Setting Free the Bears Read online

  We drove up under the window, and I steadied the motorcycle while Siggy stood on the gas tank; on his toes, he would just get his hands over the rim of the box.

  'I can feel them,' he said. 'They were just watered - sweet snappy baby ones!'

  He stuffed them in his duckjacket, and we drove through Ulmerfeld, still following the Ybbs. A mile or so out of the village, we cut through a meadow bank to the river.

  'After all, Graff,' said Siggy. 'This day still owes us a piece of our fifty schillings.'

  And with that for grace, we opened our beers with Frau Freina's opener, and salted our radishes from Freina's shaker. Freina had a wonderously unclogged shaker. The radishes were crunchy and moist, and Siggy planted the greens.

  'Do you think they'll grow?' he said.

  'Well, anything's possible, Siggy.'

  'Yes, anything is,' he said, and we flicked our close-nibbled stumps to the river, watching them bob under and spin to the crest of the current again, like hats with pin-wheels on the heads of drowning boys.

  'Upstream,' I said, 'there's got to be a dam.'

  'Oh, a great falls in the mountains,' said Siggy. 'And think of the fishing above the dam!'

  'I'll bet there's grayling, Sig.'

  'And walruses, Graff.'

  We lay back in the meadow and tooted the bottlenecks of our beers. Crows again, downstream, were circling the radish stumps.

  'Is there anything a crow won't eat, Sig?'

  'Walruses,' he said. 'Couldn't possibly eat a walrus.'

  'Well, that's amazing,' I said.

  The spring-damp was still in the ground, but the thick grass seemed to trap the sun and hold it against me; I was warmed into closing my eyes. I could hear the crows telling off the river, and the crickets were sawing in the fields. Siggy was chinking the bottleneck on his teeth.

  'Graff,' he said.

  'Hm.'

  'Graff?'

  'Here,' I said.

  'It was a terrible scene in that zoo,' he said. 'I think it would be better if we had them out here.'

  'Those girls?' I said.

  'Not the girls!' he cried. 'I meant the animals! Wouldn't they have a time out here?'

  And I could see it with my eyes closed. The giraffes were nipping the buds off the treetops; the anteaters gobbled waterbugs from the fine lace of foam on the shore.

  'Those girls!' said Siggy. 'God, Graff - what a frotting ninny you can be.'

  So the sun and the beer settled our sleep; the Rare Spectacled Bears were kissing in whispers, and the oryx chased all the frotting ninnies out of the meadow. On the bruise-purple Ybbs the walrus was rowing a boat with his flippers, sunning his tusks and bleaching his mustache, and he didn't see the hippo who lurked in the deep pool by the bank - the disguised hippo in a veil of froth, mouth agape for the walrus, rowboat and all.

  I woke up to warn the walrus; the giraffes had munched the meadow until they'd reached the sun and dragged it down. The down sun glinted through the grass, caught the motorcycle and stretched the shadow of wheels and engine over the river; the river raced under the motorcycle like a fast, bruised road.

  'Siggy,' I said. 'It's time we moved.'

  'Gently, Graff,' he said. 'I'm watching them. They're stepping out of their cages, free as us.'

  So I let him watch awhile, and I watched the sun flattening the meadow out red, and the river running out of sun. I had a look upstream, but there was no peeking the mountains yet.

  Going Nowhere

  OUT OF THE valley and the night bugs, the road turned to tar, then back to dirt, and always now the river was hidden from us in the thick tunnel of firs. The heavy gargle of the motorcycle beat against the forest, and our echo crashed alongside - as if other riders paced themselves to us and moved unseen through the woods.

  Then we climbed out of the firs too, and the night was sharp enough to breathe in careful bits. We were aware of space again, and the sudden, looming things to fill it - a rocking black barn with great wind-swung doors, and triangular pieces of window casting a severed headlight back to us; something shuffling off the road, throwing its fierce eyes over its shoulder, hunched like a bear - or a bush; a farmhouse shuddering in its sleep, and a yapping dog who sprinted alongside us - over my shoulder, its eyes getting smaller and blinking out of the dancing-red tail-light. And on the valley side, dropping below us, the little peaks of treetops were pitched like tents along the road.

  'I think we've lost the river,' said Siggy. He was shifting down to the upgrade; he went third to second and gave us a full throttle. We tossed a wake of soft dark dirt behind, and I leaned forward with my chest up on his back; I could feel him begin to lean before the bike would lay over, and I could lean through the corners - as perfectly with him as a rucksack on his back.

