The Fixer (35 page)

  Towards the end of this wearying, terrifying document a new subject was introduced, “the matter of Yakov Bok’s self-proclaimed atheism.” It was noted that although the accused, when first examined by the authorities, had confessed he was a Jew “by birth and nationality,” he had however claimed for himself “an atheistic status; to wit, that he was a freethinker and not a religious Jew.” Why he should make “such an odious self-description” was understandable to anyone who reflected for a moment on the matter. It was done to create “extenuating circumstances” and “obfuscating details” in order “to deflect the legal investigation by hiding the motive for this dastardly crime.” However this assertion of atheism could not be defended, for it was observed by reliable witnesses, including prison guards and officials, that Yakov Bok, while incarcerated and awaiting trial, “though persisting in his false claim of irreligion, had in his cell secretly prayed daily in the manner of Orthodox Jews, wrapped in a prayer shawl, with black phylacteries entwined around his brow and left arm.” He was also seen piously reading an Old Testament Bible, “which, like the previously mentioned Orthodox religious instruments, had been smuggled into his cell by fellow Jews of the synagogue.” It was clear to all who observed him that he was engaged in the performance of a devout religious rite. He had continued to use the prayer shawl until he had worn it out, and “even now he kept a remnant of this sacred garment in his coat pocket.”

  It was the opinion of investigators and other officials that this self-incriminating atheism “was a fabrication of Yakov Bok’s, in order to hide from the legal authorities that he had committed a vile religious murder of a child for the sole and evil purpose of providing his Hasidic compatriots with the uncorrupted human blood needed to bake the Passover matzos and unleavened cakes.”

  After he had finished reading the document the fixer, in exhaustion, thought, there’s no getting rid of the blood any more. It’s stained every word of the indictment and can’t be washed out. When they try me it will be for the crucifixion.

  The fixer grew more intensely worried. Now that he had this paper would they withdraw it and later issue another? Was this the newest torture? Would they hand him indictments, time after time, for the next twenty years? He would read them till he died of frustration or his dry brain exploded? Or would they, after this indictment, or the third, seventh, or thirteenth
at last
bring him to trial? Could they make a strong enough circumstantial case against him? He hoped they could. Anyway, just barely. If not, would they keep him in chains forever? Or were they planning a worse fate? One day as he was about to clean himself with a scrap of newspaper he read on it, “THE JEW IS DOOMED.” Yakov frantically read on to find out why, but that part was torn off.

  2

  He had been told a lawyer was on his way to the prison, but when the cell door was opened on a hot July night, it was not the lawyer, it was Grubeshov, in evening dress. The fixer awoke when Kogin, holding a dripping candle, unlocked his feet. “Wake up,” said the guard, shaking him, “his honor is here.” Yakov awoke as though coming up out of deep dirty water. He beheld Grubeshov’s moist fleshy face, his sidewhiskers limp, his red-shot eyes, lit, restless. The public prosecutor’s chest rose and fell. He began pacing in the cell, unsteadily, then sat down on the stool, one hand on the table, an enormous shadow on the wall behind him. He stared for a moment at the lamp, blinked at it, and gazed at Yakov. When he talked, the stink of rich food and alcohol on his breath drifted across to the fixer, nauseating him.

  “I am on my way home from a civic banquet in honor of the Tsar,” Grubeshov, breathing with a whistle, said to the prisoner. “Since my motorcar happened to be in this district, I ordered the driver to go on to the prison. I thought I would speak to you. You are a stubborn man, Bok, but perhaps not yet beyond reason. I thought I would talk to you one last time. Please stand up while I am speaking.”

  Yakov, sitting on the wooden bed with his bony bare feet on the clammy floor, slowly got up. Grubeshov, gazing at his face, shuddered. The fixer felt a violent hatred of him.

  “First of all,” said Grubeshov, patting the back of his flushed neck with a large humid handkerchief, “you oughtn’t to let your expectations rise too high, Yakov Bok. You will be disappointed if they do. Don’t think just because an indictment has been issued that your worries are over. On the contrary—now begin your worst troubles. I warn you, you will be publicly unmasked and seen for what you are.”

  “What do you want from me here, Mr. Grubeshov? It’s late at night. I need my little rest for the chains in the morning.”

