Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [20]
“Yakov Ivanovitch,” Zina said, pouring herself another glassful of wine which she at once drank down, “do you believe in romantic love? I ask because I think you guard yourself against it.”
“Whether I do or don’t it doesn’t come easily to me.”
“I heartily agree that it oughtn’t to come too easily,” Zina said, “but it seems to me that those who are serious about life—perhaps too serious—are slow to respond to certain changes in the climate of feeling. What I mean to say, Yakov Ivanovitch, is that it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.”
“It’s possible,” he said.
“Do you love me—just a little, Yakov Ivanovitch?” she asked quickly. “I’ve sometimes noticed you looking at me as though you might. For instance, you smiled at me quite delightfully a few minutes ago, and it warmed my heart. I dare ask because you yourself are very modest and tend to be conscious—overconscious, I would say—that we are from different classes, though I believe much alike as people.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t say I love you.”
Zina flushed. Her eyelids fluttered. After a long minute she sighed and said in a smaller voice, “Very well, then, do you like me at all?”
“Yes, you have been kind to me.”
“And I like you too, indeed I do. I think you are serious and a well-informed person.”
“No, I am half an ignoramus.”
She poured herself some cherry brandy, sipped from the glass and put it down.
“Oh, Yakov Ivanovitch, please for a moment let up on your seriousness and kiss me. I dare you to kiss me.”
They got up and kissed. She groped for him, her body clinging tightly to his. He felt for an instant an anguished pity for her.
“Shall we stay here longer?” she whispered, breathing heavily, “or would you care to visit my room? You’ve seen Papa’s but not mine.”
She looked him full in the face, her green eyes lit dark, her body hot, still clinging. She seemed to him an older woman, possibly twenty-eight or nine, someone used to looking out for herself.
“Whatever you say.”
“What do you say, Yakov Ivanovitch?”
“Zinaida Nikolaevna,” he said, “excuse me for asking you this question but I don’t want to make a serious mistake. I’ve made my share of them—every kind you can think of—but there are some I don’t want to make again. If you are innocent,” he said awkwardly, “it would be better not to go any further. I say this out of respect for you.”
Zina reddened, then shrugged and said frankly, “I’m as innocent as most, no more nor less. There’s nothing to worry about in that regard.” Then she laughed selfconsciously and said, “I see you’re an old-fashioned person and I like that, although your question to me was hardly discreet.”
“If one why not another? What about your father? What I mean to ask is, is it likely he might find out if we go to your room?”
“He never has,” she said. He was momentarily surprised at her answer and then accepted it without another question. Why wrestle with a fact?
They went silently along the corridor, Zina hobbling, Yakov tiptoeing behind her, to her perfumed bedroom. The Pekinese, lying on the bed, looked at the fixer and yawned. Zina picked it up and went again down the hall to lock it in the kitchen.
Her room was full of knickknacks on numerous small tables, and pictures of kerchiefed girls on the wall. Peacock feathers stuck out from behind the frame of a mirror. In the corner of the room hung an ikon of the Holy Mother with a small red oil lamp lighted before it.
Should I stay or should I go? Yakov thought. On the one hand it’s been a long season without rain. A man is not a man for nothing. What do the Hasidim say? “Hide not from thine own flesh.” On the other hand what does this mean to me? At my age it’s nothing new. It means nothing.
When she returned he was sitting on the bed. He had taken off his shirt and undershirt.
Yakov watched uneasily as Zina, after removing her shoes, knelt at the ikon, crossed herself, and for a moment prayed.
“Are you a believer?