12.

THE VERY NEXT morning, a Sergeant Oooh-lah-lah, at any rate, came roaring up to the concrete landing just under Dr. Pekar’s office in a white U.N. vehicle. Irena and Dr. Pekar could hear the engine cut off, and the sound of booted steps. There was a knock, and a slightly breathless voice.

Sergeant Colin Lemarchand was with the U.N. forces of the French army. His pale blue beret in hand and his neat blond mustache twitching in animation, the sergeant explained that he had been cruising the streets of Kosevo just below the Sarajevo Zoo, looking for a veterinarian’s sign. A Dr. Djukic had been the zoo’s veterinarian, but he had not been seen since the first days of the war.

“He’s a good man, I know him a little,” Dr. Pekar told Sergeant Lemarchand. “You can’t find him?”

“He’s in Pale,” said the sergeant. “He can’t—they won’t let him across.”

“I’m a doctor for house cats, hamsters, and lap dogs,” said Dr. Pekar.

“That will do,” said Sergeant Lemarchand. “Until a few months ago, I was an assistant pastry chef.”

         

THE ZOO WAS spread out on a hill in Poljine, above the Olympic Stadium and just beyond the Kosevo neighborhood. The U.N.’s field maps called it a contested zone. But there really was no contest between Serb paramilitaries and Bosnian zookeepers. Serbs had wheeled large guns into Poljine, at the top of the hill, to churn shells into the zoo. The park became a free-fire zone inhabited by trapped animals.

The lions and bears reared up at the alien roars and crashes, as if to challenge their invaders. But they were ensnared in their steel cages. Then the wolves, foxes, and monkeys began to starve. Zookeepers couldn’t sprint through sniper and mortar fire to feed them, though a few tried, and died next to the animals they often had reared from the time they were young.

The pumas and jaguars went wild with hunger. The shooting and shelling made them crazy with fear. Then hungry people coming in from all over did the same. Gangs attacked cages and seized peacocks, ostriches, and alpine goats for food. Serb snipers fired into the cages, slaughtering the animals—they wanted to see their bullets draw blood, like kids smashing bugs with their shoes. People in the streets nearby swore that they saw the zoo’s two lions stand on their hind legs and try to bat down bullets with their paws. They said that the lions, unlike the Blue Helmets, didn’t just stand aside.

         

SERGEANT LEMARCHAND TOLD Dr. Pekar and Irena on the short ride over that Kolo was sick. Kolo was one of three brown bears that had sat, swatted flies, and shaken off water in a cage on a raised stone platform overlooking a slender creek. When the food ran out, the bears had turned to each other for mutual protection—and then for nourishment. Kolo was the strongest or, at least, the meanest. When a company of Canadian soldiers got to the zoo, they found a clutter of bones scattered across the cage floor. Kolo had eaten his cage mates. When he realized that he no longer had company, he played with their bones.

The sergeant left his little white truck in the parking lot, where small family cars had been smashed by shells in the first days of the war. The wind, rain, and bullets of the past few months had rusted and riddled the cars, and shattered their windows; they looked like so many flattened soup cans.

“Step carefully,” said Sergeant Lemarchand. “This is what they call a contested area.”

“Unlike the rest of our city,” said Dr. Pekar.

         

SERGEANT LEMARCHAND STOPPED suddenly.

“The girl,” he said, whirling around toward Irena. “You, mademoiselle”—he deployed a phrase in French to make his point—“I do not wish to bring a young girl into a contested area.”

“Oh, that’s très ridiculous,” said Irena. “It’s not like I’m, you know, a virgin.”

As they stepped carefully up to Kolo’s cage, Dr. Pekar turned to her and murmured, “Odd choice of words.”

