High Society and the Handyschüssel
8:00PM
When the guests of honour make their way to the entrance hall for pre-ball drinks, they find the previously empty hall now filled with people: while everybody looks basically the same to begin with, their eyes begin to adjust, and they can begin to distinguish the waiters from the new attendees by their sleeves: the waiters are jacketless, wearing white shirts under black waistcoats, while the guests are primarily wearing tuxes. Actually, the attendees
are wearing primarily tuxes, aren’t they? They’re interspersed with the odd cocktail dress, but of the perhaps sixty or seventy attendees, the vast majority are male.
Whoever the houseguests were expecting, there doesn’t really seem to be any clue as to who they might be. The obvious guess would be family and friends, but, while it’s conceivable, the attendees seem to be generally solitary figures, walking in on their own or in small groups, and their interactions, in both English and German, are friendly, but formal – they don’t overwhelmingly give off the impression of familiarity in any sense of the word. While keeping more or less to themselves, they do notice the arrival of the Wolf’s houseguests with interest.
The hubbub is amplified by the hall, with a reverberation on every gentile laugh, chinked glass and even particularly loud footsteps. The Wolfs themselves do not currently appear to be present, with the exception of Klara, who, apart from a nod of acknowledgement to the houseguests, is too busy to make conversation: she is working, after all, although her modest, plum-coloured dress and beehive haircut act as an effective camouflage. With powerful, purposeful strides, she checks that the ground-floor rooms are vacant before locking them, and skims through the attendees to the service staff, offering them subtle but deft guidance.
The waiters are, as she warned, German-speaking. As the houseguests enter the fray, they are naturally greeted with silver platters of champagne flutes and fancy, delicious-looking morsels, but any interaction with their bearers is an uncertain dance of guesswork, body language and mutual prediction.
There is a certain excitement, but one that is slightly vicious, and fraught with tension, like a pinched nerve or adrenaline kick. It’s only intensified, and probably deliberately, by periodic stings of a timpani and well-timed brass section as the clock, not that there is one anywhere in sight, creeps slowly closer to the appointed hour. Behind the good manners of high society, it’s fire; it’s a bleeding knife-edge; it’s almost tribal in its intensity.
At five to the hour, the room begins to climax. Without shouting, voices raise and the pressure begins to build. Platters of champagne, now empty, are hastily refilled from the kitchen downstairs, adding a disruptive flow to the room. It’s a pressure cooker. Suddenly, just when the entrance hall is about to burst,
the band kicks in. The doors open inwards toward the ballroom, pulled, presumably, by waiters on the other side, giving them the majestic sensation of moving by themselves. It can only be showtime.
