Gallen and I sneaked by the elephant's trapped and blundering shape, plunging through little mustering teams of monkeys.
But in the Tiroler Garten there was also a crowd, a predawn army of more citizens than police - of suburb folk in nightwear, blinking flashlights. We were not noticed in the mayhem; we jogged alongside housewives, shriller than monkeys.
It was only when we reached the larger, darker shrubs of Maxing Park, that a sense of outcome loomed clearly in my mind against this chaos. Through the shrubs, I saw them hiding. Anonymous men with ancient weapons - with fireplace tridents, grub hoes and gleaming bucksaws; pitch forks, sledges and moon-shaped sickles. And people's voices, now, were raised above the Asiatic Black Bear's din - left behind me.
And when I'd dragged Gallen as far as she could go, I knelt over her, sobbing on a stone park bench, and saw how the hiding men seemed uniformed and old and starving; an army of diehard meat-eaters, all these years of nights in the parks round the Hietzinger Zoo. Ever since Zahn Glanz, or whoever he was, was eaten.
I heard a shot or two; the trees shook with birds and monkeys. Beside us, on the park bench, a comfortably seated gibbon ate a candy-bar wrapper.
I said to Gallen, 'Will you promise me to stay here with this gibbon?' Her face was as calm, or numb, as the gobbling primate's.
I dashed for Maxing Strasse, tracing down the curb for the bike, and spotted the bush where our lumpish rucksack was stashed.
It was still dark, but all the houses were lit along the street and headlit cars tore by; cabs unloaded customers carrying things - sticks, brooms, mops and shish kebabbers. Men stepped out into the battle sound. A din like they hadn't heard in years.
I lashed the pack on the motorcycle and drove down Maxing Strasse, yelling for Gallen. I didn't know if I could be heard above the clamor - the wailing police-green Volkswagens sounding behind me in Maxing Platz. And over the trees of the Tiroler Garten, their blinking-blue bars of light. Streams of people pouring into Maxing Park, and streams of animals pouring out.
I saw Gallen on the curb, standing as if she were catching a bus she always caught at this hour, in this customary traffic. Mounting numbly behind me, she was slightly bumped by a Siberian ibex, stumbling blindly and goatlike over the curb - a chunk of his hide torn open and flapping down over his shoulder; the gash was sort of hoe-shaped.
And I listened and listened for him - the Famous Asiatic Black Bear - for some final roar of despair or satisfaction. But I could never have heard him above the din the people made; not even him.
Gallen sat like a puppet behind me, and I pulled us out in the traffic of Maxing Strasse. The police were now cruising Maxing Park; I saw the bobbing, single headlights and pearl-white fairings of their BMWs - weaving through the shrubs, trying to rout the mob. Inside a fast-closing circle of motorcycle headlights, the great gray boomer was beating up a man, who'd lost his grip on his garden shears; they shone in the grass, pinned under the boomer's hunting claw.
The mob was around us for five suburb blocks of driving. In a doorway on Wattmann Gasse, I saw the snow leopard panting and licking one paw. And in Sarajevo Platz, I saw a team of five successful hunters trying to crouch down out of my passing headlight, thinking I was a police cycle; behind them, they attempted to conceal the dragged, bloodied and unprotesting gaur. Who, when he was upright, was six-foot-four.
The low, sturdy zebra herd came in a noiseless wave across the lawns, weaving through shrubs - shifty, and able to fool the threesome of hunters with a net and two-man saw. The zebras came out over the curb in front of me, their hooves sparking off the cobblestones. Their own clatter startled them; they veered and zigzagged between parked cars, crossing the far sidewalk and bolting down tiny Wolter Gasse, where onrushing headlights turned them back - again across Maxing Strasse - and once more drove them into Maxing Park.
Then Gallen and I were in the Lainz suburbs, in the eerie outlying hospital district. We passed them altogether - the Old People's Home, the Invalids' Home, and City Hospital; the floodlit lawns, and stark, beige stucco. On the balconies, rows of wheelchairs gleamed; on the lawns and in the windows, cigarettes and pipes were glowing. The old and sick and maimed were listening to the clamorous zoo, like people in the country watch the lighting effects in a city being bombed.
And for a moment I idled low, listening with them and watching, as they were, for the one brilliant animal who might any second appear - having run the best possible obstacle course. For the one superb gibbon, maybe, who would come handspringing over the hospital grounds - be surrounded by nurses, showered by wheelchairs off the balconies; be finally snagged in rubber breathing tubes, and strangled with a stethoscope. A capture for which all the hospital staffs and patients would take proud credit.
But no one made it that far. Gallen slumped more heavily on my back; I felt her start shaking against my neck. So I turned us past the waiting hospitals, toward the country west of the suburbs, with Gallen's wet cheek sliding against my own, and her hands plucking at my shirt; and her teeth in my shoulder, biting me fierce.
But I didn't mind it, and wished for all this world that she could bite much deeper and hurt me more. While I alternated driving fast with driving slow; fast so the din would fade behind me, and slow so that if there were any who successfully escaped, they might overtake me and lope before me in my headlight - serve me for that moment kindly, as guides I would be happy to believe in.
But no one overtook me; there was no traffic headed in my direction. All the traffic I met was going the other way. Family autos, farmers' wagons, clattering with tools and weapons - in the early morning dark, the people poured eagerly into the calamity area.
For every headlight I met, I saw again my old soccer-ball situation. And I was beaten to the kick, every time.
Making New Plans
THE BEGINNING DAYLIGHT found us out of the city, in the countryside above the Danube, south of Klosterneuburg. Where there still were monks.
I don't know how long I'd been pulled off the roadside, sitting down in the ditch, before I noticed the country folk coming wearily back from the wondrous, city-type excitement in the Hietzinger Zoo. Truck and whole wagonloads of them, mostly; some of the loutish younger farmers whistled at Gallen, who sat in a ball on the other side of the road from me.
We hadn't spoken. I thought: It's not wise of me to let her do so much thinking by herself. But I had nothing to say, so I kept the peace of the road between us. Until these farmers started coming back.
Then I thought: We look suspicious. Although O. Schrutt never got a look at us, and probably would never be coherent again, there was that Balkan waiter and little Hugel Furtwangler who might have had something to say about a big, ragged motorcycle, and a madman who spoke zoo talk.
O. Schrutt, I thought, at least was found with his nametag on - and his epaulettes buttoned down sharp. That's something.
But it wasn't enough, for sure. Because the last of the pickup trucks to pass us had a load in the back - a lump under a tarp, hanging down off the tailgate. I saw a bit of leg and hoof protrude; I recognized the brownish-red and creamy-white striping, running from hock to shank. Heavens forfend all evil from the previous bongo, handsomest of antelopes - about to be eaten and have his rack mounted over the mantle of the humble peasant dwelling. For later generations of hunters to ask: Was he once native to Austria?
Oh yes. A slave boat to Austria brought the first of them.
But extinct now?
Oh yes. They were a damaging lot - to the gardens. And dogs were gored.