Siege 13. Tamas Dobozy

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 there 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