by Aidan Truhen
I nearly kill him for having the nerve to be a fat man from Sion and not my friend.
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.)
“This is weirdly familiar you have a really huge neck is it possible that you are a fan of French film noir and a student lawyer?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Well that is the thing about déjà vu I guess it is not a reliable guide to tangible reality.”
“Reality cannot be said to be tangible sir the truth of the universe is not observable and in any case takes place at a level below the Newtonian human understanding and in many ways also above it our scale is habitable but not relevant to the extrinsic cosmos. Even if it could the tactile is mediated by fallible sensory apparatus.”
“…In like ten seconds I am going to walk up your face like a cat on a curtain and bite off one of your ears.”
“That is quite unnecessary Herr Telemark I am yoshing you the management is delighted you have come.”
“What is it with the yoshing in this country wait Doc did you—”
“Get in the club Banjo.”
* * *
—
So here under the Hotel Kieselstrand’s original art nouveau ballroom there is a modern-built art deco bar called the Jahrhundert and it is only when you go through Jahrhundert to the private dining area and down in the executive lift that you come to FischFisch, and FischFisch has a heavy velvet door and when you get beyond that door and take a seat it becomes rapidly apparent that FischFisch is a sushi bar wherein you can throw sushi to attractive somewhat naked people somewhat dressed as seals or indeed dress yourself in a manner of wet foot-binding plastic flipperslipper and bark for your futomaki from the preternaturally attractive hospitality team who are themselves wearing a cutaway interpretation of Yupik hunting gear that has as much to do with the original activity as the chaps of a woman riding an electric bronco at Joe Lariat’s Rodeo Grill in Miami, Florida, where I have not been and nor should you the pie is awful.
FischFisch offers numerous other sushi-based activities that have names in Swiss German I thankfully do not understand, because this is the most bespoke and salubrious fetish establishment on the planet. There is literally not one surface here from which you could not eat your dinner, and indeed people mostly are although technically I am not sure a person can be a surface.
All of which is very educational and Rex in particular appears to be learning a great deal and much of it stuff he would acquire in no other way. I do not know if this place is culturally appropriative or just so fucking weird as to belong to some other category of shit for which previously I had no name.
We are here because Elena Riccardi comes here with her husband twice every month and she is coming tonight and aside from being a really good amateur golfer and obviously some sort of fish fetishist she is also according to Mr. Friday the true and only software designer for Die Festung at Kircheisen.
* * *
—
Doc says:
“Charlie you have experience in this culture—”
“I what now?”
“You are polyamorous Charlie you put it on the website—”
“Boss lady! That is not this! This is like a whole scene. It has scene-y-ness and rules and stuff that I cannot possibly know. Sure I mean sure I advocate and accept the boning and adoration of more than one person within a consensual and acknowledged frame of emotional and sexual rules toward a fulfilled but unbounded sense of self but this is just WEIRD—”
“In fact this is only unusual you do not know weird until you have had sex with Price—”
“Doc this is not something we need to—”
“Really boss lady what—”
“Well for example he recently asked me to give him a subdermal tracheal stent—”
“DOC THAT WAS PROFESSIONAL yes I asked about it in bed but that is not—”
“It was undeniably weird though and I was postcoitally nude at the time—”
“Van der Graaf lady calls my conversation weird—”
“Hush you will arouse me—”
“Van der Graaf van der Graaf van der—”
“ENOUGH Price enough be professional Charlie—”
“Yes quite right Doc. Charlie be professional we are on a clock here the lady in the fish suit is waiting—”
“What I’M the one wasting—no never mind—FISH SUIT BOSS Jesus how can I put this in Jacktalk let me see yeah okay yeah I am an expert in coffee right and these people they are buying and selling pork belly and I do not know one fucking thing about what turns on their pork belly horn okay? What the fuck ever is going on over there with that sashimi—this is not my universe okay?”
“Fine we’ll just bu
sk it how hard can it be?”
Doc does not even bother to reply.
