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'Do you feel it, Vratno?' Wut was always asking.
'A conditioned reflex,' my father would answer. 'You're pure Pavlov, Wut.'
But they didn't get far into November of '41 before it snowed, so my father had to wait awhile before going beyond the passenger stage. Wut let Vratno get the feel of the gears on the big side-valve model 600 with the sidecar, but he refused to let my father drive a straight bike until the ice was off the roads.
Wut himself was not so cautious. In fact, one Sunday in February of '42, he took one of the straight 600 overheads, 1938, and with Vratno as passenger, drove north of Slovenjgradec to the village of Bucovska Vas, where an elbow of the Mislinja River was reportedly frozen the thickest. My father stood shaking in the pine grove on the edge of the bank while Wut gingerly drove the '38 out on the ice. 'Now see?' said Wut, and began to move slowly from my father's left to my father's right - very slowly, with steady first-gear work, Wut cornered and came back, right to left; then he cornered again and came back, left to right - this time hitting second gear. When he cornered in second, his rear wheel slipped and he touched one tailpipe down to the ice; then righted the bike, slipped to the other tailpipe and righted it again. A
nd came back, right to left - now hitting third. 'Now see?' he cried, and swung his leg over from the side of the bike that was going down, this time, all the way to the rear wheel hub; he stood two-footed on one pedal and held the throttle steady while the bike righted itself. He remounted and came back, carrying a little farther in both directions each time he turned, so that my father had to come gaping out of the pine grove and stand with his toes on the river's ice heave - just to see the farthest reaches of Wut's fantastic turns. Again and again, the bike rocked over a tailpipe and touched down the rear wheel hub, and Wut swung a stiff leg to right the machine. 'Now see?' Wut screamed, and made the frozen river twang and sing beneath him. Back and forth, faster and faster, in a wider and wider radius - letting the bike almost lie flat on the ice, with the wheel hub trying to eat its way down to the running water. In a flourish, Wut tapped his rear brake very lightly - let the bike slip out from under him while he swung his leg; let the bike rest at last, laying it down gently - standing on its gas tank until it had stopped spinning.
Then the only thing Wut had trouble with was getting the heavy old '38 back up on its wheels. Gottlob's feet kept slipping on the ice when he tried to lift. My father came off the bank, and together they righted it, and wiped off the tank where some fuel had sloshed.
'Of course,' said Wut, 'you've got to feel that just right. But that's how it's done.'
'Driving on rivers?' my father said.
'No, you fool,' said Wut. 'That's how you handle tar or an oil slick. You hold your throttle steady, you get your leg out from under, and if you don't touch the brake, she should come back up on her own.'
Then they minced along the ice, walking the old '38 to where the bank was flattest. And from the bank on the far side of the river came a shouting foursome of ice fishermen on a sled with droning runners; out from wherever they'd watched the performance, they brought their strange, mittened applause.
Gottlob Wut, perhaps, had never had such a public audience before; he seemed wholly stunned. He took his helmet off and held it under one arm, waiting for the wreath or trophy, maybe, or for no more than a bearded ice fisherman's kiss. He was bashful, suddenly self-conscious. But when the sledful of fishermen arrived, my father saw that the Slovenians were hopelessly drunk and oblivious to Wut's uniform. They nudged their sled up to Gottlob's left boot; one of the fishermen used his mitten for a megaphone and shouted up to Wut, in Serbo-Croat, 'You must be the craziest man in the world!' Then they all laughed and clapped their mittens. Wut smiled; his kindly eyes begged my father for a translation.
'He said you must be the best in the world,' Vratno told Gottlob Wut, but to the drunks on the sled, my father said, in cheerful Serbo-Croat, 'Keep smiling, oafs, and bow a little as you leave. The man's a German commander, and he'll shoot your bladders if you say another word.'
Vratno had them smiling foolishly up from the sled, their heels slipping on the ice as they backed. The beefiest of them went down on his knees on the river and grunted against the runners. They straddled the sled and hugged each other, hip-to-thigh, looking like children who'd ridden their sled into a place where sleds were absurd, or not permitted.
My father held the motorcycle up for Wut, who waved after his departing fans. Poor, gullible Gottlob Wut, standing helmet-in-armpit, chin-up and vulnerable on the creaking ice.
'That was really great, Wut,' my father said. 'You were just fine.'
The Twelfth Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967, @ 4.30 a.m.
I WAS THOROUGHLY chilled and was burrowed down in the roots of my hedge when old O. Schrutt came jangling his keys down the centre-doorway aisle; for a second, I came crouching and duck-walking out from my hedge and peered down the path at him. He staggered out of the Small Mammal House and down the blood-glowing stairs.
O. Schrutt drinks on the job! Smokes pot, takes acid or pep pills. O. Schrutt pushes heroin - to the animals! Perhaps.
God, he was awful. He looked ravished. One pant leg was untucked from one combat boot; one epaulette was unbuttoned and flapped; his flashlight was jittery; he carried the keyring like a great mace.
Perhaps his mind is stretched and torn and then mushed back in shape by dark and tidal, almost lunar forces. Perhaps O. Schrutt averages three transformations a night.
But whatever cycle his insanity goes through - whatever phase this was - his effect on me was hypnotic. I crouched almost too long on the path; I would have been dumb-struck at his feet, if he hadn't sent me scrambling back to the cover of my hedge with his sudden barking at the Monkey Complex.
'Rauf!' he barked - perhaps still remembering the gelada baboon, 'Raa-ow-ff!' But all the primates kept very still, hating or pitying him.
And when he came on down the path again, he was making growls.
'Aaaaarr,' he said softly. 'Uuuuurr.'
While the Parliament meeting of Miscellaneous Range Animals tried to look casual about herding and milling together. But O. Schrutt walked the length of my hedgerow with his eye on them. When he turned down the path to the Biergarten, I ran scootched-over behind the hedge - all the way to the far corner, where I could see him move on. Sauntering, a changed man in a minute - cocky, I tell you - he whirled back to face the Miscellaneous Range Animals.
'Awake, eh?' he cried - so shrilly that the tiny kiang, the wild ass of Tibet, bolted out of the herd.
And virtually swaggering then, O. Schrutt walked on to the Biergarten - as far as I could see. He stopped a few feet before the Famous Asiatic Black Bear; then O. Schrutt leaned out toward the bear's cage and rang his keyring like a gong against the bars.
'You don't fool me,' cried old O. Schrutt, 'crouching there like you're asleep and not planning an ambush!' While the Asiatic Black Bear threw and threw himself against his cage - roaring like I've never heard, alarming the Big Cats so much that they didn't dare to roar a challenge back, but only coughed in little rasps, and unbefitting mewing noises: Oh, feed me or forget to - I'll eat old O. Schrutt or anyone else. But whatever you do, God, don't you let that Oriental bear out. Oh please, no.
But O. Schrutt boldly taunted; exhausted, the Asiatic Black Bear slumped against the front of his cage, his great forepaws dragging through the peanut shells on the path, on the cage side of the safety rope - as far as he could reach and still six inches short of old O.
O. Schrutt went on, continuing what must be the aggressive phase of his zoo watch. I heard him plunk a rock in the polar bears' pool.
