Free The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

Podol—he never said where in the district—and come to work very early each morning. It wasn’t too far a walk from where he lived. The electric trolley, which stopped close by the brickyard, did not run after dark.

    â€œUnfortunately you won’t be of much use to me living in the Podol,” said Nikolai Maximovitch. They were talking in the brickyard on a cloudy end-of-January day —a pall of black smoke hung over the kilns—and Nikolai Maximovitch still wore his Black Hundreds button on his coat, which Yakov, when speaking to him—he saw himself unable to detach his eye if once he stared at it—had to ignore or look around, for the button loomed large and unsettling.
    â€œIt is not what goes on here during the workday that worries me so much,” the anti-Semite said, “although I assure you that worries me too; but I am deeply concerned with what happens in the early morning hours when the wagons are being loaded for the first deliveries. Daylight is too strong for a thief. It’s in the dark when the ghosts are flying and good people are lying abed that he does his dirty work. My late-lamented brother, who had little respect for sleep—one must respect it or it will not respect him—was here at 3 A.M. in every weather to oversee each and every wagonload. I am not asking you to do the same, Yakov Ivanovitch. That sort of dedication to a business enterprise is fanatic and in his case led, I am convinced, to my brother’s early death.” Nikolai Maximovitch crossed himself with eyes shut. “But if you were to look in on them in the early morning hours, and also unexpectedly during other loadings, counting off aloud a close estimate of the number of bricks in the trucks, it might tempt them not to overdo it. I expect some thievery—humans are humans—but of necessity there has to be a limit. It would be impossible for me to get a reasonably just price for this factory if it should go bankrupt.”
    â€œHow do they steal?” the fixer had asked.
    â€œI suspect the drivers under Proshko’s supervision or connivance. They take out more than they account for.”
    â€œThen why don’t you give him the boot?”

    â€œMore easily said than done, my dear boy. If I did I would have to shut down the plant. He is an excellent technical man—one of the best, my brother used to say. I confess it is not my purpose to catch him thieving. As a religious person I want to keep him from it. And wouldn’t you say it was the more sensible as well as charitable thing? No, let’s arrange it as I say. Take the room above the stable, Yakov Ivanovitch. It’s yours without a single kopek of rent.”
    Since he had not mentioned the fixer’s papers—neither the passport necessary for new employment, nor the residence certificate he would need, Yakov uneasily took the chance and accepted the job. He had for a fleeting minute again considered saying he was a Jew—just quietly informing Nikolai Maximovitch: “Well, you ought to know what the situation is. You say you like me; you know I’m an honest worker and don’t waste the boss’s time, then maybe it won’t surprise you to hear I was born Jewish and for that reason can’t live in this district.” But that was of course impossible. Even supposing —a fantastic suppose—that Nikolai Maximovitch, two-headed eagle button and all, overlooked the confession in his own interests, still the Lukianovsky was not for Jews, with certain unusual exceptions, and if a poor fixer were exposed as one living there he would be in serious trouble. It was all too complicated. For the first week Yakov was daily on the verge of leaving, escaping from the place, but he stayed on because he had heard from Aaron Latke that counterfeit papers of various kinds were available to prospective buyers at a certain printing establishment in the Podol, for not too large a