Setting Free the Bears Read online

  On 6 April 1941, Heinkels and Stukas were used simultaneously. The Wehrmacht pushed into Yugoslavia with thirty-three divisions, six of which were panzers and four of which were motorized. The aim was to march on Russia in mid-May, in the dry-weather season - when the roads would still be hard. So the German onslaught against this upstart revolution was fierce. So fierce that on 4 May Germany announced that the Yugoslav State was non-existent. But on 10 May, Colonel Drazha Mihailovich and his band of wild Chetniks hoisted the Yugoslav flag on the mountain of Ravna Gora. Mihailovich and his freedom fanatics went on doing that kind of thing all summer.

  Oh, stories got told, you know, how Croat quislings and other Yugoslav capitulators marched with the Germans, hunting down Chetniks. How the Chetniks would disguise themselves as Croat quislings and appear to be hunting for themselves. How Mihailovich was a magician in the mountains - potting Germans throughout Serbia, in fact, in watchful America, Time magazine voted Drazha Mihailovich Man of the Year. And the Communist press was most praiseworthy too. After all, the Germans didn't get to march on Russia in mid-May. They were delayed five weeks and they sloughed in on soggy roads. And they were no longer thirty-three divisions strong; between ten and twenty divisions were left behind as an occupying force - still hunting down those fanatical Chetniks.

  But those were heroes, and I'm wondering where my father was. I suspect he summered in Jesenje, mastering the languages of likely victors - even learning the names of foreign wines and soups, brands of cigarettes and movie stars. Regardless, his whereabouts are unknown to me until the fall of '41, when Vratno Javotnik appeared in Slovenjgradec.

  The city was full of capitulating Slovenes and Croats who felt reasonably secure to be occupied by Germany, and who resented the wildly resisting Serbs to the southeast. The only people my father had to fear in Slovenjgradec were a few uprooted Serbs. These called attention to themselves on 21 October 1941, by protesting the somewhat conflicting reports of the massacre at Kraguyevats, where - one broadcast said - 2300 Serbian men and boys were machine-gunned in retaliation for 10 German soldiers killed by Chetniks, and 26 Germans also sniped but only wounded; another broadcast said that at least 3400 Serbs were shot, which would have been in excess of the retaliation number promised by Germany to combat Chetnik sniping - that is, 100 Serbs per German killed, and 50 Serbs per German wounded.

  Whichever broadcast was correct, the women folk of Kraguyevats were digging graves from Wednesday to Sunday, and Slovenjgradec, at least, was generally pacified to learn that the Germans had presented the Kraguyevats Town Council with 380,000 dinars for the poor. Who were just about everyone after the massacre. Oddly, the amount of the German donation was estimated to be slightly less than half of what 2000 to 3000 dead Serbian men and boys might have had in their pockets.

  But the Kraguyevats massacre had all of Slovenjgradec outdoors anyway. Just to hear the conflicting broadcasts and to catch the sentiment of the city from sidewalk talk. In fact, the massacre brought people out in public who might otherwise have stayed aloof.

  Namely, my father - out listening to dialects of his native Serbo-Croat, and picking up various German colloquialisms from cafe to cafe.

  And namely, the entire Slivnica family horde, as they were known - dreaded fiends, all of them, enlisted in the service of the Ustashi terrorist organization, supposedly headed by the fascist Ante Pavelich. It was a hireling of Pavelich's, we're all told, who assassinated King Alexander and French Foreign Minister Barthou in Marseilles in '34.

  Fascist Italy was reportedly behind the Ustashi end of this organization; Yugoslavia's neighbors were known to take advantage of the endless tiff between Serbs and Croats. But the Slivnica family horde were Ustashi terrorists of a special kind. Oh, the terror they waged wasn't in the least political; they were simply well fed for their work. In fact, they were feeding when Vratno encountered them, although it was only the lovely Dabrinka who first caught my father's eye.

  The Slivnicas were at a long table at an outdoor terrace restaurant above the Mislinja River. Fair Dabrinka was pouring the wine for her two sisters and four brothers. Her sisters were nothing to what Vratno saw in Dabrinka. Only squat, circle-mouthed Baba, and the sulky, melon-round Julka. Dabrinka was a creature with lines and bones - more features than flesh, my father was fond of saying. Dabrinka was a cool, slim trickle - more the green stem than the flower. My father thought she was a waitress, and never guessed her to be a member of that most thick family she served.

