This is enough, I thought. Enough, for sure. And I was winding through the other, roaring bear cages when Gallen screamed. Schrutt's out! I thought. But when I squinted through cage corners and down the dark paths toward the Small Mammal House, I saw a man-shaped figure, loping more or less on all fours, turn the corner by the Monkey Complex - followed by another just like him, though not as thick in the chest. The orangutan and the lowland gorilla, in cahoots.
I thought: But how the frot did they ever get out? And saw then - cantering sideways behind them - the housesized blur of the African elephant, carrying a cage wall in his trunk; a great rectangle of bars bent every which way.
When he flung the cage wall down on the path, it rang off the cement - as if the bell in St Stephen's had broken loose and dropped straight down the steeple, striking the organ pipes behind the center altar.
Then all running forms stood still; I stood trying to hold my breath. The zoo was church-still; a new hope brings silence. And I started up slowly, past the polar bears and brown bears and American grizzly; I turned up the path by the Famous Asiatic Black Bear, who stood like an assassin in his cage. But I was forced to leap over the Oriental's safety rope and crash against his wrist-thick bars - when the elephant blurred up in front of me on the path and charged on by me after I'd crumpled against the terrible bear's cage door; the elephant tore through the Biergarten, squashing umbrellas and grinding up fallen mirror-bits under his mammoth feet. And I was almost up and away again, when the Famous Asiatic Black Bear seized me round the chest and hugged me back against his bars. I took a breath and held it; I was back-to him and could feel his foul breath stir my hair. I thought, calmly: When he realizes he can't fit his great head through the bars to eat me, then he'll rake up my belly with his claws and gobble me innards-first. But instead, he turned me to face him; his head seemed buffalo-sized. But when I dared to look him in the eye, I saw that he eyed the keyring looped over my shoulder.
'Oh no!' I told him. He hugged me; I was chest to chest with him, the bars grooving my ribs. I felt the claws plucking at my spine. 'Squash me, then,' I grunted at him. 'Just get your eyes off that keyring, because I'm not ever letting you out.' He roared all over my face; he bellowed up my nostrils, so loud I almost choked, 'Never!' I squeaked. 'You have to draw the line somewhere!'
But then Gallen screamed again. I thought: That elephant has loosed O. Schrutt! Or: That virile orangutan has got my Gallen - surely, the best he's ever had.
I moved my hand for the keyring; the Asiatic Black Bear let my spine move out a notch. I fumbled, reading in the dark for the key I thought would probably be labeled: NEVER USE! But it said simply: ASIAN BEAR. Such understatement, but I fitted key to latch; the bear held me, unbelieving. I felt the door swing into me; the bear and I swung out together on the opening frame of bars. And for a moment, he still squeezed me, not really believing he was free. Then he let me go; we both plopped to all fours.
Now he'll run around this door and eat me whole, I thought. But both of us heard the Big Cats then, a brief upcry noticeably louder than before, as if - at the very least - their general house door had been opened. And then I heard the terrible Big Cats, purring close-by. The Big Cats were prowling, on the loose. I crept backward from the door. But the Oriental took no notice; oddly, he crouched very still, his nose lifting up now and then - salivating, and quivering the long, coarse hair on his flanks.
The Famous Asiatic Black Bear is thinking! I thought. Or plotting.
And I didn't wait a moment more - for him to make up his awful mind. I bolted round his open cage and back to the path, past the ponds, to the Small Mammal House. Where I found my poor Gallen huddled in the doorway aisle of the maze, watching down the blood-bathed path to where a tiger, his stripes tinted crimson and black in the infrared, was squatting over a large and tawny, deep-chested antelope with spiraled horns; with a large brain-shaped mass of intestines spilled over his side. And with a hind hoof bent or drawn up under his thigh, over which sprawled his unmistakable, familiar balloons of volleyball size.
'Oh, Siggy, it's the oryx,' I said.
'It's a tiger,' said Gallen, colder than the winter river. 'And I'm not Siggy.'
