The Fixer (30 page)

  “My dear fellow,” said the blue-eyed, pale-faced Tsar in a gentle voice, “don’t envy me my throne. Uneasy lies the et cetera. The Zhidy would do well to understand and stop complaining in a whining tongue. The simple fact is there are too many Jews—my how you procreate! Why should Russia be burdened with teeming millions of you? You yourselves are to blame for your troubles, and the pogroms of 1905-6
outside
the Pale of Settlement, mind you, were proof positive, if proof is needed, that you aren’t staying where you were put. The ingestion of this tribe has poisoned Russia. Who ever wanted it? Our revered ancestor Peter the Great, when asked to admit them into Russia, said, ‘They are rogues and cheats. I am trying to eradicate evil, not increase it.’ Our revered ancestor, the Tsarina Elizabeth Petrovna, said, ‘From the enemies of Christ I wish neither gain nor profit.’ Hordes of Jews were expelled from one or another part of the Motherland in 1727, 1739, 1742, but still they crawled back and we have been unable to de-louse ourselves of them. The worst of it happened, our greatest error, when Catherine the Great took over half of Poland and inherited the whole filthy lot, a million poisoners of wells, spies against us all, cowardly traitors. I always said it was the Poles’ plot to ruin Russia.”

  “Have mercy on me, your Majesty. So far as I’m concerned, I am an innocent man. What have I seen of the world? Please have mercy.”

  “The Tsar’s heart is in God’s hands.” He stepped into his white sailboat and sailed away on the Black Sea.

  Nikolai Maximovitch had lost weight, the girl limped badly and would not look at the fixer. Proshko, Serdiuk and Richter came in on three skittish horses whose droppings were full of oats he longed to get at. Father Anas-tasy sought to convert him to Roman Catholicism. Marfa Golov, wept dry-eyed and haggard, offered him a bribe to testify against himself; and the Deputy Warden, in the uniform of a naval officer, for personal reasons insisted on continuing the searches. The guards promised the fixer anything if he would open up and name names, and Yakov said he might for a heated cell in wintertime, a daily bowl of noodles and cheese, and a firm clean hair mattress.

  Shots were fired.

  He passed through time he had no memory of and one day awoke to find himself in the same cell, not a new one with six doors and windows he had dreamed of. It was still hot but he couldn’t be sure it was the same summer. The cell seemed the same, possibly a bit smaller, with the same scabby sweating walls. The same wet stone floor. The same stinking straw mattress; its smell had never killed the bugs. The table and three-legged stool were gone. Scattered over the wet floor were pages of the Old Testament, stained and muddied. He could not find the phylacteries but still wore the ragged prayer shawl. And the last of the firewood had been removed and the cell hosed down as though to make it fit for him to stay forever.

  “How long was I gone?” he asked Zhitnyak.

  “You weren’t gone. Who says you were gone?”

  “Was I sick then?”

  “They say you ran a fever.”

  “What did I say when I ranted and raved?” he asked uneasily.

  “Who the hell knows,” said the guard impatiently. “I have my own troubles. Try and live on the lousy wages they pay you here. The Deputy Warden listened to you twice a day but couldn’t make out heads or tails. He says you have a filthy mind but nobody expected otherwise.”

  “Am I better now?”

  “That’s up to you, but if you break another piece of furniture, we’ll smash your head.”

  Though his legs trembled, he stood at the peephole, looking out. Moving the disk aside with his finger, he stared out into the corridor. A yellow bulb lit the windowless wall. The cells on both sides of him, he remembered, were empty. He had more than once hit a log against the walls but there was never any response. Once an official passing by in the corridor saw his eye staring out and ordered him to shut the hole and move away from the door. After the man had gone Yakov looked out again. All he could see on the left was the chair the guards sat on, Zhitnyak whittling a stick, Kogin sighing, worrying. The other way a dusty bulb lit up a broken barrel against the wall. The fixer stood for hours staring into the corridor. When Zhitnyak came over to look in, he saw the fixer’s eye staring out.

  6

  One midsummer night, long past midnight, Yakov, too long imprisoned to sleep, was staring out the peephole when his eye throbbed as if it had been touched, and slowly filled with the pained sight of Shmuel.

  The fixer cursed himself, withdrew his eye, and tried the other. Whether vision or visitor it looked like Shmuel, though older, shrunken, grayer, a scarecrow with a frightened beard.

  The prisoner, in disbelief, heard a whisper. “Yakov, it’s you? Here is Shmuel, your father-in-law.”

