The Fixer (31 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Fixer
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“Welcome home,” Berezhinsky laughed.
Kogin stared at the fixer in frightened surprise.
“Hurry it up,” said the Cossack captain to the Deputy Warden.
“Please, friend, don't tell me how to do my job and I won't tell you how to do yours,” said the Deputy
Warden, coldly. His boots smelled as though he had freshly stepped in excrement.
“Inside and undress,” he ordered Yakov.
The prisoner, the Deputy Warden, and the two guards entered the cell, leaving the captain and the escort guard waiting in the corridor. The Deputy Warden slammed the cell door shut.
Inside the cell Kogin crossed himself.
Yakov slowly undressed, shivering. He stood there naked, except for his undershirt. I must be careful, he thought, or it will go hard on me. Ostrovsky warned me. Yet as he told himself this he felt his rage growing. The blood roared in his ears. It was as though he had dug a hole, then put the shovel aside but the hole was still growing. It grew into a grave. He imagined himself tearing the Deputy Warden's face apart and kicking him to death.
“Open your mouth,” Berezhinsky ran a dirty finger under his tongue.
“Now spread your ass apart.”
Kogin stared at the wall.
“Take off that stinking undershirt,” ordered the Deputy Warden.
I must calm my anger, thought the fixer, seeing the world black. Instead, his anger grew.
“Why should I?” he shouted. “I have never taken it off before. Why should I take it off now? Why do you insult me?”
“Take it off before I tear it off.”
Yakov felt the cell tremble and dip. I should have eaten, he thought. It was a mistake not to. He saw a bald-headed thin naked man in a freezing prison cell ripping off his undershirt and to his horror watched him fling it into the face of the Deputy Warden.
A solemn silence filled the cell.
Though his wet eyes were lit, murderous, the Deputy Warden spoke calmly. “I am within my rights to punish you for interfering with and insulting a prison official in the performance of his duty.”
He drew his revolver.
My dirty luck. Yakov thought of the way his life had gone. Now Shmuel is dead and Raisl has nothing to eat. I've never been of use to anybody and I'll never be.
“Hold on a minute, your honor,” said Kogin to the Deputy Warden. His deep voice broke. “I've listened to this man night after night, I know his sorrows. Enough is enough, and anyway it's time for his trial to begin.”
“Get out of my way or I'll cite you for insubordination, you son-of-a-bitch.”
Kogin pressed the muzzle of his revolver against the Deputy Warden's neck.
Berezhinsky reached for his gun but before he could draw, Kogin fired.
He fired at the ceiling and after a while dust drifted to the floor.
A whistle sounded shrilly in the corridor. The prison bell clanged. The iron cell door was slammed open and the white-faced captain and his Cossack guards rushed into the cell.
“I've given my personal receipt,” he roared.
“My head aches,” Kogin muttered. He sank to his knees with blood on his face. The Deputy Warden had shot him.
A church bell tolled.
A black bird flew out of the sky. Crow? Hawk? Or the black egg of a black eagle falling towards the carriage? If it isn't that what is it? If it's a bomb, thought Yakov,
what can I do? I'll duck, what else can I do? If it's a bomb why was I ever born?
The prisoner, watched in silence by a crowd of officials, guests, and the mounted Cossacks in the yard, had limped amid the guard from the prison door to the massive black armored carriage drawn by four thick-necked, heavy-rumped horses at the gate. On the driver's seat sat a hawk-eyed coachman in a long coat and visored cap, whip in his hand.
The fixer was boosted up the metal step by two Cossacks and locked in the large-wheeled coach by the Chief of Police and his assistant. Inside it was dark and musty. An unlit lamp hung in the corner; the windows were round and small. Yakov put his eye to one of them, saw nothing he wanted to see—Warden Grizitskoy in military cap and coat rubbing a bloodshot eye—and sat back in the gloom.
The coachman shouted to the horses; a whip snapped and the huge carriage with its escort of fur-capped, gray-coated Cossack riders, a platoon in front with glittering lances, another in the rear with swords unsheathed, lumbered through the gate and rattled out on the cobblestone street. The coach moved quickly up the street, turned a corner and then went along an avenue with fields on one side and occasional factories and houses on the other.
I'm off, thought the fixer, for better or worse, and if it's worse it'll be worse than it was.
He sat for a while shrunken in loneliness, then through a window saw a bird in the sky and watched with emotion until he could no longer see it. The weak sun stained the thin drifting clouds and for a minute snow flurried in different directions. In a wood not far from the road the oaks retained their bronze leaves but the large chestnut trees were black and barren. Yakov,
seeing them in memory in full bloom, regretted the seasons he had missed and the years of his youth lost in prison.
