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He walked the length of my hedgerow. When he'd passed me, I leaned out through a root gap - just enough to see him from the waist up: the keyring, the epaulettes, the crook in his right arm. But I only saw the whole of him back-to, and it had to be a quick look. He's very sudden with his flashlight. He'll be nodding the light out on his boot toes, and then he'll whirl and paint a circle of light around himself.

It's been an hour and a half, and he's still out in the zoo, whirling his light. Perhaps he thinks the first-shift guard is careless. Perhaps, before he settles down to a normal watch, he has to make the place safe in his mind.

It must make the animals very nervous to have this disturbance every night. I see the watchman's sudden circles of light - often three or four times in the same area. And he's very aggressive about checking the locks. Just a tug won't do for him - he trembles the cages.

It's no wonder everyone's awake.

(CONTINUING:)

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

Black Friday, 11 March 1938: at a little after half past five, the early morning priests are setting up the side altars in St Stephen's and Kurt von Schuschnigg ducks in for a very brief, clear prayer. He's been up and en route to the Chancellery ever since Secretary of Security Skubl phoned him about the Germans closing the border at Salzburg and withdrawing all customs officials. Skubl also mentioned a German troop build-up from Reichenhall to Passau. And at the Chancellery, Schuschnigg finds the sour telegram from Austria's consulate general in Munich: LEO IS READY TO TRAVEL. All this before it's light outside, and before all of the morning's German press has been telegraphed to Vienna for Kurt von Schuschnigg's perusal. They have just a smattering of German sentiment to go on, though it should be enough. The Nazi news agency, D.N.B., claims that hammer-and-sickle flags have been hoisted in Vienna, and that the frenzied citizens have been yelling, 'Heil Schuschnigg! Heil Moskau!' in the same breath. D.N.B. says that the Fuhrer might be forced to make an 'anti-Bolshevik crusade,' on Austria's behalf. Poor Kurt von Schuschnigg must confess that this is particularly creative reporting of his plebiscite. He get

s off an urgency phonecall to the British minister, who in turn cables Lord Halifax in London - to inquire if Britain will choose sides. Then Schuschnigg watches the first light, glancing through the sooty windows of the Hofburg showrooms - seeking out the rare old jewels and gold within.

The slow March light is lifting windowshades in drowsy St Veit, and Zahn Glanz is crowing a welcome to the dawn. It's good for Zahn that it's early, and there's little traffic, because he's not being very consistent at the intersections. The cobblestones are giving him a headache, so he drives in the tram tracks wherever that's possible; he doesn't quite get the taxi to fit in the tracks, but he can usually manage to have one wheel side unjarred.

He's approaching the Inner City on Wahringer Strasse when he stops to pick up a fare. A head-down man, nodding out of an early Mass in the Votivkirche, steps into the back seat. Zahn is off with him before the man can properly close the door.

'Cawk! Cawk!' says Zahn. 'Where to?'

And the man, smacking chicken feathers off his trousers, says, 'Is this a taxi or a barnyard?' And looks up at Zahn's bent beak in the rear-view mirror, and sees the spotty-feathered shoulders hunched over the wheel. And rolls out the door he hasn't quite closed.

'Better not leave the door open,' says Zahn, but he's looking at an empty back seat awhirl with feathers.

Zahn turns up Kolingasse and stops; he shambles out of the taxi and struts back to the corner of Wahringer, where he sees the man limping to the curb. The man must think he's seen a seraph, being so fresh out of Mass.

So Zahn springs back to his taxi, startles a cafe-owner rolling up his awning to watch whatever weak sun there is. The man lets go of the awning crank; the awning comes rumpling down over him, and the crank spins madly, cracking the backs of his hands.

'Oh, I'm sure up early this morning,' says Zahn, and gives a fierce cock call from his taxi's running board. Somehow Zahn's got chicken feathers, cocks' crowing and eagles all confused.

Zahn does feel something is amiss, and decides it's that he's clawless. Whatever bird he is, he should have claws. So he stops at a butcher shop in the Kohlmarkt and buys a whole chicken. Then he crunches the legs off and fastens them in the mesh of his chainmail, just under the wide, forearm-length cuffs. The claws curl over his own hands; as he drives, they scratch him.

But butchers are notoriously unimaginative types, and the Kohlmarkt butcher is no exception. He calls Radio Johannesgasse to report a man in a bird-suit, inexpertly driving a taxi.

'What sort of man, you tell me,' says the butcher, 'would buy a whole chicken and crunch off the legs on the edge of his taxi's door? Just so - opening and shutting the door on his poor chicken's legs until he had them sawed through. And he threw away the chicken!' says the butcher, who thinks the people should be warned.

But Radio Johannesgasse already has been informed of something feathery - from a worried cab-company man, who phoned after someone was arrested on Wahringer Strasse for blasphemous rantings and general disturbances concerning a possible seraph. So the word is out on Zahn, all right. The only one who's heard it on the radio and isn't interested is Kurt von Schuschnigg, for whom this day has too much time.

