In the penultimate chapter, the inevitable discovery, Granach added. Handled with more tristesse than panic: “But the strict Headmaster found out their inclinations.”

Hans smiled again. It sounded, he said, like Granach had done some hunting for the pen-knife himself.

Granach laughed.

The conversation lapsed.

Veidt finally returned, easing in beside Wilhelm so that their bodies touched from shoulder to knee. Granach asked if this so-called bar in fact ever served anything to drink. Veidt asked what they’d been talking about. Müthel caught him up on the conversation.

“‘The sordid perils of actual existence,’” Veidt remarked, looking at Wilhelm.

Hans regarded them both.

“Granach was telling us about your role as The Doomed Homosexual,” Müthel said.

“As to questions concerning my nature,” Veidt said, with a smile, “my usual answer is ‘Musical.’”

The bartender arrived with a tray of five glasses of Mampe’s orange-flavored cordial.

“Who ordered these?” Granach asked.

“Whom do you think?” Veidt said.

They toasted themselves.

“What are we?” Granach asked, grimacing at the taste. “English shopkeepers’ wives?”

“A man over there gave me his card,” Veidt said, removing it from a pocket and showing it round. “It says under his name, ‘Portuguese Doctor.’”

“As in Dutch wife?” Hans asked. “French letter? Spanish fly?”

The two dwarf spotlights at the end of the bar flared on, and a fanfare was performed by a fat man with a clarinet. He then pulled open the curtain to reveal two women in heavy makeup and dressed as Amazons. The special quality of the proceedings that followed depended in part on the disparity in the size of the women. One was so small as to appear to be the other’s daughter. They mimed a pitched battle which ended with the tiny woman pinned, at which point they seemed to see each other with new eyes. The victor lowered her face slowly, while the vanquished kept her eyes on the approaching mouth. At the crucial moment the victor stopped, their open lips only grazing. The group at the table could hear breathing, and glasses clinking. Then the victor reared back and tore away the tunic from between the vanquished’s legs. The vanquished did the same to the victor. The fat man performed another fanfare. Neither woman was a woman.

The victor began to lower his mouth toward the proof of the vanquished’s masculinity.

The group at the table seemed unwilling to breathe. Wilhelm felt like he had become afflicted with a new, pleasurable form of fever.

The lights went out and a cheer rose up from the patrons. When the lights came back up, the two principals were holding hands and taking bows.

Veidt got up while they were still applauding. Time to get out of here, he said. They had other stops to make.