The Fixer by Bernard Malamud Page B

guard and give him the paper. Be accurate in everything you say. I’ll leave the candle with you.”

    Yakov stared at the paper.
    â€œI have to hurry now. My boy has a fever. My wife gets frantic.” The Investigating Magistrate buttoned his fur coat and put on a wide-brimmed black fedora that looked large for his head.
    Nodding to the prisoner, he said quietly, “Whatever happens you must have fortitude.”
    â€œMy God, what can happen? I’m an innocent man.”
    Bibikov shrugged. “It’s a touchy thing.”
    â€œHave mercy, your honor; I’ve had little in my life.”
    â€œMercy is for God, I depend on the law. The law will protect you.”
    He called the guard and left the cell. As the door was being locked he hurried away in the dimly lit corridor.
    The fixer felt at once a sense of intense loss.
    â€œWhen will you come back?” he shouted after him.
    â€œTomorrow.” A distant door shut. The footsteps were gone.
    â€œIt’s a long tomorrow,” said the guard.

2
    The next morning a new guard unlocked the cell, searched Yakov thoroughly for the third time since he had awakened, manacled him tightly with heavy handcuffs attached by a short thick chain, and in the presence of two other armed guards, one of whom cursed the prisoner and prodded him with his pistol, escorted Yakov, about as dead as he was alive, up two flights of narrow booming wooden stairs into the Investigating Magistrate’s office. In the large anteroom some clerks in uniform sat at long tables scratching on paper with wet pens. They gazed at him with intense interest, then looked at each other. Yakov was led into a brown-walled smaller office. Bibikov was standing at an open window, waving his hand back and forth to thin out the cigarette
smoke. As Yakov entered he quickly shut the window and seated himself in a chair at the head of a long table. The room contained a bulky desk, several shelves of thick books, two large green shaded lamps, and a small ikon in the corner; on the wall hung a large sepia portrait of Tsar Nicholas II, bemedaled and immaculately barbered, staring critically at the fixer. The picture added to his discomfort.
    The only other person in the room was Bibikov’s assistant, a pimply-faced man in his thirties, with a thin beard through which his small chin was visible. He was sitting next to the magistrate at the short end of the table, and Yakov was told to take his seat at the other end. The three escorting guards at the magistrate’s request waited in the antechamber. He, after barely glancing at the prisoner—almost distastefully the fixer thought—fished among some official documents in a pile before him and drew forth a thick one whose pages he thumbed through. He whispered something to the assistant, who filled a heavy fountain pen from a large bottle of black ink, wiped the nib with an ink-stained rag, and began to write quickly in a notebook.
    Bibikov, looking ill-at-ease and tired, seemed changed from last night, and for a moment Yakov nervously wondered if it was the same man. His head was large, with a broad forehead and a pelt of dark graying hair. As he read he nibbled on his thin underlip; then he put down the paper, blew at his pince-nez, adjusted them with care and sipped from a glass of water. He spoke in a voice without warmth, addressing the fixer across the table: “I will now read you a portion of the deposition of Nikolai Maximovitch Lebedev, factory owner of the Lukianovsky District; that is, his factory is in the Lukianovsky—” Then his official voice changed and he said quietly, “Yakov Shepsovitch Bok, you are in a difficult situation and we must straighten things out. Listen first
to a statement of the witness Lebedev. He says it was your intent from the outset to deceive him.”
    â€œIt isn’t true, your honor!”
    â€œJust one minute. Please contain yourself.”
    Bibikov took up the