Siege 13

by Tamas Dobozy

  Of the animals they’d released, a few vultures and eagles remained, circling above the zoo and drifting down lazily to feed on the plentiful carrion in the streets. When they returned to their nests, Sándor would wonder what was more poisonous in their bellies, the flesh of communists or fascists. He would say things like that. They held discussions, long into the night, and József said the fascists were wrong to speak of their beliefs, the society they envisaged, as natural, for no animal was ever interested in war for glory, or compiling lists of atrocities, or mastering the world, or getting rid, en masse, of another species, and that more often than not what animals did was tend only to their immediate needs, and in doing so created a kind of harmony . . . “Harmony?” laughed Sándor. “You sound like a communist!” And he spoke of how a male grizzly will kill the cubs belonging to another male so that the female will mate with him; how he’d once heard about a weasel that came into a yard and killed twenty-five chickens, biting them through the neck, without taking a single one of the corpses to eat; how certain gulls will steal eggs from others, sit on them until they hatch, and then feed the chicks to their own young; how a cat will play with whatever it catches, torturing it slowly to death, all out of amusement. “Does that sound like harmony to you?” he asked József.

  Zamertsev looked a moment at József, who sat there trembling in the creaking chair in the headquarters the Red Army had put up in one of the half-obliterated mansions along Andrássy Boulevard, still dressed in the ragged attendants’ uniform, unwashed these hundred days, his hair matted and filthy, so shrivelled by hunger Zamertsev thought he could see the man’s spine poking through the skin of a belly fallen in on its emptiness. Then Zamertsev came around the desk and grabbed József’s chin roughly in one hand and said, “I’m not interested in what you think I want to hear. Politics. . . .” He glanced at the interpreter, who raised his eyebrows. “I want to protect my . . . the people’s army . . . which means telling me about Sándor, what he did, what I’m dealing with . . .”

  Protect the people’s army. József wanted to laugh. If your soldiers had been kept in check, if they hadn’t come in wanting a safari all their own, we wouldn’t have had to free the animals in the first place. After that, Sándor seemed intent on prowling around the zoo as if he was an animal himself, even though József warned him to stay inside, because there wasn’t a day when one of the carnivores that was still alive didn’t come upon another, the polar bear devouring the wolves, the wolves taking apart the panther, the lion emerging at night. But that’s how it was then: József working hard to conserve himself, to survive, while Sándor had given up on everything—first sleep, then food, then safety—divesting himself of every resource.

  Somehow Sándor had gotten word to the Russians that the lion was living in the tunnels of the subway, and when the other predators were gone—having finally eaten one other, or been shot, or wandered off—then the lion took to eating stray horses. Sándor would point out its victims to József when they went out to gather snow for drinking water, Sándor hobbling along, weakened enough by then to need the help of one of Teleki’s canes, though he still had enough presence of mind to show József how it was teeth not ordnance that had made the gaping holes along the flanks and backs and bellies of the horses. “The lion must be weakened,” said Sándor, clutching himself, “otherwise, it would have dragged the carcass away to where it lives, and eaten the whole thing.”

  “Or maybe it’s too full to bother,” said József, envious of its teeth.

  At night, József would awaken and not even turn toward Sándor’s pallet, because he knew he wasn’t there. Night after night he’d awaken and Sándor would be out. Sleepwalking is what József thought at first, but when he asked about it, Sándor would laugh and say he’d been out “getting horses.” There wasn’t a lot to what Sándor said anymore, though truth to tell József himself was having trouble coming up with anything to say, and of saying it, when he did, in a meaningful way.

  “My soldiers tell me Sándor was meeting with them,” said Zamertsev. “That he was arranging lion hunts in the subway tunnels.”

  “You could fit a herd of horses in there,” nodded József. “But it was very dark. And the soldiers were always drunk. And there were bullets flying all over the place.”

  “It was one way to feed the lion,” said Zamertsev. “You knew about it. Perhaps even helped him?”

  No, József shook his head, and then a second later, he nodded yes, and then stopped, not knowing who or what he’d helped, deciding that it certainly wasn’t Sándor. Zamertsev was wrong to think that Sándor was feeding the lion, for that’s what József had thought at first as well, as if the lion and Sándor were two separate things. But it was better that Zamertsev think this than what József knew to be the truth, the transformation he’d witnessed the day he’d carried Sándor to the subway entrance, one of the few that wasn’t bombed out or buried in rubble or so marked by the lion’s presence that even humans could sense the danger there. He’d pressed his body against the door—it was an old service entrance used by the engineers and subway personnel, wide enough to fit a small car, covered with a corrugated metal door—envisioning that awful metamorphosis.

