The Fixer (15 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
“Aren't these your tools, Yakov Bok? They were found in your habitat in the stable by the driver Richter.”
Yakov identified them in the candlelight.
“Yes, your honor, I've had them for years.”
“Look at this rusty knife and these awls cleansed of
blood with this rag, and now deny these instruments were used by you and your gang of Jews to perforate and bleed the body of a sweet and innocent Christian child!”
blood with this rag, and now deny these instruments were used by you and your gang of Jews to perforate and bleed the body of a sweet and innocent Christian child!”
The fixer forced himself to look. He gazed at the gleaming point of the awl, and beyond it, into the depths of the cave which he now saw clearly, everyone present, among them Marfa Golov, her head wrapped in a black shawl, her wet eyes reflecting the candle lights, wailing on her knees at the bier of her Zhenia, disinterred from his grave for the occasion, lying naked in death, the wounds of his gray shrunken pitiful body visible in the light of two long thickly dripping white candles burning at his large head and small feet.
Yakov hastily counted the wounds on the child's bloated face, and cried out, “Fourteen!”
But the Prosecuting Attorney replied these were two magic groups of seven, and Father Anastasy, the stink of garlic rising from his head, fell on his knees and with a quiet moan began to pray.
The days were passing and the Russian officials were waiting impatiently for his menstrual period to begin. Grubeshov and the army general often consulted the calendar. If it didn't start soon they threatened to pump blood out of his penis with a machine they had for that purpose. The machine was a pump made of iron with a red indicator to show how much blood was being drained out. The danger of it was that it didn't always work right and sometimes sucked every drop of blood out of the body. It was used exclusively on Jews; only their penises fitted it.
In the morning the guards came into the cell and awakened him roughly. He was searched carefully and
ordered to dress. Yakov was manacled and chained, then marched up two flights of stairsâhe had hoped to Bibikov's office but it was to the Prosecuting Attorney's across the hall. In the anteroom, on a bench against the wall in the rear two men in threadbare suits looked up furtively at the prisoner, then lowered their eyes. They are spies, he thought. Grubeshov's office was a large high-ceilinged room with a long ikon of a crucified blue-haloed Christ on the wall behind the prosecutor's desk, where he sat reading legal documents and referring to open law books. The fixer was ordered to sit in a chair facing Grubeshov, and the guards lined up behind him.
ordered to dress. Yakov was manacled and chained, then marched up two flights of stairsâhe had hoped to Bibikov's office but it was to the Prosecuting Attorney's across the hall. In the anteroom, on a bench against the wall in the rear two men in threadbare suits looked up furtively at the prisoner, then lowered their eyes. They are spies, he thought. Grubeshov's office was a large high-ceilinged room with a long ikon of a crucified blue-haloed Christ on the wall behind the prosecutor's desk, where he sat reading legal documents and referring to open law books. The fixer was ordered to sit in a chair facing Grubeshov, and the guards lined up behind him.
The day was uncomfortably warm, the windows shut against the heat. The prosecutor wore a light greenish suit with the same soiled yellow vest and black bow tie. His sidewhiskers were brushed, and he mopped his moist face and palms and wiped the back of his heavy neck with a large handkerchief. Yakov, disturbed by his bad dream of that morning, and almost unable to look at the Prosecuting Attorney since his performance at the cave, felt he was suffocating.
“I have decided to send you to the preliminary confinement cell in the Kiev Prison to await your trial,” Grubeshov said, blowing his nose and cleaning it slowly. “It is, of course, not easy to predict when it will begin, so I thought I would inquire whether you had become more cooperative? Since you have had time to reflect on your situation, perhaps you are now willing to tell the truth. What do you say? Further resistance will gain you only headaches. Cooperation will perhaps ease your situation.”
“What else is there to say, your honor?” the fixer sighed sadly. “I've looked in my small bag of words and I have nothing more to say except that I'm innocent. There's no evidence against me, because I didn't do what you say I did.”
“That's too bad. Your role in this murder was known to us before you were arrested. You were the only Jew living in the district, with the exceptions of Mandel-baum and Litvinov, Merchants of the First Guild, who weren't in Russia during the time of the commission of the crime, perhaps on purpose. We suspected a Jew at once because a Russian couldn't possibly commit that kind of crime. He might cut a man's throat in a fight, or suddenly kill a person with two or three heavy blows, but no Russian would maliciously torture an innocent child by inflicting forty-seven deadly wounds on his body.”
