Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [80]
“What’s happened?” the fixer asked.
The guard shrugged. “The higher-ups don’t want you dying on them. You can’t try a corpse in court, as the saying goes.” He winked and laughed a little.
Maybe this means the indictment is coming, Yakov thought in excitement. They don’t want me looking like a skeleton in the court.
Not only was the food better, there was more of it. In the morning there were two extra ounces of bread and the gruel was thicker, barley with watery hot milk. And there was a half lump of sugar for the tea, which diluted the rotten taste a little. The fixer chewed slowly, savoring what he was eating. A cockroach in the bowl no longer bothered him. He plucked it out and ate, afterwards licking the bowl with his tongue. Zhitnyak brought the food into the cell and left at once. But he sometimes watched Yakov eat, through the spy hole, although the prisoner as he ate usually sat on the stool with his back to the iron door.
“How’s the soup?” Zhitnyak asked through the hole.
“Fine.”
“Eat hearty.” When Yakov had finished the guard was gone.
Though there was more to eat, the fixer hungered for more. The minute after he had eaten he was hungry. He had visions of Zhitnyak appearing one day with a huge plate of well-seasoned chicken soup, thick with broad yellow noodles, a platter of meat kreplach, and half a haleh loaf from which he would tear hunks of sweet foamy bread that melted on the tongue. He dreamed of rice and noodle pudding with raisins and cinnamon, as Raisl had deliciously baked it; and of anything that went with sour cream—blintzes, cheese kreplach, boiled potatoes, radishes, scallions, sliced crisp cucumbers. Also of juicy tomatoes of tremendous size that he had seen in Viscover’s kitchen. He sucked a ripe tomato till it dribbled from his mouth, then, to get to sleep, finally had to finish it off, thickly salted, with a piece of white bread. After such fantasies he could hardly wait for the guard to come with his breakfast; yet when it came at last he restrained himself, eating very slowly. First he chewed the bread until its hard texture and grain flavor were gone, then bit by bit swallowed it down. Usually he saved part of his ration for nighttime, in bed, when he got ravenously hungry thinking of food. After the bread he ate the gruel, sucking each barley grain as it melted in his mouth. At night he worked every spoonful of soup over his tongue, each pulpy cabbage bit and thread of meat, taking it in very small sips and swallows, at the end scraping the bowl with his blackened spoon. He was grateful for the somewhat more satisfying portions he was getting, and although he was never not hungry, after this somewhat better, more plentiful food, he was a little less hungry than he had been.
But in a week his hunger was gone. He awoke nauseated one morning and waited a long day for it to go away but only felt worse. He felt sick in his mouth, eyes, and in the pit of his bowel. It’s not asthma, he thought, then if so what’s wrong with me? His armpits and crotch itched, he was cold inside himself and his feet were ice. He also had diarrhea.
“What’s going on here?” said Zhitnyak when he entered the cell in the morning. “You didn’t eat your last night’s soup.”
“I’m sick,” said the fixer, lying in his greatcoat on the straw mattress.
“Well,” said the guard as he scrutinized the prisoner’s face, “maybe you might have jail fever.”
“Couldn’t I go to the infirmary?”
“No, you had your turn already but maybe I’ll tell the warden if I see him. In the meantime you better eat this barley gruel. It’s got hot milk in with the barley, and that’s good for sickness.”
“Couldn’t I get out in the yard for a