The Betrayers (11 page)

To whom could she confide such things?

To Svetlana, she said, So you think God sent us here for your redemption. To shepherd you into the Holy Land. With Baruch the shepherd and your husband the lamb.

—Do you believe in God? Svetlana asked.

—What does it matter?

—If we are going to speak of God, it matters. I need to know what kind of person I am speaking with. One who believes or one who doesn’t. It isn’t the same conversation. And if you believe, you will know this.

—Then say I believe.

—Then I will repeat myself. I believe in the grace of our Lord. I believe in His justice and mercy. If you say you believe, then I take it you agree. Or what sort of God is there to believe in? A sadist who only metes out suffering?

—He does that too.

—He punishes the sinner according to his sin. But He also forgives. And He rewards the true penitent. Don’t we also believe this? That when we transgress we can seek His forgiveness?

—So your husband has repented and is deserving of forgiveness.

—My husband has repented a hundred times over. For decades he has borne his punishment. But he is not the worst of men. Far from it. Whether you believe it or not. What he did forty years ago, he did with a heavy heart. What he did, he did against his conscience. And he has suffered for it in more ways than I can say.

—Is it still God’s mercy we’re talking about?

—For me, God’s mercy is no longer the question. I know He
is merciful. Not just on faith. I know it because I see the evidence of His mercy.

At this, Svetlana fixed her eyes on Leora with a fervent, meaningful conviction. The gaze of a holy communicant.

—That He brought you to us now is a sign of His mercy. That is how I see it, Svetlana said. So it is no longer about His mercy.

—It isn’t? Then whose? Leora asked, incorrectly anticipating the answer.

—Yours, of course.

—Mine? Leora asked. You don’t mean mine specifically?

—Yours. To start.

—How is that? I haven’t been wronged. I have nothing to forgive.

—It is still yours. I see that you hold my husband in contempt. As many people hold him in contempt, though he wronged none of them personally. Of course your forgiveness won’t change those people’s minds. Only one person’s forgiveness can do that. But you are in a position to influence that person.

—There you are mistaken. Nobody is in a position to influence that person. Which is why he is that person.

—However he is, Svetlana said, her expression unbeguiled, he is a man.

At this Leora could not help but smirk.

—According to the latest news, Leora said, and she enjoyed the vexed, befuddled look on Svetlana’s face.

—You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, Leora added.

Uncertain, cautious, fearful, Svetlana didn’t answer.

—What happened between Baruch and me is all over the papers. Do you understand?

Before her, Svetlana leaned away, drew her teacup to her bosom, and straightened her spine to sit fully, rigidly upright, as though tensed against a cruel onslaught.

—So if you believe God sent us to you, you might want to question His timing. We have our own troubles. We came here to escape them. Only, as it turns out, we found new ones. In any case, Baruch’s forgiveness will be of no benefit to your husband now. Right now, Baruch could use this sort of forgiveness himself. Not that he seeks it.

Rather than stiffen further, Svetlana appeared to relax. Her eyes lit with a sly, fervent, self-satisfied gleam.

—Then I wouldn’t be so quick to question God or His timing. What you say gives me no reason to question Him. On the contrary, only to further admire His wisdom. Only He could contrive to bring us together at such a time. When we are all in such need. It is clear as day that everything is according to His will. I am surprised you don’t see it. He brought you here not only for our sake but also for yours. You say that Baruch’s forgiveness will be of no benefit to my husband, but how can you be so sure? If he is fulfilling God’s plan, then it will be to everyone’s benefit. And if it seems improbable, that is further proof that it is ordained. I see by your face that you still don’t believe. You think I am a lunatic. But half the miracle has already happened. You are here. If half the miracle has already happened, it is lunacy to deny the other half.

Almost against her will, Leora’s mind, as if of its own accord, step by step, advanced this hypothetical. Was there truly some advantage to be gained from this scenario?

Baruch Kotler, on the run with his young mistress, stumbles upon the man who betrayed him to the KGB. And forgives him!
And then what? A photo of the two of them clasping hands. Followed by the grand redemptive statement. But what was it?
This unexpected meeting has reminded me of my priorities: my family and my people. My commitment to my people has never wavered, but I have hurt my family and I will do whatever I can to make amends.

This was the standard script. If she could distance herself from her feelings, she would advise Baruch to deliver these lines. As for if he would do it, that was another matter. In any case, what good would this confession do? Leora tried to continue thinking this way, pragmatically, minding Baruch’s interests, but her pragmatic thoughts pragmatically branched off. Baruch’s interests were one thing, but she had interests of her own. And if their interests diverged, what would happen to her? What place did the world reserve for the discarded mistresses of powerful men? When the unwelcome attention waned and people turned to the next disturbance, where did these women go? Were they allowed to slip into a quiet anonymity—marrying a gentle and understanding man, living in an unremarkable town, doing the grocery shopping with a child riding in the cart? But what if they wanted something more, to wield some of the power that had attracted them? How stubbornly did the world conspire against them?

—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.

K
otler 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, and 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.