The Betrayers

by David Bezmozgis

—I think you have too dim a view of your own character.

  —Do I? Not according to what I heard between you and Tankilevich. I heard what you said and I heard what he said. I’m not sure I would have behaved any differently in his place. So maybe I’m not who you thought I was.

  —I see, Kotler said.

  —He is a sick foolish old wreck of a man.

  —And so should be absolved.

  —Oh, I don’t know, Baruch. Does it matter what I think, anyway? I’m in no position to say.

  They looked at each other in silence and before Leora could turn away or Kotler offer something in reply, there came a cascade of notes that Kotler recognized as Leora’s phone’s ringtone. The notes, sampled from a vibraphone, bounced around the chamber of the cab. Leora let the phone ring a second time before she reached into her handbag. She let it ring a third and a fourth as she held it in her hand and read the display. And she gave Kotler a dubious glance before she touched the screen to accept the call.

  —Hello, she said crisply.

  Kotler tried to infer who might be on the other end. At present, a great many people could conceivably elicit from Leora such a response.

  Yes, Kotler heard her say. Then, in the same tone, Yes, I know. And after a pause, looking directly at him, she said once more, Yes. She then took the phone from her ear and mutely extended it to him.

  Kotler accepted it.

  —Hello, he said and heard his daughter’s voice in reply.

  —I called first on your phone, Dafna said tightly. It didn’t work.

  Kotler felt for his own phone in his trouser pocket and tilted it away from the sun’s glare. The screen was black. He pressed the button for the power but saw no change.

  —The battery died, Kotler said.

  —I was forced to call her.

  —Then it must be important.

  Through the handset Kotler heard a woman’s voice over an intercom, resonating through the corridors of a public space. He couldn’t decipher the words but he immediately assumed the worst. His heart and mind hurtled to the graveside, with the raw heaped earth, the shrieks and lamentations.

  —You need to come home, Dafna said.

  —I am coming home. I have a flight tonight. What happened?

  —You talked to Benzion?

  —Dafna, what is this? Are we playing some sort of game? Have you taken it into your head to discipline me? Tell me what happened.

  —Benzion shot himself, she replied.

  Kotler felt the impact as though the gun had just been fired and the bullet had struck him as well, its force concussing his chest.

  —Did you hear me, Papa?

  —Is he alive?

  Leora had been following his conversation, and at this Kotler saw her body tense and her eyes grow wide and sharp with concern.

  —Yes, Dafna said. He shot himself, but it was in the hand.

  Kotler felt immediate, slavish relief, but also a rising sadness.

  —He and two other soldiers. They all put their hands in front of Benzion’s rifle and he fired. They called themselves the Brotherhood of the Right Hand. Benzion posted their declaration on his Facebook. A few lines from the Psalms. Now none of them will say a word.

  —Where are you, Dafna?

  —Hadassah Ein Kerem.

  It was where Miriam had given birth to Benzion. The doctor had announced, Mazal tov, Mr. Kotler, you have a son. Kotler was invited to look at the child, the embodiment of so many of his dreams. He saw, almost to the exclusion of everything else, the infant’s long, slender, finely wrought hands. On the little body, the hands seemed almost freakishly long, as if to mock Kotler’s unspoken desire. For he’d secretly hoped that a child of his not be encumbered as he’d been. That the randomness of genes would, against probability, be kind to it. The sight of his son’s beautiful hands filled him with pleasure and relief. He never ceased to admire them. He admired them too much, too effusively—his admiration, to his shame, carrying with it a taint of envy. How different his own life would have been if only he’d been granted such hands! In Benzion’s act, Kotler discerned the deeper message intended for him: it was not by coincidence that his son had ruined the part of himself that his father loved best.

  Now, in a hospital room, under military guard, his son was lying, while outside, before they were dispersed, the demonstrators would have assembled. Bearded and bedraggled supporters with their songs and banners. Through his window Benzion would hear their voices. David, King of Israel, lives, lives and endures!

  —What did he say to you, Papa? Dafna asked.

  —What did he say? He wanted my blessing, Dafna. To refuse orders.

