Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [82]
“To hell with you,” said the cross-eyed warden as he left the cell.
In a half hour he was back. “It’s not my doing,” he said. “I never gave such orders. If there’s any poisoning done it’s on the part of your fellow Jews who are the most notorious well-poisoners of all time. And don’t think I’ve forgotten your attempt, in this prison, to bribe Gronfein to poison or kill Marfa Golov so that she couldn’t testify against you in court. Now your Jewish compatriots are trying to poison you out of fear you will confess your true guilt and implicate the whole nation. We just found out that one of the cook’s assistants was a disguised Jew and packed him off to the police. He’s the one who was poisoning your food.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Yakov.
“Why would we want you to die? We want you sentenced to a severe life imprisonment as a lesson for all to see of Jewish perfidy.”
“I won’t eat what you give me. You can shoot me but I won’t eat.”
“If you expect to eat, eat what you get. If not you’ll starve.”
For the next five days Yakov starved. He exchanged the sickness of poisoning for the sickness of starving. He lay on the mattress, sleeping fitfully. Zhitnyak threatened him with a whipping but nothing came of it. On the sixth day the warden returned to the cell, his cross-eye watering and face flushed. “I command you to eat.”
“Only out of the common pot,” Yakov said weakly. “What the other prisoners eat I will eat. Let me go to the kitchen and take my gruel and soup out of the common pot.”
“It cannot be allowed,” said the warden. “You mustn’t leave your cell. You are under strict confinement. Other prisoners are not allowed to look at you. It’s all in the regulations.”
“They can turn their heads while I draw my rations.”
“No,” said the warden. But after Yakov had fasted another day he consented. Twice a day the fixer, accompanied by Zhitnyak holding his drawn pistol, went to the prison kitchen in the west wing. Yakov drew his bread rations in the morning and filled his bowl from the common pot as the prisoners working in the kitchen momentarily faced the wall. He did not fill the bowl too full because if he did Zhitnyak poured some of it back.
He returned to half starvation.
4
He begged for something to do. His hands ached of emptiness, but he got nothing. The fixer offered to repair furniture, build tables, chairs, other pieces they might need—all he asked for was a few boards and his sack of tools. He missed his crosscut saw with the taped handle, his small German plane, the hammer and tri-square. He could still feel each tool with his fingers and remembered how each worked. The sharp saw could rip through a six-inch board in ten seconds. He liked the touch and smell of wood shavings. There were times he heard in his thoughts the two-toned buzz of the crosscut and the responsible knock of the hammer. He remembered things he had built with his tools, and sometimes in his thoughts he built them again. If he had the tools—if not his own, any tools—and some pieces of wood, he might earn himself a few kopeks to buy underdrawers, a wool vest, a warm pair of socks—other things he needed. If he earned a little money he secretly hoped he might pay someone to smuggle out a letter; or if not a letter then a message to Aaron Latke. But the tools and wood were refused him, and he cracked his knuckles constantly to do something with his hands.
He asked for a newspaper, a book of some sort, anything he could read to forget the tedium. Zhitnyak said the Deputy Warden had told him reading matter was forbidden to prisoners who had violated the regulations. So were paper and pencil. “If you hadn’t written those sneaky letters you wrote, you wouldn’t be in strict confinement now.” “Where would I be then?” Yakov asked. “Better off. You might still be in the common cell.” “Do you know when my indictment is supposed to come?” “No, and neither does anybody else, so don’t ask me.” Once Yakov said, “Why did you try to poison me, Zhitnyak, what did I do to you?” “Nobody said there was poison in that food,