Feeding Time

The morning bread line stretched past the zoo gates like a gray ribbon of the defeated, three blocks of hollow-eyed citizens clutching handfuls of marks that might buy a loaf yesterday but wouldn't purchase a crust today. Ernst Kellner pressed his face against the lodge window and watched Frau Zimmermann near the front—the baker's wife who'd once given his daughter free cookies—count and recount her money with the mechanical precision of the desperate.

Forty-three years old, hands scarred from twenty years of feeding wild things that had forgotten how to be wild, Ernst understood the mathematics of hunger. The zoo's monthly budget, slashed again last week, allowed three meals weekly for each animal. Kaiser the brown bear received the smallest portion, though Ernst had never explained this to the visitors who came to mock what remained of magnificence.

He lifted the metal pail of kitchen scraps gathered from the city's better neighborhoods—potato skins brown with age, bread crusts spotted with mold, bones picked so clean they appeared surgical. The bear had not touched yesterday's offering, but Ernst would try again. Some habits proved stronger than logic or despair.

"Making your rounds, old-timer?"

Hermann Voss stepped through the lodge door without the courtesy of knocking, his brass nameplate catching the weak October light. Two years ago, Hermann had cleaned elephant dung with a shovel and bitter resentment. The economic collapse had shuffled everyone's cards, and Hermann had drawn authority from the deck of the formerly powerless.

"The bear requires feeding."

"Does he, truly?" Hermann's smile contained no warmth, only the sharp satisfaction of those who'd discovered that small power over others provided adequate compensation for large humiliations suffered elsewhere. "The board meets tomorrow. They are discussing which exhibits to... how shall we say this delicately... streamline."

Through the window, Ernst observed a woman near the bread line's front collapse against a lamppost—exhaustion, perhaps, or simply the accumulated weight of too many mornings that had promised sustenance and delivered only the taste of metal coins and broken promises. The crowd barely noticed her distress; they had learned to conserve their compassion for themselves.

"Twenty minutes," Ernst said, lifting the pail with both hands.

The zoo's pathways lay nearly deserted at this hour—too early for visitors who could no longer afford the entrance fee that had doubled twice since summer. Ernst passed the permanently shuttered reptile house, its glass cases reflecting nothing but dust and abandonment; the aviary where three sparrows remained of what had once been an orchestra of tropical birds; the lion enclosure where two skeletal cats paced their endless circuits with the mechanical persistence of the utterly mad.

Kaiser sat motionless in his corner, massive frame pressed against concrete walls that had replaced the forest floor of his youth. Once, he had performed before Kaiser Wilhelm himself and the crown prince, dancing to organ music in a circus tent filled with gaslight and wonder. Now his ribs showed through fur that fell in patches, and his eyes held the particular emptiness of creatures who have surrendered not merely hope but the memory of what hope had felt like.

"I have brought your breakfast, mein Freund." Ernst poured the scraps through gaps in the iron bars, speaking the mixture of German and gentle authority he'd used with animals for two decades. The bear did not move, though his ears twitched slightly at the familiar voice. "I know it is not much. But perhaps tomorrow..."

Footsteps approached on gravel—the careful, measured steps of someone who'd learned that sudden movements invited unwanted attention. A woman walked toward the enclosure with a small boy, perhaps six years old, wearing clothes too fine for these times but carefully mended in places where prosperity's facade had worn through. The woman's handbag appeared expensive but felt light in her grip, clutched with the desperation of someone who'd sold its contents piece by piece to buy another day's survival.

"Mama, why does he not move?"

"Hush, Hans." The woman's voice carried exhaustion like a physical weight, each word requiring effort she could barely afford. "We should not have come. The money should have purchased bread instead of memories."

"But you made a promise."

"Yes, liebchen. I made many promises." Her smile held the brittleness of glass under pressure. "Look quickly, then we must go."

More visitors trickled through the gates despite the early hour and the chaos beyond the walls. University students with hollow cheeks and eyes that burned with the particular anger of those who'd been told they were the future but could see no tomorrow worth inheriting. An elderly man in a threadbare uniform still wearing his Iron Cross like armor against the reality that heroism had become a luxury no one could afford. Two middle-aged women who calculated the cost of everything—including hope—with the sharp precision of those who'd learned that sentiment was a commodity they could no longer purchase.

