—Look into your heart, Svetlana said. That’s all I ask. You have the ability to save lives. And what does a person gain from withholding mercy?
At that moment the front door opened and there came the sound of Tankilevich’s heavy steps. They both looked up to see him enter the kitchen, his face dark with disapproval at the sight of Leora.
TWELVE
Kotler stared for long minutes out the window and into the chicken yard. What had once seemed like the right decision, compulsory even, now seemed like utter foolishness. What had made him think that he could go on some romantic holiday when the situation at home was dire and his own son was caught up in it? He’d failed to understand his duty clearly. His duty was to see things through to their conclusion. When the army and the police came to evacuate the settlement, his duty was to be present, holding a placard: Peace Settlement Before Settlement Withdrawal! But he had convinced himself that he needed to leave. That the scandal would overshadow everything. That his presence would prove too distracting. That the helpful, reasonable thing to do was to absent himself. And he’d somehow thought that far away, in Crimea, he would be able to occupy his mind with other thoughts. Now, after speaking to Benzion, he saw his mistake. He had engaged in games. Coming to Yalta had been a game. And staying to confront Tankilevich, to satisfy his curiosity? Also a game. Well, he had played games for one day, and one day was enough. He’d caught a glimpse of Yalta and seen the changes fifty years had wrought. He’d had a day and a night together with Leora, the most he could ask for under the circumstances. If he was to have no more, he would have to accept it. That was the bargain he had struck on the park bench. And as for Tankilevich, what else did Kotler want? He’d seen as much as he needed to see. Enough, in any event, to resolve the central mystery. Was Tankilevich living or dead? Living. How did he live? Like this. Had justice been served? In its way.
It was still early in the morning. If they took a taxi to Simferopol, Kotler thought, they could be at the airport in two hours. If they were lucky, in another two hours they could be in Kiev. By the end of the day, they could be back home. Almost certainly too late for the evacuation, but not for the aftermath. The aftermath was also important—in its way, more important. The evacuation itself was by now a foregone conclusion. People could protest and resist, but the decision had been made and wouldn’t be reversed. The aftermath, on the other hand, was an open question. And the aftermath accounted for the larger portion of life. The drab aftermath, when the vanquished must fend for themselves. He remembered it after Gaza—the dazed, disbelieving, resigned numbers sitting on the steps of their mobile homes. They had been deceived, misled. In a golden hour they had been promised one thing, and that promise had been rescinded. And what did they get in return? They got what Kotler had predicted. From the Arabs they got rockets—some people had apparently expected bouquets. Not that he blamed them for their optimism. They hadn’t had his education. Even if a lesson was elementary, one rarely learned it in the abstract. The instruction had to be applied directly onto one’s hide. Holding the territory had become increasingly painful, but as Kotler knew, one had to have a tolerance for pain. Because there is no life without pain. To deny this was only to invite more pain. This is what they had done when they withdrew from the Gaza settlements in 2005, and they were doing it again, as if a mistake stubbornly repeated could yield different results. To uproot thousands of your own people. To make casualties of them for no discernible purpose. It was gross incompetence. If you were not willing to protect your people, you should not have encouraged them to live in that place, and if you were not going to encourage them to live in that place, you should never have held the territory. There was no middle ground. Once you had committed to one, you had committed to all. The time for simply walking away had long passed. Now you stayed at any cost or exchanged a pound of flesh for a pound of flesh. That was all. Nothing else.
Well, what rigidity! Kotler observed with bemusement. Sometimes, after a run of such thoughts, he stood as if at his own shoulder, looking at a curious twin self. Who was the man who thought these thoughts? It came as something of a surprise. Not because of the thoughts—he didn’t dispute the thoughts—but their pitch. The pitch of a public man who expected his thoughts to have injunctive force in the world. In spite of his true nature, he’d become this man. Forty years earlier, he’d been thrust, unwittingly, into this role by Tankilevich. Neither of them could have anticipated where it would lead. When he’d first seen the article in Izvestia, his head swam. Then, two weeks later, on the street outside his apartment, half a dozen agents swooped, surrounding him, their many hands clutching his coat and tossing him, limp as a rag, into the waiting car. From such pathetic beginnings he rose. Simply, he was forced to discover hidden reserves of strength. And once he rose, it was hard to return to the man he’d been before—a fairly ordinary man, with no grand designs. A former musical prodigy with small hands, a degree in computer engineering, and a desire to live in Israel. This described nearly every Zionist in Moscow. But then, after his ordeal, he was exposed to people in positions of power and saw how many of them were inadequate, even mentally and morally deficient. Little more than noise and plumage. And then it seemed impossible to leave serious matters—matters for which he had sacrificed everything—in the hands of such people. Still, he wasn’t one of them and it was a wonder that he had lasted in their midst for as long as he had. Now, almost certainly, his time was up. How many politicians survived such a scandal? So why couldn’t he now return to his original humble ambitions: to lead the life of an ordinary citizen in his ancestral homeland? How many other immigrants were there, even former refuseniks, who’d attained just that sort of life? They gloried in the country, found pleasure in every mundane detail. It all still seemed miraculous for a people so long displaced. Street signs bearing names from Jewish history. Hebrew singing issuing from the radio. The sight of young Jewish soldiers in uniform. All the peerless works of Jewish industry. Even the trees and birds, their beautiful essences nourished on Jewish soil. It sufficed for them. Only an egomaniac thought in terms any more exalted—to be a leader of the people, a second Moses or Ben-Gurion. But the question was, after he had been exposed to the upper machinations, to the sordid leveragings of power, and knowing what he knew, could it still suffice for him?
