Setting Free the Bears Read online

  It would warm him even more to see the determination of Ernst Watzek-Trummer, who is suffering the humiliation of being thrown from a tramcar at the St Veit Station - in full view of the children who've been collected along the way from Hacking, and who've been following at a steady, taunting distance. The eagle leaves a few untidy larded feathers; he struts on. But Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg can't see over five city districts to witness this unique, patriotic demonstration.

  Grandfather Marter would say that the Chancellor has never been particularly far-sighted. My grandfather fancies himself as having a monopoly on far-sightedness. For example, he says to my mother, 'Hilke, get your coat, it's Zahn' - while Zahn is still three blocks away, and only now, thinking that early Mass-goers must be walking types, decides to abandon the curb at Karl's Church. But whether it's far-sightedness or plain impatience, Grandfather and Hilke have their coats on when Zahn turns down their street.

  'Don't get in any scuffles,' says my grandmother.

  'You just read a good book,' Grandfather tells her.

  And it's midafternoon before Grandfather Marter has a vision through a smeary window of the Augustiner Keller; he sloshes his beer and hides his face against Zahn's collar. He giggles.

  'Father!' says Hilke, embarrassed.

  'Are you going to be sick?' Zahn asks, and my grandfather snaps his face around to the window again; he still keeps hold of Zahn's lapel, ready to dive back in hiding if the creature of his vision reappears.

  'It's the biggest bird I ever saw,' he mutters, and then his vision looms round the revolving door - is flown into the Keller with staggering, tinny wing flaps, alarming a counter row of men munching sausage; they stumble backward in a wave; a thick slice of meat flaps to the floor, and they all stare at it as if it were someone's heart or hand.

  'Jesus!' says Grandfather, and dives for Zahn's lapel again.

  The vision with the terrifying wingspan clatters its feathered pieplate breast. 'Cawk!' It cries, 'Cawk! Cawk! Austria is free!' And very slowly, after an awesome silence, drinkers, one by one, rush to embrace the national symbol.

  'Cawk!' says Grandfather, with dignity again, and Zahn catches hold of the eagle's chainmail, dragging him to their table; his beak nearly stabs my grandfather, who greets the great bird with a bear hug.

  'Oh, look at you,' says Grandfather. 'What a fine eagle!'

  'I came all the way to Europa Platz on foot,' the eagle says, 'before I was allowed on the tram.'

  'Who put you off?' shouts Grandfather, furious.

  'Drivers, here and there,' Ernst Watzek-Trummer says.

  'There's very little patriotism in the outer districts,' my grandfather tells him.

  'I made it all myself too,' the eagle says. 'I'm just an egg man, really. I've got chickens' - touching his feathers, and tapping the tin underneath - 'and I've got these little pans around, for selling eggs in.'

  'Marvelous!' says Zahn.

  'You're beautiful,' Hilke tells the eagle, and pokes his downy parts, where the feathers are all wadded up and stuck on the thickest - under his tin-jutting chin, wild across his breast and gathered in his wing pits.

  'Take off your head,' says Zahn. 'You can't drink with your head on.'

  And a wave of jostling men surges up behind the eagle. 'Yes! Take off your head!' they shout, and reach and slosh their way nearer the bird.

  'Don't crowd! Show some respect!' Grandfather says.

  A violinist skitters to the balcony above their table - a cellist, stooping and grunting, follows. They refold their handkerchiefs.

  'Music!' says Grandfather, lording over the Keller now.

  The violinist tweaks his bow. The cellist creaks a string of finger-thickness; everyone clutches his spine, as if the cellist had struck a vertebra.

  'Now quiet!' says Grandfather, still in charge. The eagle spreads his wings.

  'Take off your head,' Zahn whispers, and the music begins - a Volkslied to make the mighty blubber.

  Hilke helps the eagle off with his head. Ernst Watzek-Trummer crinkles his old elfish face and sinks a dimple deep in his chin. My mother wants to kiss him; my grandfather does - out of second-joy, perhaps, to find so many gray hairs fringing the eagle's ears. Only a man of my grandfather's generation could be the Austrian eagle.

  Ernst Watzek-Trummer is overcome - toasted and kissed by a man of some education, he can tell. He keeps agonized time with the Volkslied. His head is reverently passed around; it skids from hand to hand, losing lard and some of its gleam.

  The windows frost. Someone suggests they devise a plan to fly the eagle - to hang him and swing him from the balustrade of St Michael's. If they did it at St Michael's, then Schuschnigg could see. Suspenders are offered. The eagle seems willing, but my grandfather is stern.

