Carlotta rises languidly from the visitor’s armchair where she had seated herself collegially next to Aristides and walks to the door in all her corporeality to relay Witte’s wish to the secretary in the outer office. A. can’t figure out what her role is here. The leisureliness of her movements is provocative, with a slatternly elegance, animalistic and unwholesome, a demonstration of erotic power. The way Aristides watches her does not escape Witte. With a little edge he says, “Frau Schwab is my personal assistant.” (Schwab? A. swiftly weighs the possibility that she is S.’s former wife. S. has never mentioned her, in fact, but Rönnekamp has said something about an ex-wife named Charlotte. As she comes back, A. regards her with new eyes.)

Witte uses the time that passes until the advertising director arrives to continue his lecture. “My principle is to give my people complete independence to do their jobs—assuming a certain minimum of control, of course. But I myself determine the course of the company, which requires a strictly centralized organization. If you will, we’re the brain cells in the organism of our affiliates. If you don’t look after every shitty little detail personally, you go broke. Only unambiguously clear leadership determines the profile of our brand and makes it resistant to the crushing competition of the big national firms—Henkel, for instance—and also from abroad. Of course, our advertising is crucial to the struggle, especially its . . .” He’s interrupted by a knock on the door. “Ah, here he is already!” With a jovial wave of his arm, “Come in, come in . . .” (his good mood increases with the possibility of favorable self-presentation) “. . . May I introduce the director of our advertising department, Dr. Fiebig? Herr—what was your name again? Subicz, of course!—Herr, or rather, Baron von Subicz.”

Neither the one nor the other, A. assures him.

“The Subiczes were a Bosnian royal family,” A. says mischievously, “who died out in the fourteenth century.” Now he can’t help stealing a glance at Carlotta and reaps ironical agreement in return.

For a moment, Witte is struck dumb. Then he clears his throat lightly and continues: “The idea of raising the aesthetic level of our advertising already occurred to me quite some time ago—but here’s Dr. Fiebig. Show us what we’ve been doing up to now.”

He’s interrupted by the purring of his phone. He picks up, says several times “Yes? Yes? Yes! Wait a sec,” then presses the button for the outer office and says, “Frau Busse, connect this guy to sales and don’t bother me with such stuff for the next half an hour!” He turns to A.: “A former admiral with connections in the navy—pure bullshit, but what can you do? These guys need to make a living too” and to the advertising director: “Well, Dr. Fiebig, fire away.”—”With what?” asks Dr. Fiebig.

“With what we’ve been doing in advertising. Herr von Subicz wants to be informed about it.”

The director of advertising doesn’t try to hide the fact that he has more important things to do than spread out the entire advertising material for a visitor. At the moment, he says, they’re concentrating on the campaign “Wittewash Washes Whiter than White” initiated by the head of the company, Herr Witte himself. “Yes, yes, of course,” Witte interrupts him, “but I just had the idea that we are basically doing nothing concrete to illustrate that slogan. Have you ever considered the possibility that we could put on a sort of public washing demonstration, not as a big event before a big audience, of course, but with in-house demos from door to door?”