Setting Free the Bears Read online

  'Where to?' says Grandfather, chin on chest, and waits until they're under way before he says, 'Pretty damn slick father you've got, haven't you? Went all the way down Elisabethstrasse for a full tank of gas, and picked you off this corner just as you got here. I could see you coming. You didn't even have to wait. Some sense of timing, I have.'

  Hilke tugs her hair around her ears; she laughs a bright, adoring laugh, and Grandfather, nodding his head, laughs along. 'Pretty slick, pretty slick - a flawless job, I must say.'

  Anyone watching them, bobbing up and down in the getaway taxi, must be thinking: Now what could an old man like that have to say, to make such a pretty girl laugh?

  My grandfather gets things done - delicately, and with fanfare.

  So does Goring - but with much less fanfare, and no delicacy at all. Just twenty minutes after receiving the phonecall of Schuschnigg's first concession, Goring phones back. He tells Seyss-Inquart that Schuschnigg's behavior is unacceptable and that the Chancellor and his Cabinet are asked to resign; that President Miklas is asked to nominate Seyss-Inquart for the Chancellorship. Goring has such an odd way of putting things. He promises that Austria will have German military aid, if the Schuschnigg government cannot change itself promptly.

  It's a most embarrassed Seyss-Inquart who breaks this news to Kurt von Schuschnigg, and Schuschnigg takes his next-to-last step backward. At three-thirty, or only half an hour after Goring's phonecall, Schuschnigg simply places the resignation of his entire government in President Miklas' hands. And here's an arbitrary matter: it would have looked so much nicer, after the war, if Schuschnigg had held out an hour longer - until Lord Halifax's message was conveyed from the British Embassy in Vienna; how His Majesty's government wouldn't want to be taking the responsibility of advising the Chancellor to expose his country to dangers against which His Majesty's government would be unable to guarantee protection.

  It's a matter of giving in when you're abandoned, or abandoning yourself when you know you're going to be abandoned. But after the fact, fine hairs are indeed split.

  At three-thirty, Schuschnigg doesn't need anything formal to know he's been abandoned. He can anticipate; that Lord Halifax will evade; that French charge d'affaires in Rome, M. Blondel, will be told by Count Ciano's private secretary that if the reason for his visit is Austria, he needn't bother to come; and that Mussolini will never be reached by phone - that he's hiding somewhere, listening to it ring and ring.

  So Schuschnigg leaves Federal President Miklas with the decision for a new Chancellor. Old Miklas has been this route before. Under the Nazi Putsch of four years ago - poor Dollfuss murdered in the sanctity of his Chancellory office, and a courtyard of toughs below, waiting to sway the crowd whichever way the limbo turned; then Miklas turned to Kurt von Schuschnigg. Now Miklas has until seven-thirty. So the old President goes looking for a Chancellor.

  There's faithful police head, Skubl, but Skubl declines; he's known in Berlin, and his nomination would be a further irritation to Hitler. There's Doktor Ender, authority on constitutional law, who feels his need to be Chancellor already has been satisfied, as leader of a previous government. And General Schilhawsky, Inspector General of the Armed Forces says he's an officer, not a politician. So Miklas finds no takers.

  Pity that he didn't know my grandfather, who would probably enjoy another intrigue.

  Grandfather - who's parked and locked the taxi in the lot at Karl's Church - walks Hilke and the cookie crock home. Ignoring Grandmother's protest, they peek in on Zahn Glanz. Peeled out of his pieplates, disarmed of his last claw, the eagle's feet protrude from the little girl's bed. A chicken feather laces his ear, a pink pouf makes him cosy; he sleeps midst the knick-knackery and troll kingdom of my mother's room. Hilke tucks him in again, and he sleeps through supper; he sleeps right up to the seven o'clock report on Radio Johannesgasse. Grandfather can't let Zahn miss the news.

  The postponement of the plebiscite is announced, and the resignation of the entire Cabinet - all except Seyss-Inquart, who's staying on in his office as Minister of Interior.

  Zahn Glanz is not fully recovered; when he goes wordlessly back to bed, old Miklas is sitting all alone in his office of the Federal President, watching the clock run by seven-thirty. Field Marshal Goring's ultimatum time has expired, and Seyss-Inquart is still not Chancellor of Austria. Miklas refuses to make it official.

