Brandt These two are urgent. This one's confidential.

Guillaume I'll get it ciphered. Never know who's going to see these things in transit. - Every communication he has with the outside world - it passes through me. The knight errant and his loyal squire. The travelling magician and the assistant who knows all his tricks. Everything he sees - I see it, too.

Brandt All those other worlds! That little factory on the industrial estate. I could be working in there . . . And already it's gone . . . The bent old man in that village street, turning to glance up at the passing train . . . That could have been me instead of him . . . I could be in that silver Mercedes on the autobahn, vanishing into another distance altogether . . . We're stopping.

Guillaume Nordstemmen. Three minutes. A few words from the window. - And there they are, the good people of Nordstemmen.

Brandt Not a bad house.

Guillaume - The same sort of dutiful supporters we've seen waving and smiling in Northeim and Freden and Alfeld.

Brandt Dear friends! Have the courage to show compassion . . . !

Guillaume - Which of the women has he got his eye on this time? Is it that one at the front gazing up at him with very slightly parted lips? Or the one over there smiling that strange dark half-smile? Or both of them at once? Or all of them? Each one of them knows he's looking at her, and her alone . . .

Brandt I can see you, Herr Guillaume. Eyeing the girls.

Guillaume What is it about women, Chief?

Brandt The way they look at you . . . The way they look straight into your eyes and you look straight into theirs. The way you can't understand them. The way you can.

Guillaume The way they smile.

Brandt The way they look seriously at you. The way they make fun of you.

Guillaume The way they're not like men.

Brandt The way they are. The way they touch your hand. The way they touch your face. The softness of their touch on your skin. The softness of your own on theirs . . . All the different people you can be with them. All the different ways your life might go . . .

Guillaume - But already they're slipping away from us. All those sweet possibilities - vanishing for ever . . . And when the evening comes . . .

Brandt Uli! Where are you?

Bauhaus Chief. (Offers wine.) Red or red?

Guillaume — He relaxes and he talks, the way he does at the end of the working day in Bonn. But now there's no Uncle Herbert, no Crown Prince Helmut, no faithful Ehmke. Only the journalists travelling with us. Only Uli. And sometimes — only me. Nobody. An upturned face like all the others.