The Fixer (11 page)

  “It was only in the Lukianovsky, if you’ll excuse me, your honor, that I didn’t register. That was where I made a mistake.”

  “That is also noted.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to mention that I served for a short time in the Russian Army,”

  “Noted. A very short time, less than a year. You were discharged for illness, were you not?”

  “Also because the war was over. There was no use for any more soldiers at that time.”

  “What was the illness?”

  “Attacks of asthma, on and off. I would never know when they would hit me next.”

  “Are you still troubled with this ailment?” the magistrate said conversationally. “I ask because my son has asthma.”

  “Mostly it’s cleared up though sometimes on a windy day I find it hard to draw a breath.”

  “I’m glad it’s cleared up. Now permit me to go on to the next item. I will read from the deposition of Zinaida Nikolaevna Lebedev, spinster, age thirty.”

  This is terrible, the fixer thought, squeezing his hands. Where will it all end?

  The door opened. The magistrate and his assistant looked up as two officials strode into the room. One, in a red and blue uniform with gold epaulets, was the officer who had arrested Yakov, Colonal Bodyansky, a heavy man with a cropped red mustache. The other was the Prosecuting Attorney Grubeshov, Procurator of the Kiev Superior Court. He had that morning gone down to stare at the fixer in his cell without addressing a word to him. Yakov had stood frozen against the wall. Five minutes later the prosecutor had walked away, leaving him in a sweaty state of unrest.

  Grubeshov placed on the table a worn portfolio with straps. He was a stoutish man with a fleshy face, sidewhis-kers, thick eyebrows and hawklike eyes. A roll of flesh on the neck hung over his stiff collar, the tabs of which were bent over a black bow tie. He wore a dark suit with a soiled yellow vest and seemed to be repressing excitement. Yakov was again apprehensive.

  Bibikov’s assistant had at once arisen and bowed. At a warning glance from the magistrate, the fixer hastily got up and remained standing.

  “Good morning, Vladislav Grigorievitch,” said Bibi-kov, a little flustered. “Good morning, Colonel Bodyansky, I am examining the suspect. Kindly be seated. Ivan Semyonovitch, please shut the door.”

  The colonel brushed his fingers over his mustache, and the Prosecuting Attorney, smiling slightly at nothing in particular, nodded. Yakov, at the magistrate’s signal, shakily resumed his seat. Both officials studied him, the Prosecuting Attorney, once more intently, almost as though appraising the fixer’s health, weight, stamina, sending chills down his back; or as though he were a new animal in the zoo. But the colonel looked through him as though he did not exist.

  He wearily wished he didn’t.

  Bibikov read part way down the typewritten first page of the paper in his hand, then flipped through several more pages before he glanced up.

  “Ah, I have it here,” he said, clearing his throat. “This is the key statement: ‘Z. N. Lebedev: I felt from the first he was different or odd in some way but could not guess how basically so, or I would never have had anything to do with him, you may believe me. He seemed to me somewhat foreign, but I explained to myself that he was from the provinces and obviously lacking in education and cultivation. I can only say I was on the whole uncomfortable in his presence, although of course truly grateful that he had assisted Papa that time he slipped in the snow. Afterwards I detested him because he tried to assault me. I told him firmly I never wished to see him again—’ “

  “It’s not true, I didn’t assault her,” Yakov said, half rising. “It’s not true at all.”

  “Please,” said Bibikov, staring at him in astonishment.

  “Silence,” said Colonel Bodyansky, pounding his fist on the table. “Sit down at once!”

  Grubeshov drummed with his fingertips.

  Yakov quickly sat down. Bibikov glanced at the colonel in embarrassment. To the fixer he said firmly, “You will please control yourself, this is a legal investigation. I shall continue to read: ‘Investigating Magistrate: Are you charging sexual assault?’

  “‘Z. N. Lebedev: I’m sure he intended to assault me. By this time I had begun to suspect he might be a Jew but when I saw for certain I screamed loudly.’

