Fall of Giants

A thin man in spectacles came to the door of the office. Surely this could not be Vyalov, Lev thought; he was too weedy. “Bring him in, Theo,” he said.

“Sure thing, Mr. Niall,” said the leader of the thugs.

The office reminded Lev of the peasant hut in which he had been born. It was too warm and the air was full of smoke. In a corner was a little table with icons of saints.

Behind a steel desk sat a middle-aged man with unusually broad shoulders. He wore an expensive-looking lounge suit with a collar and tie, and there were two rings on the hand that held his cigarette. He said: “What is that fucking smell?”

“I’m sorry, Mister V, it’s puke,” said Theo. “He acted up, and we had to calm him down a little, then he lunged up his lunch.”

“Let him go.”

They released Lev’s arms, but stayed near.

Mister V looked at him. “I got your message,” he said. “Telling me I should be more polite.”

Lev summoned his courage. He was not going to die sniveling. He said: “Are you Josef Vyalov?”

“By Christ, you’ve got some nerve,” the man said. “Asking me who I am.”

“I been looking for you.”

“You have been looking for me?”

“The Vyalov family sold me a ticket from St. Petersburg to New York, then dumped me in Cardiff,” Lev said.

“So?”

“I want my money back.”

Vyalov stared at him for a long moment, then he laughed. “I can’t help it,” he said. “I like you.”

Lev held his breath. Did this mean Vyalov was not going to kill him?

“Do you have a job?” Vyalov said.

“I work for you.”

“Where?”

“At the Hotel St. Petersburg, in the stables.”

Vyalov nodded. “I think we can offer you something better than that,” he said.

{II}

In June 1915 America came one step closer to war.

Gus Dewar was appalled. He did not think the United States should join in the European war. The American people felt the same, and so did President Woodrow Wilson. But somehow the danger loomed closer.

The crisis came about in May when a German submarine torpedoed the Lusitania, a British ship carrying 173 tons of rifles, ammunition, and shrapnel shells. It also carried two thousand passengers, including 128 U.S. citizens.

Americans were as shocked as if there had been an assassination. The newspapers went into convulsions of indignation. “People are asking you to do the impossible!” Gus said indignantly to the president, standing in the Oval Office. “They want you to get tough with the Germans, but not to risk going to war.”

Wilson nodded agreement. Looking up from his typewriter, he said: “There’s no rule that says public opinion has to be consistent.”

Gus found his boss’s calm admirable, but a bit frustrating. “How the heck do you deal with that?”

Wilson smiled, showing his bad teeth. “Gus, did someone tell you politics was easy?”

In the end Wilson sent a stern note to the German government, demanding that they stop attacking shipping. He and his advisers, including Gus, hoped the Germans would agree to some compromise. But if they decided to be defiant, Gus did not see how Wilson could avoid escalation. It was a dangerous game to play, and Gus found he was not able to remain as coolly detached about the risk as Wilson appeared to be.

While the diplomatic telegrams crossed the Atlantic, Wilson went to his summer place in New Hampshire and Gus went to Buffalo, where he stayed at his parents’ mansion on Delaware Avenue. His father had a house in Washington, but Gus lived in his own apartment there, and when he came home to Buffalo he relished the comforts of a house run by his mother: the silver bowl of cut roses on his nightstand; the hot rolls at breakfast; the crisp white linen tablecloth fresh at every meal; the way a suit would appear sponged and pressed in his wardrobe without his having noticed that it had been taken away.

The house was furnished in a consciously plain manner, his mother’s reaction against the ornate fashions of her parents’ generation. Much of the furniture was Biedermeier, a utilitarian German style that was enjoying a revival. The dining room had one good painting on each of the four walls, and a single three-branched candlestick on the table. At lunch on the first day, his mother said: “I suppose you’re planning to go to the slums and watch prizefights?”

“There’s nothing wrong with boxing,” Gus said. It was his great enthusiasm. He had even tried it himself, as a foolhardy eighteen-year-old: his long arms had given him a couple of victories, but he lacked the killer instinct.

“So canaille,” she said disdainfully. This was a snobby expression she had picked up in Europe that meant low-class.

“I’d like to take my mind off international politics, if I can.”

“There’s a lecture on Titian, with magic-lantern slides, at the Albright this afternoon,” she said. The Albright Art Gallery, a white classical building set in Delaware Park, was one of Buffalo’s most important cultural institutions.