The Fixer by Bernard Malamud Exceptional, meaningful masterpiece that will stay vivid in the memory of the reader – 10 out of 10

 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

Exceptional, meaningful masterpiece that will stay vivid in the memory of the reader – 10 out of 10

 

After reading The Assistant it should come as no surprise that Bernard Malamud can create a masterpiece that may take your breath away at times.

The drama of The Fixer is so compelling that it will stay with you forever, unless you do not care about others and their suffering.

It is difficult to say how or why but I had a feeling that something wrong will happen to Yakov Bok or the fixer as he will be called throughout the book.

It may come back to The Assistant, the book that has propelled Bernard Malamud among my top favorites, which has its share of tragedy.

It is a miraculous gift that this marvelous writer has, to make the reader so intimate and attached to main characters that not only seem common, but even worse.

Both Frank and Yakov have quite a few shortcomings, with the first stealing and even getting involved in a hold up and the latter being harsh to his wife and overall lacking obvious hero-like qualities to endear him to us.

Yakov lives in a shtetl in poverty which we might as well call misery, with his wife and father in law, trying to fix things for a living.

In today’s slang that would refer more to a wise guy from the Scorsese movies, who will fix others by bribing an official, or scaring a bad debtor…that kind of thing.

But this Fixer is really repairing a door, putting a fence in place and other such odd jobs that bring in only a meager income, not enough to even live on.

Raisl, his wife has no children and Yakov takes a medieval, stupid attitude in blaming this on her and doing even worse by refusing to sleep with her- since it was no use.

That is later cleared and his chauvinist, backward attitude is exposed when Raisl gives birth and the fixer regrets his vileness, for which he paid in the meantime hundreds of times over.

Raisl abandons her husband for a goyim and that is perceived as a supreme insult by a man who is a self proclaimed free thinker…quite a paradox, isn’t it

When he is left by his wife, Yakov feels that he must go away from the shtetl, to Kiev, where he may rise to a respectable position.

Alas, it is not what happens, for after luck seems to descend upon him, a terrible and false accusation sends him to prison.

Even if a man works hard, not just minding his business but even helping others and going beyond the call of duty, in a primitive society he is in grave danger.

Yakov is Jewish and that is enough for anti-Semites, who represented if not the whole population then a big chunk of it in Russia and elsewhere.

A teenage boy is killed with multiple stabs- I think they were 45 or so- and the conclusion of authorities, experts and …the czar himself is that the Jew did it.

To be frank, Bernard Malamud includes the opinion of important personalities, newspapers that have tried to a voice an opposing view, but were mostly silenced.

To begin with, there is even an official investigator – Bibikov, who is certain that the boy was killed by his mother in cahoots with her outlaw lover.

But Bibikov is ostracized and dies, either killed by the stupid, hateful colleagues or by his own hand, after the case is pushed on the track of religious murder.

Jewish people have been made to pay for two thousand years for the supposed murder of Christ and pogroms took place in many parts of the Christian world.

The book is extraordinary for the plot which keeps the reader guessing, the characters- complex and fascinating and the moral, religious issues which are explored.

How can we talk so much about forgiveness and yet be so cruel and revengeful…

How could they torture a poor innocent man only because he belonged to a different faith…?

And not even that, for he did not attend the synagogue and was often rather blasphemous, blaming his God for the terrible life and fate that he had to endure.

Sublime, wonderful masterpiece