Kolo did not look like an animal who had recently eaten two bears. His brown coat was dry and gray; it hung over his spine and ribs like a sagging old rug. His penis was a small, lank worm. He had beached himself onto his side, gasping for breath through a slender, battered muzzle. He kicked his legs slowly, like a tired baby falling asleep. A Canadian doctor, a captain with a medical shield over the breastplate of his bulletproof vest, offered Dr. Pekar a reflexive salute. Irena sawed off a salute in return.

“I am not a veterinarian,” said Captain Pierre Enright. “But I do not think there is much more diagnosis to be done here.”

Dr. Pekar stood back from Kolo’s cage. She bent down, as if trying to peer through a keyhole, to look into the bear’s eyes. Mostly, they were closed. She watched for a long minute, in which Kolo finally batted them to wince away the pain. Sergeant Lemarchand wrenched open the iron gate for Dr. Pekar; it was quite pointlessly locked. The soldier knelt to steady the bear against his shoulder. Dr. Pekar passed her hand over Kolo’s eyes; they did not follow her hand. She had no fear of kneeling down to place her nose against his muzzle. She held her left hand against the bear’s chest; she could just about feel his heart squeeze lightly into her hand.

“He is dying for sure,” said Dr. Pekar from inside the cage. “Starving to death and mad with hunger and pain.”

“How much food would he need?” asked Captain Enright.

“I usually deal with house cats. But, say, six to eight pounds a day.”

“Meat?” asked the captain. The two doctors circled Kolo’s cage slowly.

“A little. Vegetables and fruit, mostly. And grains. But a lot.”

“Is there any way we can get six pounds of food a day for this bear?” asked Captain Enright.

Sergeant Lemarchand was already shaking his head. “Captain, we can’t count on six spoonfuls for the whole city.”

“Perhaps an article in Paris Match or The New York Times would help,” mused Captain Enright. “I’m thinking out loud. Or a television story. People love animals. Brigitte Bardot might see it.”

“There isn’t time,” said Dr. Pekar. “This boy is already eating himself up inside. It’s in his breath. Look at him. Look at him!” she said with sudden urgency. “And all you can do is hope that Brigitte Bardot sees him.” Dr. Pekar snorted.

Derision seemed to spur Captain Enright to marshal his thinking. “I understand,” he said without resentment. “How would you ordinarily end the suffering of a patient with no hope of survival? It is not a question I confront with mine,” he added.

“Pentobarbital,” said Dr. Pekar. “But you would need a lot for a brown bear. Even desiccated as he is. Do you have any?” she continued.

“Not a jot,” said Captain Enright. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but we try to keep our soldiers alive.”

“The right dose of morphine could work,” said Dr. Pekar from behind Kolo in the cage. Sergeant Lemarchand was still holding Kolo against his shoulder. Indeed, he had put a hand behind the bear’s ear, as if to protect him from the conversation. “I could never get that approved,” he said. “We need it for people.”

“You have another course of treatment,” Dr. Pekar observed. “On your hip.”

Sergeant Lemarchand’s left hand dropped softly onto the handle of his service revolver, as if he had just been reminded to feel for an old sore.

“The traditional prescription for suffering creatures,” the doctor went on. “One bullet applied directly to the brain. Effective and even humane. They are dead before they can hear the shot, much less feel it.”

Sergeant Lemarchand tipped back onto his buttocks on the cage’s cold, chipped floor. His knees had suddenly given way, and he slapped his ankles to bring them feeling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I cannot fire my weapon. Those are orders.”

“You’re a soldier,” said Dr. Pekar. “Is your gun just for decoration? Like a bracelet and earrings?”

“I know how to use it, madame,” said Sergeant Lemarchand, stressing his courtesy. “But I cannot. Those orders are the specific policy of the United Nations. They are handed down from New York. You can read them in English, French, and Russian.”

“Those pompous asses are a long way off,” Dr. Pekar retorted with growing vehemence.

“Still, I cannot fire my gun. I must account for every bullet. Please. I love animals, too. That is why I brought you and the doctor here—I’d hoped you could do something for Kolo that I could not.”

