The Betrayers (13 page)

—You worked for them from 1964? How many others did you denounce? Kotler asked, and for the first time he felt a flash of the anger he had known in those years.

—Nobody else.

—All those years for me alone?

—That’s all they ever asked of me.

—Did you know from the beginning that you would be required to denounce Jews?

—I didn’t know anything. The colonel said I would have a chance to restore my family’s honor by protecting the motherland from spies and saboteurs. I thought he had in mind catching others who were doing what my brother had done. Those who were doing it on a larger scale. But I heard almost nothing from them for several years. I guess they had no shortage of informants. They didn’t contact me until 1972, when they made
plans to move me to Moscow. Only then did they explain what they wanted from me.

—So you never applied to go to Israel.

—How could I? They had me by the neck.

—Well, you certainly played the Zionist.

—Before 1972, I knew as much about Israel as you did. I followed the Six-Day War. I watched the Munich Olympics. I never denied who I was. But what kind of Zionist could I have been in Alma-Ata before 1972? What did we have in Kazakhstan? I learned about Israel and Judaism along with you, in Moscow.

—As a KGB spy.

—It so happened I discovered Zionism through the KGB. But the things I learned, the people I met—those were the best days of my life. You say I pretended to care about Israel, but I cared as much as anyone else. I too dreamed of living there even though I knew that for me it was a futile dream.

—So if you were such a sympathizer, why did you continue to collaborate?

—In ’72, they still held my brother. And after they released him, they threatened to take my father. He suffered from heart problems. I told them to arrest me instead, but they refused. They said if I stopped cooperating they would put my father under a rock and me right beside him. Even after your trial I tried to recant, but they wouldn’t let me. I offered to go to prison, but they wouldn’t allow it since it would compromise the result of your trial. I was the primary witness and so I couldn’t be a criminal.

—We all had families, Kotler countered. We were all prey to the same intimidation. And we all had to make the same calculations.
Everyone understood what it meant to shelter one’s brother at the expense of someone else’s. None of us had that right. You say you believed that they wouldn’t shoot me, but how could you know? What if they
had
shot me? Or what if some accident had befallen me in jail that cost me my life or left me a cripple? Or even if none of this happened, what led you to think that I could be shorn of thirteen years of my life? That I should be separated from my wife? That my parents should not live to see me liberated? That they should have to meet death without their son at their side? There is no compensation for such losses. Not in this life. And no explanation but weakness. Which I can excuse. But not self-deception.

Kotler knew he was allowing himself to become overly emotional. It hadn’t been his intent, but the mention of his father’s death had loosed the stream of memories. Where had Tankilevich been when Kotler received the letter informing him of his father’s death? What affront was he decrying while Kotler was at the Perm camp sewing hundreds of flour sacks? The letter arrived in February, four months after his mother had sent it.
My dearest son, How it pains me to give you this sad news.
The camp authorities would not explain why it had been so cruelly and illegally withheld. From there the conflict escalated so much that he himself came close to meeting his end. He announced a work strike. He would not sew the flour sacks. He wrote a protest to the post office, to the procurator’s office, and to the Interior Ministry. Even though he was four months late, he decided to sit shivah. He stayed in the barracks and recited what mismatched scraps of Hebrew liturgy he could remember in the absence of a prayer book.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One. Holy, holy, holy. He Who makes peace
in the heights, may He make peace upon us, and upon all Israel, amen.
He wore the single phylactery upon his head like a horn, its companion missing, the subject of a previous battle. When he ignored the commands of the guards, the warden came to reason with him. He ignored him too. He was not deceived. After all, who had withheld his letter? Out of respect for his father, he declared that he would sit the full seven days and observe all the customs, neither working nor shaving. Then the battle started in earnest. They cut his food ration in half. But his bunkmates—a Crimean Tatar, a Jehovah’s Witness, an Estonian nationalist—gave him from theirs. Before the week of mourning was up, the guards threw him into a punishment cell. When he still refused to concede, they confiscated his phylactery. Two guards pinned him to the stone floor while a third tore it from his head. He then had no choice but to declare a hunger strike until his property was restored to him. Ninety-eight days later, when his heart was no longer beating properly, the warden put the velvet pouch with the phylactery on the metal table beside his cot. For those three months, they had fed him with a tube down his throat.

