'Oh, there,' Grandfather says. 'Here now, you're a fine patriot, aren't you? There, there - and didn't we have some evening though? And Zahn's going to drive you home, you know.'
'Oh, the poor thing,' says Grandmother.
And together, all of them, they get the eagle to the taxi.
'You'll have the whole back seat to yourself,' says Zahn.
'Get his head off,' Grandfather says. 'He could drown.'
And Hilke says to her father: 'It's all your fault, you pessimist.'
'You know-it-all!' says Grandmother.
But Grandfather is s
lamming doors and directing imaginary traffic on the empty street. He signals to Zahn that it's safe to pull away.
Zahn drives through the cemetery stillness of the outer districts - Hadik and St Veit and Hutteldorf-Hacking - where, Zahn can only guess, the ghosts and present dwellers seem as ready or not to welcome the Holy Roman Empire as Hitler.
While the eagle takes himself apart in the backseat. And when Zahn finds the dark farm hiding outside the glow from the night-laying hen-house, there's a disheveled old man in his rear-view mirror, weeping - and feathers are floating all over the taxi.
'Come on,' says Zahn, but Ernst Watzek-Trummer is attacking the empty eagle, shouldering it against the front seat. He's trying to break its back, but the eagle is surprisingly well made; it slumps in a half-sit position, its weave of pieplates stronger than a spine.
'All right, all right now,' says Zahn. 'Just look at what you're doing to your suit.' But Ernst Watzek-Trummer punches, snatches handfuls of feathers and gropes his kicking-foot along the floor - trying to find and squash the fallen head.
Zahn crawls in the backseat after him and wrestles him out the door. Ernst Watzek-Trummer flaps his arms. Zahn shuts the door and steers the egg man.
'Oh, please,' says Zahn. 'You'll have a good sleep, won't you? And I'll drive out and bring you to the polls myself.'
The egg man buckles; Zahn lets him stumble forward but comes round in front of him to hold up his head. They kneel, facing each other.
'Can you remember?' says Zahn. 'I'll pick you up for the plebiscite. I'll drive you to the polls. All right?'
Ernst Watzek-Trummer stares hard and lifts his fanny like a sprinter poising up on the blocks; he jerks his head as if to charge, draws Zahn off and scampers round him - on all fours, but running himself upright. He stops and looks back at Zahn. Zahn plots a move.
'Come on,' says Zahn. 'You'll go to bed, won't you? You won't get in any trouble, will you?'
Ernst Watzek-Trummer lets his arms hang. 'There won't be any vote,' he says. 'They'll never let us get away with it, you young fool.' And he breaks for his hen-house; Zahn starts after him, but stops. A doorway of light opens on Zahn's horizon, and then Ernst Watzek-Trummer closes it after him. The hen-house stoops under its own roof and groans; there's a moment, Zahn is sure, when eggs are caught in the act, half laid. Then there's some squabbling; Zahn sees a hen go winging or falling past a window; the light inside dances or is swung. Another hen, or even the same one, shrieks. Then the light goes out; there won't be any eggs laid tonight. Zahn waits until he's sure that Ernst Watzek-Trummer has found a berth - has put someone off his roost. But whoever is put out is at least being quiet about it.
Zahn wobbles back to the taxi, sits on the running board and has a pull from the cognac bottle Grandfather has left with him. He tries to smoke, but he can't keep lit. And he's almost behind the wheel and driving off when he spots the eagle, uninhabited, leaning over the front seat. Zahn sits the eagle beside him, but it keeps slumping over; Zahn finds the eagle's head, sits it in the eagle's lap - offers it some of my grandfather's cognac.
'You'll have quite a head in the morning,' Zahn tells it, and begins a giggle that turns into a sneezing bout, a fit - a seizure loud enough to cause some clucking in the hen-house. Zahn can't stop; hysterical, he sees himself in the eagle-suit suddenly looming into the hen-house, switching on the light and cawking till the frenzied hens begin a binge of laying eggs - or never lay an egg again; cawking so loudly that Ernst Watzek-Trummer lays the greatest egg of all.
But Zahn just offers the eagle's head another drink; when it fails to respond, he pours a shot down the head hole.
It seems to Zahn that they talk for hours, passing the bottle, keeping watch over the darkened hen-house, guarding the sleep of Ernst Watzek-Trummer on his lordly roost.
'Drink up, brave eagle!' says Zahn, and watches the head hole quaffing down the upended bottle.
The Sixth Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967 @ 1.30 a.m.
THE CHANGING OF the guard happened at midnight, and things haven't been the same since. Everyone is still awake. Really - this zoo is one restless stir and scuff; no one is asleep. A general insomnia arrived at midnight.
At first, I thought they were on to me. I thought the first-shift guard told the second-shift guard that someone was prowling about. Or, perhaps, the animals passed the word around; along some universal grapevine of tapped hooves, twitters, grunts and such, they told each other about me. And now they're waiting to see what I'll do.
But I don't think that's really why the zoo's awake. It's because of the new nightwatchman. The little bell-ringing prepared everyone; the animals were expecting him. There's some difference in the guards, I can tell you.
He walked by me. This one's got a truncheon; he sticks it in a sheath that's stitched inside his left boot. They're above-ankle, modified combat boots, laced loosely at the calf. The grey twills tuck in the boots. He wears an open holster, cowboy-style, and the barrel of his clip-load handgun is at least six inches long. He does an interesting thing with the keyring. He puts his arm through it and hikes it up on his shoulder; he fastens it under an epaulette - his uniform still has both epaulettes too. All the keys hang under his armpit and jangle against him. It seems awkward to me; if you've a bunch of keys in your armpit, you carry your arm funny. It's his right arm, though, and maybe that puts him in a better position for going at the open holster, which is worn rather high on his right hip. I think, although he looks a bit off balance, he has his hardware fairly well understood. Of course, he's got a flashlight too. He carries that left-handed, and it's on a wrist thong - so it wouldn't interfere if he reached for the truncheon. That's reasonable: if you're close enough to use a truncheon, you don't need a flashlight to see; if you're far enough away to use a gun, you want a flashlight steady in your other hand. I think this watchman takes his job seriously.