In the Garden of Beasts

To the girls, and the

next twenty-five

(and in memory of Molly, a good dog)

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

—DANTE ALIGHIERI, The Divine Comedy: Canto I (Carlyle-Wicksteed Translation, 1932)

I walked across the snowy plain of the Tiergarten—a smashed statue here, a newly planted sapling there; the Brandenburger Tor, with its red flag flapping against the blue winter sky; and on the horizon, the great ribs of a gutted railway station, like the skeleton of a whale. In the morning light it was all as raw and frank as the voice of history which tells you not to fool yourself; this can happen to any city, to anyone, to you.

—Christopher Isherwood, Down There on a Visit