'Well,' said Siggy. 'Thinking of driving off with it, were you?'

'Was not,' the fat girl said. 'But I could drive this thing if I wanted to.'

'Bet you could,' said Siggy. He patted the gas tank and drummed his fingers over her knee.

'Watch out for him,' the thin girl said. She had a strange spasm in her chin, and she wouldn't stop playing with the cables; looped under the handlebars, the cables were all atangle from her twisting them.

'Say, Graff,' Siggy whispered. 'Do you think that thin one's contagious? I don't mind if you want her. I'll just make do with the old fatty here.'

And the fat one said, 'Say, you boys. Would you buy us a beer?'

'There's a place for beer in the zoo,' said the thin one.

'We've just been in the zoo,' I said.

And Siggy whispered, 'It's rabies, Graff. She's got rabies.'

'You've not been in the zoo with a girl on your arm!' the fat one said. 'And you've not gone through the Tiroler Garten, I'll bet. There's a mile of moss and ferns, and you can take off your shoes.'

'Well, Graff,' said Siggy. 'What do you say?'

'He's wild for it!' the fat girl shouted.

'Graff?' said Siggy.

'Well, sure,' I said. 'We're in no hurry.'

'Fate shapes our course,' said Siggy.

So we went to the Biergarten, surrounded by bears - and all of them watched us, except the Famous Asiatic Black Bear, whose cage didn't allow him to face the Biergarten or other bears.

The polar bears sat and panted in their swimming pool; now and then they took a slow, loud lap. The brown bears paced, brushing their thick coats against the bars; their heads swayed low to the ground, in rhythm with some ritual of stealth they were born knowing and pointlessly never forgot - no matter how out of place wariness was to them here.

Downwind from our table and Cinzano umbrella, squat and hot in their shared cage, was a reeking pair of Rare Spectacled Bears from the Andes - 'the bears with the cartoon countenance.' They looked like they'd been laughed right out of Ecuador.

And Siggy was unnerved to find no radishes in the Biergarten. The dark, fat girl was named Karlotta, and she had a pastry with her beer; but the thin one was Wanga, and she would have nothing but syrupy bock. Siggy touched his fat Karlotta under the table; my Wanga's hand was dry and cool.

'Oh, they should have more ice for the polar bears,' said Wanga. And no more for you, I thought.

'Siggy,' said Karlotta, 'could use a little ice himself.' And her arms went under the table, groping for him. She had dark little ringlets for bangs, glossy and damp on her forehead.

The Spectacled Bears had a blotch of white running forehead-to-nose and over their throats. Their squint-eyes were bandit-masked in shaggy black mats like the rest of their fur; their coats looked oddly slept on, like a series of cowlicks. They rapped

their long claws on the cement.

Poor Wanga ran her tongue lightly over her lips, as if she were feeling out where she was chapped and hurt.

'Is this your first trip?' she asked.

'Oh, I've been all over,' I said.

'To the Orient?' she asked.

'All over the Orient.'

'In Japan?'

'Bangkok,' I said.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net