The Fixer by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online Page B

entertaining. Or if you like there’s a cinematograph to go to on the Kreshchatik.”
      Her eyes darted glances as she spoke and when he looked at her she glanced away. Afterwards the fixer, made nervous by her chatter, excused himself to go back to work, but Zina followed him up the stairs to watch him paste on the wallpaper she had selected, bunches of blue roses. She sat on a kitchen chair with her legs crossed, the good one over the crippled, and cracked and ate dried sunflower seeds, rhythmically swinging her leg as she watched him work.
      Then she lit and awkwardly smoked a cigarette.
      “You know, Yakov Ivanovitch, I couldn’t possibly treat you as an ordinary common laborer for the simple reason that you aren’t one. Certainly not in my eyes. Really you are a guest who happens to be working here because of Papa’s idiosyncratic ways. I hope you realize that?”
      “If you don’t work you don’t eat.”
      “Quite true, but you are more intelligent and even genteel—at any rate, sensitive—please don’t shake your head over that—than the average Russian laborer. I can’t tell you how exasperating they can be, particularly Ukrainians, and really we dread having repairs or improvements made. No, please don’t deny it, anyone can sense you are different. And you told Papa you believe in the necessity of an education and would like to further your own. I heard you say that and approve very much. I too love to read, and not only romances. I’m sure you’ll find excellent opportunities for yourself in the future, and if you are alert may some day be as comfortably off as Papa.”
      Yakov went on papering.
      “Poor Papa suffers dreadfully from melancholia. He gets quite drunk by nightfall and has no appetite, to speak of, for supper. He usually falls asleep in his chair, Lidya removes his shoes, and with Alexei’s help we get him to bed. At night he awakes and says his prayers. Sometimes he undresses himself, and it’s almost impossible to find his clothes in the morning. Once he put his socks under the rug, and I found his drawers, all wet, in the water closet. Usually he isn’t awake till midmorning. It’s hard on me, of course, but I can’t complain because Papa’s had a difficult life. And there’s no one to keep me company in the evening but Lidya and at times Alexei when he happens to be fixing something, but quite frankly, Yakov Ivanovitch, neither of them has an idea in his head. Alexei sleeps in the basement, and Lidya’s small room is at the back of the flat off the terrace beyond Papa’s bedroom; and since I would rather read at night than listen to her go on and on, I dismiss her early. Sometimes it gives me pleasure to be the only one up in the house at night. It’s very cozy. I light the samovar, read, write letters to old friends and crochet. Papa says I make the most remarkable lace doilies. He marvels at the intricacy of the patterns. But most of the time,” she sighed, “to tell the truth, it can be dreadfully lonely.”
      She chewed a sunflower seed disconsolately, then remarked that although she had been crippled through illness as a child, she had always been considered attractive by the opposite sex and had had more than one admirer.
      “I don’t say this to flaunt myself or be brazen but because I don’t want you to think of me as being at a disadvantage with regard to the normal experiences of life. I am nothing of the sort. I have a quite attractive figure and many men notice me, especially when I’m dressed up. Once in a restaurant a man ogled me so insistently Papa went over to him and demanded an explanation. The man humbly apologized and do you know, Yakov Ivanovitch, when I got back home I broke into sobs.”
      Gentlemen called on her of course, Zina went on, but unfortunately not always the most sensitive or worthy, a situation more than one of her friends had to put up with. Sensitive, dependable men were rare, although such persons