The Betrayers

by David Bezmozgis

  SEVENTEEN

  Tankilevich stood over the zinc tub in the yard. He had placed inside it the carbons of his letter to Chava Margolis. In his hand he held a box of matches. He would burn this letter. He had kept it this long because of a stupid self-deception. He’d imagined it would be discovered by his daughters after he died and that it would provide them with the truth about their enigmatic father. This had given him comfort. That which he could not bring himself to reveal to them in life, they could read in his own words after his death. But after his return from the pointless trip to the hospital, Tankilevich had been seized by the need to reread this letter, and he’d gone to the cabinet to get it. He hadn’t looked at it in many years. He’d sent it ten years earlier, and it had been nearly that long since he had read it, though he believed he remembered with considerable accuracy what it contained.

  After he reread it he went to find a matchbox.

  Svetlana, meanwhile, had collapsed on the sofa. She lay there with a hand over her eyes. From this position she called after him—first imploring him not to go rummaging in the other room and then, when she saw him going back out to the yard, imploring him to stay in the house.

  Reading the letter had brought back something that Tankilevich had managed to suppress. He had been right in that he remembered with a high degree of fidelity what he had written, but he had somehow forgotten why he had written it. And the reason for the letter, the purpose behind its composition, was shamefully manifest in its every line. He had written it soon after his brother’s death. How could he have forgotten that? He had written it in a fit of financial desperation. This accounted for its pathetic, clamoring tone. Now he remembered. First he had begged Chava Margolis—Forgive me, spare me, release me—and, when she did not reply, he’d gone to beg Nina Semonovna. The letter was in the voice of a weakling, a man he despised. Not the man he wanted his daughters to discover. Instead, a man whose traces needed to be obliterated.

  As he struck the match, he heard the telephone ring inside the house. For some reason, some intuition, he stood with the lit match in his fingers. The phone rang a second time before Svetlana answered it. Tankilevich continued to wait. He dropped the match onto the parched earth and stamped it out. Moments later, Svetlana came rushing out, holding the cordless telephone.

  —For you, she said breathlessly.

  Tankilevich took the phone and heard Nina Semonovna’s voice. He heard her speak his name.

  —Mr. Tankilevich, I have thought about our conversation.

  —Yes, Tankilevich said.

  —I have had a change of heart, Nina Semonovna said, though her voice gave no sign of it.

  —Why? Tankilevich asked.

  —Instead of asking questions, Mr. Tankilevich, I’d encourage you to say Thank you.

  —I would like to know why, Tankilevich repeated.

  —Why? Because the sun is in the sky, Nina Semonovna said. Tell me, would you prefer I reconsider?

  Svetlana stood very close to Tankilevich and looked at him with horror.

  Do as you please, Tankilevich thought. Reconsider! Go to hell!

  —No, he said.

  —I’ll not wait for Thank you, Nina Semonovna said, adding, Your stipend will be mailed to you.

  Tankilevich handed the receiver back to Svetlana.

  —Well? she asked.

  —Go and thank God, Tankilevich said.

  He struck a match and put it to the letter.

  EIGHTEEN

  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.

  Coda

  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.

  David, King of Israel, lives, lives and endures!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author wishes to thank the following people and organizations for their assistance:

  Ben George at Little, Brown USA; Will Hammond at Viking/Penguin UK; Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins Canada.

  Amanda Urban at ICM in New York; Margaret Halton at RCW in London; Daisy Meyrick at Curtis Brown UK. Thanks also to Ira Silverberg, who oversaw the book in its early stages.

  Roman Chavdarov, for his exceptional generosity and hospitality in Crimea. My traveling companions, Michael Burns and Simon Shuster. Elana Kriulko and everyone I met at the Feodosia Hesed. Victoria Plotkina and everyone at the Simferopol Hesed—particularly Natalia Visotskaya, who has been a tremendous source of information about Crimean Jewry past and present .

