David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

— 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.

Kotler 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.