  First the Tsar and now Shmuel. Either I’m still crazy or it’s another mad dream. Next comes the Prophet Elijah or Jesus Christ.

  But the figure of the fragile old man in shirt-sleeves and a hard hat, standing in the yellow light, his fringed garment hanging out under his shirt, persisted.

  “Shmuel, don’t lie, is it really you?”

  “Who else?” said the peddler hoarsely.

  “God forbid you’re not a prisoner, are you?” the fixer asked in anguish.

  “God forbid. I came to see you though I almost didn’t. It’s erev shabbos but God will forgive me.”

  Yakov wiped his eyes. “I’ve dreamed of everybody so why not you? But how did you get in? How did you come here?”

  The old man shrugged his thin shoulders.

  “We came in circles. I did what they told me. Yakov, for more than a year I tried to find you but nobody knew where. I thought to myself he’s gone for good, I’ll never see him again. Then one day I bought for a few kopeks a hill of rotting sugar beets from a sick Russian. Don’t ask me why but for the first time in my life what I bought for rotten was not all rotten. More than half the beets turned out good, God’s gift to a poor man. The sugar company sent some wagons and took them away. Anyway, I sold the beets for forty rubles, my biggest profit since I’m in business. Also I met Fyodor Zhitnyak, the brother of the one here—he peddles in the Kiev market. We got to talking and he knew your name. He told me that for forty rubles he could arrange it so I could speak to you. He spoke to the brother and the brother said yes if I came late at night and wasn’t too ambitious. Who’s ambitious, so here I am. For forty rubles they will let me stand here just ten minutes, so we must talk fast. Time I’ve had like dirt my whole life but now it’s worth money. Zhitnyak, the brother who’s the guard here, changed shifts with another one who took the night off because his son got arrested. That’s how it goes, I wish him luck. Anyway, Zhitnyak will wait for ten minutes down the hall by the outside door but he warned me if somebody comes he might have to shoot. He might as well, if they see me I’m lost.”

  “Shmuel, before I faint from excitement, how did you know I was in prison?”

  Shmuel moved his feet restlessly. It wasn’t a dance though it looked like one.

  “How I know, he asks. I knew because I knew. I know. When it came out in the Yiddish papers last year that a Jew was arrested in Kiev for murdering a Christian child, I thought to myself who can this poor Jew be, it must be my son-in-law Yakov. Then after a year I saw your name in the newspaper. A counterfeiter by the name of Gronfein got sick from his nerves and went around saying that Yakov Bok was in the Kiev prison for killing a Russian child. He saw him there. I tried to find this man but he disappeared and those who are hopeful hope he’s alive. Maybe he went to America, that’s what they hope. Yakov, maybe you don’t know, it’s a terrible tumult now all over Russia, and to tell you the truth, the Jews are frightened to death. Only a few know who you are, and some say it’s a fake, there’s nobody by that name, the goyim made it up to cast suspicion on the Jews. In the shtetl those who never liked you say it serves you right. Some have pity and would like to help you but we can’t do a thing till they give you an indictment. When I saw your name in the Jewish paper I wrote you right away a letter and they sent it back—’No such prisoner.’ I also sent you a little package, not much in it, just a few little things, but did you ever get it?”

  “Poison I got but no package.”

  “I tried to get in here to see you and nobody would let me till I made my profit on the sugar beets and I met the brother Zhitnyak.”

  “Shmuel, I’m sorry for your forty rubles. It’s a lot of money and what are you getting for it?”

  “Money is nothing. I came to see you, but if it paves my way a foot into Paradise it’s a fine investment.”

  “Run, Shmuel,” the fixer said, agitated, “get out while you can or they’ll shoot you in cold blood and call it a Jewish conspiracy. If that happens I’m doomed forever.”

  “I’m running,” said Shmuel, cracking his knuckles against his bony chest, “but tell me first why they blame you for this terrible crime?”

  “Why they blame me? Because I was a stupid ass. I worked for a Russian factory owner in a forbidden district. Also I lived there without telling him my papers were Jewish.”

  “You see, Yakov, what happens when you shave your beard and forget your God?”

  “Don’t talk to me about God,” Yakov said bitterly. “I want no part of God. When you need him most he’s farthest away. Enough is enough. My past I don’t have to tell you, but if you knew what I’ve lived through since I saw you last.” He began to say but his voice cracked.

