Out on the street, he fell into step beside Wilhelm and asked if that was the first male organ Wilhelm had seen in public. Ahead of them, Hans strode with his hands in his pockets, forcing Müthel to trot every so often to keep up.

Wilhelm could easily have called to him.

The next club was as raucous as a rally. A paralyzed patron, wheeled up a ramp onto the stage, dictated his will to wild applause. A grateful young man in silk trousers the color of pomegranate climbed onto his lap and passed cherries to him mouth to mouth while the crowd whooped like Red Indians. After each transfer the paralyzed man would chew the cherry and spit the pit high out into the audience.

The club after that featured two veiled tableaus: “Victory in Her Golden Chariot” and “The Shame of Catherine the Great.” While the latter was assembling itself, Hans touched Wilhelm’s shoulder and pointed. Spiess was along the opposite wall, sitting by himself. He gave no sign of having seen them.

With the evening winding down, Veidt read their palms. Hans’s left hand revealed a few simple gifts, and his right promised them rich development. The opposite proved the case with Wilhelm’s hands: many gifts, destined to go unused.

While his hand was still in Veidt’s, Spiess passed their table.

On the way to the streetcar stop Granach took Wilhelm aside and mentioned that Veidt was someone who let his little head rule his big head.

Rattling along on the streetcar, they talked about Byron. The saddest thing about his early death, Hans volunteered, was the way it overshadowed his work in so many memories.

Wilhelm’s education with Reinhardt proceeded. He worked on chamber-pieces adapted from Lessing. He was added to small committees Reinhardt called problem-groups to work on specific issues involved in the staging.

The first was lighting. This was his introduction to Reinhardt’s Kuppelhorizont, a plaster cyclorama sky-dome attached to a cupola that overhung the back of the stage. The plaster was covered with a kind of glaze. Properly lit with a diffused and modulated light, it transformed itself into a stunning illusion of space, and infinite depth.

He found himself astounded by the possibilities. Reinhardt dropped in every so often to monitor his team’s progress or gently urge them in one direction or another. They taught themselves all about light. They were drunk with light.

So that for their first production, the curtain rose on a horizon flooded with ultramarine moonlight. Then the theater was plunged into darkness, until a magic lantern in the orchestra pit, manipulated by a crouching Granach turning and turning his crank, covered the sky with rushing opalescent clouds.