Siege 13 by Tamas Dobozy Page B

realize that the only life that matters, the only place you exist, is on the inside, a world you no longer mention, filled with wantsso unrealizable there’s no point in even talking about them, whole continents of desire taken off the map, excised but ever-present even as your wife and child talk to you and you pretend to listen.
    This, I suppose, is why on one lonely business trip I ended up leafing through the Yellow Pages looking at the ads for escort services. It seemed ideal, the intentions were absolutely clear—sex on one side, money on the other—and none of the stuff people who had affairs, and I knew a few of them, had to deal with: running a second relationship involving as many compromises as the first, the fear of exposure, the snowballing of desire into demands: “I want us to take a trip together!” “I want you to leave your wife!” “If we’re to continue together we have to do it honestly and in the open!” And so these people, most of them men, would be forced to choose between a home life that was, except for the occasional irrepressible urge, the one they wanted, and a life that had no basis except for those urges. Who needed that kind of stress? As far as relationships went, my marriage was as good as I was likely to get, and beyond that I just wanted to be left alone, and to have sex. The call girls, prostitutes, whores, whatever you called them, provided all the benefits of an affair with none of the risks.
    Except of course an ever-increasing loneliness whenever I placed another call, ushered another girl into my room, handed over another wad of cash I’d covertly put aside. Every night I spent with Judit I’d awaken at three in the morning, the worst possible hour, and gaze at the twinkling city, the Danube, thinking of how to get out of my situation, of what could still be rescued or restored and what it would take.
    Then Judit would wake up, her hand would travel up my spine, and she’d tell me another crazy story about a sailor in the Museum of Failed Escapes, consoling me not so much with alternatives as with putting off the decision, not thinking about it, so that when she finished I was still in exactly the same place. She knew exactly what to do, what I wanted.
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    We met just after I arrived in Budapest, one night when I’d gone out hoping to lose myself in the city as I’d done on nights in countless other cities, wandering in and out of bars, looking for someone to hook up with, a businessman out for a drink, a banker from the U.K., some Hungarian guy, men who’d also taken off their wedding rings. I think on this occasion his name was Gerg ő , and he took me to the Tip-Top Klub, one of the city’s strip bars. I was too drunk, about to get more drunk, and already listening with regret to the rising sound of morning traffic.
    Judit was one of three girls we ended up sitting with, Gerg ő strolling over to their table and asking if they’d mind. They didn’t mind, they didn’t care, they were sitting in identical shorts, tight, low-cut T-shirts, drinking straight cherry pálinka over ice. I ended up sitting next to Judit, who turned to me with a sour smile and asked what I was doing in Budapest.
    Two hours later, on the Margit Bridge, I stood in the first light of morning holding up Judit, caressed by one of those cool summer breezes that almost makes you happy to be drunk, sleepless, and still up that early. I shuffled her around to face Margit Island, then around again to gaze past the parliament with its neo-Gothic spires, at the Lánc Bridgebeyond, then the Erzsébet Bridge, the green river winding itself away. All of the girls Judit had been sitting with danced at the Tip-Top Klub. I knew what “dancing” meant, and Judit knew I did, and that more often than not they danced for people like me, “men from the west,” as she said, who’d get drunk, have their Visa cards