But this was in the past and he had put it to rest. It didn’t pay to dredge it up. Kotler looked at Tankilevich standing rigid before him.

—Never mind, Kotler said. It’s all gone and done with.

—For who? Tankilevich asked.

—For everyone.

—Easy for you to say. You’re a big personage. You have yourself a young mistress.

—You’re right, I have a mistress. She’s a remarkable young woman. Attractive, passionate, intelligent. Everything a man
could want. But it’s not a thing to gloat about. On the one hand, I am very happy with her; on the other, I regret the whole mess. I have hurt and embarrassed my children and my wife. I have damaged my reputation, but Shakespeare had a good line about that. Still, if you wish to insist on the past, then you can take credit for my mistress. If I hadn’t been separated from my wife for thirteen years, it would never have happened. I would have gone to Israel shortly after Miriam. Maybe a year or two, but not thirteen. When we reunited, my Miriam would have been much as I remembered her. She would not have gravitated toward religion or the settlers. Neither of us was much inclined that way. We would have had a normal life. Instead, we had thirteen years of separation and thirteen years of struggle. She was alone fighting this battle. The state of Israel rebuffed her. Because I’d involved myself in the larger human rights movement, I wasn’t Zionist enough for them. My case trailed unwanted complexities. So who embraced her and who helped her? The religious. The settlers. And naturally she was drawn into their midst. Because of their help, she had the strength to fight. For that I’m grateful. But the woman I found wasn’t quite the woman I’d married. And as for Leora, my mistress, what reason would a girl like her have to be interested in a round little man like me? Only because I was dropped down the coal chute of the Gulag and came out the other end.

—There. That’s it. Say what you will, but you benefited from this Gulag. You had thirteen dark years followed by how many bright ones? Without those thirteen years, where would you be? You say living a normal life. Am I living a normal life? Very well, in Israel a normal life doesn’t look like this, but people still struggle. Maybe you would have had forty years like that? In
stead you had money and position. Those thirteen years were your lottery ticket.

—I see. And you gave me this ticket.

—Look at it how you wish.

—All right. If I credit you with my mistress, I suppose I should credit you with the rest too. But what did it take to issue me this ticket? You did it, but anyone could have. With that legal process, anyone could have put his name to the indictment. And as you said, I was destined for trouble anyway.

—But it was I who signed. I explained to you why. And it is I who have borne the consequences all these years. To this day!

Tankilevich spoke the last with great vehemence, as though trying to breach the impenetrable divide between them. He had been too long maligned. It wasn’t so simple as Kotler liked to believe. The force of his desire rose up in him like the sea. His head was filled with the deafening tidal rush. The white surf flooded his vision. His knees gave and he sank into it.

Kotler watched Tankilevich’s eyes go blank, then quizzical. Tankilevich teetered and pitched to his side. Kotler was slow to react and reached for him only when it was too late. On the way down, Tankilevich’s shoulder struck the tub, and with the blow the eggs juddered around the base. Three fell to the ground, surprisingly unbroken.

K
otler and Svetlana, each under one of his arms, helped Tankilevich into the house. He offered little assistance, shuffling his feet and mumbling unintelligibly. Leora followed behind.

They lugged Tankilevich through the kitchen and lowered him onto the sofa in the living room. His face was ashen. He continued to mumble. Now Kotler was able to distinguish a few phrases.
To strike a peaceful citizen, you scum! I have witnesses. I will report you to the police.

Svetlana bent close to Tankilevich’s face and pressed a hand to his forehead.

—Chaim, do you hear me? Chaim?

