Free Keep The Giraffe Burning by John Sladek

crime. The judge was on her side – so much could be inferred from the way he leaned over the bench to watch her cross her legs – but the jury needed more persuading. Luckily she could count upon Major X to provide a well-known and eloquent lawyer, Bill Grass.
    Summing up for the defence, Bill explained that, just as the Copernican revolution had displaced man from the centre of the universe,just as the Darwinian revolution displaced man from his privileged position in the Great Chain of Being, so too had the Einsteinian revolution destroyed man’s last assurances that size, duration and speed were real, absolute values. Bill showed how, cut loose from faith and tradition, adrift in modem anomie, Mitzi had faltered. As they moved to acquit her, many of the jury were not ashamed to weep.
    Dr Penn, wearing his white jacket and speculum, explained to Hector Gordon just what a heart attack was. Mr Gordon scarcely listened. At length he interrupted:
    ‘Listen, doctor, the important thing is, life has become intensely real. The most ordinary objects have taken on a gloss of newness, a translucency of gem mystery. For the first time, I see what the business of life really is. That speculum of yours might be a monocle, for example. The stethoscope in your hand might be a glass of pink gin. Yes, and the eye chart on the wall behind you might be a wall of trophy animal heads, arranged in order of size, beginning with the great E elephant …’
    That weekend began with Al Cullenor, the new neighbour, borrowing the lawn mower. Bill and Mary decided to take the kids to the beach. On the way, they discussed sex education quite freely in front of the children, by using a form of ‘pig latin’ Bill had learned at Law School. ‘Atureobnay ovidesobpray omanobway ithobway a uilt-inobbay atorobindicay of the imeobtay eobshay is ulatingobovay, onsistingobcay of ightobslay ampsobcray ompaniedobaccay by a inobthay aginalobvay ecretionobsay faintly coloured with oodobblay,’ Bill opined. ‘German scientists long ago learned to call this phenomenon
Mittelschmerz
,’ Bill opined.
    They were lost, driving in the wrong direction.
    Major X knew there must be more to life than standing here in his trophy room, drinking pink gin. Somehow the elephant and the rhino had lost their freshness; looking at the musk ox, he no longer felt the crisp thrill born when his charge slammed home …
    ‘The city, too, has its wild pulse of jungle noises,’ he told himself, ‘its secret struggles, its heart of dankness.’
    He went out into it, strolling in the noonday sum without his helmet. High on a girder, he could see steelworkers eating lunch.
    Al Cullenor straddled a girder and opened his lunch box. What he found there was so shocking that …
    Major X passed on into the park. He passed ragged George, asleep under a copy of the
Wall Street Journal
, and he passed the bench where N. Decting was proposing to Lida Norse. The Major found a bench of his own. It was not until he rose from it that he realized it was freshly painted: His coat was tigered.
    ‘Marked!’ he cried, and fled. Past a blind beggar selling pencils. Past a bearded prophet whose sign advised him to Repent. Past a street vendor selling tiny wind-up dolls. On into a department-store, to the ComplaintDepartment.
    On his way home, the Major stopped to watch a fire. A fireman made his way down a ladder, carrying a blonde named Darlene.
    They finally admitted they were lost and asked directions of a rustic in bib overalls. Leaning over a rail fence and chewing a blade of grass, he explained to them that in the ultimate sense, all directions were one. Bill and Mary Grass drove on into the desert, past the bleached skulls of cattle. A few miles from the road, though they did not know it, George was crawling in the sand, dying of thirst.
    Now and then Pa and Ma Norse looked into the living room to watch the young couple on the sofa. It was in much the same spirit that Dave had looked in, one