  'Sirs,' he says, and hands back a broad pair of red suspenders. 'Please, sirs.' And surveys the puzzled, blurry faces of the men holding up their pants with their thumbs. 'My daughter is with us,' says Grandfather, and he gently lifts my mother's face to the crowd. They retreat, admonished, and the eagle survives a near-swinging - what might have been a most elastic flight, with the combined snap-and-stretch of strong and weak suspenders.

  Ernst Watzek-Trummer makes it safely to Zahn's taxi. At Grandfather's suggestion, the eagle blunts his beak with a wine cork - so he won't give injury on his way through the throng to the door. With beak corked - and a little bit bent, getting into the taxi - he enfolds my mother and grandfather in the back seat, while Zahn reels them through the Michaelerplatz, under the rumpling bed sheets that bless Schuschnigg, and down the Kaffeehaus alleys off the Graben.

  Zahn announces, with shouts and his horn, the deliverance of Austria, 'Cawk! Cawk!' he cries. 'The country's free!' And the by now weary observers, sobering in coffee and behind hand-rubbed peep sights on steamy windows, pay little attention. They're already tired of miracles. This is only some large bird in a flying taxi's backseat.

  And waiting up for them, is my grandmother - book open, tea cold. When she sees the eagle led into her kitchen, she turns to Grandfather as if he's brought home a pet they can't afford to feed. 'Lord, look at you!' she says to him. 'And your daughter with you all the while.'

  'Cawk!' the eagle says.

  'What does it want, Zahn?' Grandmother asks. And to Grandfather: 'You haven't bought it, have you? Or signed anything?'

  'It's the Austrian eagle!' says Grandfather. 'Show some respect!'

  And Grandmother looks, not quite respectfully; she peers past the corked beak, into the eyeholes.

  'Frau Marter,' says the eagle. 'I'm Ernst Watzek-Trummer, from Hacking.'

  'A patriot!' Grandfather shouts, and clomps the eagle's shoulder. A feather falls; it appears to go on falling forever.

  'Muttie,' says Hilke. 'He made the suit himself.'

  And Grandmother makes a wary reach, touching the plumage on the eagle's breast.

  Grandfather gently says, 'It's just a little last fling I was having, Muttie. Our daughter's been properly looked after.'

  'Oh, indeed she has!' says Zahn, and thumps the eagle.

  And Grandfather very sadly says, 'Oh, it's Austria's last fling too, Muttie.' And he genuflects before the eagle.

  Ernst Watzek-Trummer covers his eyeholes, trembles his feathers and starts to cry - a grinding whimper into his beak.

  'Cawk! Cawk!' says Zahn, still gay, but the eagle's helmet is rattling with sobs.

  'Oh, there,' Grandfather says. 'Here now, you're a fine patriot, aren't you? There, there - and didn't we have some evening though? And Zahn's going to drive you home, you know.'

  'Oh, the poor thing,' says Grandmother.

  And together, all of them, they get the eagle to the taxi.

  'You'll have the whole back seat to yourself,' says Zahn.

  'Get his head off,' Grandfather says. 'He could drown.'

  And Hilke says to her father: 'It's all your fault, you pessimist.'

  'You know-it-all!' says Grandmother.

  But Grandfather is s
lamming doors and directing imaginary traffic on the empty street. He signals to Zahn that it's safe to pull away.

  Zahn drives through the cemetery stillness of the outer districts - Hadik and St Veit and Hutteldorf-Hacking - where, Zahn can only guess, the ghosts and present dwellers seem as ready or not to welcome the Holy Roman Empire as Hitler.

  While the eagle takes himself apart in the backseat. And when Zahn finds the dark farm hiding outside the glow from the night-laying hen-house, there's a disheveled old man in his rear-view mirror, weeping - and feathers are floating all over the taxi.

  'Come on,' says Zahn, but Ernst Watzek-Trummer is attacking the empty eagle, shouldering it against the front seat. He's trying to break its back, but the eagle is surprisingly well made; it slumps in a half-sit position, its weave of pieplates stronger than a spine.

  'All right, all right now,' says Zahn. 'Just look at what you're doing to your suit.' But Ernst Watzek-Trummer punches, snatches handfuls of feathers and gropes his kicking-foot along the floor - trying to find and squash the fallen head.

  Zahn crawls in the backseat after him and wrestles him out the door. Ernst Watzek-Trummer flaps his arms. Zahn shuts the door and steers the egg man.

