The Fixer (26 page)

  The fixer, stunned, shut his eyes. When he opened them the warden was still there.

  “How shall I go, your honor?” His voice broke.

  “A detective will accompany you. Since it’s a short distance you can go by streetcar. You will be allowed out for no more than an hour and a half. That is the time the Prosecuting Attorney requisitioned you for.”

  “Must my legs be chained again?”

  The warden scratched in his beard. “No, but you’ll be handcuffed and there’ll be strict orders to shoot you dead if you try anything in the least irregular. Furthermore, two Secret Police officers will be following you and the detective in case any of your cohorts attempt to communicate with you.”

  In half an hour Yakov was outside the prison, waiting with the detective for a trolley. Though the day was dreary and cold, the streets white in every direction, the leafless trees black against the frozen sky, everywhere he looked brought tears to the fixer’s eyes. It seemed to him he was seeing for the first time how the world was knit together.

  On the trolley he watched the shops and passers-by in the street as though he were in a foreign country. How moving it was that a peasant entered a store. The detective sat next to him, one hand in his overcoat pocket. He was a heavy-bellied man with eyeglasses and a gray fur cap, who sat silent. All the way to the courthouse the fixer worried what the indictment would say. Would it accuse him simply of murder, or of murder “for ritual purposes”? The evidence was non-existent, “circumstantial” at best, but he feared their ingenuity. When the purpose was frame-up, the evidence could be arranged. Yet whatever the indictment said, the important thing to him now was getting it so that he could talk to a lawyer. Once he had done that maybe they would not keep him in solitary confinement. Even if they put him in with a murderer it would be better than being so desperately alone. The lawyer would tell everyone who he was. He would say, “This is a decent man, he could never have killed a child.” The fixer worried about getting the proper lawyer, wondering who Bibikov had had in mind, “a vigorous and courageous man of excellent reputation.” Would Ivan Semyonovitch know, if he were permitted to ask him? Was the lawyer a Russian or a Jew? Which was best? And how would he pay him? Could a lawyer advise him if he had no money to give him? And even if he had a good lawyer, would he be able to defend him if Bibikov’s files had fallen into the hands of the Black Hundreds?

  Despite these worries, and though he was tightly handcuffed, a prisoner out of jail for a few minutes, Yakov enjoyed the trolley ride. The people around him and the movement of the car created an illusion of freedom.

  At the next stop two men boarded the streetcar, and passing the fixer, saw his manacled hands. They whispered to each other, and when they sat down, whispered to others. Some of the passengers turned their heads to stare at him. Noticing this he shut his eyes.

  “It’s that bastard killer of a Christian child,” a man in a knitted wool hat said. “I saw him once in a motorcar in front of Marfa Golov’s house after they arrested him.”

  Some of the men in the car began to mutter among themselves.

  Then the detective spoke calmly. “Everything is in good order, my friends. Don’t excite yourselves for nothing. I am accompanying the prisoner to the courthouse, where he will be indicted for his crime.”

  Two bearded Jews wearing large hats hastily got off the trolley at the next stop. A third tried to speak to the prisoner but the detective waved him away.

  “If they convict you,” the Jew shouted at Yakov, “cry, ‘Sh’ma, Yisroël, the Lord our God, the Lord is one!’“ He jumped off the moving trolley, and the two secret police, who had risen, sat down.

  A woman in a hat with velvet flowers, when she went by, spat at the fixer. Her spittle dribbled from his beard. Soon the detective nudged him and they left the trolley at the next stop. They were trudging along on the snowy sidewalk when the detective stopped to buy an apple from a street vendor. He handed it to the fixer, who gobbled it down in three bites.

  In the courthouse building Grubeshov had moved into a larger office with six desks in the anteroom. Yakov waited with the detective, nervously impatient to see the indictment. It’s strange, he thought, that an indictment of murder should be so precious, yet without it he could not make the first move to defend himself.

  He was summoned into the inner office. The detective, hat in his hand, followed him in and stationed himself at attention behind the prisoner but Grubeshov dismissed him with a nod. The Prosecuting Attorney sat stolidly at a new desk regarding the prisoner with squinting eyes. Little had changed but his appearance. He looked older and if that was so, how much older did Yakov look? He saw himself as bushy-haired, bearded, swimming in his clothes, and frightened to death.