“This bear snapped at us,” Dr. Pekar suggested. Kolo, meanwhile, seemed to be simmering in pain, his murmurs growing louder.

“He was mad. He was hungry. He was going to eat us. What lie isn’t more believable than the truth right now?” she asked.

“I’ll attest to whatever you say,” Captain Enright volunteered.

But Sergeant Lemarchand saw instantly that the plot would have to begin with him, and he wanted no part of it. “My orders are clear,” he said. “In fact, nothing is clearer. Sometimes I wonder what we are supposed to do here. Relieve the siege, but help the Serbs keep it. Assist civilians, but don’t fire back at their assailants. They’ve sent me out here to help a sick bear. I can do everything but actually help him. One order holds firm: I cannot fire my gun.”

Dr. Pekar sprang forward. “Give me your gun, then,” she said.

“That’s also against orders,” said Sergeant Lemarchand. “Guns are not corkscrews or can openers that you lend out for chores.”

“What’s your problem?” Dr. Pekar shrieked at the sergeant. “I mean, what is your problem? Is the U.N. afraid that shooting a sick bear will infringe on the sovereignty of Serb bears? Are you really proud to stay neutral in the middle of a massacre? What kind of sick bastards are you Blue Helmets to leave your snug homes just to stand around and watch us bleed? I would rather have a spot on my conscience than nothing, like yours.” Her voice was hard and cold.

Kolo’s eyes seemed suddenly to lock shut. A loud crack split the sky, and reverberated through the cage; the bars buzzed softly. Kolo deflated swiftly. There was a last gasp from the big brown bear’s chest as Irena watched him flatten against the floor, falling with astounding softness into a spreading, slippery red pond.

         

SARAJEVO CIVILIANS KNEW how to get down at the sound of a sniper shot. The soldiers were surprised and baffled, Irena noticed. Sergeant Lemarchand and Captain Enright flinched and ducked, but they turned their faces up toward the trees, looking for the shot.

“Get down!” Dr. Pekar shouted at them. “Stay down!”

A voice screamed at them through the trees from the other side. “That—animal—” he shouted in bursts, “did not—deserve—to suffer. You—do.”

Another shot split the air; Irena could hear it clipping branches and leaves. “Run!” the voice shouted. “Get out! Run! Or I will give you”—he squeezed off another shot—“my autograph.”

The little group in the cage stood up slowly. Sergeant Lemarchand raised his arms above his head, to show that he had no intention of reaching for his revolver; the sniper might not have heard that he couldn’t fire it anyway. Captain Enright, who was a doctor and had no gun, did the same. Dr. Pekar and Irena followed, moving slowly back down the hill. Their arms felt heavy and weary after just a few feet.

“Wait,” Sergeant Lemarchand said to Irena. He turned around to face the trees, keeping his arms flamboyantly upraised. With slow, exaggerated movements, the sergeant unzipped his bulletproof vest and slid his arms out of it until he held the jacket almost daintily in his hands. He motioned Irena to hold still and slipped the vest almost grandly over her shoulders. “This way, mademoiselle,” he said.

As they walked back down the hill, Irena thought that she could feel a hole burning in the back of her head. When they reached flat terrain, she was both relieved and excited. She turned around, jumping on her toes, and called back through the trees, “Are you the Sniper from Slatina?” Sergeant Lemarchand helped her out of the vest, and she jumped up again, higher, shouting the question more loudly yet. “Are you the Sniper from Slatina?”

There was no response, and they headed for the sergeant’s vehicle. It was a couple of blocks before they could hear one another breathing naturally, trusting that another breath would follow.

“He would have shot us by now if he was going to,” Captain Enright pointed out.

“Perhaps we should have said thank you,” said Dr. Pekar.

“That would have seemed—odd,” said the captain.

“He might have let us come back,” said the doctor.

“There is nothing left in that zoo to care for,” Sergeant Lemarchand said. “Someone even shot the squirrels from their trees. Madame, am I really a sick bastard?” he asked Dr. Pekar.

