The Fixer (31 page)

  Shmuel pulled a cucumber out of his pants pocket. “Here’s a little pickle I brought you.” He attempted to thrust it through the spy hole but Zhitnyak grabbed it.

  “None of that,” the guard loudly whispered. “Don’t try any Jew tricks on me. Also you shut up,” he said to Yakov. “You’ve had your say and that’s enough now.”

  He grabbed Shmuel by the arm. “Hurry up, it’s getting towards morning.”

  “Goodbye, Yakov, remember what I told you.”

  “Raisl,” Yakov called after him. “I forgot to ask. Whatever happened to her?”

  “I’m running,” said Shmuel, holding on to his hat.

  
VIII

  Shmuel’s visit left the fixer with a heavy burden of excitement. Something must happen now, he thought. He will run to people on my behalf. He will say this is my son-in-law Yakov and look what happened to him. He will tell them I’m in prison in Kiev and what for. He will cry out my innocence and beg for help. Maybe a lawyer will then go to Grubeshov and ask for the indictment. He will say, “You must give it to us before this man dies in his cell.” Maybe he will even petition the Minister of Justice. If he’s a good lawyer he will think of other things to do. He won’t neglect me here.

  Instead the warden appeared in the cell, tense and agi-tated. His good eye gleamed. His mouth was loose with anger. “We’ll give you escape, you bastard. We’ll give you conspiracy.”

  A prisoner in strict confinement nearby had heard voices that night and had informed on Zhitnyak. The guard was arrested and after a while confessed that he had let an old Jew in to talk to the murderer.

  “This time you overreached yourself, Bok. You’ll wish you had never laid eyes on this other conspirator. We’ll show you what good outside agitation will do. You’ll wish you had never been born.”

  He demanded to know who the conspirator was, and the fixer excitedly answered, “Nobody. He was a stranger to me. He didn’t tell me his name. A poor man. He met Zhitnyak by accident.”

  “What did he say to you? Come out with it.”

  “He asked me if I was hungry.”

  “What did you answer?”

  “I said yes.”

  “We’ll give you hunger,” shouted the warden.

  Early the next day two workmen entered the cell with boxes of tools, and after laboring all morning with steel hammers and long metal spikes, drilled four deep holes in the inner wall, in which they cemented heavy bolts with attached rings. The workmen also constructed a bed-size platform with four short wooden legs. The foot of the “bed” was a stock for enclosing the prisoner’s legs, that would be padlocked at night. The window bars were strengthened and two more were added, reducing the meager light in the cell. But the cracked window was left cracked, and six additional bolts were fastened to the outside of the iron door, making twelve altogether, plus the lock that had to be opened by key. There was a rumor, the Deputy Warden said, that the Jews were planning a ruse to free him. He warned the fixer a lookout tower was being constructed on the high wall directly opposite his cell, and the number of guards patrolling the yard had been increased.

  “If you try to escape out of this prison we’ll slaughter the whole goddamn gang of you. We’ll get every last one.”

  In Zhitnyak’s place a new guard was stationed at the cell door during the day, Berezhinsky, an ex-soldier, a dark-faced man with pouched, expressionless eyes, swollen knuckles and a broken nose. There were patches of hair on his cheekbones and neck even after he had shaved. At times, out of boredom, he thrust a rifle barrel through the spy hole and sighted along it at the prisoner’s heart.

  “Bang!”

  The fixer was chained to the wall all day, and at night he lay on the bedplank, his legs locked in the stocks. The leg holes were tight and chafed his flesh if he tried to turn a little. The straw mattress had been removed from the cell. At least that smell was gone, and the bedbugs, though some still inhabited his clothes. Since the fixer slept on his side when he slept, it took a while before he could begin to fall asleep on his back. He lay awake until he could no longer stand it, then seemed to faint into sleep. He slept heavily for an hour or two and woke. If he slept again the slightest movement of his body awakened him.

  Now in chains, he thought the searches of his body might end, but they were increased to six a day, three in the morning and three in the afternoon. If the Deputy Warden went off duty early, the six searches were carried out in the morning. Berezhinsky went in with him in place of Zhitnyak. Six times a day his key grated in the lock, and one by one the twelve bolts were snapped back, each with a noise like a pistol shot. Yakov put his hands to his head, obsessed by the thought that someone was hitting him repeatedly. When the searchers appeared he was unchained and ordered to strip quickly. Though he tried to hurry, his fingers were like lead; he could not open his few buttons, and the guard booted him for not moving fast enough. He begged them to examine half his body at a time, with his jacket and shirt on and pants off; then with his pants on and the other clothes off, but they wouldn’t. All he was allowed to keep on was his undershirt. It was as though, if that were not removed, the search could not be such a bad thing whatever else they did to him. During the search Berezhinsky grabbed the fixer’s beard in his fist and tugged. When Yakov complained, he yanked his penis.

