Setting Free the Bears Page 20

  The Eleventh Zoo Watch: Tuesday 6 June, 1967, @ 4.15 a.m.

  I CAN'T IMAGINE what O. Schrutt could be doing to them. I still hear them; the whole zoo is listening. Now and then there's a door that opens suddenly on some awful animal music, and just as suddenly closes - muffles the cry.

  I can only guess: O. Schrutt is beating them, one by one.

  It's clearly anguish. Whenever the cries blare full force, there's an answer from the rest of the zoo. A monkey scolds, a large cat coughs, the Various Aquatic Birds are practicing take-offs and landings; bears pace; the great gray boomer is viciously shadow-boxing; more subtly, in the Reptile House, the great snakes twine and untwine. Everyone seems in angry mourning for the creatures under infrared.

  I can only guess: O. Schrutt is mating with them, one by one.

  There's a herd of Miscellaneous Range Animals just behind my hedgerow; they're huddled round each other, conspiring. I can guess what they're saying, nipping each other's ears with their strange, herbivorous teeth: Schrutt's at it again. Did you hear the last one? Brannick's giant rat. I know its terrible bark anywhere.

  Oh, the zoo is full of gossip.

  A moment ago, I crept out of my hedgerow and down to the empty Biergarten to have a word with the bears. They were all in a stew. The most fierce and famous Asiatic Black Bear squatted and roared himself upright, lunging into the bars as I scurried past his cage. I saw his shaggy arms still groping out for me when I was half a zoo block away. The Famous Asiatic Black Bear must have been thinking of his captor, Hinley Gouch - and was interpreting the nameless diabolics of O. Schrutt as no more than another capture of that deceiving Hinley Gouch's kind. For the terrible Asiatic Black Bear, all men must be Hinley Gouch - especially O. Schrutt.

  I tried to calm them all, but the Asiatic Black Bear was unfit for reason. I did whisper to the polar bears that they shouldn't take it out on each other, and they floated, though uneasily, thereafter; I did beg the grizzly to have a seat and collect his thoughts, which, after a half-blind charge at me, he begrudgingly did; my gentle pair of Rare Spectacled Bears were so very worried that they hugged each other upright.

  Oh, I can only guess: O. Schrutt - mad fetishist! - what is your evil indulgence that frenzies the whole zoo?

  But no one can tell me. I'm in some haunted bazaar in someplace more scheming than Istanbul; in their cages and behind their fences, the animals are gossiping in a language more violent and foreign than Turkish.

  I even tried a little Serbo-Croat with a Slavic-looking great brown bear. But no one can tell me a thing.

  I can only guess what the last shriek meant: O. Schrutt, with ritual slowness, is strangling the coati-mundi. The cry pushes thickly through the lavender maze; now it's cut off like all the rest.

  Now sliding glass is slid. And the zoo gives me a Turkish explanation.

  (CONTINUING:)

  THE HIGHLY SELECTIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIEGFRIED JAVOTNIK: PRE-HISTORY II

  The ritual of Vratno learning to drive the 1939 Grand Prix racer was limited to Sundays. My father would wait for Gottlob Wut on the Smartin Street sidewalk in front of the Serbian woman's door. Wut was punctual, bath-robed, helmeted, shoed but unlaced - uniform under his arm. My father, in Bijelo Slivnica's leathers, would polish his indigo-blue helmet while waiting for Wut.

  Gottlob Wut required a two-hour bath Sunday mornings. The tub had a ledge for his pastries and coffee. My father ate his breakfast on the hopper, lid down. They talked around and occasionally through the passing bulk of Wut's Serbian mistress, who refreshed the coffee and Wut's bath water - who at times simply squatted between tub and hopper, watching the changing colors of Gottlob Wut's many scars underwater.

  Zivanna Slobod was about as effortless a mistress as anyone could come by. Middle-aged, heavy in the jaw and hips, she had a shiny, black-haired, gypsy strength to her. She never spoke a word with Wut, and when my father would compliment her services in Serbo-Croat, she would raise her head a little and show him the fine rippling vein in her neck and all her bright, heavy teeth.

  Zivanna took Wut away from my father after the bath; she returned him in half an hour. This was the rubbing-down session, wherein the thoroughly bath-limp Wut would be bundled in towels and escorted from the bathroom by strong Zivanna. Vratno turned up the radio and loudly drained the bath so he wouldn't hear Gottlob Wut's joints being loosened beyond imagination on the great airless mound of bed things in Zivanna's only room with a door that closed. Vratno saw the mound once - the door had been left ajar as he followed Wut to the bathroom one morning. It would have been like sleeping on a ball, because Zivanna's bed, if that's what really was beneath the bed things, was strewn with silks and pelts, fur pillows and large, shiny scarves; a tippy bowl of fruit perched on top of the mound.

