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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Fixer
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A guard with a gun outside the grating shouted “Supper!” and two other guards opened the cell door and delivered three steaming wooden pails of soup. The prisoners ran with a roar to the pails, crowding around each. Yakov, who had eaten nothing that day, got up slowly. A guard handed out a wooden spoon to one prisoner in each group around the three pails. Sitting on the floor before his pail, the prisoner was allowed to eat ten spoonfuls of the watery cabbage soup, thickened with a
bit of barley, then had to pass the spoon to the next one in line. Those who tried to take extra spoonfuls were beaten by the others. After each prisoner had had his quota, the first began again.
Yakov edged close to the nearest pail but the one eating the soup, a clubfoot with a scarred head, stopped spooning, reached into the pail, and with a shout of triumph plucked out half a dead mouse, its entrails hanging. The prisoner held the mouse by the tail, hastily spooning down the soup with his other hand. Two of the prisoners violently twisted the spoon out of his hand and shoved him away from the pail. The clubfoot limped over to the men at the next pail and dangled the mouse in front of their faces, but though they cursed him into the ground no one left the pail. So he clumsily danced around with his dead mouse. Yakov glanced into the second pail, already empty except for a few dead cockroaches floating at the bottom. He did not look into the third pail. Nor did he care for the colorless tea that was served in tin mugs without sugar. He had hoped for a bit of bread but was given none because his name had not been entered on the bread list by the sergeant. That night when the other prisoners were snoring side by side on the platform, the fixer, wrapped in his greatcoat, though it was not a cold night, walked back and forth the length of the cell in the thick dark until the nails in his shoes bit into his feet. When he lay down exhausted, covering his face with half a sheet of newspaper he had found in the cell, to keep off the flies, he was at once awakened by the clanging bell.
At breakfast he gulped down the weak tea that smelled like wood rotting but could not touch the watery gray gruel in the pails. He had heard the wooden pails were in use in the bathhouse when they were not filled with soup or gruel. He asked for bread but the guard said he was still not on the list.
“When will I be?”
“Fuck you,” said the guard. “Don't make trouble.”
The fixer noticed that the mood of the prisoners to him, neutral to begin with, had altered. The men were quieter, subdued. During the morning they congregated in groups close to the urinal, whispering, casting glances at Yakov. The clubfoot from time to time appraised him with shrewd and cunning eyes.
Yakov felt icicles sprout in his blood. Something has happened, he thought. Maybe somebody told them who I am. If they think I killed a Christian boy they might want to kill me.
In that case should he cry out to the guard and ask to be transferred to another cell before they murdered him in this? And if he did would he live long enough to get there? Suppose the prisoners rushed him and the guards made no move to defend him?
During the morning “promenade,” the ten-minute exercise break when the men marched in double lines of twelve around the yard, ten paces between each group, as armed guards, some with coiled bullwhips, stood at the foot of the high thick walls, the clubfoot, who had slipped into line next to Yakov, said in a whisper, “Why isn't your head shaved like the rest of us?”
“I don't know,” Yakov whispered. “I told the barber to go ahead and do it.”
“Are you a stool pigeon or squealer? The men are suspicious of you.”
“No, no, tell them I'm not.”
“Then why do you sit apart from us? Who the hell do you think you are?”
“To tell the truth my feet hurt in these shoes. Also it's my first time in prison. I'm trying to get used to it but it's not so easy.”
“Are you expecting any food packages?” asked the clubfoot.
“Who would send me packages? I have nobody to send
me a package. My wife left me. Everyone I know is poor.”
“Well, if you get one, share and share alike is my motto. That's the rule here.”
“Yes, yes.”
The clubfoot limped along in silence.
They don't know who I am, Yakov thought. From now on I'd better be sociable. Once they find out it will be blows, not questions.
But when the prisoners had marched back into the cell there were whispered arguments among them, and Yakov, remembering how he had been beaten in the District Courthouse cell, felt himself sweating hotly.
Afterwards, another prisoner, a tall man with humid eyes, detached himself from a group of others and approached Yakov. He was heavily built, with a pale hard intense face, an almost black neck, and thin bent legs. He walked forward slowly, oddly, as though afraid something might fall out of his clothes. The fixer, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, scrambled up quickly.
