The Fixer (20 page)

  He sucked in his breath and wiped an eye with his sleeve. “Excuse me for being out of order, your honor.”

  “I see we’re wearing similar linen garments,” Bibikov joked, fanning himself slowly with his limp hat. He remarked in an undertone, “Tell me your size and I’ll send you a pair of shoes.”

  “Maybe it’s better not to,” Yakov whispered, “or the Deputy Warden would know I complained to you.”

  “You understand it wasn’t I but the Prosecuting Attorney who ordered your imprisonment?”

  The fixer nodded.

  “Would you care for a cigarette? You know my Turkish beauties?”

  He lit one for him but after a few puffs Yakov had to put it out. “Excuse me for wasting it,” he coughed, “but it’s hard to breathe in this heat.”

  The magistrate put away his cigarette box. He reached into his breast pocket for his pince-nez, blew on them, and settled the glasses on his perspiring nose. “I would like you to know, Yakov Shepsovitch—if I may— that your case holds an extraordinary interest for me, and only last week I returned in a beastly stuffy, crowded train from St. Petersburg, where I had consulted the Minister of Justice, Count Odoevsky.”

  He leaned forward and said quietly, “I went there to submit the evidence I had already gathered, and to request that the charge against you be limited, as I had already suggested to the Prosecuting Attorney, strictly to the matter of your residing illegally in the Lukianovsky District, or perhaps even dropped altogether if you left Kiev and returned to your native village. Instead I was expressly directed to continue my investigation beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt. I will tell you in the strictest confidence what most troubled me is that although the Minister of Justice listened courteously and with obvious interest, I left with the unmistakable impression that he expects the evidence to confirm your guilt.”

  “Vey iz mir.”

  “This was not stated so specifically, you must understand—it was an impression and I may possibly be misinterpreting, although I don’t think so. Frankly, the matter seemed to revolve around an imprecise use of language, further confused by hints, hesitations, odd questions I did not fully understand, shadowy remarks, and so forth. Nothing—even now—is said absolutely directly, yet I am under pressure, as it were, to uncover evidence close to the prevailing belief. The Minister of Interior also has been telephoning me regularly. I will admit these pressures have made me nervous. My wife tells me I am more difficult than usual to live with, and there are signs of gastric disturbances. In her letter today she urged me to see a doctor. And tonight,” he went on, lowering his voice to the dimmest whisper, “I had the impression on my way here that my carriage was being followed by another, though no doubt I am suggestible in my present state of nerves.”

  He thrust his pallid face close to Yakov’s, continuing to whisper: “But that’s neither here nor there. To return then to the facts: Count Odoevsky at one point offered to relieve me of the ‘burden’ of this case if I felt ‘pressed or unwell,’ or the work had become ‘distasteful’ or seemed to go against what he referred to as ‘your creed.’ And I believe I caught a clear hint that the purposes of justice might better be served by an indictment of murder for ritual reasons, an accusation which is of course poppycock.”

  “As for the murder,” said Yakov, “if I had a hand in it let me live forever a cripple in hell.”

  The Investigating Magistrate fanned himself slowly with his hat. After again glancing at the door he said, “When I told the Minister of Justice—quite directly told him, nothing minced or hedged, shadowy remarks do not explicate or uphold the law—that my evidence pointed in the opposite direction, towards acquittal of the major charge, he shrugged his shoulders—the count is an imposing man, handsome, well-spoken, discreetly perfumed—as though perhaps to indicate I had not yet achieved true wisdom. And that’s apparently where we left it, with a shrug that may mean much or little, but in any case a doubt. I can say in his favor that he is a gentleman. But I will tell you frankly that with the Prosecuting Attorney, my colleague Grubeshov, there are not even the slightest doubts. He has, I would say, convinced himself, perhaps almost before the fact. I say this after careful consideration. Grubeshov has more than once emphatically requested from me—in fact he has insisted on it—a severe indictment of you, mincing no words—for Zhenia Golov’s murder, and I have categorically refused. Of course that adds to my nervousness. Yet for all practical purposes you should know this matter can’t go on in such a way much longer. If I don’t draw up the indictment someone else will. They will get rid of me, if they possibly can, and then I’ll be of no use to you whatever. Therefore I will pretend to cooperate with them while I continue my investigation, until I have a foolproof case. I will then once more submit the evidence to the Ministry of Justice, and if they insist on a prosecution, I may reveal my findings to the press, which could conceivably cause a scandal. I would hope so. In fact I am already planning anonymously to give out selected information to one or two highly placed journalists as to the true state of affairs regarding the nature of the evidence against you, which up to now consists in nothing more than anonymous accusations and provocative articles published by the reactionary press. I decided this as I lay awake tonight. My visit to you, which I decided on impulsively, is to inform you of my plans so that you will not think you are without a friend in the world. I know you are falsely accused. I am determined to continue this investigation to the best of my ability and powers in order to discover, and if necessary, publish the whole truth. I am doing this for Russia as well as for your sake and mine. I therefore request, Yakov Shepsovitch, though I understand how difficult your trials are, your confidence and patience.”

