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The Fixer | Introduction

Bernard Malamud based The Fixer on the case of Mendel Beilis, a Jewish bookkeeper for a brick factory who was accused of ritualistically murdering a Christian child. With very little evidence against him, the Russian government pushed for the conviction of Beilis in order to justify anti-Semitic policies that were being enacted at the time. The novel's protagonist, Yakov Bok, also works in a brick factory, and he is charged, for no particular reason except being Jewish, for a crime just like the one with which Beilis was charged. As in Malamud's fictionalized version, the actual case occurred between 1911 and 1913 in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. The Beilis case is credited with being one of the main contributing factors in bringing about the Russian Revolution by raising the sense of distrust Russian citizens felt toward their government and the anger of people around the world. The political situation surrounding the case is hardly touched upon in The Fixer. Most of the book focuses on Yakov's life in solitary confinement, waiting for years in prison for the murder charge to be formally levied against him so that he can get on with the trial.

The Fixer was published in 1966, more than fifty years after the Beilis case had been settled in court, but Malamud could count on his audience to be familiar with the circumstances of what had happened because the case was and is an important event in the history of the Jewish struggle for peace and security. The book won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and is considered one of the finest in the canon of books by one of America's finest authors.

The Fixer Summary

Part I
The first section of The Fixer is divided into three chapters. The book's first chapter takes place at a point that is outside of the ordinary flow of time. While most of this book follows in chronological order, this chapter occurs after some of the plot events and before others. In the first chapter, Yakov Bok is already living at the brickyard when he hears the commotion of people running outside the factory gate because the body of a murdered boy, Zhenia Golov, was found stabbed to death. One of the drivers for the brickyard brings in leaflets from the Black Hundred, accusing the Jews of murdering the boy for his blood, which they would use for the making of Passover matzos. This chapter includes background information about other incidents of violence against the Jews. Within a year of Yakov's birth, his father had been killed by a pair of drunken soldiers out to shoot the first three Jews in their path, and Yakov himself had in his childhood survived one of the state-supported rampages against Jews, known as a pogrom. If this chapter were worked into the normal chronological order of the book, it would appear near the end of Part II, where the discovery of the boy's body, his funeral, and the public backlash against the Jews are recounted again.

The remaining two chapters of part I start with "five months ago, on a mild Friday in early November." Bok, whose wife has left him, is preparing to leave the Pale of Jews where he has been living to try to make a better life for himself in Kiev, possibly saving enough to go to Amsterdam and then to America. He has said good-bye to the few friends he had and traded the cow his wife kept for a horse her father used in his business, intending to take the horse and its carriage to the city, twenty miles away. Along the road, though, when he stops to pick up an old woman who turns out to be a Christian, the carriage wheel breaks, and he is left to ride on horseback as far as the bank of the Dnieper River. In order to get across the river, he trades the horse to an anti-Semitic ferryman. The first section ends with Yakov dropping his Jewish prayer things into the river.

Part II
The second section of the novel spans the five months between Yakov's arrival in Kiev and his arrest. On first entering the city, he lives in the Jewish quarter in the Podol district, working what few odd jobs he can find. One night, he finds a man drunk in the snow and helps him get home. The man, Lebedev, offers him a job fixing up an apartment upstairs in his house. Desperate for work, Yakov takes the job, even though as a Jew he is not supposed to. He gives a false, Russian name to hide his Jewish identity and answers questions carefully so that his identity will not be revealed. While he is working, Lebedev's daughter, a lonely cripple, seduces him. When the apartment is fixed up, Lebedev is so impressed that he offers Yakov another job, as overseer of a brick factory that he inherited from his brother. Yakov tries to turn the job down, but Lebedev keeps increasing his offer, with a free apartment at the factory and more and more money, until he accepts.

The workers at the factory resent him. They had been pilfering bricks and selling them on the side, and now must stop because Yakov has been put in charge of inventory. The foreman, Proshko, threatens Yakov carefully, alluding to his Jewish looks and asking about his work papers in order to convey the point that he knows Yakov could face legal trouble. When Yakov finds an old Hasidic Jew wandering dazed in the snow, having been hit with stones thrown by some boys, he takes the man up to his apartment until the snow stops, but when Yakov falls asleep, he dreams of killing the man. The next day news arrives that a boy has been found dead in a nearby cave, and after several days of rising violence against Jews, the secret... ยป Complete The Fixer Summary