Setting Free the Bears Read online

  'Who sleeps at the foot of yours?'

  'If I thought you were staying long, I'd have a lion. How long will you stay, Graff?' she said.

  'Fate shapes our course,' I told her.

  'If I thought you were staying long, I'd tell you where my room is.'

  'Would your auntie give you a dowry?'

  'I don't believe you're going to stay another day.'

  'Where would you go for your wedding trip?' I said.

  'Where would you take me?'

  'On a cruise in a bathtub!' I said. 'A huge bathtub.'

  'And would Siggy come with us?' said Gallen.

  'Well,' I said, 'I don't know how to drive the motorcycle.'

  'Here,' she said. 'See my neck? What you did is going away.'

  But it was getting too dark to see; I turned her shoulders and pulled her back against me. Oh, she never would give me all her weight; a part of her sat up away from me when I kissed her.

  'You'll make it come back, Graff.'

  'Would you show me how your hair is when it's down and loose.' I said.

  And she reached up to uncoil her braid; under my fingers I felt the long, hard line of her collarbones, squared up to her shoulders when she raised her arms.

  'What a lot of bones you have, Gallen,' I said.

  She brought her braid over her shoulder and undid the end knot. Then she tugged apart the thick-wound bands of her hair, combing her fingers through it, letting it crackle loose and dance like auburn milkweed in the spray gusts from the falls.

  'There's nothing to cover my bones,' said Gallen. 'I haven't filled out in years.'

  'Oh, it's ages since you were fat,' I said.

  'Are you kissing or biting?' she asked.

  'You're a little filled out,' I said, and I put my arms round her waist, touched my fingertips to her long little belly. She seemed to draw herself from under me; I felt I was falling inside her.

  'You're scaring me, Graff,' she said. 'You just want to scare me.'

  'I don't either.'

  'And that old Siggy-friend of yours,' she said, 'he just wants to scare Auntie.'

  'He does?'

  'He did, and he meant to,' she said, 'because it's certainly not a bit true. And wouldn't I know it, if it were true of you?'

  'Oh, you would,' I said.

  Her hair was wrinkled from the braiding and left a bare place behind her ear. So I kissed her there, and she moved a little more away, and came a little back, and pressed my hands down flush to her sides. 'Feel the bones again,' she whispered.

  She relaxed, and then she didn't; she jounced away from me and stood up. 'Oh, Graff,' she said. 'You mustn't think that I do anything I do on purpose. I don't know what I'm doing at all.'

  'Don't be frightened of what I might think,' I said.

  'Are you really pretty nice, Graff?' she asked. 'Even though you scare me a little, aren't you really pretty good?'

  'Bright pink Graff,' I said, 'to you.'

  And there were dramatic lightning flashes across the river, paling the yellows of the garden. The thunder was dry and splintery, far-off and in a world I didn't live in. Gallon's hair was bleached a brighter red in the lightning.

  She skipped along the wall to the castle corner. When she got to the cornerstone, she let me come up to her; I put my arms round her waist again, and she leaned back into me. But she wouldn't turn; she just held my hands to her hips. 'Oh my, Graff,' she said.

  'My, your bones,' I whispered.

  We looked into the courtyard. The few night-lit windows threw the bright squares and crosshatches of their grates over the lawn. Against the crosshatching I saw Siggy's shadow, arms over his head.

  'What's that?' said Gallen.

  'Siggy's touching his toes,' I said. But, oh no, that wasn't it. He had ahold of the window grating; he'd reached over his head and had caught the weave of rungs and bars, and he seemed to press himself out into the courtyard - like some nocturnal enlivened beast, testing the strength of his cage.

  'He's not touching his toes at all,' said Gallen.

  'It's just a stretching exercise,' I said. And I hurried her along under the window ledges; I gave her a sudden blurry kiss at the monstrous castle door.

  'We've got to watch out for your auntie,' I said, and I went into the castle ahead of her.

  And did the soccer players seem suddenly interested? Was there a light in their eyes that hadn't shone since the day they were fixed, framed, and hung?

  But there was no light coming under my own door, and for a long while I waited in the hall - listening to the perfect rhythm of my Siggy-friend's fake snores.

  A Blurb from the Prophet

  Will you ride with me?

  The prison of the Sybarites

  Is still fat and secure.

  Will you always be such

  Easy prey for sycophants?

