"Yes," says Johannes, relieved for another topic. "Yay."
That leaves him in the vast conversational wasteland of small talk. He knows how it functions, has even ventured into it a few times, but nonetheless tends to avoid spending the night. He sniffles and thinks about Jeremy Fischer. What does he even know about Fischer, anyway? What is there to know about someone like Fischer? It's not hard to tell the man poses him, or anyone, no threat, not here where Johannes hasn't even got a wallet to steal. He's just... another person, American, a bit scruffy, hard to understand. That's troublingly nonspecific.
That's all evaluating Fischer according to purpose, of course. Horst would surely think of something to talk to him about. He and Horst would probably be fast friends, language barriers notwithstanding. However it is that Horst does these things. Fischer. That sounds Jewish, Johannes supposes, and the man looks it; well, he hears America is better for them than England, anyway, though Deutschland isn't so bad itself nowadays. Still, that gives him a grudging grain of sympathy.
"I'm not so ill," he amends, cautiously, after a verging-on-awkward silence. "It's a minor strain of the influenza, I think, but my fever hasn't risen above a hundred or one or so degrees and it's on the decline--" Well, that's too much information. Lovely. Very debonair. "Never mind. It's only a nuisance," he says, gruff. "But this device has--its uses."
This topic has stalled in the air and is rapidly nosediving. Johannes peers at the graffiti again. "The vandalism. Is that out of the ordinary? Is there an 'ordinary,' here, by any definition?" He has nothing further to investigate, of course, but it's worth knowing Fischer's reaction, he supposes.
[voice] [unlocked]
That leaves him in the vast conversational wasteland of small talk. He knows how it functions, has even ventured into it a few times, but nonetheless tends to avoid spending the night. He sniffles and thinks about Jeremy Fischer. What does he even know about Fischer, anyway? What is there to know about someone like Fischer? It's not hard to tell the man poses him, or anyone, no threat, not here where Johannes hasn't even got a wallet to steal. He's just... another person, American, a bit scruffy, hard to understand. That's troublingly nonspecific.
That's all evaluating Fischer according to purpose, of course. Horst would surely think of something to talk to him about. He and Horst would probably be fast friends, language barriers notwithstanding. However it is that Horst does these things. Fischer. That sounds Jewish, Johannes supposes, and the man looks it; well, he hears America is better for them than England, anyway, though Deutschland isn't so bad itself nowadays. Still, that gives him a grudging grain of sympathy.
"I'm not so ill," he amends, cautiously, after a verging-on-awkward silence. "It's a minor strain of the influenza, I think, but my fever hasn't risen above a hundred or one or so degrees and it's on the decline--" Well, that's too much information. Lovely. Very debonair. "Never mind. It's only a nuisance," he says, gruff. "But this device has--its uses."
This topic has stalled in the air and is rapidly nosediving. Johannes peers at the graffiti again. "The vandalism. Is that out of the ordinary? Is there an 'ordinary,' here, by any definition?" He has nothing further to investigate, of course, but it's worth knowing Fischer's reaction, he supposes.