  “Thanks, your honor,” said Yakov with a tremor in his voice. “If you’re used to stepping out of the hut once in a while to take a breath of fresh air in your lungs while you look at the sky to see if it’s going to rain tomorrow—not that it makes any difference—it’s hard to go on living in a small dark solitary cell; still now I know there’s somebody who knows what I did and what I didn’t do, and who I trust, though I would like to hear what you mean about ‘the true state of affairs’ that you mentioned before when you were talking about the journalists.”

  Bibikov went again to the door, opened it softly, peered out, closed it carefully and returned to his chair, once more bringing his face close to Yakov’s.

  “My theory is that the murder was committed by Marfa Golov’s gang of criminals and housebreakers, in particular her blinded lover, one Stepan Bulkin, who, thus, perhaps, revenged himself on her for the loss of his eyesight. The boy was grossly neglected by his mother. She is a wicked woman, stupid yet cunning, with the morals of a hardened prostitute. Zhenia had apparently threatened, possibly more than once, to expose their criminal activities to the District Police, and it is possible that the lover convinced her the child had to be done away with. Perhaps the incident occurred during a time of general drunkenness. The boy was killed, I am all but certain, in his mother’s house, Bulkin taking the leading role in the beastly sacrifice. They obviously tortured the poor child, inflicting a large number of wounds on his body and soaking up the blood as it spurted forth, in order not to leave any telltale stains on the floor—I would imagine they burned the bloody rags—and finally plunging the knife deep into the child’s heart. I have not been able to determine whether Marfa witnessed his death or had passed out drunk.”

  The fixer shuddered. “How did you find out about that, your honor?”

  “I can’t tell you except to say generally that thieves quarrel, and as I said before, Marfa is stupid, canny as she is. The true story will come out in time if we work patiently. We have reason to believe she kept her son’s body in the bathtub for a week before it was removed to the cave. We are searching for one of the neighbors who is believed to have seen it there and soon thereafter moved out of the vicinity, frightened out of her wits I would guess, by Marfa’s threats. To save their own necks, naturally the thieves are going along with the blood ritual accusation against you. How that originated we are not exactly sure. We suspect Marfa herself wrote an anonymous letter suggesting that Jews did the evil work. The original letter to the police was signed ‘A Christian.’ I know that, though I have not been able to put my hands on the document yet. At any rate the thieves will do whatever they can to uphold the charge, even if it means testifying against you as eyewitnesses to your ‘crime.’ They are frightened and dangerous men. And my assistant, Ivan Semyonovitch, has ascertained that Proshko and Richter burned down Nikolai Maximovitch’s stable, though without the help of any Jewish demons.”

  “So that’s how it is,” sighed Yakov. “Behind the world lies another world. Excuse me, but does the Prosecuting Attorney also know what you just told me?”

  Bibikov fanned himself leisurely with his hat.

  “To be absolutely truthful I don’t know what he knows or doesn’t. I am not one of his confidants—but I suspect he knows more than he admits. I also know he is an ambitious and opportunistic man, a restless careerist. In his youthful days he was a strong Ukrainophil, but since attaining public office he has become more Russian than the Tsar. Someday, if God’s mercy does not intervene, he will be a justice of our Supreme Court—it is without a doubt what he wants most. If that should happen there will be ‘justice’ without justice.” The magistrate caught himself and paused. “I will be grateful to you if you do not repeat this, Yakov Shepsovitch, or my other remarks to you, to anyone. Like most Russians I talk too much; however I wanted in particular to ease your mind a bit. I ask this for our mutual protection.”