  Will you never admit

  There are greater devotions?

  Will you ride with me?

  While the Sybarites take their sleep We can set their prisoners free.

  'YOU'RE A BETTER snorer than a poet,' I said. 'I think you're more conscious about snoring.'

  'Did the thunder wake you, Graff?'

  'I read your poem in the lightning.'

  'Ah,' he said. 'A veritable bolt lit your way.'

  'And did you summon it?' I asked.

  'It was very officious of me,' he admitted.

  'From the window, Sig? Hanging on the grate, were you? Summoning wayward bolts?'

  'Not at first,' he said. 'At first I was just watching when old Fate happened along with the nightfall and gave me a second looking-over.'

  'Listen to that rain that's coming, Sig. Did you have a hand in that too?'

  'Nothing to do with it, Graff. It's a slip-up, that rain. And all along the way, Graff, it's the slip-ups that have to be reckoned with.'

  'I wish I'd seen Fate too,' I said. 'It must make a fellow very knowing.'

  'Did you frot her yet, Graff?'

  'I didn't,' I said.

  'You have a natural respect for youth,' he said.

  'When's leaving day, Sig?'

  'Ah, the tearful departure! When can you whip yourself away?'

  'You can be a prodding frotter, Siggy. I'd like to have some sleep now.'

  'So Graff would like to sleep!' he yelled, and he sat up with his pillow. 'Sleep then,' he said.

  'Sleep yourself,' I said.

  'Like a volcano, Graff. This old Siggy sleeps like a volcano.'

  'I don't care how you sleep,' I said.

  'No, it's true you don't, Graff. You don't care a sweet frot!'

  'Oh, Christ!' I said.

  'He's in the bathroom, Graff,' said Siggy, 'cooking up what's next for you and me.'

  What Christ Cooked Up in the Bathroom

  THE LIGHT WAS early in our room, even though the rain still puddled the courtyard; I could hear the fat drops ping on the pipes of the motorcycle. I propped myself up on my elbows and peered out the window through the grating; the wet cobblestones of the drive looked like a cluster of egg shapes, and I could see Auntie Tratt preparing for the milkman.

  She seemed to come into the courtyard from under the castle; she rolled two milkcans in front of her, prodding them with her floppy galoshes. The pink hem of her robe showed under her sacklike raingear; her hairnet slipped down to her eyebrows and made her forehead look like some puffy thing caught from the sea. The short shocks of her calves peeked between her clog tops and the hem of her robe; her flesh was as white as lard.

  She set the milkcans on the cobblestones, just in front of the castle door; then she hurried down to the courtyard gate and opened it for the milkman. Only the milkman wasn't there yet; Auntie Tratt looked both ways on the street, and then she pelted back to the castle - flying her soggy hem, leaving the gateway clear.

  The rain now drummed on the milkcans; it ponged a deeper sound than it made off the motorcycle pipes.

  In a sudden, mad flurry, as doomed as dancing on ice, the
milkman arrived.

  I saw the crooked-faced horse lurch into the gateway, tilting his blinders against all the possible momentum of the rickety cart and his own swaying body; the hitchmast shunted up along his sagging spine, and the mass of leathery harness and trappings leaned out against the corner this fool horse tried to cut. Then I saw the driver rein and crank up the horse's maw; and the whole cart pick itself up and skitter after the horse, wrenching on the hitchmast and slinging its awkward weight to one side of the animal's rump - as if a rider had flung himself off the horse's back at full gallop, keeping the reins in hand, and weighing as much as the horse.

  The driver cried, 'Jeee-sus!' and the cart hopped sideways on its two wheels, which locked and wouldn't spin.

  The horse was waiting for all his legs to come down, and for the cart to follow him. And I waited for the fool driver to stop reining his poor horse's head so high up that the animal saw only the tops of the forsythia bushes, and not his own hooves landing on edge on the wet, egg-smooth cobblestones.

  The horse came down on his side, with the hitchmast sliding along his spine and conking him in the ear; the little cart stopped high up on his rump. When his spongy ribs whomped the cobbles, the horse said, 'Gnif!'

  The fool driver pitched out of his seat and landed on all fours on the horse's neck, in a tangle of leather hitchings and the jingling iron rings. The milkcans made a terrible clamor in the slat-sided cart. The breeching slid up and lifted the horse's tail like a banner.

