David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

Kotler and Leora followed Svetlana to the house but left their bags in the trunk of the car so as not to give the impression of a fait accompli. At the entrance, they conspired to notice the white plastic mezuzah that had been fastened to the doorjamb. Svetlana, not oblivious, and with a glint of self-satisfaction, brushed the object with her fingertips and then pressed her fingers to her lips.

— Normally, my husband would be here, but Saturdays he takes the trolleybus early to Simferopol to go to synagogue. They don’t always have ten men for services, the minyan. Svetlana said, savoring the last word.

Inside the house, she whisked them through the rooms that she occupied with her husband. The front door opened out to a sitting room with a sofa, coffee table, and television. Beyond this stretched a corridor. On the right side of the corridor lay the kitchen, with a wooden table and four matching chairs, a modern refrigerator and stove, and a deep, old-fashioned enamel sink. On the left side of the corridor were three doors, all shut, behind which, Svetlana explained, were the bedroom she shared with her husband, the bedroom their two daughters had shared, and a bathroom. With the exception of the kitchen, which boarders were permitted to use, the rest of the rooms were exclusive to her and her husband. The walls of the corridor were adorned by a number of decorative plates, some of a folkart variety — presumably local — and others porcelain, featuring historical renderings of foreign cities: Krakow, Prague, Zurich. There was a small wooden plaque with a bronze relief of the Wailing Wall — the kind sold on every street corner in Jerusalem. At the end of the corridor hung a framed portrait of a bride and groom.

— My oldest, Svetlana said, indicating the photo. Now in Simferopol. Her husband prefers to be unemployed there.

— He also attends the synagogue? Kotler asked playfully.

— It’s not for him, Svetlana curtly replied.

— And your other daughter?

— She is at the university in Kharkov. She studies economics. A brilliant girl, but this summer she is working in a hairdresser’s, Svetlana said and shrugged ruefully.

The corridor came to an end and they faced a door. A small window along the right side of the corridor admitted light. The left side of the corridor opened out to a vestibule. Three steps down was another door, which led to the scraggly yard.

— A private entrance, Svetlana said. You would have a key.

She then unlocked the door to the guest quarters and ushered them into a room of some twenty square meters, hardly extravagant, but tidy and bright. It had everything one expected from such a room: a desk, two chairs, a dresser with a small television upon it, and a double bed with the pillows and blue coverlet precisely arranged. The floor was composed of square white tiles; the walls were also painted white. Above the desk hung a rectangular gilt-framed mirror, and above the bed an amateur watercolor of a seascape, with wheeling gulls and little sailboat. Between the desk and the dresser was the door to the celebrated toilet. Svetlana stood behind them as Kotler and Leora peered inside. They saw a light blue commode with its water tank, a sink of the same color, and the raised platform of the shower protected by a translucent plastic curtain. Like the rest of the quarters, the space was cramped but everything looked clean and in good repair.

— Towels are here, Svetlana said.

Folded over a rod that was screwed to the back of the door were two thin, stiff cotton waffle-print towels, not large enough to wrap around a grown person’s waist — masterworks of Soviet fabrication.

With the tour concluded, they returned to the bedroom and inhabited a brief silence. Svetlana looked from Kotler to Leora and then said, So.

— We’ll need a few minutes to discuss, Kotler said.

— Very well, Svetlana said.

Her eyes then ranged about the room and momentarily came to rest on the bed. She turned and regarded them both as though trying to communicate something wordlessly. A thing too embarrassing to say out loud.

— And if there are other things you need for the room …

Kotler took this as an allusion to the ambiguity of his and Leora’s relations. In other words, the discreet offer of a foiding cot.

— Thank you, he said.

Svetlana withdrew to the main house, doing a poor job of concealing her resentments: a resentment that they had not immediately agreed to take the room and a resentment that anticipated their inevitable refusal.

Once she had gone, Kotler sat on the bed, bouncing gently to test the firmness of the mattress.

— This is not a good idea, Baruch. It’s not worth it.

— What about your sympathies?

— I don’t need to prove my sympathies, and neither do you.

— But that’s the problem with sympathies, Kotler said with a smile. One keeps needing to prove them.

— Baruch, to stay here is to ask for trouble. And the whole point of coming here was to evade trouble.

— The point. But not the whole point.

— You know what I mean.

— From that woman, we have nothing to fear.

— And from her husband?

— A Kazakh Jew in a Crimean town?

— A Russian Jew. If there is a Russian Jew in the world who doesn’t know who you are, I haven’t met him.

— Come, sit by me, Leora.

Kotler patted the spot beside him on the bed. Reluctantly, she did as he asked. Kotler reached for her hands and laid them on his thigh. The gesture was paternal and reassuring, but also undeniably more. Through the fabric of his trousers, Kotler felt the warm, birdlike weight of her hands. They sat quietly together and allowed the moment to take its effect. Slowly, as if submitting to fatigue, Leora rested her head on Kotler’s shoulder.

— There, my bunny, Kotler said.

What a picture they made, he thought. This voluptuous, serious, dark-haired girl with her head on the shoulder of a potbellied little man still wearing his sunglasses and Borsalino hat. Fodder for comedy. And yet, the girl’s fingers slipping between the man’s thighs dispelled comedy. In its place, the leap of animal desire.

— Leora, I agree this isn’t the rational thing. The rational thing would be to stay with the other woman.

— The peasant.

— The hardy, noble peasant. Who doesn’t care for Jews and doesn’t read the international press.

— It isn’t too late.

— Call it curiosity. Call it instinct. And I am a man who has followed his instincts.

— I thought it was principles.

— In my experience, they’re one and the same.

Leora straightened up and looked at him.

— You know my position. What more can I say?

— If you trust me in large matters, trust me in small.

— Baruch, it isn’t trust, it’s agreement. Usually, I agree with you. I agree with you like with no one else.

— Well, then this time will be an exception. Or more precisely, an evolution. Between two people, trust is more important than agreement. I am asking for your trust. Do you trust me on this?

— I disagree with you, Baruch, but I will not fight with you about it.

— Good. That is the definition of trust.

They found Svetlana in the kitchen, rinsing beet greens in the sink.

— So you have decided? Svetlana asked, not bothering to extract her hands from the sink.

— We will take the room, Kotler said.

— Is that so? Svetlana said, warming not at all.

— We will pay in cash for the week in advance. If that suits you.

— Yes, Svetlana said evenly, that suits me.

As the sun started its slow midsummer descent, they settled into their room. Svetlana had provided them with keys to the front and back doors and then done them the favor of graciously disappearing. For a moment — after they had finished arranging their belongings in the drawers and cabinets, and after they had stowed their empty suitcases in a corner — Kotler and Leora regarded each other with a mixture of wryness, giddiness, and apprehension. They had stolen away to hotel rooms before, but, except for one instance, never for more than an afternoon or an evening. Six months earlier, on a diplomatic visit to Helsinki, Leora had prevailed upon Kotler to let her stay the night in his bed. But there, she had had her own room a few doors away. Here, for the first time, they had created the semblance of a shared home. Their clothes resided in the same dresser, the same drawers. In the bathroom, huddled together in the shallow cabinet, were their vitamins, pills, creams, and toothbrushes. They were now publicly what they had been privately — which meant they were now altogether something else. Leora still had her apartment in Jerusalem, but as for himself, Kotler thought, this room arguably represented his only home. As matters stood, he had no other.