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'Pretend?' said Vratno.
'If it's not too hard,' said Wut, 'you should try to pretend that you've never driven a motorcycle before.'
'That shouldn't be too hard,' Vratno said and watched Gottlob Wut doing knee bends - limbering up the old sticky joints before mounting the monster Grand Prix racer, '39.
If you're careless with the spark retard, the kickstarter can kick you back hard enough to slide your ankle joint flush to your knee joint - shove the whole shaft of your thighbone screaming up under your lungs.
Or so claimed Gottlob Wut, the motorcycle master and secret keeper of a Grand Prix racer, '39, who was as unconcerned with politics as my father was; who hadn't yet heard of Josip Broz Tito, either.
The Eleventh Zoo Watch: Tuesday 6 June, 1967, @ 4.15 a.m.
I CAN'T IMAGINE what O. Schrutt could be doing to them. I still hear them; the whole zoo is listening. Now and then there's a door that opens suddenly on some awful animal music, and just as suddenly closes - muffles the cry.
I can only guess: O. Schrutt is beating them, one by one.
It's clearly anguish. Whenever the cries blare full force, there's an answer from the rest of the zoo. A monkey scolds, a large cat coughs, the Various Aquatic Birds are practicing take-offs and landings; bears pace; the great gray boomer is viciously shadow-boxing; more subtly, in the Reptile House, the great snakes twine and untwine. Everyone seems in angry mourning for the creatures under infrared.
I can only guess: O. Schrutt is mating with them, one by one.
There's a herd of Miscellaneous Range Animals just behind my hedgerow; they're huddled round each other, conspiring. I can guess what they're saying, nipping each other's ears with their strange, herbivorous teeth: Schrutt's at it again. Did you hear the last one? Brannick's giant rat. I know its terrible bark anywhere.
Oh, the zoo is full of gossip.
A moment ago, I crept out of my hedgerow and down to the empty Biergarten to have a word with the bears. They were all in a stew. The most fierce and famous Asiatic Black Bear squatted and roared himself upright, lunging into the bars as I scurried past his cage. I saw his shaggy arms still groping out for me when I was half a zoo block away. The Famous Asiatic Black Bear must have been thinking of his captor, Hinley Gouch - and was interpreting the nameless diabolics of O. Schrutt as no more than another capture of that deceiving Hinley Gouch's kind. For the terrible Asiatic Black Bear, all men must be Hinley Gouch - especially O. Schrutt.
I tried to calm them all, but the Asiatic Black Bear was unfit for reason. I did whisper to the polar bears that they shouldn't take it out on each other, and they floated, though uneasily, thereafter; I did beg the grizzly to have a seat and collect his thoughts, which, after a half-blind charge at me, he begrudgingly did; my gentle pair of Rare Spectacled Bears were so very worried that they hugged each other upright.
Oh, I can only guess: O. Schrutt - mad fetishist! - what is your evil indulgence that frenzies the whole zoo?
But no one can tell me. I'm in some haunted bazaar in someplace more scheming than Istanbul; in their cages and behind their fences, the animals are gossiping in a language more violent and foreign than Turkish.
I even tried a little Serbo-Croat with a Slavic-looking great brown bear. But no one can tell me a thing.
I can only guess what the last shriek meant: O. Schrutt, with ritual slowness, is strangling the coati-mundi. The cry pushes thickly through the lavender maze; now it's cut off like all the rest.
Now sliding glass is slid. And the zoo gives me a Turkish explanation.
(CONTINUING:)
THE HIGHLY SELECTIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIEGFRIED JAVOTNIK: PRE-HISTORY II
The ritual of Vratno learning to drive the 1939 Grand Prix racer was limited to Sundays. My father would wait for Gottlob Wut on the Smartin Street sidewalk in front of the Serbian woman's door. Wut was punctual, bath-robed, helmeted, shoed but unlaced - uniform under his arm. My father, in Bijelo Slivnica's leathers, would polish his indigo-blue helmet while waiting for Wut.
Gottlob Wut required a two-hour bath Sunday mornings. The tub had a ledge for his pastries and coffee. My father ate his breakfast on the hopper, lid down. They talked around and occasionally through the passing bulk of Wut's Serbian mistress, who refreshed the coffee and Wut's bath water - who at times simply squatted between tub and hopper, watching the changing colors of Gottlob Wut's many scars underwater.
Zivanna Slobod was about as effortless a mistress as anyone could come by. Middle-aged, heavy in the jaw and hips, she had a shiny, black-haired, gypsy strength to her. She never spoke a word with Wut, and when my father would compliment her services in Serbo-Croat, she would raise her head a little and show him the fine rippling vein in her neck and all her bright, heavy teeth.
Zivanna took Wut away from my father after the bath; she returned him in half an hour. This was the rubbing-down session, wherein the thoroughly bath-limp Wut would be bundled in towels and escorted from the bathroom by strong Zivanna. Vratno turned up the radio and loudly drained the bath so he wouldn't hear Gottlob Wut's joints being loosened beyond imagination on the great airless mound of bed things in Zivanna's only room with a door that closed. Vratno saw the mound once - the door had been left ajar as he followed Wut to the bathroom one morning. It would have been like sleeping on a ball, because Zivanna's bed, if that's what really was beneath the bed things, was strewn with silks and pelts, fur pillows and large, shiny scarves; a tippy bowl of fruit perched on top of the mound.
God bless Gottlob Wut for his indulgent Sundays. The man knew how to break up the weeks.
And he knew everything about his 1939 Grand Prix racer. He could strip it in ten minutes. It was to Wut's unending sorrow, however, that he hadn't the time to do anything about the camouflage paint. Some appearances had to be maintained. Wut was fortunate enough to have a most agreeable motorcycle unit; they never reported the racer's presence to the overseers of the German scout command. Gottlob kept them happy by giving each his turn on the racer, although this pained him a good deal. Wallner was too cocky with it - had no respect for the power; Vatch was afraid of it and never shifted out of second; Gortz ground gears; Bronsky floated corners, one gear too high; Metz was an utter dolt about the overuse of brakes - he brought the racer back smoking. Even out of Slovenjgradec on a very open road, Gottlob was nervous about anyone else riding his racer. But certain sacrifices had to be made.
With my father, Wut was very cautious. They began by riding the racer double - Wut driving, of course, and carrying steady instructions back to his passenger. 'Now see?' said Wut, and would corner neat, with a whining, flawless down shift at the break of the turn. My father's eyes were shut tight, the wind screamed in his ear holes and moved his helmet up and down. 'You can even take it up a gear when the curve is banked,' said Wut. 'Now see?' And would never break the steady, increasing pace when he changed his gears; and would never miss a gear, either. 'Never miss,' said Wut. 'There's too much weight behind you to miss a gear and hold the road.' And would give an example: he'd pull in the clutch and freewheel the racer into a turn. 'Do you feel?' Wut asked. 'You'd never hold this corner out of gear, would you?'
'Oh, my God no!' my father answered, to show as quickly as possible that he felt very surely they wouldn't hold the curve. And Wut would ease the clutch out; they'd feel the sweet and heavy gear pull drawing them back to the crown of the road.
If you were deaf, you would never know when Gottlob Wut was shifting; he was much smoother than an automatic transmission.
