Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [73]
If he had forgotten the man he suddenly remembered him. One night a distant moaning broke into his sleep. He awoke and heard nothing. The fixer beat on the wall with his heavy shoe but there was no response. He dreamed he heard footsteps in the corridor, then a smothered cry awakened him again, terrified. Something’s wrong, he thought, I must hide. A cell door clanged and there were steps of more than one man in the corridor. Yakov waited tensely in the pitch gloom, about to cry out if his door moved, but the steps went past his cell. The heavy door at the end of the corridor thumped shut, a key turned in the lock, and that was the end of the noise. In the terrible silence that followed, he could not get back to sleep. He beat on the wall with both broken shoes, shouting until he was hoarse, but could rouse no response. The next morning he was not brought food. They are leaving me to die, he thought. But at noon, a drunken guard came in with his soup and bread, muttering to himself. He spilled half the soup over Yakov before the prisoner could grab the bowl.
“Here he kills a Russian child and lords it over us,” the guard muttered, his breath thick with alcohol.
When he had gone it came to the fixer, as he was very slowly chewing his black bread, that the guard had not locked and bolted the door. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. He got up in excitement, thrust two fingers through the peephole and almost fainted as the door slowly opened inward.
Yakov was overwhelmed in confusion and fright. If I step out they’ll kill me for sure. Someone must be waiting on the outside. He peered through the hole but could see no one. Then he shut the door softly and waited.
An hour, if not longer, went by. Again he opened the creaking door and this time quickly looked into the hall. To the right, at the end of the cell block the concrete door stood ajar. Had the drunken guard forgotten to lock that too? Yakov slunk along the corridor, stopped a few feet from the door and at once hurried back. Yet he did not go into his cell. Once more he approached the heavy door and was about to pull it open when it came to him thunderously that he was acting faster than he could think. So he ran back to his cell, entered, and slammed the door shut. There he waited, his flesh freezing, his heart a growing pain. No one came. But the fixer had thought it out and was certain the guard had left the door open on purpose. If he went through it and sneaked down the stairs, at the bottom another guard would confront him, the one with the stupid eyes. He would look at Yakov and slowly raise his pistol. In the prison log the warden would write: “The prisoner Yakov Bok shot in the stomach while attempting to escape.”
But he slid out into the corridor again, his thoughts flooded with freedom, this time going the other way, astonished he hadn’t thought of that before. He looked cautiously to the left and right, then peered through the peephole into the other prisoner’s cell. A bearded man, swinging gently, hung from a leather belt tied to the middle bar of the open window, a fallen stool nearby. He was staring down where his pince-nez lay smashed on the floor under his small dangling feet.
It took the fixer an age to admit it was Bibikov.
VI
In the luminous dark the ghost of Bibikov appeared wearing a large white hat. He had no glasses pinched to his nose, they were gone, and he rubbed the bridge in embarrassment.
“A terrible thing has happened, Yakov Shepsovitch. These men are without