  Then Kurt von Schuschnigg performs the last and most conclusive leap backward of his career - an executive order to General Schilhawsky to withdraw the Austrian Army from the German border; to offer no resistance; to watch, or perhaps wave, from behind the River Enns. The Austrian Army has only forty-eight hours of steady-fire ammunition anyway. What would be the point of so much blood? Someone phones from Salzburg to say the Germans are crossing the border; it's not true, it's a false alarm, but it's another fine hair to be split, and Schuschnigg doesn't wait for verification. He steps back.

  At eight o'clock, he asks Radio Johannesgasse for a nationwide broadcasting privilege. The microphone wires are strung up the banister of the grand staircase in the Ballhausplatz. And Grandfather wakes up Zahn again.

  Schuschnigg is all sadness and no reproach. He speaks of yielding to force; he begs no resistance. He does say there's no truth to the Berlin radio reports of worker revolutions terrorizing Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg's Austria isn't terrorized; it's forced to be sad. And in the whole show, the only sentiment that touches Grandfather's skulking heart is the rude outburst of the Commissioner for Cultural Propaganda - the old cripple Hammerstein-Equord, who grabs the microphone when the Chancellor is finished, but before the technicians can pull the contact plug. 'Long live Austria!' he burbles. 'Today I am ashamed to be German.'

  It's a sad thing for Grandfather to hear. Even tough old cripples like Hammerstein-Equord consider German as something in the blood, and look at Germans as a race to which Austria must belong.

  But my grandfather has never looked at things that way. 'Pack, Muttie,' he says. 'There's a taxi full of gas just round the corner.'

  And my mother takes the arm of Zahn Glanz; she holds to it tighter than she's ever held a thing alive, and waits for Zahn to raise his eyes to hers; her fingers on his arm are talking: Hilke Marter will not let go, will not pack herself or any of her things, until this eagle can unfuddle enough to make up his mind and speak it clear.

  While Miklas, with his mind made up and all alone, refuses to accept Schuschnigg's personal resignation and is still speaking of resistance - without a single soldier of the Austrian Army between the German border and the River Enns. In the Federal President's office, Lieutenant General Muff, German military attache to Vienna, is explaining that the reported border-crossing by German troops is a false alarm. But the troops will cross, says Muff, if Miklas doesn't make Seyss-Inquart the Chancellor. Perhaps old Miklas is less futile in his resistance than it appears; he may even recognize Hitler's apparent need to legalize the takeover. But the patient Muff keeps after him: Does the Federal President know that all the provinces are now in the hands of local Austrian Nazi officials? Does the President know that Salzburg and Linz have given the seals of office to Nazi party members there? Has the President even looked in the corridor outside his office, where the Vienna Nazi youth are lighting cigarettes and jeering over the balcony of the grand staircase; they're curling smoke rings round the head of the wood-carved Madonna in mourning for poor Dollfuss.

  At eleven o'clock the patient Muff is still conjuring images. Seyss-Inquart has revised his list for his proposed Cabinet; Miklas, in his tenth hour of resistance, is telling an anecdote about Maria Theresia.

  At eleven o'clock my grandfather is arbitrating the matter of silver or china. The china is breakable, and less saleable. It's the china that stays in Vienna, the silver that goes. And whether Zahn Glanz will go or stay is still being perceived through my mother's touch.

  'It doesn't necessarily mean they'll come marching in,' says Zahn. 'And where can you go in my taxi anyway?'
/>   'It does mean they'll come marching in,' Grandfather says, 'and we'll take your taxi to my brother's. He's the postmaster of Kaprun.'

  'That's still Austria,' says Zahn.

  'It's the cities that won't be safe,' Grandfather says. 'The Kitzbuhler Alps are very rural.'

  'Rural enough to starve, is it?' asks Zahn.

  'Librarians put away some money,' Grandfather tells him.

  'And how will you get it out of your bank,' Zahn asks, 'in the middle of the night?'

  Grandfather says, 'If you decide to stay a while, Zahn, I could endorse my bankbook to you and have you post a draft'

  'To your brother the postmaster,' says Zahn. 'Of course.'

  'Why can't we just leave in the morning?' Hilke asks. 'Why can't Zahn come with us?'

  'He can, if he wants to,' says Grandfather. 'Then I'd stay until morning, and Zahn can drive you.'

  'Why can't we all go in the morning?' Grandmother asks. 'Maybe in the morning, we'll find it's going to be all right.'

