Setting Free the Bears - Page 53

Some people are proud, and some have their doubts.

And I can look at how left out of these times I feel - how I rely on pre-history for any sense and influence - and I can simplify this aforementioned garble. I can say: all anyone has is a pre-history. Feeling that you live at an interim time is something in the nature of being born and all the things that never happen to you after birth.

And once in a rare sometime, there's a grand scheme that comes along and changes all of that.

So I'll tip this good waiter fairly, and be getting myself across the street. There's many an animal I'd like to have a word with.

(BEGINNING)

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

30 May 1935: Hilke Marter, my mother-to-be, celebrates her fifteenth birthday. Her back against a naked trellis, she lolls in a Grinzing wine garden; some miles below her, the thin sun is melting its way to the snow's last, Baroque hiding places in downtown Vienna; above her, the meltwater trickles through the Vienna Woods, and the treetops are bobbing in a ground fog as intricate as the lacework in the downtown lingerie. Melt, says the day, and my mother melts.

Zahn Glanz, Hilke's first boyfriend, has such soft and blurry, mudpuddly eyes. But what my mother most admires are the few threads of cornsilk he wears on his bright chin. And Zahn can make his wineglass hum by skidding his tongue round the rim; he can change to an octave higher by the force of his grip on the stem. In 1935, art is still common in glassware, even in public places, and talents as graceful as Zahn's develop, simply, to greatness.

So Zahn thinks he'll be a journalist, or a politician. And he'll never take Hilke to places where the radio doesn't work - or isn't always on, and loud enough - just so he'll be up with the current events.

'Watch you don't jar the trellis,' says Zahn, and my mother leans forward, fingers the table, looks over her shoulder and up to the speaker box wedged in the latticework above her head.

Even the waiter is careful he doesn't disturb Zahn's contact with the world outside the wine garden; he tiptoes - a gingerbread man crumbling softly over the terrace.

And Rad

io Johannesgasse complies with Zahn's readiness. Hitler is quoted as saying that Germany has neither the intention nor desire to interfere with internal affairs of Austria, or to annex or incorporate Austria.

'I'll cut off my trunk,' said Zahn Glanz, 'if a bit of that's true.'

Oh, your what? Hilke thinks. No, you wouldn't. Oh, don't.

The Second Zoo Watch: Monday, 5 June 1967 @ 4.30 p.m.

SHORTLY AFTER I came in, I watched them feed the Big Cats. Everyone in the zoo seemed to have been waiting all day for that.

At the time, I was having a look at Bennet's cassowary, a wingless bird, related to emus and ostriches. It has enormous feet, which are said to be dangerous. But what I thought was interesting is that the bird has a bony casque on top of its head, and the information sheet speculated that this was to protect it - 'as it bolts through dense undergrowth at amazing speeds.' Now why would cassowaries be bolting through dense undergrowth at amazing speeds? They don't look especially stupid. My own theory on the evolution of that head armor is that the cassowaries only grew such helmets after people started trapping them in dense undergrowth, and chasing them at amazing speeds. Perhaps a worry gland produced it. It certainly is nothing they'd need if they were left alone.

Anyway, I was having a look at Bennet's cassowary when the Big Cats started their caterwauling. Well, everyone around me was hopping, and shoving, just dying to get to the spectacle.

Inside the Cat House, it smells very strong. People were remarking on that, all right. And I saw two terrible things.

First, this keeper came and flipped a horse steak through the bars to the lioness; the keeper flipped it right in a puddle of her pee. Everyone snickered, and waited for the lioness to make some derisive expression.

Second, the keeper was more professional with the cheetah; he slid the meat in on a little tray, shook it off, and the cheetah pounced on it, snapping it around in his mouth. Just the way a house cat breaks a mouse's neck. Great roars from everyone. But the cheetah shook his meat too hard; a big hunk flew off and plopped on the ledge outside the bars. Everyone was hysterical. You see, the cheetah couldn't quite reach it, and, being afraid someone would steal it, the poor animal set up this roar. Some children had to be taken outside the Cat House when all the other Big Cats started roaring too. They thought, you see, that this cheetah was threatening their own food. All of them were crouched down over their meat hunks, eating much too fast. All down the cage row, the tails were swishing - flanks flexed and twitching. And naturally, the people started hollering too. Someone pranced in front of the cheetah, pretending to make a grab for the meat on the ledge. The cheetah must have lost his mind, trying to jam his head between the bars. Then the keeper came back with a long pole that had a sort of gaffing hook on the end of it. The keeper snared the meat and flung it through the bars like a jai-alai ball. The cheetah reeled to the rear of his cage, the meat caught in his mouth. God, he ate up that meat in two terrible bites and swallows - not one bit of chewing - and sure enough, he gagged, finally spewing it all back up.

And when I left the Cat House, the cheetah was bolting down his vomit. The other Big Cats were padding in circles, envious that someone had a bit left to eat.

And even now, at four-thirty, I don't see any signs of the zoo getting ready to close. I'm under an umbrella in the Biergarten. You remember? The Rare Spectacled Bears. They've surely not bathed since the last time we were here; they're reeking worse than ever; they seem very nice, though; they're very gentle with each other. We should decide: either we let both of them out, or we leave them both. It wouldn't do to break them up. That's where the viciousness would come in.

Of course, I don't believe we can do anything for the Big Cats. I'm afraid they'll have to stay. Although I hate to admit it, we do have a responsibility to the people of this world.

(CONTINUING)

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

22 February 1938: morning in the Rathaus Park. Hilke Marter and Zahn Glanz are sharing a bag of assorted Spanish nuts. They're taking a chilly, head-down walk, and they've kept a tally of how many different, following squirrels have begged and received a nut from the bag. Hilke and Zahn have counted four: one with a thin face, one with a tooth gone, one with a bitten ear, and one who limps. Zahn makes squirrel-summoning sounds. And Hilke says to the thin-faced one, 'No, you've had yours. One apiece. Isn't there anyone else?'

'Just four squirrels in the whole park,' says Zahn.

But my mother thinks she spots a fifth; they count again.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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