The host reaps a thankful glance from the count, who now tremendously and corpulently bows over Stella’s hand. With an emphatic amiability that excludes her from the others, he says, “I am inconsolable, my dear. I was so looking forward to seeing you. Please give my very best to dear John. And let’s get together very, very soon!”

Pirouetting with elephantine grace, he spirals up from the hand kiss, managing as he twists to bid goodnight to the others with a gesture of apology, as though to indicate that his size prevents him, in this constricted space, from making an individual farewell to each person without greatly inconveniencing everyone else. Now, having turned his back to them, he leaves, throwing his tremendous arm around the narrow shoulders of the host, who sees him out of the room. We hear their muffled speech behind the door and their occasional bitter mirth.

The hostess desperately tries to catch Stella’s eye, but Stella is gazing absently into space. The Berliners too have lapsed into dull silence, and not even the breezy lawyer from Kecskemét has a quip at hand to dissipate the general embarrassment. This awkward tension is further heightened when the returning host, instead of rejoining the group, peers rather ostentatiously at his watch and then goes into the next room to switch on the radio for the eight o’clock news.

But this exposes a pugnacious streak in the hostess. With a candor that almost makes her pretty, she declares that she was expecting only a few guests—namely, the count, Stella, and me—for supper. But if the others would be satisfied with something improvised, then they’d all be welcome. However, she says, she has to ask them to pitch in and help because her maid gave notice this morning—she need hardly explain why.

Her suggestion is accepted with enthusiasm all around. Everyone goes into the kitchen, where the Lemberger or Kecskeméter and the Berlin woman who declared her love for him prove to be proficient and inventive amateur chefs and have soon put us all to work. The atmosphere becomes downright boisterous, especially since the host, an old-time Austrian, is incapable of rudeness under any circumstances. Making the best of a bad situation, he serves an excellent Veltliner wine—but he turns away in disgust when one of the belatedly invited guests calls it “swell booze.”

In the dining room, the table is quickly set for twelve instead of five, and naturally we do without being placed—everyone sits where he likes. The meal has the relaxed mood of one eaten in an Alpine hut, which leads some of the Berliners to shed their coarse Salzburg loden jackets, to which they are obviously unaccustomed. The wine connoisseur talks away at the host, who is seated rather far down the table; he assures him that there are two things he finds charming about Austrians, whom he does not exactly hold in high esteem otherwise: the Viennese Heurige and the informal, natural ways of Alpine inhabitants, especially the Salzburgers and Tyrolians; he can’t quite get along with Styrians and Carinthians. The host listens with the expression of a man suffering from a toothache. He also winces each time his Berlin neighbors bang a piece of cold meat or a dollop of potato salad onto his plate, telling him he’s too skinny.