The Fixer (33 page)

  “Vey is mir,” said Yakov.

  The fixer had been suspected from the beginning. Even before the funeral, rumors had begun to fly through the city that “the real culprit responsible for the murder of the boy was a member of the Hebrew faith.” Then came a summary of reasons why Bok had come to the attention of the police “as a suspicious person”: First, because it had come out he was a Hebrew using a false name and living in the Lukianovsky District, a district forbidden by special law to all members of his faith except Merchants of the First Guild and some professionals. Second, while representing himself as a Russian, one Yakov Ivanovitch Dologushev, this same Yakov Bok had made improper advances, and even attempted physical assault of Zinaida Nikolaevna, the daughter of Bok’s employer, Nikolai Maximovitch Le-bedev. “By good fortune she thwarted his nefarious purposes.” Third, Yakov Bok was suspected by certain of his fellow employees at the brickworks, in particular “the observant foreman Proshko,” of systematically peculating from funds belonging to the business enterprise of Nikolai Maximovitch Lebedev. Fourth, he was seen on certain occasions by the yardkeeper Skobeliev, the foreman Proshko, and “other witnesses,” chasing boys in the brickyard, near the kilns. These were Vasya Shiskovsky, Andrei Khototov, the deceased Zhenia Golov, and other even younger children, all of them boys. And fifth, Zhenia Golov had one night been pursued among the tombstones in the cemetery close to the brickyard by the same Yakov Bok “clasping in his hand a long thin carpenter’s knife.” The frightened boy had related this to his mother. In Bok’s living quarters in the stable the police had unearthed his bag of tools, which included “certain bloodstained awls and knives.” Some bloody rags also were recovered in this room.

  The fixer sighed and went on reading.

  “In addition to the above-listed evidence, Marfa Golov has testified that Zhenia complained Yakov Bok had interfered with him sexually and had feared the boy would expose him to the authorities.” ‘“Zhenia, a bright and perceptive lad,” had “on certain occasions” followed Bok and discovered that he sometimes met “with a group of other Hebrews, suspected smugglers, housebreakers, and other criminal elements, in the cellar of the synagogue.” Her son, according to the mother, threatened to report these illegal activities to the police. Furthermore, Vasya Shiskovsky and Zhenia Golov had once or twice “in the manner of boys,” angered Bok by flinging rocks at him and taunting him about his race, and he was determined to take revenge on them. “Zhenia Golov, to his great misfortune, was the one who had fallen into Bok’s evil hands, but by great good luck Vasya Shiskovsky had escaped his poor friend’s fate.”

  He read quickly through the section where he had killed the boy. (“Skobeliev testified that he had seen Bok carrying something heavy in his arms, a large squirming package of some sort that resembled a human body, up the stairs to his quarters. There, the evidence is clear, the boy was tortured and then murdered by Yakov Bok, probably with the assistance of one or two of his coreligionists.”) “While in prison,” the indictment went on, “the said Yakov Bok had attempted to influence the counterfeiter Gronfein, a friend and fellow religionist, to bribe Marfa Golov not to testify against him. The sum of money for that purpose was to be raised by subscription in the Hebrew communities of the Jewish Pale of Settlement. Another bribe was offered to Marfa Golov herself at a later date, the large sum of 40,000 rubles if she would flee across the Austrian border, but she indignantly refused.”

  The last paragraph read: “It is therefore the fully considered opinion of the Investigating Magistrate, the Prosecuting Attorney, and the President of the Superior Court of the Kiev Province, where the Court Indictment is this day filed, that Yakov Bok, an admitted Hebrew, had with premeditation, and for purposes of torture and murder, stabbed to death Yevgeny Golov, age 12, the beloved son of Marfa Vladimirovna Golov, for the reasons stated above; in sum, an overweening and abnormal desire for revenge against an innocent child who had discovered his participation in criminal activities. However, the crime was so wicked and debased that an additional element may be said to have been present. Only a criminal of the worst sadistic instincts could have engaged in such an unnatural act of unprovoked hostility and degraded bestiality.”

  The indictment was signed by Yefim Balik, Investigating Magistrate; V. G. Grubeshov, Prosecuting Attorney; and P. F. Furmanov, President of the Superior Court.

