The Fixer (5 page)

  “Nikolai Maximovitch Lebedev,” the fat Russian said, offering his soft pudgy hand. A thick gold watch-chain hung on his paunch, and his vest was dusty with snuff grains.

  Yakov, after a slight hesitation, shook hands, answering as he had planned, “Yakov Ivanovitch Dologushev.” To have given his name might have finished off the reward. Yet he felt ashamed and sweaty.

  Zinaida Nikolaevna busied herself with the samovar.

  Her father indicated a chair for the fixer.

  “I have a good deal to thank you for, Yakov Ivanovitch,” he said, resuming his seat. “I lost my footing in the snow, no doubt there was ice under it. You were very kind to assist me—not everyone would have. Once, under quite different circumstances—I began to drink only after the death of my beloved wife, a woman of exceptional qualities—Zina will affirm the truth of what I am saying—I fainted from illness on Fundukleyevsky Street, in front of a coffee shop, and lay on the pavement with a gash in my head for an unconscionable time before anyone—in this case a woman who had lost a son at Port Arthur—bothered to come to my assistance. Nowadays people are far less concerned about their fellow humans than in times past. Religious feeling has shrunk in the world and kindness is rare. Very rare indeed.”

  Yakov, waiting for him to come to the reward, sat tightly in the chair.

  Nikolai Maximovitch regarded the fixer’s worn sheepskin coat. He took out his snuffbox, inserted a pinch in both nostrils, blew his nose vigorously in a large white handkerchief, sneezed twice, then after a few futile attempts, succeeded in thrusting the box back into his robe pocket.

  “My daughter informs me you were carrying a bag of tools yesterday. What is your trade, if I may ask?”

  “Repairs, et cetera, of all kinds,” Yakov answered. “I do carpentering, also painting, and roofing.”

  “Is that so? Are you presently employed?”

  The fixer, without thought, said he wasn’t.

  “Where are you from if you don’t mind saying?” said Nikolai Maximovitch. “I ask because I have a curious nature.”

  “From the provinces,” Yakov answered, after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Ach—really?—a country boy?—and a good thing, may I say. The country virtues are not to be denied. I’m from the region of Kursk myself. I’ve pitched hay in my time. Do you come to Kiev as a pilgrim?”

  “No, I came for work.” He paused. “Also, if possible, for a little education.”

  “Excellent. You speak well although with a provincial accent. But grammatically. Have you had some school-ing?”

  Blast his questions, the fixer thought.

  “I’ve read a little on my own.”

  The girl was watching him through lowered eyelids.

  “Do you also read in the Holy Scriptures?” asked Nikolai Maximovitch. “I presume you do?”

  “I know the Psalms.”

  “Wonderful. Did you hear, Zina?—the Psalms, wonderful. The Old Testament is admirable, the true prophecy of Christ’s coming and his redemption of us through death. However, it is in no way equal to the preachings and parables of Our Lord, in the New Testament. I have just been rereading this.” Nikolai Maximovitch glanced down at the open book and read aloud: “ ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ “

  Yakov, grown pale, nodded.

  Nikolai Maximovitch’s eyes were humid. He had again to blow his nose.

  “He always cries when he reads the Sermon on the Mount,” said Zinaida Nikolaevna.

  “I always cry.” Clearing his throat, Nikolai Maximovitch read on: “ ‘Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.’ “

  Mercy, the fixer thought, it makes him cry.

  “ ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ “

  Come already to the reward, thought Yakov.

  “Ah, this is most moving,” Nikolai Maximovitch said, having to wipe his eyes again. “You know, Yakov Ivanovitch, I am in some ways a miserable man, melancholic, a heavy drinker, yet something more than that although I recently set my clothes on fire while smoking a cigarette when a piece of hot ash fell on my trousers, and if Zina had not alertly poured a pitcher of water over me, I would now be a burnt corpse. I drink because I happen to be more sensitive than most—I feel much too keenly the sorrows of life. My daughter will attest to that.”

  “It’s true,” she said. “He is a man of more than ordinary feeling. When our former little dog Pasha died of a distemper, Papa couldn’t eat for weeks.”

  “When Zina was a child, after her severe illness I wept every night over her poor crippled leg.”

  “It’s true,” she said, her eyes moist.

  “I tell you this so that you may know the kind of person I am,” Nikolai Maximovitch said to Yakov. “Zina, please serve the tea.”