  Then the road dropped out from under us, and our headlight darted straight out into the night, with the momentum of the motorcycle bearing us levelly into the sky; when the front wheel touched the road again, we were carried madly downhill to a wooden bridge. Siggy hit first gear, but he still had to brake, and the rear wheel moved up beside us; we skipped across the bridge planks like a crab.

  'It's the river,' said Siggy, and we went back to peek.

  He wrenched down the headlight and slanted the beam to the river, but there wasn't any river. He pressed the kill button on the engine, and we heard a river - we heard the wind making the bridge planks groan - and we felt how the bridge rails were damp from a rising spray. But in the light's beam there was only a gorge falling into darkness; and the tilted firs, holding to the gorge walls, reached for help and didn't dare look down.

  The river had taken a shortcut; it sawed the mountain in two. We peered into the blank awhile. There'd be no fish in the morning unless we dared some horrible pendency before breakfast.

  So we found a spot flat enough for the groundcloth, and set back enough from the edge of the great gorge. It was so cold we made a rumpus of undressing in our bags.

  'Graff,' said Siggy. 'If you get up to pee, don't walk the wrong way.'

  And later, our bladders must have remembered what he said - or else, must have been listening too long to the river-gush. Because we both had to get up. And oh, it was cold, stepping naked and fearful across the field.

  'How does the oryx keep his warm?' said Siggy.

  'I've been thinking,' I said. 'Don't you think all of that might have been a disease?'

  'Oh, Graff!' said Siggy. 'It's surely a case of over-health.'

  'He must feel quite vulnerable,' I said.

  And we did a clutching, vulnerable dance back to our bags. The bags had stayed warm for us; we curled, and felt the mouseful field scurry. The night was so chilly I think the mice crept up and slept warm against us.

  'Graff,' said Siggy. 'I've been thinking too.'

  'Very good, Sig.'

  'No, really thinking, Graff.'

  'What, then?' I said.

  'Do you think there's a nightwatchman at the Hietzinger Zoo - inside the grounds all night? Just peeking around?'

  'Communing with the oryx?' I said. 'Asking him his secret?'

  'No, just in there,' said Siggy. 'Do you think someone's in there at night?'

  'Sure,' I said.

  'I think so too,' he said.

  I saw the guard muttering to the bears, waking up the oryx to ask the potent question; by the early dawn hours the guard walked hunched like an ape, swung from cage to cage, baiting the animals in their own languages.

  'Graff?' said Siggy. 'Do you remember any closed doors in the Small Mammal House? Was there anything that looked like a closet?'

  'A closet in infrared?'

  'A guard's got to have someplace to go, Graff. Someplace for sitting and having his coffee, and a spot to hang the keys.'

  'Why, Siggy!' I said. 'Are you scheming a zoo bust?'

  'Oh, wouldn't that be something, Graff? Wouldn't that be something rare? Just to let them go!'

  'The rarest of fun!' I said.

  And a veritabl
e gaggle of bears went waddling out the main gate, carrying with them the ticket taker's booth, in which the man with the gambler's green eyeshade was crying for mercy.

  But I said, 'Except, of course, it wouldn't be any fun going back to Vienna. That's at the very bottom of things I'd like to do.'

  I opened my eyes and saw the lovely pale stars above me; the stunted, desperate firs were climbing out of the gorge. Siggy was sitting up.

  'What's at the very top of things you'd like to do, Graff?'

  'Have you ever seen the sea?' I said.

  'Only in movies.'

  'Did you see From Here to Eternity?' I said. 'It was an American film, with Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster. Burt was rolling Deborah in the surf.'

  'It wasn't the sea you were interested in, Graff.'

  'Wouldn't that be something, though?' I said. 'Camped down on a beach somewhere - in Italy, maybe.'

  'I saw that movie too,' said Siggy. 'I felt that their crotches must have been sandy.'

  'Well, I'd like to see the sea,' I said. 'And fish some more, up in the mountains.'

  'And roll Deborah Kerr in the surf, Graff?'

  'Why not?'

  'And frot a whole herd of country girls, Graff?'

  'Not a whole herd,' I said.

  'But one fine piece of a girl, Graff? Just one to make a world out for you awhile?'