  Grubeshov coughed seriously and glanced away. Yakov saw no papers on his desk. Though he had made up his mind to be controlled before this archanti-Semite, he could not help himself and began to shiver. He had been trembling within and had suppressed it, but when he thought of what had happened to Bibikov, and how he himself had been treated and what he had endured because of Grubeshov, a bone of hatred thickened in his throat and his body shook. It trembled violently as though it were trying to expel a poisonous substance. And though he was ashamed to be shivering as though feverish or freezing in front of this man, he could not stop it.

  The Prosecuting Attorney looked on in puzzlement for a minute. “Are you suffering a chill, Bok?” The slightly thick voice attempted sympathy.

  The fixer, still uncontrollably shaking, said he was.

  “Have you been ill?”

  Yakov nodded, trying to mask his contempt for the man.

  “A pity,” said the prosecutor. “Well, sit down and try to control yourself. Let’s get on with other matters.”

  Unlocking his desk drawer, he took out a pack of closely typewritten long sheets of blue paper. There were about twenty pages.

  My God, so many? Yakov thought. His trembling subsided and he sat forward anxiously.

  “So,” said Grubeshov, smiling as though he understood the matter for the first time, “you have come for the indictment?” He fingered the papers.

  The fixer, staring at them, wet his lips.

  “I suppose you find incarceration a not very pleasant experience?”

  Though moved to shriek, Yakov nodded.

  “Has it altered your thinking, yet?”

  “Not of my innocence.”

  Grubeshov laughed a little, pushing his chair away from the desk. “A stubborn man walks with both feet tied. I am surprised at you, Bok. I wouldn’t exactly have called you stupid. I think you know your future is nil if you continue to be stubborn.”

  “Please, when can I see a lawyer?”

  “A lawyer won’t do you the least good. You may take my word for it.”

  The fixer sat tensely, silent but wary.

  Grubeshov began to walk on his oriental rug. “Even with six or seven lawyers you will be convicted and sentenced to total solitary confinement for the rest of your life. Do you think a jury of patriotic Russians will believe what some shyster concocts for you to say?”

  “I will tell them the truth.”

  “If the ‘truth’ is what you have told us, no sane Russian will believe you.”

  “I thought you might, your honor, since you know the evidence.”

  Grubeshov paused in his pacing to clear his throat. “I least of all, though I have given thought to the possibility that you were once a virtuous man who became the expiatory victim of his co-religionists. Would it interest you to know that the Tsar himself is convinced you committed the crime?”

  “The Tsar?” said Yakov in astonishment. “Does he know about me? How could he think such a thing?” His heart sank heavily.

  “His Majesty has taken an active interest in this case since he read of Zhenia’s murder in the newspapers. He at once sat down at his desk and wrote me in his own hand the following: ‘I hope you will spare no pains to unearth and bring to justice the despicable Jewish murderer of that lad.’ I quote from memory. His Majesty is a most sensitive person and some of his intuitions are extraordinary. Since then I’ve kept him informed of the progress of the investigation. It is conducted with his full knowledge and approval.”

  Ah, it’s bad luck, the fixer thought. After a while he said, “But why should the Tsar believe what isn’t true?”

  Grubeshov quickly returned to his desk and sat down. “He is convinced, as we all are, by the accumulative evidence conveyed in the testimony of the witnesses.”

  “What witnesses?”

  “You know very well which witnesses,” Grubeshov said impatiently. “By Nikolai Maximovitch Lebedev, for instance, and his daughter, refined and genteel people. By Marfa Golov, the long-suffering mother of an unfortunate son, a tragic but pure woman. By the foreman Proshko and the two drivers. By the janitor Sko-believ, who saw you offering sweets to Zhenia, and will testify in court that you chased the boy several times in the brickyard. It was through your intervention, Nikolai Maximovitch tells us, that the man was discharged from his job.”

  “I never knew he was discharged.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know that you will find out.”

