The Fixer (12 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
Grubeshov listened impatiently. “Answer strictly to the point. Did the âtzadik' bake the matzos?”
“If so not in my house. Who knows if elsewhere, he didn't tell me but I don't think so.”
“Then some other Jew did?”
“It's probably true.”
“It's more than probable,” said the Prosecuting Attorney, glaring at him. “It's the truth of God.”
When Yakov saw him peering again into his evil portfolio, he wrung his manacled hands under the table.
Grubeshov now slowly drew forth a long, stained rag.
“Have you seen this before?” He danced the stained rag over the table with his fingers.
Bibikov watched the dancing rag, absently polishing his glasses; Ivan Semyonovitch stared at it in fascination.
“I will describe it to you,” said the Prosecuting Attorney. “It is part of a peasant's blouse similar to the one you are presently affecting. Was this rag, by some chance, formerly a possession of yours?”
“I don't know,” said Yakov wearily.
“I advise you to think more carefully, Yakov Bok. If you've eaten no garlic your breath won't stink.”
“Yes, your honor,” Yakov said desperately, “it's mine more or less, although that's nothing to worry about. The old man I mentioned to you was hit on the head by a rock, and I used part of an old shirt I was no longer wearingâit fell apart on my backâto wipe the blood away. That's God's own truth and all there is to it, I swear.”
“So you admit it's bloodstained,” shouted the Prosecuting Attorney.
Yakov felt his tongue turn to dust.
“Did you ever chase any children in the brickworks yard in the vicinity of the kilns, in particular a twelve-year lad by the name of Zhenia Golov?”
The fixer was unable to reply.
Grubeshov, after glancing at Bibikov, smiled broadly
as he mincingly asked the fixer, “Tell me Yankel Jew, why are you trembling?”
as he mincingly asked the fixer, “Tell me Yankel Jew, why are you trembling?”
Why does a man tremble?
When he was locked in the cell again there were three filthy straw pallets on the floor. One was hisâwhat a misery that he could think of it as his; and two new prisoners were lying on the others. One was a hairy man in rags, the other a living skeleton. Both stank across the room, of dirt and poverty. Though neither paid any attention to him, the ragged one blinking at the wall, the other snoring, the fixer kept to the far corner of the cell. He felt abandoned, lost to the world.
“What will happen to me now?” he asked himself. And if it happens bad who will ever know? I might as well be dead. Recalling his father-in-law and wife, he could conjure neither of them close. Especially the wife. He thought of his father and mother, young people in their weedy graves, and their fate gave him no comfort. His frustrated innocence outraged him. He was unjustly accused, helpless, unable to offer proof or be believed. What horror would they accuse him of next? “If they knew me could they say such things?” He tried to comprehend what was happening and explain it to himself. After all, he was a rational being, and a man must try to reason. Yet the more he reasoned the less he understood. The familiar had become evil. What happened next was weighted with peril. That he was a Jew, willing or unwilling, was not enough to explain his fate. Remembering his life filled him with hatred for the way things went and were going. I'm a fixer but all my life I've broken more than I fix. What would they accuse him of next? How could a man defend himself against such terrible
hints, insinuations,
accusations
, if no one was willing to believe him? Panic gnawed him. He was full of desperate thoughts of what to do nextâsomehow to sneak out of the cell and seek in the ghetto for the old man to tell the Russians that he had been hit on the head by a rock and Yakov had wiped away the blood?
hints, insinuations,
accusations
, if no one was willing to believe him? Panic gnawed him. He was full of desperate thoughts of what to do nextâsomehow to sneak out of the cell and seek in the ghetto for the old man to tell the Russians that he had been hit on the head by a rock and Yakov had wiped away the blood?
The fixer goes from house to house, knocking on each thin door and asking for the tzadik but nobody knows him; then in the last house they know him, a saintly man, but he had long ago gone away. The fixer hurriedly travels on the train to Minsk and after months of desperate searching meets the old man, the moon on his rabbinic hat, coming home one evening from the synagogue.
“Please, you must go back to Kiev with me and prove my innocence. Tell the officials I didn't do what they say I did.”
But the old tzadik does not recognize the fixer. He looks at him long but shakes his head. The wound on his temple has healed and he cannot now recall the night Yakov says he had spent with him in the room above the stable.
When the fixer remembered where he was he tore at his hands with his nails, and he tore at his face.
The snorer awoke with a gasp. “Akimytch,” he cried out. “Formerly a tailor. I am innocent,” he whimpered. “Don't beat me.”
The other one snickered.