“Listen, little brother,” the other prisoner began, “I am Fetyukov. The prisoners have sent me to talk to you.”
“If you're worried that I'm a stool pigeon,” Yakov said hastily, “you've got the wrong worry. I'm here like everybody else, waiting for my trial. I haven't asked for any privileges, not that they would give me any. I'm not even getting a bread ration. As for my hair, I told the barber to go ahead and cut it off but the sergeant said not to, though don't ask me why.”
“What are you accused of?”
The fixer touched his lips. with a dry tongue. “Whatever they've accused me of I didn't do. I give you my word. It's too complicated to go into without turning it into a wearying tale, something I don't understand my-. self.”
“I'm a murderer,” said Fetyukov. “I stabbed a stranger at the inn in my village. He provoked me so I stabbed him twice, once in the chest, and when he was falling, once in the back. That was the end of him. I had had more than a drop or two, but when they told me what I had done I was greatly surprised. I'm a peaceful man, I never make trouble if you don't provoke me. Who would've thought I could murder anybody? If you had told me any such thing I would have laughed at you to your face.”
The fixer, staring at the murderer, edged sideways along the wall. At the same time he saw two other prisoners sneaking up on him, one from either side. As he cried out, Fetyukov reached behind him whipping a short heavy stick out of his trousers. He struck Yakov a hard blow on the head. The fixer went down on one knee, holding both hands over his pain-wracked, bloody head, then fell over.
He awoke, lying on the clammy wooden platform. His head ached sickeningly and a searing pain throbbed on the left side of his skull. His fingers sought out the wet swollen cut on his scalp. Blood dripped from it. He was anguished. Would he be beaten every time he was moved to another cell and met other prisoners? The fixer dizzily sat up, blood trickling down his face.
“Wipe it off,” advised an old man with cracked eyeglasses, peering down at him. It was the slop-pail man who took care of the excrement buckets, brought in drinking water, and occasionally swept the wet floor. “Use the water bucket by the door.”
“Why do you hit a man who has done nothing to you? What have I done to you?”
“Listen, matey,” the old man whispered, “wash the blood off before the guard comes or the men will kill you.”
“Let them kill me,” he shouted.
“I told you he's a shitnose squealer,” the clubfoot said from the other side of the cell. “Finish him off, Fetyukov.”
A nervous murmur rose among the prisoners.
Two guards came running in the corridor, one carrying a shotgun. They peered through the grating.
“What's going on here? Cut out the noise, you pigs, or you'll live on half rations for a week.”
The other guard stared through the barred grating into the gloomy cell.
“Where's the Jew?” he called.
There was dead silence. The prisoners looked among themselves; some glanced furtively at Yakov.
After a while Yakov said he was there. A low murmur came from the prisoners. The guard pointed a shotgun at them and the murmur ceased.
“Where?” said the guard. “I can't see you.”
“Here,” said Yakov. “There's nothing to see.”
“The sergeant wrote your name on the bread list. You'll get your six ounces tonight.”
“In the meantime you can dream of matzos,” said the guard with the gun. “Also the blood of Christian martyrs, if you know what I mean.”
When the guards left the prisoners talked excitedly among themselves. Yakov felt renewed fright.
Fetyukov, the murderer, approached again. The fixer rose tensely, his hand clawing the wall.
“Are you the Jew they say has murdered a Russian lad?”
“They lie,” Yakov said hoarsely, “I'm innocent.” The mutterings of the prisoners filled the cell. One of them shouted, “Jew bastard!”
“That's not why I hit you,” said Fetyukov. “Your head wasn't shaved and we thought you were a spy. We did it to see if you would report us to the guard. If you had done that it would have finished you off. The clubfoot
would have knifed you. We are going on trial and don't want anybody testifying what he has heard in this cell. I didn't know you were a Jew. But if I had I wouldn't have hit you. When I was a boy I was apprenticed to a Jew blacksmith. He wouldn't have done what they say you did. If he drank blood he would have vomited it up. And he wouldn't have harmed a Christian child. I'm sorry I hit you, it was a mistake.”
“It was a mistake,” said the clubfoot.
Yakov went unsteadily to the water bucket. The bucket stank but he sank to his knees and poured some water over his head.
After that the prisoners lost interest in him and turned to other things. Some of them went to sleep on the platform and some played cards.