  “As for the chains, that’s your fault; learn to follow orders. It’s none of my affair, I came on other business. Marfa Golov, the victim’s mother, visited me in my office today. She knelt before me with holy tears streaming from her eyes, and swore before God that she had told the absolute truth regarding Zhenia and his experiences with you that led to the murder. She is a totally sincere woman and I was deeply affected by her. I am more than ever convinced that a jury will believe what she says, and so much the worse for you. Her testimony and the sincerity of her appearance will demolish whatever case you think you can make.”

  “Then let her give her testimony,” Yakov said. “Why don’t you begin the trial?”

  Grubeshov, who squirmed on the stool as though it were the top of a hot stove, answered, “I have no intention of engaging in an argument with a criminal. I came to tell you that if you and your fellow Jews continue to press me to bring you to trial before I have gathered every last grain of evidence, or investigated all courses of action, then you ought to know what dangers you are creating for yourself. There can be too much of a good thing, Bok, if you understand my meaning. The kettle may steam but don’t be surprised if the water is boiled off.”

  “Mr. Grubeshov,” said Yakov, “I can’t stand up any more. I’m tired and must sit down. If you want to shoot me call the guard, he has a gun.”

  Yakov sat down on the bedplank.

  “You’re a cheeky one,” Grubeshov said, his voice emotional. “The Russian people are sick to their souls of your Jewish tricks and deceptions. That holds also for your investigators, your complaints, your libels from all over. What is happening, Bok, obviously reveals the underground involvement of the Jewish conspiracy in Russian affairs, and I warn you to take rational notice that there is bound to be a tumultuous reprisal against the enemies of the state. Even if by some trickery you were to succeed in swaying a jury to render a judgment against the weight of the true evidence, then you can believe me that the Russian people in justifiable wrath will avenge this poor Zhenia for the pain and torture that you inflicted on him. You may wish for the trial now, but remember this: even the judgment that you are guilty will set off a bloodbath in this city that will outdo the ferocity of the so-called Kishinev massacres. A trial will not save you nor your fellow Jews. You would be better off confessing, and after a period of time when the public has settled down, we could announce your death in prison, or something of the sort, and spirit you out of Russia. If you insist on the trial, then don’t be surprised if bearded heads roll in the street. Feathers fly. Cossack steel invades the tender flesh of young Jewesses.”

  Grubeshov had risen from the hot stool and was pacing again, his shadow going one way on the wall as he went the other.

  “A government has to protect itself from subversion, by force if it can’t persuade.”

  Yakov stared at his white crooked feet.

  The public prosecutor, in the grip of his excitement, went on: “My father once described to me an incident involving a synagogue cellar full of Jews, men and women, who attempted to hide from the Cossacks during a raid on their village. The sergeant ordered them to come up one by one and at first none of them stirred, but then a few came up the steps holding their arms over their heads. This did do them not the least good as they were clubbed to death with rifle butts. The rest of them, though they were like herrings stuck together in a stinking barrel, would not move although they had been warned it would go worse with them. And so it did. The impatient Cossacks rushed into the cellar, bayoneting and shooting every last Jew. Those who were dragged out still alive were later thrown from speeding trains. A few, beginning with their benzine-soaked beards, were burned alive, and some of the women were dropped in their underclothes into wells to drown. You can take my word for it that in less than a week after your trial, there will be a quarter-million fewer Zhidy in the Pale.”

  He paused to breathe, then went on thickly. “Don’t think we don’t know that you wish to provoke just such a pogrom. We know from Secret Police reports that you are plotting to bring down on yourselves a violent reaction for revolutionary purposes—to stimulate active subversion among Socialist revolutionaries. The Tsar is informed of this, you can be sure, and is prepared to give you increased doses of the medicine I have described if you persist in trying to destroy his authority. I warn you, there is already a detachment of Ural Cossacks quartered in Kiev.”

  Yakov spat on the floor.

