Setting Free the Bears

My father said - enunciating every German syllable, perfectly - 'I just met the man. We had beards in common, you see. Just a mutual admiration.'

And Bronsky or Metz said, 'Old Wut! Would you just look at him!'

'Filthy traitor,' said Heine Gortz. And one of them brought a knee up under him - buckled him - and someone tugged him along by his beard. They moved him into the standup crapper stall. Then they upended him, and sent him headfirst down into the breathless bog. Balkan 4 worked as a team. New-leader Heine Gortz, beshitted from his spine to the backs of knees, with his pants still down at his ankles, had Wut by one leg and stuffed poor Gottlob down the crapper's chasm.

While my father fastened his fly, exchanged shrugs of shoulder and tilts of head with the perplexed others still standing at the steaming urinal.

'Wut?' said one. 'Who's this Wut?'

'We just had beards in common,' Vratno said. 'Just a mutual admiration, was all,' he emphasized, although my poor father could scarcely talk - he was struck so dumb by the terrible teamwork of Balkan 4 - and it seemed to him that he had to shout to get his words out in front of his rising stomach.

When my father quietly left the Sv. Benedikt Cellar's men's room, only the soles of Wut's shoes were showing above the awful hole; nice poor Borsfa Durd, Gottlob Wut was buried coffinless; like Borsfa Durd, Gottlob Wut could finally be recognized by no more than the soles of his shoes.

The Sixteenth Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967, @ 5.30 a.m.

I RECOMMEND THAT we do it just as I've done up to now. We get behind this hedgerow late

one afternoon; we just sit tight through the first-shift nightwatchman's watch. When O. Schrutt takes over, we'll let him go through a round or two. We'll have to be on our guard for the gelada baboon too, although that could be made to work in our favor.

I can't decide whether we should drive O. Schrutt babbling mad, subtly; or simply feed him to the Famous Asiatic Black Bear - at the first possible opportunity.

Handling O. Schrutt in the latter fashion could present some problems. The Asiatic Black Bear might also get the keyring, and there'd be no taking it away from him, I assure you. Also, O. Schrutt might just have time enough to pull his gun and get a shot off. Whether he'd save himself or not, there'd surely be a policeman in Hietzing with an ear open for trouble in the zoo.

But even if we used the gelada baboon to drive O. Schrutt over the edge, there's no telling what form his final madness would take. He might run amok in the zoo.

So this is a problem. I believe we'll have to nab O. Schrutt very neatly, in the Small Mammal House. Disarm him, tie and gag him - lead the frotter along a chute and tumble him into a glasshouse for safekeeping.

We'll toss him in with the giant anteaters! They should keep him still. With what O. Schrutt knows about matchmaking, he should know exactly how quiet and inoffensive he has to be to keep the giant anteaters at ease with him. But then, it would be unfair of us not to share O. Schrutt a little. I'm sure the Indo-Chinese fishing cat would love to babysit with O. Schrutt awhile. I'm sure the ratel and the jaguarundi would love to have O. Schrutt visit their homes, all trussed up like a goose for the roasting pan - cooing dovelike through his gag, his face in the sawdust, saying, 'Nice, nice ratel - ooooh! Aren't you a nice ratel, though? And you don't have any hard feelings, do you, ratel?'

Better yet, we could blindfold him and let him guess which animal he's been thrown in with - which snuffling, deep-breathing animal is laying a cold, movable nose against old O.'s ear.

Tit for tat, O. Schrutt.

(CONTINUING:)

THE HIGHLY SELECTIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIEGFRIED JAVOTNIK: PRE-HISTORY II

My father laid low in Maribor. He paid a rather high rent for the prostitute's outdoor booth in the Old City, but thereby garaged the motorcycles safely out of sight. Not that he trusted the prostitute, a witchy thing who wouldn't tell him her name; in fact, one night when Vratno came back to the booth to sleep with the bikes, he found an old Serb siphoning gas out of the sidecar model 600. The Serb wouldn't give himself a name, either, but my father talked to him in Serbo-Croat and the old Serb gave way to senile utterances - choosing a theme of general disillusionment: first, with traitorous King Peter, who, after all, Mihailovich had rescued and sent to London. Did my father know the song the Serbs sang? No, since it had to do with politics; the old Serb sang it for him:

Kralju Pero, ti se nase zlato

Churchill-u si na cuvanje dato ...

King Peter, you are our gold,

We sent you to Churchill to keep you for us ...

But then, the old Serb ranted, the chicken-hearted King had been bullied by the British into what was best for Yugoslav unity. King Peter announced on 12 September 1944, that support of Marshal Tito's People's Army was the best chance for Yugoslavia. The King denounced Mihailovich and Chetniks - called all those 'Traitors to the Fatherland' who wouldn't join the partisan army. Did the King know, the old Serb asked, that only six days before his betrayal of his people, Chetniks had risked their lives in the night to honor the King's birthday - bonfires on every mountaintop and singing aflaunt their love for the King, under blackout conditions too?

Did my father even know that? And Vratno confessed he'd been tied up for a time in the mountains himself - but not in Serbian mountains.

Well, then, did my father know what the Serbs sang now?

Necemo Tita Bandita--

Hocemo Kralja, i ako ne valja!

We don't want Tito the Bandit--