The Betrayers

by David Bezmozgis

  There they sat in relative privacy, engaging in a conversation that, to a casual observer, would have seemed perfectly congenial. There were no raised voices, no scowls. Not the least sign of agitation. Thus was such business conducted.

  Amnon said, I’m here on behalf of an interested party.

  —What party might that be? Kotler asked.

  —It’s of no consequence.

  —Is that so?

  —Mr. Kotler, you’re a politician. You’ve taken an unpopular position. You must know that many people are unhappy with you. Some of them contacted me. Who specifically? Avi, Yossi, Moshe, Dudi. What does it matter? If I told you who, it would only be a distraction. Who isn’t important.

  —So then.

  —So then these people wanted to give you one last chance to change your mind.

  —You see? You say who isn’t important, but it is important. Clearly, if these people knew me at all, they would know that this here is a waste of time. With me, this road leads nowhere. I am a famously stubborn person, Mr. Amnon. Famous for being stubborn. I assume you’re aware of this.

  —I am, Mr. Kotler. I am a great admirer of your stubbornness. But I assume you are aware that, even without your cooperation, the vote will still go in favor of the withdrawal. In this instance, your stubbornness won’t change the outcome.

  —So then why bother with me?

  —Because the people I represent would like to see everything go as smoothly as possible. They are concerned about the safety of the soldiers and the settlers both. It is an emotional issue. And you are an influential person. People respect you. They listen to what you have to say. If you continue to speak out against the operation, you could incite a bad reaction. You yourself may not be aware of the consequences.

  —If the people you represent fear the consequences, they should be the ones to reconsider. We live in a democracy, Mr. Amnon. This is Israel, not Iran. In a democracy a man can speak his mind. When I speak out against this plan, it is not to incite a bad reaction, it is to prevent my country from making a bad mistake.

  —That is all very well, Mr. Kotler. But you have had your say. You have had it in the Knesset and in the pages of the New York Times. Now you are being asked to be quiet for a little while. You are being asked not to make a big production by resigning from the cabinet. Nobody is even asking you to say you support the operation. You are just being asked to step into the shadows for a moment.

  —Mr. Amnon, I will be as clear as I can. I spent thirteen years in Soviet jails and camps fighting for my right to come to Israel. If you or the people you represent think that I can be intimidated by this sort of KGB thuggery, you are mistaken.

  —Mr. Kotler, I didn’t expect you to say otherwise. In fact, I confess that I would have been disappointed if you had. But since your opposition will not materially change the outcome, I ask why you should martyr yourself in vain?

  —Now we’re speaking of martyring?

  —Believe me, this gives me no pleasure.

  —Mr. Amnon, the KGB read from the same script.

  —The truth is, I am trying to protect you.

  —Line for line.

  At this, Amnon let his hand fall upon the envelope that he’d rested in his lap.

  —No pleasure at all, he said.

  —Let’s try without the theatrics, Kotler said.

  Amnon smiled ruefully and tapped the envelope with an index finger. He proceeded to slide it from his own lap over to Kotler’s. He did so as if with profound regret, as if under duress. Kotler let it lie there without touching it.

  —You can feel free to open it, Amnon said.

  —I haven’t the least interest, Kotler replied.

  —Now who is being theatrical?

  Kotler picked up the envelope, felt the slickness and pliancy of its contents, and returned it to Amnon.

  —They are photographs, Mr. Kotler.

  —So they are.

  —I encourage you to take a look before you dismiss my proposal.

  —Mr. Amnon, I hope I haven’t given you the impression that we are engaged in a negotiation. There is nothing in those photographs that would lead me to change my mind. Rest assured, I have a healthy appreciation of my own vulnerabilities. However, if, God forbid, those photos depict some indiscretion committed by my children or my wife, I am sure your people would have, if not the moral, then the political sense not to publicize them. In either case, I have absolutely no desire to look at your garbage.

  That was the end of their conversation. Amnon walked off with his garbage and the next morning it was plastered on the front page of every newspaper in Israel.

