The Ministry for the Future

106

The day before Fasnacht, Mary got a message from Arthur Nolan. He was getting back to Zurich in time for it, could he still join her?

Yes, she messaged back. The rest of that day she thought about him, wondered what it meant that he was back. She was pleased he would be there. Had he cut short a tour?

She went out to see The Clipper of the Clouds descend onto the big new airship flughafen in Dübendorf. When he emerged from their little Jetway he saw her and smiled. A slight man.

She accompanied him to his co-op, looked around curiously as he put away his small bag of stuff. Frank’s last place. Who remembered him now? Seemed like it might already be down to her. Maybe his parents were still alive. If so they would be so sad. Horrible the way mental illness spread its pain around, cut people off. Her Frank, she had done her best; and he had been a friend anyway, she had loved him in her way. Nothing to be done.

They trammed up to her place, and he laughed to see it. You took a place sized for me, he joked as he walked down the length it, farther to the left than she could have gone.

They dined in a nearby trattoria. Art told her where he had gone on his last trip: central Asia, mostly, circling the lower slopes of the various mountain ranges, where animals were doing very well. The Caucasus, the Pamirs, the Karakorums, the Altai, the Hindu Kush, the Himalaya. There was a Lenin Peak in the Pamirs, and Tajikistan was almost all a wilderness reserve, imperfect but real. They had seen a snow leopard, and black-faced langurs, and many other creatures. People had inhabited these mountain ranges for thousands of years, but the nature of the land meant it was a bit like Switzerland, only more so; some terrain was just too wild to make much of. His friends Tobias and Jesse were helping to create what they called the Anthropocene wilderness, a composite thing that was like the wilder wing of the Half Earth movement, and many of the governments there were cooperating in creating a vast integrated park and corridor system that included and supported the local indigenous human populations, as park keepers or simply local residents, part of the land doing their thing.

It sounds great, Mary said. I’d like to go on that one.

Would you? Because I’m going to do it again.

If I go, I’d like to spend more time on the ground, she confessed. Just stay in one place for a while, see what happens.

We could drop you off and pick you up again.

That sounds good.

After dinner he gave her another hug and headed off to the tram.

The next day was Fasnacht in Zurich. Shrove Tuesday, falling on February 14 of this year. Art came up to her place to meet her, and when she opened the door she found him wearing a silver lamé jumpsuit with a plastic red hat. You’re going to freeze in that, she warned him. She herself had on a long black cape and carried a Venetian domino she could put on when she wanted, a beautiful cat face, which restricted her vision too much to keep on all the time, but looked nice. She put it on to show him and he said, Oh I love cats.

I know you do, she said. Do you want to borrow a coat?

I’ll be all right.

They went out into the darkness of early evening. As so often, Fasnacht was going to be cold. On this night the air was particularly chill, temperature already well below freezing. This had a peculiar effect on the festival, because many Zurchers were like Art, dressed in costumes not really appropriate for such cold. But the Swiss were pretty cold-hardened people, and apparently Art was too. As they walked down Rämistrasse arm in arm, they saw people in grass skirts, Hawaiian short-sleeved shirts, bikinis and the like, also fur coats, band uniforms, national costumes from many nations, and every possible type of kitschy cantonal costume. And almost every person out there promenading carried a musical instrument. Fasnacht in Zurich was a musical evening. On every street corner, one or more musical groups were playing for small crowds surrounding them. For a while Mary and Art listened to a steel drum band banging away metallically at some spritely tune from Trinidad. Right behind the band, a fountain was gushing into the air, its water plashing down in time to the music. Bulbous ice knuckles made a thick white verge around the edges of the fountain’s basin.

Lower on Rämistrasse they strolled slowly by the luxury shops, looking at window displays. The shop that sold Alpine curiosities held them for a long time: polished facets of stone, geodes, burls and cubes of wood, all enlivened by a small menagerie of stuffed Alpine animals. Also fur pelts, stretched out like artworks against the walls to right and left. Art stuck his nose to the glass to see better.

What are they? Mary asked.

I’m not sure. I mean the stuffed ones are easy, that’s a fox, and a weasel. I’m not really sure about the pelts though.

