'Oh, I don't know,' says Zahn. 'Maybe to watch what happens for a day or so.'
And my mother keeps taking the pulse in his arm. Hilke Marter is speaking through her fingers again: Oh, Zahn, there's nobody outside, there's nobody there at all.
But a little before midnight, in the Ballhaus courtyard, there are forty toughs from SS Standarte 89, of which the assassin Otto Planetta was a member. Perhaps it's then - when Miklas sees them - that the old President shares a bit of Schuschnigg's vision for the slaughter that could be Vienna's. Perhaps it's then that Miklas droops down his chins to Muff the middleman.
Zahn Glanz must feel like a middleman now, with my grandfather's bankbook fat in his pocket. He makes the walk from Schwindgasse to Karl's Church, my mother still fastened to his arm. At the Gusshausstrasse corner they're forced to hop off the curb.
Arms locked, in step, five boys from an alphabetized meeting of Vienna's Nazi youth come shouldering along. It must have been a meeting of the S's from the fourth district. Freshly sewn, their nametags glow: P. Schnell, perhaps, and G. Schritt, with F. Samt, J. Spalt, R. Steg and O. Schrutt - just to name some ordinary names.
Zahn doesn't say a word to them; my mother has shut off his pulse. He unlocks the taxi in the Karl's Church lot and drives back to the Schwindgasse another way. It wouldn't do to have the cruising youth club see them so suddenly motorized. Zahn drives lights-out up the Schwindgasse. My grandfather opens both sides of the great lever-handled lobby door, and Zahn backs over the sidewalk and inside the apartment building.
It's late, but the upstairs apartments can't be sleeping very soundly tonight. They certainly must hear the motor before Zahn shuts it off. The garbage truck - do they think? - making some awful collection that can't keep till morning? But no one brings their garbage downstairs. There are no frightened faces over the spiraling banister - only juts of light, from letter slots and doors ajar. Grandfather waits for the last, stealthy ray to leave the stairs; then he stations my grandmother by the banister, and has her listen for the cranking of a phone.
It's one o'clock Saturday morning when they begin to load the taxi.
The Seventh Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967, @ 2.15 a.m.
SOME OF THE animals are dropping off to sleep. A certain nervous element is still in this zoo, all right, but the watchman's gone back to the Small Mammal House, and some of us feel like sleeping.
When the watchman first went inside, I felt like a short nap myself. I heard the Assorted Antelopes lying down in soft collapses. I really thought I'd sleep awhile, and I was snuggling myself around the roots when the Small Mammal House changed color. That's just the way it happened. Over the tops of cages, the glow was white and it changed to blood-purple. The watchman had switched on the infrared.
There they all are again, with the putting-out of one light and the switching-on of one they can't see; there they are, with their distorted view of how quickly the night falls.
So I went lurking along my hedges, and even out of cover, for a moment, to where I could see the door.
Why did the watchman do it? Does he like looking at them when they're awake? Then it's a bit selfish of him to end their sleep to please himself; he should come during the regular zoo hours, if it matters so much to him. But I don't think that's it.
Especially now that I've had a better look at this watchman, I don't think that's his reasoning at all. What I mean is, I went to have a closer look. I wanted a look at that little room.
I was all set up behind a cage. I couldn't see very far into the cage; the moonlight caught just the outer edges. But I was sure it was a part of the indoor-outdoor Monkey Complex. I was peering down the violet corridor of the Small Mammal House when two very rough hands grabbed my head and jerked me against the bars. I couldn't get free, but I was able to turn my head in the thing's hands. I faced the hairless, bright red chest of the male gelada baboon - powerful, savage bandit from the highland plains of Abyssinia.
'I'm here to help you,' I whispered. But it sneered.
'No noise now,' I pleaded, but its thumbs sank in the hollows behind my ears; the thing was putting me to sleep with its grip. I reached into my jacket and handed it my meerschaum.
'Would you like to try a pipe?' I asked. It looked. One forearm went a little limp on my shoulder.
'Go on, take it,' I whispered, hoping I wouldn't be forced to ram the pipestem up one of its flaring nostrils.
It took; one hand peeled off my neck and covered my fist, pipe and all. Then its other hand came delicately poking for the pipe between my fingers. I lunged my head back, but I couldn't free my fist; the gelada baboon shoved the pipe in its mouth and grabbed hold of my arm with both hands. I wasn't a match for it, but I got my feet against the bars and pushed back with all my weight. I fell out of its reach, away from the cage, and the gelada baboon, munching my meerschaum and spitting it out on the cage floor, knew it had been fooled. It made enormous noises.
It whooped and raced round the cage, leaping off the bars and stamping in the watering trough. The indoor-outdoor Monkey Complex understood; a baboon had been outwitted by a lower-species creature.
If there had been animals finally dropping off to sleep, I apologize. They awoke to a clamor of general primate noise-making; the Big Cats roared back; bears grumbled; all over the zoo was a skitter of hooves, dashing from fence line to fence line. And I was stumbling backward down the path, heading for my hedges again, when I saw the watchman round the end of his lavender hallway.
It surprised me. I expected the infrared to go out; I expected the guard, camouflaged and crawling belly-down, combat-style, to sneak up on me from behind with his truncheon. But he stood and gaped down the blood-colored aisle, frozen and aghast; he would have made an easy target.
I was safe behind my hedgerow before I saw his light come whirling down the path; when his light began to whirl, the zoo was suddenly hushed. He spun from bush to bush, and cage to cage. When he passed the spot where I'd been assaulted, I expected trouble. But the gelada baboon must have gathered together the bits of my pipe and slinked through the back-wall door, losing itself in the parapets and split-level avenues of the Monkey Complex.
The guard seemed to know that this was where it started, though. He stopped and shone his light, from the corners of the cages to the treetops all around him. He timidly kicked the cage where the gelada baboon had been. 'Was it you?' he cried, in a high and lisping voice.
The zoo was wide-awake and silent; a hundred breaths were being held, and lost in little pieces.
On past the Monkey Complex th
e watchman skittered - and stopped again at the corner of my hedgerow, the diluted blood-light from the Small Mammal House faintly reaching him on the path. He whirled for us, shaking his light. 'What happened?' he shouted.
Something with hooves took a false step, caught itself and held its ground. The watchman's light leapt down to the Australians' area, struck across the sky. The guard fired his light up a nearby tree, seeking leopards or ocelots that might have been lurking there, ready to pounce. 'All of you!' he screamed. 'You go to sleep now!'