“Have you got a cigarette, Potseikin?” the former tailor asked the one on the other mattress. “A piece of butt?”
“Fuck yourself,” said the blinker, a man with bloodshot eyes.
“Have you got a cigarette?” Akimytch asked Yakov.
“My bag is empty,” said the fixer. He held it up.
“I'll bet you don't know why I'm here,” Akimytch said.
“No.”
“Neither do I. It's mistaken identity with me. I never did what they say I did, may they choke to death on their mothers' milk. They mistook me for an anarchist.”
He began to weep.
“I'm here because of a pack of pamphlets or whatever you call âem,” Potseikin said. “Some poor bastard, a man with wild eyes and a thick greatcoat says to me on Institutsky Street, âBrother,' he says, âI have to piss, so hold my bundle a minute, and when I come back here I'll slip you a five-kopek piece, on my honor.' What can you say to a man who has to piss? Could I say no to that? Then he might piss on me. So I held onto his bundle and in two minutes a pig-eyed detective comes running across the street and jabs a gun in my gut so hard it almost busts, and then he marches me off to the Secret Police without listening to a word I say. When we get there three big ones give me a going over with fat sticks till all my bones are cracked, and they show me where the pamphlets say to overthrow the Tsar. Who wants to overthrow the Tsar? Personally, I have only the highest regard for Nicholas the Second and the royal family, especially the young princesses and the poor sick boy, who I love as my own. But nobody believed me and that's why I'm here. It's all the fault of those bastard pamphlets.”
“It's mistaken identity with me,” said Akimytch. “What's it with you, pal?”
“The same,” said Yakov.
“What did they say you did?”
He thought he oughtn't to tell them, but it came out quickly, in accusation of the accusers.
“They say I killed a boyâit's a dirty lie.”
There was a deep silence in the cell. Now I've blundered,
Yakov thought. He looked for the guard but he had gone for the soup pail.
Yakov thought. He looked for the guard but he had gone for the soup pail.
The two on the straw pallets, their heads together, whispered in each other's ears, first Akimytch whispering, then Potseikin.
“Did you?” Akimytch asked Yakov.
“No, of course not. Why would I kill an innocent child?”
They whispered once more and Potseikin said in a thick voice, “Tell us the truth, are you a Jew?”
“What difference would it make?” Yakov said, but when they were whispering again he was afraid.
“Don't try anything or I'll call the guard.”
The one in rags got up and approached the fixer, sneering. “So you're the bastard Jew who killed the Christian boy and sucked the blood out of his bones? I saw it in the papers.”
“Leave me in peace,” Yakov said. “I've done nothing like that to anybody, not to speak of a twelve-year-old child. It's not in my nature.”
“You're a stinking Jew liar.”
“Think as you like but let me alone.”
“Who else would do anything like that but a motherfucking Zhid?”
Potseikin pounced on the fixer and with his rotten teeth tried to bite his neck. Yakov shoved him off but Akimytch, foul-breathed, was on his back beating the fixer's head and face with his clammy bony hands.
“Christkiller!”
“Gevalt!” cried Yakov, flailing his arms. Though he whirled, ducked, and struck out with his fists, Potseikin hit him with a knee in the back as Akimytch struck him on the neck with both fists. The fixer went down, his mind darkened in pain. He lay motionless as they kicked him savagely, and felt as he passed out, a terrible rage.
Afterwards he woke on his mattress, and when he heard their snoring, retched. A rat scuttled across his genitals and he bolted up in horror. But there was a bit of horned moon at the small high barred window and he watched for a while in peace.
The stable had burned to the ground in a matter of minutes, Proshko said, spitting at the fixer's feet, and it wouldn't surprise him if it were done with Jewish magic. He pointed to the blackened remains of the stalls where four maddened, rearing, trumpeting horses had died, and a crisscross pile of burnt and broken planks and timbers had fallen from the roof.