  Yakov squeezed his throbbing head after reading the papers. Though his eyes ached—he felt as though he had read the words through sand and glue—he at once reread them, and again, in increasing astonishment and disbelief. What had happened to the charge of ritual murder? Holding each sheet up for better light he searched it in vain. There was no such charge. Every reference to a religious crime, though hinted at, led up to, had in the end been omitted. The Jews had become Hebrews. Why? The only reason he could think of was that they could not prove a charge of ritual murder. And if they couldn’t prove that, what could they prove? Not these stupid lies, vile, ridiculous, some snipped directly out of Marfa’s insane letter. They can’t prove a thing, he thought, that’s why they’ve kept me in solitary imprisonment for almost two years. They know the mother and her lover murdered the boy. He fought a deepening depression. With this “evidence” they’ll never bring me to trial. The weakness of the indictment showed they had no intention to.

  Still it was an indictment and he was wondering if they would now let him see a lawyer, when the warden appeared again in the cell and ordered him to hand over the papers.

  “You may not believe this, Bok, but they were issued through an administrative error. I was supposed to look them over but not give them to you.”

  They’re afraid of the trial, the fixer thought bitterly, after the warden had left. Maybe people are asking when it will begin. Maybe this has them worried. If I live, sooner or later they’ll have to bring me to trial. If not Nicholas the Second, then Nicholas the Third will.

  4

  When his chains were unlocked and he was permitted to lie on his bedbench as long as he liked with his legs free, or to walk around, he could not comprehend what had happened and for a while suffered from excitement. Yakov limped around the cell but mostly lay, breathing through his mouth, on the wooden bed. “Is it another indictment, or maybe is the trial coming?” he asked Ber-ezhinsky, but the guard wouldn’t say. One day the fixer’s hair was trimmed a bit and the beard combed. The barber, glancing stealthily at a yellowed photograph in his tunic pocket, combed out curls over his ears. He was then given another suit of prison clothes, permitted to wash his hands and face with soap, and called to the warden’s office.

  Berezhinsky pushed him out into the hall and commanded him to move along, but the prisoner limped slowly, stopping often to recover his breath. The guard prodded him with his rifle butt, then the fixer ran a step and limped two. He worried how he would make it back to the cell.

  “Your wife is here,” said Warden Grizitskoy, in his office. “You can see her in the visitors’ room. There’ll be a guard present, so don’t presume any privileges.”

  He felt, in towering astonishment, this could not be true, they were deceiving him to extend the torture. And when, as he watched the warden and guard, he believed it, the fixer gasped as though fire had scorched his lungs. When he could breathe he was frightened.

  “My wife?”

  “Raisl Bok?”

  “It’s true.”

  “You’ll be allowed to speak to her for several minutes in the visitors’ room, but watch your step.”

  “Please, not now,” said Yakov wearily. “Some other time.”

  “That’ll do,” said the warden.

  The fixer, shaken, upset, his thoughts in turmoil, was led in a limping trot by Berezhinsky through a series of narrow corridors to the prisoners’ pen in the visitors’ room. At the door Yakov tried to straighten himself, entered, and was locked in. It’s a trick, he thought, it’s not her, it’s a spy. I must be careful.

  She sat on a bench, separated from him by a heavy wire grating. On the far side of the bare-walled boxlike room, a uniformed guard stood behind her, his rifle resting against the wall, slowly rolling a cigarette.

  Yakov sat stiffly opposite her, hunched cold, his throat aching, palms clammy. He felt a dread of cracking up, going mad in front of her—of will failing him once they talked and how would he go on after that?

  “Get along with your business,” said the guard in Russian.

  Though the visitors’ room was dimly lit it was brighter than his cell, and the light hurt his eyes before he could get used to it. The woman sat motionless, her coat threadbare, a wool shawl covering her head, her fingers clasped like spikes in her lap. She was watching him mutely, eyes stricken. He had expected a hag, but though she was worn, tensely embarrassed, and had abandoned the wig she had never liked to wear, she looked otherwise the same, surprising how young though he knew she was thirty, and not bad as a woman. It’s at my expense, he thought bitterly.

  “Yakov?”

  “Raisl?”

  “Yes.”