  'Suits me,' I said.

  'Suits you, indeed, Graff,' he said. 'You dreaming romantic ninny-ass bastard.'

  'Well, what do you want to do, then?' I said.

  'Well, you can frot all you want,' said Siggy, and he lay back down, his arms crossed outside the bag; his arms were all the bare, pale colors of the stars in the stinging night. 'That zoo won't be going anywhere,' he said.

  I gave a glance to the firs in the gorge, but they hadn't climbed out yet. Siggy didn't move; his hair fell over his pillow of duckjacket and touched the shiny grass. I was sure that he slept, but before I slept myself, he mumbled me a groggy little bedtime song: Frau Freina Gippel's lost her pan.

  And never will she find it.

  The Frau has teeth on her behind,

  But Gippel doesn't mind it.

  Going Somewhere

  THERE WAS A frost in the morning, and the grass reflected a thousand different prism-shapes of sun; the meadow-bank to the river gorge was like a ballroom floor, catching the patterns of an intricate chandelier. I lay on my side and squinted through the frost-furry grass to the gorge wall. The groundcloth was cool on my cheek, and the grass spears seemed bigger than the trees; the frost-melt lay in bright pools between the spears. There was a cricket coming along, using the grass for stilts to span the droplets - lake-sized, for a cricket; its joints were frosty, and it seemed to be thawing as it walked.

  When you're level with it, a cricket can be fierce - a giant anthropod come bending down the jungle, stepping over oceans. I growled at it, and it stopped.

  Then I heard bells, not far away.

  'Cowbells!' said Siggy. 'We're going to be trampled! Oh, pushed down the gorge!'

  'Church bells,' I said. 'We must be near a village.'

  'Well, frot me,' said Siggy, and he peeked out of his bag.

  But my cricket was gone.

  'What are you looking for, Graff?'

  'A cricket.'

  'A cricket's quite harmless.'

  'This was an especially big one,' I said. But it wasn't under the groundcloth, so I got out of my bag and stepped on the frost-stiff grass.

  Well, the dew made me dance, and with that giddy gorge close by, I got much more interested in dancing than finding my cricket. But Siggy watched me coldly, and not for long; he huffed himself out of his bag and began stomping around the groundcloth - not at all the same sort of dance I was doing.

  'You don't have to get up yet,' I said.

  'Well, I don't recommend watching you in the nude,' he said.

  'Well, be careful with your stamping,' I said. 'You'll get my cricket.' But I stood oddly embarrassed in front of him.

  'Let's have some coffee and find a more fishable part of this river,' he said, like a frotting scoutmaster. And I forgot about my probably trodden cricket - watching him load the motorcycle, like a frotting sergeant.

  So we left for the next town.

  Hiesbach was less than a mile up the road; it was a town piled against a hillside - old, rounded, gray-stone buildings heaped like egg boxes, with the usual, outstanding, squat and onion-headed church that hunched beside the road like an old, toothless lion who wouldn't attack any more.

  When we got there, Mass was over; stiff, crinkly families milled on the church steps, creaking their once-a-week shoes. The smaller boys bolted for a Gasthof opposite the Holy Onion Head: FRAU ERTL'S OLD GASTHOF.

  Siggy rapped the sign as we went in. 'Graff,' he whispered. 'Beware of the Ertl.' So we came in agiggle.

  'Well,' said fat Frau Ertl, 'you're very welcome.'

  'Oh, thank you,' Siggy said.

  'Coffee?' I asked the Ertl. 'Is it hot?'

  'And a place to wash our hands?' said Siggy.

  'Oh, of course,' she said, pointing us out the back door. 'But the light bulb's burnt out, it seems.'

  If there ever could have been a light bulb. Because the pissoir was a dirt-floor stall in back of the Gasthof and next to a long, narrow pen for goats. The goats watched us work the pump. Siggy pumped the water over the back of his head; when he shook his head, the goats bleated and butted against the gate of the pen.

  'My poor goats,' said Siggy, and he went over to the pen to tug their chins. Oh, they loved him, it was easy to see. 'Graff,' he said, 'step inside and see if anyone's coming.'

  Inside it was filling up - the families together with their coffees and sausages, the lone men together at a long table with their beers.

  'Ah,' said the Ertl. 'I've your coffees by the window.'