The mustached and bearded officials in the brickyard, some uniformed and booted, a few carrying umbrellas although it was no longer raining, and the Secret Police gendarmes, plainclothes detectives, and Kiev City Police âamong them also an Imperial Army general with two rows of gold buttons and one of medals across his chestâ
looked on in silence as the foreman spoke. Grubeshov, in English bowler, mud-spattered gaiters, and rain cape, flushed at Proshko's testimony, whispered in Colonel Bodyansky's lowered ear, clutching his hand tightly, and the colonel earnestly whispered something in return as Yakov licked his dry lips. Bibikov, with small, yellow-muddy, ankle-length shoes, his winter scarf and large hat, standing behind two tight-faced Black Hundreds representatives wearing their accusatory buttons, chain-smoked cigarettes from a box he amiably offered around. Nearby, the pimply Ivan Semyonovitch accompanied an oldish priest of the Orthodox Church, Father Anastasy, a “specialist,” Yakov had heard it whispered, “of the Jewish religion”; he was a round-shouldered man with a streaked beard, thin hands, and restless dark eyes, dressed in flowing vestments and round pot-hat which he pressed down with his palm when the wind blew. What he was expected to add to the miserable state of Yakov's affairs the fixer didn't know and was afraid to guess. Manacled, his legs chained, nervously exhausted, his body in flight though he tried with ten fingers to hold onto his mind, he stood with five armed guards at his back, apart from the rest. Though almost a month had gone by since his arrest he could still only half believe this had happened to him, someone who did not recognize himself in the dream he was dreaming; and listened stunned to Proshko, as though the accusation of the monstrous crime were both true and an irrelevancy, as though it had happened to someone he didn't know very well, in truth a stranger, although he clearly remembered fearing that something like this might happen to him.
looked on in silence as the foreman spoke. Grubeshov, in English bowler, mud-spattered gaiters, and rain cape, flushed at Proshko's testimony, whispered in Colonel Bodyansky's lowered ear, clutching his hand tightly, and the colonel earnestly whispered something in return as Yakov licked his dry lips. Bibikov, with small, yellow-muddy, ankle-length shoes, his winter scarf and large hat, standing behind two tight-faced Black Hundreds representatives wearing their accusatory buttons, chain-smoked cigarettes from a box he amiably offered around. Nearby, the pimply Ivan Semyonovitch accompanied an oldish priest of the Orthodox Church, Father Anastasy, a “specialist,” Yakov had heard it whispered, “of the Jewish religion”; he was a round-shouldered man with a streaked beard, thin hands, and restless dark eyes, dressed in flowing vestments and round pot-hat which he pressed down with his palm when the wind blew. What he was expected to add to the miserable state of Yakov's affairs the fixer didn't know and was afraid to guess. Manacled, his legs chained, nervously exhausted, his body in flight though he tried with ten fingers to hold onto his mind, he stood with five armed guards at his back, apart from the rest. Though almost a month had gone by since his arrest he could still only half believe this had happened to him, someone who did not recognize himself in the dream he was dreaming; and listened stunned to Proshko, as though the accusation of the monstrous crime were both true and an irrelevancy, as though it had happened to someone he didn't know very well, in truth a stranger, although he clearly remembered fearing that something like this might happen to him.
Otherwise the brickyard was deserted on a gray and green overcast Sunday afternoon in what had been a cold May. None of the workers was around except for the drivers Richter and Serdiuk, who listened without
speaking and occasionally spat, the Ukrainian holding his cap in his large red hand, ill at ease, the German staring darkly at the former overseer. Nikolai Maximovitch had been expected but Yakov knew it was too late in the day for him to leave the house sober. After a morning fog had thinned and lifted, it began to rain heavily; and it poured again in the afternoon. The horses drawing the half dozen carriages that had left at intervals from the District Courthouse in the Plossky, and met first in the brickyard, had splashed through puddles, and the motorcar carrying Yakov, Colonel Bodyansky and the gendarmes, had got stuck in the mud on a road in the Lukianovsky, drawing several people, and irritating the Prosecuting Attorney, who made it known to the chauffeur that he didn't want “the matter getting out.” Not very much about the fixer had appeared in the newspapers. All they seemed to know was that a Jew from the Podol had been arrested “as a suspicious person,” but not who or why. Grubeshov had promised more information at a later date in order not, presently, to impede the investigation. Bibikov, before they left the courthouse, had managed to convey this to Yakov, but not much else.
speaking and occasionally spat, the Ukrainian holding his cap in his large red hand, ill at ease, the German staring darkly at the former overseer. Nikolai Maximovitch had been expected but Yakov knew it was too late in the day for him to leave the house sober. After a morning fog had thinned and lifted, it began to rain heavily; and it poured again in the afternoon. The horses drawing the half dozen carriages that had left at intervals from the District Courthouse in the Plossky, and met first in the brickyard, had splashed through puddles, and the motorcar carrying Yakov, Colonel Bodyansky and the gendarmes, had got stuck in the mud on a road in the Lukianovsky, drawing several people, and irritating the Prosecuting Attorney, who made it known to the chauffeur that he didn't want “the matter getting out.” Not very much about the fixer had appeared in the newspapers. All they seemed to know was that a Jew from the Podol had been arrested “as a suspicious person,” but not who or why. Grubeshov had promised more information at a later date in order not, presently, to impede the investigation. Bibikov, before they left the courthouse, had managed to convey this to Yakov, but not much else.
