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By Root 3142 0

Jew.” Why he should make “such an odious self-description” was understandable to anyone who reflected for a moment on the matter. It was done to create “extenuating circumstances” and “obfuscating details” in order “to deflect the legal investigation by hiding the motive for this dastardly crime.” However this assertion of atheism could not be defended, for it was observed by reliable witnesses, including prison guards and officials, that Yakov Bok, while incarcerated and awaiting trial, “though persisting in his false claim of irreligion, had in his cell secretly prayed daily in the manner of Orthodox Jews, wrapped in a prayer shawl, with black phylacteries entwined around his brow and left arm.” He was also seen piously reading an Old Testament Bible, “which, like the previously mentioned Orthodox religious instruments, had been smuggled into his cell by fellow Jews of the synagogue.” It was clear to all who observed him that he was engaged in the performance of a devout religious rite. He had continued to use the prayer shawl until he had worn it out, and “even now he kept a remnant of this sacred garment in his coat pocket.”

It was the opinion of investigators and other officials that this self-incriminating atheism “was a fabrication of Yakov Bok’s, in order to hide from the legal authorities that he had committed a vile religious murder of a child for the sole and evil purpose of providing his Hasidic compatriots with the uncorrupted human blood needed to bake the Passover matzos and unleavened cakes.”

After he had finished reading the document the fixer, in exhaustion, thought, there’s no getting rid of the blood any more. It’s stained every word of the indictment and can’t be washed out. When they try me it will be for the crucifixion.

The fixer grew more intensely worried. Now that he had this paper would they withdraw it and later issue another? Was this the newest torture? Would they hand him indictments, time after time, for the next twenty years? He would read them till he died of frustration or his dry brain exploded? Or would they, after this indictment, or the third, seventh, or thirteenth at last bring him to trial? Could they make a strong enough circumstantial case against him? He hoped they could. Anyway, just barely. If not, would they keep him in chains forever? Or were they planning a worse fate? One day as he was about to clean himself with a scrap of newspaper he read on it, “THE JEW IS DOOMED.” Yakov frantically read on to find out why, but that part was torn off.

2

He had been told a lawyer was on his way to the prison, but when the cell door was opened on a hot July night, it was not the lawyer, it was Grubeshov, in evening dress. The fixer awoke when Kogin, holding a dripping candle, unlocked his feet. “Wake up,” said the guard, shaking him, “his honor is here.” Yakov awoke as though coming up out of deep dirty water. He beheld Grubeshov’s moist fleshy face, his sidewhiskers limp, his red-shot eyes, lit, restless. The public prosecutor’s chest rose and fell. He began pacing in the cell, unsteadily, then sat down on the stool, one hand on the table, an enormous shadow on the wall behind him. He stared for a moment at the lamp, blinked at it, and gazed at Yakov. When he talked, the stink of rich food and alcohol on his breath drifted across to the fixer, nauseating him.

“I am on my way home from a civic banquet in honor of the Tsar,” Grubeshov, breathing with a whistle, said to the prisoner. “Since my motorcar happened to be in this district, I ordered the driver to go on to the prison. I thought I would speak to you. You are a stubborn man, Bok, but perhaps not yet beyond reason. I thought I would talk to you one last time. Please stand up while I am speaking.”

Yakov, sitting on the wooden bed with his bony bare feet on the clammy floor, slowly got up. Grubeshov, gazing at his face, shuddered. The fixer felt a violent hatred of him.

“First of all,” said Grubeshov, patting the back of his flushed neck with a large humid handkerchief, “you oughtn’t to let your expectations rise too