  FOUR

  Small round halogen lights had been set into the flagstones of the promenade, evidently part of some recent beautification project. From Lenin Square, the lights formed an illuminated path that extended about a kilometer, as far as the Hotel Oreanda. After a dinner at a restaurant that overlooked the square and the harbor, Kotler and Leora followed the path, leisurely now, feeling, for the first time since the news had broken, not like two culprits harried and pursued. The day’s heat had subsided, and the nighttime air felt gentle, consoling, as if bestowed upon them by a sympathetic spirit. The day’s throngs had also thinned, and most of the people on the promenade proceeded as they did, without urgency, seemingly without destination. At a certain point, a column of shops and nightclubs split the promenade into two branches. The lower branch bordered the sea; the upper branch ran between two rows of storefronts. For no particular reason, Kotler and Leora followed the upper branch and saw themselves reflected in the darkened storefronts on either side. Out in the open, with their images duplicated again and again, it was as though they had unwittingly made a bold statement of exhibitionism. Not only could they now be seen but, in this hall of mirrors, they could not be missed.

  They walked for some time without speaking. With their arms linked, they gave the impression of a couple complete unto themselves, unburdened by the sorts of complications that could lead a person with a constitution weaker than Kotler’s—weaker than Leora’s, he believed—to commit some desperate, rash, irredeemable act. In the matter of taking one’s self in hand, Kotler had world-class credentials. He had mastered his emotions in circumstances far more dire than these. To prove the point to himself, he summoned up an anodyne image from childhood, from this very place, fifty-three summers ago.

  —Did I tell you my father was something of a sportsman? Kotler said to Leora.

  She shook her head.

  —In Lvov, as a boy, before the Soviets took over, he played soccer and ran track and field for the Maccabi sports club. He claimed to have been their best sprinter.

  —That’s something else you never told me. Your father was Zionist?

  —He didn’t tell me himself until I informed him that I wanted to immigrate to Israel. I knew growing up that he took a dim view of the Soviet Union, but only in the way most children knew such things about their parents. He’d make a veiled remark. He’d listen covertly to the BBC. But not until I announced myself did he reveal that he had once been the fleetest little Zionist in Lvov!

  —No, you never told me, Leora said.

  By the time Kotler was a boy, his father was no longer in shape to run. At the front he’d been wounded in the knee, and the wound had never properly healed. Nevertheless, he retained his love for sport and tried to cultivate this interest in Kotler. Physically, they looked very much alike—there were a few childhood photos of his father preserved from before the war, and Kotler could see that the resemblance between him and his father was striking. Even now, when Kotler looked in the mirror, he saw his father’s face. Increasingly, he sought his father’s face—but that was another story. Yet somehow, in spite of this resemblance, Kotler had failed to inherit his father’s knack for running. His father did not easily accept this. When Kotler was little, his father tried to train him. They’d be walking on the street and he’d point to a tree or a lamppost fifty meters away and tell Kot
ler to run to it. They’d do the whole thing very formally. Kotler would get down into a crouch and his father would keep time on his wristwatch. Borya: Ready, steady, go!

  Kotler saw a version of this scene before his eyes. The length of pavement near the building they had inhabited in Lvov. He remembered his father calling the commands, and he also remembered hearing neighbors taunt him with the mocking couplet Zhid, zhid, na verevochki bezhid. Kike, kike, running on a string. And here in Yalta, perhaps on this very stretch, in the late evening, they had repeated the exercise. Solomon, stop torturing the boy! his mother had admonished his father, who had dismissed her with a wave of his hand. Meanwhile, little Borinka knelt down and looked over his shoulder to see his father peering intently at his watch face, the device pinched between the thumb and index finger of his right hand. Kotler knew he wasn’t fast, but he wanted to please his father. And, on some level, his childish heart never quite relinquished the hope that, miraculously, the next time, his legs would unleash their latent power and whirl beneath him like a blur.

  Kotler released Leora’s arm and handed her his hat.

  —Time me, he said with an impish smile. From here to that post.

