Setting Free the Bears - Page 16

So when Siggy came in, we went to our table - next to a family with a cantankerous-looking grandfather for a leader. The family's youngest, a boy, watched us over his long sausage and roll, and his chin drooped in what he was gnawing.

'Gross little boy,' Siggy whispered, and he made a face at him. The boy stopped eating and stared, so Siggy made a threatening gesture with his fork - stabbing air - and the boy pulled his grandfather's ear. When the old man looked at us, Siggy and I were just sipping our coffees; we saluted, and the grandfather pinched the boy under the table.

'Just eat, boy,' the grandfather said.

So the boy looked out the window, and was the first to see the goats.

'Goats out!' he shouted, and the grandfather gave him another pinch. 'Boys who keep seeing things should hold their tongues!' he said.

But others were looking now; the grandfather saw them too.

'I shut the gate,' said Frau Ertl. 'I shut them up before Mass.'

Some older boys swaggered and shoved each other out of the Gasthof; the goats shyly herded by the church. And the pinching grandfather leaned over us. 'Frau Ertl's a widow,' he said. 'She needs someone to keep her goat pen shut.' Then he choked on whatever he was eating and had a little spasm over it.

The goats were nodding to each other, clattering off balance, up and down the church steps. The boys had herded them against the door, but no one dared go up the steps after them, and mess one's Sunday clothes.

We went outside and watched, listening to the bells from another village - striking Sunday morning with insistent, hurry-up echo-shots that muted the end of each note.

'That's St Leonhard's bells,' said a woman. 'We've got our own bells, and I'd like to know why they're not ringing on Sunday.' And the issue was seized, taken up by other voices: 'But our bell ringer's eating his breakfast.'

'Drinking his breakfast, you mean.'

'The old swiller.'

'And the children don't miss a thing.'

'We've our own church and our own bells, and why should we have to listen to somebody else's?'

'Religious fanatics,' Siggy whispered - but he was interest

ed in the goats. The mob was trying to scare them off the steps.

'Go get the bell ringer,' the woman said, but the bell ringer had been warned of the plot already; he stood on the steps of the Gasthof, a beer in his hand, wrinkling the veins on his nose to the sun.

'Now, ladies,' he said. 'Kindly ladies, I could never hope to attain' - and he swallowed a belch that made his eyes water - 'to achieve,' he said, 'the mastery of bell-ringing that my competitor in St Leonhard has' - and he let it come: a sharp, ringing belch. 'Has attained,' he said, and went back inside.

'Someone else,' the woman said, 'should learn how to ring the bells.'

'Oh,' said the pinching grandfather, 'there's not much to it.'

'Too much for you,' the woman said, 'or you'd be doing it all right. You're just dying for something to do.'

And a hard-faced girl flicked her saucy, hard butt at the grandfather; stepping in front of him, she brushed his chin with the down of her arm; she stretched herself away from him, almost leaving her leg behind - toe down, her skirt tugged to mid-thigh. Her little calf leapt high above her ankle and knotted like a fist.

'Too much for you,' she said, and skipped away from him, out into the street.

'Look at those goats, there!' said Siggy. 'Why don't they bolt? They should bolt right by those brats. Bolt!' he hooted.

And the grandfather looked at us; he eased himself down a step or two and sat on the stairs by us. 'What did you say, there?' the grandfather said.

'It's a goat call,' said Siggy. 'It works for some.'

But the grandfather was staring too hard; he clicked his teeth. 'You're a queer rascal,' he said, and he picked up Siggy's hand. 'I saw you,' he whispered, and Siggy jerked his hand away.

'Where's St Leonhard and its famous bells?' I said.

'Over the mountain,' said the grandfather. 'And not much of a mountain, either, but to hear this town talk, you'd think it was Alps. Not much of a church, either, and nobody who's much of anything living here - but to hear this town talk. And there's nothing to ringing their damn bells!'

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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