A group of factory workers passed by, their faces gray with exhaustion and something deeper—the knowledge that their jobs would disappear by Christmas, that their skills had become worthless overnight, that the world they'd understood had ended while they weren't paying attention.

Hans pressed his face against the outer rail, breath fogging the cold metal. "Is he sleeping?"

Ernst found himself answering without conscious decision. "No, young man. He is simply... tired."

"Tired of what?"

Ernst studied the boy's face—still capable of curiosity about suffering that wasn't his own, still young enough to believe that understanding might lead to remedy. "Of being observed by those who do not see him."

"But he's dangerous, isn't he?" Hans persisted with the relentless logic of childhood. "Mama says bears can tear people apart."

Ernst glanced at Kaiser's massive frame, the powerful shoulders that could indeed crush bone, the claws that had once killed for survival in forests that no longer existed. "Yes," he said quietly. "He could be very dangerous. But danger and evil are not the same thing."

The boy considered this with the seriousness that children brought to concepts they sensed were important but couldn't yet grasp. "Do you think he dreams?"

"What would you dream, if you were him?"

"Of running. Of the forest. Of being... free."

Before Ernst could respond, the sound of shouting erupted from the street beyond the zoo's walls. The bread line was moving—not forward toward the bakery's promise, but sideways and backward, scattering like startled birds before a storm. Someone screamed. Glass shattered with the sharp report of violence finally finding its voice.

"Riots again," the old soldier muttered, touching his medal with fingers that remembered when such decorations had meant something. "Third time this week. Perhaps the fourth."

The zoo's thin crowd pressed closer to the bear enclosure, seeking distraction from the chaos beyond the gates. Children clutched their parents' hands while adults tried to pretend that the sounds of breaking glass and angry voices belonged to someone else's nightmare.

But chaos had its own logic, and it rarely respected the boundaries others drew.

The first wave of fleeing people spotted the zoo's entrance and surged inside—not visitors seeking entertainment, but refugees from the violence in the streets. Men with flour dust on their coats and rage in their movements, women clutching empty baskets like weapons, children who'd learned that adult promises meant nothing and that safety was an illusion maintained by those too privileged to understand its fragility.

"Close the gates! Immediately!" Hermann's voice cut through the confusion as he rushed toward the entrance, his authority finally tested by circumstances beyond his control.

But authority, like safety, proved to be another illusion. The flood of desperate people poured into the zoo, bringing the street's fury with them. They moved with the particular energy of those who'd been pushed beyond endurance and needed something smaller than themselves to push back against.

Ernst watched the crowd's dynamics shift from individuals seeking shelter to something else entirely—a collective organism driven by hunger that had nothing to do with food. He'd seen this transformation before in animals: the moment when fear and frustration combined into something more dangerous than either alone.

"Look at this obscenity."

A man in a torn jacket had spotted Kaiser's enclosure, his voice carrying the bitter edge of someone who'd waited in too many lines for too many broken promises. His face bore the particular pallor of the chronically underfed, and his eyes held the glassy brightness of fever or desperation.

"They feed bears while our children starve."

The crowd pressed forward, individual frustrations merging into something larger and uglier than the sum of its parts. Someone rattled the bars. Others picked up the chant with the rhythmic intensity of a prayer or a curse: waste, priorities, enemies who deserved what they received.

Hans's mother tried to pull her son away from the rail, but the crowd had trapped them against the enclosure. The boy's eyes went wide as the adult world revealed its capacity for sudden, inexplicable violence—the same expression Ernst had seen on young animals when they first encountered human cruelty.

"It is only an animal," Ernst said, stepping closer to the enclosure, his voice carrying the calm authority he'd learned from years of managing dangerous situations with deadly creatures.

"So are we, old man." The man with the torn jacket turned his fury on Ernst with the speed of someone who'd been looking for a target and had finally found one worthy of his rage. "My daughter has not eaten meat in six weeks. This beast receives food every day while children collapse in the streets."