“Start from the beginning,” Grubeshov said to Proshko, dressed in his Sunday thick-trousered suit with short jacket. “âI want to hear your earliest suspicions.”
The Prosecuting Attorney had planned this re-enactment, he had told the accused, “to let you know the inescapable logic of our case against you so that you may act accordingly and for your own benefit.”
“But how for my benefit?”
“It will become clear to you.”
The foreman blew his nose, wiped it in two strokes and thrust the handkerchief into his pants pocket.
“On one look I knew he was a Jew, even though he was faking that he was a Russian. It's easy enough to tell
an onion from a radish if you're not color blind.” Proshko laughed a little from the chest. “Yakov Ivanovitch Dologushev, he called himself, but I knew from the sound of it on his tongue that the name didn't fit him. A name belongs to you as your birthright, but it hung on him like a suit of stolen clothes. I felt in my blood he was a Jew the same way as you feel in the dark the presence of a ghost. Wait up, little brother, I thought to myself, something smells fishy here. Maybe it's his natural smell, or the way he talks Russian, or maybe it's the flatfooted way he runs when he chases young boys, but when I looked with both of my eyes open I saw what I already knewâhe was a Zhid and no two ways about it. You can't make a gentleman out of a toad, as the saying goes, and a born Jew can't hide the Zhid in his face. This is a foxy bastard, I thought to myself, and he thinks he's got it hidden because he wears a belted sheepskin coat and has shaved off his Jewish whiskers and curls, and maybe it'll be a little slow smoking him out of his hole now that he's fooled Nikolai Maximovitch, but smoke him out I will, and with God's help it's what I did.”
an onion from a radish if you're not color blind.” Proshko laughed a little from the chest. “Yakov Ivanovitch Dologushev, he called himself, but I knew from the sound of it on his tongue that the name didn't fit him. A name belongs to you as your birthright, but it hung on him like a suit of stolen clothes. I felt in my blood he was a Jew the same way as you feel in the dark the presence of a ghost. Wait up, little brother, I thought to myself, something smells fishy here. Maybe it's his natural smell, or the way he talks Russian, or maybe it's the flatfooted way he runs when he chases young boys, but when I looked with both of my eyes open I saw what I already knewâhe was a Zhid and no two ways about it. You can't make a gentleman out of a toad, as the saying goes, and a born Jew can't hide the Zhid in his face. This is a foxy bastard, I thought to myself, and he thinks he's got it hidden because he wears a belted sheepskin coat and has shaved off his Jewish whiskers and curls, and maybe it'll be a little slow smoking him out of his hole now that he's fooled Nikolai Maximovitch, but smoke him out I will, and with God's help it's what I did.”
“Tell the details,” said Grubeshov.
“It wasn't more than fifteen minutes after I first saw him that I went back to the office shack and asked him for his papers so as to hand them over to the District Police, and right off he showed me who he was. He lied that he had given them to the boss and he had registered them with the police. If a man talks crooked, I thought to myself, he's crooked elsewhere, and I'll watch out to see where else. I didn't have long to wait. Once when he was nosing around the kilns for purposes of his own, I sneaked into the shack and checked up on his figures in the books. He was crooked in his accounts and every day entered smaller amounts than he should so he could keep some rubles for himselfânot so many, a Jew is cunningâmaybe three or four or five a day that Nikolai
Maximovitch had no suspicions of, and he saved himself a nice little pile in a tin can in his room.”
Maximovitch had no suspicions of, and he saved himself a nice little pile in a tin can in his room.”
“You're a liar,” Yakov said, trembling, “you're the thief and you're putting it on me. You and your drivers stole thousands of bricks from Nikolai Maximovitch, and you hated me for watching you so you couldn't steal more.”
Nobody was listening.
“What did he do with the rubles you say he stole?” Bibikov asked the foreman. “There were about ninety in the tin can, if I remember correctly. If he was stealing four rubles a day, let us say, he should have had many more.”
“Who knows what a Jew does with money. I've heard it said they take it to bed with them and give it a fuck once in a while. I bet he gave most of it to the Zhidy synagogue in the Podol. They have plenty of uses for a Russian ruble.”