  —And what did you tell him?

  —I told him I couldn’t do that.

  —Why?

  —Because I disapproved, Dafna. I told him to find another way.

  —Ha! Dafna derided him. Well, he found another way!

  And what other way had Kotler imagined Benzion would find? Once the words were out of his mouth, did he follow the line of thought to the very end? He had. And had he been willing to accept that end? The graveside with the heaped earth? The sackcloth and ashes? No. But then why hadn’t he said so unequivocally to Benzion? My son, my dear one, anything but that!

  —You, Mama, Benzion: all of you with your sacred principles, Dafna said. And look at us. Look at all the good they have done us. Benzion wanted one word from you, Papa. Would it have killed you to give it to him? He is your son, not some enemy. Not the KGB or the prime minister. Well, now he gets to follow in your footsteps and go to jail, which should make you both happy.

  A voice reverberated over the hospital intercom again and there was the sound of some commotion.

  —This is pointless, she said. I have to go.

  —How is your mother? Kotler interjected before she could hang up.

  —In her element, Dafna said and ended the call.

  SIXTEEN

  At the next roadside stand, Kotler asked the driver to pull over.

  Several folding tables were arrayed on the gravel turnout. On the tables dozens of clear glass jars glowed with different shades of honey, from palest yellow to deepest amber. On the ground, in wicker baskets, sprawled mounds of apricots and melons. And from metal racks flanking the tables, long strings of purple Yalta onions hung like curtains. Shaded under a large blue beach umbrella, a Russian woman and a Tatar boy in his teens sat on folding chairs. The boy was hunched over, doing something on his mobile phone, his thumbs moving in rapid patterns, while the woman gazed languidly at the highway and her approaching customers.

  Kotler and Leora drew up to the table, though Kotler hardly looked at the offerings. He came to rest near the boy, who continued the compulsive thing he was doing with his phone. The woman fanned herself with her hand, though Kotler and Leora were the ones under the sun.

  —Good day, the woman said.

  —Good day, Kotler answered abstractedly, his thoughts elsewhere.

  —Visiting Crimea?

  —Visiting.

  —Where from? she asked.

  —Israel, Kotler answered plainly, since there was no longer any reason to dissemble.

  —Ah, Israel, the woman said, investing the word with a completely arbitrary meaning.

  A simple mercantile woman, without politics, Kotler thought. But that was all the consideration he was willing to give her. He asked Leora to borrow her phone—What for? she asked—Penance, he said—and took several steps away from the table. Only tangentially did he hear Leora’s exchange with the woman.

  —Yalta onions. Sweet as sugar. Taste.

  —I believe you.

  —Tell me, what do you know about honey?

  —What everyone knows.

  Kotler stood by the roadside. A truck plunged through the amplitude of dense air, and a wave of it washed over and staggered him. He had tried to do right, he thought, but had caused a great deal of hurt, even more than he’d expected. In some future of books and historians, he might yet be
exonerated, but in the present he could not point to a single positive outcome. From the entire mess he would have liked to salvage at least one. There still remained a possibility, and in three or four phone calls he would know if it was feasible. He placed the first call to his office, for the number of a man he trusted at the JDC in Jerusalem. From this man he received the address of the Simferopol Hesed, a phone number, and the name of its director, Nina Semonovna Shreibman. He made his last call to her.

  By noon they arrived at the Hesed. The driver, though he claimed to know the city, had trouble locating the building.

  —What kind of place is it? he asked.

  —A Jewish center.

  —They don’t make it easy to find.

  —Not by accident, Kotler said.

  In the parking lot the driver took a space under the branches of a juniper tree. The sun was high overhead and the air smelled thickly of the surroundings, of the tar in the asphalt, the metal and rubber of automobiles, the molten pitch of the trees.

  —Keep track of your time, Kotler said to the driver. I don’t know how long we’ll be. I hope not long.

  —So long as you pay, it’s all the same to me, the driver said, lowered his window and reached for his newspaper. Reconciled to waiting by vocation and heredity. A stern relentless life, Kotler thought. Thus they’d sat in the trenches as the Panzers advanced.

