Tankilevich rang the bell to be admitted into the Hesed and waited for some time for a response. He rang again and then felt, through the door, the reverberations of someone’s steps striding toward him. A turn of the bolt and Nina Semonovna was there. A handsome Jewish woman in her fifties, of the Portuguese type, olive-skinned, full-featured, and without a shred of credulity, habituated to a deceitful, grasping world where everyone is suspect. Tankilevich was no exception.
Dispensing with Hello she said, Come in.
He followed her through the empty reception area where the guard usually sat. Then through the narrow corridor, dim because she had not bothered to turn on the lights. Along the walls were posted the displays. There was always something. Tankilevich remembered one that featured Jewish Nobel laureates—Einstein, Bohr, Pasternak, and so on—complete with their likenesses and short biographies. Now it was local Jewish war heroes: soldiers, sailors, and partisans. Affixed to the walls were dozens of photographs; some depicted the fighters in their youth, some in their later years. They passed the doors to the lecture room, the doors to the library, the doors to the game room. At the end of the corridor, Nina Semonovna indicated a padded vinyl chair situated in front of the door to the administrative offices.
—Wait here, please, she said morosely, I have another client. Tankilevich did as he was told. He sat in the dim corridor and, almost in spite of himself, caught strains of the dispute that resounded behind the closed door:...
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