Though still stunned by Kogin's death he felt, finally, the relief of motion, though to what fate who could say? Yet on the move at last to the courthouse, his trial about to take place, they said, a full three years from the time he had left the shtetl and ridden to Kiev. Then as they passed the brick wall of a factory, its chimneys pouring out coal smoke whipped by the wind into the sky, he caught a reflected glimpse of a faded shrunken Jew in the circle of window and hid from him, but could not, a minute later, from the memory of his gaunt face, its darkened stringy beard white around the bitter mouth, and though he would not weep for himself, his palms, when he rubbed his eyes, were wet.
At the factory gate five or six workers had turned to watch the procession; but when it had gone a verst into the business district, the fixer looked up in astonishment at the masses of people gathered on both sides of the street. Though it was early morning the crowds stretched along, five and six deep, laborers and civil servants on their way to work, shopkeepers, peasants in sheepskin coats, women in shawls and a few in hats, a scattering of military cadets and soldiers, and here and there a gray-robed monk or priest staring at the carriage. The trolleys were stopped, passengers rising from their seats to look out the windows as the Cossack riders and lumbering coach passed by. In the sidestreets the police held up carriages and motorcars, and bullock carts from the provinces, piled high with vegetables and grains, or loaded with cans of milk. Along the route to the courthouse mounted police were stationed at intervals to keep order. Yakov moved from one window to another to see the crowds.
“Yakov Bok!” he called out. “Yakov Bok!”
The Cossack riding on the left side of the carriage, a thick-shouldered man with overhanging brows and a mustache turning gray, gazed impassively ahead; but the rider cantering along on the door side, a youth of twenty or so on a gray mare, from time to time stole a glance at Yakov when he was staring out the window, as though trying to measure his guilt or innocence.
“Innocent!” the fixer cried out to him. “Innocent!” And though he had no reason to, he smiled a little at the Cossack for his youth and good looks, and for being, as such things go, a free man, give or take a little. The Cossack then rode forward as the mare, raising her tail, dropped a steaming load on the street at which a schoolboy pointed.
Amid the crowd were a few Jews watching with commiseration or fear. Most of the Russian faces were impassive, though some showed hostility and some loathing. A shopkeeper in a smock spat at the carriage. Two boys hooted. Some of the men in the crowd wore Black Hundreds buttons and when Yakov, out of one window then quickly the other, saw how many of them there were at this place, he grew apprehensive. Where there was one there were a hundred. A man with a strained face and deadly eyes threw his hand into the air as though it had caught on fire. The fixer's scrotum shrank painfully and he tore at his chest with his fingers as a black bird seemed to fly out of the white hand clawing the air.
Yakov frantically ducked. If this is my death I've endured for nothing.
“You might have waited a bit, Yakov Bok,” the chairman of the jury said. “None of us are gentry or educated folk, but neither are we without a bit of experience in the world. A man learns to recognize the truth even if he doesn't always live by it. And there are times he does that if it suits his fancy. The officials may not want us to know what the truth is but it comes in, you might say,
through the chinks in the walls. They may try to deceive us, as they do often enough, but we will sift the evidence and if the facts are not as they say, then let them look to their consciences.”
“They have none.”
“So much the worse for them, in that case. You aren't born human for nothing, I say.”
“I'm innocent,” said Yakov, “you can look at me and see. Look in my face and say whether a man like me, whatever else he might do, could kill a boy and drain the blood out of his body. If I have any humanity in my heart and you are men you must know it. Tell me do I look like a murderer?”
The chairman was about to say but a violent explosion rocked the coach.
Yakov waited for death. He wandered for a while in a cemetery reading the names on the tombstones. Then he ran from grave to grave, searching them frantically, one after another, but could not find his name. After a while he stopped looking. He had waited a long time but maybe he had longer to wait. If you were a certain type death stayed its distance. Your afflictions were from life —a poor living, mistakes with people, the blows of fate. You lived, you suffered, but you lived.
He heard screams, shouts, commotion, the frightened whinnying of horses. The carriage rattled and seemed to leap up, then struck the ground and stopped dead, shuddering, but remained upright. The stench of gunpowder bored through his nostrils. A door lock snapped and the door fell ajar. He felt an overwhelming hunger to be back home, to see Raisl and set things straight, to decide what to do. “Raisl,” he said, “dress the boy and pack the few things we need, we'll have to hide.” He was about to kick the door open but warned himself not to. Through the cracked right window he saw people on the run. A squad of Cossacks with lances raised galloped
away from the carriage. A squad with uplifted sabers galloped towards it, risen in their saddles. The gray mare lay dead on the cobblestones. Three policemen were lifting the young Cossack rider. His foot had been torn off by the bomb. The boot had been blown away and his leg was shattered and bloody. As they carried him past the carriage his eyes opened and he looked in horror and anguish at Yakov as though to say, “What has my foot got to do with it?”