The next thing to befall poor Kurt is Nazi Cabinet member Seyss-Inquart, reporting a most unreasonable phonecall from a diatribing Goebbels in Munich. Seyss has been told to seize control of the Cabinet and see to it that Schuschnigg calls off the plebiscite. Seyss-Inquart is almost apologetic about it; perhaps he's not sure if things aren't happening a bit too fast. He and Schuschnigg go along to find President Miklas, after Schuschnigg - or someone near him - has sent a Chancellery pageboy to pick up the fallen mass of bed sheets that is interfering with traffic in the Michaelerplatz.

And Grandfather Marter has again decided that the head librarian will stay at home; in fact, since he heard the first radio report of the taxi-driving, birdlike creature, my grandfather has not left the window. Grandmother brings him his coffee, and Hilke watches the Schwindgasse with him. The sun isn't down on the street yet. It's an occasional sun, anyway, and it strikes, when it does, only the topmost stories and roofs across the street - and is impressive only when it catches the brass ball cupped in the palms of a cupid atop the Bulgarian embassy. There are cupids all over, but only the Bulgarians gave theirs a brass ball to hold; or someone else gave it, perhaps to insult the Bulgarians. Anyway, it's the only embassy building on the Schwindgasse, and it's given Grandfather something to watch while he's waiting for Zahn. Grandfather has noticed that even the Bulgarians are making and receiving phonecalls today. A short, heavy man, who must have hair all over himself, has been stooped at the phone in the front-office window, all the while that Grandfather has been standing watch.

When Grandfather hears the latest news brief of the Kohlmarkt butcher's experience, he asks Grandmother for a tea with rum. The Kohlmarkt butcher has an eye for detail. Radio Johannesgasse broadcasts a picture of a madman in a bird-suit, reeking of cognac, driving a taxi with JA! SCHUSCHNIGG! chalked on the hood.

If Schuschnigg pays any attention to this local affair now, it's only because he has enough imagination to see what the Nazi news agency could do with such an item: A secret Bolshevik society of terrorists disguised as birds, taking over the city's public transportation systems to prevent voters from participating in Schuschnigg's rigged plebiscite. But local disturbances can't seem very important to Schuschnigg now. He's having trouble enough convincing old President Miklas that Germany's demand of Seyss-Inquart should probably be carried out. And old Miklas, so long inactive, is picking this occasion to offer resistance.

Perhaps Schuschnigg has read the writing on the wall, on his early-morning stroll through the dark-paneled offices of the Chancellery; Maria Theresia and Aehrenthal, and the small wood-carved Madonna for the murdered Dollfuss: a gallery of Austria's deciders - always for or against Germany.

No such heavy thoughts are weighing down Zahn Glanz. He's a bird, and flying. He's coming up Goethegasse and almost doesn't stop for the tram coming round the Opernring. It's unfortunate that Zahn makes such a display of last-minute stopping; the squeals attract the attention of some rowdy street workers, waiting for a drill-bit replacement. One of them must have just been near a radio, because the JA! SCHUSCHNIGG! on the hood appears to have special significance. It's lucky for Zahn, though, that they don't conceal their excitement and approach the taxi with stealth. Instead, they raise an awful cry and charge, and Zahn has time enough to feel quite threatened. He shoots the intersection with only one of the workers making it to the running board. And if that worker was pleased with himself - if he's been leering in the window at Zahn - he's not very happy when Zahn reaches the Schillerplatz and startles a drove of pigeons, dung-dropping their terror in flight.

'Cawk!' Zahn screams to them, birds of a feather. And the worker is convinced he should be waiting for the drill-bit with his friends, and not hanging on to the handle of the locked door, and beating his head on the rolled-up window - receiving only once and briefly, a terrible glance from the empty eyeholes of the armored eagle.

Round the Schillerplatz and through a close arch of the Academy of Graphic Arts, the worker flattens himself against the taxi and hears the echo of some awful wail he doesn't recognize as his own.

Zahn Glanz, in the clear for a moment, kindly slows his taxi and aims for the last archway of the Academy of Graphic Arts. Then he opens his door. Not too hard; he just lets it swing out, carrying the surprised, clutching worker off the running board. The worker dangles, watching the arch approach; then he lets go of the handle, and Zahn closes the door. In his rear-view mirror, he can see the worker backpedaling and almost catching up with his own momentum. But he topples over a little foolishly, and somersaults out of Zahn's mirror.

Zahn decides that alley travel is advisable, since he's not sure who's after him. But he runs out of gas in the alley alongside the Atelier Theater. His taxi comes to rest just under the billboard portrait of dark-eyed Katrina Marek, who's been a sensational Antigone for the past two weeks.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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