The long and narrow room was decorated with articles of clothing, most of which they couldn’t identify. A mockery of a rustic sign hung over the beer taps, and the table coasters were labeled Cozy Corner. A Polizeiknüppel, a leather-covered length of steel spring, hung on the wall behind the bartender.

At the far end, a raised platform was flanked by two dwarf spotlights and a curtain.

At the nearest table, a boy dressed without conviction as a sailor sat with a man in English tweeds. They kissed. The sailor eased the Oxford don’s lips apart with two fingers.

“My God,” Granach said from deep in their booth, and Veidt excused himself to chat with someone at the bar.

Boys who sold themselves for sex, Müthel finally remarked, had no future. They all looked at him.

“The voice of experience,” Hans said.

Nevertheless, Müthel said. It was true. Their clients couldn’t allow themselves to care what became of them.

They abused him for his threepenny psychology, and in so doing led themselves out of their paralysis of excitement and terror.

It occurred to them that they were thirsty. They tried various ways of attracting the barkeep’s attention.

Granach ventured the opinion that since prostitution was heartless and marriage immoral, abstention was preferable. Müthel added that he regarded women as a distraction, nothing more. Hans took both their hands, and said, “Come, now. Why don’t we all face the music and say what we mean: that we’re frankly afraid of them?”

Wilhelm kept to himself, aware that he didn’t know how anyone besides merchants’ sons and bookworms actually spoke.

Veidt stood at the bar sipping champagne. He looked to be considering the clientele with unsurprised benevolence.

Granach mentioned that he’d first seen Veidt in a cabaret on the Schützenstrasse. Veidt had played The Doomed Homosexual. That had been at least two years ago. How old could he have been?

Müthel wanted to know if they thought he was a member of—what was it called?—the Society of Free Spirits.

Wilhelm looked at Hans and Hans looked away. He seemed relaxed.

Granach shrugged, then put two coasters over his eyes for monocles. What was that gang on about, anyway? he asked.

Müthel said that, as he understood it, the idea was the celebration of Greek ideals. Spiritual calm and inner peace, in the intimate company of a friend.

Oh, yes, Granach said. Willi and Fritzi, after the football match. The older and younger boy at school. “The evening tutorial, in which the most spiritual of values were inculcated … Willi had dropped his pen-knife in Fritzi’s bed, and together they hunted for it, for without it there would be no fun that day.”

Hans smiled across the table at Wilhelm: a calming, beautiful smile.

Where was the barkeep? Müthel wanted to know. Were they ever going to drink?