  Benny and Varda Shilo, for hosting me at the Weizmann Institute. Also at the Weizmann Institute: Amos and Galia Arieli, Shimon Levit, Rada Massarwa, and Tegest Aychek. At kibbutz Ein HaHoresh: Gadi, Ayala, and Itamar Marle; Yonat and Yossi Rotbein; and Elisha Porat. To the former refuseniks with whom I met in Israel: Yuli Kosharovsky, Hillel Butman, Evgeny Yakir, Alexander and Polina Paritzky. And, once again, to Enid Wurtman, for opening doors and much else. I’m also grateful to Benny Begin, Hilik Bar, Yoram Meital, Talia Sasson, Boaz Katz, Meyer Shimony Bensimon, and Shlomo Azoulai for their time, as well as to Samer Makhlouf in Ramallah. Further thanks to Joel Braunold and OneVoice.

  Many people at the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) were helpful to me at various stages of researching and writing the novel, among them Misha Mitsel, Gilla Brill, Mark Codron, Asher Ostrin, Ofer Glanz, and Michael Geller, who offered unflagging support.

  Nell Freudenberger, Amity Gaige, and Larissa MacFarquhar read early drafts of the novel. Rabbi Martin Berman and Marilyn Berman also offered valuable advice.

  Significant sections of the book were researched and written during fellowships at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. I am sincerely grateful to both organizations and to the colleagues I met there whose insights informed the novel, particularly those of Mortaza Mardiha.

  And, as ever, I’m grateful to Hannah Young and Sara Bezmozgis.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DAVID BEZMOZGIS is an award-winning writer and filmmaker whose fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Zoetrope, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the author of the story collection Natasha and the novel The Free World, and in 2010 he was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” writers.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Advance Praise for THE BETRAYERS

  “Now that Philip Roth has finished his life’s work, let us turn our attention to David Bezmozgis. His bravery and style are off the charts, and The Betrayers is his finest, slyest, most robust work yet.” –Gary Shteyngart

  “A novel of compulsive dramatic power, The Betrayers feels as urgent as the news and as eternal as scripture. David Bezmozgis weds precise, perfect craft with a generous moral vision of the heart, and head, in ceaseless conflict.” –Charles Foran

  “An intensely penetrating, transcendent novel … with characters that are absolutely themselves, their flaws, strengths, and desires so tenderly and truthfully imagined as they move through the startling turns of a story that rises out of the deep center of Bezmozgis’s fine intelligence. Extraordinary.” –Barbara Gowdy

  “The Betrayers is a moral thriller in the tradition of Bernard Malamud, but the generosity, grace, and wisdom of the writing belong entirely to David Bezmozgis. The magic of fiction is that it makes the reader care deeply about imaginary strangers, and Bezmozgis is a magician.” –Aleksandar Hemon

  “In this taut, fierce, forensically insightful novel, David Bezmozgis explores the frictions between goodness and kindness, public and private virtue, forgiveness and forgetting. Compulsive and profound.” –A. D. Miller

  “This unforgettable novel squanders no words in its brilliant, deft depictions of love, of memory, of compassion–and, ultimately, despite its title, of loyalty.” –Edith Pearlman

  “The Betrayers presents us with the novel-as-scalpel, a brilliant dissection of lives formed and deformed by tyranny, temptation, and the demands of conscience. Just when we think we’ve arrived at the heart of the story’s moral complexity, Bezmozgis cuts again and lays bare yet another layer. It’s harrowing, but also thrilling, to see our nature revealed with such unflinching precision. This outstanding novel not only shows Bezmozgis at the top of his form, but also definitively establishes him as one of the foremost writers of his generation.” –Ben Fountain

  ALSO BY DAVID BEZMOZGIS

  The Free World

  Natasha

  Credits

  Illustration by Matt Taylor

  Copyright

  The Betrayers

  Copyright © 2014 by Nada Films, Inc.

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  EPUB Edition August 2014 ISBN 9781443409797

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