David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

— Go and thank God, Tankilevich said.

He struck a match and put it to the letter.

Between the domestic terminal of Kiev’s Boryspil airport and the parking lot, there was a stand of mature chestnut trees, the bases of their trunks painted white. A few benches had been installed beneath them to create a little refuge. Leora told Kotler she wished to sit there before they went into the international terminal for the flight to Tel Aviv. It was past ten in the evening and the canopies of the trees corralled the darkness. A soft breeze blew. Leora and Kotler were not alone in the little refuge; others appeared to have gravitated there for the same reason: to skim a restful moment from a long journey. On one bench huddled a young family — the parents and two small children. One child was asleep in the father’s arms, the other chewed sleepily on a bun given it by its mother. Sitting quietly by himself on another bench was a man, much obscured by the darkness, who sipped from a bottle of beer and smoked a cigarette. The silence was broken intermittently by the motor of a car starting in the parking lot and, every few minutes, by a plane lifting into the sky in a graceful line, soon visible only as a configuration of lights, pulsing and shining, white at the nose, the wings tipped green and red.

Leora and Kotler sat without speaking a small distance apart. After a time, Leora took her hand and placed it in Kotler’s. Holding hands, they continued to sit without speaking. This was farewell with nothing to be said. Had they not come to Yalta, had they not met Tankilevich, had Benzion not shot himself, Leora wondered if the outcome for them would have been the same. If the train of events would have been any way unchanged. She thought of Benzion in the hospital with his mutilated hand. In her mind he was still very much a shy, serious, openhearted boy. She still felt a great deal of affection for him, and for Dafna and Miriam too. She had always felt privileged to be taken into their midst. But now she could not even think of paying Benzion a visit, sending him a card for his convalescence. She didn’t doubt that his act had as much to do with the havoc in his family as the havoc in the land. Soon enough they would be returning to both, and she also to the ambiguity of what life held next. For this reason, she was glad to sit in the darkness and prolong their farewell, the purest, most intimate moment they would share on this trip. The rest of it was now clouded by a vague unpleasantness. She understood now what she should have understood all along. When Kotler refused the compromise on the park bench, it had sounded the death knell not for his marriage but for their affair. This trip, which they had entertained as a beginning, was always an ending. And, at root, her relationship with Kotler had been built upon a flawed premise. A girlish infatuation she had failed to banish. She had wanted her saint to also be a man. Which was like wanting day to also be night. A saint loved the world more than any single person, while a man loved one person more than the whole world. And so only a saint could live with a saint. She was no saint, though she had once aspired to be.

The thought of being not good enough for another person carried within it a condemnation of that person, and yet Leora felt it was a condemnation to which she alone was entitled. The rest of the world hadn’t earned the right. And the rest of the world would resume for them as soon as they joined the line of people for the flight to Tel Aviv and lost their anonymity. They had already received a foretaste from Nina Semonovna. There had been the look on her face when she greeted them, but also the way she had treated Baruch when he asked for her help. This was what they could expect, and more.

— If it gets out, if there is trouble, Nina Semonovna had said, who will protect me? Are you any longer in a position to give assurances?

— Never mind assurances, Kotler said. Even at the best of times, there are no assurances. You do it not because of assurances but because it is right.

— Then I must not think it is right.

— You are punishing him needlessly. If I can forgive him, so can you.

Nina Semonovna then turned flintily to Leora.

— You have not said a word. Maybe we should also have your opinion?

Kotler turned to her as well.

— Let him live, she said.

On the flight to Tel Aviv, Kotler looked out from under the brim of his hat. He was in the middle seat; Leora had the window. A young Hasid with sidelocks and black garb sat on the aisle. The middle seat had originally been Leora’s but the Hasid had politely asked if Kotler might be willing to switch with her. He hadn’t explained why and they hadn’t required him to. It was a small accommodation on a full plane. Not the place to make an egalitarian stand.

The airline was Ukrainian and the plane contained a mingling of humanity that now existed only on a flight like this. It was a little flying shtetl. A Sholem Aleichem story come to life. Sitting side by side, row by row, was every Jewish derivation. There were Hasids who worshipped God one way, rival Hasids who worshipped Him another, and the Zionist Orthodox who worshipped Him a third. There were the families of the merchant class who spoke Hebrew, and the families of the biznismeni who spoke Russian. There were the artists and intellectuals like Leora and Kotler, with their grand philosophical visions. And there were the young American Jews, carefree, heedless, and a little dim, cushioned from history and entrusted with too much. Interspersed among them were Russians and Ukrainians, quiet and unperturbed, accustomed to these Jews from longstanding acquaintance. It was a model of coexistence as it may never have been and as it had failed to become. The moment the plane landed, it would dissolve, with everyone returning to his barricade.

How much changed, Kotler thought, was his outlook now compared to his first arrival in Israel. Practically antithetical. Twenty-five years earlier he had been filled with joy. The entire country had been astir. The prime minister had sent an official plane. They flew from Prague to Tel Aviv, just the Israeli aircrew, two diplomats, Miriam, and him. It was the high point of his life. He had never felt such promise, such optimism.

Now he was on an airplane surrounded by his people, his ideal little world, but he was hiding under his hat. He still retained his wonderment at the thought of Israel — that after millennia of exile, this country existed; that he’d had the good fortune to be born into this time; and that he had prevailed against an awesome foe to gain his place there — but he despaired for its future. His countrymen no longer waited impatiently for his arrival. Rather, he was the object of scorn and ridicule. His time had passed. The country desired a different kind of hero. Perhaps he should be proud, for he had supplied it with one.

But he remembered the night twenty-five years ago when he’d had his first glimpse of the land, the dark contours of Jerusalem scrolling by, the ancient city speckled with light, his heart stretched to the limit, as though pulled from above and below, his eyes welling with tears of primordial grief and thanksgiving, and the words of the Psalm resounding in his head in a strong mystical voice, When the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like dreamers. And he remembered the feel of Miriam’s hand in his as they made their descent, holding her tight because otherwise he would burst from the plane from impatience, and the view of the tarmac with the honor guard and the brass band and the billowing flags, and the throng of a thousand jubilant faces, who were already singing when he stepped from the plane.