The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis Page B

was a balding, feisty little schmendrik. By trade, Tankilevich was a dental technician, and he volunteered his services to other refuseniks, making dentures, caps, and crowns. Since he was ostensibly under refusal, he could not work officially. Everyone understood the implications: How could a refusenik handle gold and silver? He was susceptible to a charge of commercialism or speculation. This was grounds for suspicion. People discussed this, and Chava Margolis, as usual, staked out the most skeptical position—even though she too had one of Tankilevich’s bridges in her mouth.
    But Kotler never found any reason to distrust him and came to consider him a friend, a confidant. He was nursing the pain of Miriam’s departure. Sometimes the two men sat together and listened to classical music: Scriabin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich. They studied Jewish subjects and practiced their clumsy Hebrew. There was nothing out of the ordinary until the night before Tankilevich’s denunciation ran in
Izvestia.
    And what of that night? Kotler was in the apartment, writing a press release for Western outlets about the conditions inside the psychiatric hospitals. They’d received sworn affidavits from a dissident who had emerged from one and, remarkably, from a psychiatric nurse who was appalled by what she had seen—taking sane, healthy people, confining them with lunatics, and injecting them with drugs until they became like lunaticsthemselves. Kotler was composing his text at a table in the front room when Tankilevich came home. They exchanged the usual greetings.
Shalom. Shalom.
Everything as always. Tankilevich asked what he was doing. Kotler told him. Tankilevich considered attentively and then excused himself, going into the kitchen. Kotler continued his work. Then, suddenly, there was a crash, a sound of breaking plates. Not just one or two; it was as though every plate in the kitchen had been dashed. Kotler sprang up from the table and found Tankilevich standing amid the shards of an entire stack of dinner plates. With a very peculiar expression on his face. Not startled or agitated or regretful. Rather, detached. As if he was mildly, distantly intrigued by the mess around him.
Volodya, what happened?
Kotler said.
Nothing, a trifle
came the answer. Kotler offered to get a broom, to sweep up. But Tankilevich said,
No need, I’ll do it.
Because he was behaving so strangely, Kotler didn’t insist. He let him be. They were all under a great deal of stress and nobody knew all that weighed on another man’s heart. Kotler went back to work. He heard Tankilevich sweeping. Then some fumbling and shuffling that he couldn’t identify. He expected Tankilevich to go to the corridor and toss the broken things into the dustbin, but when he looked in on him, he found him at the kitchen table gluing the pieces back together. How many plates had been broken? Ten? Twelve? There was a considerable jumble. The plates themselves were nothing special, neither heirlooms nor imports. They were the most ordinary Soviet plates and could be purchased in any store for fifty kopeks apiece. To replace them would have been easy. There were deficits and shortages of practically everything then, but not of those sorts of things. So why go to the trouble?
Volodya,what are you doing that for? he asked.
To which Tankilevich replied,
It calms the soul.
    Those were the last civil words they exchanged. Period. The end.
    Leora listened to all this dully, with neither expression nor reaction.
    —And the mystery? she asked.
    —You see, I told you it wasn’t much of a story.
    —I just don’t see the mystery.
    —The mystery? The entire thing. Did he dash the plates deliberately or did they fall by accident? And what was going through his head?
    —Of course he dashed them, Baruch.
    —Yes? And what was going through his head?
    —He was conflicted. Stricken by conscience. He didn’t want to face you.
    —There’s that.
    —What else could there be?
    —I don’t