The Betrayers

by David Bezmozgis

  Tankilevich made a point of remaining in the car as Svetlana marched to the door with the groceries. She turned once to glance at him over her shoulder, but he stayed obdurately, broodingly in place. She entered the house, and the white rectangles of their rooms flicked consecutively on. In the quiet sanctum of the car, he listened for some soothing intimation.

  Svetlana had said paranoia, but that was not the right word. It was not paranoid for him to believe that a man such as the one she had described, a Jew of that generation, native to Moscow or Leningrad, part of the intelligentsia, might be able to recognize him. That was no paranoia. That was a fact. A fact that had dictated the course of his life for the past four decades. It had dictated where he could live and whom he could associate with. For those four decades he had taken every precaution to avoid meeting people like the man Svetlana had now recklessly brought into their midst. This was something she knew as well as he. It was the very reason they had met: she had lived in a part of the Soviet Union, the sort of provincial hinterland, where no Jew from Moscow or Leningrad had set foot since collectivization. This was where he had been deposited by the KGB and where he had remained, a Jewish needle in the Soviet haystack, until everything changed and it seemed possible and permissible to venture out. But he and Svetlana had still been guided by the same fact. By then, Yalta seemed as safe as their little Ukrainian hamlet, which was dying a sclerotic death. By then, in Yalta, after the flood of emigration, one was as likely to encounter a Jew from Moscow or Leningrad—now St. Petersburg—as in any rotting kolkhoz. So how was it that something they had registered as a fact, a reality, a peril, something that had accounted for nearly forty years of their lives—how could Svetlana now deride this as paranoia? But after nearly forty years, was the peril the same? Time made specters of perils. But was this true of every peril? And how much time? And who could claim the authority to decide? Who could say to another that his fears were unsubstantiated? That the wolf was not at the door? That the wolf was not even a wolf? And who knew this better than a Jew? Still, he was willing to concede that time had done its work, that time, like water, had eroded the sharpest edges from the peril. What he had feared before—confrontation, outcry, retribution—he did not fear in the same way. Not from a random Russian Jew, even, say, a former activist who might be able to recognize him. Nina Semonovna had spoken of attacks in the press, of newspaper articles, of public excoriation, but he didn’t believe that a chance encounter would have the same consequences. And if not those, then what consequences? What was it that he still desperately wished to avoid? Curses? Epithets? Or just that penetrating look of contempt? The tangible evidence that there remained people in the world for whom he was unredeemed, unredeemable.

  But had he even this much to fear from the man Svetlana described? This midget with a mistress? What feelings to attribute to this sort of man? No, it was not a case of paranoia that was at issue but a case of overreaction. He and Svetlana both. They were equally at fault. They had each attributed too much to this man. Svetlana had been too hopeful; he too fearful. Hers the exaggerated hope that this man could save them; his the exaggerated fear that this man could harm them.

  Back in the house, he sequestered himself in his armchair and watched the insipid programming from Channel One in Moscow. A game show hosted by a facetious impresario. A benevolent vozhd who behaved toward the contestants—bumpkins and workers—as if they’d come to touch the hem of his Italian suit. This was what they had raised from the scraps of communism. This was what the struggle for freedom and democracy had delivered. Bread and circuses. Mostly circuses. From one grand deception to another was their lot. First the Soviet sham, then the capitalist. For the ordinary citizen, these were just two different varieties of poison. The current variety served in a nicer bottle.

  As Tankilevich allowed the vulgarity to wash over him, Svetlana sat on the sofa with one of the free weekly newspapers on her lap. Occasionally he would hear her rustle a page or sense that she had raised her eyes to glance at the television. Finally she folded her newspaper and stood up. She was almost through the door before she stopped and let out what she had pent up.

  —It’s not you alone who prays. I also pray. And it may be that God has sent these people to us.

