Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [74]
“No, no,” cried Yakov. “I don’t believe in superstition.”
The Investigating Magistrate lit a rose-papered cigarette and sat silent; then tried to say something and began to fade. He slowly disappeared in the dark, his white self dimming, as though evening had come and then night; and the soft glow of the cigarette diminished until it was out. All that remained was the dark memory of him hanging from the window, his bulbous eyes staring at his smashed glasses on the floor.
All night the fixer sat huddled in the corner of the cell, filled with the dread of dying. If he slept a minute his sleep was steeped in the taste, smell, horror of dying. He lay motionless in a graveyard, rigid, terrified. In the black sky were black stars. If he stirred he would topple into an open grave, amid the rotting dead, their dead flesh and putrefying bones. But more than death he feared torture. He feared being torn and broken before he died. He saw them dragging into the cell terrible instruments, monstrous wooden machines that racked and crushed the body; they hung his remains from a window bar. At dawn, when the dirty eye staring through the hole in the door touched him, he woke from shadowy sleep begging for his life. As the door creaked open he cried out; but the guards did not strangle him. One of them, with his foot, shoved in a bowl of gruel without a cockroach in it.
All day the fixer walked in his cell, sometimes he ran, five steps, three, five, three, breaking the circuit to hurl himself against the wall, or smash his fists against the metal door with prolonged cries of grief. He mourned Bibikov with great sorrow, great bitterness. For weeks he had lived with this potential savior in his thoughts, this just and gentle man; depended on him somehow to free him from prison, the trap laid for him, from the crime itself, the horrifying accusation. His only peace had come from these thoughts, that a good man was assisting him, and because of him, when the trial came, he would be judged not guilty. He had pictured himself freed, hurrying back to the shtetl, or running off to America if he could raise the funds. But now these hopes and expectations, these reveries on which he had lived, were gone, snatched from him without warning. Who would help him now, what could he hope for? Where Bibikov had lived in his mind was a hopeless hole. Who would now expose the murderess, Marfa Golov, and her accomplices, and proclaim his innocence to the newspapers? Suppose she left Kiev, fled to another city—or country—would they ever lay eyes on her again? How would the world ever learn about the injustice that had been committed against an innocent man? Who could help him if no one but his jailers knew where he was? For aught he meant to anyone, Yakov Bok did not exist. If they had no plans to kill him outright, then they would kill him slowly by burying him alive in prison forever.
“Mama-Papa,” he cried out, “save me! Shmuel, Raisl —anybody—save me! Somebody save me!” He walked in circles, forgetting he was walking, inventing fantastic plans to escape, each making his heart ache because each was impossible. He walked all day and into the night, until his shoes fell apart, and then walked in his bare feet on the lacerating floor. He walked in almost liquid heat with nowhere to go but his circular entrapment, striking himself on his journey—his chest, face, head, tearing his flesh, lamenting his life.
His crooked feet hurt unbearably. Yakov lay down in exhaustion on the floor. Torture by his own instrument —pain of body on deep depression. His pulpy feet, the soles covered with live scabs and red pussing sores, were like bags blown up about to burst. Then the ankles disappeared as the swelling moved up his legs. The fixer lay on his back, breathing badly, noisily. At least if it were cooler. How long can I stand this? His feet felt as though they were bound in chains and laid on fire. Both legs bulged to the knees. He lay on his back wishing for death. A cold eye stared at him. Ultimately he placed it at the