“Neither would I,” said the fixer. “It's not in my nature, whatever else is.”
“The weight of the evidence is against you.”
“Then maybe the evidence is wrong, your honor?”
“Evidence is evidence, it can't be wrong.”
Grubeshov's voice became persuasive. “Tell me the honest truth, Yakov Bok, didn't the Jewish Nation put you up to this crime? You seem like a serious personâperhaps you were unwilling to do it but they urged it on you, made threats or promises of certain sorts, and you reluctantly carried out the murder for them? To put it in other words, wasn't it their idea rather than yours? If you'll admit that, I'll tell you franklyâI'll put it this way âyour life would be easier. We will not prosecute to the full extent of our powers. Perhaps after a short while you will be paroled and your sentence suspended. In other words, there are âpossibilities.' All we ask is your signatureâthat's not so much.”
Grubeshov's face glistened, as though he were making a greater effort than was apparent.
“How could I do such a thing, your honor? I couldn't do such a thing. Why should I blame it on innocent people?”
“History has proved they are not so innocent. Besides I don't understand your false scruples. After all, you're
an admitted freethinker, this admission occurred in my presence. The Jews mean very little to you. I size you up as a man who is out for himself, though I can't blame you. Come, here is an opportunity to free yourself from the confines of the net you have fallen into.”
an admitted freethinker, this admission occurred in my presence. The Jews mean very little to you. I size you up as a man who is out for himself, though I can't blame you. Come, here is an opportunity to free yourself from the confines of the net you have fallen into.”
“If the Jews don't mean anything to me, then why am I here?”
“You are foolish to lend yourself to their evil aims. What have they done for you?”
“At the very least, your honor, they've let me alone. No, I couldn't sign such a thing.”
“Then keep in mind that the consequences for you can be very grave. The sentence of the court will be the least of your worries.”
“Please,” said the fixer, breathing heavily, “do you really believe those stories about magicians stealing the blood out of a murdered Christian child to mix in with matzos? You are an educated man and would surely not believe such superstitions.”
Grubeshov sat back, smiling slightly. “I believe you killed the boy Zhenia Golov for ritual purposes. When they know the true facts, all Russia will believe it. Do you believe it?” he asked the guards.
The guards swore they did.
“Of course we believe it,” Grubeshov said. “A Jew is a Jew, and that's all there is to it. Their history and character are unchangeable. Their nature is constant. This has been proved in scientific studies by Gobineau, Chamberlain and others. We here in Russia are presently preparing one on Jewish facial characteristics. Our peasants have a saying that a man who steals wears a hat that burns. With a Jew it is the nose that burns and reveals the criminal he is.”
He flipped open a notebook to a page of pen-and-ink sketches, turning the book so that Yakov could read the printing at the top of the page: “Jewish noses.”
“Here, for instance, is yours.” Grubeshov pointed to a thin high-bridged nose with slender nostrils.
“And this is yours,” Yakov said hoarsely, pointing to a short, fleshy, broad-winged nose.
The Prosecuting Attorney, though his color had deepened, laughed thinly. “You are a witty man,” he said, “but it won't do you any good. Your fate is foreseen. Ours is a humane society but there are ways of punishing hardened criminals. Perhaps I ought to remind youâto show you how well off you areâhow your fellow Jews were executed in the not too distant past. They were hanged wearing caps full of hot pitch and with a dog hanging beside them to show the world how despised they were.”
“A dog hangs a dog, your honor.”
“If you can't bite don't show your teeth.” Grubeshov, his neck inflamed, slashed the fixer across the jaw with a ruler. Yakov cried out as the wood snapped, one piece hitting the wall. The guards began to beat his head with their fists but the Prosecuting Attorney waved them away.
“You can cry to Bibikov from now to doomsday,” he shouted at the fixer, “but I'll keep you in prison till the flesh rots off your bones piece by piece. You will beg me to let you confess who compelled you to murder that innocent boy!”
He feared the prison would go badly for him and it went badly at once. It's my luck, he thought bitterly. What do they say?â“If I dealt in candles the sun wouldn't set.” Instead, I'm Yakov Fixer and it sets each hour on the stroke. I'm the kind of man who finds it perilous to be alive. One thing I must learn is to say lessâmuch less, or I'll ruin myself. As it is I'm already ruined.
