'Where's the Biergarten?' said Gallen, so frotting eager.
And down by the Biergarten that my Gallen wanted to see, the terrible Asiatic Black Bear deafened the zoo.
'God, what's that?' said Gallen.
'BROP!' said the endlessly belching walrus. 'That's our terrifying leader. That's who that is.'
The giraffe now transfixed me with his neck. 'How could you?' his radar asked. 'How could you have even considered it?'
'BROP!' said the tiresome walrus. 'Weren't you forgetting O. SCHRUTT?'
Gallen tugged my arm. 'Come on, Graff,' she said.
And as I stumbled, half-blind, toward the Biergarten, I saw again my loon of a soccer mate on my old high-school team. Down the path was the ball, and ahead of it, coming full tilt, the Famous Asiatic Black Bear, who wouldn't allow O. Schrutt to be forgotten, appeared to have a step or two on me; he was going to get to the ball first.
Past the Monkey Complex, then; my eyes were blurred by the frotting bear's speed. I began, low down in my throat: 'Aaii, aaii,' I cried softly, 'Aaaiii!' I screamed.
'Graff!' said Gallen. 'What's the matter with you?'
'Aaaiii! Aaaiii!' wailed a monkey or two, old hands at mimicry.
And Gallen laughed, with all her guards clearly down, even more vulnerable than I'd imagined - to my inevitable surprise.
'I didn't know, Graff,' she said, taking my arm, 'that you knew how to talk to monkeys.'
But I thought: It's clearly a matter of them knowing how to talk to me. And make me one of them.
How, Clearing the Ditch, I Fell in the Gorge
THE RARE SPECTACLED Bears sat upright and stared, seeing me ensconced in the Biergarten with a new partner. Gallen shone a rich wine-brown, her new neck pale and perhaps prickly in the sun bearing straight down on her. She sat outside the fringe of our Cinzano umbrella; she pushed herself back from our table - the better to view me at a distance, with awe.
'You mean, you've been thinking you'd do it all along?' she said. 'Then you tricked me into coming here with you.'
'No, not exactly,' I said. 'Not at all, really. I don't know when I really knew I was going to go through with it.'
'You mean, Graff,' she said, 'you're going to creep around in here all night? You're going to let them out? And it was you who told me it was a crazy idea! You said so, you did, Graff. You agreed he must have been crazy to even think of such a thing.'
'No, not exactly,' I said, with the frotting notebook rising up under my shirt and against my belly, like a gorged feast I couldn't possibly keep down. 'Not at all, really,' I said. 'I mean, yes, I think it's a crazy idea - I think he lost his sense over it, sure. But I mean, I think there's a proper way to go about it. And basically, I think, it's a sound enough idea.'
'Graff, you're crazy too,' she said.
'No, not exactly,' I insisted. 'Not at all, really. I just think there's a reasonable way to go about it. I think his error was to even imagine that he could get them all out. No, this is the point, you see: reasonable selection of animals, Gallen. Naturally, I agree, you'd have to be mad to let them all loose. That would be unmanageable, I agree.'
'Graff,' she said. 'Graff, you're even talking like him. You are, really. More and more, I've noticed. You sound just like he did.'
'Well, I haven't noticed any such thing,' I said. 'And so what if I do? I mean, he went too far - I'd be the first to admit. But there's a proper perspective to put this in, I think. What I mean, Gallen, is let's put it in a new light. It could be kind of fun, if it's done with some taste.'
'Oh, fun, yes,' said Gallen. 'Oh, with taste, sure. All these lovely animals out biting people and each other. That's fun, sure. And that really has taste, Graff, I have to admit.'
'Reasonable selection, Gallen,' I insisted; I wasn't going to let her bait me into a fight.
'Oh, you're out of your head, Graff,' she said. 'You must be.' And she stood up. 'I'm not staying in here for one minute more,' she said.
But I said, 'Oh, fine. Just where will you go?'
'Oh, Graff,' said Gallen. 'We're fighting already.' And she held her ears - remembering, no doubt, that I was the cause of them being so exposed. I went round the table and squatted down next to her; she crouched, sniffling in her hand.
'Gallen,' I said. 'Just think of it, please - just for a minute.'
'I wanted to go shopping with you, or something,' she said. 'I've never been.'
