Tankilevich received the speech as if it were a clobbering, and he slumped down accordingly. And yet, he thought: Clobbered, yes, but not beaten! In his life he had known real terrors, real bloodlettings. So this was nothing new. Unpleasant, yes, but it would take more to make him fold. He found his voice.
—Nina Semonovna, I don’t dispute anything you say. But the fact remains: What choice did I have? As Vladimir Tarasov—with this false identity bestowed upon me by the KGB—I could rejoin the community of my people. As this aberration, Vladimir Tarasov, I could attend the synagogue. And as Vladimir Tankilevich, I could not.
—As Vladimir Tarasov, this aberration—as you call it—you could have rejoined your community and attended the synagogue a long time ago. Nothing was stopping you. But you came only when there was money for the taking. And now you wish to have everything: to retain the disguise of Vladimir Tarasov, keep the subsidy, and retreat from your obligations to the community and the synagogue. But, Mr. Tankilevich, hear me well: So long as I sit behind this desk, I will not allow this to happen. If you do not fulfill the terms of our agreement, I will cut you off. Doing so, as you should by now understand, would be a great relief for me. A great relief and no small satisfaction.
With this statement of finality, Nina Semonovna reached again for her pack of cigarettes and, in a flare of punctuation, struck a match.
Tankilevich regarded her across the desk. She looked contented, the cigarette smoking between her fingers.
He remembered Svetlana’s words. Now, then, he thought. So the time had come to go to the farthest extreme.
Stiffly—not without difficulty—he rose from his chair and pushed it from him. Its legs scraped, and the sound shot like a current along his calves and up his back. Gripping the edge of the desk, he lowered himself until the points of his knees met the hard ground. When he felt steady enough, he removed his hands from the desk and let them dangle at his sides. He lifted his eyes to Nina Semonovna, his inquisitor. This was the posture, but it was not enough. More was required. There were also the words.
—I beg of you, Tankilevich said.
Nina Semonovna gazed down at him from her bastion.
—Stand up, Mr. Tankilevich. If you are fit enough to do this, you are fit enough to go to the synagogue.
EIGHT
On Mayakovsky Street, in the center of the city, was a Furshet grocery market where, each week, Tankilevich bought provisions to take back to Yalta. The Hesed had an arrangement with the market’s owners. It had a similar arrangement with a Furshet in Yalta, but Nina Semonovna deliberately hadn’t put him on its roll. To utilize the subsidy, Tankilevich was obliged to do it in Simferopol. For this reason, the shopping also fell to him on these Saturdays. But after his encounter with Nina Semonovna, he felt leaden, nearly killed. How could he force himself to go to the market, to put one plodding foot in front of the other, to contemplate the bins and the shelves and be surrounded by the gaudy, mindless, mocking display of excess? His hands felt as if they were filled with sand. It would take a superhuman effort to lift them, to coax his fingers to grasp the cartons and boxes. His every fiber revolted against this. It was too much to ask of him on such a day. He pictured Svetlana’s dour, disapproving expression. But what right could she invoke? She was not shackled to the trolleybus; she had not thrown herself before Nina Semonovna. The depredations were all on his head. Svetlana could stuff her disapproval. He would not go, that’s all, Tankilevich thought. He would not go! But by then he was already there.
Mechanically, Tankilevich moved through the aisles, depositing their staples into a red plastic basket: bread, farmer’s cheese, sour cream, cereals, buckwheat kasha, carrot juice, smoked mackerel, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, green onions. A few yellow plums, because they were in season and inexpensive. He finished at the meat counter, where the woman reflexively asked, Three hundred grams roast turkey? Tankilevich had long assumed that they stocked the turkey solely for the Jews. Everything else at the counter, the appetizing salamis and sausages, contained pork and was thus forbidden under the Hesed subsidy. For pork and shellfish, as for cigarettes and alcohol, one had to lay out one’s own money.
From the meat counter Tankilevich carried his basket—the plastic handle biting into his fingers, the sinews straining in his shoulder—to the cash register at the front of the market. Since it was a Saturday afternoon, the market was not short of customers. Three women stood in line ahead of him. And immediately after Tankilevich assumed his place, people formed up behind. He glanced back to take their measure. Directly behind him was a young mother with a small daughter, three or four years old, in a bright cotton dress with a white cotton cap. Behind them was an older man, Tankilevich’s age, with short bristly white hair, ethnically Russian. And behind him was another man, younger than the Russian, swarthy, Tatar or Azeri, a laborer, wearing a sleeveless shirt, the taut muscles of his arms exposed. Paying for his purchases, this final element of the task, always put Tankilevich’s nerves on edge, made him exceedingly conscious of the people around him, of attracting their attention, judgment, and disdain. It was the moment when he was forced to shed the bleary status of ordinary citizen and declare himself conspicuously, in blazing letters, a Jew.
