The Betrayers (7 page)

—I would.

—And what about my part of our agreement? Am I then to be released from that?

Tankilevich eyed Nina Semonovna cautiously.

—You speak of the hardship our agreement imposed on you, but why not ask about the hardship it imposed on me? Do you think it was easy for me to engage in this subterfuge all these years? And to engage in it for the sake of a person like you?

Nina Semonovna leaned forward, her eyes lit with malice. But also with something else. A kind of gladness. He had been mistaken. The appetizer hadn’t robbed her of a stomach for the main course. Quite the contrary. It had whetted her appetite. The appetizer had made her ravenous, eager to devour something. It was likely that, even without the episode with the horrible woman, Nina Semonovna would have denied his request. But after the horrible woman, his fate was sealed. Such was his misfortune.

—You ask if I remember when you first came to this office. When I say I remember, not only do I mean that I remember it now because you have asked me to. When I say I remember, I mean that I have never forgotten. I mean that, from time to time, I still think about you, Mr. Tankilevich. I still think about you and whether I was right or wrong to enter into this arrangement with you. Because I did not like you from the first. I did not like you and I did not trust you. I thought you were an opportunist. That is still my opinion. Because of what you did for the KGB, because of how you conducted yourself in the decades
after, because of the circumstances under which you came to my office, I thought you deserved nothing but scorn. Not my indulgence, not my protection, and not a kopek of the Hesed’s money.

—I see, Nina Semonovna, Tankilevich said. And ten years of my faithful attendance at the synagogue has not changed your opinion?

—Why should it? You attended only for the Hesed subsidy. What is there to admire, Mr. Tankilevich? It is
batlanus,
and you are a
batlan.
I am not happy that I had to resort to
batlanus
to help the synagogue, but that is our reality. Hilka complained to me that they did not have enough men and by chance you happened on my doorstep. So I extended my offer. More out of sentiment than sense. Always a mistake. As you have now proved.

—I’m sorry, but how exactly have I proved this? By making a difficult trip from Yalta to Simferopol for ten years, until my health no longer permits it? You think I did all that as part of some fraud? The fraud, Nina Semonovna, was my life until I came to you.

Nina Semonovna leaned back and emitted a throaty, contemptuous laugh. She laughed this way, deliberately, overlong, until the laugh drained to a dark smile.

—Quite a declaration, Mr. Tankilevich. You’ll forgive me if I don’t applaud. But since you put it like this, allow me to say you could have put an end to the so-called fraud of your life at any time simply by walking through this door and declaring:
My name is Vladimir Tankilevich. I have reached my pensionable age. I am a Jew, descended from Jews. I was born on such and such a date, in such and such a place. Here are my supporting
documents.
This is what everybody else does. But this was
not
what you did. You came here under a shroud of secrecy and asked me to help you conceal your true identity. And in the moment I agreed to that, I became a party to this deception. I compromised myself for you. I could say
for the synagogue,
but this fine distinction would not count for much in the heat of a scandal. You have thought only about yourself and your situation, but allow me to enlighten you about mine. From the performance you witnessed a few minutes ago, you might have gathered that I am a person who is not without enemies. Can you imagine what that wonderful woman would do if she learned that for ten years I have been secretly helping a person like you? A notorious traitor to the Jewish people? You think she would keep quiet? You think she wouldn’t be writing to Odessa and Moscow and New York to denounce me? Here I am, denying her humble claim, while I am giving money to Vladimir Tankilevich, KGB informant, the man responsible for sending the great Baruch Kotler to the Gulag. How do you think this would be received by my superiors? And by
their
superiors? By the American Jews in New York whose job it is to raise the money for our sustenance? Do you know how they do this? By appealing to their wealthy brethren who still harbor quiverings for their shtetl roots. By telling them sad tales about our existence. By printing brochures with photographs and touching descriptions of poor, neglected Russian Jews. By staging lavish events for millionaires where famous Jews, like your Baruch Kotler, make speeches to get them to open their wallets. Now, can you imagine what happens if it is revealed that some Nina Semonovna Shreibman, director of the Simferopol Hesed, has, with full
and deliberate knowledge, been aiding and abetting the traitor Tankilevich, this disgrace to the Jewish people? That for ten years she has been giving him money—and not only him but also his shiksa wife? That to this end, she has manipulated documents? Are you getting the picture, Mr. Tankilevich? Can you imagine what would happen if this information was to be publicized? Not only what would happen to me. That should be quite clear. But the harm it could do to the larger structure upon which we all rely? Can you imagine how such an embarrassment would look printed in the newspapers? You have no idea how sensitive these American Jewish organizations are. Or how territorial. I have seen them go into fits over far lesser things. There are many organizations and they are all competing for the same dollars. If one group stumbles, believe me, the others are quick to take advantage. And just like that, money that has been painstakingly solicited for the Jews of Ukraine is now diverted to some other, less controversial, cause, like teaching Ethiopian Jews to eat with forks or sending young American Jews to pick tomatoes in the Negev. And all this because I stuck my neck out for you. So while you have been riding the trolleybus, Mr. Tankilevich, this is what has been hanging over my head.