  “Yakov,” said Shmuel, clasping and unclasping his excitable hands, “we’re not Jews for nothing. Without God we can’t live. Without the covenant we would have disappeared out of history. Let that be a lesson to you. He’s all we have but who wants more?”

  “Me. I’ll take misery but not forever.”

  “For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.”

  “I blame him for not existing. Or if he does it’s on the moon or stars but not here. The thing is not to believe or the waiting becomes unbearable. I can’t hear his voice and never have. I don’t need him unless he appears.”

  “Who are you, Yakov, Moses himself? If you don’t hear His voice so let Him hear yours. ‘When prayers go up blessings descend.’ “

  “Scorpions descend, hail, fire, sharp rocks, excrement. For that I don’t need God’s help, the Russians are enough. All right, once I used to talk to him and answer myself, but what good does it do if I know so little in the first place? I used to mention once in a while the conditions of my life, my struggles, misfortunes, mistakes. On rare occasions I gave him a little good news, but whatever I said he never answered me. Silence I now give back.”

  “A proud man is deaf and blind. How can he hear God? How can he see Him?”

  “Who’s proud if I ever was? What have I got to be proud of? That I was born without parents? I never made a decent living? My barren wife ran off with a goy? When a boy was murdered in Kiev, out of three million Jews in Russia they arrested me? So I’m not proud. If God exists I’ll gladly listen to him. If he doesn’t feel like talking let him open the door so I can walk out. I have nothing. From nothing you get nothing. If he wants from me he has to give first. If not a favor at least a sign.”

  “Don’t ask for signs, ask for mercy.”

  “I’ve asked for everything and got nothing.” The fixer, after a sigh, spoke close to the peephole. “ ‘In the beginning was the word,’ but it wasn’t his. That’s the way I look at it now. Nature invented itself and also man. Whatever was there was there to begin with. Spinoza said so. It sounds fantastic but it must be true. When it comes down to basic facts, either God is our invention and can’t do anything about it, or he’s a force in Nature but not in history. A force is not a father. He’s a cold wind and try and keep warm. To tell the truth, I’ve written him off as a dead loss.”

  “Yakov,” said Shmuel, squeezing both hands, “don’t talk so fast. Don’t look for God in the wrong place, look in the Torah, the law. That’s where to look, not in bad books that poison your thoughts.”

  “As for the law it was invented by man, is far from perfect, and what good is it to me if the Tsar has no use for it? If God can’t give me simple respect I’ll settle for justice. Uphold the Law! Destroy the Tsar with a thunderbolt! Free me from prison!”

  “God’s justice is for the end of time.”

  “I’m not so young any more, I can’t wait that long. Neither can the Jews running from pogroms. We’re dealing nowadays with the slaughter of large numbers and it’s getting worse. God counts in astronomy but where men are concerned all I know is one plus one. Shmuel, let’s drop this useless subject. What’s the sense of arguing through a little hole where you can barely see part of my face in the dark? Besides, it’s a short visit and we’re eating up time.”

  “Yakov,” said Shmuel, “He invented light. He created the world. He made us both. The true miracle is belief. I believe in Him. Job said, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’ He said more but that’s enough.”

  “To win a lousy bet with the devil he killed off all the servants and innocent children of Job. For that alone I hate him, not to mention ten thousand pogroms. Ach, why do you make me talk fairy tales? Job is an invention and so is God. Let’s let it go at that.” He stared at the peddler with one eye. “I’m sorry I’m making you feel bad on your expensive time, Shmuel, but take my word for it, it’s not easy to be a freethinker in this terrible cell. I say this without pride or joy. Still, whatever reason a man has, he’s got to depend on.”

  “Yakov,” said Shmuel, mopping his face with his blue handkerchief, “do me a favor, don’t close your heart. Nobody is lost to God if his heart is open.”

  “What’s left of my heart is pure rock.”

  “Also don’t forget repentance,” said Shmuel. “This comes first.”

  Zhitnyak appeared in a great hurry. “That’s enough now, it’s time to go. Ten minutes is up but you talked longer.”

  “It felt like two,” Shmuel said. “I was just about to say what’s on my heart.”

  “Run, Shmuel,” Yakov urged, his mouth pressed to the peephole. “Do whatever you can to help me. Run to the newspapers and tell them the police have imprisoned an innocent man. Run to the rich Jews, to Rothschild if necessary. Ask for help, money, mercy, a good lawyer to defend me. Get me out of here before they lay me in my grave.”