  Leora arched an eyebrow, but Kotler was already bending down to assume a semblance of the sprinter’s crouch, or as much of one as the constraints of age and inactivity allowed.

  —Whom should I call if you have a heart attack?

  —An ambulance, Kotler said.

  Kotler looked up at her. From here to the post, he said. Ready, steady, go.

  Leora shook her head with mild exasperation but turned her wrist and held her watch face between her thumb and index finger, just as his father had.

  A few people gazed with benign amusement at the spectacle of the little potbellied Jew chugging along the promenade, knees and elbows pumping. Kotler clapped his palm on the post when he reached it, making a satisfying, declarative noise. Then he trotted back to Leora like a spaniel, beaming with self-satisfaction.

  —So, how did I do? Kotler asked.

  —A new world record, Leora said. She reached over and gently wiped the perspiration from his brow. How do you feel? she asked.

  —Like a boy.

  —You are a boy, Baruch. People say you took up with a younger woman, but the truth is that I took up with a boy, Leora said affectionately.

  —That’s because with you I can be a boy.

  On Karl Marx Street they saw a collection of cars waiting, marked taxis on one side and unmarked sedans on the other. The drivers of the unmarked sedans—bored, surly-looking men—leaned against their vehicles. Across the way, the cabbies congregated in a group, smoking and bantering. One of them, a short stocky man with a baseball cap and a yellow reflective vest—the kind worn by crossing guards or construction workers—spoke occasionally into a walkie-talkie and barked orders at arriving drivers.

  Because they were already on that side of the street, Kotler and Leora approached the driver of one of the sedans, whose car was at the head of the line. Grim-featured, with a thick black mustache, he looked to be from the Caucasus. As they neared, he eyed them as if he suspected they were out to do him ill.

  —You’re for hire? Kotler asked genially.

  —I am. Where to?

  Kotler named the street.

  —One hundred hryvnia, the man replied bluntly.

  The sum amounted to a little over ten dollars, hardly a fortune, well within their means, but, Kotler felt, inflated nonetheless. He was long in the habit of not letting himself be arbitrarily bettered. In this regard, a man was well advised to be scrupulous. Slacken here or there, let this or that trifle pass, and it set a bad precedent, eroded the substrate of one’s character.

  —It’s a little high, Kotler said.

  —If you don’t like it, the driver replied, you can go across the street. Ride in one of theirs. But I bought this car. It belongs to me. A Nissan Maxima. I paid for it with my own money. I take care of it. I answer for it. What do you expect me to accept in return, crumbs?

  —I understand, Kotler said and took Leora by the arm.

  If righteous anger was the man’s negotiating tactic, Kotler didn’t care for it. He’d encountered it in more consequential settings and hadn’t indulged it there either.

  —If you understand, then pay! the driver shouted after them.

  Kotler and Leora crossed the street to the taxi stand.

  —And they ask why we didn’t make peace with Arafat, Kotler said.

  Since the man with the vest and the cap was the authority, Kotler addressed him.

  —Fifty hryvnia, the man said, precluding any need to negotiate.

  —Very well, Kotler replied.

  He was surprised to see the man walk to the lead cab, shrug out of his vest, and toss it and the walkie-talkie through the driver’s-side window and onto the passenger seat. The man then opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. How the other cabbies were supposed to manage without his generalship, Kotler didn’t quite understand. But wasn’t that the beauty of life—when it departed from sense? The little car, another Lada, sputtered to life and Kotler and Leora took their places in the back.

  The driver stepped on the accelerator and the car bolted forward. Traffic was sparse but the driver pressed ahead as if he were in a terrific hurry. He weaved around slower vehicles and aggressively took the turns. Kotler and Leora were thrown against each other like riders at a Luna Park.

  —We’re on vacation, Kotler called to the driver.

  —What’s that?

  —We’re on vacation, my friend. We’re in no hurry.

  —Ah, forgive me. Habit, the driver said and slowed down.

  He glanced at them in the rearview mirror as though really seeing them for the first time.

  —Where are you from? he asked.