Kind of sad, no?

I don’t know, once they’re dead I think stuffing some of them is okay. And keeping their fur. Once I came on a dead owl that was perfectly intact, a huge thing, and I took it to a taxidermist and had it stuffed. It was beautiful, I had it for years.

What happened to it?

I don’t know, I was about ten.

Down the street to the next corner, where an Andean band in serapes played their pan pipes and guitars. They at least were appropriately dressed for the cold. They sang in tight harmonies, not in Spanish—maybe it was Quechua. These were professionals, or at least professional street musicians, and Mary and Art stayed and listened for a long time—so long that Mary got cold, and steered Art down into the Niederdorf.

Here they found that Zurich had put its lions out for the evening, a fact which caused Art to exclaim happily, time after time as they passed the little prides. Mary told Art what she knew about them, which she had just read in the paper the week before; they were fiberglass lions, life-sized, molded in ten or a dozen different postures, then painted different colors by different groups, and placed all over the city to celebrate its two thousandth anniversary, back in 1987. Turicum, Art interjected, a Roman city. Mary agreed. After the city’s yearlong celebration of its two thousandth year, she went on, most of the lions had been auctioned off, but the city had kept a hundred or two in storage at one of the bus garages, ready to be redeployed, and this year’s Fasnacht had been declared special for some reason or other. So now they passed lions painted like alpine meadows, like flames, like the blue and white Zurich flag; like tram tickets and zebras and sea serpents and the British flag (they booed it); like Art Deco lamps or granite or brick; and as for their various postures, Art identified most of them to Mary as they passed them: That’s couchant, that’s rampant, that one’s assaultant; that one’s at gaze, that one’s accolé. That head is caboshed, if you can believe it.

You liked heraldry as a child, Mary guessed.

I did! It was all about animals, it seemed to me.

Did you read Gerald Durrell?

I loved Gerald Durrell. That one’s passant, the one next to it is trippant, this one is saliant.

She steered him toward the Casa Bar. As they approached it he laughed aloud at a group of lions outside its door, painted in uniforms of some psychedelic Sergeant Pepper kind. He said, Do you know Fourier, Charles Fourier, the French utopian?

No, Mary said. Tell me.

He was a utopian, he had followers in France and America, they started communes based on his ideas, and in his books he went into great detail about everything. Verne loved his work, he’s a kind of secret influence on Verne. And for him the animals were very important—they were going to join us, he said, and become a big part of civilization. So at one point he says, The mail will be delivered by lions.

By lions! Mary exclaimed.

That’s right. The mail will be delivered by lions!

She laughed with him. They staggered down an alleyway laughing helplessly. I’d like to see that, she said. I’m looking forward to that one.

They crashed into the Casa Bar still laughing. The drinks will be served by kangaroos, Mary predicted. The usual house band was playing traditional jazz. The star of this band was the clarinet player, fluid and long-winded beyond human belief. They drank Irish coffees as they listened, and prodded by Mary, Art told her more about his animalist youth. It turned out they had grown up about a hundred miles apart, but he had been a country boy in summer, a child of County Down, and Ireland’s back country still supported a fair population of small wild creatures, all hounded relentlessly by the young Art, it sounded like.

They downed the last of their coffees and went back out into the night. As they threaded the crowded dark alleys it sounded like someone was playing an organ in the Grossmünster, but as they chased the sound they found it was coming from a single accordion player, sitting on a gold lion in a concrete and glass box on the western river walk. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, in fact, all coming from a single man squeezing his big black box in and out, and fingering fast. Perfect pacing, articulation, volume. Mary had never heard any orchestra finish it so well. Afterward Art approached with the few other listeners to find out who this virtuoso was, while Mary stayed outside the box to listen to the general cacophony. A Russian, Art reported to Mary when he returned, due to play the next night in Tonhalle. Just passing the time tonight, not even rehearsing, just joining the party. He had played in subway stations in Moscow when he was young, and still liked it. So he had said.

To make such beauty out of a silly squeezebox! Mary marvelled.

