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and present his skin to the soul-warming light; it was just that he found himself in the aforesaid negotiations to acquire a plantation, with monies he did not even possess, and so he was still sufficiently a pragmatist not to reveal immediately to all in Herbertsh ö he his convictions regarding clothing and sustenance—after all, one didn’t do business with naked, long-haired men.
    At the Imperial Post Office, meanwhile, he became friendly with the stocky postmaster after they assured one another of their mutual enthusiasm for stamps of all kinds. The fellow led Engelhardt into the back room of the mail parlor and showed him a genuine little printery that the clerk ran there in his spare time: rubber cords, all sorts of seals, embossers, and printing matrices, labeled in a clean hand and organized into hundreds of small boxes attached to the wall; print samples of graphical elements and various letters lay on benches and tables next to one another. The protectorate had recently received its own stamps, which were now being furnished with the imperial seal Deutsch Guinea in the back parlor (on this very machine here). A light draft sprang up and swirled a few papers around that the official hurriedly gathered together again. Engelhardt was truly astonished. In his mind he already saw the official eagerly sketching drafts for his diverse advertising brochures. Back in the front office, he handed the official the letters for franking, slid a respectable gratuity across the counter, and the latter assured him he would see to it that his mailings would be dispatched home safely on the next Imperial Post ship, Engelhardt could rely on him, may he come visit again soon.
    Villa Gunantambu, Mrs. Forsayth’s wooden palace, lay a few minutes’ walk from the forlorn placard marking the city limits of Herbertsh ö he. She herself sat on the veranda, a colorfully embroidered linen shawl draped around her slender, handsomely shaped shoulders, and had air fanned at her by means of a complicated mechanical contraption. A naked little boy sat on the lawn and blew soap bubbles that landed on Engelhardt’s shoulders, where, wearily and unspectacularly, like a metaphor en miniature invoked by a second-class novelist, they breathed their last brief, soapy breath.
    And so he stepped onto the veranda, introduced himself, and bowed. Mrs. Forsayth, though a half-caste, spoke excellent, one might even say overly perfect, German. Cold tea was served, with pastries and tiny little cubes of mangosteen on toothpicks, of which Engelhardt took a few mouthfuls so as not to come across as impolite. Silence. Then, primarily to get conversation going—for one look at the gaunt young man was enough for her to classify him as a shy fellow who had turned his back on life somewhat—Mrs. Forsayth pointed out the casuarina trees growing adjacent to her wooden palace, thickly festooned with fruit bats that dangled like cocoons from the leafless boughs and occasionally flailed about with their patagia, screeching. During high heat, she declared, fixing her gaze sternly on Engelhardt, the animals urinated over their own wings, and the evaporative cold produced by flapping then provided the desired cooling effect. Engelhardt cleared his throat and smiled awkwardly, an indefinable tone of discord rattling forth from his gullet.
    Mrs. Forsayth intimidated him. She was, after all, despite being long past fifty and corpulent, a highly attractive woman who knew how to complement her flattering facial expressions most arrestingly with scant but resolute movements. It may well be that Engelhardt allowed himself to be overawed (and indeed, the businesswoman Emma Forsayth would not have been sitting there were she not thrice as shrewd as her male colleagues), for he hemmed and hawed a bit, haltingly mentioned the correspondence with Governor Hahl, and then outlined his plan to harvest the fruits of the coconut palm and trade in the by-products, which is to say, not just