  One table away, Vratno raised his empty glass to her. 'My girl,' he said. 'Would you fill me up?' And Dabrinka hugged the wine decanter; she turned away. The Slivnica menfolk turned to my father the linguist, now speaking Serbo-Croat. My father felt the wrath. Oh yes. Four of them: the sturdy twins, Gavro and Lutvo; Bijelo, the eldest - and leader - and terrible Todor, body-awesome.

  'What shall we fill you up with?' Bijelo asked.

  'Nails?' said Todor. 'Or ground glass?'

  'Oh, you're all one family,' my father cried. 'Oh yes, I see.'

  For the resemblance was striking among them all, excluding Dabrinka. She had their olive-black and green color only in her eyes, but not their quickly sloping-away foreheads and nothing of the family swarth. Not the flat, pounded cheeks - which even Baba and Julka had - and not the twins' close-together eye slits. Not the exaggerated dimples of Bijelo the eldest; not a bit of the bulk of her big brother Todor, and not his cleft chin, either - the imagined tool work of hours with a rat's-tail file.

  'Seven of you!' said my father. 'My, what a big family!' Thinking: What inconceivable twosome could ever have mated and conceived them?

  'Do you know us?' Bijelo asked. The twins sat mum and shook their heads; Baba and Julka licked their lips, trying to remember; Dabrinka blushed through her blouse; Todor hulked.

  'I'd be honored,' my father said, in ordinary Serbo-Croat; he faltered to his feet. Then in German he said, 'It would be my pleasure.' And in English: 'Happy to know you, I'm sure.' And in the Mother Russian tongue, hoping to arouse possible pan-Slav sympathies: 'Extraordinarily glad!'

  'He's a linguist!' said Todor.

  'A linguist,' Bijelo said.

  'He's sort of nice,' said Baba.

  'Just a youngster,' Julka breathed, while Lutvo and Gavro still sat mum.

  'And you don't know us from somewhere?' said the leader Bijelo.

  'But I hope to,' my father said, in his straightest Serbo-Croat.

  'Bring your wineglass over,' Bijelo commanded.

  'Perhaps,' said Todor, 'we could powder the rim of your glass into the finest possible bits, and let you sip the glass dust down?'

  'That's enough humor, Todor,' Bijelo said.

  'I only wondered,' said Todor, 'what language he would speak with glass dust in his larynx.'

  Bijelo cuffed a twin. 'Give the linguist your chair and get another,' he said. Both Gavro and Lutvo went looking.

  When my father sat down, Baba said, 'Oh, get him!'

  'Go on, if you want,' said Julka.

  Gavro and Lutvo came back with a chair each.

  'They're dumb,' Baba said.

  'Dummies,' said Julka.

  'They share one brain between them,' Todor said. 'It's a small allowance to live on.'

  'Enough humor, Todor,' Bijelo said, and Todor sat mum with the twins, who sat puzzling over the extra chair.

  When the young Dabrinka turned around, my father felt his wineglass was too heavy to lift.

  And that was how Vratno Javotnik met the Slivnica family horde, odd-job artists for the Ustashi terrorists - who had use for a linguist.

  The Ustashi had touchy sort of work in mind. In fact, this job was so delicate that the Slivnicas had been surprisingly inactive for the past two weeks, pending the discovery of just the right man. The Slivnicas were probably quite restless for work - or for work less random than linguist-looking. Their last job had called on the services of the entire family and had gratified everyone. A French newspaperman, unauthorized in Yugoslavia, had
sought a home experience with a typical Slovenjgradec family - to learn for himself the degree of fascism and Italo-German sentiments in the average Slovene or Croat. The Ustashi were not interested in this sort of publicity, feeling that the French were sore headed enough about Minister Barthou's assassination. So the Ustashi selected the Slivnicas as the typical family for the French newspaperman.

  But this Monsieur Pecile didn't think the Slivnicas were average, or wished, at least, to live with a family that didn't have twin mutes and did have a living mother and father. Perhaps he doubted, as Vratno had, the possibility of natural genitors; or perhaps he made a pass at Dabrinka - and with Baba and Julka offering it so freely, the Slivnica family feelings were hurt. At any rate, the gleeful twins, Gavro and Lutvo, described in drawings, on the dusty hood of the Frenchman's car, the spectacular rocklike plummeting of Monsieur Pecile into the Mislinja River.

  Now there was a job that had involved them all - a real family project. But this linguist hunt had been something else. Todor confessed it to be so tedious that he feared his humor had soured.