Leora entered from the kitchen, bearing a glass of water. She offered it to Svetlana, who accepted it without a word. She held it under Tankilevich’s lips, urging him to drink. When he didn’t respond, she set the glass on the magazine table nearby.

—We must call the ambulance, Svetlana declared.

There was a handset for a cordless phone on the table. Svetlana snatched it up and dialed.

—Has this happened before? Kotler asked.

Svetlana shook her head brusquely and, tight-lipped, held the phone to her ear.

Tankilevich had quieted. He was no longer mumbling but lying down with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly.

—Curse them, a person could wait all day, Svetlana seethed at the phone.

As she continued to wait for a response, Leora picked up the glass of water and moistened her fingers with it. She sat on the edge of the sofa and ran her fingers across Tankilevich’s brow, temples, and the line of his jaw. She kept her fingers at his neck and felt for his pulse. All this she performed with precision and unexpected tenderness. In her care, Tankilevich began to breathe more regularly. Kotler watched and was gripped by a strong feeling of adoration. If this was how she cared for a stranger, an enemy, how indeed would she care for him? How could he contemplate losing such a woman?

—Is there a cloth or a handkerchief? Leora asked.

Svetlana, still loath to oblige, glanced around the room. She seemed on the verge of saying something to Leora when her call was connected.

—Yes, hello, Svetlana said, I need an ambulance.

As she spoke, Kotler dug into his pants pocket for his handkerchief and presented it to Leora. She doused it with water, and they both listened to Svetlana’s conversation.

—It’s for my husband, Svetlana said. He has lost consciousness.

Leora applied the compress to Tankilevich’s brow and he
stirred a little. Reacting, it seemed to Kotler, either to the compress or his wife’s agitated voice.

—He is seventy, Svetlana said. He suffers from arrhythmia, yes.

She listened, with growing consternation, to the voice on the other end and considered her husband.

—He is breathing, yes. No, I haven’t taken his pulse or his blood pressure. When do you think I would have had time to do this? He is in distress. I am not a doctor. I called
you.

His head cradled in Leora’s lap, Tankilevich weakly blinked his eyes open. Kotler saw him inspect the room, looking first, dimly, at Leora and then, darkly, at Kotler and at his wife.

—I don’t understand what you mean by busy, Svetlana said. You are the ambulance service. A person requires aid.

Tankilevich tried to lift his head to speak. His lips moved but his voice caught in his throat, producing no more than a croak.

—Maybe an hour, maybe two? What sort of answer is this? The devil take you!

She jabbed her thumb into the phone’s keypad to disconnect and then glared at Kotler and Leora.

—This is the sort of country we live in! Where the average person counts for nothing. Less than nothing. You could drop in the street and nobody would bat an eye.

She bustled over to the sofa and edged Leora from her place. She cupped Tankilevich’s head in her hands. He gazed at her with irritation. Again he tried to speak but his voice still failed him.

—Give him water, Leora said.

Petulant, resentful of another’s instruction, Svetlana grabbed the water glass from the table and held it to her husband’s lips. Tankilevich took a few feeble sips.

—No ambulance, he managed.

Svetlana studied him with overwrought concern. She felt his forehead with the back of her hand.

—Look at how pale you are. And cold.

Tankilevich stared at her silently, derisively, and then closed his eyes.

—I don’t like the look of you, Svetlana said.

With this she turned and hurried out of the room and then noisily upended things in another. She returned carrying a blood pressure cuff.

—That one on the phone asks if I took his blood pressure. And what if I had? Would they come any quicker?

Tankilevich submitted as she fastened the cuff around his arm and inflated it with the rubber bulb.

—If you are old, they have no use for you. For a younger person, they might still come. But for an older person? Everyone knows. They don’t come. Even if a person has a critical reading, they still don’t care. An elderly person is having an infarction, better he should have it at home. If they send an ambulance, and he is still alive, they will have to take him to the hospital. And what then? He will occupy a bed. On an old person, they will be reluctant to operate. Why expend scarce resources? He might die on the table, or if he survives, what are the chances he’ll last more than a week? Because this is a person with no money. If he had money, he would never have called the public ambulance. He would have called the private. And if he has no money it means he won’t be able to afford the medications to recuperate properly. So, of course, why go to all the trouble to begin with?

