Fall of Giants

“I dunno. How can you tell?” Billy fought down panic. “No, he’s not breathing, I don’t think.”

“Smack his bum, not too hard.”

Billy turned the baby over, held him easily in one hand, and sharply smacked his bottom. Immediately the child opened his mouth, breathed in, and yelled in protest. Billy was delighted. “Hark at that!” he said.

“Hold him a minute while I turn over.” Ethel got herself into a sitting position and straightened her dress. “Give him to me.”

Billy carefully handed him over. Ethel held the baby in the crook of her arm and wiped his face with her sleeve. “He’s beautiful,” she said.

Billy was not sure about that.

The cord attached to the baby’s navel had been blue and taut, but now it shriveled and turned pale. Ethel said: “Open that drawer over by there and pass me the scissors and a reel of cotton.”

Ethel tied two knots in the cord, then snipped it between the knots. “There,” she said. She unbuttoned the front of her dress. “I don’t suppose you’ll be embarrassed, after what you’ve seen,” she said, and she took out a breast and put the nipple to the baby’s mouth. He began to suck.

She was right: Billy was not embarrassed. An hour ago he would have been mortified by the sight of his sister’s bare breast, but such a feeling seemed trivial now. All he felt was enormous relief that the baby was all right. He stared, watching him suckle, marveling at the tiny fingers. He felt as if he had witnessed a miracle. His face was wet with tears, and he wondered when he had cried: he had no memory of doing so.

Quite soon the baby fell asleep. Ethel buttoned her dress. “We’ll wash him in a minute,” she said. Then she closed her eyes. “My God,” she said. “I didn’t know it was going to hurt that much.”

Billy said: “Who’s his father, Eth?”

“Earl Fitzherbert,” she said. Then she opened her eyes. “Oh, bugger, I never meant to tell you that.”

“The bloody swine,” said Billy. “I’ll kill him.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – June to September1915

As the ship entered New York harbor, it occurred to Lev Peshkov that America might not be as wonderful as his brother, Grigori, said. He steeled himself for a terrible disappointment. But that was unnecessary. America was all the things he had hoped for: rich, busy, exciting, and free.

Three months later, on a hot afternoon in June, he was working at a hotel in Buffalo, in the stables, grooming a guest’s horse. The place was owned by Josef Vyalov, who had put an onion dome on top of the old Central Tavern and renamed it the St. Petersburg Hotel, perhaps out of nostalgia for the city he had left when he was a child.

Lev worked for Vyalov, as did many of Buffalo’s Russian immigrants, but he had never met the man. If he ever did, he was not sure what he would say. The Vyalov family in Russia had cheated Lev by dumping him in Cardiff, and that rankled. On the other hand, the papers supplied by the St. Petersburg Vyalovs had got Lev through U.S. immigration without a hitch. And mentioning the name of Vyalov in a bar on Canal Street had got him a job immediately.

He had been speaking English every day for a year now, ever since he landed in Cardiff, and he was becoming fluent. Americans said he had a British accent, and they were not familiar with some of the expressions he had learned in Aberowen, such as by here and by there, or is it? and isn’t it? at the ends of sentences. But he could say just about anything he needed to, and girls were charmed when he called them my lovely.

At a few minutes to six o’clock, shortly before he finished work for the day, his friend Nick came into the stable yard, a cigarette between his lips. “Fatima brand,” he said. He drew in smoke with exaggerated satisfaction. “Turkish tobacco. Beautiful.”

Nick’s full name was Nicolai Davidovich Fomek, but here he was called Nick Forman. He occasionally played the role previously taken by Spirya and Rhys Price in Lev’s card games, though mostly he was a thief.

“How much?” said Lev.

“In the stores, fifty cents for a tin of a hundred cigarettes. To you, ten cents. Sell them for a quarter.”

Lev knew that Fatima was a popular brand. It would be easy to sell them at half price. He looked around the yard. The boss was nowhere to be seen. “All right.”

“How many do you want? I’ve got a trunkful.”

Lev had one dollar in his pocket. “Twenty tins,” he said. “I’ll give you a dollar now and a dollar later.”

“I don’t give credit.”

Lev grinned and put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Come on, buddy, you can trust me. Are we pals, or not?”

“Twenty it is. I’ll be right back.”

Lev found an old feed sack in a corner. Nick returned with twenty long green tins, each with a picture of a veiled woman on the lid. Lev put the tins in the sack and gave Nick a dollar. “Always nice to give a helping hand to a fellow Russian,” Nick said, and he sauntered away.