AllFreeNovel
Share Us
'A whole army of them farting!' said Siggy. 'And then we'll be out on the curvy roads. We'll have trees overhead and crickets smacking off our helmets.'
'I don't have a helmet,' I said.
'I've got one for you,' said Siggy, who'd been getting ready for this trip.
'What else do I need?' I asked.
'Goggles,' he said. 'I've got them too. A World War One pilot's goggles - frog eyes, with yellow lenses. They're terrifying! And boots,' said Siggy. 'I've got real trompers for you.'
'We should go pack,' I said.
'Well, we should finish our beers.'
'And then go.'
'Go off in a roar!' said Siggy. 'And tomorrow night we'll have a sip from a river in the mountains, or a drink of a lake. Sleep in the grass, let the sun wake us.'
'With dew on our lips.'
'With country girls beside us!' said Siggy. 'Barring acts of God.'
So we drank up. There was a murmur of voices on the terrace, faces from the tables round us swam and bobbed in our beers.
Then the pumping of the kick starter, and the faraway sucking sound of the pistons that seemed to be rising from miles beneath the engine. The grunt of it catching, and the slow, untroubled drumming of its even idle. Siggy let it warm, and I looked over the hedgerows to the tables on the terrace. The onlookers weren't irritated, but they stopped their murmuring and cocked their heads to us; the slow beat of our engine was in rhythm with the first buffs of the spring-heavy air.
And there was a new lump in the back vent-pocket of Siggy's duckhunter's jacket; when I looked again at our table, I saw that the saltshaker was gone.
The First Act of God
SIGGY DROVE. WE came through an arch into the Plaza of Heroes; I tipped back my head and watched the pigeons cross the tops of the buildings; the pudgy Baroque cupids peered at me from the government houses. The morning seemed more golden than it was, through the famous yellow tint of my World War One pilot's goggles.
A cheek-chewing old woman wheeled a pushcart full of flowers along the Mariahilferstrasse, and we pulled to the curb beside her to buy some saffron crocuses; we stuck them in the air holes of our crash helmets. 'Boys up to no good,' said the floppy-gummed hag.
We drove on, tossing our flowers to the girls who waited for buses. The girls had their scarves off their heads; the scarves flapped about their throats, and most of the girls had flowers already.
We were early; we met the horsecarts coming to the Naschmarkt with their vegetables and fruits, and more flowers. Once we passed a horse who'd been shell-shocked by the traffic, and who pranced at our motorcycle. The drivers were cheerful and shouting from their squealing wagon-seats; some of the drivers had their wives and children with them, it was such a glorious day.
Schonbrunn Palace looked lonely; no tourist buses, no crowds with cameras. A cool mist hung over the palace grounds; a thin haze crept close to the trimmed hedgerows, stole turtlelike across the green, green lawns. We watched the country roll in and be pushed back.
In the suburb of Hietzing, on the country edge of the palace grounds, we smelled the first zoo whiffs from the Hietzinger Zoo.
We stopped for a traffic light, and an elephant trumpeted over our idle.
'We've time enough, haven't we?' said Siggy. 'I mean, we've all the time in the world, as I see it.'
'We shouldn't leave Vienna,' I said, 'without seeing how spring has struck the zoo.'
Well, yes - the Hietzinger Zoo, gated by stone, admission granted by a jowled toad of a man with a gambler's green eyeshade. Siggy parked the motorcycle out of the sap drip, out from under the trees and flush to the gambler's booth - the ticket taker's domish stall - over which we saw the giraffe's head tottering on its neckpole. The shambly heap of the giraffe followed its neck; bucket-hooved, its legs tried to keep up. There was a raw, hairless spot on its thin chin, where it had scraped the high storm fence.
The giraffe looked down the fence line to the greenhouses of the botanical gardens; the plates of glass were still frosty with dew. It was too early for much sun, and there was no one else to watch the giraffe. Down the long cobbly alley, between the buildings and cages, there was no one but a cage-cleaner, who sagged with his mop.
Hietzinger Zoo hadn't been there long, but the buildings were as old as Schonbrunn; a part of the palace grounds, the buildings were all rubbled now - unroofed, three-walled, with the open spaces filled in by bars or screens. The animals had inherited the ruins.
The zoo was waking up and making public sounds. The walrus belched in his murky pool; we saw his old fish stiff on the pool curb, where he'd nudged them out of his water and left their scales on his mustache. The duck pond was talking breakfast, and down the alley some animal hammered in its cage.
The Rare Birds Building made a din for us - little and large ladies in costume hats with broken, choir voices; and over-lording, the dull-clothed condors sat hugely on the toppled columns, perched on the fallen bust of some Habsburg great. They took the statues' pedestals for their own, and glared at the meshing pulled over the ruin above them. A split carcass of sheep lay in the weeds of the building's floor, and some South American with a terrifying wing-span had old meat in his breast feathers; the flies zipped from sheep side to bird, and the condor snapped his nicked, bone-colored beak at them.
'Our feathered friends,' said Siggy, and we went on to see what was thumping in its cage.
