The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

I don’t understand it all.”
    â€œWhat is its appeal to you? First let me ask you what brought you to Spinoza? Is it that he was a Jew?”
    â€œNo, your honor. I didn’t know who or what he was when I first came across the book—they don’t exactly love him in the synagogue, if you’ve read the story of his life. I found it in a junkyard in a nearby town, paid a kopek and left cursing myself for wasting money hard to come by. Later I read through a few pages and kept on going as though there were a whirlwind at my back. As I
say, I didn’t understand every word but when you’re dealing with such ideas you feel as though you were taking a witch’s ride. After that I wasn’t the same man. That’s in a manner of speaking of course, because I’ve changed little since my youth.”
    Though he had answered freely, talking about a book with a Russian official frightened the fixer. He’s testing me, he thought. Still when all’s said and done, better questions about a book than a murdered child. I’ll tell the truth but speak slowly.
    â€œWould you mind explaining what you think Spinoza’s work means? In other words if it’s a philosophy what does it state?”
    â€œThat’s not so easy to say,” Yakov answered apologetically. “The truth is I’m a half-ignorant man. The other half is half-educated. There’s a lot I miss even when I pay the strictest attention.”
    â€œI will tell you why I ask. I ask because Spinoza is among my favorite philosophers and I am interested in his effect on others.”
    â€œIn that case,” said the fixer, partly relieved, “I’ll tell you that the book means different things according to the subject of the chapters, though it’s all united underneath. But what I think it means is that he was out to make a free man out of himself—as much as one can according to his philosophy, if you understand my meaning—by thinking things through and connecting everything up, if you’ll go along with that, your honor.”
    â€œThat isn’t a bad approach,” said Bibikov, “through the man rather than the work. But you ought to explain the philosophy a little.”
    â€œWho knows if I can,” the fixer said. “Maybe it’s that God and Nature are one and the same, and so is man, or some such thing, whether he’s poor or rich. If you understand that a man’s mind is part of God, then you understand it as well as I. In that way you’re free, if
you’re in the mind of God. If you’re there you know it. At the same time the trouble is that you are bound down by Nature, though that’s not true for God who is Nature anyway. There’s also something called Necessity, which is always there though nobody wants it, that one has to push against. In the shtetl God goes running around with the Law in both hands, but this other God, though he fills up more space, has less to do altogether. Whoever you end up believing in, nothing has changed much in the world if you’re without work. So much for Necessity. I also figure it means that life is life and there’s no sense kicking it into the grave. Either that or I don’t understand it as well as it’s said.”
    â€œIf a man is bound to Necessity where does freedom come from?”
    â€œThat’s in your thought, your honor, if your thought is in God. That’s if you believe in this kind of God; that’s if you reason it out. It’s as though a man flies over his own head on the wings of reason, or some such thing. You join the universe and forget your worries.”
    â€œDo you believe that one can be free that way?”
    â€œUp to a point,” Yakov sighed. “It sounds fine but my experience is limited. I haven’t lived much outside the small towns.”
    The magistrate smiled.
    Yakov snickered but caught himself and stopped.
    â€œIs such a