Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [55]
He had turned to the officials. They had listened courteously, even the two Black Hundreds representatives, though the shorter of them could not hide the distaste he felt for the fixer. The other now walked away. One man in a round cloth cap smiled sweetly at Yakov, then gazed impassively into the far distance where the golden cupolas of a cathedral rose above the trees.
“You’d be better off confessing,” Grubeshov said, “instead of raising this useless stink.” He asked the priest’s pardon for his language.
“Confessing what, your honor, if as I told you I didn’t do it? I can confess to you some things but I can’t confess this crime. You’ll have to excuse me there—I didn’t do it. Why would I do such a thing anyway? You’re mistaken, your honor. Somebody has made a serious mistake.”
But no one would admit it and a heavy sadness settled on him.
“Confessing how it was done,” Grubeshov replied. “How you enticed the boy into the stable with sweets, and then two or three of you pounced on him, gagged his mouth, tied him hand and foot, and dragged him up the stairs to your habitat. There you prayed over him with those black hats and robes on, undressed the frightened child, and began to stab him in certain places, twelve stabs first, then another making thirteen wounds—thirteen each in the region of the heart, on the neck, from which most of the blood is drawn, and on the face—according to your cabalistic books. You tormented and terrified him, enjoying the full shuddering terror of the child victim and his piteous pleas for mercy, in the meanwhile collecting his dripping lifeblood into bottles until you had bled him white. The five or six litres of warm blood you put into a black satchel, and this, if I understand the custom, was delivered by a hunchback Jew to the synagogue in time for making the matzos and afikomen. And when poor Zhenia Golov’s heart was drained of blood and he lay on the floor lifeless, you and the tzadik Jew with the white stockings picked him up and carried him here in the dead of night and left his corpse in the cave. Then you both ate bread and salt so that his ghost would not haunt you and hurried away before the sun rose. Fearing the discovery of the bloodstains on your floor, you later sent one of your Jews to burn down Nikolai Maximovitch’s stable. That is what you ought to confess.”
The fixer, moaning, wrung his hands and beat them against his chest. He looked for Bibikov but the Investigating Magistrate and his assistant had disappeared.
“Take him up to the cave,” Grubeshov ordered the guards.
Shutting his umbrella, he quickly preceded them, scampering up the steps, and entered the cave.
The leg chains were too short for Yakov to climb the steep steps, so he was seized under the arms by two of the gendarmes and dragged and pushed up, the other guards following directly behind. Then one guard went into the cave and the others shoved the fixer in through the narrow stone opening.
Inside the dank cave, smelling of death, in the dim light of a semicircle of dripping candles fastened on the wall, Grubeshov produced Yakov’s tool sack.
“Aren’t these your tools, Yakov Bok? They were found in your habitat in the stable by the driver Rich-ter.”
Yakov identified them in the candlelight.
“Yes, your honor, I’ve had them for years.”
“Look at this rusty knife and these awls cleansed of blood with this rag, and now deny these instruments were used by you and your gang of Jews to perforate