The Fixer (23 page)

  “That’s to keep you looking more like a Jew,” Zhitnyak said through the peephole. “They say the warden is going to make you wear a Zhid caftan and a rabbi’s round hat, and they’re going to twist earlocks out of your hair over your ears so you’ll look kosher. That’s what the Deputy Warden said they’ll do.”

  The prisoners in the other solitary cells down the hall were served their meager food by other prisoners who were not allowed to serve the Jew. In Yakov’s case they had to give the food to Zhitnyak, or Kogin, and he handed it to the fixer. This annoyed Zhitnyak, and sometimes when he brought Yakov’s gruel or cabbage soup and bread, he said, “Here’s your bowl of Christ’s blood, drink hearty, mate.” To enter the cell, the guard on duty, sometimes backed up by another guard in the hall holding a shotgun, more often alone, unlocked the six three-ringed bolts that had been attached on the door the day Yakov had been put into this cell. Hearing the six bolts being snapped back one by one, four or five times a day, put the fixer on edge.

  During the late autumn Yakov did not see the warden, then one day he appeared in the cell “tor purposes of official business.”

  “They’ve found a fingerprint on Zheniushka’s belt buckle so we’d better take yours.”

  A detective appeared with an ink pad and paper and took Yakov’s fingerprints.

  A week later the warden entered the cell with a large pair of scissors.

  “They’ve found some hairs on the boy’s body, and we want to compare them with yours.”

  Yakov uneasily gave him permission to cut his hair.

  “You cut it,” said Warden Grizitskoy. “Cut off six or eight hairs and put them in this envelope.” He handed Yakov the scissors and envelope.

  The fixer snipped off several of his hairs. “How do I know you won’t take these hairs and put them on the boy’s corpse and then say you found them there in the first place?”

  “You are a suspicious type,” said the warden. “That’s true of all your race.”

  “Excuse me, but why should the warden of a prison look for evidence of a crime? Is he a policeman?”

  “That’s none of your damn business,” said the warden. “If you’re so innocent let’s have the proof of it.”

  A louse fell into the envelope with the hairs but Yakov let it stay.

  One morning the warden entered the cell with a pen. bottle of black ink, and several sheets of foolscap paper for some samples of Yakov’s handwriting. He ordered him to write in Russian, “My name is Yakov Shepsovitch Bok. It is true that I am a Jew.”

  Later the warden returned and asked the fixer to write the same words, lying on the floor. Then he had Zhitnyak hold the prisoner’s legs as he stood on his head while writing his name.

  “What’s this for?” asked Yakov.

  “To see if the change in position changes your writing any. We want all possible samples.”

  And twice a day since he had been in this cell there were inspections of the fixer’s body; “searches” they were called. The bolts of the door were shot back, and Zhit-nyak and the Deputy Warden, with his smelly boots, came into the cell and ordered the fixer to undress. Yakov had to remove his clothes—the greatcoat, prison jacket, buttonless shirt, which were never washed though he had asked that he be allowed to wash them; and then he dropped his trousers and long drawers. He was allowed to keep on his threadbare undershirt, possibly so he wouldn’t freeze to death. They also made him remove the torn socks and wooden clogs he had worn since the time the surgeon had lanced the sores on his feet, and to spread his toes apart so that Zhitnyak could inspect between them.

  “Why do you do this?” Yakov had asked at the time of the first search.

  “Shut your trap,” said Zhitnyak.

  “It’s to see you haven’t hidden any kind of weapon up your ass or in your clothes,” said the Deputy Warden. “We have to protect you.”

  “What weapons could I hide? Everything was taken from me.”

  “You’re a foxy sort but we’ve dealt with your kind before. You could be hiding small files, nails, pins, matches or such; or maybe even poison pills the Jews gave you to commit suicide with.”

  “I have none of those things.”

  “Spread your ass,” said the Deputy Warden.

  Yakov had first to raise his arms and spread his legs. The Deputy Warden probed with his four fingers in Yakov’s armpits and around his testicles. The fixer then had to open his mouth and raise his tongue; he stretched both cheeks with his fingers as Zhitnyak peered into his mouth. At the end he had to bend over and pull apart his buttocks.

  “Use more newspaper on your ass,” said Zhitnyak.

  “To use you have to have.”

  After his clothes were searched he was permitted to dress. It was the worst thing that happened to him and it happened twice a day.

