Setting Free the Bears

'And then what?' said Gallen.

'What you want,' I said, and I really hoped so. 'We'll go to Italy. Have you seen the sea?'

'No, never,' she said. 'Really, though - what I want to?'

'Whatever you want,' I said. 'I just want done with this business here.'

And she sat so frotting trusting in her chair, my hand snug in her lap.

The Rare Spectacled Bears relaxed too. They slumped in their fashion, against the bars and each other, as if they'd been not so much interested in the outcome as in any, even over-simple settlement of our squabble.

Oh, don't fight among each other, their sighs implied. Never fight among each other. We know. In close quarters, it's not wise. You'll find there's no one else. Passively, they hugged each other.

But I thought: This is strange. This isn't quite right. It's the wrong mood for it. I want to restore this idea to its proper larklike light. But I saw too many alternatives to be fair to either Siggy or Gallen.

The attitude for zoo-busting wasn't right yet. It was just something I was getting over with - I'd even said so - and Siggy wouldn't approve of the unhappy tone in that: such a piddling, compromising gesture.

The Big Cats roared. But I thought: No, I'm sorry, Big Cats, but I'm not here for you. Just for a harmless, trivial few. Thus the notebook warns:

Most decisions are anticlimactic.

So, oddly, after all, it hardly seemed worthwhile, at least as I had rearranged it - the reasonable selections of Hannes Graff. That only seemed of any consequence when I looked across the table at my Gallen. Who deserved, at least, a little reason.

Passively sad but accepting anything, the Rare Spectacled Bears repeated their sighs: At the very least, we must get along with each other.

But there was one to refute them. The Famous Asiatic Black Bear wasn't familiar with compromise.

I thought

- with considerable surprise: Why, they're all different - these animals! Just like people, whose sad history shows they're all impossibly different too. And not equal, either. Not even born that way.

About that, the notebook says:

How incomplete. How funny. How simple. And also, a great pity.

I stood up from the table; on the facing of the service counter, the Biergarten staff had hung an old funhouse mirror, salvaged somewhere; if you were weary of animals, you could look up skirts at unidentified bits of bloomer and thigh. Remarkable. I caught myself in it - or caught part of myself, weirdly segmented, and parts of other people and things. Legs of unassociated chairs, and unmatching shoes. In the strange mirror, I was generally unfitted; my parts didn't go together, at all.

While the sweaty notebook on my belly made such a unit - a solid bulk of perfect lunacy.

'Oh, look,' I said to Gallen, or to anyone. 'How nothing goes together.'

And she stood in the mirror with me, her parts no more together than mine, but easier to pick out - from chairs and other people-pieces. Because all her parts were simply beautiful; a mirror fragment of broad, thin mouth and long, downy throat; crease of blousy soccer shirt between one breast and a half. She laughed. I didn't.

She said, 'How do we start?' Whispering, so frotting eager and trusting me, all of a sudden. 'Do we let them out in the dark? What do we do about the guard?' And when I kept looking for my scattered self in the mirror, she said, with mock stealth, 'No good attracting attention like that, Graff. Shouldn't we slip off somewhere and go over the plan?'

I watched the mirror-section of her mouth, talking all by itself. I didn't even know if she was baiting me, or if she was serious. I squinted. Somewhere in the frotting mirror, I had lost my head and couldn't find it.

Following Directions

IT WAS EASY. We poked about till late afternoon, and scouted out the hedgerow by the long pen for Miscellaneous Range Animals; the hedge was every bit as snug as Siggy said it was. Shortly before we ducked behind it, and listened to the cage-cleaners and sweepers calling for stragglers, I showed Gallen the Small Mammal House - and noted, for myself, the closed door of the room that had to be the watchman's lair. In fact, we had time to look at everything - before we went in hiding behind the hedgerow.

I was only disappointed that the oryx had been thinking in his shed - travel plans, perhaps - and Gallen hadn't seen him and his fierce balloons.

But the skulking part was easier than easy, and we got to feel quite cheery about it - lying close against the fence line, peering through the hexagonal holes at the shuffling Assorted Antelopes and their miscellaneous kin. I'll admit, though, I didn't totally relax until all the daylight had left us.

By eight-thirty or so it was dark, and the animals were dropping off - breathing more even and making those comfortable, unconscious noises. A paw flapped in a water dish, and someone briefly complained. The zoo dozed.

But I knew the guard was due for another round at a quarter to nine, and I wanted us to do it just as Siggy had - and be down on the ponds for the Various Aquatic Birds, when the guard started out.