  Tankilevich did not even grumble a response but waited for her to leave the room. The game show came to an end and the nightly newscast began. The game show was offensive, but there were no words for the newscast. Every lie starched and ironed. The pomp of a new agreement between Russia and Western corporations to drill for oil in the North Pole. Which everyone knew meant billions of dollars to the same crooks. Condemnation of America for interfering in the affairs of sovereign states. Which meant defending the rights of Arab dictators to shoot their citizens with Russian guns. A clash between authorities and violent demonstrators in Moscow. Which meant the criminal regime stifling dissent. This was Moscow, Russia, and he was in Yalta, Ukraine. But it mattered little. Moscow, Kiev, or Minsk. The same methods prevailed.

  Tankilevich turned off the television and rose heavily to his feet. He was overcome by fatigue. The fatigue of living in this country. The fatigue of enduring a day of such indignities—after a life of such indignities. He took a few steps and then caught his haggard reflection in the window. There had been a time when women considered him handsome and he had prided himself on his looks. Now he was like an old elephant, a big gray beast sagging to the earth. He ran his hand through his hair and cleared his throat. More quaveringly than he intended, he called to Svetlana.

  —Mother, if you’re not praying, make some tea.

  Reunion

  TEN

  At dawn Kotler opened his eyes. He had been lying in bed for what seemed like hours with his eyes shut, thinking, thinking. For part of this time, he had heard Leora shifting beside him. Then she had grown still, her breathing become that of a sleeping person. He wished to sleep too, but his mind was too active. For a man of his vocation—civic life, politics—sleepless nights should not have been uncommon. Indeed, for months now he had been embroiled in a political struggle and a love affair, but he could not say that he had lost an entire night’s sleep. An hour here or there, certainly, but not a full night watching the chromatic spool in his head. In fact, part of what kept him awake were recollections of sleepless nights past. The sleepless nights after Tankilevich’s article ran in Izvestia. That article had marked the beginning of his third life. First life: rank-and-file Soviet citizen. Second life: rank-and-file dissident. Third life: the chosen among the chosen. Many sleepless nights followed: sleepless nights waiting for the knock on the door; sleepless nights in his cell in Lefortovo, parsing his interrogator’s every word and gesture, trying to squirm his way out of the psychological maze; sleepless nights during his trial, chiseling away at the lies of his accusers; sleepless nights in solitary confinement, in conditions too brutish for sleep; and sleepless nights in the camps before a hunger strike, steeling himself for the ordeal, incanting a Hebrew phrase he had memorized, the words ringing like hammer blows: Justice, justice, shall you pursue.

  And now what was he pursuing? Kotler asked himself. Justice, justice, he playfully replied.

  He swung his legs around and rose from the bed. He pulled on his trousers and his shirt. Barefoot, he padded to the window. The chickens were out, pecking. Ma nishma, chickens? he greeted them. Joviality in the face of adversity, that was the secret of his success. And of my undoing! he appended to himself jovially.

  Behind him, Leora stirred. He turned from the window. This was how they had spent their first, and possibly last, night alone together. Lying silently in the same bed, thinking their separate, divergent thoughts. Very like a married couple. Another of life’s scintillating ironies.

  Leora slowly opened her eyes. How lovely she looked, even when she awoke cross. He smiled at her and told her so.

  —What time is it, Baruch?

  Kotler consulted his wristwatch.

  —Early. Just past six.

&n
bsp; —Did you sleep?

  —I thought about it.

  Leora sat up and brushed the sheets aside. She wore her brassiere and panties. He had worn his underpants. The stuff of bourgeoisie comedy.

  —You haven’t changed your mind? Leora asked.

  —Many times, Kotler said. But it always changed back.

  She stood up and surveyed the room. Her dress lay on the floor beside the chair. She moved to pick it up. Kotler watched with admiration and longing—the longing for a thing that is slipping from one’s grasp—as she raised her arms and the dress slid down the length of her body. The closing curtain on a fine spectacle.

  —All right, then, what do you intend to do?

  Kotler looked at his watch again, as if he hadn’t looked at it a minute before.

  —If I knew where we could get one, I would like to see a newspaper. A cup of coffee would be nice too.

