Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [48]
“The floor may be dusty,” Marfa said quickly, “but I always empty the chamber pot.”
“Never mind that,” said Grubeshov distastefully. “Well, what have you discovered?” he asked Bibikov.
“Nothing.”
The Investigating Magistrate glanced quickly into Marfa’s bedroom and stopped at the locked door of the other room as if he were listening, but did not try the knob. He then wandered downstairs. Marfa hurriedly attempted to make the boy’s bed up but Grubeshov ordered her to leave it alone.
“It will take me only a minute.”
“Leave it as it is. The police prefer it that way.”
They went downstairs. Although it was drizzling outside, some of the officials were gathered in the yard. The others, including the prisoner and gendarmes who guarded him, met in Marfa’s dusty disordered parlor that smelled of tobacco smoke, stale sweet beer, and cabbage. At Grubeshov’s request, she pulled open the window vent, and with a dirty rag hastily wiped the seats of a half dozen chairs nobody sat down in. The prisoner was afraid to sit. Marfa tried to do something to the floor with a broom but the Prosecuting Attorney took it from her.
“This can wait, Marfa Vladimirovna. Please give us your fullest attention.”
“I just thought I’d clean up a bit,” she hurriedly explained. “To tell the truth, I wasn’t expecting so many high officials. I thought the prisoner was coming to see what he had done and why should I clean up for a dirty Jew?”
“That’ll do,” Grubeshov said. “We’re not interested in your household affairs. Go now into the story of what happened to your son.”
“Ever since he was little he wanted to be a priest,” Marfa wept, “but now he’s a dead corpse in his grave.”
“Yes, we all know that and it’s a tragic story, but perhaps you ought to limit yourself to what you know about the details leading up to the crime.”
“First shouldn’t I serve tea, do you think, your honor?” she asked, distracted. “The samovar’s boiling.”
“No,” he said. “We are very busy and have much to do before we can return to our homes. Please tell the story—specifically of Zhenia’s disappearance and death —how, for instance, you learned of it.”
“You,” he said to Yakov, who was gazing out the window at the rain in the chestnut trees, “you know well this concerns you so pay attention.” In the time the fixer had been in prison the city had turned green and there were sweet-smelling lilacs everywhere but who could enjoy them? Through the open window he could smell the wet grass and new leaves, and where the cemetery ended there were birches with silver trunks. Somewhere nearby an organ grinder was playing a waltz that Zinaida Nikolaevna had played for him once on her guitar, “Summer Is Gone Forever.”
“Go on, please,” Grubeshov said to Marfa.
She lifted both hands to straighten her hat, then caught his eye and dropped them.
“He was an earnest boy,” Marfa quickly began, “and never gave me much trouble as boys do. As for myself I’m a widow of stainless character, pure and simple. My husband, who was a telegrapher, deserted me, as I mentioned before, your honor, and a couple of years later died of galloping consumption, which served him right for the way he mistreated us. I support myself by hard work and that’s why my house that you’re in isn’t the neatest, but my child has always had a roof over his head, and my life has been one of irreproachable toil. If you work like a horse you can’t live like the gentry, if you’ll pardon my frankness. We got along without the deserter. This house doesn’t belong to me, I rent it and sometimes let out a room or two, though one has to be careful of riffraff, especially those not given to paying what they owe to others. I didn’t want my child associating with such, so I rarely took boarders in—even though I had to work that much harder—and then only if they were genteel people. But even if he didn’t have all the advantages, Zhenia had what he needed and wasn’t above showing