'Gallen,' I said. 'Just a few animals, really. Just a few of the gentle types. And just a little scare for old O. Schrutt.' But she shook her head.
'You're not even thinking of me,' she said. 'You just took me!' she whispered, fierce and dramatic. 'You have had me! I was just taken along,' she accused, with ridiculous flourishing of her pointed elbows.
'Oh, frot,' I said.
'You're crazy and mean,' she said.
'All right,' I said. 'Frot me, I am.' And then I whispered these fierce dramatics of my own: 'Siggy's dead, Gallen, and I never took him seriously - we never even got to talk about anything at all.' But that didn't sound like what I meant, really, so I said, 'I hardly got to know him. I mean, really, I didn't know him at all.' But that led to nothing logical either, so I said, 'It all started out very light and funny - just easy, going nowhere in particular. We were never very intimate, really - or serious. We'd only gotten started.' And I saw no conclusions leaping at me out of that, either. So I stopped.
'How could anyone take Siggy seriously?' she said.
'I liked him, you bitch,' I stopped. 'It was his idea and it's crazy, maybe. And, maybe, so am I.'
But she took my hand, then, and sneaked it under the soccer shirt to her hot, hard tummy; she sat back down in her chair, holding my hand to her. 'Oh no, you're not crazy, really,' she said. 'I don't think you are, Graff. I'm sorry. But I'm not a bitch, either, am I?'
'No,' I said. 'You're not. And I'm sorry.' She held my hand against her a long while, as if she were telling my fortune on her tummy.
Anything's possible.
'But what will we do afterwards?' she asked.
'I just want to get this over with,' I said.
'And then what?' said Gallen.
'What you want,' I said, and I really hoped so. 'We'll go to Italy. Have you seen the sea?'
'No, never,' she said. 'Really, though - what I want to?'
'Whatever you want,' I said. 'I just want done with this business here.'
And she sat so frotting trusting in her chair, my hand snug in her lap.
The Rare Spectacled Bears relaxed too. They slumped in their fashion, against the bars and each other, as if they'd been not so much interested in the outcome as in any, even over-simple settlement of our squabble.
Oh, don't fight among each other, their sighs implied. Never fight among each other. We know. In close quarters, it's not wise. You'll find there's no one else. Passively, they hugged each other.
But I thought: This is strange. This isn't quite right. It's the wrong mood for it. I want to restore this idea to its proper larklike light. But I saw too many alternatives to be fair to either Siggy or Gallen.
The attitude for zoo-busting wasn't right yet. It was just something I was getting over with - I'd even said so - and Siggy wouldn't approve of the unhappy tone in that: such a piddling, compromising gesture.
The Big Cats roared. But I thought: No, I'm sorry, Big Cats, but I'm not here for you. Just for a harmless, trivial few. Thus the notebook warns:
Most decisions are anticlimactic.
So, oddly, after all, it hardly seemed worthwhile, at least as I had rearranged it - the reasonable selections of Hannes Graff. That only seemed of any consequence when I looked across the table at my Gallen. Who deserved, at least, a little reason.
Passively sad but accepting anything, the Rare Spectacled Bears repeated their sighs: At the very least, we must get along with each other.
But there was one to refute them. The Famous Asiatic Black Bear wasn't familiar with compromise.
I thought
- with considerable surprise: Why, they're all different - these animals! Just like people, whose sad history shows they're all impossibly different too. And not equal, either. Not even born that way.
About that, the notebook says:
How incomplete. How funny. How simple. And also, a great pity.
I stood up from the table; on the facing of the service counter, the Biergarten staff had hung an old funhouse mirror, salvaged somewhere; if you were weary of animals, you could look up skirts at unidentified bits of bloomer and thigh. Remarkable. I caught myself in it - or caught part of myself, weirdly segmented, and parts of other people and things. Legs of unassociated chairs, and unmatching shoes. In the strange mirror, I was generally unfitted; my parts didn't go together, at all.
While the sweaty notebook on my belly made such a unit - a solid bulk of perfect lunacy.
'Oh, look,' I said to Gallen, or to anyone. 'How nothing goes together.'
And she stood in the mirror with me, her parts no more together than mine, but easier to pick out - from chairs and other people-pieces. Because all her parts were simply beautiful; a mirror fragment of broad, thin mouth and long, downy throat; crease of blousy soccer shirt between one breast and a half. She laughed. I didn't.
