Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [135]
I’m off, thought the fixer, for better or worse, and if it’s worse it’ll be worse than it was.
He sat for a while shrunken in loneliness, then through a window saw a bird in the sky and watched with emotion until he could no longer see it. The weak sun stained the thin drifting clouds and for a minute snow flurried in different directions. In a wood not far from the road the oaks retained their bronze leaves but the large chestnut trees were black and barren. Yakov, seeing them in memory in full bloom, regretted the seasons he had missed and the years of his youth lost in prison.
Though still stunned by Kogin’s death he felt, finally, the relief of motion, though to what fate who could say? Yet on the move at last to the courthouse, his trial about to take place, they said, a full three years from the time he had left the shtetl and ridden to Kiev. Then as they passed the brick wall of a factory, its chimneys pouring out coal smoke whipped by the wind into the sky, he caught a reflected glimpse of a faded shrunken Jew in the circle of window and hid from him, but could not, a minute later, from the memory of his gaunt face, its darkened stringy beard white around the bitter mouth, and though he would not weep for himself, his palms, when he rubbed his eyes, were wet.
At the factory gate five or six workers had turned to watch the procession; but when it bad gone a.verst into the business district, the fixer looked up in astonishment at the masses of people gathered on both sides of the street. Though it was early morning the crowds stretched along, five and six deep, laborers and civil servants on their way to work, shopkeepers, peasants in sheepskin coats, women in shawls and a few in hats, a scattering of military cadets and soldiers, and here and there a gray-robed monk or priest staring at the carriage. The trolleys were stopped, passengers rising from their seats to look out the windows as the Cossack riders and lumbering coach passed by. In the sidestreets the police held up carriages and motorcars, and bullock carts from the provinces, piled high with vegetables and grains, or loaded with cans of milk. Along the route to the courthouse mounted police were stationed at intervals to keep order. Yakov moved from one window to another to see the crowds.
“Yakov Bok!” he called out. “Yakov Bok!”
The Cossack riding on the left side of the carriage, a thick-shouldered man with overhanging brows and a mustache turning gray, gazed impassively ahead; but the rider cantering along on the door side, a youth of twenty or so on a gray mare, from time to time stole a glance at Yakov when he was staring out the window, as though trying to measure his guilt or innocence.
“Innocent!” the fixer cried out to him. “Innocent!” And though he had no reason to, he smiled a little at the Cossack for his youth and good looks, and for being, as such things go, a free man, give or take a little. The Cossack then rode forward as the mare, raising her tail, dropped a steaming load on the street at which a schoolboy pointed.
Amid the crowd were a few Jews watching with commiseration or fear. Most of the Russian faces were impassive, though some showed hostility and some loathing. A shopkeeper in a smock spat at the carriage. Two boys hooted. Some of the men in the crowd wore Black Hundreds buttons and when Yakov, out of one window then quickly the other, saw how many of them there were at this place, he grew apprehensive. Where there was one there were a hundred. A man with a strained face and deadly eyes threw his hand into the air as though it had caught on fire. The fixer’s scrotum shrank painfully and he tore at his chest with his fingers as a black bird seemed to fly out of the white hand clawing