The Fixer by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online Page A

and honest in her way, though she makes me uneasy, and as for the old man, maybe I misjudged him. How many goyim have I known in my life? Maybe someone stuck that Black Hundreds pin on his coat when he was drunk in the tavern. Still, if it’s really his own I’d like to ask him straight out, “Nikolai Maximovitch, will you please explain how you can cry for a dead dog yet belong to a society of fanatics that urges death on human beings who happen to be Jews? Explain to me the logic of it.” Then let him answer that.
      What also troubled the fixer was that once he went to work, even though the “reward” made it different from work though not less than work, he might be asked to produce his passport, a document stamped “Religious Denomination: Judaic,” which would at once tell Nikolai Maximovitch what he was hiding from him. He chewed his lips over that but decided that if the passport was asked for he would say the police in the Podol had it; and if Nikolai Maximovitch insisted he must produce it, that was the time to quit or there would be serious trouble. It was therefore a gamble, but if you were against gambling, stop playing cards. He guessed the Russian was probably too muddled to ask for the passport although he was required to by law. Still, after all, it was a reward, maybe he wouldn’t. Yakov was now somewhat sorry he hadn’t at once identified himself as a Jew by birth. If that had killed off the reward, at least there would be no self-contempt. The more one hides the more he has to.
      He did an expert job on the flat—scraped the walls clean of paper, and the ceilings of flakes and loose patches. He plastered where he had to, then thickly calcimined the ceilings—nothing but the best for Nikolai Maximovitch. And he pasted the wallpaper neatly though his experience with papering was limited—in the shtetl only Viskover, the Nogid, was that fancy. Yakov worked all day and into the night by yellow gaslight to get the job done, collect his rubles, and disappear. The landlord, stopping now and then to catch his breath, labored up the stairs each morning to see how the work was progressing, and expressed himself as most pleased. In the afternoon he got out his vodka bottle, into which he had cut strips of orange peel, and by sunset was drunk. Zina, unseen during the day, sent up the cook, Lidya, with a snack at lunchtime—a fish pie, bowl of borscht, or some meat dumplings so delicious it seemed to the fixer he would have done the job for the food alone.
      One night Zina limped up the stairs, expressing surprise he was working so late. She asked Yakov if he had eaten since lunch, and when he said he was not hungry she suggested, nervously laughing, that he eat supper with her, Papa having already retired and she liking company. The fixer, greatly surprised by the invitation, begged off. He had, he explained, too much to do, and apologized for his clothes. Zina said not to mind that. “Clothes can be shed in a minute, Yakov Ivanovitch, but whether they are or not cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes. Besides I don’t care for excessive formality.” He thanked her but said he couldn’t take the time off from work. There were two more rooms to do. The next evening she came up again and somewhat agitatedly confessed she was lonely; so they ate together in the kitchen downstairs. She had dismissed Lidya and throughout the meal talked constantly, mostly of her childhood, the young ladies’ school she had attended, and the pleasures of Kiev in the summertime.
      “Days are long and hot, but nights are languorous and starlit. People refresh themselves in their flower gardens and some walk in the parks, drink kvass and lemonade, and listen to the symphonies. Have you ever heard Pagliacci , Yakov Ivanovitch? I think you would love Marinsky Park.”
      He said he did not mind parks.
      “The Contract Fair opens in the spring, it’s most