Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [104]
“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