He passed by the women’s club set right out over the Limmat, where bathers lay in the sun. Across the river stood the Odeon, looking at the sunbathing women like prurient Joyce himself. Then to the bridge at the river outlet, Quaibrücke, the beginning of the Limmat. West along the lake to the first lakeshore park. Sit at a bench above the tiny marina and watch the statue of Ganymede hold his arms out to the big bird before him. A simple gesture, enigmatic to the point of blankness. His kind of statue. Ganymede’s ta-da— that was Frank, maybe, going forward. Offering something to a great eagle. The sight gave him a shiver. In the sun, wan though it was, he shouldn’t have been cold, but he was. Then he felt a slight wave of nausea, and a cold sweat burst out all over him at once. He sat there, willing the sensation to leave him. To his relief it did. But now his clothes were damp, and he sat there feeling weak and cold.
This had happened a few times recently. He hadn’t told anyone, had brushed it off. Somehow out here in the pale sunlight it felt worse. He stood up, caught at the bench arm unsteadily. Walked down the broad steps to where the lake lapped against the concrete abutment. The sight reminded him of something he couldn’t recall— couldn’t afford to recall— he knew what it was, but he ignored it in order to plunge his hands into the water. Cold alpine water, clean and fresh. You could drink right out of the lake, Mary Murphy had told him. She swam in it and knew. He scooped a handful and lifted it to his mouth, sucked it down. Cool and bland, a little organic. He could taste that it had been snow a week before. He sucked down several handfuls, ignoring a couple of passersby who thought it was strange of him to be drinking from the lake. It was James Joyce who had said you could eat your breakfast off the Zurich streets. Now you could certainly drink their lake water. He had swum in it once or twice, he recalled now. It had been years. Jake in the lake. Strange it was so long ago.
He took a deep breath. Something wrong there, some light-headed chilled weakness he couldn’t identify, couldn’t put a word to. People said it was a shock to be released, that the days stretched out forever in the weeks before it happened, that you went crazy, that you got afraid of the freedom, wanted back inside. None of that was right when it came to him; it was not any of his old familiar reactions, which he had been told were mental states manifesting in his body. Post-traumatic stress disorder, yes, but this phrase always hid more than it revealed. What was the trauma, what was the stress, what was the disorder? No one knew. In the jungle of each mind a wandering went on ceaselessly, finding a clearing here, a pool there, all in the murky light of one’s sputtering thoughts, half awake, half asleep. Why the helpers tried to put words to it he didn’t know. Well, they were trying to help. People were wordy creatures, they felt their feelings as words. Sometimes. But sometimes it didn’t work. No words fit.
A shaft of fear cut through him like a blade. Something was wrong.
He took the steps up from the lake carefully, looking down to make sure his feet were set right. Not a place to stumble, there were too many Zurchers out for a walk, and if he fell and they helped him and saw his ankle monitor they would think he was on drugs. No, he had to maintain.
He got up to street level, breathed deeply. He took stock, shook his limbs, felt them move as he expected them to, took heart. Across the busy street and into the little sidestreets between Bahnhofstrasse and the river. Up here was a candy shop that sold wedges of candied orange half-dipped in various types of chocolate. He liked the darkest chocolate. Best possible wedges of orange, bittersweet, not quite dried, half-coated with the best possible chocolates. He had made a habit of dropping by and buying just one, to nibble on while he walked. He went in now, and the saleswoman recognized him, plucked out a wedge with tongs and put it on a sheet of waxed paper without him having to ask, a nod from him was enough. Then back out into the narrow pedestrian streets, smooth flattened pavers almost like cobblestones but not, back toward Paradeplatz, across the tram tracks running down Bahnhofstrasse and up into the neighborhood around the prison, so well known to him.
Orange and chocolate, chocolate and orange. Bitter and sweet, dark and light. The complementary tastes forming a composite taste of its own, full and chewy. An infusion of sugars flowing into him, some fat, probably a little jolt of caffeine too. He turned the corner and saw the Gefängnis and felt better. He would shake off this malaise, await his release as stoically as he had endured it, get out and take an apartment in the neighborhood. There was a co-op apartment nearby, overlooking the bus garage, that he had been on the waiting list for since the beginning of his sentence. Now a little bedroom in it was available. He would take that and keep living just as he was now. Keep his head down and get through the days just as he had been.
Mary Murphy didn’t
