Setting Free the Bears

'Where's Bangkok?' said Wanga, so softly I leaned near to her.

'India,' I said. 'Bangkok, India.'

'Oh, India,' she said. 'The people are very poor there.'

'Yes, very,' I agreed, and watched her touch gently her broad mouth - hide her thin lips with her pale hand.

'You there!' said Karlotta to me. 'Don't you hurt her. Wanga, tell me if he hurts you.'

'We're talking,' Wanga said.

'Oh, he's a nice boy,' said Karlotta, and from under the table she gave me a slight goose with her wedging toe.

The Spectacled Bears slumped against each other, shoulder to shoulder; one dropped its head on the other's chest.

'Graff,' said Siggy, 'don't you think Karlotta would enjoy the oryx?'

'I want to see the hippo,' Karlotta said. 'The hippo and the rhino.'

'Karlotta wants everything big,' said Siggy. 'Well, Karlotta, it's the oryx for you.'

'We'll meet you behind the hippohouse,' I said. Because I didn't want frail Wanga to see the oryx. Thus Siggy has it in his notebook: You have to draw the line somewhere.

'Karlotta,' said Siggy, 'this oryx will give you some jolt.' And Karlotta rubbed her paunch with the palm of her hand.

'Ha!' she said.

The Rare Spectacled Bears sat upright and stared.

The Hippohouse

THERE WAS A moat around the rhino's field, and a fence on the outside of the moat. If the rhino tried to ram the fence, he'd break his legs falling into the moat; the knee-pieces of the rhino's armor were cracked and open, like sun-splits in baked clay.

The field he jogged in was flat, and the grass was beaten to scruff. The field was somewhat elevated too - a hard, dry plateau surrounded by the hippohouse and the high, iron gates to the Tiroler Garten. If you lay flat on the ground just inside the Tiroler Garten, you could see under the boughs of the trees, through the gardens all the way to Maxing Park. If you sat up out of the ferns, you could see the rhino's back - the top of his driftwood head and the tip of his horn. The ground shook when the rhino ran.

Wanga and I lay in the ferns, peeking for Siggy and fat Karlotta.

'Where are you travelling now?' she asked.

'To the Arctic Circle,' I said.

'Oh!' she said. 'I'd love to come. I mean, if you were traveling alone, I'd ask to come with you.'

'And I'd let you,' I said. But when I nuzzled the down on her arm, she sat up and looked again for Siggy and Karlotta.

We heard Siggy trumpeting at the rhino; for a while I couldn't see him, but I knew Siggy's poetry voice. He bellowed somewhere along the rhino's field, and we could hear Karlotta tittering. When we saw them, they were arm in arm behind the hippohouse and coming for the gate of the Tiroler Garten.

From the wild eyes of Karlotta, it was easy to see that she would be one of us - marked for life; to remember always having seen the oryx.

'Let's hide from them,' I said, and I tugged Wanga down in the ferns.

But her eyes were startled and she lay on her back, hugging herself, 'Karlotta!' she called.

'You! Boy!' Karlotta shouted. 'Are you hurting her?'

'We're talking,' said Wanga, 'but we're over here.'

And they came along the fence line to us; Siggy slapped through the deep ferns, one hand up under Karlotta's sweater and cupped round her lumpy side.