  3

  He sank into deep gloom. I’ll be here forever. The indictment will never come. I can beg on both broken knees but they won’t give it to me. They will never bring me to trial.

  In December, frost appeared on the four walls in the morning. Once he awoke with his hand stuck to the wall. The air was dead icy air. The fixer walked all day to keep from freezing. His asthma was worse. At night he lay on the straw mattress in his greatcoat, covered with the blanket, gasping, snoring thickly, wheezing as he desperately fought to breathe. The one listening at the peephole shut it and moved away. One morning Zhitnyak helped Yakov pile up a new load of bundles of wood almost chest high against the outer wall. And in the evening there were pieces of meat floating in the cabbage soup, and some round flecks of fat.

  “What’s happened?” the fixer asked.

  The guard shrugged. “The higher-ups don’t want you dying on them. You can’t try a corpse in court, as the saying goes.” He winked and laughed a little.

  Maybe this means the indictment is coming, Yakov thought in excitement. They don’t want me looking like a skeleton in the court.

  Not only was the food better, there was more of it. In the morning there were two extra ounces of bread and the gruel was thicker, barley with watery hot milk. And there was a half lump of sugar for the tea, which diluted the rotten taste a little. The fixer chewed slowly, savoring what he was eating. A cockroach in the bowl no longer bothered him. He plucked it out and ate, afterwards licking the bowl with his tongue. Zhitnyak brought the food into the cell and left at once. But he sometimes watched Yakov eat, through the spy hole, although the prisoner as he ate usually sat on the stool with his back to the iron door.

  “How’s the soup?” Zhitnyak asked through the hole.

  “Fine.”

  “Eat hearty.” When Yakov had finished the guard was gone.

  Though there was more to eat, the fixer hungered for more. The minute after he had eaten he was hungry. He had visions of Zhitnyak appearing one day with a huge plate of well-seasoned chicken soup, thick with broad yellow noodles, a platter of meat kreplach, and half a haleh loaf from which he would tear hunks of sweet foamy bread that melted on the tongue. He dreamed of rice and noodle pudding with raisins and cinnamon, as Raisl had deliciously baked it; and of anything that went with sour cream—blintzes, cheese kreplach, boiled potatoes, radishes, scallions, sliced crisp cucumbers. Also of juicy tomatoes of tremendous size that he had seen in Viscover’s kitchen. He sucked a ripe tomato till it dribbled from his mouth, then, to get to sleep, finally had to finish it off, thickly salted, with a piece of white bread. After such fantasies he could hardly wait for the guard to come with his breakfast; yet when it came at last he restrained himself, eating very slowly. First he chewed the bread until its hard texture and grain flavor were gone, then bit by bit swallowed it down. Usually he saved part of his ration for nighttime, in bed, when he got ravenously hungry thinking of food. After the bread he ate the gruel, sucking each barley grain as it melted in his mouth. At night he worked every spoonful of soup over his tongue, each pulpy cabbage bit and thread of meat, taking it in very small sips and swallows, at the end scraping the bowl with his blackened spoon. He was grateful for the somewhat more satisfying portions he was getting, and although he was never not hungry, after this somewhat better, more plentiful food, he was a little less hungry than he had been.

  But in a week his hunger was gone. He awoke nauseated one morning and waited a long day for it to go away but only felt worse. He felt sick in his mouth, eyes, and in the pit of his bowel. It’s not asthma, he thought, then if so what’s wrong with me? His armpits and crotch itched, he was cold inside himself and his feet were ice. He also had diarrhea.

  “What’s going on here?” said Zhitnyak when he entered the cell in the morning. “You didn’t eat your last night’s soup.”

  “I’m sick,” said the fixer, lying in his greatcoat on the straw mattress.

  “Well,” said the guard as he scrutinized the prisoner’s face, “maybe you might have jail fever.”

  “Couldn’t I go to the infirmary?”

  “No, you had your turn already but maybe I’ll tell the warden if I see him. In the meantime you better eat this barley gruel. It’s got hot milk in with the barley, and that’s good for sickness.”

  “Couldn’t I get out in the yard for a breath of air? The cell stinks and I’ve had no exercise for a long time. Maybe I would feel better outside.”

  “The cell stinks because you do. You can’t go out in the yard because that’s against the regulations when you’re in strict confinement.”