  —Very well, Leora said and took a determined step toward the door.

  —There’s no need for that, Leora, Kotler said.

  —No need for what? If you wish to do this, why delay? I’ll wake the lady of the house. I’ll ask her for a newspaper and a cup of coffee. And then we can get to the business at hand. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll finish. Or isn’t that the point?

  —That probably is the point. As usual, you’re more astute than I. I had visions of something grand and involved, but likely it will be nothing of the kind. As is often the case in life, one imagines an opera and gets an operetta. If that. Still, I’d prefer to do this in a civilized manner. No banging on doors. No rousing from sleep. The time for that is past.

  —From what I have seen, Baruch, the time for that is not past.

  —Even so. Let’s behave as if it is and wait for the world to follow our noble example.

  —None of this is even remotely funny to me.

  —No, I know it isn’t, Kotler said.

  Leora looked at him from where she had stalled, partway to the door.

  —Would you like to hear about the last time I shared a roof with this man? Kotler asked. You’ve said more than once that you were interested in the stories of the glorious past. So here is one I’ve never told you. It’s one I’ve hardly spoken of at all, as far as I can remember. Perhaps to a few cellmates and to Miriam. Because it isn’t much of a story. It’s the opposite. A nonstory. Even in my memoir, my editor chose to edit it out. But it is the story of the last night I spent under the same roof with Vladimir Tankilevich.

  Leora sighed and walked slowly back to the bed. She sat on its edge and looked at Kotler like someone submitting reluctantly to the sway of a hypnotist. Kotler, who remained near the window, would have liked to sit beside her as in times past, but refrained. Times past now included the previous day, the previous hour. He was responsible for it. He still had the power to change it. But he knew he would not. A man could not live two lives. A man was condemned to choose and he had chosen.

  —Fine, Baruch, tell me. Tell me so that we can get on with things.

  There was his gospel, the substance of which Leora knew, as, once, did millions of others. A young man, a lapsed musician turned computer scientist, embraces his Jewish identity and resolves to quit the Soviet Union for Israel, his ancestral homeland. His application for an exit visa is routinely, arbitrarily denied by the Interior Ministry for unsubstantiated “security reasons”—even though he possesses no technical knowledge that isn’t already old news in the West. He is branded a traitor, fired from his job, designated a criminal—since it is a crime to be without work in the workers’ state. He falls in love with a young woman, also a Zionist; they marry quickly in the hope that this will bind their fates but are nonetheless separated when she, just as arbitrarily, is permitted to leave and he, again, is not. While he waits to join her, he throws himself into activist work and is framed by a fellow Jew, a KGB plant. Charged with treason, subjected to a show trial, he is sentenced to death, but then, after an international outcry, he is locked up for thirteen years instead of being shot in the head. All the while, he resists, resists, resists! Until finally, triumphantly, he is released.

  But there was more, of course. The minor notes and episodes, less spectacular but, for him, more consuming. His final night in the apartment he shared with Tankilevich represented one. For until Tankilevich took him in, he had been homeless. Miriam had left for Israel. Their small apartment had been registered in her name, and once she departed—for it was virtually a rule among refuseniks that nobody should forfeit the chance to go—he had to move out. With no job and no apartment, he slept, a week here and a week there, in the homes of other refuseniks and of sympathizers. Everything he owned he carried in a small suitcase. The man who would soon become the world’s most illustrious refusenik was a pauper whose belongings would have been declined by a junk shop. And then, at no small personal risk, Tankilevich offered to take him in. A marginal character in Kotler’s life before then, Tankilevich had appeared in their midst a year earlier. He presented himself as a Zionist and declared he had been refused an exit visa—nobody bothered to verify. If KGB spies had infiltrated their ranks, there wasn’t much they could do about it. In any case, everything they did—the Hebrew classes, the Passover seders, their small public demonstrations—was technically legal.