The fixer shrank from the sight. The Cossack had fainted but his torn leg shook, spattering blood on the policemen. Then a Cossack colonel galloped up to the carriage, holding a sword aloft, shouting to the coachman, “Go on, go on!” He dismounted and tried to slam the door shut but it wouldn't lock. “Go on, go on!” he shouted. The carriage rumbled on, the horses picked up speed and broke into a fast trot. The colonel, on a white horse, cantered along beside the coach in place of the wounded Cossack.
Yakov sat in the gloomy coach overcome by hatred so intense his chest heaved as though the carriage were airless. He saw himself, after a while, sitting at a table somewhere, opposite the Tsar, a lit candle between them, in a cell or cellar, whatever it was. Nicholas the Second, of medium height, with frank blue eyes and neatly trimmed beard a little too large for his face, sat there naked, holding in his hand a small silver ikon of the Virgin Mary. Though distraught and pale, afflicted with a bad cough he had recently developed, he spoke in a gentle voice and with moving eloquence.
“Though you have me at a disadvantage, Yakov Shepsovitch, I will speak the truth to you. It isn't only that the Jews are freemasons and revolutionaries who make a shambles of our laws and demoralize our police by systematic bribery for social exemptions—I can forgive that a bit but not the other things, in particular the
terrible crime you are accused of, which is so repellent to me personally. I refer to the draining of his lifeblood out of Zhenia Golov's body. I don't know whether you are aware that my own child, the Tsarevitch Alexis, is a haemophiliac? The newspapers, out of courtesy to the royal family, and the Tsarina in particular, do not, of course, mention it. We are fortunate in having four healthy daughters, the princesses Olga, the studious one; Taty-ana, the prettiest, and something of a coquette—I say this with amusement; Maria, shy and sweet-tempered; and Anastasya, the youngest and liveliest of them; but when after many prayers an heir to the throne was born at last—it pleased God to make this joy our greatest trial —his blood unfortunately was deficient in that substance which is necessary for coagulation and healing. A small cut, the most trivial, and he may bleed to death. We look after him, as you can expect, with the greatest care, on tenterhooks every minute because even a quite ordinary fall may mean extreme peril. Alexei's veins are fragile, brittle, and in the slightest mishap internal bleeding causes him unbearable pain and torment. My dear wife and I—and I may add, the girls—live through death with this poor child. Permit me to ask, Yakov Shepsovitch, are you a father?”
“With all my heart.”
“Then you can imagine our anguish,” sighed the sad-eyed Tsar.
His hands trembled a little as he lit a green-papered Turkish cigarette from an enameled box on the table. He offered the box to Yakov but the fixer shook his head.
“I never wanted the crown, it kept me from being my true self, but I was not permitted to refuse. To rule is to bear a heavy cross. I've made mistakes, but not, I assure you, out of malice to anyone. My nature is not resolute,
not like my late father‘s—we lived in terror of him—but what can a man do beyond the best he can? One is born as he is born and that's all there is to it. I thank God for my good qualities. To tell you the truth, Yakov Shepsovitch, I don't like to dwell on these things. But I am—I can truthfully say—a kind person and love my people. Though the Jews cause me a great deal of trouble, and we must sometimes suppress them to maintain order, believe me, I wish them well. As for you, if you permit me, I consider you a decent but mistaken man—I insist on honesty—and I must ask you to take note of my obligations and burdens. After all, it isn't as though you yourself are unaware of what suffering is. Surely it has taught you the meaning of mercy?”
He was coughing insistently now and his voice, when he finished, was unsteady.
Yakov moved uneasily in his chair. “Excuse me, Your Majesty, but what suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering, if you don't mind me saying so. Anyway, there's enough of that to live with naturally without piling a mountain of injustice on top. Rachmones, we say in Hebrew—mercy, one oughtn't to forget it, but one must also think how oppressed, ignorant and miserable most of us are in this country, gentiles as well as Jews, under your government and ministers. What it amounts to, Little Father, is that whether you wanted it or not you had your chance; in fact many chances, but the best you could give us with all good intentions is the poorest and most reactionary state in Europe. In other words, you've made out of this country a valley of bones. You had your chances and pissed them away. There's no argument against that. It's not easy to twist events by the tail but you might have done something for a better life for us all—for the future of Russia, one might say, but you didn't.”
The Tsar rose, his phallus meager, coughing still, disturbed and angered. “I'm only one man though ruler yet you blame me for our whole history.”
“For what you don't know, Your Majesty, and what you haven't learned. Your poor boy is a haemophiliac, something missing in the blood. In you, in spite of certain sentimental feelings, it is missing somewhere else—the sort of insight, you might call it, that creates in a man charity, respect for the most miserable. You say you are kind and prove it with pogroms.”
“As for those,” said the Tsar, “don't blame me. Water can't be prevented from flowing. They are a genuine expression of the will of the people.”
“Then in that case there's no more to say.” On the table at the fixer's hand lay a revolver. Yakov pushed a bullet into the rusty cylinder chamber.

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