  'A lot of people will be leaving in the morning,' says Grandfather. 'And Zahn hasn't checked in his taxi for a while. Do you think they might start missing your taxi, Zahn?'

  'The taxi better go tonight,' Zahn says.

  'But if Zahn stays,' says Hilke, 'how can he get to Kaprun?'

  'Zahn doesn't have to stay if he doesn't want to,' Grandfather says.

  'And why would he want to?' Hilke asks.

  'Oh, I don't know,' says Zahn. 'Maybe to watch what happens for a day or so.'

  And my mother keeps taking the pulse in his arm. Hilke Marter is speaking through her fingers again: Oh, Zahn, there's nobody outside, there's nobody there at all.

  But a little before midnight, in the Ballhaus courtyard, there are forty toughs from SS Standarte 89, of which the assassin Otto Planetta was a member. Perhaps it's then - when Miklas sees them - that the old President shares a bit of Schuschnigg's vision for the slaughter that could be Vienna's. Perhaps it's then that Miklas droops down his chins to Muff the middleman.

  Zahn Glanz must feel like a middleman now, with my grandfather's bankbook fat in his pocket. He makes the walk from Schwindgasse to Karl's Church, my mother still fastened to his arm. At the Gusshausstrasse corner they're forced to hop off the curb.

  Arms locked, in step, five boys from an alphabetized meeting of Vienna's Nazi youth come shouldering along. It must have been a meeting of the S's from the fourth district. Freshly sewn, their nametags glow: P. Schnell, perhaps, and G. Schritt, with F. Samt, J. Spalt, R. Steg and O. Schrutt - just to name some ordinary names.

  Zahn doesn't say a word to them; my mother has shut off his pulse. He unlocks the taxi in the Karl's Church lot and drives back to the Schwindgasse another way. It wouldn't do to have the cruising youth club see them so suddenly motorized. Zahn drives lights-out up the Schwindgasse. My grandfather opens both sides of the great lever-handled lobby door, and Zahn backs over the sidewalk and inside the apartment building.

  It's late, but the upstairs apartments can't be sleeping very soundly tonight. They certainly must hear the motor before Zahn shuts it off. The garbage truck - do they think? - making some awful collection that can't keep till morning? But no one brings their garbage downstairs. There are no frightened faces over the spiraling banister - only juts of light, from letter slots and doors ajar. Grandfather waits for the last, stealthy ray to leave the stairs; then he stations my grandmother by the banister, and has her listen for the cranking of a phone.

  It's one o'clock Saturday morning when they begin to load the taxi.

  The Seventh Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967, @ 2.15 a.m.

  SOME OF THE animals are dropping off to sleep. A certain nervous element is still in this zoo, all right, but the watchman's gone back to the Small Mammal House, and some of us feel like sleeping.

  When the watchman first went inside, I felt like a short nap myself. I heard the Assorted Antelopes lying down in soft collapses. I really thought I'd sleep awhile, and I was snuggling myself around the roots when the Small Mammal House changed color. That's just the way it happened. Over the tops of cages, the glow was white and it changed to blood-purple. The watchman had switched on the infrared.

  There they all are again, with the putting-out of one light and the switching-on of one they can't see; there they are, with their distorted view of how quickly the night falls.

  So I went lurking along my hedges, and even out of cover, for a moment, to where I could see the door.

  Why did the watchman do it? Does he like looking at them when they're awake? Then it's a bit selfish of him to end their sleep to please himself; he should come during the regular zoo hours, if it matters so much to him. But I don't think that's it.

  Especially now that I've had a better look at this watchman, I don't think that's his reasoning at all. What I mean is, I went to have a closer look. I wanted a look at that little room.

  I was all set up behind a cage. I couldn't see very far into the cage; the moonlight caught just the outer edges. But I was sure it was a part of the indoor-outdoor Monkey Complex. I was peering down the violet corridor of the Small Mammal House when two very rough hands grabbed my head and jerked me against the bars. I couldn't get free, but I was able to turn my head in the thing's hands. I faced the hairless, bright red chest of the male gelada baboon - powerful, savage bandit from the highland plains of Abyssinia.

  'I'm here to help you,' I whispered. But it sneered.

  'No noise now,' I pleaded, but its thumbs sank in the hollows behind my ears; the thing was putting me to sleep with its grip. I reached into my jacket and handed it my meerschaum.