Tankilevich received the speech as if it were a clobbering, and he slumped down accordingly. And yet, he thought:
Clobbered, yes, but not beaten!
In his life he had known real terrors, real bloodlettings. So this was nothing new. Unpleasant, yes, but it would take more to make him fold. He found his voice.

—Nina Semonovna, I don’t dispute anything you say. But the fact remains: What choice did I have? As Vladimir Tarasov—
with this false identity bestowed upon me by the KGB—I could rejoin the community of my people. As this aberration, Vladimir Tarasov, I could attend the synagogue. And as Vladimir
Tankilevich,
I could not.

—As Vladimir Tarasov, this aberration—as you call it—you could have rejoined your community and attended the synagogue a long time ago. Nothing was stopping you. But you came only when there was money for the taking. And now you wish to have everything: to retain the disguise of Vladimir Tarasov, keep the subsidy, and retreat from your obligations to the community and the synagogue. But, Mr. Tankilevich, hear me well: So long as I sit behind this desk, I will not allow this to happen. If you do not fulfill the terms of our agreement, I will cut you off. Doing so, as you should by now understand, would be a great relief for me. A great relief and no small satisfaction.

With this statement of finality, Nina Semonovna reached again for her pack of cigarettes and, in a flare of punctuation, struck a match.

Tankilevich regarded her across the desk. She looked contented, the cigarette smoking between her fingers.

He remembered Svetlana’s words. Now, then, he thought. So the time had come to go to the farthest extreme.

Stiffly—not without difficulty—he rose from his chair and pushed it from him. Its legs scraped, and the sound shot like a current along his calves and up his back. Gripping the edge of the desk, he lowered himself until the points of his knees met the hard ground. When he felt steady enough, he removed his hands from the desk and let them dangle at his sides. He lifted his eyes to Nina Semonovna, his inquisitor. This was the posture,
but it was not enough. More was required. There were also the words.

—I beg of you, Tankilevich said.

Nina Semonovna gazed down at him from her bastion.

—Stand up, Mr. Tankilevich. If you are fit enough to do this, you are fit enough to go to the synagogue.

O
n Mayakovsky Street, in the center of the city, was a Furshet grocery market where, each week, Tankilevich bought provisions to take back to Yalta. The Hesed had an arrangement with the market’s owners. It had a similar arrangement with a Furshet in Yalta, but Nina Semonovna deliberately hadn’t put him on its roll. To utilize the subsidy, Tankilevich was obliged to do it in Simferopol. For this reason, the shopping also fell to him on these Saturdays. But after his encounter with Nina Semonovna, he felt leaden, nearly killed. How could he force himself to go to the market, to put one plodding foot in front of the other, to contemplate the bins and the shelves and be surrounded by the gaudy, mindless, mocking display of excess? His hands felt as if they were filled with sand. It would take a superhuman effort to lift them, to coax his fingers to grasp the cartons and boxes. His every fiber revolted against this. It was too much to ask of him on such a day. He pictured Svetlana’s dour, disapproving expression. But what right could she invoke? She was not shackled to the trolleybus; she
had not thrown herself before Nina Semonovna. The depredations were all on his head. Svetlana could stuff her disapproval. He would not go, that’s all, Tankilevich thought. He would not go! But by then he was already there.

Mechanically, Tankilevich moved through the aisles, depositing their staples into a red plastic basket: bread, farmer’s cheese, sour cream, cereals, buckwheat kasha, carrot juice, smoked mackerel, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, green onions. A few yellow plums, because they were in season and inexpensive. He finished at the meat counter, where the woman reflexively asked, Three hundred grams roast turkey? Tankilevich had long assumed that they stocked the turkey solely for the Jews. Everything else at the counter, the appetizing salamis and sausages, contained pork and was thus forbidden under the Hesed subsidy. For pork and shellfish, as for cigarettes and alcohol, one had to lay out one’s own money.

From the meat counter Tankilevich carried his basket—the plastic handle biting into his fingers, the sinews straining in his shoulder—to the cash register at the front of the market. Since it was a Saturday afternoon, the market was not short of customers. Three women stood in line ahead of him. And immediately after Tankilevich assumed his place, people formed up behind. He glanced back to take their measure. Directly behind him was a young mother with a small daughter, three or four years old, in a bright cotton dress with a white cotton cap. Behind them was an older man, Tankilevich’s age, with short bristly white hair, ethnically Russian. And behind him was another man, younger than the Russian, swarthy, Tatar or Azeri, a laborer, wearing a sleeveless shirt, the taut muscles of his arms exposed. Paying for his purchases, this final element of the task,
always put Tankilevich’s nerves on edge, made him exceedingly conscious of the people around him, of attracting their attention, judgment, and disdain. It was the moment when he was forced to shed the bleary status of ordinary citizen and declare himself conspicuously, in blazing letters, a Jew.

