Setting Free the Bears

And so. It was lunchtime when we rode into Ulmerfeld and bought two bottles of beer. We were nearly out of the village when Siggy saw the windowbox hung to a second-story window of a Gasthaus.

'Radishes!' said Siggy. 'I saw their little greens peeking over!'

We drove up under the window, and I steadied the motorcycle while Siggy stood on the gas tank; on his toes, he would just get his hands over the rim of the box.

'I can feel them,' he said. 'They were just watered - sweet snappy baby ones!'

He stuffed them in his duckjacket, and we drove through Ulmerfeld, still following the Ybbs. A mile or so out of the village, we cut through a meadow bank to the river.

'After all, Graff,' said Siggy. 'This day still owes us a piece of our fifty schillings.'

And with that for grace, we opened our beers with Frau Freina's opener, and salted our radishes from Freina's shaker. Freina had a wonderously unclogged shaker. The radishes were crunchy and moist, and Siggy planted the greens.

'Do you think they'll grow?' he said.

'Well, anything's possible, Siggy.'

'Yes, anything is,' he said, and we flicked our close-nibbled stumps to the river, watching them bob under and spin to the crest of the current again, like hats with pin-wheels on the heads of drowning boys.

'Upstream,' I said, 'there's got to be a dam.'

'Oh, a great falls in the mountains,' said Siggy. 'And think of the fishing above the dam!'

'I'll bet there's grayling, Sig.'

'And walruses, Graff.'

We lay back in the meadow and tooted the bottlenecks of our beers. Crows again, downstream, were circling the radish stumps.

'Is there anything a crow won't eat, Sig?'

'Walruses,' he said. 'Couldn't possibly eat a walrus.'

'Well, that's amazing,' I said.

The spring-damp was still in the ground, but the thick grass seemed to trap the sun and hold it against me; I was warmed into closing my eyes. I could hear the crows telling off the river, and the crickets were sawing in the fields. Siggy was chinking the bottleneck on his teeth.

'Graff,' he said.

'Hm.'

'Graff?'

'Here,' I said.

'It was a terrible scene in that zoo,' he said. 'I think it would be better if we had them out here.'

'Those girls?' I said.

'Not the girls!' he cried. 'I meant the animals! Wouldn't they have a time out here?'

And I could see it with my eyes closed. The giraffes were nipping the buds off the treetops; the anteaters gobbled waterbugs from the fine lace of foam on the shore.

'Those girls!' said Siggy. 'God, Graff - what a frotting ninny you can be.'

So the sun and the beer settled our sleep; the Rare Spectacled Bears were kissing in whispers, and the oryx chased all the frotting ninnies out of the meadow. On the bruise-purple Ybbs the walrus was rowing a boat with his flippers, sunning his tusks and bleaching his mustache, and he didn't see the hippo who lurked in the deep pool by the bank - the disguised hippo in a veil of froth, mouth agape for the walrus, rowboat and all.

I woke up to warn the walrus; the giraffes had munched the meadow until they'd reached the sun and dragged it down. The down sun glinted through the grass, caught the motorcycle and stretched the shadow of wheels and engine over the river; the river raced under the motorcycle like a fast, bruised road.