  She brought the tea to the marble-top table on a thick silver tray, with two clay pots of whole-fruit jam, raspberry and peach; and Viennese rolls, and butter.

  It’s mad, I know, Yakov thought. Tea with rich goyim. Yet he ate hungrily.

  Nikolai Maximovitch poured a little milk into his tea and ate a buttered roll. He ate with gulping noises, as though drinking what he ate. Then he sipped again from the hot glass and set it down, patting his snuff-swollen lips with a linen napkin.

  “I would like to offer you a modest reward for your timely assistance.”

  Yakov hastily put down his glass and rose.

  “I ask for nothing. Thanks for the tea and I’d better be off.”

  “Spoken like a Christian, but please sit down and listen to what I have to say. Zina, fill Yakov Ivanovitch’s glass and put plenty of butter and conserves on his roll. Yakov Ivanovitch, what I have to say is this. I have an empty flat on the next story, recently vacated—the tenants proved entirely unsuitable—four fine rooms that need painting and repapering. If you care to undertake the task I offer forty rubles, which is more than I would ordinarily pay, considering the fact that I furnish the paint and other materials; but the circumstances in this case are different. It is, of course, a matter of gratitude, but wouldn’t you rather work than peremptorily receive from me some silver coins? Is money ever valuable if it is come by without labor? An offer of work is an appreciation of merit. Notwithstanding you did me the greatest of favors—I might have suffocated in the snow, as Zina points out—isn’t my offer of work a more estimable reward than a mere payment of money?” He looked eagerly at Yakov. “Therefore will you accept?”

  “In the way you put it, yes,” said Yakov. He got up quickly, said he had to be going, and after stumbling into a closet on his way out, hurriedly left the apartment.

  Though he worried what he was getting into and changed his mind every half hour as he lay restlessly on his bed-bench that night, the next morning he went back. He returned for the same reason he had gone the first time—to collect his reward. What he earned for his work in this case was the reward. Who could afford to say no to forty rubles—a tremendous sum? Therefore why worry about returning? Go, do the job quickly, collect the money, and when you have it in your pocket, leave the place once and for all and forget it. After all it’s only a job, I’m not selling my soul. When I’m finished I’ll wash up and go. They’re not bad people. The girl’s direct and honest in her way, though she makes me uneasy, and as for the old man, maybe I misjudged him. How many goyim have I known in my life? Maybe someone stuck that Black Hundreds pin on his coat when he was drunk in the tavern. Still, if it’s really his own I’d like to ask him straight out, “Nikolai Maximovitch, will you please explain how you can cry for a dead dog yet belong to a society of fanatics that urges death on human beings who happen to be Jews? Explain to me the logic of it.” Then let him answer that.

  What also troubled the fixer was that once he went to work, even though the “reward” made it different from work though not less than work, he might be asked to produce his passport, a document stamped “Religious Denomination: Judaic,” which would at once tell Nikolai Maximovitch what he was hiding from him. He chewed his lips over that but decided that if the passport was asked for he would say the police in the Podol had it; and if Nikolai Maximovitch insisted he must produce it, that was the time to quit or there would be serious trouble. It was therefore a gamble, but if you were against gambling, stop playing cards. He guessed the Russian was probably too muddled to ask for the passport although he was required to by law. Still, after all, it was a reward, maybe he wouldn’t. Yakov was now somewhat sorry he hadn’t at once identified himself as a Jew by birth. If that had killed off the reward, at least there would be no self-contempt. The more one hides the more he has to.

  He did an expert job on the flat—scraped the walls clean of paper, and the ceilings of flakes and loose patches. He plastered where he had to, then thickly calcimined the ceilings—nothing but the best for Nikolai Maximovitch. And he pasted the wallpaper neatly though his experience with papering was limited—in the shtetl only Viskover, the Nogid, was that fancy. Yakov worked all day and into the night by yellow gaslight to get the job done, collect his rubles, and disappear. The landlord, stopping now and then to catch his breath, labored up the stairs each morning to see how the work was progressing, and expressed himself as most pleased. In the afternoon he got out his vodka bottle, into which he had cut strips of orange peel, and by sunset was drunk. Zina, unseen during the day, sent up the cook, Lidya, with a snack at lunchtime—a fish pie, bowl of borscht, or some meat dumplings so delicious it seemed to the fixer he would have done the job for the food alone.

