I cry a bit instead. I sit down to cry on a bench and I see something so I duck my head. There’s a noise like ZVOVVvv above my head and something lodges halfway through a metal sign pointing the way to the Bärengraben: a metal marble the size of a human eye.

I look across the road and I see Evil Hansel with a heavyweight fisherman’s catapult. With the right projectile these things are lethal up to forty feet but they look sort of scampish. Scampish such that a small boy might carry one without getting arrested and such.

Evil Hansel looks at me and shrugs. He doesn’t even reload. His face barely registers anything at all.

We stand there and look at one another across the road for a while. Then a bus comes and he’s gone.

I slightly like this kid.

I mean he stabbed me while his grandfather shot my friend. It’s not like we could ever be friends.

But Volodya was right man this country has interesting people in it. People and stuff I guess.

I go back to the pig farm and I wait for Doc to notice I am there. Rex has disarmed the door and now it looks kinda sad. It is a murder door with no murder left in it.

—

“Hi door.”

LOOM

“Hi door my name is Jack how are you today?”

LOOM

“I hear you man but there has to be something that you want like something that you can’t get just with the opening and the closing.”

LOOM

LOOM

LOOM

“Yep I guess in the end that is really just your whole thing isn’t it?”

LOOM

“That and the killing—”

“So if I just—”

“If you were activated and I reached out and—”

ZzzzzZZZ-CLICK

“Wow. Yep.”

CLICKACLICKACLICK

“I feel ya big guy.”

LOOM CLICKACLICKCLICK

“Yeah let it all out that’s right—”

“Price?”

“Hi Doc.”

“Price are you talking to the door?”

“No?”

“Mr. Friday called it’s time to go.”

“Go where?”

“A place called FischFisch.”

—

FischFisch is hard to find because if it was easy to find there would be a risk of un-Swissness. Once you know there is a place like FischFisch you almost have to have an opinion about it and having an opinion on something that is not your business is not Swiss. The avoidance of that situation by obfuscation and deliberate blindness is absolutely a form of high polite Swissness all by itself.

“Hi I am Banjo Telemark and this is totally my jam.”

“I am sorry sir you cannot come in it is a private club.”

“Big guy I can totally come in I am a renowned artist.”

“You cannot come in.”

(Guy has a neck like a structural steel and giant ridiculous arms. He is just so obviously a tough guy and now I have déjà vu.)