* * *
—
“ROCKS AND WAVES AND DISHY FISHY—”
Walk across the floor. Smile. Swerve and turn. We are moving through the crowd we are browsing taking it in we are—
“I do not want to know what is happening with that mackerel sir—”
“COLD SALT WATER HOT SEA LIONS—RAAAWR! O BABY RAWWWR—”
I do not know this band they are kinda Elle and the Pocket Belles but dirtier and more oceanographic I will guess they are bespoke.
“RAWRRR PENGUIN PENGUIN PLEASE BE GENTLE—”
“Hi— O I’m sorry I did not meant to intrude—”
“WHEN YOU’RE REALLY FISHY SPENT YOU’LL—”
“That is fine just fine don’t worry about it—”
“May I say that you look lovely in that fish suit—”
“Thank you this is my husband Oscar—”
“MIGHTY HUNTER SALT SPLASH SPLISHY—”
“So enchanting well I shall be on my way o wait look here is my friend Rita Langstrumpf she is as you see quite elegant—”
“Banjo I will fuck you up. Hello I did not catch your name madame I am—”
“Ow gosh you have sharp nails Madame Langstrumpf—”
“QUITE SOME LOVELY FISHING TALE—”
“I am so sorry they are part of my jouissance I did not mean to scratch—”
“O MY! BABY WHAT A WHALE—”
“Yes I quite see o goodness it is hot in here I feel quite—”
“Darling are you quite all right you look faint—”
SLOOSHTHUD
“We will need medical attention I must call the manager—”
“BABY BABY FISHY DISHY—”
“That will not be necessary Herr Oscar here you sit Madame Langstrumpf is indeed a doctor in her working day please be discreet on that score obviously FischFisch is not entirely reputable in the wider community—”
“O of course o o in fact I also feel a little…”
THONK
“Charlie you could not catch his head?”
“I thought there was a pillow this divan has one of those stupid boards—”
FISHERMAN SO STRONG AND BOLD—
“Is he alive?”
“Of course it’s a board not a spike he’s not even gonna have a bruise—”
“Very well then let us help Elena out of here.”
We are helpful. We are solicitous.
We are good citizens. That is a very Swiss thing to do. And that is how you do a kidnapping in a fish fucker club.
WANT YOU IN MY CARGO HOLD—
Which is fine.
Until we are leaving and we are away from the music—at last AT LAST my God one more line and I was going to—and someone squashes into my arm with what feels like the upper surface of a mostly naked breast and says all breathy:
“O Mr. Telemark I am so glad to meet you your art—it moves me—it touches me deeply Mr. Telemark truly it does—”
“O well thank you so much madame I do—”
I am paying attention to the breast area and I do not notice the hands and TINK the cuff closes tight like tight. I look round and—
Agent Hannah is wearing a clever disguise something in a Nunatsiavut fall style cut real short like to the—you know groinal region—so that you can tell those are not regular cop undies they are something impractically tiny and appropriate to the venue but I am not looking because VERY professional. She’s grinning her sexy Aryan dolphin grin. Agent Hannah is totally the winner in this moment but at the same time she is not thinking properly because she’s smug about this and because she is used to working in a pantsuit, which is where things get—
—a little weird—
—because as she closes the cuff on my other hand behind my back, she leans into me and lifts with her core, and my hands—my fingers—are pressed or—or driven really let’s say driven—against the bare skin of her thighs and her—somewhat minimal and as it transpires incrementally mobile undies—and—um—how to say this without saying pussy—her personal intimate undercarriage—which is receptive to this situation in a way which I think comes as a surprise to both of us.
Which means that as she cuffs me there is a definite I guess you would say nontrivial interpersonal connection of the sex kind—
There is no getting away from this Agent Hannah touches me inappropriately with her clitoris.
I do not move so much as an eighth of an inch.
And then I fucking swear to you I feel her weight drop—her body drop—and lock rigid, and for one second her mouth opens and she exhales in an O and she shakes in place like if I’d wired her up to the alternating current.
I don’t know where she is right now but I’m definitely having a harpoon issue.
Doc looks back over her shoulder what’s the delay Jack let’s go there is kidnapping to do here—
And she—
Sees—
Everything—
Everything at all.