  Either Grubeshov did not see or pretended he hadn’t. Now, as though he had spent his anger, his voice became calm. “I am here to tell you this for your own good, Yakov Bok, and for the ultimate good of your fellow Jews. It’s all I will say now, absolutely all. I leave the rest to your contemplation and judgment. Have you any suggestions on how to forestall such an appalling, catastrophic—and I say frankly—useless tragedy? I appeal to your humanitarian impulses. One can imagine all sorts of compromises a person in your situation might be willing to make to tip the balance against disaster. I’m very serious. Have you something to say? If so, speak up.”

  “Mr. Grubeshov, bring me to trial. I will wait for the trial, even to my death.”

  “And death is what you will get. It’s on your head, Bok.”

  “On yours,” said Yakov. “And for what you did to Bibikov.”

  Grubeshov stared at the fixer with white eyes. The shadow of a huge bird flew off the wall. The lamps went out and the cell door clanged.

  Kogin, in a foul mood, slammed the stocks on the fixer’s feet.

  3

  The lawyer had come and gone, Julius Ostrovsky.

  He had appeared one day a few weeks after the Prosecuting Attorney’s visit, whispered with the prisoner an hour, filling his ear with what was going on, some that the fixer already had guessed, much that astonished him. He was astonished that strangers knew more than he of the public cause of his suffering and that the complications were so fantastic and endless.

  “Tell me the worst,” Yakov had begged, “do you think I will ever get out of here?”

  “The worst is that we don’t know the worst,” Ostrov-sky had answered. “We know you didn’t do it, the worst is they know it too but say you did. This is the worst.”

  “Do you know when my trial is coming—if ever?”

  “What can I answer you? They won’t tell us what’s happening today, so what can we expect to find out about tomorrow? Tomorrow they also hide from us. They hide even the most basic facts. They’re afraid that anything we might know is a Jewish trick. What else can you expect if you are fighting a deadly war and everybody pretends, who’s fighting? it’s peace. It’s a war, believe me.”

  The lawyer had risen when Yakov had limped into the room. This time there was no screen separating the prisoner from his visitor. Ostrovsky had at once cautioned him with a gesture, then whispered in his ear, “Speak quietly—to the floor. They say there’s no guard outside the door but speak as if Grubeshov stands there if not the devil.”

  He was past sixty, a stocky man with a lined face and baldish head from which a few gray hairs rose like stubble. He had bent legs, wore two-toned button shoes, a black cravat and a short beard.

  He had, when the prisoner appeared, stared at Yakov as though unable to believe this was the one. Finally he believed and his eyes changed from surprise to concern. He spoke in intense whispered Yiddish with more than one emotion. “I will introduce myself, Mr. Bok, Julius Ostrovsky of the Kiev bar. I’m glad I’m here at last but don’t cheer yet, it’s a long way to go. Anyway, some friends sent me.”

  “I’m thankful.”

  “You have friends though not all Jews, I’m sorry to say, are your friends. What I mean is that if a man hides his head in a bucket, whose friend is he? To my great regret some of our people shiver in every weather. We have organized a committee to help you but their caution is excessive. They’re afraid to ‘meddle’ or there’ll be another calamity. That’s in itself a calamity. They shoot with popguns and run from the noise. Still, who has all friends?”

  “Then who are my friends?”

  “I am one and there are others. Take my word, you’re not alone.”

  “Can you do anything for me? I’m sick of prison.”

  “What we can do we’ll do. It’s a long fight, I don’t have to tell you, and the odds are against us. Still, anyway, calm, calm, calm. As the sages say, there are always two possibilities. One we know from too long experience; the other—the miracle—we will hope for. It’s easy to hope, it’s the waiting that spoils it. But two possibilities make the odds even. So enough philosophy. At this minute there’s not much good news; finally we squeezed out an indictment, which means they will now have to schedule the case for trial, though when I leave to Rashi. But first, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll give you the bad news.” Ostrovsky sighed. “I’m sorry that your father-in-law, Shmuel Rabinovitch, who I had the pleasure to meet and talk to last summer—a gifted man—is now, I’m sorry to tell you, dead from diabetes. This your wife wrote me in a letter.”

  “Ah,” said Yakov.

  Death had preceded itself. Poor Shmuel, the fixer thought, now I’ll never see him again. That’s what happens when you say goodbye to a friend and ride out into the world.

  He covered his face with his hands and wept.

  “He was a good man, he tried to educate me.”