  'Oh, please,' says Zahn. 'You'll have a good sleep, won't you? And I'll drive out and bring you to the polls myself.'

  The egg man buckles; Zahn lets him stumble forward but comes round in front of him to hold up his head. They kneel, facing each other.

  'Can you remember?' says Zahn. 'I'll pick you up for the plebiscite. I'll drive you to the polls. All right?'

  Ernst Watzek-Trummer stares hard and lifts his fanny like a sprinter poising up on the blocks; he jerks his head as if to charge, draws Zahn off and scampers round him - on all fours, but running himself upright. He stops and looks back at Zahn. Zahn plots a move.

  'Come on,' says Zahn. 'You'll go to bed, won't you? You won't get in any trouble, will you?'

  Ernst Watzek-Trummer lets his arms hang. 'There won't be any vote,' he says. 'They'll never let us get away with it, you young fool.' And he breaks for his hen-house; Zahn starts after him, but stops. A doorway of light opens on Zahn's horizon, and then Ernst Watzek-Trummer closes it after him. The hen-house stoops under its own roof and groans; there's a moment, Zahn is sure, when eggs are caught in the act, half laid. Then there's some squabbling; Zahn sees a hen go winging or falling past a window; the light inside dances or is swung. Another hen, or even the same one, shrieks. Then the light goes out; there won't be any eggs laid tonight. Zahn waits until he's sure that Ernst Watzek-Trummer has found a berth - has put someone off his roost. But whoever is put out is at least being quiet about it.

  Zahn wobbles back to the taxi, sits on the running board and has a pull from the cognac bottle Grandfather has left with him. He tries to smoke, but he can't keep lit. And he's almost behind the wheel and driving off when he spots the eagle, uninhabited, leaning over the front seat. Zahn sits the eagle beside him, but it keeps slumping over; Zahn finds the eagle's head, sits it in the eagle's lap - offers it some of my grandfather's cognac.

  'You'll have quite a head in the morning,' Zahn tells it, and begins a giggle that turns into a sneezing bout, a fit - a seizure loud enough to cause some clucking in the hen-house. Zahn can't stop; hysterical, he sees himself in the eagle-suit suddenly looming into the hen-house, switching on the light and cawking till the frenzied hens begin a binge of laying eggs - or never lay an egg again; cawking so loudly that Ernst Watzek-Trummer lays the greatest egg of all.

  But Zahn just offers the eagle's head another drink; when it fails to respond, he pours a shot down the head hole.

  It seems to Zahn that they talk for hours, passing the bottle, keeping watch over the darkened hen-house, guarding the sleep of Ernst Watzek-Trummer on his lordly roost.

  'Drink up, brave eagle!' says Zahn, and watches the head hole quaffing down the upended bottle.

  The Sixth Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967 @ 1.30 a.m.

  THE CHANGING OF the guard happened at midnight, and things haven't been the same since. Everyone is still awake. Really - this zoo is one restless stir and scuff; no one is asleep. A general insomnia arrived at midnight.

  At first, I thought they were on to me. I thought the first-shift guard told the second-shift guard that someone was prowling about. Or, perhaps, the animals passed the word around; along some universal grapevine of tapped hooves, twitters, grunts and such, they told each other about me. And now they're waiting to see what I'll do.

  But I don't think that's really why the zoo's awake. It's because of the new nightwatchman. The little bell-ringing prepared everyone; the animals were expecting him. There's some difference in the guards, I can tell you.

  He walked by me. This one's got a truncheon; he sticks it in a sheath that's stitched inside his left boot. They're above-ankle, modified combat boots, laced loosely at the calf. The grey twills tuck in the boots. He wears an open holster, cowboy-style, and the barrel of his clip-load handgun is at least six inches long. He does an interesting thing with the keyring. He puts his arm through it and hikes it up on his shoulder; he fastens it under an epaulette - his uniform still has both epaulettes too. All the keys hang under his armpit and jangle against him. It seems awkward to me; if you've a bunch of keys in your armpit, you carry your arm funny. It's his right arm, though, and maybe that puts him in a better position for going at the open holster, which is worn rather high on his right hip. I think, although he looks a bit off balance, he has his hardware fairly well understood. Of course, he's got a flashlight too. He carries that left-handed, and it's on a wrist thong - so it wouldn't interfere if he reached for the truncheon. That's reasonable: if you're close enough to use a truncheon, you don't need a flashlight to see; if you're far enough away to use a gun, you want a flashlight steady in your other hand. I think this watchman takes his job seriously.

