Setting Free the Bears

'Well, Graff,' said Siggy, 'my Karlotta was properly impressed with the oryx.'

'Who could fail to be?' I said.

'What?' asked Wanga. 'With what?'

'Not for you, dear,' Karlotta said. 'You're a dear boy, you,' she told me. 'That was nothing for Wanga to see.'

'It's for the world to see!' said Siggy.

'Stuff you,' Karlotta said, and she went tugging him off to another fern path.

When we were all lying down, we couldn't see each other. Close to the ground was an air trap, and the rich scent of some animal's dung settled over us.

'I believe that's rhino stuff!' Siggy called.

'Or hippo,' I said.

'Something large and prolific,' said Siggy.

'Hippos never leave the water,' Karlotta said.

'Oh, they must!' said Siggy. 'It's hard to imagine ...'

And Wanga curled in the crook of my arm, knees up tight and a cool hand on my chest. We could hear the stirrings of Siggy and Karlotta; twice Siggy hooted like a wild bird.

Well, as the notebook wisely imparts:

Time passes, praise God.

And then we were hearing Karlotta. 'You're not so funny all the time,' she was saying. And when I looked, I saw Siggy's upstretched arm - waving above the ferns a mighty pair of black lace bloomers.

'You're just too much of a stuffing clown,' said Karlotta, and I saw her bare, thick foot thrash upwards through the ferns. 'You can't ever be serious, you frotter!' she said. 'Oh, there's something definitely wrong with you.'

Then Siggy sat up and grinned toward our fern patch; he wore the thigh-wide bloomers for a hat. Karlotta swatted him with a clod of weeds, and Siggy danced over to us.

When Karlotta stalked after him, she swung at her side a black lace bra with a pink bow - one cup loaded with sod. It dangled from her wrist like a battler's sling.

'Here comes the giant-killer,' said Siggy.

Karlotta's breasts sagged to her movable paunch. When her sweater rode up, I caught a peek of dark nipple-bit.

Then Wanga was out of my arms and running down the fence line to the gate; she ran in a buffeted way, like a leaf blown along by varying gusts - through the gate and back into the zoo.

'Hey!' I said. 'Hey, Wanga!'

'Mine! Mine, Graff,' said Siggy. 'I'll get her.' He flipped the bloomers to Karlotta and was off running himself.

'No!' I yelled. 'Siggy, I'll go!' But Karlotta had moved alongside me; when I tried to stand, she threw her hip into me and knocked me down in the ferns.

'Oh, let him be the clown,' she said, and she knelt beside me. 'Dear boy,' said Karlotta. 'You've some morality about you. You're not a bit like him.' And when I tried to sit up, she smothered my face in her bloomers and held me down. Then she peeked under the glorious panties and kissed me with her peach-sweet lips. 'Hush, hush,' she said, and she pressed me into the damp ground.

We rolled in the hidden and airless, dung-smelling patch; the sounds of the zoo merged and were lost in the lashing of ferns, and the rhino shook the ground.

And when we heard the birds again, their voices were raucous and demanding. The great cats were snarling for meat and revolution.

'Feeding time,' said Karlotta. 'And I've not yet seen the hippo.'

So I tried walking, and she followed me, steering me into the hippohouse, a great vat sunk in the middle of a greenhouse, with a rail around the water so the children wouldn't fall in. At first, there was nothing but murk in the vat.