  God bless Gottlob Wut for his indulgent Sundays. The man knew how to break up the weeks.

  And he knew everything about his 1939 Grand Prix racer. He could strip it in ten minutes. It was to Wut's unending sorrow, however, that he hadn't the time to do anything about the camouflage paint. Some appearances had to be maintained. Wut was fortunate enough to have a most agreeable motorcycle unit; they never reported the racer's presence to the overseers of the German scout command. Gottlob kept them happy by giving each his turn on the racer, although this pained him a good deal. Wallner was too cocky with it - had no respect for the power; Vatch was afraid of it and never shifted out of second; Gortz ground gears; Bronsky floated corners, one gear too high; Metz was an utter dolt about the overuse of brakes - he brought the racer back smoking. Even out of Slovenjgradec on a very open road, Gottlob was nervous about anyone else riding his racer. But certain sacrifices had to be made.

  With my father, Wut was very cautious. They began by riding the racer double - Wut driving, of course, and carrying steady instructions back to his passenger. 'Now see?' said Wut, and would corner neat, with a whining, flawless down shift at the break of the turn. My father's eyes were shut tight, the wind screamed in his ear holes and moved his helmet up and down. 'You can even take it up a gear when the curve is banked,' said Wut. 'Now see?' And would never break the steady, increasing pace when he changed his gears; and would never miss a gear, either. 'Never miss,' said Wut. 'There's too much weight behind you to miss a gear and hold the road.' And would give an example: he'd pull in the clutch and freewheel the racer into a turn. 'Do you feel?' Wut asked. 'You'd never hold this corner out of gear, would you?'

  'Oh, my God no!' my father answered, to show as quickly as possible that he felt very surely they wouldn't hold the curve. And Wut would ease the clutch out; they'd feel the sweet and heavy gear pull drawing them back to the crown of the road.

  If you were deaf, you would never know when Gottlob Wut was shifting; he was much smoother than an automatic transmission.

  'Do you feel it, Vratno?' Wut was always asking.

  'A conditioned reflex,' my father would answer. 'You're pure Pavlov, Wut.'

  But they didn't get far into November of '41 before it snowed, so my father had to wait awhile before going beyond the passenger stage. Wut let Vratno get the feel of the gears on the big side-valve model 600 with the sidecar, but he refused to let my father drive a straight bike until the ice was off the roads.

  Wut himself was not so cautious. In fact, one Sunday in February of '42, he took one of the straight 600 overheads, 1938, and with Vratno as passenger, drove north of Slovenjgradec to the village of Bucovska Vas, where an elbow of the Mislinja River was reportedly frozen the thickest. My father stood shaking in the pine grove on the edge of the bank while Wut gingerly drove the '38 out on the ice. 'Now see?' said Wut, and began to move slowly from my father's left to my father's right - very slowly, with steady first-gear work, Wut cornered and came back, right to left; then he cornered again and came back, left to right - this time hitting second gear. When he cornered in second, his rear wheel slipped and he touched one tailpipe down to the ice; then righted the bike, slipped to the other tailpipe and righted it again. A
nd came back, right to left - now hitting third. 'Now see?' he cried, and swung his leg over from the side of the bike that was going down, this time, all the way to the rear wheel hub; he stood two-footed on one pedal and held the throttle steady while the bike righted itself. He remounted and came back, carrying a little farther in both directions each time he turned, so that my father had to come gaping out of the pine grove and stand with his toes on the river's ice heave - just to see the farthest reaches of Wut's fantastic turns. Again and again, the bike rocked over a tailpipe and touched down the rear wheel hub, and Wut swung a stiff leg to right the machine. 'Now see?' Wut screamed, and made the frozen river twang and sing beneath him. Back and forth, faster and faster, in a wider and wider radius - letting the bike almost lie flat on the ice, with the wheel hub trying to eat its way down to the running water. In a flourish, Wut tapped his rear brake very lightly - let the bike slip out from under him while he swung his leg; let the bike rest at last, laying it down gently - standing on its gas tank until it had stopped spinning.