  Grubeshov went on naming witnesses. “I shall also cite testimony by your Jewish cellmate, Gronfein, whom you urged, as a favor to the Jewish community, to bribe Marfa Vladimirovna so she wouldn’t testify against you. By a beggar woman who once asked you for alms, which you refused her, and who saw you enter a shop where knives are sharpened. By the proprietor of that establishment and his assistant, who will say two of your knives were sharpened to the highest pitch and then returned to you. By certain religious figures, scientists of Jewish history and theology, and alienists who are authorities on the Jewish mind. We have already gathered more than thirty reliable witnesses. His Majesty has read all the relevant testimony. When he last visited Kiev shortly after your arrest, I had the honor to inform him, ‘Sire, I am happy to report that the guilty culprit in Zhenia Golov’s murder has been apprehended and is now in prison. He is Yakov Bok, a member of one of the Jewish fanatic groups, the Hasidim.’ I assure you His Majesty bared his head in the rain and made the sign of the cross to express his thanks to the Lord for your apprehension.”

  The fixer could see the Tsar crossing himself, bareheaded in the rain. For the first time he wondered if it were a matter of mistaken identity. Could they have confused him with someone else?

  The prosecutor opened a side drawer of his desk and took out a folder of newspaper clippings. He read from one: “ ‘His Majesty expressed himself as justified in his belief that the crime was the dastardly work of a Jewish criminal who must be properly punished for his barbaric deed. “We shall do whatever is necessary to protect our innocent Russian children and their anxious mothers. When I think of my own wife and children I think of them.” ‘ If the ruler of the Russian State and its people is wholeheartedly convinced of your guilt, what chance do you think you will have for a verdict of not guilty? None, I assure you. No Russian jury will free you.”

  “Still,” said the fixer, sighing brokenly, “the question is of the worth of the evidence.”

  “I have no doubts of its worth. Do you have any better evidence?”

  “What if certain anti-Semitic groups committed the murder to cast suspicion on the Jews?”

  Grubeshov banged his fist on the desk. “What a monstrous canard! It takes a Jew to shift the blame of his crime onto his accusers. You are apparently unaware of your own admissions, yes, confessions of guilt.” He had begun to sweat and his breath whistled in his nose.

  “Mine?” said Yakov, on the verge of panic. “What admissions? I have made none.”

  “You may think not but there is already a record of more than one confession you have made in your sleep. The guard Kogin has compiled it in his notebooks, and the Deputy Warden also heard you when he listened at the cell door at night. It’s obvious that your conscience is heavily burdened, Yakov Bok, and for good and sufficient reason. There is much crying out against the abhorrent nature of your crime, sighs, ejaculations, grunts, even sobs of remorse. It is because you obviously feel some sorrow for what you have done that I am willing to talk to you in this kindly way.”

  Yakov’s eyes again crept to the papers on the desk.

  “Could I see the indictment, your honor?”

  “My advice to you,” Grubeshov said, wiping his neck with a handkerchief, “is to sign a confession saying you committed the murder unwillingly, under the influence of your religious cohorts. Once that’s done, as I informed you the last time I talked to you, something to your advantage may be arranged.”

  “I have nothing to confess. What can I confess to you? I can only confess my miseries. I can’t confess the murder of Zhenia Golov.”

  “Listen, Bok, I speak to you for your own good. Your position otherwise is hopeless. A confession by you will have more than one beneficial effect. For your fellow Jews it may prevent reprisals. Do you know that at the time of your arrest Kiev was on the verge of a massive pogrom? It was only the fortuitous appearance of the Tsar to dedicate a statue to one of his ancestors that prevented it. That won’t happen a second time, I assure you. Think it over, there are strong advantages for you. I am willing to see to it that you are secreted out of prison and taken to Podovoloshchisk on the Austrian border. You will have a Russian passport in your pocket and the means of transportation to some country outside of Europe. This includes Palestine, America, or even Australia, if you choose to go there. I advise you to consider this most carefully. The alternative is to spend your lifetime in prison under circumstances much less favorable than those you are presently enjoying.”

  “Excuse me, but how will you then explain to the Tsar that you let a confessed murderer of a Christian child go?”

  “That part doesn’t concern you,” said Grubeshov.

  The fixer didn’t believe him. A confession, he knew, would doom him forever. He was already doomed.