I am convinced she’s followed every detail of the game; it doesn’t matter whether she’s seen through it; all the same, it sparks the desired reactions. Now she really becomes aware of herself (and her awkwardness) but switches to the offensive, becomes aggressive in a feminine way, stands ostentatiously (with her back to me) at the window, through which I stare into the anemic heavenly void, but then she turns around, cuts my line of sight again and (certain of not leaving my field of vision) goes to the office door. Very attentively reads the letters of name groups on the door as well as the names of the officials processing the respective group: A–E, Handke; F–K, Löschmann; L–R, Janitzki; S–Z, Kühnle. By all means, study it as carefully as you can, my dear lady. There are situations that, at first blush, seem ineluctable, this can be confirmed by Nadine; they become all the more piquant if you delay them, in your circles especially this is probably considered good form (à propos: in art, too, delay is most helpful). But she is more discerning than she appeared to be, and comes back quite emphatically, recrossing my line of vision (hung out, like an Elbe fisherman’s line with an earthworm on the hook, in the watery distance beyond the windowpane). Before she can make any further decisions, I shift (to offer her room) half a buttock over on the bench. She promptly sits down; I naturally pay her no heed, absentmindedly light a Rothman taken from the Fabergé case, exude the fragrance of a victorious power. This must collide with early impressions of hers: budding twelve-year-old girl with half a kilo of black-market butter under her skirt goes through the British checkpoint at Aumühle, the last urban transport station on the way to Lauenburg; will the soldiers search her for it? . . . Such experiences make this generation accessible. Early humiliation and anxiety always do a fine job of preparing the erotic soil; smells, for instance cigarette smoke, are an excellent device for stirring up this past in the subconscious; phonograph records come later. Now, the sensoria of the left half of my body register that she has taken the bait, it becomes perceptibly warmer between us, from the corner of her eye she gauges my suit, the quality of my linen, and presumably the quantity of the hair on my chest—well, what do you think of me, dear lady? A distinguished foreigner, no doubt (shit, as if he needed to go to the immigration office, he looks like James Bond; even the Persian nut importer sends someone to take care of this kind of business for him, doesn’t matter if it’s his own brother-in-law). Still and all, I am a writer, a film writer, interested in milieu studies; this immigration office is without a doubt a literary gold mine, with all these colorful destinies, wouldn’t you agree? Why, these citizens of serf nations could give you the plots for entire novels, nowhere else could you find such a wealth of diverse human situations, at least not in humdrum West Germany; we all know that sociology is invalidated by the society of equality, one need only know the phenotype.