Setting Free the Bears

And Gallen, who might some Wednesday meet me in Kahlenberg, was now of the nature of Todor Slivnica's custard - to be interpreted from wherever it all lay spattered.

Congratulations to All You Survivors!

HANNES GRAFF, I thought, is too split-haired and loose-ended to ever rise up out of this road ditch and ride his beastly motorcycle out of this deceptively ordered countryside.

And orderly, too, were the towns I'd go through. If only I could get myself started.

An easy plan. Through Klosterneuburg, Konigstetten, Judenau and Mitterndorf; through Hankenfeld or Asperhofen, Perschling, Pottenbrunn and wee St Hain; to the big town of Amstetten and three hours west on the Autobahn - where you can easily drive faster than the frotting wind. Then there would still be an hour south of Salzburg, through the little Lofer Range; and I know a place to eat in Furth. And after-dinner coffee in Kaprun, across that well-worn kitchen table - a second pair of elbows, speaking. Now, at least, with something to say. Something needless and lunatic enough to hold the attention of doughty Watzek-Trummer. Surely, I thought, Ernst Watzek-Trummer has had enough experience with pointless schemes to be sympathetic.

But I thought, too, that I wouldn't rise up from the road ditch, just yet. Or if I did, there was no need to hurry my visit to Kaprun.

Let the grave mound grow a little grass, I always say. Grass is nice, and it will not hurt you, Siggy.

So I'd move along in the general direction of Kaprun, for sure. But I'd creep up on it slowly, you might say; I'd have myself more familiar with this frotting memorabilia I was trucking to Watzek-Trummer.

But what deadened me in the road ditch was that none of my ideas was very stirring, and there seemed to be no excitable planning called for - for this trip.

Something new to get used to, I thought. How Hannes Graff was rendered inert. What worse awareness is there than to know there would have been a better outcome if you'd never done anything at all? That all small mammals would have been better off if you'd never meddled in the unsatisfactory scheme of things.

And I surveyed once again this unalterable countryside around me - namable and controlled. A pasture down the road with three white fences and one brown; with nine ewes, one ram and one watchful dog. A pasture up the road with one stone wall, one briar hedge, one wire fence, and one forest - the boundary at the rear; with one horse, and six splotched dairy cows - and, conceivably, an old bull in the woods behind. But not an oryx, surely.

Across the road was a forest, through which the old wind tunneled, furrowing the pine needles.

Then the watchful sheepdog barked over the road at the forest. So, someone's coming, I thought, and I got on the motorcycle - thinking I'd better leave, ready or not, because I looked pretty foolish just sitting there.

The dog barked more. At someone coming on a well-walked path through the tidy forest, and probably someone who'd come this way, at this time, for years and years - and for years and years, this dog has always barked. A domestic chore, connected to wagging the tail. Which the dog will do next, I thought - at any moment, now, when this farmer's wife or daughter breaks out of the forest and up on the road. And shouldn't see me here, suspiciously inert.

But when I tried to pump the kick starter, my legs were spongy; the heel piece of my boot wouldn't grip the lever. And I forgot to open the gas line. I leaned over and sniffed the carburetor, filled my mind with woozy thoughts of fuel sloshing loose in my skull. I had all I could do to keep the bike upright; I tottered back and forth.

So whoever it is will just have to see me here, I thought; I'll be a non-routine blob on the landscape. Someone will stick the dog on me. Or perhaps the dog is really barking at me; only he's got this crazy habit, derived from sheep, of looking in ano

ther direction from what he's barking at.

But the dog was barking furiously now. And I thought: Whether it's me or not he's barking about, why didn't he bark at me before now? If that's the sort of dog he is - given so easily to woofing at the slightest thing.

The dog was berserk; he snapped around his sheep and drove the flock into a tight circle. He's lost his head, I thought - familiar with the symptoms. The sheepdog is going to eat his sheep!

He was the most unreasonably behaving dog I have ever seen.

I was still watching him, and shaking on the motorcycle, when the shoulder-to-shoulder pair of Rare Spectacled Bears tumbled out of the forest and huffed across the road, not more than twenty yards from me. The dog dropped flat down on his belly - paws spread, ears tight to his head.

But the Rare Spectacled Bears were not looking for sheep, or dogs - or cows in the next field, or a possible bull in the woods. They were running steadily together; they came down in my road ditch and up over the fence, into the sheepdog's field. He howled by the huddled flock, and the bears pushed on - not at unreasonable speed; not even hurrying, really. They just headed for the woods at the far end of the field - where, more than likely, they would still keep running. The inexhaustible, remarkable, and very Rare Spectacled Bears, running back to the Andes in Ecuador. Or at least to the Alps.

But when they reached the end of the field, they stopped and cocked their heads back toward me. I wanted to wave, but I didn't dare. I wanted them to go on. If they'd ever waved back to me, or had shouted 'Hello!' - if they'd said 'Thank you!' or 'Frot you!' - I wouldn't have been able to believe they were really there. They just paused, though, and went on again; they ran shoulder to shoulder into the woods.

I was so thankful that their escape didn't take on the custardlike quality of too many other endings.

And I suddenly didn't dare stay there any longer. In case, I thought, the Famous Asiatic Black Bear comes next. Or even gibbons. Or Siggy astride the oryx - the remaining flesh and ghosts of the Hietzinger Zoo. That would have spoiled this little token offered me by these Rare Spectacled Bears. That would not have allowed me to believe in them, either.

So I worked the kick starter this time. The bike made a ragged, suffering idle under me. I was still shaky. Even so, I couldn't stay there - until, perhaps, the Rare Spectacled Bears passed by me again, this time followed by some more of those who had temporarily escaped. Vratno Javotnik on the Grand Prix racer, '39 - leaving Gottlob Wut behind. And other selected mammals.

I looked nervously to the woods behind the field, and was happy to see that the Rare Spectacled Bears were gone - leaving the pastures at least not quite the same, at least not for this moment. Cows fretted; the sheep still obeyed the panting dog. A little something had been harmlessly disrupted, and I certainly don't imply that it made things all frotting rosy. Only that I was able to sincerely imagine coming this way again, some Wednesday. And meeting someone from the area, who would tell me: There are bears in Klosterneuburg.

Really?

Oh yes. Bears.

But they've done no harm?