past.
—Even so. Let’s behave as if it is and wait for the world to follow our noble example.
—None of this is even remotely funny to me.
—No, I know it isn’t, Kotler said.
Leora looked at him from where she had stalled, partway to the door.
—Would you like to hear about the last time I shared a roof with this man? Kotler asked. You’ve said more than once that you were interested in the stories of the glorious past. So here is one I’ve never told you. It’s one I’ve hardly spoken of at all, as far as I can remember. Perhaps to a few cellmates and to Miriam. Because it isn’t much of a story. It’s the opposite. A nonstory. Even in my memoir, my editor chose to edit it out. But it is the story of the last night I spent under the same roof with Vladimir Tankilevich.
Leora sighed and walked slowly back to the bed. She sat on its edge and looked at Kotler like someone submitting reluctantly to the sway of a hypnotist. Kotler, who remained near the window, would have liked to sit beside her as in times past, but refrained. Times past now included the previous day, the previous hour. He was responsible for it. He still had the power to change it. But he knew he would not. A man could not live two lives. A man was condemned to choose and he had chosen.
—Fine, Baruch, tell me. Tell me so that we can get on with things.
There was his gospel, the substance of which Leora knew, as, once, did millions of others. A young man, a lapsed musician turned computer scientist, embraces his Jewish identity and resolves to quit the Soviet Union for Israel, his ancestral homeland. His application for an exit visa is routinely, arbitrarily denied by the Interior Ministry for unsubstantiated “security reasons”—even though he possesses no technical knowledgethat isn’t already old news in the West. He is branded a traitor, fired from his job, designated a criminal—since it is a crime to be without work in the workers’ state. He falls in love with a young woman, also a Zionist; they marry quickly in the hope that this will bind their fates but are nonetheless separated when she, just as arbitrarily, is permitted to leave and he, again, is not. While he waits to join her, he throws himself into activist work and is framed by a fellow Jew, a KGB plant. Charged with treason, subjected to a show trial, he is sentenced to death, but then, after an international outcry, he is locked up for thirteen years instead of being shot in the head. All the while, he resists, resists, resists! Until finally, triumphantly, he is released.
But there was more, of course. The minor notes and episodes, less spectacular but, for him, more consuming. His final night in the apartment he shared with Tankilevich represented one. For until Tankilevich took him in, he had been homeless. Miriam had left for Israel. Their small apartment had been registered in her name, and once she departed—for it was virtually a rule among refuseniks that nobody should forfeit the chance to go—he had to move out. With no job and no apartment, he slept, a week here and a week there, in the homes of other refuseniks and of sympathizers. Everything he owned he carried in a small suitcase. The man who would soon become the world’s most illustrious refusenik was a pauper whose belongings would have been declined by a junk shop. And then, at no small personal risk, Tankilevich offered to take him in. A marginal character in Kotler’s life before then, Tankilevich had appeared in their midst a year earlier. He presented himself as a Zionist and declared he had been refused an exit visa—nobody bothered to verify. If KGB spieshad infiltrated their ranks, there wasn’t much they could do about it. In any case, everything they did—the Hebrew classes, the Passover seders, their small public demonstrations—was technically legal.
They made an odd pairing, the two of them. Tankilevich was almost a decade older, a bachelor, impressive-looking, while Kotler
—Even so. Let’s behave as if it is and wait for the world to follow our noble example.
—None of this is even remotely funny to me.
—No, I know it isn’t, Kotler said.
Leora looked at him from where she had stalled, partway to the door.
—Would you like to hear about the last time I shared a roof with this man? Kotler asked. You’ve said more than once that you were interested in the stories of the glorious past. So here is one I’ve never told you. It’s one I’ve hardly spoken of at all, as far as I can remember. Perhaps to a few cellmates and to Miriam. Because it isn’t much of a story. It’s the opposite. A nonstory. Even in my memoir, my editor chose to edit it out. But it is the story of the last night I spent under the same roof with Vladimir Tankilevich.
Leora sighed and walked slowly back to the bed. She sat on its edge and looked at Kotler like someone submitting reluctantly to the sway of a hypnotist. Kotler, who remained near the window, would have liked to sit beside her as in times past, but refrained. Times past now included the previous day, the previous hour. He was responsible for it. He still had the power to change it. But he knew he would not. A man could not live two lives. A man was condemned to choose and he had chosen.
—Fine, Baruch, tell me. Tell me so that we can get on with things.
There was his gospel, the substance of which Leora knew, as, once, did millions of others. A young man, a lapsed musician turned computer scientist, embraces his Jewish identity and resolves to quit the Soviet Union for Israel, his ancestral homeland. His application for an exit visa is routinely, arbitrarily denied by the Interior Ministry for unsubstantiated “security reasons”—even though he possesses no technical knowledgethat isn’t already old news in the West. He is branded a traitor, fired from his job, designated a criminal—since it is a crime to be without work in the workers’ state. He falls in love with a young woman, also a Zionist; they marry quickly in the hope that this will bind their fates but are nonetheless separated when she, just as arbitrarily, is permitted to leave and he, again, is not. While he waits to join her, he throws himself into activist work and is framed by a fellow Jew, a KGB plant. Charged with treason, subjected to a show trial, he is sentenced to death, but then, after an international outcry, he is locked up for thirteen years instead of being shot in the head. All the while, he resists, resists, resists! Until finally, triumphantly, he is released.
But there was more, of course. The minor notes and episodes, less spectacular but, for him, more consuming. His final night in the apartment he shared with Tankilevich represented one. For until Tankilevich took him in, he had been homeless. Miriam had left for Israel. Their small apartment had been registered in her name, and once she departed—for it was virtually a rule among refuseniks that nobody should forfeit the chance to go—he had to move out. With no job and no apartment, he slept, a week here and a week there, in the homes of other refuseniks and of sympathizers. Everything he owned he carried in a small suitcase. The man who would soon become the world’s most illustrious refusenik was a pauper whose belongings would have been declined by a junk shop. And then, at no small personal risk, Tankilevich offered to take him in. A marginal character in Kotler’s life before then, Tankilevich had appeared in their midst a year earlier. He presented himself as a Zionist and declared he had been refused an exit visa—nobody bothered to verify. If KGB spieshad infiltrated their ranks, there wasn’t much they could do about it. In any case, everything they did—the Hebrew classes, the Passover seders, their small public demonstrations—was technically legal.
They made an odd pairing, the two of them. Tankilevich was almost a decade older, a bachelor, impressive-looking, while Kotler
Similar Books
