The Fixer by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online

comfortable in his presence, or the girl’s. Then either better not go, or tell the old man who he was indebted to and leave. But that wasn’t what he wanted to do. Yakov sweated in his thoughts, the drunkard’s two-headed eagle staring him in both eyes. He slept badly and woke with a new thought. Why not a ruble or two if it kept a Jew alive?
What better service from an anti-Semite? He recalled a Russian saying: “A fearful wolf should stay out of the forest,” but decided to go anyway, take a chance, or how would he know what went on in the world?
    So he returned to the house in the Plossky without his bag of tools, though he could not dress up, nor did he want to. Zinaida Nikolaevna, wearing an embroidered peasant blouse and skirt, with two green ribbons plaited into her hair and some strings of yellow glass beads at her throat, led him to her father’s bedroom. Nikolai Maximovitch, in a loose wadded robe with a fur collar, sat at a table by a curtained window, a huge book open before him. On the wall behind hung a large chart in the form of a tree showing by way of white printed slots on its thickest black branches the descent of Nicholas II from Adam. A framed portrait of the Tsar sitting with the pale-faced Tsarevitch hung above that. The house was overheated. The little dog snarled at the fixer and had to be carried out of the room by the cook.
    Nikolai Maximovitch rose slowly, an old man with wrinkled, red-rimmed, wet melancholy eyes, and welcomed Yakov without embarrassment. The fixer, thinking of his Black Hundreds button felt for him contempt, and a portion of the same for himself. His throat tightened. Though he wasn’t trembling he felt he might be.
    â€œNikolai Maximovitch Lebedev,” the fat Russian said, offering his soft pudgy hand. A thick gold watch-chain hung on his paunch, and his vest was dusty with snuff grains.
    Yakov, after a slight hesitation, shook hands, answering as he had planned, “Yakov Ivanovitch Dologushev.” To have given his name might have finished off the reward. Yet he felt ashamed and sweaty.
    Zinaida Nikolaevna busied herself with the samovar.
    Her father indicated a chair for the fixer.

    â€œI have a good deal to thank you for, Yakov Ivanovitch,” he said, resuming his seat. “I lost my footing in the snow, no doubt there was ice under it. You were very kind to assist me—not everyone would have. Once, under quite different circumstances—I began to drink only after the death of my beloved wife, a woman of exceptional qualities—Zina will affirm the truth of what I am saying—I fainted from illness on Fundukleyevsky Street, in front of a coffee shop, and lay on the pavement with a gash in my head for an unconscionable time before anyone—in this case a woman who had lost a son at Port Arthur—bothered to come to my assistance. Nowadays people are far less concerned about their fellow humans than in times past. Religious feeling has shrunk in the world and kindness is rare. Very rare indeed.”
    Yakov, waiting for him to come to the reward, sat tightly in the chair.
    Nikolai Maximovitch regarded the fixer’s worn sheepskin coat. He took out his snuffbox, inserted a pinch in both nostrils, blew his nose vigorously in a large white handkerchief, sneezed twice, then after a few futile attempts, succeeded in thrusting the box back into his robe pocket.
    â€œMy daughter informs me you were carrying a bag of tools yesterday. What is your trade, if I may ask?”
    â€œRepairs, et cetera, of all kinds,” Yakov answered. “I do carpentering, also painting, and roofing.”
    â€œIs that so? Are you presently employed?”
    The fixer, without thought, said he wasn’t.
    â€œWhere are you from if you don’t mind saying?” said Nikolai Maximovitch. “I ask because I have a curious nature.”
    â€œFrom the provinces,” Yakov answered; after a moment’s