  “How long will I be kept that way?”

  “You’d better shut up your questions. That’s for the higher-ups to say.”

  Yakov ate the gruel and threw it up. He sweated violently, the mattress soaked. In the evening a doctor came into the cell, a young man with a sparse beard and brown fedora. He took the prisoner’s temperature, examined his body, and felt his pulse.

  “There is no fever,” he said. “It’s some kind of harmless stomach complaint. You also have a rash. Drink your tea and never mind the solid food for a day or two, then you can go back on regular fare.”

  He left quickly.

  After fasting two days the fixer felt better and went back to gruel and cabbage soup, though not to black bread. He hadn’t the energy to chew it. When he touched his head hairs came off on his fingers. He felt listless, despondent. Zhitnyak watched him through the hole, peeking in from the side. The diarrhea occurred more frequently, and after it Yakov lay, enervated and panting, on the mattress. Though he was very weak he kept up the fire in the stove all day and Zhitnyak did not say no. The fixer still felt cold and nothing seemed to warm him. The one good thing was that there were now no searches.

  He asked again to be sent to the infirmary but when the Deputy Warden came into the cell, he said, “Eat your food and cut out malingering. Starving is what makes you sick.”

  Yakov forced himself to eat and after a few spoonfuls it was not too bad. Later he vomited. He vomited repeatedly although there was nothing left in his stomach. And at night he had terrible dreams, visions of mass slaughter that left him sleepless, moaning. When he dozed again people were being cut down by Cossacks with sabers. Yakov was shot running into the woods. Yakov, hiding under a table in his hut, was dragged forth and beheaded. Yakov, fleeing along a rutted road, had lost an arm, an eye, his bloody balls; Raisl, lying on the sanded floor, had been raped beyond caring, her fruitless guts were eviscerated. Shmuel’s split and broken body hung from a window. The fixer awoke in nausea, afraid to sleep although when he was awake the thick foul-smelling sickness was worse to bear than his nightmares. He often wished for death.

  One night he dreamed of Bibikov hanging over his head and awoke with a heavy taste in his mouth, as if his tongue had turned to brass.

  He sat up in fright. “PoisonI My God, they’re poisoning me!”

  He wept for a while.

  In the morning he would not touch the food Zhitnyak had brought in, nor drink the tea.

  “Eat,” ordered the guard, “or you’ll stay sick.”

  “Why don’t you shoot me?” the fixer said bitterly. “It would be easier for both of us than this bastard poison.”

  Zhitnyak turned pale and hurriedly left the cell.

  He returned with the Deputy Warden.

  “Why do I have to spend so much time on one goddamned Jew?” said the Deputy Warden.

  “You’re poisoning me,” Yakov said hoarsely. “You have no true evidence against me so you’re poisoning my food to kill me off.”

  “It’s a lie,” said the Deputy Warden, “you’re out of your head.”

  “I won’t eat what you give me,” Yakov cried. “I’ll fast.”

  “Fast your ass off, it’ll kill you just the same.”

  “Then it’s your murder.”

  “Look who’s accusing other people of murder,” said the Deputy Warden, “the blood killer of a twelve-year-old Christian lad.”

  “You shithead,” he said to Zhitnyak as they left the cell.

  The warden soon hastily came in. “What are you complaining about now, Bok? It’s against the prison regulations to refuse food. I warn you that any more unorthodox behavior will be severely punished.”

  “You’re poisoning me here,” Yakov shouted.

  “I know of no poison,” the warden said sternly. “You’re inventing this tale to make us look ridiculous. The doctor reported you had a stomach cold.”

  “It’s poison. I can feel it in me. My body is sick and shrunken and my hair is falling out. You’re trying to kill me.”

  “To hell with you,” said the cross-eyed warden as he left the cell.

  In a half hour he was back. “It’s not my doing,” he said. “I never gave such orders. If there’s any poisoning done it’s on the part of your fellow Jews who are the most notorious well-poisoners of all time. And don’t think I’ve forgotten your attempt, in this prison, to bribe Gronfein to poison or kill Marfa Golov so that she couldn’t testify against you in court. Now your Jewish compatriots are trying to poison you out of fear you will confess your true guilt and implicate the whole nation. We just found out that one of the cook’s assistants was a disguised Jew and packed him off to the police. He’s the one who was poisoning your food.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Yakov.