That night Fetyukov woke the fixer and gave him a piece of sausage he had saved from a package his sister had sent him. Yakov gobbled it up. The murderer also handed him a wet rag to press down the swollen cut on his head.
“Tell the truth,” he whispered, “did you kill that lad? Maybe you did it for a different reason? You might have been drunk.”
“For no other reason,” Yakov said. “And I wasn't drunk. It never happened, I'm innocent.”
“I wish I were innocent,” sighed Fetyukov. “It was a terrible thing I did. The man was a stranger to me. One must protect strangers, it says so in the Book. I had had a drop, you understand, and the next thing I knew I grabbed up a knife and he was dead at my feet. God, who gives us life, lets it hang by a thread. One blow and it's torn away. Don't ask me why unless the devil is the stronger. If I could give that man his life again I would. I would say take your life and don't come near me again. I don't know why I did it but I don't want to be a murderer. Things are bad enough as they are, who needs
worse? Now they'll pack me off to a prison camp in Siberia and if I live out my term I'll have to stay there the rest of my days.
“Little brother,” he said to Yakov, making the sign of the cross over him, “don't lose hope. The stones of the bridge may crumble but the truth will come out.”
“And till then,” sighed the fixer, “what of my wasted youth?”
His youth dribbled away.
He had been imprisoned almost three months, three times longer than Bibikov had predicted and God only knew when it would end. Yakov nearly went mad trying to figure out what was happening to him. What was a poor harmless fixer doing in prison? What had he done to deserve this terrible incarceration, no end in sight? Hadn't he had more than his share of misery in a less than just world? He tried desperately to put together a comprehensible sequence of events that had led inevitably from his departure from the shtetl to a prison cell in Kiev; but to think of all these strange and unexpected experiences as meaningfully caused by related events confused him. True, the world was the kind of world it was. The rain put out fires and created floods. Yet too much had happened that didn't make sense. He had committed a few errors and paid for them in more than kind. One dark night a thick black web had fallen on him because he was standing under it, and though he ran in every direction he could not extricate himself from its sticky coils. Who was the spider if it remained invisible? He sometimes thought God was punishing him for his unbelief. He was, after all, the jealous God. “Thou shalt worship no other Gods before me,” not even no Gods. He also blamed the goyim for their eternal
hatred of Jews. Things go badly at a historical moment and go that way, God or no God, forever. Did it
have
to be so? And he continued to curse himself. It could have happened to a more dedicated Jew, but it had happened instead to a recent freethinker because he was Yakov Bok. He blamed his usual mistakes—he could not always tell those of the far-off past from those that had led directly to his arrest in the brickyard. Yet he knew there was something from the outside, a quality of fate that had stalked him all his life and threatened, if he wasn't careful, his early extinction.
He hungered to explain who he was, Yakov the fixer from a small town in the Pale, an orphan boy who had married Raisl Shmuel's and had been deserted by her, a curse on her soul; who had been poor all his life, had grubbed for a living, and was poor in other ways too—if he was that one what was he doing in prison? Who were they punishing if his life was punishment? Why put a harmless man into a prison with thick stone walls? He thought of begging them to let him go simply because he was not a criminal—it was a known fact—they could ask in the shtetl. If any of the officials—Grubeshov, Bodyansky, the warden—had known him before, they would never have believed he could commit such a monstrous crime. Not such as he. If only his innocence were written on a sheet of paper, he could pull it out and say, “Read, it's all here,” but since it was hidden in himself they would know it only if they sought it, and they were not seeking. How could anyone look twice at Marfa Golov, note her suspicious ways and those crazy cherries on her hat, and not suspect she knew more about the murder than she was willing to admit? And what had happened to the Investigating Magistrate whom he hadn't seen now in more than a month? Was he still loyal to the law, or had he joined with the others in their vicious hunt for
a guilty Jew? Or had he merely forgotten an expendable man?
During Yakov's first days in the courthouse jail the accusation had seemed to him almost an irrelevancy, nothing much to do with his life or deeds. But after the visit to the cave he had stopped thinking of relevancy, truth, or even proof. There was no “reason,” there was only their plot against a Jew, any Jew; he was the accidental choice for the sacrifice. He would be tried because the accusation had been made, there didn't have to be another reason. Being born a Jew meant being vulnerable to history, including its worst errors. Accident and history had involved Yakov Bok as he had never dreamed he could be involved. The involvement was, in a way of speaking, impersonal, but the effect, his misery and suffering, were not. The suffering was personal, painful, and possibly endless.