Her eyes are terrible dark and deep and I have promises to keep and deaths to die before I sleep.
Doc smiles so wide I think she will swallow the world and she looks at Agent Hannah and I see murder happening right there in a thousand different ways inside her head and Agent Hannah sees it too and then Doc swirls away out of the door leaving me handcuffed and holding the arresting officer by the soft parts of her highly trained federal investigating cligeva and Agent Hannah does not remotely try to change that as she leans in against me and says right into my ear so that I can feel the traces of her teeth on my skin:
“Do you know what you got wrong, Jack Price?”
I do know and she isn’t really asking. She says it differently this time because pronouns:
“You forgot to kill the taxi driver. But Jack? He didn’t forget you.”
Oh fuck it I completely—fuck. She’s good. She’s really really good.
Serious harpoon issue.
Agent Hannah steps back and my fingers are removed from their little Aryan dolphin Valhalla and they are behind my back so thank God I cannot put them in my mouth that would be totally inappropriate.
I tell myself Agent Hannah is having some similar dialogue with herself vis-à-vis her own thighs and now that is in my head and—but she is all business now she slips into a pair of gray sweatpants and a blue cop jacket as we get in the car and I am hooked to the chassis in the back. Half-inch steel hoop like for military-grade croquet.
I am so totally going to Swiss jail.
I actually to be honest I do not think that will be all bad.
I mean it is Swiss jail I am sure there is great dental and all kinds of due process and Doc will get me out in two shakes of seal’s—
We do not talk about that now.
Swiss jail will almost certainly feature minimalist neutral design palettes and basic comforts and hygiene I figure also acceptably nutritious food and punctilious attention to prisoner well-being and reform. Because this is not fucking Louisiana this is the canton of Bern.
I’m guessing maybe a selection of educational and morally improving TV channels like maybe I can find out that whole deal with the ducal hat.
And you got to remember I am Banjo Telemark quite demonstrably and Jack Price is dead and the money dear LORD the money and the lawyers which will fall in a great appalling crash upon this situation…I got maybe three or four hours of this shit to deal with.
So I stare out of the window at the river and the mountains and I close my eyes and think about swimming in the cloudy blue-green water in the moonlight and how cold and sharp that would be and saunas with burning yellow lights and cutting a hole in the snow and Doc rising up naked out of the river as Agent Hannah passes b
y on her way in—wait not passes by, passes through as if they are both made of molasses—they ripple through one another and stop and then—
Then I open my eyes and see the truck.
* * *
—
I said that Eiger would phone a friend and he has. Of course he has. And who has he called? He has called François Leclerc of course that was always the plan. He has said—brash and loud to the bad people we do not like and in their language because he needs them to believe he is their man here their guy on the ground their absolute solid rock in the Canton of Bern—he has said: I have a hippie infestation boys there is a long-hair jerking my chain will you come deal with it for me?
And they will that is totally their jam. If there is a hippie problem they are just all over that. They love a hippie problem. Beating up on hippies is like a fucking traditional activity although in certain parts of the world you have to be real fucking careful about it because there are hippies and hippies and some hippies turn out to be log-cabin motherfuckers after all and—but an art hippie is just a hippie and they love that sweet bloodhoney.
So they are here to help man just to help out a buddy. You can tell it is them because they are so very fucking precisely ethnic. If any one of them had so much as a midbrown hair he has dyed it that straw-piss color you see in colorized photos from the ’30s. These guys are nostalgia walking and they are here to do me wrong.
Well okay not walking per se that is not what they are doing. I sort of reckoned they would come in their black suits with their perky flower badges or in that paramilitary crap they wear to make themselves feel like real soldiers and not basically drug remoras. I figured they would in the first instance try to scare the shit out of Banjo Telemark or at least send the screwheads in first with bats to beat him down because as we have mentioned Hans Eiger does not want to accidentally-on-purpose murder an artist howevermuch of a dick that artist might be. Because advertising. But of course that constraint now that I think about it does not entirely apply to his deniable friends here and these guys are not walking and they do not have bats that I can see.
They are riding.
In a big fucking terrifying truck of death.