The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis Read Free Book Online Page B

comes after, once you are sated.
    —And to satisfy this need you’re willing to risk revealing yourself to these people? Not only that, but also us, the time we have together here. The only time like this we’ve ever had or may ever have. Because what do you think will happen when you confront this man and his wife? That we’ll continue on as if nothing happened? That we’ll go to the beach and take excursions to the Livadia Palace and the Chekhov Museum? If you confront this man, you don’t know what will happen, except that we will lose our chance to be alone together as we dreamed. If that isn’t important to you, if that isa subordinate need, then you will have answered a question for
me.
    The outburst brought a flush to Leora’s throat and cheeks, a sensuality, as if ardor of any kind were related to sexual ardor. Kotler looked at her breathing above him and was filled with the animal instinct to pounce on her so they could claw and tear at each other. The lushness of her body still inflamed him, the fullness and smoothness of her breasts, her buttocks, her thighs. Her flesh that he stuffed his mouth with, that he clutched by the handful like a bandit. Her body, where she invited, encouraged, him to enact his every wildness, his every brackish want. Between them there was no hesitation, no apology. With Leora he had been able to be himself, the paragon of virtue, but also a man who felt the weight of his testicles under the point of his prick. A man he had only half been for forty years of prison and vindication and glory and indebtedness and fidelity and timidity. He had been locked up at twenty-five and released at thirty-eight. He had gone into prison a young man, newly wed, and he had come out a gaunt, desiccated saint. What a groom he was for the bride who had waited for him all those years. And what a bride awaited him, after her own years of dogged, confounding struggle. Two people who had long occupied cold solitary beds were brought together. Two old acquaintances, nearly strangers, were expected—by the world, by themselves—to leap into passionate embrace or slip into delicate intimacy. They had done their best. They were persistent, devoted people, and they persisted also in the matter of their hearts. In many ways, they did what everyone did to stoke the embers of the original fire. But their fire hadn’t simply abated; it was practically extinguished for want of fuel, the ordinary fuel of shareddays and casual contact. Apart, they had pretended that the embers still glowed, that the fire still burned, but reunited, they knew the truth. Still, they had rekindled a fire. It was no small thing. It was a real fire. But the fire you rekindle is not the same fire, doesn’t burn as hot. With Leora, he burned as before, with consuming heat.
    —Are you not also curious, Leora? Kotler asked. Don’t you want to see what will happen? This coincidence is not mine alone. It is ours together. If we stay, what happens will include you. You will be part of it. As I believe you are meant to be. As I would like you to be. Because if greater forces have conspired, they have seen fit to include you. After all, what brought you to me started forty years ago between me and this man.

SIX
    A t dawn, Chaim Tankilevich gripped the metal handrail and pulled himself into the trolleybus, which, with its wobbly antennae, resembled an old, dun grasshopper. He handed the driver his fare, fifteen hryvnia, and lumbered to take one of the vacant seats in the rear of the vehicle. This was not hard to do. All of the seats were vacant and would remain so for much of the trip. He was going against the current. At the other end, in Simferopol, a crowd was boarding a trolleybus to come to the sea, but in Yalta he was among a dismal handful who, for their own insular reasons, were going in the wrong direction. And of these, only he appeared every Saturday, summer or winter, rain or shine, year after year, now for ten years.