Tankilevich’s turn came. He presented the contents of his basket to the cashier, a blond woman in her thirties. Like the woman at the meat counter, she was offhandedly familiar with him. With quick, practiced movements she unloaded his basket and punched the prices into her register. When the sum appeared on the computerized display, the woman looked at Tankilevich and said, Coupons? It was at this point that Tankilevich became supremely attuned to any change in the atmosphere, like a dog sniffing for storm ions. And as he withdrew the bright, multicolored Hesed bills from his pocket, he picked up rumblings behind him. The air grew dense. Its sullen weight pressed on his shoulders. He turned around to confirm his suspicions. The woman behind him was gazing off, her little girl waiting docilely at her hip. Neither of them was the source of the disturbance and neither seemed to have noticed anything awry. Why should they? Tankilevich thought. Such storms did not affect them. But after a lifetime of such storms, he rarely mistook them. One look at the Russian man’s face and Tankilevich knew that he wasn’t mistaken now either. He saw the sneer—the bitter, arrogant, Jew-hating sneer. Locking eyes with Tankilevich, the man allowed his sneer to ripen into a smirk.

—Is there a problem? Tankilevich asked him.

The question seemed to fill the man with glee, as if Tankilevich had uttered a tremendous joke. The man swiveled his head from side to side, seeking to include others in this hilarity. If
not his goggling about, then Tankilevich’s question had already drawn people’s attention. The young mother pulled her daughter closer and eyed both Tankilevich and the Russian warily. The cashier shifted a hip, tilted her head. And the laborer looked up with the coolness of a lizard.

—Is there a problem?
the Russian mimicked. Not for the likes of you. Never.

—What are you implying, Citizen?

—Implying? I’m not implying anything. I’m stating what is clear as day. You people always know how to get ahead.

—You people. What people do you mean? Tankilevich demanded. If you’re going to sow slander, at least have the courage to speak plainly.

—To say what I’m saying requires no courage, the Russian said. Only eyes in your head. Anyone with eyes in his head sees how you Jews always get special treatment. Isn’t that so?

The Russian turned for confirmation to the people around him. But they remained silent. Tankilevich thought he even detected a hint of disapproval on the cashier’s face. Still, he expected no support. How many times had he encountered such anti-Semites, and how many times had anyone said even a single word in his defense? He felt his heart pounding as if to fly apart. He gripped tightly the bills in his hand and held them up.

—What special treatment? Tankilevich said. Do you mean these?

The Russian was unintimidated.

—Who but Jews have such things? I too would like such privileges. But it’s only the Jews that get them.

—You would like such privileges? Tankilevich boomed. Then
you should have lined up in ’41, when the Germans were taking the Jews to the forest!

—Oh ho! the Russian said. So it’s back to the Germans, is it? To listen to you people, you’d think it was only the Jews who suffered. Everyone suffered. Who shed more blood than the Russian people? But nobody gives us special favors, do they?

At this, he turned again to the others for reinforcement. First to the young mother, whose expression remained wary and reticent. And then to the laborer.

—Isn’t that so, pal? the Russian asked.

The laborer took his time and then answered in Tatar-accented Russian, the consonants rolling like stones in his mouth.

—Yes, everyone suffered, he said. But not only from the Germans.

—Oh, I see, the Russian announced grandly. I’m surrounded by persecuted minorities. That’s the way it is now in this country. The Russian nation built up this land—what didn’t we do?—but now we’re everyone’s bastard. We’re supposed to go around with our heads bowed and beg forgiveness from this one and the other.

The Russian had worked himself up now and gazed about defiantly, no longer expecting solidarity. He glared at Tankilevich.

—The hell I’ll beg forgiveness from the likes of you! While you get special money and I have a hole in my pocket. The Germans could have lined up a few more of you in ’41!

There it was, Tankilevich thought. The fuse had been lit and now the charge had detonated. His heart surged. He waved his Hesed banknotes in the Russian’s face.

—I should beat you, you filth! Tankilevich shouted.

—Well, well, I’d like to see you try.

But the young mother and her little girl were between them. And the laborer put a restraining hand on the Russian. And the cashier spoke up.

—Be civilized or I will call the police!

And that, more or less, was the end of the spectacle.

His heart still thudding, his groceries sagging in their net bag, Tankilevich left the market and followed the dolorous path to the trolleybus station.