Setting Free the Bears Read online

  The dizzy man rocked in his chair; he made an odd, fishy gurgle. He hammered his fists in his lap, where his ascot lay puddled like a napkin over his bright knees; his lower lip was as purple and fat as a beet.

  'Frau Tratt,' said Siggy. 'It's raining up a flood, fit to burst the dam. The end of the earth!' And he paraded by her.

  The pouf flared out as he swung on the banister, taking the stairs on upward - rhythmically, with flourish, and two at a time.

  Massing the Forces of Justice

  NOW AND THEN a clod of mud appeared in the air above the forsythia, a long spitter of debris trailing behind it. It was always flung nearly straight up, and followed by unreasonable stamping sounds and violent shakings of the bushes. The milkman was composing himself in the garden.

  The poor horse was only making his lot worse. He'd managed to turn himself, still on his side, so that he now lay perpendicular to the hitchmast, and under it; he'd twisted himself so tightly in his breeching that he hadn't room to move any more. A lump the size of a tennis ball swelled on the ridge of his eyebrow and closed one eye. The other eye blinked into the rain, and the horse lay back and wheezed - his tail switching.

  'Is it still raining, Graff?' said Siggy.

  'Harder now.'

  'But it's not an electrical storm, is it?'

  'No,' I said, 'not any more.'

  'Well,' he said, 'it's not a good idea to have a bath during an electrical storm.'

  'You're safe,' I said.

  'It's an enormous bathtub, Graff. I can see how you managed it.'

  'The milkman's still in the bushes,' I said.

  'Are you taking a bath after me, Graff?'

  'I didn't get that muddy,' I said 'How fussy of you,' said Siggy.

  'The police are here, Sig,' I told him.

  The green Volkswagen with the bar of blue lights had some trouble getting through the gate and past the milk-cart. There were two policemen, high-booted and in immaculate uniform, the collars of their rain slickers identically curled to a sneer; and perhaps there was a third one, out of uniform - in a long coat of black leather, belted, and under a jaunty black beret.

  'They've brought an assassin,' I said.

  'The police?'

  'With a secret agent.'

  'It's probably the mayor,' said Siggy. 'A small town, a rainy day - what has a mayor got to do?'

  The three went into the castle; I could hear the man who was being sponged, creaking his chair and raising his voice to greet them.

  'Siggy?' I said. 'How many kicks would it take to start that good motorcycle?'

  But he sang me a bathtub song: Disaster, disaster,

  We're having a

  Disaster.

  If we try to

  Get away,

  Disaster

  Will run faster.

  'Oh, frot your damn rhyming,' I said.

  'You should have a bath, Graff,' said Siggy. He splashed for me.

  And one of the uniformed policemen came out in the courtyard, carrying some large hedge-trimming shears. He straddled the horse and squatted on the poor animal's back; then he snipped along the hitchmast, freeing the harness. But the horse just lay there, dizzy, with his old blinky one-eye; the policeman hissed and turned back for the castle.

  It was then he saw a mudclot come spinning out of the forsythia and heard the stamping, battering sounds of the milkman in the garden.

  'Hello?' said the policeman. 'You! Hello!'

  And the milkman spattered handfuls of mud and sticks in the air.

  'You!' the policeman shouted. And he advanced on the garden, with the hedge trimmers held in front of him like a water douser's rod.

  I could see the milkman darting from bush to bush - crouching, scooping mud and twigs and hurtling them in the air; he lurked watching his little bombs fall; and with cartoon stealth, he darted on.

  'Sig, the milkman's lost his head,' I said. And the policeman tiptoed into the forsythia, the great, vicious beak of the hedge trimmers held before him.

  Then I heard them gathering in the hall outside our door. The light slot under the door was patched and blurred by sneaking feet; an elbow, a hip or a belly brushed the wood. They were milling, their voices thin and whispery - now and then a word, a phrase, would stand out clearly and be hissed, be hushed: 'as the day he was born'

  'there should be'

  'live together'

  'hoe'

  'must be'

  'laws'

  'dogs'

  'unnatural'

  'God knows'

  And everything else - as if someone were speaking through a fan, and only the quickest speech-pieces made it between the blades - was chopped and whished into a single voice, indistinguishable from the rub of clothes and human weight against the walls and door.