  Then the only thing Wut had trouble with was getting the heavy old '38 back up on its wheels. Gottlob's feet kept slipping on the ice when he tried to lift. My father came off the bank, and together they righted it, and wiped off the tank where some fuel had sloshed.

  'Of course,' said Wut, 'you've got to feel that just right. But that's how it's done.'

  'Driving on rivers?' my father said.

  'No, you fool,' said Wut. 'That's how you handle tar or an oil slick. You hold your throttle steady, you get your leg out from under, and if you don't touch the brake, she should come back up on her own.'

  Then they minced along the ice, walking the old '38 to where the bank was flattest. And from the bank on the far side of the river came a shouting foursome of ice fishermen on a sled with droning runners; out from wherever they'd watched the performance, they brought their strange, mittened applause.

  Gottlob Wut, perhaps, had never had such a public audience before; he seemed wholly stunned. He took his helmet off and held it under one arm, waiting for the wreath or trophy, maybe, or for no more than a bearded ice fisherman's kiss. He was bashful, suddenly self-conscious. But when the sledful of fishermen arrived, my father saw that the Slovenians were hopelessly drunk and oblivious to Wut's uniform. They nudged their sled up to Gottlob's left boot; one of the fishermen used his mitten for a megaphone and shouted up to Wut, in Serbo-Croat, 'You must be the craziest man in the world!' Then they all laughed and clapped their mittens. Wut smiled; his kindly eyes begged my father for a translation.

  'He said you must be the best in the world,' Vratno told Gottlob Wut, but to the drunks on the sled, my father said, in cheerful Serbo-Croat, 'Keep smiling, oafs, and bow a little as you leave. The man's a German commander, and he'll shoot your bladders if you say another word.'

  Vratno had them smiling foolishly up from the sled, their heels slipping on the ice as they backed. The beefiest of them went down on his knees on the river and grunted against the runners. They straddled the sled and hugged each other, hip-to-thigh, looking like children who'd ridden their sled into a place where sleds were absurd, or not permitted.

  My father held the motorcycle up for Wut, who waved after his departing fans. Poor, gullible Gottlob Wut, standing helmet-in-armpit, chin-up and vulnerable on the creaking ice.

  'That was really great, Wut,' my father said. 'You were just fine.'

  The Twelfth Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967, @ 4.30 a.m.

  I WAS THOROUGHLY chilled and was burrowed down in the roots of my hedge when old O. Schrutt came jangling his keys down the centre-doorway aisle; for a second, I came crouching and duck-walking out from my hedge and peered down the path at him. He staggered out of the Small Mammal House and down the blood-glowing stairs.

  O. Schrutt drinks on the job! Smokes pot, takes acid or pep pills. O. Schrutt pushes heroin - to the animals! Perhaps.

  God, he was awful. He looked ravished. One pant leg was untucked from one combat boot; one epaulette was unbuttoned and flapped; his flashlight was jittery; he carried the keyring like a great mace.

  Perhaps his mind is stretched and torn and then mushed back in shape by dark and tidal, almost lunar forces. Perhaps O. Schrutt averages three transformations a night.

  But whatever cycle his insanity goes through - whatever phase this was - his effect on me was hypnotic. I crouched almost too long on the path; I would have been dumb-struck at his feet, if he hadn't sent me scrambling back to the cover of my hedge with his sudden barking at the Monkey Complex.

  'Rauf!' he barked - perhaps still remembering the gelada baboon, 'Raa-ow-ff!' But all the primates kept very still, hating or pitying him.

  And when he came on down the path again, he was making growls.

  'Aaaaarr,' he said softly. 'Uuuuurr.'

  While the Parliament meeting of Miscellaneous Range Animals tried to look casual about herding and milling together. But O. Schrutt walked the length of my hedgerow with his eye on them. When he turned down the path to the Biergarten, I ran scootched-over behind the hedge - all the way to the far corner, where I could see him move on. Sauntering, a changed man in a minute - cocky, I tell you - he whirled back to face the Miscellaneous Range Animals.

  'Awake, eh?' he cried - so shrilly that the tiny kiang, the wild ass of Tibet, bolted out of the herd.

  And virtually swaggering then, O. Schrutt walked on to the Biergarten - as far as I could see. He stopped a few feet before the Famous Asiatic Black Bear; then O. Schrutt leaned out toward the bear's cage and rang his keyring like a gong against the bars.

