Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [114]
This “Court Indictment,” typed on long sheets of blue paper, retold the murder of Zhenia Golov, much as Yakov knew it, but now the number of wounds was unaccountably forty-five, “3 groups of 13, plus 2 additional groups of 3.” There were wounds, the paper said, on the boy’s chest, throat, face, and skull—”around the ears”; and the autopsy performed by Professor M. Zagreb of the Medical Faculty of Kiev University, indicated that all the wounds had been inflicted on the body when the boy’s heart was still strong. “But those in the principal veins of the neck had been inflicted when the heart was weakening.”
On the day the boy was found murdered in the cave, his mother, when she heard the news, fainted. This had been noted on the police record of the case. Then came some details Yakov read quickly but had to go back and read slowly. The collapse of Marfa Golov, the indictment said, “was noted here with particular interest” because it was later observed that she was composed at the funeral and did not weep at her son’s burial, although others, “mere strangers,” had wept without restraint. Some “well-meaning spectators” and others “perhaps not so well-meaning,” were disturbed by this, and “foolish rumors” began at once to circulate “concerning the possible involvement of this good woman, through a former and seriously incapacitated friend, in the murder of her own child.” Because of this baseless rumor, but in the interests of arriving at the truth, she was arrested and thoroughly investigated by the police. They searched her house more than once and found “nothing in the least incriminating.” Thus, after days of painstaking investigation she was released with the apologies of the police and other officials. The Chief of Police concluded that the rumors previously referred to were false and unfounded, “probably the invention of the enemies of Marfa Golov, or possibly of certain sinister forces,” for Marfa Golov was a devoted mother, “blameless of any crime against her child.” Such suspicion was contemptible. Her composed behavior at her son’s funeral was the “behavior of a dignified person in control of her sentiments although involved in a profound personal loss.” For “not all who are sad, weep” and “guilt is not a matter of facial expression but of evidence.” “How much this unfortunate woman had mourned and endured prior to the child’s funeral no one had inquired.” However, witnesses had testified that Marfa Golov had been a more than ordinarily conscientious mother, and a “hardworking virtuous woman of unstained character, who without any assistance to speak of, had provided for her child since the desertion and death of the irresponsible father.” It was therefore concluded that the attempts to destroy her reputation were “the work of unknown subversive alien groups” for the purpose of “concealing the guilt of one of its members, the true murderer of Zhenia Golov, the jack-of-all-trades, Yakov Bok.”
“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