  'Sig,' I said. 'They're out in the hall.'

  'Massing the forces of justice?' he asked.

  'Are you staying in the tub?'

  'Why, hello!' he cried. 'Look here!' And there was a lot of splashing. 'Lash marks!' he said. 'Whippings! Pink as your tongue, Graff. You did some job with your switch, you should see.'

  'I couldn't get you off him,' I said.

  'My ass is remarkable!' he said. 'Veritable grooves!' And I heard him plunking and skidding in the tub.

  Then there was a tiny knocking on the door, and the hall was very quiet; there were only two feet taking up the light slot now.

  'Graff?' said my Gallon.

  'Have they made you our Judas?' I said.

  'Oh, Graff,' she said.

  Then weight came against the door, and someone was trying a key.

  'Stand back!' said Auntie Tratt.

  'It's unlocked,' I told them.

  A uniformed policeman booted the door open, springing the knob; he came sideways into the room, and the doorway filled behind him. Anxious Auntie Tratt, her arms crossed; the newly sponged man, pushing his shiny knees into the room; between them was the assassin, or the mayor. And nowhere was my Gallen now.

  'Where's the other one?' said the sponged man, walking his knees forward.

  And Siggy said, 'You should see, Graff,' and opened the bathroom door.

  He flashed to all of us his stinging, washed bottom. The pink scars glowed across his rump like the tilted smiles of new moons.

  'There!' said Auntie Tratt. 'Do you see?'

  And it was the mayor, all right - the formidable Burger-meister, who hadn't removed his beret for Auntie Tratt, but who removed it now with a precise nod to the fanny poised in the bathroom doorway. A perfect job of doffing, quick enough to catch the fanny before Siggy leapt his hind end back in the bathroom and whomped shut the door.

  'I see, Frau Tratt,' said the mayor. 'We all see, I'm sure.' And he barely raised his voice. 'Herr Javotnik?' he called. 'Herr Siegfried Javotnik.'

  But we could hear Siggy padding across the bathroom floor; he thumped up on the platform and plunked back in the tub.

  The Revealing of Crimes

  HE WOULDN'T UNLOCK the bathroom door, so we all waited in the lobby downstairs - all of us except one policeman, who was left behind to search our room.

  The very upset pink man said, 'Herr Burgermeister, I can't understand why we just don't smash down the door.' But the mayor was watching his other policeman, leading the milkman through the courtyard and up the castle stoop.

  'Drunk again, Josef Koller?' the mayor said. 'Having wrecks and beating your horse?'

  The milkman was so muddy it was hard to see his fabulous neck-welt. But the mayor moved closer and examined.

  'Taught a small lesson?' he said; he poked around the welt, and the milkman drew himself in like a turtle. 'Perhaps a bit more than you had coming,' the mayor said.

  'And my milk is all froth,' said Auntie Tratt.

  'Then, Josef,' the mayor said, 'you'll leave an extra can?'

  The milkman tried to nod, but his jowls knotted and he made a winced-up face.

  'He's a madman,' I told the mayor.

  'Bitten on the
neck,' the mayor said, 'and bitten hard enough to break the skin and raise a welt the size of my fist! And who's a madman? Running nude in the courtyard! Riding a man! Biting a man! And dallying about in a bathtub, locked in! An exhibitionist and a flagellant!' roared the mayor.

  'Worse!' Auntie Tratt said. 'A pervert!'

  'A screwdriver!' bellowed the pink man. 'Just a screwdriver would get you in that bathroom. And if you'd only gotten the dogs here on time, there'd be no mess now.'

  Then the upstairs policeman appeared on the stairs - the toes of his boots so perfectly together he looked as if he would fall.

  'He's still in there,' the policeman said. 'He sang me a song.'

  'What did you find?' the mayor asked.

  'Saltshakers,' said the policeman.

  'Saltshakers?' the mayor said - his voice like the high-pitched gnaw of the rain on the castle's hollow-tiled roof.

  'Fourteen,' said the policeman. 'Fourteen saltshakers.'

  'My God,' the mayor said. 'A pervert, for sure.'

  Fetching the Details

  WHAT'S GOING ON? These interruptions! They're what happens when you stand still long enough to let the real and unreasonable world catch up with you. And listen, Graff - that's not standing still very long.