  “‘Investigating Magistrate: Explain what you mean that you saw “for certain.” ‘

  “‘Z. N. Lebedev: He—I saw he was cut in the manner of Jewish males. I could not help seeing.’

  “‘Investigating Magistrate: Go on, Zinaida Nikolaevna, after you have calmed yourself. You may be embarrassed but it is best to speak the truth.’

  “‘Z. N. Lebedev: He realized I would not tolerate his advances and left the room. That was the last I saw of him, and I thank God.’

  “‘Investigating Magistrate: Then there was no assault in the true sense of the word, if you will pardon me? He did not touch you or attempt to?’

  “‘Z. N. Lebedev: You may say that but the fact remains he undressed himself and his intentions were to have relations with a Russian woman. That’s what he hoped for, or he wouldn’t have undressed and appeared naked. I’m sure you wouldn’t approve of that, your honor.’

  “‘Investigating Magistrate: There is no approval expressed or implied either of his conduct or yours, Zinaida Nikolaevna. Did you afterwards inform your father, Nikolai Maximovitch, of this incident?’

  “‘Z. N. Lebedev: My father is not well and hasn’t been in good health or spirits since the death of my poor mother. And his only brother died a year ago of a lingering illness, so I didn’t wish to upset him further. He would have wanted to horsewhip the Jew.’ “

  “It is noted that at this point the witness wept copiously.”

  Bibikov laid down the paper.

  “Will you say now,” he asked Yakov, “whether you attempted to force yourself upon Zinaida Nikolaevna?”

  Ivan Semyonovitch filled the magistrate’s water glass from a porcelain pitcher on the table.

  “Absolutely not, your honor,” Yakov said hastily. “We ate together twice on her invitation while I was working in the upstairs flat, and the last night—the night I finished painting—she afterwards invited me to her bedroom. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone—that’s obvious now—but it’s not such a hard thing to do when you consider a man’s nature. Anyway, I had doubts and the minute I saw she was unclean, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, your honor, I left. That’s the honest truth and I could try from now to the Day of Judgment and not make it truer.”

  “What do you mean ‘unclean’?”

  The fixer was distraught. “I’m sorry to mention such things but if a man is in trouble he has to explain himself. The truth of it is she was having her monthlies.”

  He lifted his manacled hands to wipe his face.

  “Any Jew who approaches a Russian woman ought to be strung up,” said Colonel Bodyansky.

  “Did she state such was her condition?” Grubeshov spoke with a slight thickness of speech.

  “I saw the blood, your honor, if you’ll excuse me, while she was washing herself with a cloth.”

  “You saw the blood?” the Prosecuting Attorney said sarcastically. “Did that have some religious meaning to you as a Jew? Do you know that in the Middle Ages Jewish men were said to menstruate?”

  Yakov looked at him in surprise and fright.

  “I don’t know anything about that, your honor, although I don’t see how it could be. But getting back to Zinaida Nikolaevna Lebedev, what her condition meant to me was that it wouldn’t do either of us any good, and I was a fool to agree to go to her room in the first place. I should have gone home the minute I finished my work and not be tempted by a table full of all kinds of food.”

  “Relate what happened in the bedroom,” Bibikov said. “And please confine yourself to the question at hand.”

  “Nothing happened, your honor, I swear it with my whole heart. It’s as I said before—and also the young lady in the paper you just read—I got dressed as quickly as I could and left. I assure you of that, and it was the last I saw of her. Believe me, I’m sorry it happened.”

  “I do believe you,” said Bibikov.

  Grubeshov, sharply startled, stared at the Investigating Magistrate. Colonel Bodyansky shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  Bibikov, as though justifying himself, said, “We found two letters, both identified by the witnesses as written in their hand. One was from Nikolai Maximovitch addressed to Yakov Ivanovitch Dologushev, praising his diligence as an overseer of the Lebedev Brickworks, and the other was from the daughter, Zinaida Nikolaevna, on a sheet of perfumed blue letter paper, inviting the suspect to call on her at her home and expressly stating in the letter that she was writing it with the permission of her father. I have both letters in my files. They were turned over to me by Captain Korimzin of the Kiev City Police, who found them in the office of the brickworks.”