She said, 'How do we start?' Whispering, so frotting eager and trusting me, all of a sudden. 'Do we let them out in the dark? What do we do about the guard?' And when I kept looking for my scattered self in the mirror, she said, with mock stealth, 'No good attracting attention like that, Graff. Shouldn't we slip off somewhere and go over the plan?'
I watched the mirror-section of her mouth, talking all by itself. I didn't even know if she was baiting me, or if she was serious. I squinted. Somewhere in the frotting mirror, I had lost my head and couldn't find it.
Following Directions
IT WAS EASY. We poked about till late afternoon, and scouted out the hedgerow by the long pen for Miscellaneous Range Animals; the hedge was every bit as snug as Siggy said it was. Shortly before we ducked behind it, and listened to the cage-cleaners and sweepers calling for stragglers, I showed Gallen the Small Mammal House - and noted, for myself, the closed door of the room that had to be the watchman's lair. In fact, we had time to look at everything - before we went in hiding behind the hedgerow.
I was only disappointed that the oryx had been thinking in his shed - travel plans, perhaps - and Gallen hadn't seen him and his fierce balloons.
But the skulking part was easier than easy, and we got to feel quite cheery about it - lying close against the fence line, peering through the hexagonal holes at the shuffling Assorted Antelopes and their miscellaneous kin. I'll admit, though, I didn't totally relax until all the daylight had left us.
By eight-thirty or so it was dark, and the animals were dropping off - breathing more even and making those comfortable, unconscious noises. A paw flapped in a water dish, and someone briefly complained. The zoo dozed.
But I knew the guard was due for another round at a quarter to nine, and I wanted us to do it just as Siggy had - and be down on the ponds for the Various Aquatic Birds, when the guard started out.
It was very easy getting there too. I dipped my fingers over the pool curb; sleeping ducks floated by, heads tucked, webbed feet dragging. Occasionally, a foot would paddle in sleep. Unaware, the duck would turn like a rowboat pulled by one oar, and bump the pool curb; wake, and squabble with the cement; churn off, doze, paddle and sleep again. Oh, the rhythms of that first-shift watch were lovely.
Gallen's heartbeat was no more than a flutter on my palm, as if some elf inside her were blowing softly on the pale skin under her breast.
'It's so quiet,' said Gallen. 'When does Schupp come?'
'Schrutt,' I said, and woke a duck. He croaked like a frog.
'Well, when does he get here?' said Gallen.
'Not for a while,' I said, and watched the casual first-shift guard stretching and yawning in the good, white light coming out the Small Mammal House door.
'This is the good guard?' said Gallen.
'Yes,' I said, and immediately had kindly feelings toward him - seeing him go off through the zoo, softly clucking his tongue to special friends. The boxing Australian, and his cherished zebra horde.
'This is the one who leaves the red off?' said Gallen.
'Infrared,' I said. 'Yes, this one's all right.'
And when he was being considerate enough not to wake anyone in the House of Pachyderms, we went back to our hedgerow and snuggled along the fence line, legs scissoring - with each other's elbows for pillows on the roots.
'Now,' said Gallen, 'this guard has another watch at eleven?'
'Quarter to eleven,' I said.
'All right,' she said, and lightly bit my cheek. 'Eleven or quarter to. What's the difference?'
'Detail,' I said. 'Detail is the difference.' Knowing myself that details are, of course, essential to any good plan. And, of course, knowing the need for a plan.
I was working on one; like every good plan, I was taking first things first, and first was O. Schrutt - the nabbing and stashing thereof. After which, I do confess, my thinking was still a little too general. But under the hedge I was calm again, and Gallen seemed so much in this anticlimax with me that I at least had an easier conscience toward her.
In fact, after the guard's round at a quarter to eleven, with the zoo sleeping heavily around us, I initiated suggestive nuzzles in Gallen's rich, thick hair - patted her behind, and attacked with suchlike ploys - because I thought our hedgerow was just too snug to abuse, or not use at all.
But she turned away from me and pointed through the hexagonal holes in the fence, indicating the sleeping, overlapping mound of Miscellaneous Range Animals huddled in the center of the pen. 'Not with them there, Graff,' she said. And I thought: Really, this animal business has been carried far enough.
