Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [116]
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.