  As it turned out Zamertsev wasn’t like the other soldiers, so easily led into the same trap. He sent for one of his men and told him to get a map of the old Franz Josef Underground Line, staring silently at József until the blueprints were delivered, at which point he spread them across the desk and began tracing the possible routes into and out of the subway, ignoring entirely the service entrance József had told him about. It was as if Zamertsev knew, József thought, as if he’d discerned the bits of the story he’d left out, and was even now being guided over the map by what József hadn’t told him about that last night, when Sándor had crawled over and whispered to him of the effort of getting horses for the lion, of how weak he’d become, though what József really heard in his voice was a hunger so great it would have swallowed him then and there if Sándor had had the strength, if he felt he could have overpowered his friend. “I can’t do it alone,” Sándor mumbled. “I can’t walk.” When József asked if their friendship no longer meant anything to him, Sándor rubbed the place in his skull where his cheeks had been and said something about “word getting around,” and the soldiers “staying away,” and then paused and smiled that terrible smile, lipless, all teeth. “It’s because I’m your friend that I’m asking you to do this. There is no greater thing a friend could do,” he said, laughing without a trace of happiness.

  József had looked at him then, turning from where he’d been facing the wall, hugging himself as if in consolation for the emptiness of his stomach, for the delirium of this siege without end, the constant fear, the boredom, waiting on the clock, the slow erasure of affection, of the list of things he would not do. “The city is destroyed,” he said, not wanting to do as Sándor asked, not wanting even to address it, for he thought he’d caught another implication in his voice now, one even worse than what the words had at first suggested. “There are people dead and starving,” he continued, “the Soviets are looting, hunting, raping, and you’re worried about a lion. Fuck the lion,” said József, “fuck everything,” and he turned over on his pallet, lifting the layers of plastic sacks and tarpaulin they used for blankets. But Sándor nudged him again, and when József let out an exasperated moan and turned, he saw that his friend was already half transformed, the hair wild around his head and neck, his fingernails much longer than József’s, and dirtier too, packed underneath with the hide and flesh of horses and men and what else, reduced from malnourishment and injury and trauma to crawling around on all fours. “I need you,” growled Sándor, though he had lost so much by then that it came out like a cough, the cords in his throat too slack, or worn, for much noise, and it cost him to raise his voice above a whimper.

  Need me? wondered József, rising from the sheets and drawing Sándor’s head to his chest. You don’t know what you need, he thought, as if t
here were two pulses beating in counter-rhythm within Sándor, two desires moving him in opposite directions. He held him like that for a while, feeling his friend’s eyelids blinking regularly against his skin, thinking of how Sándor had run out of the zoo after Gergő and Zsuzsi, trying to gather up their limp forms, of how often they’d found him squatting in the cage of this or that dead animal, as if by lifting a wing or an arm or a leg he might reanimate them, or, as József had once observed, actually put on the animal like a suit of clothes and become it, leaving his humanity behind. At the same time Sándor had been moving in the opposite direction, trying to keep in mind who he was, who he’d been, what he cared about.

  “Listen, Sándor,” he murmured, frightened by what was taking place in his friend’s body, the spasms that passed through it as he held him. “You have to pull yourself together,” he said, “the siege won’t last forever.” But Sándor was already past the idea of waiting, József knew that, past thinking of what had happened and what was to come. What he really wanted, what he needed, had nothing to do with József at all, for József was already disappearing for Sándor—disintegrating into the state of war, falling apart with the capital and the zoo, with the death of the animals—and all Sándor needed to realize his own disappearance was this one last act, this final favour. But things weren’t like that for József, not yet, for the presence of Sándor was still keeping him intact, as if the strength of their friendship, the history they shared, whatever it was in his character that Sándor loved, could recall József to himself. He looked at Sándor and saw what the war had done to friendship after it had finished with everything else—with sympathy, with intelligence, with self-awareness, with loyalty and affection and love—all those impediments to survival, all those things that got in the way of forgetting who you were. It was for this that József envied Sándor, for Sándor had forgotten him just as he’d forgotten that the soldiers he’d fed to the lion were men, that the bodies the birds fed on where those of women and children, that there was even such a thing as his own life, or anyone else’s, and that it might be worth preserving.

  When he finally rose up with Sándor that night, carrying him in his arms like a child, József wasn’t sure if he could do what Sándor wanted him to do, because he was still clinging to his friend’s memory, unwilling to let him go, as he would weeks later, even more so, after the conversation with Zamertsev, after the Soviet hunting party had gone out—sober this time, no horses—carrying flashlights and head-lamps, determined to do it right. He had set out that night in exactly the same way, out the door, moving along, bent with Sándor’s weight under arc lights and stuttering street lamps, dodging patrols that weren’t really patrols but an extension of the three days of free looting the commanders had granted their troops.

  By then he knew what Sándor needed as much as Sándor did—this is what József would not tell Zamertsev—and when they arrived at the subway entrance and swung open the door and looked inside, József hesitated. And when Sándor, resting his head against his old friend’s chest, asked to be put down on the threshold, József laughed and said no, it was fine, they could go in together, it didn’t matter. “Please,” said Sándor, jerking limply in József’s arms. “You’ve been better with your grief,” he said, “better able to use it—to help make yourself stronger.” With this, József finally understood what Sándor wanted, and why, and József would remember it as the moment when he finally gave in to the siege, to its terrible logic, to what Sándor hoped to become, what he needed József to witness. He said goodbye before putting Sándor down and closing the door on him. Then there was only the weakness, from carrying his friend across the ravaged city, from using up what little strength was left in closing and slumping against the door, too tired now to pull it open, knowing he would have nightmares in the years to come—nightmares of banging on it, wrenching at the handle, calling out to Sándor—only to wake to the terror of loss, alone in the dark with all he’d been separated from, as if there was no way to figure out where he was, where he began and ended, until he realized what was out of reach. It was Sándor’s last gift, to József and the lion both, what he thought they needed to live, as if grief could work that way, though in the end it was only what he’d wanted: the death of whatever it was—affection, friendship, love—that kept him in place, reminding him of what he was and in that way of what he’d seen, when all he wanted by then was the roar and the leap—the moment when he was finally something else.

