Status Updates From In the Garden of Beasts

Nice days were still nice. “The sun shines,” wrote Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin Stories, “and Hitler is the master of this city. The sun shines, and dozens of my friends… are in prisons, possibly dead.” The prevailing normalcy was seductive. “I catch sight of my face in the mirror of a shop, and I am shocked to see I am smiling. You can’t help smiling in such beautiful weather.”