Tankilevich’s turn came. He presented the contents of his basket to the cashier, a blond woman in her thirties. Like the woman at the meat counter, she was offhandedly familiar with him. With quick, practiced movements she unloaded his basket and punched the prices into her register. When the sum appeared on the computerized display, the woman looked at Tankilevich and said, Coupons? It was at this point that Tankilevich became supremely attuned to any change in the atmosphere, like a dog sniffing for storm ions. And as he withdrew the bright, multicolored Hesed bills from his pocket, he picked up rumblings behind him. The air grew dense. Its sullen weight pressed on his shoulders. He turned around to confirm his suspicions. The woman behind him was gazing off, her little girl waiting docilely at her hip. Neither of them was the source of the disturbance and neither seemed to have noticed anything awry. Why should they? Tankilevich thought. Such storms did not affect them. But after a lifetime of such storms, he rarely mistook them. One look at the Russian man’s face and Tankilevich knew that he wasn’t mistaken now either. He saw the sneer—the bitter, arrogant, Jew-hating sneer. Locking eyes with Tankilevich, the man allowed his sneer to ripen into a smirk.
—Is there a problem? Tankilevich asked him.
The question seemed to fill the man with glee, as if Tankilevich had uttered a tremendous joke. The man swiveled his head from side to side, seeking to include others in this hilarity. If not his goggling about, then Tankilevich’s question had already drawn people’s attention. The young mother pulled her daughter closer and eyed both Tankilevich and the Russian warily. The cashier shifted a hip, tilted her head. And the laborer looked up with the coolness of a lizard.
—Is there a problem? the Russian mimicked. Not for the likes of you. Never.
—What are you implying, Citizen?
—Implying? I’m not implying anything. I’m stating what is clear as day. You people always know how to get ahead.
—You people. What people do you mean? Tankilevich demanded. If you’re going to sow slander, at least have the courage to speak plainly.
—To say what I’m saying requires no courage, the Russian said. Only eyes in your head. Anyone with eyes in his head sees how you Jews always get special treatment. Isn’t that so?
The Russian turned for confirmation to the people around him. But they remained silent. Tankilevich thought he even detected a hint of disapproval on the cashier’s face. Still, he expected no support. How many times had he encountered such anti-Semites, and how many times had anyone said even a single word in his defense? He felt his heart pounding as if to fly apart. He gripped tightly the bills in his hand and held them up.
—What special treatment? Tankilevich said. Do you mean these?
The Russian was unintimidated.
—W
ho but Jews have such things? I too would like such privileges. But it’s only the Jews that get them.
—You would like such privileges? Tankilevich boomed. Then you should have lined up in ’41, when the Germans were taking the Jews to the forest!
—Oh ho! the Russian said. So it’s back to the Germans, is it? To listen to you people, you’d think it was only the Jews who suffered. Everyone suffered. Who shed more blood than the Russian people? But nobody gives us special favors, do they?
At this, he turned again to the others for reinforcement. First to the young mother, whose expression remained wary and reticent. And then to the laborer.
—Isn’t that so, pal? the Russian asked.
The laborer took his time and then answered in Tatar-accented Russian, the consonants rolling like stones in his mouth.
—Yes, everyone suffered, he said. But not only from the Germans.
—Oh, I see, the Russian announced grandly. I’m surrounded by persecuted minorities. That’s the way it is now in this country. The Russian nation built up this land—what didn’t we do?—but now we’re everyone’s bastard. We’re supposed to go around with our heads bowed and beg forgiveness from this one and the other.
The Russian had worked himself up now and gazed about defiantly, no longer expecting solidarity. He glared at Tankilevich.
—The hell I’ll beg forgiveness from the likes of you! While you get special money and I have a hole in my pocket. The Germans could have lined up a few more of you in ’41!
There it was, Tankilevich thought. The fuse had been lit and now the charge had detonated. His heart surged. He waved his Hesed banknotes in the Russian’s face.
—I should beat you, you filth! Tankilevich shouted.
—Well, well, I’d like to see you try.
But the young mother and her little girl were between them. And the laborer put a restraining hand on the Russian. And the cashier spoke up.
—Be civilized or I will call the police!
And that, more or less, was the end of the spectacle.
His heart still thudding, his groceries sagging in their net bag, Tankilevich left the market and followed the dolorous path to the trolleybus station.
NINE
Normally, Tankilevich called Svetlana from the highway to arrange for her to collect him at the depot. This time he did not call. And when she called, he did not answer. Still, when he descended from the trolleybus and did not immediately see her, he was incensed. With his net bag slapping against his thigh, its weight like razors in his forearm, he staggered from the depot to the road where the cars and taxis were parked. It was evening, but the sun had still to set and he could see clear down the line. He had taken only a few steps before he saw Svetlana striding over to intercept him. Her face, her posture, declared that she had already intuited all.