  At the door to the Hesed, Kotler pressed the buzzer, and the door clicked open to admit them. A man was seated behind a desk in the vestibule. He looked to be in his fifties, with a long melancholic face and graying hair. He regarded Kotler and Leora with no special interest.

  —We’re here to see Nina Semonovna.

  —And you are?

  —Baruch Kotler.

  —One minute, the man said, Kotler’s name evoking no more recognition than had his face.

  There was a telephone on his desk. The man lifted the receiver and dialed a number.

  Kotler and Leora stood by. Kotler looked wryly at Leora as if to say: And we feared I’d be recognized …

  A short exchange, and the guard hung up the phone.

  —Go through, he said.

  They went past the desk and into the narrow corridor, built along the Soviet administrative plan. In such corridors he had queued up for every piece of paper in his Soviet life, including, once upon a time, his exit visa. But here, instead, he saw a large wall map of Israel adorned with crayon drawings of camels, pomegranates, and menorahs. Beside it were the photographs of decorated Russian Jewish war veterans. This arrangement was also familiar. There had been a time when, in his capacity as an Israeli minister and an emancipated prisoner of conscience, he had visited many Jewish centers across the former Soviet Union. He’d done more of it in the years immediately after the Soviet Union’s collapse, when he still possessed considerable stature and mystique. Back then it would have been unfathomable for a guard, for even a charwoman, to have failed to recognize him in the most far-flung Hesed. He had made those trips, his triumphant return, accompanied by reporters and photographers, and he’d posed and reminisced and delivered the same message to all of the Jews who’d come to lay eyes on him and clasp his hand: Brothers and sisters, come home! Come to Israel! And they had come. He didn’t flatter himself that it was because of his personal invitation. The main credit went to Yeltsin and Kuchma and Lukashenko for providing such excellent reasons to leave. But it wasn’t grandiosity for him to think he’d played a part. Even his worst enemies wouldn’t quibble with that. He’d played a part and seen the results. Now here he was, doing what? Escaping those results? And what’s more, taking the opposite line: telling a Jew to stay rather than go.

  Not knowing which office was Nina Semonovna’s, they walked the length of the corridor looking into the rooms. They saw the library—several shelves partially covered with books watched over by a woman who smiled meekly at them from behind a counter. Next, a nursery from which they could hear voices. Kotler saw three small children not yet able to walk and two others who were older. Various toys and games were scattered about the room. A young woman minded the littlest ones while a young man helped the older ones make cardboard shields emblazoned with drawings of intricate and colorful birds.

  As they made their way along the corridor, Kotler noticed that they were being watched. A man, older than Kotler, stood at the double doors of one of the rooms and marked their progress. From a distance Kotler couldn’t read the man’s disposition. Nobody would have described him as menacing. He was a bald, slightly stooped, elderly Jew. Bifocals hung from a lanyard around his neck. But his expression, when they neared, was cagey.

  —Good day, he said to Kotler, still inspecting him.

  —Good day, Kotler replied.

  —Have I seen you here before? the man asked.

  —I’ve never been here before, Kotler said.

  —You looked to me familiar, the man said.

  —I have that kind of face.

  —But you’re Jewish?

  —A popular question in Crimea.

  This evasion the man disregarded, since his interest was in establishing the fact.

  —But are you?

  —I am, Kotler confirmed.

  —Redstu Yiddish? the man inquired.

  —A bissel, Kotler replied, to the man’s great delight.

  —Ah, zeyer gut! Vos macht a yid?

  —A yid dreitzikh, Kotler said. A Jew gets by, his father’s favored phrase.

  —Come, the man said and indicated the room to his right. You must join us.

  Kotler glanced inside. There was a proscenium at one end, an upright piano, and much empty floor space. In the middle of the room, a card table held a chessboard over which two men were bent. Three others sat near them but paid scant attention to the game. One gazed out at Kotler while the other two commiserated together in the language of commiseration.

  —It is our Yiddish circle, the man announced. We meet every Sunday to talk in Yiddish.