  “Who would I repeat it to even if there was somebody here who wasn’t my enemy? But what I want to ask is, does the Prosecuting Attorney truly think I killed the boy, and does he really believe those things the priest said at the cave?”

  “As to his true beliefs I must again confess my ignorance although I see him often in the course of official business. He tends to believe, in my opinion, what those around him believe. I don’t pretend to know how much claptrap and “superstition there is in his soul or what purpose it serves. But he is not a fool, I assure you. He knows our history and is quite familiar with the law though not greatly responsive to its spirit. He surely knows that Alexander I, in 1817, and Nicholas I, in 1835, by official ukase prohibited blood libels against Jews living on Russian soil, although it is quite true that these libels have been revived within the last generation to provoke pogroms for political purposes. I do not have to tell you there has been a disappointing retreat of progress in recent times, whatever it is we call progress, especially disappointing because of the little we have had since the Emancipation. There’s something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil. Still, the original decrees have not been withdrawn and are therefore the law. If Grubeshov has at all looked into this subject, as I have recently, he will also know, for instance, that certain Roman Catholic Popes, including an Innocent, a Paul, a Gregory, and a Clement, whose numerical designations I have forgotten, issued certain interdictions against this accusation. I believe one of them called it ‘a baseless and wicked invention.’ Interestingly, I learned that this very same blood accusation made against the Jews was used by pagans of the first century to justify the oppression and slaughter of the early Christians. They too were called ‘blood drinkers,’ for reasons you would understand if you knew the Catholic mass. The blood mystique arose in a belief of primitive people that there is a miraculous power in blood. It is, of course, a most dramatic substance in color and composition.”

  “So if the Pope said no, why does the priest say yes?”

  “Father Anastasy is a charlatan. He has written a stupid anti-Semitic brochure in Latin which brought him to the attention of the United Nobility, who have urged him to testify against you. Around him much of the pogrom agitation is centered. It is interesting to me that quite shortly after the appearance of his brochure, Zhenia Golov was murdered. He is a defrocked Catholic priest, for some disgraceful act, we think an embezzlement of church funds, who only latterly came from Poland and joined the Orthodox Church, whose Synod, incidentally, does not support the accusation against you, although it does not deny it. The Metropolitan of Kiev has informed me he will not issue a statement.”

  “That won’t keep the water from boiling,” the fixer muttered.

  “I’m afraid not. Do you know any French, Yakov Shepsovitch?” Bibikov asked.

  “Not that I can think of, your honor.”

  “The French have a saying, ‘The more it changes, the more it remains the same.’ You must admit there may be a certain truth to that, especially with reference to what we call ‘society.’ In effect it has not changed in its essentials from what it was in the dim past, even though we tend loosely to think of civilization as progress. I frankly no longer believe in that concept. I respect man for what he has to go through in life, and sometimes for how he does it, but he has changed little since he began to pretend he was civilized, and the same thing may be said about our society. That is how I feel, but having made that confession let me say, as you may have guessed, that I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small thing to offer—he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.

  “Be that as it may,” he went on, “if the Prosecuting Attorney had indulged in a bit of Old Testament research he would, I am sure, be familiar with the prohibitions in Leviticus that Jews may not eat any manner of blood. I can’t quote it exactly—my notes are on my desk at home—but the Lord warned that whoever ate blood, Israelite or stranger, He would cut him off from his people. Nor would He afterwards allow King David to raise a temple to Him, because he had fought in many wars and spilled much blood. He is a consistent God, if not gentle. I have also learned from certain Russian authorities of the Old Testament and other Jewish sacred texts that there does not exist in those writings a record of any law or custom which permits a Jew to use blood, or specifically Christian blood, for religious purposes. According to those I have consulted—secretly, you understand—the prohibition against using any blood whatsoever for whatever purpose was never retracted or altered in later Jewish writings of law, literature, or medicine. There is not, for instance, any record of a prescription of blood for use in medicine, internal or external. Et cetera, et cetera. There are many such facts that Grubeshov ought to have familiarized himself with— and I assure you I am strongly contemplating submitting him a summary of my researches for his reflection. Frankly, Yakov Shepsovitch, I am embarrassed to belittle a colleague to you in this manner but I have come to the unhappy conclusion that whatever he knows, or may know through my intervention, that might be helpful to you in establishing your innocence is, if not actually useless, then at least antithetical to his aims and purposes. He also would like to have you convicted.”