  As she unwound her shawl—her own dark hair cut short, the hairline damp—and he looked fully into her face, at the long exposed neck, both eyes sad, she was staring at him with fright and feeling. He tried twice to speak and could not. His face ached and mouth trembled.

  “I know, Yakov,” Raisl said. “What more can I say? I know.”

  Emotion blinded him.

  My God, what have I forgotten? I’ve forgotten nothing. He experienced a depth of loss and shame, overwhelming—that the feelings of the past could still be alive after so long and terrible an imprisonment. The deepest wounds never die.

  “Yakov, is it really you?”

  He shook away the beginning of tears and turned his good ear to her.

  “It’s me. Who else could it be?”

  “How strange you look in earlocks and long beard.”

  “That’s their evidence against me.”

  “How thin you are, how withered.”

  “I’m thin,” he said, “I’m withered. What do you want from me?”

  “They forbade me to ask you any questions about your conditions in this prison,” Raisl said in Yiddish, “and I promised not to but who has to ask? I have eyes and can see. I wish I couldn’t. Oh, Yakov, what have they done to you? What did you do to yourself? How did such a terrible thing happen?”

  “You stinking whore, what did
you
do to me? It wasn’t enough we were poor as dirt and childless. On top of that you had to be a whore.”

  She said tonelessly, “It’s not what I alone did, it’s what we did to each other. Did you love me? Did I love you? I say yes and I say no. As for being a whore, if I was I’m not. I’ve had my ups and downs, the same as you, Yakov, but if you’re going to judge me you’ll have to judge me as I am.”

  “What are you?”

  “Whatever I am I’m not what I was.”

  “Why did you marry me for I’d like to know? ‘Love,’ she says. If you didn’t love me why didn’t you leave me alone?”

  “You can believe me I was afraid to marry you, but you were affectionate then, and when a person is lonely it’s easy to lean toward a tender word. Also I thought you loved me although you found it hard to say so.”

  “What can a man say if he’s afraid of a trap? I was afraid of you. I never met anybody so dissatisfied. I am a limited man. What could I promise you? Besides that, your father was behind me, pushing with both hands: If I married you the world would change, everyday a rainbow. Then you got me in the woods that day.”

  “We were to the woods more than once. You wanted what I wanted. It takes two to lie down, one on top of the other.”

  “So we got married,” he said bitterly. “Still, we had a chance. Once we were married you should have been faithful. A contract is a contract. A wife is a wife. Married is married.”

  “Were you such a fine husband?” Raisl said. “Yes, you always tried to make a living, I won’t say no, though you never did. And if you wanted to stay up all night reading Spinoza I had nothing against that either, though it wasn’t Torah, except when it was at my expense, and you know what I mean. What bothered me most were the curses and dirty names. Because I slept with you before we were married you were convinced I was sleeping with the world. I slept with no one but you until you stopped sleeping with me. At twenty-eight I was too young for the grave. So, as you advised, I stopped being superstitious and at last took a chance. Otherwise I would soon have been dead. I was barren. I ran in every direction. I flung myself against trees. I tore at my dry breasts and cursed my empty womb. Whether I stayed or left I was useless to you, so I decided to leave. You wouldn’t so I had to. I left in desperation to change my life. I got out the only way I could. It was either that or death, one sin or worse. I chose the lesser sin. If you want to know the truth, Yakov, one reason I left was to make you move. Whoever thought it would come to this?”

  She cracked her white knuckles against her chest. “Yakov, I didn’t come here to fight about the past. Forgive me, forgive the past.”

  “Why did you come?”

  “Papa said he saw you in prison, it’s all he talks about. I went back to the shtetl last November. I was first in Kharkov, then in Moscow, but couldn’t get along any more, so I had to go back. When I found out you were in Kiev Prison I came to see you but they wouldn’t let me in. Then I went to the Prosecuting Attorney and showed him the papers that I was your wife. He said I couldn’t see you except under the most extraordinary circumstances, and I said the circumstances were extraordinary enough when an innocent man is kept in prison. I went to see him at least five times and finally he said he would let me in if I brought you a paper to sign. He told me to urge you to sign it.”

  “A black year on his papers to sign. A black year on you for bringing it.”

  “Yakov, if you sign you can go free tomorrow. It’s at least something to think about.”

  “I’ve thought,” he shouted. “It’s nothing to think about. I’m innocent.”