  —What you heard, I’m afraid, is the extent of my Yiddish. I’d be of no use to you.

  —What about chess? We also play chess.

  —My chess is worse than my Yiddish, Kotler said.

  —No Yiddish and no chess? the man chided. What kind of Jew are you?

  —The subject of much debate.

  —And what about you? the man asked Leora. Maybe you have Yiddish? Young people are learning it now. Last year American students came with their professor to make a video interview with us.

  —My Yiddish is worse than his, Leora said.

  —And your chess?

  —My chess is better.

  —So join us. For old kockers like us, it will be nice to have such a lovely girl for company.

  —I’m sorry, but not today, Leora said.

  —If not today, then not tomorrow either, the man said without animus. But maybe with the coming of the moshiach!

  —Then we will all play chess and talk Yiddish! Kotler said.

  —May He come speedily and soon! the old man said.

  He ducked back into the room to rejoin his circle, and Kotler and Leora were presented with one last door. Kotler knocked and a woman said, Come in.

  The door opened onto an outer office containing two vacant desks with telephones and computers on them. A radio played at low volume, tuned to a Russian call-in program. The topic seemed to be the possibility of life on other planets. A scientific expert was speaking in favor.

  Centered between the two desks was the door to the inner office. It was open. A woman sat behind a large desk and looked at Kotler. A cigarette smoked in an ashtray at her elbow. She picked up the cigarette and motioned for Kotler and Leora to enter.

  —Have a seat, she said. And you may want to shut that door.

  Kotler and Leora assumed two chairs in front of the desk.

  —Do you object if I smoke? Nina Semonovna asked, holding her cigarette away from her face.

  —No, Kotler said.

  She rose and went to the window and
pulled it partway open.

  —It’s hot outside and we have the air-conditioning, so I keep it closed. But this will release a little of the smoke.

  She resumed her seat, deftly tapped the ash from her cigarette, and gave the indication that she was now ready to proceed. She was like other women Kotler had met who held similar offices. Disciplined, beleaguered, economical women with too many claims on their attentions. Unemotional but not unkind. Mothers of poor households, making due with not enough.

  —So, Mr. Kotler, to what do I owe this honor? Nina Semonovna said with only the slightest trace of disingenuousness. You said very little on the telephone.

  —Thank you for agreeing to see us on such short notice.

  —It’s not every day I get a call from Baruch Kotler. As I said, I consider it an honor. I hope I don’t embarrass you by saying you were a hero to me.

  —You embarrass me just enough. It’s always nice to be remembered. Especially as one slips into obscurity.

  —I doubt you are slipping into obscurity.

  —It’s not so terrible. The times change. Before, I could not have walked anonymously through a Hesed.

  —You walked anonymously?

  —Your guard didn’t recognize me and a man in the corridor wanted to know if I was Jewish. It grounds the ego. Not a bad thing.

  —The people are caught up in their problems.

  —They have every right, Kotler said.

  Nina Semonovna paused to bring the cigarette to her lips and looked from Kotler to Leora.

  —My apologies, Kotler said. I failed to introduce you. This is Leora Rosenberg.

  —I know, Nina Semonovna said. I read the papers.

  —I see, Kotler said.

  —So to the big mystery Where did they go?, the answer is To Crimea.

  —Yes, Yalta. For reasons of childhood nostalgia. Ill placed.

  —Why ill placed? Yalta, Crimea, are still beautiful. I see nothing wrong with this sort of nostalgia. I wish more Jews had it. We’re not Odessa. We could do with the visitors.

  —I agree. Crimea is beautiful. But it was not the right time for us to come. And things did not go as planned. A very strange coincidence befell us.

  That was all he needed to say, Kotler saw, all the fragments he needed to provide for Nina Semonovna to assemble the picture. The mention of Yalta. Of a very strange coincidence. And now their appearance in her office. He watched her face go stony. Now he also understood: the queerness of her welcome had to do only with the scandal, what she had read in the papers. The connection to Tankilevich hadn’t occurred to her yet.