David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

— The Israeli government is nothing but a Judenrat! Podolsky declaimed. If anyone doubted it before, it should be clear now. The Americans and the Arabs issue the order, and their Jewish servants carry it out. They deceive themselves with the same rotten Judenrat logic. “If only we do this, our masters will be satisfied. If only we sacrifice these few, they will spare the rest.” Have not enough books been written on this subject? Is this some obscure wrinkle of history? What is the point of this Yad Vashem? So the Polish pope and the Nazi pope can have a nice place to go make a speech? And when the Arabs take over? When the Judenrat gives them Jerusalem? Then what will happen to this Yad Vashem?

— It will become the Zionist Occupation Museum, Tankilevich said, braced with tribal feeling.

— If not a mosque, said Nahum Ziskin.

This was what it was like to be on firm spiritual footing. To enjoy the prerogative of every human being: the society of like-minded fellows. In whose midst a man understood things preternaturally, in his bones. Yes, as if, after a fashion, the neural threads led to a common brain, the vessels to a common heart. Where even disagreement was disagreement within yourself. Once connected, always connected. Nothing and no one, exerting even the greatest power, could refute this.

For another fifteen minutes they remonstrated about this newest Israeli crisis, as though it were part of the liturgy they had come to recite. Then again, what were their prayers for? What was the point of Jewish prayer? What was the point of it from the very beginning? One point: Zion. A return to Zion. The ingathering of the scattered people at Zion. The arrival of the messianic age and the rebuilding of the temple in Zion. When there were millions under the tsar, it was for Zion. Now that there was but this puny remnant, it could only be for Zion. Even in London, New York, and Dnepropetrovsk, where they were not living under the shadow of extinction, it was still for Zion. Only in Zion was it not for Zion.

After services, Tankilevich didn’t linger as he often did but hurried out on the pretext of seeing his daughter. Often on these Saturdays, he visited her and her husband in the apartment they rented in a different, marginally less squalid, part of the city. For these visits Svetlana outfitted him with a parcel of food — even if only a jar of preserves and a few eggs from their chicken coop. Depending on how things sat, Tankilevich might also slip in fifty hryvnia. In return, his daughter did him the service of going once a month to pick up his Hesed subsidy. But today, because of his fearsome meeting with Nina Semonovna, he had avoided making other plans. He reasoned that if the meeting went well, he could still call his daughter and arrange to see her. But if the meeting went badly, he was certain that he would be in no condition to see her or anyone else. He dreaded to think about the condition he would be in if the meeting went badly.

Nina Semonovna had set their meeting at her office at the Hesed. She did not normally come in on Saturdays, the Hesed being closed on Shabbat, but she was making this accommodation for him. Tankilevich knew he was inconveniencing her and that this would not incline her favorably toward him, but what other choice did he have? Ten years earlier, when he had first contacted her, he had insisted on meeting after business hours, when he could be assured that nobody would overhear them. He supposed he could have done the same again, but it seemed to him that making his petition at the end of a long workday was no better than making it in the middle of a quiet Saturday. Besides, on another day he would have had to make an additional trip to Simferopol, six more hours on the hard plastic seats of the trolleybus; the prospect was too dispiriting, too daunting.

It was nearly forty-five minutes from the synagogue to the Hesed. There was the walk to the bus stop, a series of two minibuses to wait for, and another ten-minute walk to the apartment building where, on the ground floor, the Hesed had its offices. A wealthy American Jew with roots in Simferopol had bought the building and lent them the space. They were lucky to have it. Other communities — the Tatars, the Ukrainians — had nothing at all, even though there were plenty of rich Arabs in the Gulf and rich Ukrainians in Canada. Still, the location was problematic. Aside from the synagogue that Tankilevich attended, there were two others in the city, a Reformist and a Chabad — both struggling, both far from the Hesed. Nina Semonovna’s big ambition, known to all, was to reclaim the old Talmud Torah building, erected in 1913 to educate Jewish boys. It was large and well situated, perfect for a center. With such a building, the community might stand a chance. But for many years, it had served as the Institute of Sport. In the 1990s, the government had returned some buildings to local communities, but there was little chance it would return this one. The state was poor and the Jews were poor. What did moral and historical claims matter in such an equation? So the Gestapo had used it as their headquarters. So they had collected Jews there before sending them to their macabre deaths. But the innocent students of the Institute of Sport hadn’t done this. Why should they be dispossessed?

A crime demanded rectification! That was why. But it would never happen.

The situation was not bound to improve. They had just said the kaddish for Isidor Feldman. A sad business in and of itself, made sadder by the fact that without Feldman they were further depleted. Their trajectory was ineluctable. During the prayer, the perverse thought had occurred to Tankilevich that they could have used Feldman’s voice to help say the kaddish for Feldman.

Tankilevich rang the bell to be admitted into the Hesed and waited for some time for a response. He rang again and then felt, through the door, the reverberations of someone’s steps striding toward him. A turn of the bolt and Nina Semonovna was there. A handsome Jewish woman in her fifties, of the Portuguese type, olive-skinned, full-featured, and without a shred of credulity, habituated to a deceitful, grasping world where everyone is suspect. Tankilevich was no exception.

Dispensing with Hello she said, Come in.

He followed her through the empty reception area where the guard usually sat. Then through the narrow corridor, dim because she had not bothered to turn on the lights. Along the walls were posted the displays. There was always something. Tankilevich remembered one that featured Jewish Nobel laureates — Einstein, Bohr, Pasternak, and so on — complete with their likenesses and short biographies. Now it was local Jewish war heroes: soldiers, sailors, and partisans. Affixed to the walls were dozens of photographs; some depicted the fighters in their youth, some in their later years. They passed the doors to the lecture room, the doors to the library, the doors to the game room. At the end of the corridor, Nina Semonovna indicated a padded vinyl chair situated in front of the door to the administrative offices.

— Wait here, please, she said morosely, I have another client.

Tankilevich did as he was told. He sat in the dim corridor and, almost in spite of himself, caught strains of the dispute that resounded behind the closed door: Nina Semonovna’s firm, even tone and another, shriller female voice. Nina Semonovna’s words were difficult to distinguish but, Tankilevich could make out some of the other woman’s phrases at the highest pitch: On whose authority? … How dare you? … Who said so? … I am entitled!

After this appetizer, Tankilevich thought, what stomach for the main course?

There followed a considerable period of silence broken by one final proclamation and the harsh scraping of chair legs. Then the door flew open and a woman barged furiously out. She was about the same age as Nina Semonovna, stout and heavy-bosomed. She passed him with hardly a glance, only a flash of gold earrings and a swirl of her long skirt. She stamped her heels on the linoleum and Tankilevich felt shudders through the base of his chair. There was also the echo, like cannonade. Meanwhile, Nina Semonovna filled the doorway and observed laconically the woman’s departure.