Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [36]
“That is already noted. I’ve examined the passport and your remarks are substantially correct. However, that isn’t the matter I was about to bring up.”
“It was only in the Lukianovsky, if you’ll excuse me, your honor, that I didn’t register. That was where I made a mistake.”
“That is also noted.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to mention that I served for a short time in the Russian Army,”
“Noted. A very short time, less than a year. You were discharged for illness, were you not?”
“Also because the war was over. There was no use for any more soldiers at that time.”
“What was the illness?”
“Attacks of asthma, on and off. I would never know when they would hit me next.”
“Are you still troubled with this ailment?” the magistrate said conversationally. “I ask because my son has asthma.”
“Mostly it’s cleared up though sometimes on a windy day I find it hard to draw a breath.”
“I’m glad it’s cleared up. Now permit me to go on to the next item. I will read from the deposition of Zinaida Nikolaevna Lebedev, spinster, age thirty.”
This is terrible, the fixer thought, squeezing his hands. Where will it all end?
The door opened. The magistrate and his assistant looked up as two officials strode into the room. One, in a red and blue uniform with gold epaulets, was the officer who had arrested Yakov, Colonal Bodyansky, a heavy man with a cropped red mustache. The other was the Prosecuting Attorney Grubeshov, Procurator of the Kiev Superior Court. He had that morning gone down to stare at the fixer in his cell without addressing a word to him. Yakov had stood frozen against the wall. Five minutes later the prosecutor had walked away, leaving him in a sweaty state of unrest.
Grubeshov placed on the table a worn portfolio with straps. He was a stoutish man with a fleshy face, sidewhis-kers, thick eyebrows and hawklike eyes. A roll of flesh on the neck hung over his stiff collar, the tabs of which were bent over a black bow tie. He wore a dark suit with a soiled yellow vest and seemed to be repressing excitement. Yakov was again apprehensive.
Bibikov’s assistant had at once arisen and bowed. At a warning glance from the magistrate, the fixer hastily got up and remained standing.
“Good morning, Vladislav Grigorievitch,” said Bibi-kov, a little flustered. “Good morning, Colonel Bodyansky, I am examining the suspect. Kindly be seated. Ivan Semyonovitch, please shut the door.”
The colonel brushed his fingers over his mustache, and the Prosecuting Attorney, smiling slightly at nothing in particular, nodded. Yakov, at the magistrate’s signal, shakily resumed his seat. Both officials studied him, the Prosecuting Attorney, once more intently, almost as though appraising the fixer’s health, weight, stamina, sending chills down his back; or as though he were a new animal in the zoo. But the colonel looked through him as though he did not exist.
He wearily wished he didn’t.
Bibikov read part way down the typewritten first page of the paper in his hand, then flipped through several more pages before he glanced up.
“Ah, I have it here,” he said, clearing his throat. “This is the key statement: ‘Z. N. Lebedev: I felt from the first he was different or odd in some way but could not guess how basically so, or I would never have had anything to do with him, you may believe me. He seemed to me somewhat foreign, but I explained to myself that he was from the provinces and obviously lacking in education and cultivation. I can only say I was on the whole uncomfortable in his presence, although of course truly grateful that he had assisted Papa that time he slipped in the snow. Afterwards I detested him because he tried to assault me. I told him firmly I never wished to see him again—’ “
“It’s not true, I didn’t assault her,” Yakov said, half rising. “It’s not true at all.”
“Please,” said Bibikov, staring at him in astonishment.
“Silence,” said Colonel Bodyansky, pounding his fist on the table.