  One night Zina limped up the stairs, expressing surprise he was working so late. She asked Yakov if he had eaten since lunch, and when he said he was not hungry she suggested, nervously laughing, that he eat supper with her, Papa having already retired and she liking company. The fixer, greatly surprised by the invitation, begged off. He had, he explained, too much to do, and apologized for his clothes. Zina said not to mind that. “Clothes can be shed in a minute, Yakov Ivanovitch, but whether they are or not cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes. Besides I don’t care for excessive formality.” He thanked her but said he couldn’t take the time off from work. There were two more rooms to do. The next evening she came up again and somewhat agitatedly confessed she was lonely; so they ate together in the kitchen downstairs. She had dismissed Lidya and throughout the meal talked constantly, mostly of her childhood, the young ladies’ school she had attended, and the pleasures of Kiev in the summertime.

  “Days are long and hot, but nights are languorous and starlit. People refresh themselves in their flower gardens and some walk in the parks, drink kvass and lemonade, and listen to the symphonies. Have you ever heard
Pagliacci
, Yakov Ivanovitch? I think you would love Marinsky Park.”

  He said he did not mind parks.

  “The Contract Fair opens in the spring, it’s most entertaining. Or if you like there’s a cinematograph to go to on the Kreshchatik.”

  Her eyes darted glances as she spoke and when he looked at her she glanced away. Afterwards the fixer, made nervous by her chatter, excused himself to go back to work, but Zina followed him up the stairs to watch him paste on the wallpaper she had selected, bunches of blue roses. She sat on a kitchen chair with her legs crossed, the good one over the crippled, and cracked and ate dried sunflower seeds, rhythmically swinging her leg as she watched him work.

  Then she lit and awkwardly smoked a cigarette.

  “You know, Yakov Ivanovitch, I couldn’t possibly treat you as an ordinary common laborer for the simple reason that you aren’t one. Certainly not in my eyes. Really you are a guest who happens to be working here because of Papa’s idiosyncratic ways. I hope you realize that?”

  “If you don’t work you don’t eat.”

  “Quite true, but you are more intelligent and even genteel—at any rate, sensitive—please don’t shake your head over that—than the average Russian laborer. I can’t tell you how exasperating they can be, particularly Ukrainians, and really we dread having repairs or improvements made. No, please don’t deny it, anyone can sense you are different. And you told Papa you believe in the necessity of an education and would like to further your own. I heard you say that and approve very much. I too love to read, and not only romances. I’m sure you’ll find excellent opportunities for yourself in the future, and if you are alert may some day be as comfortably off as Papa.”

  Yakov went on papering.

  “Poor Papa suffers dreadfully from melancholia. He gets quite drunk by nightfall and has no appetite, to speak of, for supper. He usually falls asleep in his chair, Lidya removes his shoes, and with Alexei’s help we get him to bed. At night he awakes and says his prayers. Sometimes he undresses himself, and it’s almost impossible to find his clothes in the morning. Once he put his socks under the rug, and I found his drawers, all wet, in the water closet. Usually he isn’t awake till midmorning. It’s hard on me, of course, but I can’t complain because Papa’s had a difficult life. And there’s no one to keep me company in the evening but Lidya and at times Alexei when he happens to be fixing something, but quite frankly, Yakov Ivanovitch, neither of them has an idea in his head. Alexei sleeps in the basement, and Lidya’s small room is at the back of the flat off the terrace beyond Papa’s bedroom; and since I would rather read at night than listen to her go on and on, I dismiss her early. Sometimes it gives me pleasure to be the only one up in the house at night. It’s very cozy. I light the samovar, read, write letters to old friends and crochet. Papa says I make the most remarkable lace doilies. He marvels at the intricacy of the patterns. But most of the time,” she sighed, “to tell the truth, it can be dreadfully lonely.”

  She chewed a sunflower seed disconsolately, then remarked that although she had been crippled through illness as a child, she had always been considered attractive by the opposite sex and had had more than one admirer.

  “I don’t say this to flaunt myself or be brazen but because I don’t want you to think of me as being at a disadvantage with regard to the normal experiences of life. I am nothing of the sort. I have a quite attractive figure and many men notice me, especially when I’m dressed up. Once in a restaurant a man ogled me so insistently Papa went over to him and demanded an explanation. The man humbly apologized and do you know, Yakov Ivanovitch, when I got back home I broke into sobs.”