  'What was that?' said Siggy.

  And the milkman squatted on the horse's neck, jouncing like a spring just burst through an old bed.

  'Jeee-sus! Horse!' he cried.

  'God, Graff!' said Siggy. 'What's going on?'

  The milkman grabbed the sprawled horse by the ears and lifted the animal's head to his lap. He cradled the head and rocked back and forth on his haunches. 'Oh, sweet mother Jeee-sus, horse!' he cried.

  Then he pounded the horse's head on the cobblestones; he just tugged it up by the ears and flung it down again, leaning his weight after it. The horse's forehooves began to flay through the rain.

  All the milkcan covers were tipped forward in the cart, and seemed like round, wet faces peering over the slatted sides. Auntie Tratt was stomping on the stoop to the main door, pushing her heels into her galoshes. She slopped crooked-footed along the drive to the milkman.

  'Oh, here!' she said. 'What can be the matter with you?'

  The milkman, jockeying on the horse's neck, kept hold of the ears, laid his cheek in the hollow under the horse's jaw, and used his own head to batter the animal down. He was more expert at doing it now; he didn't try to lift the horse, he let the horse raise himself - just enough, to where the milkman was perfectly above the head, gripped on the ear handles. There he had the leverage; he could fling down so suddenly on the horse that its head would bounce a little before it lay on the cobbles - frothed over the bit, shook, bucked to raise itself again.

  'Well, frotting Graff,' said Siggy; 'If you won't tell me what's happening' - and he cloaked himself in the satiny pouf and hopped to the window ledge.

  The horse was more frenzied now; the milkman was calm and terrible. The milk-cart had ridden over the horse's rump, and the hitchmast bent like a great bow being strung on the horse's spine. And whenever the horse stopped churning, the hitchmast would spring back and over-straighten the unbelievable vertebrae.

  But none of this bothered the milkman, he held so fiercely to the neck and ears, his cheek tucked in the jaw hollow.

  'Oh my God,' said Siggy.

  'Berserk!' I said. 'His brains must have muddled in the fall.'

  'Aaah!' said Siggy.

  And Auntie Tratt moved gingerly about the scene, conscious of her pink hem in the rain.

  And Siggy, the pouf cloaked over his shoulders and pinched to his throat - moving past me, one bare foot arched as a cat's back in wet grass - whooped over the magazine stand, was out the door and off down the hall. An utterly graceless pirouette round the stairwell, and his ballooning pouf snagged on the banister, just bending him backward as he took the steps; he let go of the pouf at his throat and went on. And he didn't come back for it. It gave me a satiny wave from the banister, fluffed by the draught from the main door opening wide and fast.

  I ran back to my window.

  And this is split-second seeing: someone new in the courtyard, a large man with pink knees and hairless legs below his lederhosen - an untucked ascot at the throat of his pajama tops, and very thick-soled sandals. He stood half-way between the main door and where Auntie Tratt was circling the fallen horse; stood with his hands on his hips, his hands stubbing suddenly at the end of his arms - for he was a more or less wristless man, and a neckless, ankleless man besides.

  He was saying, 'Frau Tratt, what a terrible racket - it was very late when I got to bed' - and then he turned round to the castle and spread his arms as if someone were throwing him a bouquet from the door.

  Siggy ran into him as dead-weight as a sandbag, and the man never closed his arms before he fell, or before Siggy's bare feet padded over his pajama chest.

  Auntie Tratt was turning, a gesture beginning in her hands, the palms rolling up. Tiredly she said, 'A fool, this driver - a crazy drunk.' She just looked up and saw the puffy pink man pillowed on his ascot, his fingers twitching and his head moving very little. 'It's going to rain all day,' she said, and she caught a bit of Siggy flashing past her; she turned, her hands coming together.

  Siggy's dazzling bottom was so sleek in the rain.

  And the large, jointless man wet his ascot in a puddle, dabbed his mouth with it, lay just as he was on his back. 'No!' he shouted. 'No, nothing! He had nothing on all over, all over.'

  And Siggy mounted the milkman; he worked his hands under the chin to a hold on the throat. Then he tucked his head down close to the milkman and bit into the back of his milky neck.

  Down the prickly hall, I was hopping into my pants. Auntie Tratt came bobbing like a pigeon through the lobby; I saw her head jog by below me, just flit in and out of the slot in the stairwell.

