Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [29]
He delivered the prisoner first to Secret Police Headquarters, a one-story brown building in a side street; then after a long annoyed telephone conversation, fragments of which the frightened prisoner sitting on a bench in an anteroom surrounded by gendarmes, overheard, the colonel escorted Yakov directly to an underground cell in the District Courthouse, leaving behind two gendarmes who patrolled the corridor with naked sabers. Yakov, alone in the cell, wringing his hands, cried out, “My God, what have I done to myself? I’m in the hands of enemies!” He hit his chest with his fist, bewailed his fate, envisioned terrible things happening to him, ending by being torn apart by a mob. Yet there were also moments of sudden hope when he felt that if he only explained why he had done what he had done, he would be at once released. He had stupidly pretended to be somebody he wasn’t, hoping it would create “opportunities,” had learned otherwise^—the wrong opportunities—and was paying for learning. If they let him go now he had suffered enough. He blamed also egotism and foolish ambition, considering who he was, and promised himself it would be different in the future. He had learned his lesson—again. Then he jumped up and cried aloud, “What future?” but nobody answered. When an orderly brought in tea and black bread, he could not eat though he had eaten nothing that day. As the day wore on he groaned often, tore his hair with both fists, and knocked his head repeatedly against the wall. A gendarme saw him and strictly forbade it.
Towards evening, the prisoner, sitting immobile on a thin mattress on the floor, heard footsteps in the corridor other than the measured tread of the armed guard who had replaced the two gendarmes. Yakov scrambled to his feet. A man of medium height carrying a black hat and fur coat hurried along the dimly lit corridor to the dark cell. He ordered the guard to open the cell door, lock him in with the prisoner, and leave. The guard hesitated. The man waited patiently.
“I was ordered not to leave, if it’s all the same to your honor,” said the guard. “The Prosecuting Attorney said not to let the Jew out of my sight because it’s a most important case. That’s what I was told by his assistant.”
“I am here on official business and will call you when I need you. Wait outside the corridor door.”
The guard reluctantly opened the cell, locked the man in with Yakov and left. The man watched till the guard had gone, then took a candle stub out of his coat pocket, lit it and set it in some drops of wet wax in a saucer. He held the saucer in his hand, studying Yakov for a long moment, then put it down on the table in the cell. Seeing his cold breath in the light he drew on his fur coat. “I am subject to lingering colds.” He wore a darkish beard, pince-nez, and a thick scarf wrapped around his neck. Facing the fixer, who was standing stiffly at attention, inwardly trembling, he introduced himself in a quiet resonant voice.
“I am B. A. Bibikov, Investigating Magistrate for Cases of Extraordinary Importance. Please kindly identify yourself.”
“Yakov Shepsovitch Bok, your honor, though there’s nothing extraordinary about my foolish mistakes.”
“You are not Yakov Ivanovitch Dologushev?”
“That was a stupid deception. I admit it at once.”
Bibikov adjusted his glasses and looked at him in silence. He lifted the candle to light a cigarette, then changed his mind, set it down, and thrust the cigarette into his pocket.
“Tell me truly,” said the Investigating Magistrate in a severe voice, “did you murder that unfortunate child?”
A fog of blackness rose before Yakov’s eyes.
“Never! Never!” he cried hoarsely. “Why would I kill an innocent child? How could I have done it? For years I wanted a child but my luck was bad and my wife couldn’t have one. If in no other