He felt entrapped, abandoned, helpless. He had disappeared from the world and nobody he could call friend knew it. Nobody. The fixer berated himself for not having listened to Shmuel's advice and staying where he belonged. He had got himself in a terrible mess, for what? Opportunity? An opportunity to destroy himself. He had fished for a herring and had been snatched by a shark. It wasn't hard to guess which of them would eat meat. And though he had now, at last, a little understanding of what was going on, or thought he had, he could of course still not resign himself to what had happened. In a philosophical moment he cursed history, anti-Semitism, fate, and even, occasionally, the Jews. “Who will help me?” he cried out in his sleep, but the other prisoners had their own anguish, their own bad dreams.
One night a new guest was let into the cell, a fattish heavy-faced young man with a blondish beard and small
hands and feet, who wore his own clothes. At first his manner was morose and he returned furtive glances to anyone who looked in his direction. Yakov observed him from the distance. The young man was the only fat one in a cellful of skinny prisoners. He had money, bribed the guards for favors, lived well on packages from the outside—two large ones in a week—and wasn't stingy with food or cigarettes. “Here, boys, eat hearty,” and he would hand out whatever there was to spare, yet keep himself well supplied. He even passed around green bottles of mineral water. He seemed to know how to get along, and some of the prisoners played cards with him. The clubfoot offered to be his personal servant but he waved him away. At the same time he was a worried man, muttered to himself, shook his head in disagreement, and sometimes tore at his round wrists with dirty fingernails. One by one he pulled off the buttons of his shirt. Yakov, though wanting to talk to the man, skirted him in the beginning, possibly because he didn't know what to say to people with money, partly because the man obviously didn't want to be bothered, and partly for reasons he could not explain to himself. The new prisoner dispensed his favors with pretended cordiality, his eyes unable to conceal the fact that he was not a cordial man, and then withdrew. He sat alone often, muttering. Yakov sensed this one was aware of him. They both minded their business and looked each other over. One morning, after the promenade in the prison yard, they began to talk in a corner of the cell.
“You're a Jew?” said the fat young man, in Yiddish.
Yakov admitted it.
“I, too.”
“I thought so,” said the fixer.
“If you thought so why didn't you come over?”
“I thought I'd wait a little.”
“What's your name?”
“Yakov Bok the fixer.”
“Gronfein, Gregor. Shalom. What are you in here for?”
“They say I killed a Christian child.” He still couldn't say it keeping his voice steady.
Gronfein looked at him in astonishment.
“So you're the one? My God, why didn't you tell me right away? I'm happy to be in the same cell with you.”
“Why should you be happy?”
“I heard they had accused somebody of killing the Russian boy they found in the cave. Of course the whole thing is a manufactured fake, but there's a rumor running around in the Podol that a Jew was arrested, though nobody has seen you or knows who. Whoever he is he's a martyr for us all. Is it really you?”
“It's me, I wish it wasn't.”
“I had my doubts that such a person exists.”
“Only that and no more,” the fixer sighed. “My worst enemies should exist like this.”
“Don't grieve,” said Gronfein. “God will help.”
“He will or he won't as it suits him, but if he doesn't I hope somebody else will soon, or they might as well put me in the ground and cover me up with earth and grass.”
“Patience,” Gronfein said absently. “Patience. If there's not one way, there's another.”
“Another what?”
“As long as a man stays alive he can't tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.”
He began to talk about himself. “Of course I'm better off than some I can think of,” Gronfein said, looking at Yakov to see if he agreed. “I have a first-class lawyer already working for me in what you could call unofficial ways, and I'm not afraid to part with a few hundred rubles if I have to, because there's more where they come from. What I do is I'm a counterfeiter. It's not honest but pays well, and so what if it takes away from Tsar Nicholas—he's got plenty he takes from the Jews.
Still, if a bribe doesn't work this time I don't know what will. I've got a wife and five children and I'm getting a little worried. This is the longest I've spent in a cell. How long have you been here yourself?”
“Here about a month. Altogether three months since I was arrested.”