         

MUSTAFA ABADZIC, THE zoo’s director, had taken to sleeping in an old equipment shed on the grounds. It was exposed to more sniper fire than was generally desired in a residential property, but Mr. Abadzic had been turned out of his three-bedroom apartment in Grbavica. Black-whiskered men were stuffing the small carved olive-wood elephants and zebras he had brought back from Tanzania under their black sweaters when they beat him away from his own door.

“My children will love these,” they said.

Mr. Abadzic had seen Kolo gorge himself on Slino and Guza, his old cage mates. “It’s the law of the jungle,” he told Mr. Suman, the zoo’s chief custodian, who was camped in an unshattered corner of the old chimp house. “Our jungle, this city we have now.”

The director enlisted Mr. Suman’s help in digging a grave for Kolo, in the soft ground outside the bear cage. “We shouldn’t just leave him there to draw flies,” he said. “That would be shameful.” That afternoon, the director had used a piece of burned wood to etch a message across a plank he had wrenched off a smashed storage door:

KOLO
1981–1992
WHO SAW EACH SARAJEVAN AS THE SAME

“That should stay until we can get a proper marker chiseled,” he said.

“Perhaps it should stay like that,” said Mr. Suman.

The men got shovels and dug a hole for Kolo. They waited until ten at night to begin, when it was seamlessly dark; they did not finish before midnight. They discovered that it was hard to dig a hole in pitch blackness. The moon shone no more than the rim of a coin in the sky. It was hard to see where to stick their shovels, and as the hole got deeper it became harder to find the ground. A couple of times, Mr. Abadzic missed and fell over into Kolo’s grave. They caught their breath and had a smoke sitting on their backsides on the bottom of the hole, glad to have a place to smoke where the embers of their cigarettes could glow unseen above ground.

The men climbed out of the grave and clambered into Kolo’s cage. Mr. Abadzic squinted in the darkness and found Kolo’s front feet. Mr. Suman found the bear’s hind legs. The men had not been friends before the war. They had done no more than nod at each other on any given day. Mr. Abadzic was a scholar and an executive who took yearly trips to Africa. He brought back slide photographs and delighted school groups and club dinners with his pictures of cheetahs lounging lazily in the Serengeti, baby chimps looking as if they were budding from tree branches in the Masai Mara. Mr. Suman had traveled only as far as some of the small beach towns of Montenegro. He had never married. Collecting restaurant menus and matches was his only pastime. But the men had been storm-tossed into a close association over the past few months, sleeping in adjacent battered buildings and struggling to help their charges. Sometimes they could only open a cage and hope that a red fox or some other survivor might spring across the creek into a home on the Serb side.

Mr. Suman learned that Mr. Abadzic worked hard. He dug holes and ran around sniper fire. Mr. Abadzic had discovered that Mr. Suman cared deeply about the zoo. He hadn’t barricaded himself inside when the war began but had run to the zoo out of concern for the animals. He stayed there now, in the front line of fire, to be near them even as they perished.

Mr. Abadzic and Mr. Suman tried to lift Kolo by his legs, but the bear’s great dumb brown belly left them wheezing from the strain. The men had just budged Kolo a few inches along the floor of the cage when the first bullet struck Mr. Suman in his throat. The second shot pealed through the trees and pierced Mr. Abadzic’s chest.

People nearby awakened the next day to catch sight of two new bodies alongside Kolo’s. They must have been humans—they were wearing shoes. Many wondered what two human beings might have been trying to do with a dead bear in the middle of the night that was worth risking death. When they saw the shovels beside the grave, they asked again.

Sergeant Lemarchand got a call to return to the zoo. He could see the bodies of Mr. Abadzic and Mr. Suman, but he was determined not to risk three or four soldiers’ lives to pick up corpses—whether of men or bears. The sergeant thought that it was unavailing to override the law of the jungle, or the Sniper from Slatina, in the zoo.