Anything is possible on Fasnacht, Art said. Let’s go find the guggenmusikplatz, I like those bands.

Guggenmusik?

You know, brass bands. They’re mostly school band reunions, and they play really loudly and out of tune.

On purpose?

Yes. It’s a Swiss thing, I think. On festival night you’re supposed to go wild, so for them that means playing your French horn out of tune!

Again they laughed. They crossed the Limmat on the Münsterbrücke, into the little old streets between the river and Bahnhofstrasse. The candy store was open for Fasnacht, and Mary treated Art to a slice of dried orange half-dipped in dark chocolate. Bands were playing on every corner: a quintet of saxes, some west African pop, a tango ensemble blazing through some Piazzolla. Finally they found the guggenmusikplatz, which was indeed brass bands playing loudly and out of tune, all at once, different tunes. All a mix and a roar, the Zurchers costumed and flush-faced in the frigid air. It was cold! A choir of alpenhorn players blew into alpenhorns of different lengths, making them more versatile in terms of tones, so that Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man sounded very fine; the final movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata, on the other hand, proved to be a bridge too far when adapted for alphorn, guggenmusik indeed, to the point of falling apart into a giant blaring of all the alphorns at once. The crowd cheered and dispersed, Mary and Art among them. After a few more stops to listen to other groups, they took refuge in the Zeughauskeller and ordered crème brûlée and kafi fertig.

I like the mix of caffeine and alcohol, Mary confessed.

He nodded. I like the warmth.

A group of men dressed as American cheerleaders burst into the big room and leaped up onto the tables. The band accompanying them was Swiss traditional, and yet with the cheerleaders on the tables they began to play marching songs from America, John Philip Sousa no doubt. On the Swiss instruments this didn’t work very well, nor did the men in drag manage to coordinate their can-can dancing with any precision, but everyone cheered them anyway; it was guggenmusik again, with guggendanse too, moustached bankers in pleated skirts and cashmere sweaters, arm in arm, high-kicking precariously overhead, it was too ludicrous not to cheer. Art shouted in Mary’s ear that all this was sign of a syndrome, that when an orderly culture like Switzerland finally let loose it was inevitably even wilder than more relaxed cultures. It’s a matter of venting, he said loudly so she could hear him. Lots of pressure through a small aperture kind of thing.

Like a French horn mouthpiece, Mary joked.

Yes exactly!

I’m like that myself, Mary shouted, she didn’t know why.

Art grinned. Me too!

Let’s get out of here before someone gets hurt! Mary said.

Sounds good!

They wandered on though the crowded streets. From the Tonhalle’s opened doors they could hear the city’s orchestra charging through the end of Brahms’s Second Symphony, trombones leading the way. Brahms’s own guggenmusik, the best of all. After that the orchestra was going to do the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth, it wasn’t a night to be subtle.

At midnight there would be fireworks over the lake.

How will people get home after the fireworks? Mary wondered. The trams stop at midnight no matter what day it is.

We can walk up to your place, right?

Yeah sure. I’d like that. Work off some energy.

And warm up a little.

So they made their way slowly through the streets and alleys toward the lake. A string quartet was screeching out something by Ligeti, or maybe it was Stockhausen, transfixing a crowd around them, except for the people singing along with it, or shouting abuse. A passing clown gave Mary and Art slide whistles, hers small and high, his bigger and lower, and Art made her stop by a pair of green and orange lions, assurgent affrontée, Art said, and in the colors of the Irish flag, so they could stand on one and become their own band, him leading her through “Raglan Road.” The Gaelic name for the tune, Art told her before they started, meant “Dawning of the Day.” Very apt, she replied, trying to focus on the music. Slide whistles were simple but hard, as she was now remembering from her childhood; every micrometer up or down the slide changed the tone considerably, it was impossible to hit the notes right, one had to adjust mid-note with minute adjustments, so it was guggenmusik again for sure. Possibly it was the same for trombones, which was why they liked to play out of tune on this night, being out of practice and thus making a virtue of necessity. But Art could carry a tune on his bigger whistle, and she did her best, and some people stopped to listen; Mary saw all of a sudden that they had stopped because no one on this night was to be allowed to play without an audience. This was so touching that Mary almost cried, she blew hard into her little whistle and squealed a looping descant that almost worked, guggenmusik indeed. Sloppy Irish song, the anthem of St. Patrick’s Day, on Ragland Road in November, I saw her first and knew. When they finished she took Art by the arm and dragged him off, saying, Come on we’ll be puncturing their eardrums with these things. He only laughed.

