Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [50]
“Let her go on with the story,” Grubeshov said to Bi-bikov. “If necessary you can ask questions later.”
The Investigating Magistrate nodded to his colleague. “I assure you it’s necessary enough, Vladislav Grigorie-vitch, but as you please, I’ll ask later. As for what else may be necessary, or even not so necessary, for instance this entire procedure during a time of investigation, I think we ought to discuss that too, at least in principle if for no other reason.”
“Tomorrow,” said Grubeshov. “We’ll talk over everything tomorrow.”
“Come now to the point of the matter, Marfa Vladimirovna,” he said. “Tell us what Zhenia and Vasya Shiskovsky told you about the Jew before the fatal incident.”
Marfa had listened intently to the exchange between the men, alternating uneasiness with apparent boredom. When Bibikov was speaking she cast nervous glances around her but lowered her eyes if anyone looked at her.
“Vasya also told me what I heard Zhenia say more than once—that they were afraid of the Jew in the brickyard.”
“Go on, we’re listening.”
“Zhenia told me that one day when he and Vasya were playing in the factory yard they saw two Jews—it was toward nightfall—sneak through the gate and go up the stairs where this one lived.”
She glanced at the fixer, then averted her eyes. He was standing with his head bowed.
“Excuse me for interrupting,” Bibikov said to the Prosecuting Attorney, “but I would like to understand how the boys identified the two men as Jews?”
Colonel Bodyansky guffawed and Grubeshov smiled.
“Easily, your honor,” Marfa said in excitement, “they were wearing Jewish clothes and had long rough beards, not nicely trimmed ones like some of the gentlemen here. Also the boys used to peek in the window and saw them praying. They wore black hats and robes. The boys were frightened and ran home here. I asked Vasya to stay for a cup of cocoa and slice of white bread with Zhenia, but he was scared sick and said he wanted to go home to his own house.”
Grubeshov listened, standing with his thumbs locked behind him. “Please go on.”
“I heard from the boys that this one here brought other Jews up in his stable. One was an old man with a black satchel that the Lord knows what they did with. Zhenia once told this one to his face that he would tell the foreman if he chased him again. ‘And if you do that I’ll kill you once and for all,’ said the Jew. One day Zhenia saw him running after another boy in the brickyard, a lad not eight years old from the neighborhood around here, Andriushka Khototov, whose father is a street sweeper. The boy luckily got out through the open gate, thank the Lord. Then the Jew saw my Zhenia and chased him, but my Zhenia climbed the fence and escaped that time, though he told me his heart hurt because he did not think he would get over the fence before the Jew grabbed him. One day, hiding by the kiln, Zhenia saw two of the Jews try to catch a Russian child and drag him into the stable. But the boy was a smart one and bit, clawed, and screamed so loud they got frightened and let him go. I warned Zhenia more than once not to go back there or he might get kidnapped and killed, and he promised me he wouldn’t. I think he didn’t for a time, then one night he came home frightened and feverish, and when I cried out, ‘Zhenia, what ails you, tell me quickly what happened?’ he said that the Jew had chased him with a long knife in the dark among the gravestones in the cemetery. I got down on my knees to him. ‘Zhenia Golov, in the name of the Holy Mother, promise me not to go near that evil Jew again. Don’t go in that brickyard.’ ‘Yes, dear Mamenka,’ he said, ‘I will promise.’ That’s what he said, but he went back in there again, anyway. Boys are boys, your honor, as you already know. God knows what draws them to danger, but if I had kept him under lock and key in this house