Setting Free the Bears

'But perhaps you've gotten in the habit,' I told him. 'Habits aren't to be scoffed at, you know.' And he braced back on his heels a moment, brought up a pipe from his jacket and clacked it against his teeth.

'I'm all for a good whim too,' he said. 'My name's Siggy. Siegfried Javotnik.'

And although he made no note of it at the time, he would later add this idea to his notebook, under the revised line concerning habit and fanaticism - this new maxim also rephrased.

Be blissfully guided by the veritable urge!

But that afternoon on the sidewalk he was perhaps without his notebook or a scrap of radishbag, and he must have felt the prompting of Herr Faber, who peered so anxiously at us, his head darting like a snake's tongue out of the smoggy garage.

'Come with me, Graff,' said Siggy. 'I'm going to sit you on a beast.'

So we crossed the slick floor of the garage to a door against the back wall, a door with a dartboard on it; both the door and the dartboard hung askew. The dartboard was all chewed up, the bull's-eye indistinguishable from the matted clots of cork all over - as if it had been attacked with wrenches instead of darts, or by mad mechanics with tearing mouths.

We went out into an alley behind the garage.

'Oh now, Herr Javotnik,' said Faber. 'Do you really think so?'

'Absolutely,' said Siegfried Javotnik.

It was covered with a glossy black tarp and leaned against the wall of the garage. The rear fender was as thick as my finger, a heavy chunk of chrome, gray on the rim where it took some of the color from the mudcleats, deep-grooved on the rear tire - tire and fender and the perfect gap between. Siggy pulled the tarp off.

It was an old, cruel-looking motorcycle, missing the gentle lines and the filled-in places; it had spaces in between its parts, a gap where some clutterer might have tried to put a toolbox, a little open triangle between the engine and the gas tank too - the tank, a sleek teardrop of black, sat like a too small head on a bulky body; it was lovely like a gun is sometimes lovely - for the obvious, ugly function showing in its most prominent parts. It weighed, all right, and seemed to suck its belly in, like a lean, hunched dog in the tall grass.

'A virtuoso, this boy!' Herr Faber said. 'A joy and a comfort.'

'It's British,' said Siggy. 'Royal Enfield, some years ago when they made the pieces look like the way they worked. Seven hundred cubic centimeters. New tires and chains, and the clutch has been rebuilt. Like new.'

'This boy, he loves this old one!' said Faber. 'He worked on it all on his own time. It's like new!'

'It's new, all right,' Siggy whispered. 'I ordered from London - new clutch and sprocket, new pistons and rings - and he thought it was for his other bikes. The old thief doesn't know what it's worth.'

'Sit on it!' Herr Faber said. 'Oh, just sit, and feel the beast beneath you!'

'Half and half,' whispered Siggy. 'You pay it all now, and I'll pay you back with my wages.'

'Start it up for me,' I said.

'Ah well,' said Faber. 'Herr Javotnik, it's not quite ready to start up now, is it? Maybe it needs gas.'

'Oh no,' said Siggy. 'It should start right up.' And he came alongside me and pumped on the kick starter; there was very little fiddling - a tickle to the carburetor, the spark retard out and back. Then he rose up beside me and dropped his weight on the kicker. The engine sucked and gasped, and the stick flew back against him; but he tramped it again, and quickly again, and this time it caught - not with the burting of the motorcycles inside: with a lower, steadier borp, borp, borp, as rich as a tractor.

'Hear that?' cried Herr Faber, who suddenly listened himself - his head tilting a bit, and his hand slicking over his mouth - as if he'd expected to hear a valve tapping, but didn't; expected to hear a certain roughness in the idle, but couldn't - at least, not quite. And his head tilted more.

'A virtuoso,' said Faber, who was beginning to sound as if he believed it.

Herr Faber's Beast

HERR FABER'S OFFICE WAS on the second floor of the garage, which lo

oked as if it couldn't have a second floor.

'A grim urinal of a place,' said Siggy, whose manners were making Herr Faber nervous.

'Have we set a price on that one?' Faber asked.

'Oh, yes we have,' said Siggy. 'Twenty-one hundred schillings, it was, Herr Faber.'

'Oh, a very good price,' said Faber in an unwell voice.