Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [81]
“The cell stinks because you do. You can’t go out in the yard because that’s against the regulations when you’re in strict confinement.”
“How long will I be kept that way?”
“You’d better shut up your questions. That’s for the higher-ups to say.”
Yakov ate the gruel and threw it up. He sweated violently, the mattress soaked. In the evening a doctor came into the cell, a young man with a sparse beard and brown fedora. He took the prisoner’s temperature, examined his body, and felt his pulse.
“There is no fever,” he said. “It’s some kind of harmless stomach complaint. You also have a rash. Drink your tea and never mind the solid food for a day or two, then you can go back on regular fare.”
He left quickly.
After fasting two days the fixer felt better and went back to gruel and cabbage soup, though not to black bread. He hadn’t the energy to chew it. When he touched his head hairs came off on his fingers. He felt listless, despondent. Zhitnyak watched him through the hole, peeking in from the side. The diarrhea occurred more frequently, and after it Yakov lay, enervated and panting, on the mattress. Though he was very weak he kept up the fire in the stove all day and Zhitnyak did not say no. The fixer still felt cold and nothing seemed to warm him. The one good thing was that there were now no searches.
He asked again to be sent to the infirmary but when the Deputy Warden came into the cell, he said, “Eat your food and cut out malingering. Starving is what makes you sick.”
Yakov forced himself to eat and after a few spoonfuls it was not too bad. Later he vomited. He vomited repeatedly although there was nothing left in his stomach. And at night he had terrible dreams, visions of mass slaughter that left him sleepless, moaning. When he dozed again people were being cut down by Cossacks with sabers. Yakov was shot running into the woods. Yakov, hiding under a table in his hut, was dragged forth and beheaded. Yakov, fleeing along a rutted road, had lost an arm, an eye, his bloody balls; Raisl, lying on the sanded floor, had been raped beyond caring, her fruitless guts were eviscerated. Shmuel’s split and broken body hung from a window. The fixer awoke in nausea, afraid to sleep although when he was awake the thick foul-smelling sickness was worse to bear than his nightmares. He often wished for death.
One night he dreamed of Bibikov hanging over his head and awoke with a heavy taste in his mouth, as if his tongue had turned to brass.
He sat up in fright. “PoisonI My God, they’re poisoning me!”
He wept for a while.
In the morning he would not touch the food Zhitnyak had brought in, nor drink the tea.
“Eat,” ordered the guard, “or you’ll stay sick.”
“Why don’t you shoot me?” the fixer said bitterly. “It would be easier for both of us than this bastard poison.”
Zhitnyak turned pale and hurriedly left the cell.
He returned with the Deputy Warden.
“Why do I have to spend so much time on one goddamned Jew?” said the Deputy Warden.
“You’re poisoning me,” Yakov said hoarsely. “You have no true evidence against me so you’re poisoning my food to kill me off.”
“It’s a lie,” said the Deputy Warden, “you’re out of your head.”
“I won’t eat what you give me,” Yakov cried. “I’ll fast.”
“Fast your ass off, it’ll kill you just the same.”
“Then it’s your murder.”
“Look who’s accusing other people of murder,” said the Deputy Warden, “the blood killer of a twelve-year-old Christian lad.”
“You shithead,” he said to Zhitnyak as they left the cell.
The warden soon hastily came in. “What are you complaining about now, Bok? It’s against the prison regulations to refuse food. I warn you that any more unorthodox behavior will be severely punished.”
“You’re poisoning me here,” Yakov shouted.
“I know of no poison,” the warden said sternly. “You’re inventing this tale to make us look ridiculous. The doctor reported you had a stomach cold.”
“It’s poison. I can feel it in me. My body is sick and shrunken and my hair is falling