The accusation wasn't entirely false, and Ernst felt the weight of its partial truth. More voices joined in, each person's private humiliation feeding the collective rage like kindling added to a fire. The crowd pressed closer to the enclosure, and Kaiser finally lifted his massive head—not in challenge or defiance, but with the weary recognition of familiar danger.

"You must step back." Ernst positioned himself between the crowd and the bars, his movements deliberate and unthreatening. "This will solve nothing."

"Will it not?" Another voice from the crowd, belonging to a young woman whose educated accent suggested she'd once expected better things from life. "Perhaps it is time someone paid the price for what we have lost."

The crowd's energy shifted again, individual anger coalescing into collective permission for violence. Ernst could feel the change like a drop in atmospheric pressure before a storm—the moment when civilized people remembered that civilization was just agreement they could choose to abandon.

A rock appeared in someone's hand—small, insignificant, the kind of stone a child might skip across water in peaceful times. It flew through the air with casual precision and struck Kaiser above the left eye, opening a thin red line that began to drip onto the concrete floor.

The bear flinched and pressed deeper into his corner, massive frame somehow seeming to shrink as he tried to make himself smaller, less visible, less worthy of attention.

The crowd surged forward with the scent of blood in their nostrils.

Ernst didn't think. Twenty years of working with frightened animals had taught him that fear spreads like fire through dry grass, that cornered creatures do desperate things, and that the line between protector and protected often disappears when violence becomes inevitable. He stepped directly in front of the bars, arms spread wide, placing his body between the crowd and the bear.

"No."

The single word carried the weight of absolute decision—not a request or a negotiation, but a declaration that some boundaries would not be crossed while he drew breath. The crowd hesitated, surprised by his sudden transformation from bystander to obstacle.

Behind him, Kaiser had moved closer to the bars—not much, but enough for Ernst to feel the bear's presence like warmth against his back. The animal's breathing had steadied, as if recognizing that someone had finally chosen to stand between him and the world's anger.

"You want to throw stones?" Ernst's voice remained steady, quiet, carrying the particular authority of those who'd made peace with consequences. "Then throw them at me first."

"Ernst, get away from there immediately!" Hermann's voice carried panic as he approached with two uniformed policemen whose faces suggested they'd already seen too much violence that morning. "You are making this situation worse!"

But Ernst remained motionless, protecting something that couldn't protect itself. The crowd wavered, individual faces emerging from the collective mask of anger as people remembered, briefly, who they'd been before hunger and humiliation had transformed them into something else.

Hans broke free from his mother's grip and approached the rail, his young voice cutting through the tension with the clarity of innocence not yet corrupted by the need to choose sides.

"Will he be all right?"

Ernst looked at the boy's face—still capable of concern for creatures beyond himself, still young enough to believe that someone should try to make things better even when the effort seemed pointless. Around them, the crowd began to disperse as the police arrived and reality reasserted its claim on their attention.

"Someone must make certain that he is," Ernst said quietly.

The bread riots would burn themselves out by evening, leaving only broken glass and the memory of how quickly civilization could crumble. The zoo would close within months, another casualty of a nation that could no longer afford symbols of its former greatness. Kaiser would die before winter's end, as would many of the people who'd gathered to throw stones at him.

But none of that mattered in this moment.

Ernst remained by the enclosure as the last visitors drifted away, their anger spent like a fever that had finally broken. Kaiser had moved even closer to the bars, massive head tilted slightly toward the man who'd chosen to stand between him and the world's fury.

"There, mein Freund," Ernst said quietly, reaching through the bars to touch the bear's scarred head. "That is better, nicht wahr?"

In the distance, sirens wailed like voices from some future he couldn't imagine. But here, in this small space carved from chaos, there was only this: a simple man and a broken bear, refusing to let a broken world make them smaller than they were.

Ernst picked up his empty pail and walked back toward the lodge. Behind him, for the first time in days, Kaiser began to eat.

The sounds of the city's pain continued beyond the walls, but inside the enclosure, feeding time had finally begun.