  Oh yes, the job that Ustashi terrorists had for Vratno was indeed more delicate than the mere disposal of an unauthorized Frenchman. This new subject was a German named Gottlob Wut, as authorized in Yugoslavia as the rest of his horde, and the particular job asked of Vratno - for the moment, at least - was not a disposal. Gottlob Wut was scout-outfit leader of Motorcycle Unit Balkan 4, and the Ustashi weren't looking for any trouble with the Germans. Chiefly, they wanted my father to make a fast friend of Gottlob Wut.

  The Slivnicas were to prepare my father for this considerable task; Gottlob Wut, as far as anyone knew, had never had a friend.

  Poor Wut had been uprooted by the war, which isn't a thing you could say for all Germans. Gottlob had left an art for a service, and the Ustashi were interested in what Gottlob Wut might reveal of his mysterious past, to a friend, in his presently low-key, nostalgic condition.

  It's not clear what the Ustashi had against Gottlob, but I suspect it was an issue of wounded pride. Gottlob Wut had been a racing mechanic for the NSU motorcycle factory at Neckarsulm before the war. The motorcycle world was always saying that Wut had a mystical touch. The Ustashi also thought he had a violent touch, even a certain criminal touch - because a new-model NSU racer surprisingly won the Grand Prix of Italy in 1930, with Britisher Freddy Harrell doing the driving, and the Ustashi argued that Gottlob had more of a hand in the victory than his precise genius with valve control. The Italian counterpart of the Ustashi produced some evidence that Gottlob Wut had tinkered effectively with more than hairpin valve springs. Allegedly, Gottlob Wut had tinkered with the head of the Italian favorite, Guido Maggiacomo, whose body was found after the race in the Grand Prix body shop - lying peacefully beside his highly touted Velocette, which had missed the race. Guido Maggiacomo's temple was severely dented, authorities claimed, by an Amal racing carburetor found at the scene of the crime. It was said of Gottlob Wut, in those days, that he was never without an Amal racing carburetor. The new NSU racer had attained a new speed by successfully tilting these carburetors at a slightly downdraft angle.

  Unfortunately, the Italian counterpart of the Ustashi had backed a number of syndicates who put their money on Guido Maggiacomo and his highly touted Velocette. When the betting turnover was tabulated, it appeared that the NSU team of Britisher Freddy Harrell and German Klaus Worfer had made a killing. But the record has it that all the betting was done by the mystical mechanic Gottlob Wut. It was Wut who took away the booty.

  But that was in 1930, and if the Ustashi were to reveal this crime to Wut's Nazi superiors, the Germans certainly wouldn't care. Gottlob Wut was a valuable scout-outfit leader of Motorcycle Unit Balkan 4.

  This unit itself didn't seem to be very valuable at the moment. The Germans had found their motorcycle scouts rather obsolete in the Yugoslav campaign. They were easy targets to pot off in the Serbian mountains; the way those Chetniks hid and fought, motorcycles were easy to spot. But to keep Gottlob Wut's unit in Slovenjgradec wasn't very vital either. There wasn't a real war in Slovenia or Croatia - just an easy occupation; for police work, there were better means than motorcycles available.

  Gottlob's rough riders looked a bit silly in a quiet city.

  Of course, the Ustashi had more in mind about Gottlob than an old financial grudge. They thought it would be nice to catch the old mystic at a new crime, and one which could be presented as anti-German. They already knew of a small scandal. If Gottlob Wut didn't have a friend, he did have a woman - a Serbian woman, who was something of a political outlaw in Slovenjgradec. Gottlob Wut, it might be shown, was taking his German blood rather lightly. In fact, he didn't seem to give a damn for the whole war.

  All of which was how the get-the-goods-on-Wut campaign began, with my father studying motorcycle memorabilia on the Slivnicas' kitchen table. Vratno learned the names of racers and the dates of races; Vratno learned the bores and strokes, and the significant compression ratios; Vratno distinguished the side-valve model from the supercharged double-overhead-cam twin in sizes 350 and 500 cc. My father had never been on a motorcycle before, so the Slivnicas helped where they could.

  Broad Todor went down on all fours, and my father mounted. Todor gave his elbows for handlebars; he demonstrated cornering. Bijelo called out the road conditions.

  'Corner sharp right,' Bijelo said.

  'Lean from your spine,' said Todor. 'Don't move those elbows, you never want to steer a bike, the handles are just for holding on. You got to lean a bike, hips and head. Now tip me a little right.'