  'Would you like to try a pipe?' I asked. It looked. One forearm went a little limp on my shoulder.

  'Go on, take it,' I whispered, hoping I wouldn't be forced to ram the pipestem up one of its flaring nostrils.

  It took; one hand peeled off my neck and covered my fist, pipe and all. Then its other hand came delicately poking for the pipe between my fingers. I lunged my head back, but I couldn't free my fist; the gelada baboon shoved the pipe in its mouth and grabbed hold of my arm with both hands. I wasn't a match for it, but I got my feet against the bars and pushed back with all my weight. I fell out of its reach, away from the cage, and the gelada baboon, munching my meerschaum and spitting it out on the cage floor, knew it had been fooled. It made enormous noises.

  It whooped and raced round the cage, leaping off the bars and stamping in the watering trough. The indoor-outdoor Monkey Complex understood; a baboon had been outwitted by a lower-species creature.

  If there had been animals finally dropping off to sleep, I apologize. They awoke to a clamor of general primate noise-making; the Big Cats roared back; bears grumbled; all over the zoo was a skitter of hooves, dashing from fence line to fence line. And I was stumbling backward down the path, heading for my hedges again, when I saw the watchman round the end of his lavender hallway.

  It surprised me. I expected the infrared to go out; I expected the guard, camouflaged and crawling belly-down, combat-style, to sneak up on me from behind with his truncheon. But he stood and gaped down the blood-colored aisle, frozen and aghast; he would have made an easy target.

  I was safe behind my hedgerow before I saw his light come whirling down the path; when his light began to whirl, the zoo was suddenly hushed. He spun from bush to bush, and cage to cage. When he passed the spot where I'd been assaulted, I expected trouble. But the gelada baboon must have gathered together the bits of my pipe and slinked through the back-wall door, losing itself in the parapets and split-level avenues of the Monkey Complex.

  The guard seemed to know that this was where it started, though. He stopped and shone his light, from the corners of the cages to the treetops all around him. He timidly kicked the cage where the gelada baboon had been. 'Was it you?' he cried, in a high and lisping voice.

  The zoo was wide-awake and silent; a hundred breaths were being held, and lost in little pieces.

  On past the Monkey Complex th
e watchman skittered - and stopped again at the corner of my hedgerow, the diluted blood-light from the Small Mammal House faintly reaching him on the path. He whirled for us, shaking his light. 'What happened?' he shouted.

  Something with hooves took a false step, caught itself and held its ground. The watchman's light leapt down to the Australians' area, struck across the sky. The guard fired his light up a nearby tree, seeking leopards or ocelots that might have been lurking there, ready to pounce. 'All of you!' he screamed. 'You go to sleep now!'

  His own flashlight, tilted from his hip and pointed overhead, illuminated him for me. The watchman was lighting up himself.

  I saw him head-on, his old face lightly tinged by infrared - with a rich magenta scar, sharp and thin, from the top of his gray crew-cut head, past his ear to his left nostril, where it plunges through to the gum. A part of his upper lip is tucked in by it, and appears as a slightly raised hackle - baring all the scarlet of his upper left gum. It was no proper duel that caused it. Perhaps a foil gone berserk.

  Head-on, I saw him - that face, and that remarkable uniform-front. It's not only that he hasn't, somehow, lost his epaulettes; his uniform still has a nametag. O. Schrutt, he is - or was once. And if it's not still O. Schrutt, inside that old uniform, why would he have left the nametag on? o. SCHRUTT, with the period very faded. What an edge it seems to give you - to find out someone's name before they've even seen your face. This watchman is O. Schrutt.

  Strange, but that's a name I've used before; I've had O. Schrutt on my lips before. It's possible I knew an O. Schrutt; surely I've known one Schrutt or another in my time. Vienna is full of Schrutt families. And I also believe I've used this name in one fiction or another. That's it, I'm sure; I've made up an O. Schrutt before.

  But this O. Schrutt is real; he searches the upper tree limbs for ocelots and such. Animals don't sleep when O. Schrutt is on the prowl, and neither do I.

  I can't sleep now, although O. Schrutt's gone back to his Small Mammal House. He retreated from my hedges, pretending lack of interest; casually backing down the path - he would then erupt, in circles, exposing each lurking bit of the darkness around him. O. Schrutt makes vowel sounds when he whirls his light. 'Aah!' he cries, and 'Oooh!' - surprising the shapes that hide just out of his beam.