  'You don't fool me,' cried old O. Schrutt, 'crouching there like you're asleep and not planning an ambush!' While the Asiatic Black Bear threw and threw himself against his cage - roaring like I've never heard, alarming the Big Cats so much that they didn't dare to roar a challenge back, but only coughed in little rasps, and unbefitting mewing noises: Oh, feed me or forget to - I'll eat old O. Schrutt or anyone else. But whatever you do, God, don't you let that Oriental bear out. Oh please, no.

  But O. Schrutt boldly taunted; exhausted, the Asiatic Black Bear slumped against the front of his cage, his great forepaws dragging through the peanut shells on the path, on the cage side of the safety rope - as far as he could reach and still six inches short of old O.

  O. Schrutt went on, continuing what must be the aggressive phase of his zoo watch. I heard him plunk a rock in the polar bears' pool.

  He's not quite far enough away to suit me yet; I would guess he's only at the ponds of Various Aquatic Birds. I believe that's him I hear, skipping stones across the ponds - bonking, now and then, a rare and outraged Aquatic Bird.

  Let O. Schrutt get a little farther off. Let him get to the House of Pachyderms, let him rouse the rhino or echo his keys in the hippohouse. When he's a whole zoo away from me, I'll be in that Small Mammal Maze to see what's what.

  And if there's time, old O., I've something else in mind. It's easy enough to do. Just move that safety rope six inches or a foot nearer the Famous Asiatic Black Bear's cage. It wouldn't be hard at all. There's just a rope strung between those posts; they have an awkward, concrete base, but they're certainly not immovable.

  How would that fix you, O. Schrutt? Just change your safety line a foot or so - move you closer than you think you are, old O., and when you waggle your taunting head, we'll all watch it get lopped off.

  And now, if that's him I hear, O. Schrutt is braying his empathy with the elephants' paranoia concerning sleep. Now he's far enough away.

  (CONTINUING:)

  THE HIGHLY SELECTIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIEGFRIED JAVOTNIK: PRE-HISTORY II

  The 1939 Grand Prix racer 500 cc could summon 90 h.p. at 8000 r.p.m., and hit 150 m.p.h. when stripped of unnecessary parts, but my father was allowed no more than 80 m.p.h. when he took to driving the racer in the spring of '42. Vratno carried a necessary part. Namely, Gottlob Wut as passenger - the constant, correcting voice in my father's indigo-blue ear hole.

  'You should
be in third now. You steered us through that last one more than you leaned. You're much too nervous; you're tight, your hands will cramp. And never use your rear brake on the downhills. Front-brake work, if you've got to brake at all. Use that rear brake again and I'll disconnect it. You're very nervous, you know.'

  But Gottlob Wut never said a thing about what a good job my father was doing at pretending he'd never driven before. And only after Wut had been forced to disconnect the rear brake did he ask Vratno where he lived and what he did for food. Clerical work, my father told him - occasional translations for pro-German Slovenes and Croats in a sub-government position. Whatever that meant. Wut never asked again.

  Although it wasn't exactly fair to call the Ustashi pro-German, they were pro-winning - and in the spring of '42, the Germans were still winning. There was even a Ustashi militia who wore Wehrmacht uniforms. In fact, the Slivnica twins, Gavro and Lutvo, had Wehrmacht uniforms of their own, which they wore only for dress-up, or for going out at night. The twins weren't part of any unit Vratno knew of, and once Bijelo scolded them on their manner of acquiring the uniforms; it seems they had several changes. The Ustashi overseer for the Slivnicas was alarmed, and called the twins a 'relationship risk'.

  'Our family,' said Todor, 'has never been afraid to risk relationships of any kind.'

  But Todor was often snappish in the spring of '42. After all the work, the Ustashi had either lost interest or given up their hope that Gottlob Wut would betray anything vital enough to make him touchable. At least, as long as the Germans were winners - and as long as the Ustashi were pro-winning - Wut seemed quite safe from revenge. About all Wut was guilty of was the keeping and disguising of a Grand Prix racer in a motorcycle unit meant to have slower and less delicate war models. And Zivanna Slobod, Wut's ritual-minded Serbian mistress, turned out to be a Serb more by accident than inclination - and a 'political outlaw', as she was called on record, only because her list of lovers included every political or apolitical type imaginable. So they couldn't very well incriminate Wut on her account either. And Sundays were free; what Wut did with the racer and my father, he did on his own time. It could even be argued that Wut's Sundays demonstrated extra effort on the part of the motorcycle unit's leader - a kind of keeping-in-shape exercise. The Ustashi simply had nothing they could ever make stick on Gottlob Wut.