Bread, Prosperity, Beauty

The great hall of a workers' club house at a chemical works near Merseburg on a grey November afternoon, seen from the back rows over the heads of a thousand delegates in dark suits seen from directly behind, far ahead a long presidium table draped in white pleated cloth with microphones, water bottles, ferns and pale chrysanthemums, heavy dark curtains behind it, at the right a wooden lectern where, small and distant, a bespectacled man of sixty-five with a grey goatee in a dark suit bends his head low over his manuscript, his face hidden by the downward angle, warm stage light, a haze of smoke, every wall bare and plain.