Svetlana craned her neck to scrutinize the cuff’s dial. She shook her head grimly.

—What does it say? Kotler asked.

—Eighty over fifty. Dangerous.

Svetlana removed the cuff from Tankilevich’s arm and looked at her husband with a strange, rising fanaticism. She brought her face close to his and said in a loud, importunate voice, Chaim, can you hear me?

Tankilevich responded by squeezing his eyes shut and saying, almost soundlessly, Let me be.

—Let you be? Svetlana said, affronted. Not in your condition!

Tankilevich’s response was silent disregard.

Svetlana continued to gaze at her husband as if to impress upon him her concern, but Tankilevich did not stir. He appeared to suffer both his wife and his debility. Svetlana persisted a moment longer before her expression changed, grew pensive.

—You can curse the system all you want, but what good is it? And what should we expect of the public services? The people who work these jobs are as bad off as everyone else. About the police, I already told you, Svetlana said, glancing at Leora. And this woman on the phone, what can her salary be? One hundred dollars a month? One hundred and twenty? How is she to live on it? The same for the paramedics. And if the hospitals don’t have enough medicines and equipment, why would the ambulances? Consider yourself lucky if you get a blanket. If there was ever money to pay for such things, it was stolen long ago by the bureaucrats.

—You say there is a private service, Kotler said. If they will come, call them.

—And with what money? Svetlana inquired.

—If he needs help, call, Kotler said. I’ll pay.

At this, Tankilevich stirred. He opened his eyes and tried, unsuccessfully, to lift his head. Failing, he looked acidly at Svetlana.

—I could call the Hesed, she said wanly. They have a service.

Tankilevich continued to glare Svetlana into submission.

She looked down at her husband miserably and wrung her hands.

—No. You cannot be left like this. I won’t have it. It would be like I killed you myself.

But having spoken, Svetlana made no move. For some seconds, the only sound was Tankilevich’s breathing. Then Leora plucked the phone from the table.

—What is the number? she asked.

—To what? Svetlana said.

—The private ambulance.

—I don’t know it. I’ve never called.

—Find it, Leora said.

From the sofa came Tankilevich’s strangled
No.
Leora ignored him and went with the phone into the kitchen. She returned holding the phone and some banknotes. She offered them back to Svetlana.

—This is the money Baruch gave you in advance for the week. You keep it. It’s not charity. It’s rightfully yours. If we choose to leave early, we’re the ones breaking the agreement.

Svetlana vacillated, glancing at Tankilevich.

—Is it enough for the ambulance?

Svetlana nodded but still didn’t reach for the money, as if she were in the grip of some paralysis. Leora pressed the bills into her hand.

—Find the number and I will call.

Svetlana looked down at Tankilevich, whose eyes burned in his pale face. She kneeled before him and took his hand.

—Have mercy on me, she said.

Tankilevich mutely shook his head.

Svetlana rose to her feet, gripped her hair by the roots, and startled Kotler with a piercing cry.

—There is nowhere to turn! Who can tolerate such a life?

Tankilevich closed his eyes and lay on the sofa impassively, deaf to the drama.

Svetlana directed herself at Kotler and Leora.

—Life here for us now is impossible!

Kotler looked at her and, incidentally, at the room, which was part of a house, on a patch of land, with a car parked in front, but he didn’t contradict her.

—This country suffocates its people. Slowly, slowly, until it finally chokes you to death. That’s where we are now. It’s been suffocating us for years but somehow we managed to sneak a mouthful of air, but no longer. Now the time has come for us to choke, like everyone else who cannot leave this place.

—For Israel?