And just as coldly, I said, 'You screamed?'
'Oh, you heard?' she said, with a demented brightness to her voice. 'Well, I got over whatever it was, without you.'
'Where did the apes go?' I asked. But she sat mum and hardfaced, so I didn't press her.
Down the maze, a muffled voice was naming names. I went to see: old O. Schrutt upright against the glass, the ratel almost playful with his odd snarls - boastful in the center of the cage. And old O. was naming names, or asking them.
'Zeiker?' he called, 'Beinberg? Muffel? Brandeis? Schmerling? Frieden?' Name by name, O. Schrutt was leaving his mind behind.
So I went back to Gallen, just in time to hear the final thunder: the Famous Asiatic Black Bear's deciding roar. At last, adjusted to the surprise of his freedom, the bear had made up his mind. The zoo pitch of the other creatures hit hysteria, as if this bear were a griffin and what they feared was more his myth than his reality - all of them knowing what he thought for so long about Hinley Gouch, and how that had warped his mind.
'You let that bear out too,' said Gallen.
'No!' I said. 'I mean, I had to. He caught me. He wouldn't let me go. I had to make a deal.' But she stared at me as if I were as foreign to her as the fallen oryx, whom she'd never seen when he was so wondrously whole and upright.
'Oh, Graff,' she whispered. Her eyes glazed.
I looked out the doorway of the Small Mammal House and saw the Asiatic Black Bear mounting the stairs, four at a time. Gallen was benumbed; she never even flinched when he rushed at us, and by us, echoing through the maze. But he stopped, silent, when he saw O. Schrutt. Who was saying: 'Weinsturm? Bottweiler? Schnuller? Steingarten? Frankl? Little Frisch?'
And I thought: Why not Wut? Javotnik? Marter? Watzek-Trummer? Or loose-ended Hannes Graff too?
Having found what he came for, the Famous Asiatic Black Bear sat down at the glass front, perplexed, and rapped the hopefully foot-thick frontispiece once or twice, with a curious, pecking sort of claw. O. Schrutt stopped reciting. 'Who's there?' he said. 'I know it's Zeiker!' But the Asiatic Black Bear was not one to further endure O. Schrutt's yelling at him. He reared up and thudded against the glass; backed away; thudded again; and sat down, puzzled.
And O. Schrutt said, 'Come on! Who are you? I know you're out there!' And the Asiatic Black Bear began to roar. A gathering din that gained force through its own echo in the maze. O. Schrutt flopped backward in the sawdust, rolling into the ratel, who snapped, but who backed away himself - at the chute door, the two of them quaking at the close-range roar familiar to all the inmates of the Hietzinger Zoo.
O. Schrutt screamed, 'No! Not you! Don't let him in! Not him! Not ever! No! Please! Zeiker? Beinberg? Frankl? Schnuller? Schmerling? Little Frisch? Please!'
And I hustled Gallen out the door - the roaring seemed to shove us out - into a zoo that was bolting; hearing, no doubt, the rage of the animal no one dared to challenge. Not Big Cats, and not the elephant, either; nor apes running somewhere - for the main gate, it seemed. Along with everyone else. They were organized; the zoo was mustering. The Asiatic Black Bear was out, and nobody wanted his unreasonable company.
But when Gallen and I turned round the ticket taker's booth and headed for the main gate, I saw outside the zoo a daze of headlights, parked in rows - and heard the blurry, human sounds of a crowd in waiting. And saw a stream of animals, hoofed, padded, clawed and dashing, splashing through the ponds for Various Aquatic Birds, setting the night aflight - all of them making for the rear gate that opened to the Tiroler Garten. Where there's moss and ferns, all the sweet way to Maxing Park.
There was a jam at the gate, but the elephant had obliged, and left a passable hole for all but himself. He'd managed to spring one hinge, but the bottom corner of the gate had held, and the bottom hinge had swun
g the whole gate crosswise in the exit.