It was a small, third-rate café, half empty at this hour of the evening. The little waiter bestirred himself at their entrance and showed them with a flourish to a corner table, as if he had been reserving it especially for them. In the next room someone was playing fragments of tunes on the piano. Gurdweill ordered coffee for two and cigarettes, glancing as he did so at the sign hanging on the opposite wall: Aryan Nature Lovers Meeting, Neubau Branch. A picture flashed through his mind of tall Aryan teachers in green jackets and short, dirty leather trousers, with bare, bony, sunburned knees and long, curved pipes sticking out of their colourless, stupid faces: ‘nature lovers’. The waiter brought the coffee and cigarettes, and Gurdweill heard the president of the society say, ‘And now, gentlemen, I give the floor to our honoured member Herr Eigermeyer, after which, with the permission of all those present, we shall go on to discuss the items on the agenda of the meeting.’ Herr Eigermeyer rose to his feet and began in a somewhat husky voice: ‘The great and particular importance, gentlemen, which cannot be sufficiently emphasised, of the establishment of special branches of our society for the organisation and education of Aryan youth to the love of nature and fresh air and a proud, healthy, natural life in the spirit of the teachings of our Saviour Jesus Christ and their preservation from the undesirable foreign elements that — hmm — that have penetrated into our midst from the East, and that are taking over everything — I must stress, gentlemen, everything, all the economic and intellectual professions, and in the end even the last, precious possession remaining to us, the glorious nature of our beloved country … My heart bleeds, my friends …’ And when he came home Herr Eigermeyer would wake his wife and tell her in a casual, nonchalant tone that he had made a speech lasting half an hour at the meeting tonight. He wasn’t one to blow his own trumpet, as she very well knew, but all the members of the society had praised the clarity of his ideas and the precise, economical way in which he had expressed them … His wife would yawn lengthily, listen inattentively, and fall asleep again while he took off his clothes and got into bed with a feeling of profound self-satisfaction.

Gurdweill found it highly agreeable, even soothing, to picture this scene in a mood of ironic detachment. He smiled and took a sip of coffee. Not far off the waiter stood leaning against a table, apparently deep in thought. But the moment Lotte finished her coffee and put a cigarette into her mouth, he rushed up to offer her a light.