“The Secret Police confiscated altogether one hundred and five rubles,” Grubeshov announced after conferring with Colonel Bodyansky. “Keep your mouth shut,” he said to Yakov. “Answer when you're spoken to.”
“What's more,” Proshko went on, “he sneaked other Jews into the brickyard, and one was one of those Hasids with a round hat, or whatever you call them, who prayed up there in the stable with this one here. The other one came when they thought nobody was around to watch them. They both tied horns on their heads and prayed to the Jewish God. I watched them through the window and saw them praying and eating matzos. I figured they baked some in the stove up there and I was right, there was half a sack of flour hidden under the bed that the police got. I kept track of them because I had my own suspicions, like I told you. I saw this one here sneaking around like a ghost at night, his face white and eyes
strange, looking for something, and I also saw him chasing the boys that I told you about. I was worried he would do them some kind of harm, little knowing how right I was. One day two or three school kids came in the yard with their book satchels. I saw him chase them but they got away over the fence. Once I asked him, âYakov Ivanovitch, why did you chase those young school kids, they are good boys and all they want to do is to see how we make brick,' but he answered me, âIf they are so innocent Jesus Christ will protect them.' He thought Proshko wouldn't know what he meant by that but I did.”
strange, looking for something, and I also saw him chasing the boys that I told you about. I was worried he would do them some kind of harm, little knowing how right I was. One day two or three school kids came in the yard with their book satchels. I saw him chase them but they got away over the fence. Once I asked him, âYakov Ivanovitch, why did you chase those young school kids, they are good boys and all they want to do is to see how we make brick,' but he answered me, âIf they are so innocent Jesus Christ will protect them.' He thought Proshko wouldn't know what he meant by that but I did.”
Yakov groaned.
“That's why I kept my eye on him and when I couldn't I told the drivers to watch him.”
“That's so.” Serdiuk, still smelling of horse, nodded, and Richter said yes.
“I saw them praying with their little black hats on, and I spied on them when they were baking those matzos. Then when the boy was murdered and they found him in the cave with all those wounds the morning it was snowingâwhen the snow came again in April âI saw this one take the other Jew with the round hat down the stairs and they left the brickyard in a hurry. I went up there, walking right in their footsteps in the snow so he wouldn't see I had been there, and that was the day I found pieces of matzos they had baked, half a bag of flour under the bed, his sack of tools, and that bloody rag I told you about. The devil scatters his dung wherever he goes.
“After that he wanted to set the stable on fire to burn the evidence but he saw I had my eye on him. When I met him in the brickyard the blood ran out of his face and he couldn't raise his eyes at me. That was after they had killed the kid. After the funeral I went to the police, and in a week they came and arrested him. They took
the matzos away and the other things that I told you about, but I went up there with Serdiuk and Richter here, to tear up the floorboardsâsome had certain dark stains on them that we wanted to show the police. Just then we see an old graybeard Jew run out of the stable, and the next thing the place was up in roaring flames, and the whole stable burned down in less than five minutes, so it was just by luck we saved any of the horses. We saved six and lost four. If the fire had been an ordinary kind we would've saved the whole ten, but being as it was, there was something that made it burn as if the wind was caught in it, and it cried out like people were dying and ghosts were going to meet them. They had said some magic words from a Zhidy book, I'll swear to God, and upstairs where this one here had lived before they arrested him, the flames turned an oily green such as I never saw before, and then yellow, and then almost black, and they burned twice as fast as the fire in the stalls even though the loft was full of hay. In the stalls the fire burned orange and red, and it was slower, more like an ordinary fire, so we got six horses out of the burning stalls and lost the other four.”
the matzos away and the other things that I told you about, but I went up there with Serdiuk and Richter here, to tear up the floorboardsâsome had certain dark stains on them that we wanted to show the police. Just then we see an old graybeard Jew run out of the stable, and the next thing the place was up in roaring flames, and the whole stable burned down in less than five minutes, so it was just by luck we saved any of the horses. We saved six and lost four. If the fire had been an ordinary kind we would've saved the whole ten, but being as it was, there was something that made it burn as if the wind was caught in it, and it cried out like people were dying and ghosts were going to meet them. They had said some magic words from a Zhidy book, I'll swear to God, and upstairs where this one here had lived before they arrested him, the flames turned an oily green such as I never saw before, and then yellow, and then almost black, and they burned twice as fast as the fire in the stalls even though the loft was full of hay. In the stalls the fire burned orange and red, and it was slower, more like an ordinary fire, so we got six horses out of the burning stalls and lost the other four.”
Richter swore every word was true and Serdiuk crossed himself twice.
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