The Kiev Prison, also in the Lukianovsky, was a high-walled old gray fortress-like building with a large interior muddy yard, strewn on the iron gate side with junk pilesâa broken wagon, rotting mattresses, blackened boards, barrels of rubbish, rock and sandpiles where prisoners sometimes worked with cement. A clear area between the administrative offices on the west and the main cell block was the promenade grounds. Yakov and his guards had got to the prison on a trolley, a ride of several versts from the District Courthouse where he had been in jail until then. At the prison the fixer was greeted by the cross-eyed warden, “Hello, blood-drinker, welcome to the Promised Land.” The Deputy Warden, a lean, narrow-faced man with depthless eyes and a four-fingered right hand, said, “Here we'll feed you flour and blood till you shit matzos.” The sub-officials and clerks rushed out of their offices to see the Jew, but Warden Grizitskoy, a man of sixty-five, with a limp yellowish gray beard, a khaki uniform with gold epaulets, and a visored cap, shoved open a door and led the fixer into an inner office, where he sat down at his desk.
“I don't want your kind here,” he said, “but I have no choice in the matter. I'm the Tsar's servant and follow his orders faithfully. You are the lowest of Jewish scum âI've read of your deedsâbut nevertheless a charge of his Imperial Majesty Nicholas the Second. So here you'll stay till they tell me otherwise. You'd better behave yourself. Follow the rules and regulations and do as you're told. Quickly does it. Under no circumstances are you to attempt to communicate with any person outside this prison unless I authorize it. If you make trouble you will be shot in your tracks. Understood?”
“How long must I stay here?” Yakov managed to ask. “I mean considering I haven't yet been tried.”
“As long as the proper authorities deem necessary.
Now keep your questions to yourself and go along with the sergeant. He will tell you what to do.”
Now keep your questions to yourself and go along with the sergeant. He will tell you what to do.”
The sergeant, a man with drooping mustaches, led the fixer down the corridor past some dingy offices from whose doorways the clerks were staring out, to a long room with a counter and several benches where he was ordered to undress. Yakov changed into a sack-like white jacket, smelling of human sweat, and a pair of shapeless linen trousers. He was handed a shirt without buttons and a worn greatcoat that had once been brown and was now gray, to sleep in or under at night. As he was pulling off his boots to change into a pair of stiff prison shoes, a wave of oppressive darkness swept over him. Though he felt like fainting he wouldn't give them the satisfaction.
“Sit down in that chair for your haircut,” the sergeant ordered.
Yakov sat down in a straightback chair, but as the prison barber was about to crop his hair with a pair of large clippers, the sergeant, checking his official paper, stopped him.
“Never mind that. The orders say let him keep his head of hair.”
“It's always like that,” said the barber, incensed. “These pricks are born with privileges.”
“Cut it off!” shouted Yakov, “cut off my hair!”
“Silence!” ordered the sergeant. “Learn to follow orders! Move on!”
He unlocked a metal door with a large key and followed the fixer down a dimly lit dank corridor to a large crowded cell with a barred grating on one side, and a wall on the other containing two high small dirty windows through which little light penetrated. A smelly urinal, no more than an open drain, ran along the rear wall of the cell.
“It's the thirty-day cell,” said the sergeant. “You stay
here for a month and either you go on trial or they transfer you elsewhere.”
here for a month and either you go on trial or they transfer you elsewhere.”
“Where elsewhere?”
“You'll find out.”
Wherever it is what difference does it make? the fixer thought blackly.
The noise in the cell quieted as the door clanked open, and the silence deepened as though a quilt had been thrown over the prisoners as they watched Yakov enter. After the door shut behind him they began talking and moving again. There were about twenty-five men in the room, their searing stench in the almost airless cell nauseating. Some sat on the floor playing cards, two men danced closely together, a few wrestled or sparred, fell over each other, got kicked and cursed at. An old fanatic jumped repeatedly from the seat of a broken stool. A man with a sick sunken face hammered his shoe with the heel of another. There were a few benches and tables in the cells but no cots or mattresses. The prisoners slept on a low wooden platform along the outer wall, raised a centimeter from the damp filthy floor. Yakov sat alone in the farthest corner, reflecting on his wretched fate. He would have torn out fistfuls of his hair but was afraid to be noticed.
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