Setting Free the Bears

Present, somewhere in my mind, was the unnecessary and elbow-worn kitchen table, and Siggy hurrying prone in the box. But I got through most of the night without actually seeing them. It was only when we headed east, through Stubming, that my peace was jarred.

Another drunken town frotter peeing in another town fountain, as if someone had arranged it: that I would always be the one to catch them at it. Only this one didn't dive for cover; perhaps Gallen drove not quite so bomblike as Siggy. This one simply gawked, his cold part held out in his hand. We struck him numb in our headlight and then batted past him; I felt Gallen's tummy tighten, just a bit.

But the memory was enough to spoil my last hour of traveling darkness. For the next hour before daylight, it was my turn to see things off the side of the road - like the night Siggy had called the blackout to mind, and we saw things come to the roadside to watch us.

Once, I thought I saw - standing motionless in the deep vines - an old bull oryx, with moss on his horns. Once, more startling, an eagle in a chainmail suit of pieplates - standing as if he'd grown there, or had fallen down wingless and taken up roots, years ago.

We crossed the Murz River at Krieglach, with the daylight hitting us, and a suddenly strong wind came off the river and blew the bike out over the center line of the road. Gallen lurched us back to our side of the crown, and the wind fell in behind our backs.

But it's the frotting gale of the world, I thought. If it's not blowing against you, head-on, it's behind you and shoving you faster than you want to go. It even does the steering, maybe.

But I kept it to myself, and let Gallen think she was our pilot.

What Gallen Did, Finally

SHE STOPPED US for a long and gluttonous brunch at the top of the Semmering Pass. Somehow she'd wound us south, then east and even a little north, so that although we now were southeast of Waidhofen, we were far enough east to be almost straightaway south of Vienna, and straightaway north of either Italy or Yugoslavia - though we had no plans to leave the country; or, that is, she had no plans as such. I made it clear I had no plans at all, when we discussed our money - we had maybe two weeks' worth, of traveling as we were. I did figure that much of our plans. That if we bought no more than one meal a day, and stayed far enough in the country to fish for another - slept out and never bought a room - we'd make it two weeks, fuel and food, and then there'd have to be a job.

And jobs meant not leaving Austria. What with the problems of working permits for foreigners, which we'd be if we went out.

That talk was good for mind-occupying, and I'd have gotten along all right if we hadn't been up on the pass at noontime, when the church bells all through the Semmering Valley so formally announced it was noon.

When Siggy gets to Kaprun, I thought - where most of his family retreated to, at one time or another. And I saw old Watzek-Trummer with the crude, prone box.

'Don't you want another beer, Graff?' Gallen said.

And I said, 'He's there now. I should be too.'

'Come on, Graff,' she said.

But I could only think that the old Trummer had been in on too many burials to take on the last one alone. And that was just too sickish-sweet a thought to have in the touristy Semmering Pass Motel and Restaurant, where they piped in the Old World music - to quiver us over our soup.

So Gallen suggested that I learn to drive the bike, since both of us should know. And she led me out of the restaurant and wound us northwest into the valley. Then we climbed up higher than the Semmering Pass, to Vois, where I bought two bottles of white wine and a butter pat.

We found a pine-needled bank of the fast black Schwarza River, out of tiny Singerin Village. There was room to practice driving; there was running water to chill the wine, and get some fish for Freina Gippel's pan; and we were well off the road, to be sure of a private night.

I started driving down the bank - with Gallen up behind me, saying, 'Keff said it's the feel for the gears that comes first.' But I wasn't really listening to her. All of a sudden, it was broad Todor Slivnica beneath me, and worldly Bijelo was saying, 'Corner sharp left, Vratno, my boy.' And then I was pelting up and down the bank, with Gallen meekly saying something, but it was Gottlob Wut who was doing my driving, dictating loud and clear: 'See? Like this!' And then I was mounting a marble staircase, when I was the hunted Siegfried Schmidt, special messenger and alley traveler of Old Vienna. But I hit some root that jarred me forward on the gas tank, with poor Gallen sliding up snug behind me - and I had to stretch my toes back to reach the gear lever. Then I saw again the down-falling orchard road, and Siggy said, 'First-gear work, here, Graff. You've got to work it.'

I was aware of my knees up under the handlebars, hooking me forever on the old beast - and a honey-gunked crown of bees settling on my smarting head - when I went tearing through our unmade campsite and rode right over our rucksack.

'God, Graff,' said Gallen. 'You're a bit out of control.'

But when she got off behind me and came around front, probably wondering why I hadn't shut the engine off, she must have got a look at my dreaming eyes. 'Oh now, Graff. Come on. That's enough,' she said.

And when I didn't answer her, and just kept raising the idle higher and higher - letting the bike scream itself silly beneath me - she tapped the kill button and shut me off. The noise died. 'Show me,' she said, 'how you catch fish, Graff.'

So I did, though the river was too fast here - with no good bank to get off, and get down in the water. I was hooking and losing them for a while, before I eked out three smallish trout - light enough to jerk right up on the shore.

'Well,' I said, 'it's always a good thing to go to bed a little hungry.'

'Why?' said Gallen.

'And on two bottles of wine too,' I said, and grinned.

But she pouted away from me, skittish again.

They were good trout, though. They made Gallen sneeze - a snit of a sneeze, half caught in her hand. And I said, 'Ha!'

'What do you mean, "Ha"?' she said.