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