  Sailor’s Mouth

  T WAS 1957 and the sailor built a plastic boat. Everything on it was transparent—plastic hull, plastic mast, plastic sail—and he lay down in it with a sack of kifli and a jug of water and headed south from Budapest, down the Danube, toward the Black Sea.”

  “Did he make it?”

  “No, he was seen. His boat is in the Museum of Failed Escapes.”

  “There’s a museum like that?”

  “It’s in the ninth district. A private collection. One day I’ll take you there.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” Judit shrugged, her skin dark even for a Hungarian, long hair trailing on the pillow like rays from a black sun.

  Her daughter, Janka, was five years old, with the same black hair. She was standing in the doorway the first night I carried her mother home. It was the tail end of an ordinary flirtation, Judit pretending she was drunk and her guard was down and she was doing something she didn’t do for any man—show him where she lived—while I held her arm saying the streets of the eighth district were no place for a woman in her condition, all giggles and hiccups, fingers fluttering in my face. But it was really Janka I was after, having listened to Judit describe her, the life they led, their home, the food they ate, the kind of places the girl played. When we arrived, there was an old woman holding the door—the grandmother I guessed—hair covered in a lace shawl, standing stooped on the other side of the open door threatening Janka with a beating, no dinner for a week, if she didn’t come inside immediately. The old woman was unsurprised when Judit and I stumbled through, little Janka trailing behind grasping after her mother’s hand. I put Judit on the couch, mumbling that she’d be okay, that she was just sleepy. The old woman stared at the floor, shaking her head. “I told her never to bring anyone here.”

  I was supposed to have stayed in Budapest only a day, then gone on to Romania. “You stay as long as it takes,” my wife, Anna, said. We had a child already, seven years old, Miklós, who was as eager as his mother for a brother or sister, it didn’t matter, he’d been waiting as long as he could remember, smiling into my face as I said goodbye at the airport, telling him I was going to a place where orphanages were overflowing with children desperate for older brothers. Anna stood there also smiling, stroking the back of Miklós’s hair as I spoke to him, once in a while backing up what I said, even jumping in to describe what the little girl would look like—olive eyes, curly hair, dark brown skin—the three of us picking out names—Juliska, Klára, Mária—as we waited for me to go through security.

  Anna and I had been cleared to adopt years ago, when it became obvious that the magic that had produced Miklós was gone, vanished along with the conversations we’d once had (apart from how our son was doing, how much money we needed for daycare, renovations, bills), and our interest in concerts and art galleries and sex with each other—everything gone except the three or four glasses of wine we drank every night (that we could still agree on), though by the time of my departure for Budapest Anna was slipping even in this, and making up for it by criticizing me for drinking too much. Instead of dealing with it, our marriage, we decided, or Anna did, to become political and adopt a child.

  We’d gone through the adoption course, sitting beside other desperate couples, listening to lectures on cultural sensitivity, answering awkward questions about our sex life, swearing that we never touched drugs. We’d gotten our certificate, endured the routine visit of the social worker, who slept in our guest room and conclu
ded his assessment by saying Anna and I had a “very strong bond of friendship,” which means he knew we’d lied on the sex question.

  But there was no baby. More than one agency told us we were too particular, wanting a girl, preferably no older than three (though we were willing to go as high as six) from that part of Hungary called Erdély—“Transylvania” in English—ceded to Romania in 1919 by the Treaty of Trianon. This was Anna’s obsession, inherited from her beloved father, an old man when I knew him, hair poking from his ears, ceiling lights bringing out the veins in his head, which he shaved with electric clippers every morning. He was always sitting in the kitchen in that awful house in North Ward, old calendars clinging to the wall with their maps of Hungary from before 1919, and then, inside that territory, the tiny Hungary of today marked with a red border. Her father was one of those angry nostalgics—Trianon this, Trianon that; “kis Magyarország nem ország, nagy Magyarország mennyország”; fondly recalling how much lost territory Hitler had returned between the wars—gnashing his teeth at the two million ethnic Hungarians stranded in Erdély, how they were being “culturally cleansed,” not allowed to publish in their own language, schools closed, whole villages uprooted and forcibly assimilated to the south, politicians such as Ceaus¸escu dreaming of their disappearance, barely restrained from the genocide they would have preferred—why wait three generations if you didn’t have to?—when there’d be no one left to testify that the place had never been Romanian. Meanwhile the Hungarians kept hanging on—to their language, their culture, their identity—ninety years running.