  So when Siggy came in, we went to our table - next to a family with a cantankerous-looking grandfather for a leader. The family's youngest, a boy, watched us over his long sausage and roll, and his chin drooped in what he was gnawing.

  'Gross little boy,' Siggy whispered, and he made a face at him. The boy stopped eating and stared, so Siggy made a threatening gesture with his fork - stabbing air - and the boy pulled his grandfather's ear. When the old man looked at us, Siggy and I were just sipping our coffees; we saluted, and the grandfather pinched the boy under the table.

  'Just eat, boy,' the grandfather said.

  So the boy looked out the window, and was the first to see the goats.

  'Goats out!' he shouted, and the grandfather gave him another pinch. 'Boys who keep seeing things should hold their tongues!' he said.

  But others were looking now; the grandfather saw them too.

  'I shut the gate,' said Frau Ertl. 'I shut them up before Mass.'

  Some older boys swaggered and shoved each other out of the Gasthof; the goats shyly herded by the church. And the pinching grandfather leaned over us. 'Frau Ertl's a widow,' he said. 'She needs someone to keep her goat pen shut.' Then he choked on whatever he was eating and had a little spasm over it.

  The goats were nodding to each other, clattering off balance, up and down the church steps. The boys had herded them against the door, but no one dared go up the steps after them, and mess one's Sunday clothes.

  We went outside and watched, listening to the bells from another village - striking Sunday morning with insistent, hurry-up echo-shots that muted the end of each note.

  'That's St Leonhard's bells,' said a woman. 'We've got our own bells, and I'd like to know why they're not ringing on Sunday.' And the issue was seized, taken up by other voices: 'But our bell ringer's eating his breakfast.'

  'Drinking his breakfast, you mean.'

  'The old swiller.'

  'And the children don't miss a thing.'

  'We've our own church and our own bells, and why should we have to listen to somebody else's?'

  'Religious fanatics,' Siggy whispered - but he was interest
ed in the goats. The mob was trying to scare them off the steps.

  'Go get the bell ringer,' the woman said, but the bell ringer had been warned of the plot already; he stood on the steps of the Gasthof, a beer in his hand, wrinkling the veins on his nose to the sun.

  'Now, ladies,' he said. 'Kindly ladies, I could never hope to attain' - and he swallowed a belch that made his eyes water - 'to achieve,' he said, 'the mastery of bell-ringing that my competitor in St Leonhard has' - and he let it come: a sharp, ringing belch. 'Has attained,' he said, and went back inside.

  'Someone else,' the woman said, 'should learn how to ring the bells.'

  'Oh,' said the pinching grandfather, 'there's not much to it.'

  'Too much for you,' the woman said, 'or you'd be doing it all right. You're just dying for something to do.'

  And a hard-faced girl flicked her saucy, hard butt at the grandfather; stepping in front of him, she brushed his chin with the down of her arm; she stretched herself away from him, almost leaving her leg behind - toe down, her skirt tugged to mid-thigh. Her little calf leapt high above her ankle and knotted like a fist.

  'Too much for you,' she said, and skipped away from him, out into the street.

  'Look at those goats, there!' said Siggy. 'Why don't they bolt? They should bolt right by those brats. Bolt!' he hooted.

  And the grandfather looked at us; he eased himself down a step or two and sat on the stairs by us. 'What did you say, there?' the grandfather said.

  'It's a goat call,' said Siggy. 'It works for some.'

  But the grandfather was staring too hard; he clicked his teeth. 'You're a queer rascal,' he said, and he picked up Siggy's hand. 'I saw you,' he whispered, and Siggy jerked his hand away.

  'Where's St Leonhard and its famous bells?' I said.

  'Over the mountain,' said the grandfather. 'And not much of a mountain, either, but to hear this town talk, you'd think it was Alps. Not much of a church, either, and nobody who's much of anything living here - but to hear this town talk. And there's nothing to ringing their damn bells!'

  'Go do it, then,' said Siggy.

  'I could!' the grandfather said.

  'Do it, then,' said Siggy. 'Ring the piss out of them! Get the whole town rolling in the street, holding their ears!'

  'I can't climb all those stairs,' said the grandfather. 'I'd get winded halfway up.'

  'We'll carry you up,' said Siggy.

  'Who are you anyway?' the grandfather said. And he whispered to me, 'I saw him. He took the saltshaker off the table - Frau Ertl's shaker - and he stuffed it in that funny pocket.'