—For America. For Canada. For Australia. For Germany. Anywhere a mouse can find a hole. And, yes, for Israel. For Jews like my husband and half Jews like our daughters, and goy appendages like me. I understand very well how it is. We didn’t treat the Jews fondly here. The Russians and the Ukrainians. We were terrible anti-Semites. With repressions and pogroms, our fathers and grandfathers drove the Jews from this country. Because we didn’t want them here, the Jews had to make their own land. They shed their blood for it. A hundred years later and the Jews are nearly gone. So this is a great triumph! But how
do we celebrate? By bending over backward to invent a Jewish grandfather so that
we
can follow the Jews to
Israel!
Ha! There is history’s joke. But tell me who is laughing.

—Everybody and nobody, Kotler said. A Jewish joke.

—Nobody is laughing here. They are leaving or expiring.

—A sad end to the Crimean Jewish dream. And yet, if Stalin had only signed his name, it would have been a Jewish homeland.

—Yes, I heard of this dream. Stalin destroyed a lot of those people. But the Russians aren’t the Germans and they don’t pay reparations. So why speak of it? There is plenty of other history that also doesn’t pay.

Tankilevich’s chest rose and fell with a slow regularity. He lay on the sofa without stirring, reposed, as if calmly, pharaonically welcoming the void. Kotler recognized this condition, this state of being. A man proudly relinquishing his mortal coil. Where your death became your badge and a stab at your oppressors. This was how he had felt during the transcendent, soul-heightened stretches of his hunger strike. As though his hands were firmly gripped around the hilt of death, pointing its shining blade at iniquity. But what iniquity was Tankilevich combating? He would not accept Kotler’s help on principle. For this he was willing to deprive himself of his life and bereave his wife and children. It seemed an act of pridefulness and spite.

—We should go, Kotler said.

He watched Tankilevich for a reaction, but the man offered none. Leora, who had resisted coming here from the first and had been agitating to leave, reacted hardly more. At this point, there was little in leaving to gladden the heart.

The only animated response came from Svetlana.

—That’s it, then? she asked. This is how you’ll leave us?

With that she cast her eyes at the dreary scene behind her. The room, even in the morning light, had a watery murk.

—I think we’ve done enough, Kotler said. We’ll go before we inflict more harm.

—Never mind harm. The way we are, there’s no more harm you can inflict on us.

—Your husband needs an ambulance. Because of me he won’t accept one. We will go. And not just for your sake. We need to go. What Leora said is true. That money is rightfully yours. Use it to get him help.

Without saying another word, Kotler and Leora moved to leave the room.

—Go then, Svetlana cried. And turn your backs on God!

At this, despite his better judgment, Kotler failed to bite his tongue. A flicker of temper leaped in his chest.

—Excuse me, Kotler said, but let’s leave God out of this for a moment. There is something I don’t understand. You say you are to be suffocated and devoured. But how did you live, how did you feed yourselves all these years?

—How? We managed is how. We were younger, healthier. For as long as we could, we managed. We didn’t ask anyone for a kopek. Even when we were eligible, Chaim didn’t want to apply. He said,
I cannot go to them for money.
But we had no other choice. It was that or we become like the other pensioners in this country—insects scrabbling in the dirt. So I made him go to the Hesed. Not he,
I
. And how did the Hesed treat him? With compassion? With a shred of human decency? How? They humiliated a person. Here was a man who came to them
in need, his heart full of love for the Jewish people, and they treated him like a dog.

Tankilevich lay, as before, with his eyes shut, but now he had shed the otherworldly affect. He was listening.

—Don’t think to walk away with any rosy illusions, Svetlana spat. I understand, a respectable woman does not spill all her troubles. But I am not ashamed. Shame is a luxury, and we cannot afford it. My husband went to the Hesed as a Jew looking for help, and the director greeted him with a cold heart. She agreed to give, but imposed conditions. Conditions that my husband met for many years but that are now crippling for him. You see the state he’s in. Who in good conscience would impose harsh conditions on a person like this? And now that he can no longer meet her conditions, she will revoke the subsidy. In other words, she’s told us to dig our graves.