  “Ding-dong, giddyap. A Jew’s cock’s in the devil’s hock.”

  The Deputy Warden’s color heightened. He laughed with a gasp and during the search his mouth wore a smile.

  After each search, Yakov, exhausted, bleak, fell into depression. At first he had waited with hope that
anyway
something might come of Shmuel’s visit. Then he began to fear that the peddler had been arrested. At times he wondered whether Shmuel had really come to see him, and if he had, he now wished he hadn’t. If he had not come, there would now be no chains. For the chains he cursed him.

  The second winter in prison was worse than the first. The outside weather was worse, less snow and sleet but more clear freezing days, especially cold when a wind was blowing. The wind bayed at the window like starving wolves. And the inside weather was worse. The cold glowed in the cell. It sometimes struck him with pain, pressing his chest so hard it hurt to breathe. He wore his cap with earflaps, the ragged prayer shawl looped around it, twice around the head, and knotted on top. He wore it until it fell apart and then kept a piece of it for a handkerchief. He tried to get his coat sleeves under the manacles but couldn’t. The icy shackles encircled his bare legs. They threw him a horse blanket which he wore over his head and shoulders in the worst of winter, for though there were now a few bundles of wood in the cell, Berezhinsky was never in a hurry to light the stove, and most of the day the fixer’s bones were like ice-covered branches of a tree in the winter woods. The searches in the freezing cold were terrible; the cold plunged knives into his chest, armpits, anus. His body shriveled and teeth chattered. But when Kogin came in, in the late afternoon, he built a fire. Sometimes he lit one late at night. Since the arrest of his son, the guard’s eyes were almost glazed. He usually said nothing, puffed on a dead butt. After Yakov had cleaned out his supper bowl and lain down, Kogin locked his feet in the bed stocks and left.

  During the day the fixer sat in chains on a low stool they had given him. The Old Testament pages had been taken from the cell the day he was chained to the wall, and the Deputy Warden said they had been burned. “They went up like a fart in the breeze.” Yakov had nothing to do but sit and not think. To keep his blood from freezing he would often get up, move one step to the right, then two to the left; or one to the left and two to the right. He could also move a step back to the frozen wall, then one step forward. This was as far as he could go, and whichever way he moved he dragged the clanking chains with him. He did this for hours during the day. Sometimes he sobbed as he strained to pull the chains out of their sockets.

  He was allowed to do nothing for himself. To urinate he had to call the guard and ask for the can. If Berezhinsky was not at the door, or was too lazy to hear, or Yakov could not stand the sound of the bolts hitting his head, he held his water till it cut like a knife. When he could no longer hold it he pissed on the floor. Once he held it so long the stream burst forth, wetting his pants and shoes. When Berezhinsky came in and saw what had happened he slapped the fixer’s face with one hand, then with the other until the day blotted out.

  “You cocksucker Zhid, I ought to make you lick it up off the floor.”

  When Berezhinsky delivered the gruel, Yakov often begged him to remove the manacles for a few minutes while he ate, but the guard refused. Once after eating, while the guard was gone, Yakov turned sideways, used the spoon handle to dig a little at the cement around one of the bolts. But the guard saw this through the spy hole, entered the cell, and bloodied the prisoner’s mouth. After that Berezhinsky had the cell searched by a detail of five guards. Nothing was turned up at first, but they came again later in the week and found the blackened needle Yakov had long ago borrowed from Zhitnyak and carefully hidden in a crevice in the stove. To punish the fixer, his stool was removed for a week. He stood in chains all day and at night slept the sleep of the dead.

  Thus the days went by. Each day went by alone. It crawled along like a dying thing. Sometimes, if he thought about it, three days went by, but the third was the same as the first. It was the first day because he could not say that three single days, counted, came to something they did not come to if they were not counted. One day crawled by. Then one day. Then one day. Never three. Nor five or seven. There was no such thing as a week if there was no end to his time in prison. If he were in Siberia serving twenty years at hard labor, a week might mean something. It would be twenty years less a week. But for a man who might be in prison for countless days, there were only first days following one another. The third was the first, the fourth was the first, the seventy-first was the first. The first day was the three thousandth.