—She refused you?
—I don’t want to discuss it, Tankilevich snapped.
Svetlana reached for the shopping bag and Tankilevich made a play of refusing to yield it.
—Don’t be a hero, you look half dead, Svetlana said and took hold of the bag.
They walked in silence back to the car, Svetlana stealing glances at him as they went.
Had there been a single redeeming moment in the entire day? In this one day of a man’s life? From dawn to dusk? A single moment? Yes, there had been one. A short distance from the grocery store, when he had stopped to rest his burden, the young mother and her little girl had come alongside him. He expected nothing, averted eyes. But the woman said, My mother used to work with a Jewish woman, an ophthalmologist. Her husband was a chemist. They were honest, respectable people. Now they live in Israel. How many such valuable people did we lose? Intellectual people. Specialists. Thousands. I don’t blame them. Because this country is still primitive, full of primitive people. In front of my daughter, I’m embarrassed for this country.
There was silence between Svetlana and Tankilevich as she put the groceries in the trunk and he lowered his bulk into the passenger seat. Silence as she veered the car onto the road and began the drive home. Embedded in the silence was his silent command that they remain silent. But he could feel Svetlana straining against the silence and knew that no exercise of his will would keep her quiet long. Abruptly, he turned to face her.
—What do you want me to say? She spat in my face! Tankilevich shouted. That is all.
—I shouldn’t have let you go by yourself, Svetlana said, rehashing an old antagonistic line.
—Yes, you should have come with me. This way the trip would have cost double, and, with you along, Nina Semonovna would have simply turned us away at the door.
—Why turned us away? Because I am not Jewish?
—Of course because you are not Jewish! Tankilevich thundered. Don’t talk foolishness. It is a Jewish organization. One that believes it owes me nothing and you even less.
A large white tour bus had stopped ahead of them. Red letters stenciled on its hull identified it as Polish. Svetlana craned her neck to see what the matter was. Behind them, cars sounded their horns.
—Is he stalled?
Svetlana continued to look and didn’t reply.
—Well? Tankilevich persisted.
The bus moved.
—What was it? Tankilevich asked.
They crept along behind the bus but saw no sign of anything amiss. Nothing broken, no one injured on the road. Just indifferent trees and houses on the periphery and the slope of a hill to the east. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to cause a distraction. Nothing at all.
—A day of frustrations. Tankilevich sighed.
It was then that Svetlana told him about the new lodgers. More to crow than to console, Tankilevich felt. As though the lodgers were a flag she was waving in his face. Witness: While he was frittering away his chance in Simferopol, she was securing them lodgers for the week. Lodgers who had paid up front in full. Lodgers who also happened to be Jews. This last, Svetlana delivered with sly significance. Tankilevich didn’t miss her implication. That precisely at this moment, these people, being Jews, represented much more than a week’s rent. They represented a second chance! Salvation itself!
It was utter childish nonsense, its logic so comprehensively flawed that it pained Tankilevich to think that he was married to a person whose mind wallowed in such inanities.
—Who are these people? he asked bleakly.
—A man and a younger woman, Svetlana replied, bristling at his tone.
—What sort of couple is this?
—Is this our business? They’re a couple. They wouldn’t be the first such couple.
—Did they say where they were from?
—America.
—But they’re Russians?
—Yes. They spoke Russian like you or me.
—And where in Russia are they from?
—That, I didn’t ask. If I had to guess, I would say Moscow or St. Petersburg. They didn’t strike me as provincial people. Rather, sophisticated people. The man particularly. I would think he would need to be, to get himself such an attractive young companion. Because himself, he is not much to look at. A little nub of a man in a big hat and dark sunglasses. A little Jewish midget, like from a cartoon. Clever, wily. Still, no girl would give herself to such a physically unappealing type if he wasn’t wealthy or important.
Tankilevich felt his throat, his entire being, constrict. A tensing against an old pernicious ill. Svetlana, oblivious, looked ready to prattle on, but he cut her off.
—How old would you say is this man?
—How old? I don’t know. But I’d give him sixty. Not less.
Gloom, gloom descended on him. That Svetlana had no inkling of it—that she behaved as though enraptured by her own perspicacity and brilliance—astounded him. Tankilevich saw the approach to their house. Svetlana turned the car into the driveway. Night had begun to fall. The house was dark. Dark too were the windows of their Jewish lodgers.
Svetlana opened her door and put a leg out but T
ankilevich didn’t stir.
—What is it with you? Svetlana asked.
—How is it you have no sense? he said.
—I have no sense? she retorted. What sense is it that I lack?
But when he told her, she waved her hand.
—This is only your paranoia, she said and went to fetch the groceries from the trunk of the car.
The Betrayers Page 7