In the chicken yard, Tankilevich came into view. His legs moved stiffly, arthritically, as if they had lost the greater part of their utility. He still had the presence of a large man, but he was sapped of strength, his arms depleted of muscle, the elbows bulbous in their sheath of skin. He carried weight in the stomach and chest, but it was slack and unwholesome. The only sign of vitality was his full, almost overfull, head of white hair, below which his face was drawn, his skin loose at the mouth and the throat. He gave the impression of dissatisfaction and ill health. Bent wincingly at the knees, he ducked his head and shoulders inside the chicken coop and then held this inelegant pose, his legs splayed for balance and the wide seat of his pants framed by the gray wood of the chicken coop. Kotler couldn’t help but compare him to others from the movement, most of whom had passed through the frozen jaws of the Gulag to reach Israel. They’d emerged from captivity emaciated, jaundiced, and toothless, thinking that they would never fully recover. But to see them now, one would never guess. Kotler had recently visited Yehuda and Rachel Sobel at their home on the grounds of the Weizmann Institute. They had themselves a little villa. Pomegranate and citrus trees surrounded the backyard patio where they’d taken their dinner. Rachel had plucked herbs for their meal from ten different ceramic pots. Yehuda was tanned, stout, and percolating with good health. And yet the man had spent two years in a hole near the Mongolian border, much of that time with an abscess in his mouth. Or there was Eliezer Shvartz, who did his morning calisthenics on a balcony that overlooked the Jaffa Gate, and Abrasha Mirsky, who held several patents in desalinization and had retired to Ma’ale Adumim, and Moshe Gendelman, who had grown a long beard, fathered eight children, an
d ran a yeshiva in Kiryat Shmona. Compared to Tankilevich, they were all thriving, each after his own fashion. From a certain standpoint, Kotler thought, Tankilevich had no right to look as terrible as he did. Nobody had tried to destroy his health. So it was disgraceful for him to be in such poor shape. Nobody had done it to him. He had done it to himself. Perversely, Kotler thought, though it served him right, he hadn’t earned the right.
Tankilevich took two short shuffling steps back from the chicken coop and then extracted his shoulders and head from the enclosure. He straightened himself to his full height. In his hands he cradled several white eggs. Kotler couldn’t tell how many. Perhaps half a dozen, perhaps fewer.
Eggs in hand, Tankilevich stood contemplative, gazing off to one side. Kotler remained at the window watching him. To watch another person think was absorbing, more absorbing than watching a person do anything else. Nothing was quite so personal or mysterious or telling. And all the more absorbing when it was someone you knew. To see him in an unguarded moment when he was trying to be known to himself. And more, to watch him when you believed he was thinking about you. Tankilevich peered down at his eggs and then again at a point over his left shoulder. Every fluctuation of thought had its corresponding expression, which could be read as though set in type: self-pity, reproach, accusation, defeat, forbearance.
Tankilevich turned his head and looked at the window behind which Kotler stood. There was no confusion. It wasn’t nighttime, and the glass played no optical tricks. Kotler didn’t flinch from Tankilevich’s gaze, nor did Tankilevich avert his eyes. They looked at each other through the glass. And now what did he detect on Tankilevich’s face? A flare of recalcitrance that quickly guttered. And what of his own face? What did Kotler present? The same expression he had presented to the KGB and all the subsequent adversaries. Unyielding calm. An expression of come-what-may. No—more than that. An expression that invited come-what-may.
Though it seemed to pain him body and soul, Tankilevich put one foot in front of the other and trudged toward Kotler. If this is the way it is to be, Kotler thought, then this is the way it is to be. He moved from the window and went to meet Tankilevich. If they were to have this encounter he preferred not to have it in this small room, contained and constricted, but outdoors, with the sun and the air and the expansiveness of the sky, as befit a free man.
THIRTEEN
Tankilevich stood in the yard, waiting for Kotler to appear.
Along the wall of the house was a wooden bench—seven slats nailed together—and an upended zinc tub. Tankilevich thought to sit on the bench or to lay the eggs on the base of the tub. It had a lip that would keep them from rolling off. He bent and carefully placed the eggs down on the tub, his nerves and the need for concentration amplifying the geriatric tremor in his hands.
In the hallway, Kotler spied Leora and Svetlana in the kitchen. Both women eyed him expectantly. He acknowledged them with a quick cheery nod and continued to the side door. Stepping out into the yard, he saw Tankilevich stooped and intent over the metal tub, where the eggs rested in a line along the edge of the slightly convex surface. A hollow metal tapping sounded as Tankilevich put the last egg down with its fellows.
