Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [124]
He paused to breathe, then went on thickly. “Don’t think we don’t know that you wish to provoke just such a pogrom. We know from Secret Police reports that you are plotting to bring down on yourselves a violent reaction for revolutionary purposes—to stimulate active subversion among Socialist revolutionaries. The Tsar is informed of this, you can be sure, and is prepared to give you increased doses of the medicine I have described if you persist in trying to destroy his authority. I warn you, there is already a detachment of Ural Cossacks quartered in Kiev.”
Yakov spat on the floor.
Either Grubeshov did not see or pretended he hadn’t. Now, as though he had spent his anger, his voice became calm. “I am here to tell you this for your own good, Yakov Bok, and for the ultimate good of your fellow Jews. It’s all I will say now, absolutely all. I leave the rest to your contemplation and judgment. Have you any suggestions on how to forestall such an appalling, catastrophic—and I say frankly—useless tragedy? I appeal to your humanitarian impulses. One can imagine all sorts of compromises a person in your situation might be willing to make to tip the balance against disaster. I’m very serious. Have you something to say? If so, speak up.”
“Mr. Grubeshov, bring me to trial. I will wait for the trial, even to my death.”
“And death is what you will get. It’s on your head, Bok.”
“On yours,” said Yakov. “And for what you did to Bibikov.”
Grubeshov stared at the fixer with white eyes. The shadow of a huge bird flew off the wall. The lamps went out and the cell door clanged.
Kogin, in a foul mood, slammed the stocks on the fixer’s feet.
3
The lawyer had come and gone, Julius Ostrovsky.
He had appeared one day a few weeks after the Prosecuting Attorney’s visit, whispered with the prisoner an hour, filling his ear with what was going on, some that the fixer already had guessed, much that astonished him. He was astonished that strangers knew more than he of the public cause of his suffering and that the complications were so fantastic and endless.
“Tell me the worst,” Yakov had begged, “do you think I will ever get out of here?”
“The worst is that we don’t know the worst,” Ostrov-sky had answered. “We know you didn’t do it, the worst is they know it too but say you did. This is the worst.”
“Do you know when my trial is coming—if ever?”
“What can I answer you? They won’t tell us what’s happening today, so what can we expect to find out about tomorrow? Tomorrow they also hide from us. They hide even the most basic facts. They’re afraid that anything we might know is a Jewish trick. What else can you expect if you are fighting a deadly war and everybody pretends, who’s fighting? it’s peace. It’s a war, believe me.”
The lawyer had risen when Yakov had limped into the room. This time there was no screen separating the prisoner from his visitor. Ostrovsky had at once cautioned him with a gesture, then whispered in his ear, “Speak quietly—to the floor. They say there’s no guard outside the door but speak as if Grubeshov stands there if not the devil.”
He was past sixty, a stocky man with a lined face and baldish head from which a few gray hairs rose like stubble. He had bent legs, wore two-toned button shoes, a black cravat and a short beard.
He had, when the prisoner appeared, stared at Yakov as though unable to believe this was the one. Finally he believed and his eyes changed from surprise to concern. He spoke in intense whispered Yiddish with more than one emotion. “I will introduce myself, Mr. Bok, Julius Ostrovsky of the Kiev bar. I’m glad I’m here at last but don’t cheer yet, it’s a long way to go. Anyway, some friends sent