  My father Vratno, Vratno Javotnik, born in Jesenje before there were wheels in that part of Yugoslavia, moved to Slovenjgradec, where he fell in with the Germans - who were doing things with wheels no one had seen before; and with them rolled to Maribor, where a good road ran him straight across the border into Austria. And by himself, for he was sly.

  Young Vratno followed the tank-trodden way to Vienna, where my mother was starving, stoically and beautifully, and waiting to fall in with someone as sly as him - and not expecting, I'm sure, to play a part in the conception of anyone as born to wheels as me.

  Young Vratno, who said across his soup to me, 'Harder and harder it's getting, to have a thing going for yourself that isn't somehow the apprenticeship to something that's gone before; and not yours and never will be. And never a thing to make you happy.' That's just what the poor fart said, I'm told.

  Oh, my father was a splendid, melodramatic troll for mischief all his own; and so am I. And so are you, Graff. And so this world might yet be spared the cool, old drudge of death-by-dullness.

  *

  But these interruptions! Digressions. Oh, it's repetitive death every time you let the world catch up with you!

  Young Vratno, the ladling spoon a part of his lip and the soup becoming a part of his speech - he said, 'Listen, you've got to move in the split-second interim between the time they find you out and the time they decide what to do with you. Just a hop ahead and you're a cut above!' So he said, or so I'm told.

  Siggy's note. Pinned to the bottom sheet of my bed, where my bottom found it - a starchy crumple to make me grope for the light. And I hadn't seen him leave any note.

  In fact, when the mayor had me try my hand at getting him out of the bath, and when I'd come into the room again, Siggy was tub-slicked and dressed - all except the duckjacket, to which he was applying the last, thick rubs of saddle soap.

  And the mayor's voice came up from the lobby: 'If you can't get him out of there, he'll have to pay for the door!'

  Siggy had the raingear out of the rucksack, the plastic bags to cover his boots, the rubber bands to wrap the bags tight to his calves, and the saddle soap. The duckjacket took a candle gloss and looked like a thing melted over him. 'Don't worry,' he whispered. 'You draw them off, and I'll be back for you.'

  'They're down in the lobby, Sig. They'll hear you.'

  'Then get them up here. I'll be back, Graff - a day, two nights, at the most. You've got the pack and all the money I don't need for gas.'

  'Sig,' I said.

  But he opened the window and swung out on the ledge. He put on the goggles and helmet - a parachutist tightening his flyaway parts. Then he stepped his boots into the bags; they ballooned; he looked like a man with his feet in glass pots.

  'Siggy?'

  'Graff,' he said, 'we're in need of details! After all, Graff, we didn't really have much of a look at the place - what with your sporting with that hippo of a girl, and with the offense we took to it right away - now did we?'

  And I thought: What? How your mind can leap - to something the spanning of is beyond me.

  He jumped.

  And I thought: What a show! You could have climbed down the vines.

  He made a splotz sound in the garden-muck.

  I heard the mayor's voice again. 'Herr Graff! Is he making up his mind?'

  'Oh, I think he'll talk,' I called, and I went out in the hall. 'Come up now!' I yelled, and I could hear them thudding the stairs.

  I could hear the damp-chilled motorcycle too; it made short and enginelike sucks - caught and faltered once, like a bull-voiced man who started a shout, but gagged in mid-holler. Those rounding the stairwell, they heard it all too; we faced each other with the safe length of the hall between us.

  Then I ran back to my room and the window; I could hear the stairs being swung down upon to the lobby. The mayor, though, came alongside me; his eager face spasmed from cheek to ear.

  Siggy had caught it and held it; thick balls of gray were lobbed from the tailpipes, as weightless and wispy as dust kittens. They seemed like flimsy wads of hair, so tangled that we'd later find them in the garden, strung from the forsythia like mangled pieces of wigs.

  Siggy smoothed the engine in one throttling, up and down - and lined up with the gateway, still narrowed by the strewn milkcart.

  So it was before the policemen were off the castle stoop - and before the shoving milkman, the pink-washed man and Auntie Tratt had all shouted themselves out the castle door - that Siggy sped through the gap, posting on the foot pedals. The hunched, waxy duckjacket gleamed like a beetle's back. And even through the rain, I could hear him hit three of his gears.