  'Corner sharp left,' Bijelo said, and watched my father gingerly lean left off the broad back, his knees slipping.

  'You wouldn't have made that one,' said Todor. 'You'd have gone wild, Vratno, my boy. Let's feel those knees, now, give me a squeeze.'

  And Baba giggled. 'I'll be the bike,' she said. 'Let me.'

  'Todor makes a fine motorcycle,' said Bijelo the eldest; he had an eye for bikes, all right. He'd stolen some Italian's Norton, over the border in Tarviso - oh, before he was a responsible head of a family - and had ridden the great chugger over the mountains back to Yugoslavia, crossing where there wasn't a customs checkpoint because he crossed where there wasn't a road. But he was so carried away to be back in his homeland with it, and finally driving on a real road, that he drove it into the Sava River on the outskirts of Bled, climbed out wet but wildly happy, knowing how he'd do it again if he had the chance - and this time, make it all the way to Slovenjgradec. So he said.

  He was a good teacher for my father, at least. My father rode Todor Slivnica under Bijelo's critical eye, for hours every evening - with Baba offering her own broad back, should Todor give out, and Julka claiming that she could clamp a gas tank or her brother's ribcage tighter than Vratno could.

  My father, riding long hours through the nighttime kitchen would see his shy Dabrinka maybe once or twice. She poured the wine, she served the coffee, she was pinched by her sisters and she never met my father's eyes. Once, on a corner sharp left, Vratno held a smile up for Dabrinka; he would have waited forever to catch her eyes. But Todor turned his head, the back of which usually pretended to be the headlight and necessary gauges. Todor dumped my father on the corner sharp left.

  'You must have leaned too far, Vratno,' he said, then leaned himself closer to where my father sat. 'I think it should be grownup ladies for you,' he said. 'You don't have to go outside this house to get it, and you don't have to kill yourself looking for it, either.' And Todor made a scissors of his index and middle finger, thick as garden shears, and he snipped his finger scissors just above my father's lap.

  Oh, now that the linguist hunt was over, Todor Slivnica's humor was brightening, you could tell.

  The Tenth Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967, @ 3.45 a.m.

  SEEING THOSE ELEPHANTS has made me sleepy, but if they can be insomniacs for seventy years or more, I can hold out for a few more hours. It's just because of the lull in here; for a
moment, I was bored.

  When I came back from the House of Pachyderms, it was so quiet that I went on by my hedgerow. I went down the path to the oryx's pen. For no good reason, I realized, I'd been putting off visiting the oryx.

  It was easy, climbing the pen, but I saw as soon as I set foot inside that the oryx was in his shed. His hind hooves were splayed out the shed door, over the ramp; silky white hairs lay over his fetlocks. He looked like someone who'd been felled with a sledge as he came in his house - ambushed in his doorway. But when I gingerly came up behind him, he raised his head and shoved his face out the doorway into the moonlight; I touched his wet black nose; he sort of mooed. It was a little disappointing, he was so docile; I'd expected to be challenged - to be backed against his shed wall, threatened with horn and hoof, until I proved to him I was the sort he could trust. But the oryx needed no proof; he lay back again, stretched, raised up again, sliding his great hip out from under himself - kneeling, actually! His great bollocks bumped the boards of the ramp. He stood up tiredly, as if to say: All right, I'll show you where the bathroom is. You probably can't find it by yourself.

  He invited me into his shed; that is, he backed up, completely off the ramp, and with his nodding head, he showed me about his room: This is where I sleep when it's cold - when it's warmer, as you saw, I hang a piece of me out the shed door. And this is where I take my brunch, by the glassless window. And this is where I sit to read.

  He knocked about the shed (expecting, I think, that I was going to feed him something), and when I showed him I didn't have anything, he somewhat indignantly walked out of his house. The moonlight bounced off the ramp; his balls wobbled and were shot through by the strobe-light effect of the reflecting moon.

  Something more definite should be said for the size. Not basketballs - that's exaggerating, of course. But they're bigger than softballs and - really! - bigger than the elephant balls I saw standing at attention just a while ago. They're volleyball-sized, only too heavy to be perfectly round. They're volleyballs that look sat on, or with the air let out - little dents where the ball collapsed for lack of air. That's as close as I can come, other than to point out that they're dangled in long, loose leather moneybags, and also, that they're a little crusty - owing, I'm sure, to the muck in the poor oryx's slum.