  Yakov thought how it used to be before he was chained to the wall. He remembered sweeping the floor with the birch broom. He remembered reading Zhitnyak’s gospels, and the Old Testament pages. He had saved and counted the wood splinters and kept track of the days and months when it seemed a sort of reward to add up time. He thought of the minutes of light on the scabby wall. He thought of the table he had once had to sit at reading before he smashed it in a fit of madness. He thought of being free to walk back and forth in the cell, or in circles, until he was too tired to think. He thought of being able to urinate without having to call the guard; and of only two searches a day instead of a terrifying six. He thought of lying down on the straw mattress any time he wanted to; but now he could not even lie down on the wooden bed except when they released him to. And he also thought of the time he was allowed to go to the kitchen to fill his bowl; and also of tending the stove in winter, and Zhitnyak, who was not too bad, coming in twice a day to light it. The guard had permitted him a good fire. He allowed Yakov to put in plenty of wood; then before leaving the cell he lit it with a match and watched until it really blazed. Yakov thought he would be glad if things went back to how they had once been. He wished he had enjoyed the bit of comfort, in a way of freedom, he had had then. In chains all that was left of freedom was life, just existence; but to exist without choice was the same as death.

  He had secret, almost pleasurable thoughts of death, had had from the time he had stolen Zhitnyak’s needle. He had thought, if I want to die sometime I can use the needle to cut my veins. He could do it after Kogin left, and bleed all night. In the morning they would find a corpse. He had these thoughts more intensely now. After a while all he thought of was death. He was terribly weary, hungry to rid himself of the hard chains and the devilishly freezing cell. He hoped to die quickly, to end his suffering for once and all, to get rid of all he was and had been. His death would mean there was one last choice, there always is, and he had taken it. He had taken his fate in his hands. How will I do it? He thought of a hunger strike but that would take too long, slowly starving. He had no belt but could tear up his clothes and the blanket, braid the strips together, and if he did not first freeze to death, hang himself from the window bars. But he couldn’t reach the window bars, and even if he found some way to get the rope behind them and down to him, hanging himself was not what he wanted. It would leave them out of it. He wanted them involved. He thought of Fetyukov shot by the guard. That’s how I have to do it. They want me to die but not directly by their hand. They’ll keep me in chains, making searches until my heart gives out. Then they can say I died of natural causes “while awaiting trial.” I’ll make it unnatural causes. I’ll make it by their hand. I’ll provoke them to kill me. He had made up his mind. He planned to do it during the sixth search of the next day, when they were at their most irritable, so they would react without thought, mechanically, instantly. He would refuse to undress, and when they ordered him to, he would spit into the Deputy Warden’s eye. If he were not at once shot he would try to wrestle a gun out of one of his holsters. By then Berezhinsky would have shot him through the head. It would be over in minutes, and the guard would later receive five or ten rubles for meritorious service. The Tsar would read about it in the St. Petersburg newspapers and at once sit down at his desk to write out a telegram to Grubeshov. “I heartily congratulate you for paying back in his own coin the Jewish murderer of Zhenia Golov. You will hear from me soon regarding advancement. Nicholas.” But then the officials would have to explain his death, and whatever they said, they could never say they had proved his guilt. Who would believe them? It might even create a tumult on the outside.

  Let the Tsar jig on his polished floor. I shit my death on him.

  2

  It is late afternoon. The sun is sinking behind the cold treetops. A black carriage appears in the distance (coming from what city?) drawn by four black horses. He loses it amid traffic on the Kreshchatik, among other carriages, droshkies, trolleys, wagon-trucks, a few motorcars. The trees are now black. It is night again. Kogin is restlessly pacing back and forth in the corridor. He has often stood by Yakov’s cell door, the spy hole open, listening to his noisy wheezing, the guard’s breathing audible as he wets his pencil and writes in the notebook what Ya-kov cries out in his sleep. But tonight, a blizzarding night, the snow swirling thickly around the prison, after hours of walking back and forth past Yakov’s cell door, knowing the prisoner is awake, the guard stops and sighs through the spy hole, “Ah, Yakov Bok, don’t think you’re the only one with troubles. They’re piled on my head like snows on a mountain top.”