Setting Free the Bears

It was the Famous Asiatic Black Bear, crouched in a back corner of his cage and rocking himself sideways to slam his buttocks into the bars. There was a little printed history of the bear, fixed to a map of the world, with the species' roaming area shaded black and a red star to mark the spot where he was taken - in the Himalayas - by a man named Hinley Gouch. The Asiatic Black Bear, the history explained, had his cage facing away from the other bears because he was 'enraged' when he saw them; he was a particularly ferocious bear, the history said, and iron bars enclosed him in his own three-sided ruin because he was capable of digging through concrete.

'I wonder how old Gouch got him?' said Siggy.

'Nets, perhaps,' I said.

'Or maybe he just talked him into coming to Vienna,' said Siggy. But we didn't think Hinley Gouch was a Viennese. More likely he'd been one of those misplaced Britishers, in league with a hundred brawny Sherpas who'd routed the bear into a ready-dug pit.

'It would be fun getting him and Gouch together again,' said Siggy, and we didn't look at the other bears.

There were people coming down the alley behind us now, and a group watched the giraffe scrape its chin. The building in front of us was for small mammals; it was a restored ruin, with four more or less original walls, a roof and boarded windows. Inside, a sign told us, were the nocturnal beasts - 'who are always asleep and anonymous in other zoos.' But here they had infrared light in the thick-glassed cage

s, and the animals behaved as if it were night. We could see them in a purplish glow, but the world outside their glass was black for them; they went unsuspiciously about their nocturnal habits, never knowing they were watched.

There was an aardvark, or earth pig, sluffing off old bristles on a rough board hung over him for that purpose. There were giant anteaters licking bugs off the glass, and the arboreal rat of Mexico. There was a bat-eared fox and a ring-tailed lemur; and a two-toed sloth who seemed, upside down, to catch our movements on the other side of the glass - whose dark little eyes, not so big as his nostrils, seemed to follow us dimly in the outside world, which wasn't quite dark for him. But for the others there was nothing; not for the flying phalanger, and not for the slow loris, was there anything beyond the infrared under glass. And maybe not for the sloth, either; maybe it was only dizziness from hanging upside down that made his eyes roam after us.

In the aisles between the cages it was dark, but our hands were tinted purple and our lips were green. There was a special sign on the giant anteaters' glasshouse; an arrow indicated a little trough on the bottom corner of the glass, leading into the anteaters' lair. When you put your fingers there, an anteater came to lick. The long tongue came through the maze that kept the world from getting in; there was a new look in the anteater's eye, upon finding a finger in the dark. But it licked like any tongue does, and made us feel a little closer to the nocturnal habits of the beasts.

'Oh, God!' said Siggy.

And people had found the Small Mammal House now. Children squealed through the infrared aisles; their mauve hair and bright pink eyes - their green tongues waggling.

So we took a dirt path off the alley; we'd had quite enough of ruins. And we came to an open area where the Miscellaneous Range Animals were - including the Assorted Antelopes. Now this was better. There were zebras nuzzling along the fence line, hipping up to each other and blowing in each other's ears; their stripes ran cross-pattern to the hexagons of the fence, and it made us giddy to see them move.

Outside the fence and coming toward us was a wild-haired little boy who wheezed and held his crotch as he ran. The boy ran past us and stopped, bent over as if he'd been kicked. He dropped his cupped palm down between his knees. 'Lord! Balls!' he hooted. Then he grabbed himself up again, and rabbited down the dirt path away from us.

There was no question that he'd seen the oryx with the rapierlike horns, very long and nearly straight, spiraled on the basal half and sloped backwards on the same plane with the wrinkly forehead and the sleek black nose; no question he'd seen the old oryx under his thin shade tree, brindled by the sun and shade-spots dappling his back - a soft, lowing look in his large black eyes. A bull oryx too, by his low, heavy chest and his thick-wrinkled neck. The slope of his back ran downhill off the hump of his neck to the base of his tail. And a bull from just under his buttocks, he was, all the way to the knots on his lean knees.

'God, Siggy,' I said. 'How big, do you think?'

'The biggest ever, Graff,' said Siggy. They had to dangle cock-eyed, just to fit in the oryx's narrow hind stance.

So we read the history of the oryx from East Africa, 'best-armed of all antelopes.'

'Hinley Gouch,' said Siggy, 'never had the balls to be responsible for this.'

And quite true, so we read - this oryx had been born in the Hietzinger Zoo, and that certainly made us glum.

So down the dirt path, back to the gate; we passed all the signs for the pachyderms, and only gave a glance to the little wallaroo - 'the famous hill-living and very agile kangaroo.' It lolled on its side, propped on an elbow and scratching its hip with a curled fist. It gave us a short look with its long, bored face.

Then we were passing the sign for the Big Cats, and passing the glint off the gambler's green eyeshade - his ticket booth surrounded by an eager human covey - passing heads turned toward the groggy, waking caterwaul of a lion; heads were turned upward to greet the giraffe.

Outside the zoo, there were two girls admiring our motorcycle. One of them admired it so much that she sat on it, hugging the gas tank between her knees; she was a thick, busty girl whose black sweater had ridden up over her paunch. And her hips jiggled taut each time she clamped that lovely teardrop of a tank.

The other girl stood in front of the bike, fingering the cables for the clutch and front brake; she was a very thin girl, with more ribs to show than breast. With a yellow hue to her face, she had a sad, wide mouth. Her eyes were as gentle as the oryx's.

'Well, Siggy,' I said, 'it's surely an act of God.'

And it wasn't even ten in the morning.

God Works in Strange Ways

'GRAFF,' SAID SIGGY, 'that fat one's surely not for me.'

But when we came closer, we saw how the thin girl's lips had a bluish tint, as if she'd been long immersed in water and had taken some chill.

And Siggy said, 'That thin one's not too healthy-looking. Perhaps, Graff, you can set her straight.'

When we were up to them, the fat girl said to her companion, 'See now? I told you it was two boys taking a trip.' She jounced on the seat of the motorcycle, flapping the gas tank between her thighs.