David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

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.

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.

— Who 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.