The Fixer Read Free

wanted to run away from here the minute you got married but you wouldn’t go.”
      “It’s true,” said Yakov, “it was my fault. I thought it couldn’t get worse so it must get better. I was wrong both ways so now enough is enough. I’m on my way at last.”
      “Outside the Pale only wealthy Jews and the professional classes can get residence certificates. The Tsar doesn’t want poor Jews all over his land, and Stolypin, may his lungs collapse, urges him on. Ptu!” Shmuel spat through two fingers.
      “Since I can’t be a professional on account of lack of education I wouldn’t mind being wealthy. As the saying goes, I’d sell my last shirt to be a millionaire. Maybe, by luck, I’ll make my fortune in the outside world.”
      “What’s in the world,” Shmuel said, “is in the shtetl— people, their trials, worries, circumstances. But here at least God is with us.”
      “He’s with us till the Cossacks come galloping, then he’s elsewhere. He’s in the outhouse, that’s where he is.”
      The peddler grimaced but let the remark pass. “Almost fifty thousand Jews live in Kiev,” he said, “restricted to a few districts, and all in the way of the first blow that falls if a new pogrom should come. And it will fall faster in the larger places than it falls here. When we hear their cries we will rush into the woods. Why should you walk straight into the hands of the Black Hundreds, may they hang by their tongues?”
      “The truth of it is I’m a man full of wants I’ll never satisfy, at least not here. It’s time to get out and take a chance. Change your place change your luck, people say.”
      “Since the last year or so, Yakov, you’re a different man. What wants are so important?”
      “Those that can’t sleep and keep me awake for company. I’ve told you what wants: a full stomach now and then. A job that pays rubles, not noodles. Even some education if I can get it, and I don’t mean workmen studying Torah after hours. I’ve had my share of that. What I want to know is what’s going on in the world.”
      “That’s all in the Torah, there’s no end to it. Stay away from the wrong books, Yakov, the impure.”
      “There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.”
      Shmuel unstuck his hat and wiped his brow with his handkerchief.
      “Yakov, if you want to go to foreign parts, Turks or no Turks, why not to Palestine where a Jew can see Jewish trees and mountains, and breathe the Jewish air? If I had half a chance there’s where I’d go.”
      “All I’ve had in this miserable town is a beggarly existence. Now I’ll try Kiev. If I can live there decently that’s what I’ll do. If not, I’ll make sacrifices, save up, and head for Amsterdam for a boat to America. To sum it up, I have little but I have plans.”
      “Plans or none you’re looking for trouble.”
      “I’ve never had to look,” said the fixer. “Well, Shmuel, good luck to you. The morning’s gone so I’d better go.”
      He climbed up onto the wagon and reached for the reins.
      “I’ll ride with you as far as the windmills.” Shmuel got up on the seat on the other side.
      Yakov touched the nag with a birch switch the old man kept in the holder, a hole bored into the edge of the seat, but the horse, after an initial startled gallop, stopped short and stood motionless in the road.
      “Personally I never use it,” the peddler remarked. “It’s there as a warning. If he dawdles I remind him it’s there. He seems to like to hear me talk about it.”
      “If that’s the case I’m better off walking.”
      “Patience.” Shmuel smacked his lips. “Gidap, beauty —he’s very vain. Whenever you can afford it, Yakov, feed him oats. Too much grass and he’s prone to gas.”
      “If he’s prone to gas let him fart.” He flicked the reins.
      Yakov didn’t look back. The nag moved along a crooked road between black plowed fields