By chance or perhaps by some diminution of an electric charge running from one end of the room to the other, the two meetings break up at the same moment. The Austrian duo shakes hands with Martä and heads for the boit de nuit in the basement of the hotel where they will while away a few hours with green beer and illicit dancers. They kindly suggest that Marta join them, but she declines. She is expected at home, she says; she must catch her bus at the People’s Square.

The three dark-suited functionari, through the medium of their blushing translator, bid good evening to their distinguished guest, Malcolm Brownstone. They wish him a pleasing night. They are sorry, they say, that the rain has spoiled the evening, but the countryside has been needing such a wetting. His suggestions have greatly animated them and they look forward to traveling with him on the morrow to the coast. A car will call for him at eight-thirty and it is hoped that this very hour is agreeable.

Badly translated languages fill Malcolm with sentiment, touching his primal sense of what a language should be, every word snugged in a net of greeting. He is charmed by inversions. He welcomes the derangement of grammar and the matching derangement of his senses. Affection surges. He would like to embrace these three chunky men, as well as the earnest translator who is now giggling helplessly and struggling into a raincoat. Instead he bows elegantly, like an oversized actor, and shakes hands all round. A minute later he finds himself, too suddenly, alone.

A walk is what he needs. A stroll on the Boulevard Skopjerlë, at dusk, at twilight, a look at the famous People’s Square in the center of the city. Outside the rain is pouring down, but luckily in his briefcase he has a folding umbrella, a marvel of hinged ribs and compacted nylon. He never travels without it.

At the wide front door of the hotel-marble flooring stained and splitting-he collides with Martä Gjatä. She salutes him with her droll eyes and the smallest of shrugs. Rain is what her look says, rain and me without an umbrella. She bites her lower lip and smiles.

The smile might mean anything. Malcolm interprets it as the spasm of tension that often follows a moment of disconnection. He feels the same tension himself, and so returns the smile, but doubles the kilowatts. A real smile; no cold potato here, but a man of warmth and spontaneity; charming, helpful.