Many of the corner bands were also school reunions, people pulling instruments and jackets out of the closet, happy to be reimmersed in their mates and their old songs. The Swiss never gave up on music, Art shouted, everyone still learns to play something in school, and even if they stop doing it afterward, tonight’s the night. Mary nodded as she looked around; people were red-faced and ecstatic with the joy of playing music together. Playing: music was adults at play.

The sound spheres in this part of the city overlapped, but as long as that didn’t confuse the players, or even if it did, the listeners took it as part of the experience. Down near the lake it got more and more crowded, it was the place to be, and here they could always hear at least three tunes at once, often more. Cacophony, she shouted to Art.

Polyphony! he shouted back, grinning.

Mary nodded, smiling back at him.

Midnight was approaching. Ash Wednesday would soon be here, with its discipline and fasting. It was time to let loose. Fat Tuesday. Even more than New Year’s Eve, it was time to let loose: winter’s end was in sight, and though it wasn’t spring, it was the promise of spring. Spring would come. That knowledge was always the real festival night.

They reached the lake. The Zurichsee, her summer schwimmbad. Mary recalled the big conference in Kongresshall just down the shore, the clot of trends, the Gordian knot of the world; but then she thought, No, not tonight. She had spent her entire life tugging on that Gordian knot, and at most had only loosened a snag, the big knot remaining intact despite a lifetime of ceaseless work. She shuddered in the cold at the thought of that, grabbed Art’s arm, guided him to the little lakeside park with the statue of Ganymede and the eagle.

Have you seen this before? she asked him.

The statue? Sure. But who was Ganymede, I never really knew. And what’s with the bird?

She said, It’s kind of mysterious really. It’s said to be Ganymede and Zeus, Zeus in the form of an eagle. So, but look at him. What is he saying to that eagle, do you think? What does it mean? I mean—what does it mean?

Art regarded it. Naked bronze man, arms outstretched, neatly balanced, one arm back and high, the other forward and low—as if offering something to the bird, as in falconry. But the eagle was almost waist high to him.

That’s a really big bird, Art said. And there’s something wrong with its wings.

A phoenix, Mary said as it occurred to her. Maybe it’s a phoenix.

The man is offering it his life, Art guessed.

Mary stared at it. I don’t know, she confessed. I can’t get it.

It’s some kind of offering, Art insisted. It’s a gesture of offering. He’s us, right? So he’s us, offering the world back to the animals!

Maybe so.

He was definitely saying something. That we could become something magnificent, or at least interesting. That we began as we still are now, child geniuses. That there is no other home for us than here. That we will cope no matter how stupid things get. That all couples are odd couples. That the only catastrophe that can’t be undone is extinction. That we can make a good place. That people can take their fate in their hands. That there is no such thing as fate.

Her lake extended blackly to the low hills in the distance, the VorderAlps, the forward alps. Black sky above, spangled with stars. Orion, the winter god, looking like a starry version of the Ganymede before them.

It has to mean something, Mary said.

Does it? Art asked.

I think it does.

That’s Jupiter there to the west, Art said, pointing to the brightest star. So if your big bird is Zeus, that’s where he comes from, right?

Maybe so, Mary said.

She tried to put that together with the burbling roar of the crowd, the overlapping music, the lake and the sky; it was too big. She tried to take it in anyway, feeling the world balloon inside her, oceans of clouds in her chest, this town, these people, this friend, the Alps—the future—all too much. She clutched his arm hard. We will keep going, she said to him in her head—to everyone she knew or had ever known, all those people so tangled inside her, living or dead, we will keep going, she reassured them all, but mostly herself, if she could; we will keep going, we will keep going, because there is no such thing as fate. Because we never really come to the end.