  Gallen had the pouf; she leaned against the banister, a touch of the satin to her cheek, and watched out the main door into the courtyard, where there were sounds of terrible suffering and pain - where the flaying horse jostled the milk-cart about, and where the tumbled man sat up with his ascot hanging out of his mouth, gaping at the open castle door as if he expected a horde of naked men to come trampling him into the grooves of the cobblestones; and where Siggy rode the milkman through the garden, in and out of the forsythia.

  'Graff,' said Gallen, 'my aunt's calling the police.'

  I took the pouf from her and nudged one of her small, upright breasts with my elbow. 'Lovely little bosom,' I said. 'I'm afraid we'll be leaving you today.'

  'I couldn't sleep last night, Graff,' she said.

  But I had the pouf and I ran by her, into the courtyard.

  The poor lopsided man made circles with his arms, tipped up his broad bottom and sat again. 'He's all around,' the man said. 'Get nets and ropes.' He gagged on his ascot. 'Get dogs!' He choked, his arms still circling.

  So in and out of the forsythia - the bell-shaped petals drooped with rain - in and out a strange figure was darting, bent over in the back bushes of the thicket, upright and charging by the motorcycle, here and there appearing, four-armed and two-headed; a terror-high, doglike wail marked the spot where I could expect it next to come in view.

  The little needlepoints of rain fell icy on my back; I held the pouf like a bullfighter's cape, keeping it out from under my feet.

  'Siggy!' I said.

  In shiny raingear a hollow-eyed man with transparent ears came lurching between two fat forsythia bushes, spilling the rain from the burst cups of petals, showering the boomerang pieces of flower with his thudding galoshes - with a naked man on his back, fastened by teeth to the milky neck.

  'Blaaah-rooo!' the fool driver was screaming.

  Two bushes away, I c
rossed between, after the next holler - the next peep of double-man to straighten up and blunder on.

  Then they were one bush away; I looked over a squat shrub and could have touched the two heads with my hand if the shrub hadn't stabbed me when I reached.

  'Siggy!' I said.

  In the courtyard, on the stoop to the castle door, I heard the tumbled man yelling. 'Get the dogs on him! Why aren't the dogs here?'

  And now we ran in the same bush row; I followed the wet-streaked, flexed bottom, the long toes bent back and dragged behind the churning milkman, who was staggering more head-down, more slowly now. I could catch them.

  Then the milkman was three-headed; he couldn't run, he swayed - his shoulders coming back - and his knees quit.

  'Oh, dear God,' he moaned. And we were all in a pile in the black garden-muck, the milkman groveling under Siggy, skittering his hips out sideways and thrashing his arms. I had Siggy's head, but he wouldn't come loose. I got under his chin and tried to work open his mouth, but he ground his jaw into my hands until my knuckles were cracking. Then I biffed him in the ears and kneeled on his spine; but he held. And the milkman began some chanting wail, his hands digging back into Siggy's hair.

  'Sig, let up,' I said. 'Let him go!' But he clenched his teeth still, and kept the man from turning his hips.

  So I broke a switch of forsythia off a bush, and lashed it across Siggy's rear, and he writhed sideways; but I could still catch him, and did. At the third fanny lash he rolled free of the milkman and sat his smarting rump in the cool, kind mud.

  He put his hands under himself and slopped the mud over his hips as if he were dressing himself in it; his mouth made a little puckered O. I held out the pouf to him, and he made whistling noises.

  'The police are coming, Sig,' I said.

  And the milkman inched away from us; he scooped up a great splot of mud to the mauve welt on his neck. He made the whistling sounds too.

  Siggy wrapped himself in the pouf. I caught him under his arms and pushed him up in front of me - out of the bushes and along the castle wall. Siggy began to march; he took great strides that jogged his head up and down. His feet left spread and terrible toe marks in the ooze. 'There's a mound of mud in my ass, Graff,' he said; he jiggled.

  There was a mound of sorts in the lobby too. Auntie Tratt, sponging, held the fat, dizzy man in a chair. She tried to clean the mud off his lederhosen; my Gallen held the water pail to dip the sponge.

  'Well,' the man said, 'I heard someone coming and I was turning around to see.' And Siggy came up the stoop with the pouf draped over one shoulder and down between his legs.