“Whew.” The counterfeiter gave Yakov two cigarettes and a piece of apple strudel from his last package, and the fixer ate and smoked gratefully.
Next time they talked, Gronfein asked Yakov questions about his parents, family, and village. He wanted to know what he had been doing in Kiev. Yakov told him this and that but not too much. He did, however, mention Raisl, and Gronfein squirmed.
“Not so much of a Jewish daughter I'd say. My wife couldn't have such thoughts, not with a goy anyway, let alone do such a thing.”
The fixer shrugged. “Some do, some don't. And some who do are Jewish.”
Gronfein started to ask something, looked around cautiously, then whispered he would be interested in knowing what exactly had happened to the boy. “How did he die?”
“How did who die?” the fixer said, astonished.
“That Russian boy who was murdered.”
“How would I know?” He drew away from the man. “What they say I did I didn't do. If I weren't a Jew there'd be no crime.”
“Are you sure? Why don't you confide in me? We're both in the same pot.”
“I have nothing to confide,” said Yakov coldly. “If there was no fowl there are no feathers.”
“It's tough luck,” said the counterfeiter amiably, “but I'll do what I can to help you. Once they let me out of here I'll speak to my lawyer.”
“For that I'll thank you.”
But Gronfein had grown depressed, his eyes clouding, and said no more.
The next day he sidled up to Yakov and whispered, worried, “They say on the outside that if the government brings you up on trial they might start a pogrom at the same time. The Black Hundreds are making terrible threats. Hundreds of Jews are leaving the city as if fleeing the plague. My father-in-law is talking of selling his business and running to Warsaw.”
The fixer listened in silence.
“Nobody's blaming you, you understand,” Gronfein said.
“If your father-in-law wants to run away at least he can run away.”
As they talked, the counterfeiter, from time to time, nervously glanced in the direction of the cell door, as if he were watching for the guard.
“Are you expecting a package?” Yakov asked.
“No no. But if they don't let me out of here I'll soon go mad. It's a stinking place and I'm worried about my family.”
He drifted away, but was back in twenty minutes with the remnants of a package.
“Guard what's left here,” he said to Yakov, “maybe I'm getting some action after all.”
A guard opened the door and Gronfein disappeared from the cell for half an hour. When he returned he told the fixer they were letting him out that evening. He seemed satisfied but his ears were flaming, and afterwards he muttered much to himself for more than an hour. Later he was calmer.
That's how it goes with money, Yakov thought. If you've got it you've got wings.
“Something I can do for you before I go?” Gronfein whispered, slipping the fixer a ten-ruble note. “Don't worry, it's guaranteed good.”
“Thanks. With this I can get myself a few things. They won't give me my own money. Maybe I can buy a better pair of shoes from one of the prisoners. These hurt my feet. Also if your lawyer can help me I'll be much obliged.”
“I was thinking maybe you want to leave me a letter to send to somebody?” said Gronfein. “Just write it out with this pencil and I'll mail it along. I have paper and an envelope or two in my pack. Stamps I'll paste on on the outside.”
“With the greatest of thanks,” Yakov said, “but who have I got to write to?”
“If you have nobody to write to,” said Gronfein, “I can't manufacture you a correspondent, but what about your father-in-law that you told me about?”
“He's a poor man all his life. What can he do for me?”
“He's got a mouth, hasn't he? Let him start yelling.”
“A mouth and a stomach but nothing goes in.”
“They say when a Jewish rooster crows in Pinsk they hear him in Palestine.”
“Maybe I'll write,” said Yakov.
The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to write. He had a desperate desire to make known his fate. On the outside, as Gronfein had said, they knew somebody was in prison but not who. He wanted everyone to know it was Yakov Bok. He wanted them to know his innocence. Somebody had to know or he would never get out. Maybe a committee of some sort could be formed to help him? Maybe, if you knew the law, it was possible for a lawyer to see him before the indictment; if not that, he could at least urge them to produce the document so they could begin his defense. In another week it would be thirty days in this smelly detention cell and he had heard from no one. He considered writing to the Investigating Magistrate but didn't dare. If he should
turn over the letter to the Prosecuting Attorney things might go worse. Or if he didn't maybe his assistant, Ivan Semyonovitch, might. In any case, it was too great a chance to take.

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