  —Moscow, Kotler said, after sifting through his mind for the appropriate choice.

  —Moscow? Intellectual people like you? What are you doing here?

  —Meaning?

  —One doesn’t encounter many people from Moscow. Not intellectual people. I thought the fashion was to go west. To Turkey or Cyprus.

  —We’ve been west. We got nostalgic for Crimea.

  —I suppose, the driver said. If one hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t have the right perspective. I’m here every summer now for twelve years. To me, Cyprus sounds good. But for that you need money. Have you been there?

  —I have, Kotler said. But only for work.

  —You’re a businessman? A banker?

  —No, nothing like that. International development.

  —Oh yeah? the driver said, with due indifference.

  Kotler had in fact been part of a UN-sponsored mission to see how deeply the Cypriot Turks and Greeks had buried their hatreds. Deep enough for radishes, Kotler had felt. In a generation or two, maybe deep enough for olives.

  —Even after their crisis, I hear Russian people still keep accounts in Cyprus, the driver said.

  —Apparently, Kotler said. I personally don’t. But Lena here does.

  —Is that so? Is it hard to get one?

  —The more money the easier, Leora said.

  —Isn’t that the truth! the driver said mirthfully.

  They had turned off the main road and started up into the darker foothills. The driver maneuvered the car along streets that were badly lit and seemingly unmarked. He accomplished this while swiveling his head back to better engage Leora on the subject of her fictitious numbered bank account. After all his illustrious battles, Kotler thought, wouldn’t this be a fitting end.

  —If I had the money, I’d stash it there. Then I’d go on vacation and pay it a visit. The driver laughed. Now, that’s relaxation! A few hours on the beach and then pop into the cool vault to see my money, give it a little cuddle, make sure it’s safe and sound. Isn’t that how the rich live?

  —Once a week, without fail, we go to the bank and cuddle our money, Leora said. Or our health suffers.

  —Ha
! the driver laughed again and sought Kotler’s eyes in the rearview mirror. What a girl! You’re a lucky man.

  —Evidently, Kotler said.

  —Does your missus know? the driver asked.

  —Pardon?

  —Your missus, the driver repeated affably. Mine is in Donetsk, where I’m from. I’m here only in the summers. To earn money. I have a girl here too. It’s natural. My missus knows but she has a modern attitude.

  —Well, Kotler said, mine has an ancient one.

  At the house, the lights were on in the front rooms. Through the closed windows, the unintelligible sound of a television program surged and plummeted. Holding hands, Kotler and Leora fumbled in the darkness along the side of the still-unfamiliar house. Kotler kept expecting to rouse a goose or a hen but the birds had apparently retired to their roosts. Sensible, reliable, domestic chicken life. Short on excitements but also on dismays.

  Kotler found the lock with his key and opened the door. Leora crossed the threshold but Kotler tarried, still holding her hand.

  —I should call home, he said. Call Dafna.

  A look of apprehension played fleetingly across Leora’s face, quickly replaced by her native composure.

  —I have to let them know I’m all right.

  —Of course.

  Leora stepped inside, leaving Kotler to close the door behind her.

  He walked away from the house and stood in the middle of the patch of grass. It was the best he could manage under the circumstances. A father calls his young daughter to confess a sin of the flesh: such a call should be placed from the highest mountaintop or bobbing in the middle of the ocean, as a speck on a dark stage, reduced by biblical vastness. A conversation that, God forbid, none but God should overhear.

  Three practiced swipes of his finger across the screen—a sequence of tiny movements so routine as to be almost unconscious—and Kotler was looking at Dafna’s name and phone number. He tapped the screen, and the little glass rectangle beamed its signal. Thus were such daunting actions undertaken now, with a few twitches of a fingertip. Nothing like the old mindful ceremony of writing a letter, bent at the kitchen table or in the solitude of a prison cell. Not even like the experience of the telephone booth, with the solid, goading, reproachful machine. Still, ceremony or no, the consequences remained the same. You made decisions and, sooner or later, you were called to account.