—I see you have your own little kibbutz.
—Oh yes, it’s some kibbutz, Tankilevich said. We’re four chickens from the grave.
—That’s a lot of kibbutzes today.
—Too bad.
—I agree, Kotler said.
—How nice. Is that all? Or is there more you came to say?
Tankilevich had his first good look at Kotler in the flesh. Over the years, he had of course seen his picture in the papers and marked his progress. But to see a man in the flesh was a different matter. How had the years treated him? Forty years ago, he had been a skinny, quick-witted, balding, shabbily dressed young man. Shabbily dressed even for Russia in the 1970s. Tankilevich, who cared to dress better, had allowed himself to feel superior. Now Kotler was still shabbily dressed. His shirtsleeves were too long; the cuffs dangled. His trousers were baggy, even though he had gained weight. Only his shoes were worth envying. They were clearly from abroad, not something you could find at the bazaar. The shoes declared him a foreigner. The shoes and his expression. The easy, confident look of a person who lives his life in a better country. Kotler had prevailed and he had come to lord this over Tankilevich.
—Volodya—
—Chaim.
—Chaim, Chaim. For the last time, I didn’t come here to say anything to you. I had no idea you lived here. Not in Ukraine. Not in Crimea. Not in Yalta. In fact, I had no idea whether you were living at all. Nor did I spend much time on this question.
—I wrote a letter.
—What’s that?
—I wrote a letter. To Chava Margolis.
—And?
—Ten years ago.
—All right.
—She didn’t tell you?
—Chaim, despite your fervent Zionism, it’s clear you’re not keeping up with the news from Israel.
—I keep up perfectly well. I watch the Russian television. I read the Russian press. And a friend informs me of the Hebrew. He gets it on the computer.
—Then perhaps this bit of news eluded you. Or perhaps it didn’t rate over here.
—What news is that?
—The news of my Jerusalem trial. Chava Margolis was one of the witnesses for the prosecution. She and Sasha Portnoy. A few others too. The plaintiff was another activist. He made some outrageous claims against me in print. I defended myself and he brought a suit against me for libel. Shapira. From Gomel. Is the name familiar?
—No.
—Well, he had a very intricate thesis worked out, in which I had not been an agent of the American intelligence services, as you accused me of being, but rather an agent of the KGB. And that my Moscow show trial had been doubly fabricated. A show trial in which I, the defendant, had been in league with the authorities who were prosecuting me. In other words, I merely gave the very convincing impression of passionately defending myself and the Zionist movement, whereas, in fact, I was opposed to the movement and used the trial process as a way to expose other activists. Genuine activists like Chava and Sasha and, presumably, Shapira. And that it was because of me that they were imprisoned and exiled. You see? That I, who pretended to be the great hero, and who was celebrated above all the others, was in fact a traitor and a party to a deception of unprecedented complexity and mendacity. That I was heartless enough to put those closest to me, my parents and my young bride, through terrible anguish for more than a decade. And that while my family believed I was being kept in deplorable conditions in Soviet jails and camps, and while they moved heaven and earth to win my freedom, I was actually luxuriating in some undisclosed location, a client of the KGB. That, in essence, I was the worst traitor of all. Worse even than you.
—They mentioned me in the trial?
—Of course. You were my accomplice. Naturally. We plotted together.
One of the chickens had skittered over to them and now cocked its pert, imbecilic head at Tankilevich. With an angry swipe of his foot, he sent it flapping.
—When was this trial? he asked.
—Ten years ago.
—The same time I wrote to Chava.
—Evidently. Had I known you were alive, I could have called you as my witness.
—How so?
—To recount how we plotted together.
—No, we didn’t plot together. But if, over my head, you plotted with the KGB, how would I have known about it?
—Over your head?
—Yes. It was in my letter to Chava. I explained everything to her. How I did not write that statement in Izvestia. How they merely appended my name.
—I see. And was it a look-alike who testified against me at the trial and confirmed the substance of the letter?
—It was I but under duress. They also had me on medication. It was all in the letter to Chava. Which I expected she would share with others.
/> —She might have shared it with others, but not with me. I haven’t spoken to her since the Jerusalem trial. And I’ve seen her only once, unavoidably, at a gathering of refuseniks in the Ben Shemen Forest. What valuable information did she fail to impart to me?
—A great deal. But I can see that you’re not interested in it.
—That’s not true. But if by not interested you mean that I don’t believe anything you say will change the material facts, that’s right.
—The material facts?
—Facts that most sensible people—not conspiracy theorists—consider to be established. You gave false witness against me to the KGB.
—I gave, but I was forced.
—It was the Soviet Union; who wasn’t forced? A few degenerates. But most people aren’t degenerates. Everyone was forced. Some nevertheless managed to resist.
That second trial. Kotler avoided speaking or thinking about it. It had been a disgrace to them all. Even though he’d been acquitted, he’d come away wounded—in stark contrast to his Soviet trial, where, though convicted, he had come away invigorated. To sit in an Israeli courtroom and see Chava and Sasha looking at him with the same cold rectitude they had once reserved for the KGB. Terrible.
The Betrayers Page 11