  They made an odd pairing, the two of them. Tankilevich was almost a decade older, a bachelor, impressive-looking, while Kotler was a balding, feisty little schmendrik. By trade, Tankilevich was a dental technician, and he volunteered his services to other refuseniks, making dentures, caps, and crowns. Since he was ostensibly under refusal, he could not work officially. Everyone understood the implications: How could a refusenik handle gold and silver? He was susceptible to a charge of commercialism or speculation. This was grounds for suspicion. People discussed this, and Chava Margolis, as usual, staked out the most skeptical position—even though she too had one of Tankilevich’s bridges in her mouth.

  But Kotler never found any reason to distrust him and came to consider him a friend, a confidant. He was nursing the pain of Miriam’s departure. Sometimes the two men sat together and listened to classical music: Scriabin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich. They studied Jewish subjects and practiced their clumsy Hebrew. There was nothing out of the ordinary until the night before Tankilevich’s denunciation ran in Izvestia.

  And what of that night? Kotler was in the apartment, writing a press release for Western outlets about the conditions inside the psychiatric hospitals. They’d received sworn affidavits from a dissident who had emerged from one and, remarkably, from a psychiatric nurse who was appalled by what she had seen—taking sane, healthy people, confining them with lunatics, and injecting them with drugs until they became like lunatics themselves. Kotler was composing his text at a table in the front room when Tankilevich came home. They exchanged the usual greetings. Shalom. Shalom. Everything as always. Tankilevich asked what he was doing. Kotler told him. Tankilevich considered attentively and then excused himself, going into the kitchen. Kotler continued his work. Then, suddenly, there was a crash, a sound of breaking plates. Not just one or two; it was as though every plate in the kitchen had been dashed. Kotler sprang up from the table and found Tankilevich standing amid the shards of an entire stack of dinner plates. With a very peculiar expression on his face. Not startled or agitated or regretful. Rather, detached. As if he was mildly, distantly intrigued by the mess around him. Volodya, what happened? Kotler said. Nothing, a trifle came the answer. Kotler offered to get a broom, to sweep up. But Tankilevich said, No need, I’ll do it. Because he was behaving so strangely, Kotler didn’t insist. He let him be. They were all under a great deal of stress and nobody knew all that weighed on another man’s heart. Kotler went back to work. He heard Tankilevich sweeping. Then some fumbling and shuffling that he couldn’t identify. He expected Tankilevich to go to the corridor and toss the broken things into the dustbin, but when he looked in on him, he found him at the kitchen table gluing the pieces back together. How many plates had
been broken? Ten? Twelve? There was a considerable jumble. The plates themselves were nothing special, neither heirlooms nor imports. They were the most ordinary Soviet plates and could be purchased in any store for fifty kopeks apiece. To replace them would have been easy. There were deficits and shortages of practically everything then, but not of those sorts of things. So why go to the trouble? Volodya, what are you doing that for? he asked. To which Tankilevich replied, It calms the soul.

  Those were the last civil words they exchanged. Period. The end.

  Leora listened to all this dully, with neither expression nor reaction.

  —And the mystery? she asked.

  —You see, I told you it wasn’t much of a story.

  —I just don’t see the mystery.

  —The mystery? The entire thing. Did he dash the plates deliberately or did they fall by accident? And what was going through his head?

  —Of course he dashed them, Baruch.

  —Yes? And what was going through his head?

  —He was conflicted. Stricken by conscience. He didn’t want to face you.

  —There’s that.

  —What else could there be?

  —I don’t know. But life has taught me that there is always something else. Some surprise beyond the scope of my limited imagination.

  Through the door they heard movement, the sounds of the day’s first activities, a kettle set on a burner.

  —Well, Leora said, here is your chance to find out.

  She rose from the bed and walked briskly to the door. This time Kotler did not inhibit her. She opened the door and passed into the hall. The sounds of a morning’s preparations came more distinctly now. He heard Leora greeting their landlady and the woman returning the greeting and inquiring if Leora would be having breakfast. There was also the sound of a man’s grumbled Good morning. Kotler felt a jolt in his heart. And yet, if he hadn’t already known that this voice belonged to Tankilevich, would he have recognized it?