David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

— 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.

— What conditions? Kotler asked.

At this Svetlana hesitated and glanced at Tankilevich. He had opened his eyes and now looked at her scornfully, as at a simple-minded, bumbling child.

— He had to go once a week to Simferopol, Svetlana said tersely.

Kotler paused for a moment and smiled.

— The weekly trip to the synagogue, he said. To make the minyan.