The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis

Author:David Bezmozgis [Bezmozgis, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443409797
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2014-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Leora and Svetlana looked down the corridor to where Kotler had disappeared. They kept their eyes fixed on the spot past the point of all discomfort. They were now trapped together without a word to say. Leora laced her fingers around her teacup and looked anywhere but at Svetlana. If necessary, she could sit like this for hours, for as long as it took. How many times had she sat in some government office or waiting room waging a silent war with a receptionist or rival aide? How many times during the last round of negotiations had she been sequestered with the junior members of the Palestinian delegation staring at the closed door behind which the fruitless talks were being conducted?

She had grown up waiting. She had watched her parents wait. Righteous, implacable, and unheralded. They were modest heroes, nothing like Kotler and Miriam and the others whose names had made it into the newspapers. But they had waited no less honorably. And from their example Leora had learned her first and most instructive lesson. The iron lesson: We will out-wait them. The lesson that had sustained and defined the Jews for thousands of years. It now also sustained and defined their enemies. Both parties, masters of waiting. Across the table and across the fence, waiting each other into oblivion.

Svetlana shifted in her seat and pushed back her chair. Out of the corner of her eye, Leora watched the woman until she left the room. Unwilling to turn her head, she continued to gaze at nothing and to strain her ears. She tried to decipher even a single word of Kotler’s telephone conversation but heard only Svetlana’s steps moving across the floor and receding up the hall. Then a door creaking on its hinges followed by more of Svetlana’s heavy, muffled steps. After that came finer sounds: the sliding of a wooden drawer; the snapping of a clasp; some papery rustling. Finally, the repetition of all these sounds in reverse, until Svetlana was again in the kitchen, standing before Leora with her arm extended, a fold of bills in her palm.

—It’s all here, Svetlana said. I didn’t deduct for last night.

—That’s your prerogative, Leora said. But the money is Baruch’s, not mine. You can give it to him.

—But you see the money is already in my hand. I give it to you or I give it to him, what’s the difference?

—I told you the difference. The money is his. Give it to him. It’s not for me to accept.

Svetlana looked at the money as if it were now the crux of a thorny dilemma. She resolved it by turning her palm over and laying the money on the tabletop. She resumed her seat and silence reigned between them again. Though this time Svetlana looked directly at Leora, studied her plainly and knowingly.

—I understand, I understand, Svetlana said. You dislike me. You hold an opinion of me. In your eyes, I am a certain kind of woman. A disreputable woman. Because

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