  Oh, a lover of ill weather and of the overall, precarious condition! This was - why yes, the trial marathon to Vienna - Siggy's reconnaissance mission to the Hietzinger Zoo.

  The Real and Unreasonable World

  SO I READ the note more than once, and Gallen saw the light under my door. I saw her foot shadows, creepy and soft.

  'Gallen?' I said. 'I'm unlocked' - because no one had fixed the knob that the policeman had sprung.

  And I expected her in nightgown, unblushing black lace, and sleekly unfrilled.

  But she had her apron on; she jingled into my room, hands stuck in the flowery pocket for coins.

  'I know,' I said. 'You want to sleep with me.'

  'Stop it,' she said. 'I can't stay a second.'

  'It'll take hours,' I told her.

  'Oh, Graff,' she said. 'They're talking about you.'

  'Do they like me?'

  'You helped him get away,' she said. 'No one knows what to do.'

  'They'll think of something,' I said.

  'Graff, they said you don't have much money.'

  'So you don't want to marry me, Gallen?'

  'Graff! They really mean to get you.'

  'Come and sit, Gallen,' I said. 'I really mean to get you too.'

  But she sat on Siggy's bed; it was so soft and had such a sag in it that her knees were tipped face-up to me - lovely little chin-sized knees.

  'Stop blushing, Gallen.'

  'What are you doing in bed like that ?' she said.

  'I was reading.'

  'I'll bet you've nothing on,' she said. 'Underneath the covers, I'll bet you sleep without a stitch.'

  'Does it drive you wild to guess?' I asked.

  'They're going to get you, Graff,' she said. 'I just saw your light, so I knew you were up. I thought you'd be dressed.'

  'Well, I'm hidden,' I said. 'Come sit on my bed.'

  'Graff - the mayor and my aunt, they're cooking something up.'

  'Well, what?' I said.

  'They've looked through your stuff, you know. They saw what your money was like.'

 
'I've enough to pay for this room,' I said.

  'And there's not much left after that, Graff. They can arrest you for not having money.'

  'I'm a loiterer,' I said. 'I always knew someone would find it out.'

  'And you helped him get away, Graff. They can get you for that.'

  'I can't wait to see what they'll do,' I told her.

  'They're going to make you get a job,' she said.

  Well, that was something, all right - a frotting job. Of course, I could just scram, make off for the mountains and fish, and tell Gallen where Siggy could find me when he came back looking; leave the money with her for the Gasthof bill.

  Now I thought that, but Gallen had her eyes on me - and that one lovely line making the fine, sharp jut to her jaw, putting the slope off her shoulder that ran long to her wrist and the angle her hand made; her fingers were as sensitive as a Braille reader's, I was sure; and her dark lip-color, the rust blush-color on her cheek, and her pale, high-freckled forehead. She went as well together as the different ripe and sun-spots of a peach.

  So I said, 'What kind of a job?'

  'Just a little job,' she said. 'Just another way to have someone keeping an eye on you so they'll know when he's coming back.'

  'So they think he'll be back?'

  'I think so too,' she said. 'Will he be back, Graff?'

  'Are you a Judas, Gallen?'

  'Oh, Graff,' she said. 'I'm just warning you what they're thinking they'll do.' And she made her braid hide her face from me. 'And I've got to know when you'll be leaving. I want to know where you're going so I can write you. And I want you to keep writing that you'll come back.'

  'Come sit here,' I said, but she shook her head.

  'They think he'll come back, Graff, because Auntie said you were lovers.'

  'What sort of a job is it?' I said.

  'You've got to bring in the bees,' she said.

  'What bees?' I said.

  'The bee boxes in the apple orchards,' said Gallen. 'The hives are full and ready to be brought in. It's a job you do at night, and they think that's the most likely time you'd be trying to leave with him.'

  'And if I won't take the job, Gallen?'

  'Then they arrest you,' she said. 'You're a vagrant, they'll say, and they'll lock you up. You helped him escape, and they can get you for that.'

  'I could skip out tonight,' I said.

  'Could you?' she said, and she went round to the other side of Siggy's bed: she sat with her back to me. 'If you think you could do that,' she whispered, 'I could help you do it.'