David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

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.

— 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.