  The colonel and Prosecuting Attorney sat like statues.

  Again addressing Yakov, the magistrate said, “I gather from the date that the letter from the young lady was written after the incident already described?”

  “That’s right, your honor. I was working in the brickworks then.”

  “You did not write her as she requested?”

  “I didn’t answer the letter. I figured I was born with a lot more trouble than I needed and there was no sense searching for more. If you’re afraid of a flood stay away from the water.”

  “Her later remarks to me though of informal nature,” the magistrate said, “affirm your statement. Therefore, considering the circumstances—this does not mean that I admire your behavior, Yakov Bok—I will recommend to the Prosecuting Attorney that you not be charged with attempted sexual assault.”

  He turned to his assistant, who, nodding, wrote hastily.

  The Prosecuting Attorney, flushing through his side-whiskers, picked up his portfolio, pushed back his chair and got up noisily. Colonel Bodyansky also arose. Bibi-kov reaching for the water glass, knocked it over. Jumping up, he dabbed at the spilled water on the table with his handkerchief, assisted by Ivan Semyonovitch, who in dismay quickly gathered up the papers and began to dry those that had got wet.

  Grubeshov and Colonel Bodyansky, neither speaking a word, strode sullenly out of the room.

  When he had blotted up the water, the Investigating Magistrate sat down, waited till Ivan Semyonovitch had dried and sorted the papers, and though embarrassed at the incident, picked up his notes, and clearing his throat, once more addressed the fixer in his resonant voice.

  “We have laws, Yakov Bok,” he said grimly, “directed against any member of your faith, orthodox or heretic, who assumes or counterfeits a name other than that entered in his official birth records, which is to say for the purpose of one sort of deception or another; but since there are no forged or counterfeited documents involved in this case, and since there is at present no record of similar previous offenses by you, I shall be lenient this time and not press this charge, although I personally feel, as I have already informed you, that your deception was repugnant and it is only by the greatest good fortune that it did not become an even more reprehensible situation—”

  “I thank you kindly, your honor—” The fixer wiped his eyes with his fingers.

  The magistrate went on. “I shall, however, ask the court to charge you for taking up residence in a district forbidden to Jews, except under certain circumstances which do not in any way appertain in your case. In this regard you have disobeyed the law. It is not a capital crime but you will be charged and sentenced for a misdemeanor.”

  “Will I be sent to jail, your honor?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “Ach. But how long in jail?”

  “Not very long—a month at least, possibly less, depending on the magistrate who sentences you. It will teach you a lesson you are apparently in need of.”

  “Will I have to wear prison clothes?”

  “You will be treated the same as other prisoners.”

  There was a knock on the door and a uniformed messenger entered. He handed an envelope to Ivan Semyon-ovitch, who quickly passed it to Bibikov.

  The Investigating Magistrate, his hand trembling a little, tore it open, read the handwritten note, slowly cleaned his glasses, and hastened out of the room.

  Though he knew he could expect trouble—although he had half hoped he would be let off with a warning or even a severe dressing down and sent running back to the Jewish quarter—oh, with what pleasure he would run!—Yakov, after his first disappointment, felt relief that things weren’t a lot worse. A month in jail is not a year, and three weeks are less; besides, if you wanted to look at it that way, rent was free. After his manacled march through the snowy streets, the mutterings of the crowd, and the terrible question the Investigating Magistrate had put to him last night in his cell, he had expected a calamity if not worse. Now things had calmed down. Practically, there was only this minor charge, and perhaps a lawyer could get the sentence reduced to maybe a week or nothing at all? It meant, of course, goodbye to some rubles from his savings—surely the police would return them to him—but a ruble he could earn, if not in a day, then in a week or month. Better a month spent grubbing for one than a month in prison. It didn’t pay to worry over rubles. The main thing was to be free, and once they freed him, Yakov Bok would be less foolish in his dealings with the law.