I even felt foolish, but I got over it; Gallen was all of a sudden climbing on me with nervous ploys of her own, and I thought she'd changed her mind. But she said, too sweetly, 'Graff, don't you see how nice it is in here? What do you want to do anything for?' She performed disgusting nibbles on my chin, but I wasn't to be so easily fooled.
I admit I was a bit defensive; I drew back in the hedges. She whispered after me, 'Graff?' But I kept backing down the fence line from her, on all fours, getting all bushed over in the hedge. So she couldn't see me, and she said, too loudly, 'Graff!'
There was a violent clubbing sort of sound from the Monkey Complex, and some heavy, hoofed animal clattered back and forth. One or two Big Cats cleared their throats, and Gallen said, 'All right, Graff. Come on, it was just an idea.'
'Been your idea all along, hasn't it?' I said, peering from deep in the hedge. 'You just stayed with me to try to talk me out of it.'
'Oh, Graff!' she said, and what was left of the range herd picked themselves up and cantered down to the opposite fence line.
'Shut up, Gallen!' I whispered, hoarse.
'Oh, Graff,' she whispered back, and I could hear her take her little catch breath, setting up a good sob. 'Graff,' she said, 'I just don't know what you want to do, even. Really, I can't imagine why.'
Really, I can't either, I thought. It's hard to make any decisions when you're as reasonable as I am. But for decision-making, little helpful things, like swamps, come when you least expect them.
I was suddenly aware that the zoo was awake - and not, I thought, from Gallen's slight blurting. I mean, it was really awake. All around us, creatures were balancing in frozen crouches, three legged stances, anxious suspension from the squeaking trapezes in the Monkey Complex. I checked my watch and realized I'd been too casual for the occasion. It was after midnight. I hadn't heard the bell for the changing of the guard, but the first-shift watchman was gone. The zoo was poised. I listened to the footfall on the patch along our hedgerow. I saw his combat boots, with pants tucked in. And the truncheon in the sheath that's stitched so neatly in the left boot.
There wasn't time to warn Gallen, but I could se
e her silhouette up tight against the fence line, hands over her ears; I could see the profile of her open lips. Thanks be, she saw him too.
And when he'd passed by us, spinning his light once or twice and jolting himself off balance so his keyring jangled under his armpit, I dared a headlong look out in the path, through a root gap, and saw him strutting robotlike - his head and epaulettes above the horizon line the hedgerow made against the night. He turned a military corner on the path; I waited, and heard his keyring ringing in the empty Biergarten.
'Graff?' said Gallen, in her accomplice voice again. 'Was that Schupp?'
'His name is Schrutt,' I said, and thought: So that sudden phantom was old O. Schrutt.
Whose reception was instantly flung through the zoo, in echoes bouncing off the ponds: the Famous Asiatic Black Bear's nightly rage. Gallen scurried down the hedgerow to me, and I held her through this second phase of zoo-watching, on this week-old anniversary of poor Siggy's unreasonable conclusions; in the Hietzinger Playhouse with everyone playing his own, separate role, of not living very well with each other; where I was decision-making - there were just these three choices: the anticlimax, no climax at all, or the raging, unreasonable but definite climax demanded by the Famous Asiatic Black Bear.
First Things First
WHEN O. SCHRUTT FINISHED his first round, he went back to the Small Mammal House and turned on the infrared.
'Graff,' said Gallen. 'Please let's get out of here.' And I held her behind the hedge. Coming through the root gaps, far down the fence line, there was a purple light reflected on the wire hexagons.
When the first muffled complaints from the Small Mammal House came to us, Gallen said, 'Please, Graff. Let's just get the police.' And for a moment I thought: Why not? How easy that would be.
But I said, 'How would we explain our being here?'
'They'd understand, Graff,' she said. And although I'm not absolutely sure they wouldn't have, I didn't consider it further. My own variations on the theme were anticlimactic enough.
And besides, I remembered, if one was to even come close to Siggy's absolute faith, the idea for the zoo bust existed before O. Schrutt.
O. Schrutt was simply an added feature. Who happens to come first in any overall plan.
'O. Schrutt comes first,' I said to Gallen, and going over the plan once more, I sent her on her way to the Monkey Complex while I passed by the complex myself, and took a stand behind the children's drinking fountain.