Fixer, The - Bernard Malamud [90]
“It’s that bastard killer of a Christian child,” a man in a knitted wool hat said. “I saw him once in a motorcar in front of Marfa Golov’s house after they arrested him.”
Some of the men in the car began to mutter among themselves.
Then the detective spoke calmly. “Everything is in good order, my friends. Don’t excite yourselves for nothing. I am accompanying the prisoner to the courthouse, where he will be indicted for his crime.”
Two bearded Jews wearing large hats hastily got off the trolley at the next stop. A third tried to speak to the prisoner but the detective waved him away.
“If they convict you,” the Jew shouted at Yakov, “cry, ‘Sh’ma, Yisroël, the Lord our God, the Lord is one!’“ He jumped off the moving trolley, and the two secret police, who had risen, sat down.
A woman in a hat with velvet flowers, when she went by, spat at the fixer. Her spittle dribbled from his beard. Soon the detective nudged him and they left the trolley at the next stop. They were trudging along on the snowy sidewalk when the detective stopped to buy an apple from a street vendor. He handed it to the fixer, who gobbled it down in three bites.
In the courthouse building Grubeshov had moved into a larger office with six desks in the anteroom. Yakov waited with the detective, nervously impatient to see the indictment. It’s strange, he thought, that an indictment of murder should be so precious, yet without it he could not make the first move to defend himself.
He was summoned into the inner office. The detective, hat in his hand, followed him in and stationed himself at attention behind the prisoner but Grubeshov dismissed him with a nod. The Prosecuting Attorney sat stolidly at a new desk regarding the prisoner with squinting eyes. Little had changed but his appearance. He looked older and if that was so, how much older did Yakov look? He saw himself as bushy-haired, bearded, swimming in his clothes, and frightened to death.
Grubeshov coughed seriously and glanced away. Yakov saw no papers on his desk. Though he had made up his mind to be controlled before this archanti-Semite, he could not help himself and began to shiver. He had been trembling within and had suppressed it, but when he thought of what had happened to Bibikov, and how he himself had been treated and what he had endured because of Grubeshov, a bone of hatred thickened in his throat and his body shook. It trembled violently as though it were trying to expel a poisonous substance. And though he was ashamed to be shivering as though feverish or freezing in front of this man, he could not stop it.
The Prosecuting Attorney looked on in puzzlement for a minute. “Are you suffering a chill, Bok?” The slightly thick voice attempted sympathy.
The fixer, still uncontrollably shaking, said he was.
“Have you been ill?”
Yakov nodded, trying to mask his contempt for the man.
“A pity,” said the prosecutor. “Well, sit down and try to control yourself. Let’s get on with other matters.”
Unlocking his desk drawer, he took out a pack of closely typewritten long sheets of blue paper. There were about twenty pages.
My God, so many? Yakov thought. His trembling subsided and he sat forward anxiously.
“So,” said Grubeshov, smiling as though he understood the matter for the first time, “you have come for the indictment?” He fingered the papers.
The fixer, staring at them, wet his lips.
“I suppose you find incarceration a not very pleasant experience?”
Though moved to shriek, Yakov nodded.
“Has it altered your thinking, yet?”
“Not of my innocence.”
Grubeshov laughed a little, pushing his chair away from the desk. “A stubborn man walks with both feet tied. I am surprised at you, Bok. I wouldn’t exactly have called you stupid. I think you know your future is nil if you continue to be stubborn.”
“Please, when can I see a lawyer?”
“A lawyer won’t do you the least good. You may take my word for it.”
The fixer sat tensely,