The Fixer (38 page)

  “Because you are a prisoner,” said Berezhinsky. “The gate’s not open yet.”

  “Why now and not before?”

  “Orders,” said the prison barber, “so sit still and keep your mouth shut.”

  “Why does he cut my hair?” Yakov, angered, asked Kogin. He felt, then, the pangs of hunger.

  “Orders must be obeyed,” said the guard. “It’s to show you had no special privileges and were treated like the others.”

  “I was treated worse than the others.”

  “If you know all the answers, then don’t ask any questions,” Kogin said in irritation.

  “That’s right,” said Berezhinsky. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  When the hair clipping was done, Kogin went out and returned with the fixer’s own clothes and told him to put them on.

  Yakov got dressed in the bathhouse. He blessed his clothes though they hung on his bony body loosely and limply. The baggy pants were held up by a thin cord. The dank sheepskin coat hung almost to his knees. But the boots, though stiff, were comfortable.

  Back in the cell, strangely lit in the light of two lamps, Kogin said, “Listen, Bok, I advise you to eat. I give you my word there’s nothing to be afraid of in that food. You better eat.”

  “That’s right,” said Berezhinsky. “Do what you’re told.”

  “I don’t want to eat,” said the fixer, “I want to fast.”

  “What the hell for?” said Kogin.

  “For God’s world.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

  “I don’t.”

  “The hell with you,” said Kogin.

  “Well, good luck and no hard feelings,” Berezhinsky said uneasily. “Duty is duty. The prisoner’s the prisoner, the guard’s the guard.”

  From the window came the sound of a troop of horses clattering into the prison yard.

  “It’s the Cossacks,” said Berezhinsky.

  “Will I have to walk in the middle of the street?”

  “You’ll find that out. The warden’s waiting so hurry up or it will go hard on you.”

  As Yakov came out of the cell an escort of six Cossack guards with crossed bandoleers were lined up in the corridor. The captain, a burly man with a black mustache, ordered the guard to surround the prisoner.

  “Forward march,” commanded the escort captain.

  The Cossacks marched the prisoner along the corridor toward the warden’s office. Though Yakov tried to straighten his leg he walked with a limp. He went as quickly as he could to keep up with the guard. Kogin and Berezhinsky remained behind.

  In the warden’s inner office the captain carefully searched the prisoner; he wrote out a receipt for him and handed it to the warden.

  “Just a minute, young man,” said the warden. “I want to have a word of my own with the prisoner.”

  The captain saluted. “We leave at 8 A.M., sir.” He went to wait in the outer office.

  The old man wiped the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief. His eye was tearing so he wiped that too. He took out his snuffbox, then put it away.

  Yakov watched him nervously. If he withdraws the indictment now I’ll choke him to death.

  “Well, Bok,” said Warden Grizitskoy, “if you had had the sense to follow the Prosecuting Attorney’s advice you’d be a free man today and out of the country. As it is now, you’ll probably be convicted on the evidence and will spend the rest of your natural life in the strictest confinement.”

  The fixer scratched his palms.

  The warden got his glasses out of a drawer, adjusted them on his nose, and read aloud an item from a newspaper lying on his desk. It was about a tailor in Odessa, Markovitch, a Jew, the father of five children, accused by the police of murdering a nine-year-old boy in a waterfront street late at night. He had then carried the child’s body to his tailor shop and drained the still-warm corpse of its lifeblood. The police, suspicious of the tailor, who walked alone in the streets at night, had discovered bloodstains on the floor and had at once arrested him.

  The warden put down the newspaper and removed his glasses.

  “I’ll tell you this, Bok: if we don’t convict one of you we’ll convict the other. We’ll teach you all a lesson.”

  The fixer remained mute.

  The warden, his mouth wet with anger, threw open the door and signaled the escort captain.

  But then the Deputy Warden entered from the hall. He came in in a hurry, paying no attention to the escort captain.

  “Warden,” he said, “I have here a telegram that forbids special privileges for the Jewish prisoner Bok just because he happens to be going on trial. He hasn’t been searched this morning through no fault of mine. Please have him returned to his cell to be searched in the usual way.”

  A sick pressure burdened the fixer’s chest.

  “Why should I be searched now? What will you find if you search me? Only my miseries. This man doesn’t know where to stop.”

  “I’ve already searched him,” said the Cossack captain to the Deputy Warden. “The prisoner is now in my custody. I’ve given the warden my personal receipt.”

  “It’s on my desk,” said the warden.

  The Deputy Warden drew a folded white paper out of his tunic pocket. “This telegram is from his Imperial Majesty in St. Petersburg. It orders us to search the Jew most carefully to prevent any possible dangerous incident.”

  “Why wasn’t the telegram sent to me?” asked the warden.

  “I notified you it might come,” said the Deputy Warden.

  “That’s right,” said the warden, flustered.

  “Why should I be insulted again?” Yakov shouted, the blood burning in his face. “The guards saw me naked in the bathhouse and watched me dress. Also this captain searched me a few minutes ago in front of the warden. Why should I be further humiliated on the day of my trial?”

  The warden banged his fist on the desk. “That will do. Be still, I warn you.”

  “No one wants your opinion,” said the black-mustached captain coldly. “Forward march. Back to the cell.”

  There’s more to this than it says in the telegram, Yakov thought. If they’re trying to provoke me I’d better be careful.

  Sick to his soul, he was marched to the cell by the Cossack guard.

  “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.

  6

  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 bad 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.