Setting Free the Bears

Part One

Siggy

A Steady Diet in Vienna

I COULD FIND him every noon, sitting on a bench in the Rathaus Park with a small, fat bag of hothouse radishes in his lap and a bottle of beer in one hand. He always brought his own saltshaker; he must have had a great number of them, because I can't recall a particular one from the lot. They were never very fancy saltshakers, though, and once he even threw one away; he just wrapped it up in the empty radishbag and tossed it in one of the park's trashcans.

Every noon, and always the same bench - the least splintery one, on the edge of the park nearest the university. Occasionally he had a notebook with him, but always the corduroy duckhunter's jacket with its side slash-pockets, and the great vent-pocket at the back. The radishes, the bottle of beer, a saltshaker, and sometimes the notebook - all of them from the long, bulging vent-pocket. He carried nothing in his hands when he walked. His tobacco and pipes went in the side slash-pockets of the jacket; he had at least three different pipes.

Although I assumed he was a student like myself, I hadn't seen him in any of the university buildings. Only in the Rathaus Park, every noon of the new spring days. Often I sat on the bench opposite him while he ate. I'd have my newspaper, and it was a fine spot to watch the girls come along the walk; you could peek at their pale, winter knees - the hardboned, blousy girls in their diaphanous silks. But he didn't watch them; he just perched as alertly as a squirrel over the bag of radishes. Through the bench slats, the sun zebra-striped his lap.

I'd had more than a week of such contact with him before I noticed another of his habits. He scribbled things on the radishbag, and he was always stashing little pieces of bag in his pockets, but more often he wrote in the notebook.

One day he did this: I saw him pocket a little note on a bag piece, walk away from the bench, and a bit down the path decide to have another look. He pulled out the bag piece and read it. Then he threw it away, and this is what I read:

The fanatical maintenance of good habits is necessary.

It was later, when I read his famous notebook - his Poetry, as he spoke of it - that I realized this note hadn't been entirely thrown away. He'd simply cleaned it a little.

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

But back in the Rathaus Park, with the little scrap from the radishbag, I couldn't tell he was a poet and a maxim-maker; I only thought he'd be an interesting fellow to know.

Hard Times

THERE'S A PLACE on Josefsgasse, behind the Parliament Building, known for its fast, suspicious turnover of second-hand motorcycles. I've Doktor Ficht to thank for my discovery of the place. It was Doktor Ficht's exam I'd just flunked, which put me in a mood to vary my usual noon habit in the Rathaus Park.

I went off through a number of little arches with boggy smells, past cellar stores with mildewy clothes and into a section of garages - tire shops and auto-parts places, where smudged men in overalls were clanking and rolling things out on the sidewalk. I came on it suddenly, a dirty showcase window with the cardboard sign FABER'S in a corner of glass; nothing more in the way of advertising, except the noise spuming from an open doorway. Fumes dark as thunderclouds, an upstarting series of blatting echo-shots, and thr

ough the showcase window I could make out the two mechanics racing the throttles of two motorcycles; there were more motorcycles on the platform nearest the window but these were shiny and still. Scattered about on the cement floor by the doorway, and blurred in exhaust, were various tools and gas-tank caps - pieces of spoke and wheel rim, fender and cable - and these two intent mechanics bent over their cycles; playing the throttles up and down, they looked as serious and ear-ready as any musicians tuning up for a show. I inhaled from the doorway.

Watching me, just inside, was a gray man with wide, oily lapels; the buttons were the dullest part of his suit. A great sprocket leaned against the doorway beside him - a fallen, sawtoothed moon, so heavy with grease it absorbed light and glowed at me.

'Herr Faber himself,' the man said, prodding his chest with his thumb. And he ushered me out the doorway and back down the street. When we were away from the din, he studied me with a tiny, gold-capped smile.

'Ah!' he said. 'The university?'

'God willing,' I said, 'but it's unlikely.'

'Fallen in hard times?' said Herr Faber. 'What sort of a motorcycle did you have in mind?'

'I don't have anything in mind,' I told him.

'Oh,' said Faber, 'it's never easy to decide.'

'It's staggering,' I said.

'Oh, don't I know?' he said. 'Some bikes are such animals beneath you, really - veritable beasts! And that's exactly what some have in mind. Just what they're looking for!'

'It makes you giddy to think of it,' I said.

'I agree, I agree,' said Herr Faber. 'I know just what you mean. You should talk with Herr Javotnik. He's a student - like yourself! And he'll be back from lunch presently. Herr Javotnik is a wonder at helping people make up their minds. A virtuoso with decisions!'

'Amazing,' I said.

'And a joy and a comfort to me,' he said. 'You'll see.' Herr Faber cocked his slippery head to one side and listened lovingly to the burt, burt, burt of the motorcycles within.

The Beast Beneath Me

I RECOGNIZED HERR JAVOTNIK by his corduroy duckhunter's jacket with the pipes protruding from the side slash-pockets. He looked like a young man coming from a lunch that had left his mouth salty and stinging.

'Ah!' said Herr Faber, and he took two little side steps as if he would do a dance for us. 'Herr Javotnik,' he said, 'this young man has a decision to make.'

'So that's it,' said Javotnik, '--why you weren't in the park?'

'Ah! Ah?' Herr Faber squealed. 'You know each other?'

'Very well,' Javotnik said. 'I should say, very well. This will be a most personal decision, I'm sure, Herr Faber. If you'd leave us.'

'Well, yes,' said Faber. 'Very well, very well' - and he sidled away from us, returning to the exhaust in his doorway.

'A lout, of course,' said Javotnik. 'You've no mind to buy a thing, have you?'

'No,' I said. 'I just happened along.'

'Strange not to see you in the park.'

'I've fallen in hard times,' I told him.

'Whose exam?' he asked.

'Ficht's.'

'Well, Ficht. I can tell you a bit about him. He's got rotten gums, uses a little brush between his classes - swabs his gums with some gunk from a brown jar. His breath could wilt a weed. He's fallen in hard times himself.'

'It's good to know,' I said.

'But you've no interest in motorcycles?' he asked. 'I've an interest myself, just to hop on one and leave this city. Vienna's no spot for the spring, really. But, of course, I couldn't go more than half toward any bike in there.'

'I couldn't either,' I said.

'That so?' he said. 'What's your name?'

'Graff,' I told him. 'Hannes Graff.'

'Well, Graff, there's one especially nice motorcycle in there, if you've any thoughts toward a trip.'

'Well,' I said, 'I couldn't go more than half, you know, and it seems you're tied up with a job.'

'I'm never tied up,' said Javotnik.