Erna finishes tossing the green beans and potatoes in olive oil and herbs, and serves them on a fresh bed of spinach. She covers the eggplant and mushrooms with the lemon caper sauce, and declares them done.

Erna rings the dinner bell, and the inn's guests begin filing in. A younger, redheaded man and his pretty wife enter the room. The redhead smiles at Erna. "::This looks wonderful, thank you,::" he says.

Clara comes bouncing in, and an older gentlemen with a scraggly beard follows behind her. Next comes a reedy man and a man in a hat going back and forth in a flurry of German too fast for Autor to translate. "[They're talking politics,]" he explains to Oswin. "[It's very boring.]" From his narrow-eyed stare, however, it's anything but.