  He walked the length of my hedgerow. When he'd passed me, I leaned out through a root gap - just enough to see him from the waist up: the keyring, the epaulettes, the crook in his right arm. But I only saw the whole of him back-to, and it had to be a quick look. He's very sudden with his flashlight. He'll be nodding the light out on his boot toes, and then he'll whirl and paint a circle of light around himself.

  It's been an hour and a half, and he's still out in the zoo, whirling his light. Perhaps he thinks the first-shift guard is careless. Perhaps, before he settles down to a normal watch, he has to make the place safe in his mind.

  It must make the animals very nervous to have this disturbance every night. I see the watchman's sudden circles of light - often three or four times in the same area. And he's very aggressive about checking the locks. Just a tug won't do for him - he trembles the cages.

  It's no wonder everyone's awake.

  (CONTINUING:)

  THE HIGHLY SELECTIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIEGFRIED JAVOTNK: PRE-HISTORY I

  Black Friday, 11 March 1938: at a little after half past five, the early morning priests are setting up the side altars in St Stephen's and Kurt von Schuschnigg ducks in for a very brief, clear prayer. He's been up and en route to the Chancellery ever since Secretary of Security Skubl phoned him about the Germans closing the border at Salzburg and withdrawing all customs officials. Skubl also mentioned a German troop build-up from Reichenhall to Passau. And at the Chancellery, Schuschnigg finds the sour telegram from Austria's consulate general in Munich: LEO IS READY TO TRAVEL. All this before it's light outside, and before all of the morning's German press has been telegraphed to Vienna for Kurt von Schuschnigg's perusal. They have just a smattering of German sentiment to go on, though it should be enough. The Nazi news agency, D.N.B., claims that hammer-and-sickle flags have been hoisted in Vienna, and that the frenzied citizens have been yelling, 'Heil Schuschnigg! Heil Moskau!' in the same breath. D.N.B. says that the Fuhrer might be forced to make an 'anti-Bolshevik crusade,' on Austria's behalf. Poor Kurt von Schuschnigg must confess that this is particularly creative reporting of his plebiscite. He get
s off an urgency phonecall to the British minister, who in turn cables Lord Halifax in London - to inquire if Britain will choose sides. Then Schuschnigg watches the first light, glancing through the sooty windows of the Hofburg showrooms - seeking out the rare old jewels and gold within.

  The slow March light is lifting windowshades in drowsy St Veit, and Zahn Glanz is crowing a welcome to the dawn. It's good for Zahn that it's early, and there's little traffic, because he's not being very consistent at the intersections. The cobblestones are giving him a headache, so he drives in the tram tracks wherever that's possible; he doesn't quite get the taxi to fit in the tracks, but he can usually manage to have one wheel side unjarred.

  He's approaching the Inner City on Wahringer Strasse when he stops to pick up a fare. A head-down man, nodding out of an early Mass in the Votivkirche, steps into the back seat. Zahn is off with him before the man can properly close the door.

  'Cawk! Cawk!' says Zahn. 'Where to?'

  And the man, smacking chicken feathers off his trousers, says, 'Is this a taxi or a barnyard?' And looks up at Zahn's bent beak in the rear-view mirror, and sees the spotty-feathered shoulders hunched over the wheel. And rolls out the door he hasn't quite closed.

  'Better not leave the door open,' says Zahn, but he's looking at an empty back seat awhirl with feathers.

  Zahn turns up Kolingasse and stops; he shambles out of the taxi and struts back to the corner of Wahringer, where he sees the man limping to the curb. The man must think he's seen a seraph, being so fresh out of Mass.

  So Zahn springs back to his taxi, startles a cafe-owner rolling up his awning to watch whatever weak sun there is. The man lets go of the awning crank; the awning comes rumpling down over him, and the crank spins madly, cracking the backs of his hands.

  'Oh, I'm sure up early this morning,' says Zahn, and gives a fierce cock call from his taxi's running board. Somehow Zahn's got chicken feathers, cocks' crowing and eagles all confused.

  Zahn does feel something is amiss, and decides it's that he's clawless. Whatever bird he is, he should have claws. So he stops at a butcher shop in the Kohlmarkt and buys a whole chicken. Then he crunches the legs off and fastens them in the mesh of his chainmail, just under the wide, forearm-length cuffs. The claws curl over his own hands; as he drives, they scratch him.