David Bezmozgis - The Betrayers

Kotler joined Leora on the bed atop the blue coverlet. The atmosphere between them at that moment was unerringly chaste. Leora held herself slightly aloof, as if in anticipation of a blow. This trip they had embarked on, already fraught with many complications, seemed to accrue new ones by the minute. Mostly, Kotler thought, because he was inept at selfishness. After a life of self-denial, he had finally pursued a selfish want, but he kept undermining himself. How long had he dreamed of sleeping with Leora in a large white room overlooking the sea? If not from the first moment he saw her, then soon after he brought her onto his staff and, increasingly, into his home. A smart and efficient girl who quickly proved her worth. She was frequently at their table for Friday-night dinners. She became like an older sister to Dafna and went shopping with her for clothes that Miriam, in her piousness, abjured. All the while, a current passed between him and Leora, like the invisible data that streamed between all the new machines. It went like this for years. Then one night a year ago, the two of them working late in his office, she had glanced up from her note-taking and caught him looking at her in an explicit way, and, for the first time, he did not draw the cloak of self-restraint. How I have denied myself, he said to her. Should I continue to deny myself? She had considered him steadily and said, I can’t answer that for you. To which he’d replied, Yes, you can. And they had done in his office what so many other political men had done in theirs. For shame, Kotler thought, and yet they continued to follow in this disreputable tradition.

— What did Dafna say? Leora asked. Other than that she hates me?

— In so many words, she called her father a fool. A popular position at the moment, and difficult to dispute. Though I disputed it.

— That’s all?

— She’s a grown girl. A young woman. No longer a child, as she is quick to remind me. A father doesn’t fully realize this until it stares him in the face. It isn’t all bad. Sooner or later, the realization arrives: the child discovers the immaturity of the parent, and the parent the maturity of his child.

— It’s all wonderfully philosophical, Baruch.

— Yes, well, at times like these, we turn to our vices. The bottle for some, philosophy for others. Most of us are not blessed with your unwavering levelheadedness.

— My unwavering levelheadedness. Do you know what it’s like to be a levelheaded girl? It’s like having a disfigurement. I’m still embarrassed by the stupid things I did to try to overcome it.

— To me it isn’t a disfigurement. Quite the contrary, I like it very much.

— That puts you in the minority. A small minority.

— Not for the first time, Kotler said and took Leora’s hand.

— So that’s it, then? Leora asked. Nothing has changed? We go on as before?

— Nothing has changed between us, Kotler said.

— And not between us? If there is something you want to say, Baruch, you should say it.

Kotler tried to draw Leora closer to him, but she held her ground, such as it was, refusing to be mollified.

— What does the name Vladimir Tankilevich mean to you? Kotler asked.

From her expression, he saw that it meant nothing. It was no surprise. The name had long ago ceased to mean anything to all but a handful of people. A dwindling handful. A few of the central players from the defining drama of Kotler’s life.

— He’s my red-haired Motele, Kotler said with a weary smile.

— I don’t know what that means, Baruch.

— It’s a line from Eugenia Ginzburg. Her first offhand impression of the man who will eventually destroy her life. “Who’s the red-haired Motele?” she asks her husband at a picnic. The analogy isn’t perfect. Ginzburg was a Jewish Communist and her red-haired Motele was a Jewish Chekist, but the line nevertheless stuck in my head.

— Perhaps I’m dense, Baruch, or on edge, or just tired, but I’m not in the mood for puzzles.

— Tankilevich was the man who denounced me. My old roommate in Moscow who also happened to be a KGB informant. He published the open letter in Izvestia that said I was working for the CIA.

— All right. What of him?

— I saw him.

— When did you see him? I’ve been with you all day.

— I saw him when I was standing in the yard making the phone call to Dafna. I saw him through the window of the house. Shall I go on?

There was no need for him to go on. Leora rose from the bed and looked at him soberly.

— You saw him, but did he see you?

— No.

— Fine, Leora said.

She turned from Kotler and pulled open a dresser drawer. She scooped up an armful of their clothes and dropped it in a pile at the foot of the bed. Kotler understood that she meant to rouse him to action, to counter what had already taken root in him — what she sensed had taken root in him — but it did no good. He sat serene and motionless on the bed. Leora looked at him with ebbing defiance. He could see it ebbing, flagging. Beginning at her eyes, her shoulders, her spine, and so on. Against such motionless serenity, nothing could be done. They both knew this. As for the source of the serenity that had possessed him so swiftly, Kotler was almost embarrassed to say. It was unlike the serenity with which he had confronted Amnon and the prime minister and the various foes of his past. That serenity had been the product of reason and principle, easy to articulate and, at least in his own mind, defend. This serenity descended upon him from another dimension. For want of a better word, a mystical one. Though, no doubt, this was how all irrational people justified their intransigences.

— We should never have come here, Leora said. We should never have gone with that woman. I said so.

— But we did. And, as strange as this will sound coming from my mouth, I can’t help but feel that it was for a reason.

— Yes? And what reason?

— That’s what I’d like to find out.

— I still don’t understand. What’s there to find out? You’ve stumbled upon the man who betrayed you forty years ago. The odds of this, of ending up a boarder in his house, are almost nil. But so? Now what? Is it that you want to exact vengeance? What is it? Do you want to hit him?

— No, those fantasies ended long ago.

— So what, then? Do you want to prove something to him? Confront him with your achievements?

— No. And it hardly feels like the moment for it.

— Doesn’t it? You’re on the front pages of newspapers. Yes, there’s a scandal, but that’s incidental. The real point is about the fate of our country, a fate that means a great deal to a great many people. And you are at the center of it. Who is he, this Tankilevich, compared to that?

— I also have a beautiful young mistress. You forgot to mention that.

— And he is married to a sly embittered hag. And he lives in this decrepit little house. And he’s barely scraping by. And he’s probably nursing some chronic ailment of the liver or the prostate. And, and, and … In the end, there has been some kind of justice. What more do you want?

— I’m curious, Leora. That’s my only explanation. Curiosity. A curiosity deep in my bones. I’m as curious as I have ever been in my life.

— That’s your entire reason?

— I want to know, Leora. First and foremost. It is a need like hunger. You satisfy the need, and the rationale, the why, comes after, once you are sated.

— And to satisfy this need you’re willing to risk revealing yourself to these people? Not only that, but also us, the time we have together here. The only time like this we’ve ever had or may ever have. Because what do you think will happen when you confront this man and his wife? That we’ll continue on as if nothing happened? That we’ll go to the beach and take excursions to the Livadia Palace and the Chekhov Museum? If you confront this man, you don’t know what will happen, except that we will lose our chance to be alone together as we dreamed. If that isn’t important to you, if that is a subordinate need, then you will have answered a question for me.