Fall of Giants

Gus had grown up surrounded by Renaissance paintings, and he particularly liked Titian’s portraits, but he was not very interested in going to a lecture. However, it was just the kind of event to be patronized by the city’s wealthy young men and women, so there was a good chance he would be able to renew old friendships.

The Albright was a short drive up Delaware Avenue. He entered the pillared atrium and took a seat. As he had expected, there were several people he knew in the audience. He found himself sitting next to a strikingly pretty girl who seemed familiar.

He smiled vaguely at her, and she said brightly: “You’ve forgotten who I am, haven’t you, Mr. Dewar?”

He felt foolish. “Ah… I’ve been out of town for a while.”

“I’m Olga Vyalov.” She held out a white-gloved hand.

“Of course,” he said. Her father was a Russian immigrant whose first job had been throwing drunks out of a bar on Canal Street. Now he owned Canal Street. He was a city councilor and a pillar of the Russian Orthodox Church. Gus had met Olga several times, though he did not remember her looking quite so enchanting: perhaps she had suddenly grown up, or something. She was about twenty, he guessed, with pale skin and blue eyes, and she wore a pink jacket with a turned-up collar and a cloche hat with pink silk flowers.

“I hear you’re working for the president,” she said. “What do you think of Mr. Wilson?”

“I admire him enormously,” Gus replied. “He’s a practical politician who hasn’t abandoned his ideals.”

“How exciting to be at the center of power.”

“It is exciting, but strangely enough it doesn’t feel like the center of power. In a democracy the president is subject to the voters.”

“But surely he doesn’t just do what the public wants.”

“Not exactly, no. President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.”

She sighed. “I would have loved to study these things, but my father wouldn’t let me go to college.”

Gus grinned. “I suppose he thinks you would learn to smoke cigarettes and drink gin.”

“And worse, I’ve no doubt,” she said. It was a risqué remark for an unmarried woman, and the surprise must have shown on his face, for she said: “I’m sorry, I’ve shocked you.”

“Not at all.” In fact he was feeling captivated. To keep her talking he said: “What would you study if you could go to college?”

“History, I think.”

“I love history. Any particular period?”

“I’d like to understand my own past. Why did my father have to leave Russia? Why is America so much better? There must be reasons for these things.”

“Exactly!” Gus was thrilled that such a pretty girl should also share his intellectual curiosity. He saw a sudden vision of them as a married couple, in her dressing room after a party, talking about world affairs while they got ready for bed, himself in pajamas, sitting and watching while she unhurriedly took off her jewelry and slipped out of her clothes… Then he caught her eye, and got the feeling that she had guessed what he was thinking, and he felt embarrassed. He searched for something to say, but found himself tongue-tied.

Then the lecturer arrived, and the audience fell silent.

He enjoyed the talk more than he had expected. The speaker had made Autochrome color transparencies of some of Titian’s canvases, and his magic lantern projected them onto a big white screen.

When it was over he wanted to talk some more to Olga, but he was prevented. Chuck Dixon, a man he knew from school, came up to them. Chuck had an easy charm that Gus envied. They were the same age, twenty-five, but Chuck made Gus feel like an awkward schoolboy. “Olga, you have to meet my cousin,” he said jovially. “He’s been staring at you across the room.” He smiled amiably at Gus. “Sorry to deprive you of such bewitching company, Dewar, but you can’t have her all afternoon, you know.” He put a possessive arm around Olga’s waist and led her away.

Gus felt bereft. He had been getting on so well with her, he felt. For him those first conversations with a girl were usually the hardest, but with Olga small talk had seemed easy. And now Chuck Dixon, who had always been bottom of the class at school, had just walked away with her as easily as he would have taken a drink from a waiter’s tray.

While Gus was looking around for someone else he knew, he was approached by a girl with one eye.

The first time he met Rosa Hellman-at a fund-raising dinner for the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra, in which her brother played-he thought she was winking at him. In fact one eye was permanently closed. Her face was otherwise pretty, which made her disfigurement more striking. Furthermore, she always dressed stylishly, as if in defiance. Today she wore a straw boater set at a jaunty angle, and managed to look cute.

Last time he saw her she had been the editor of a small-circulation radical newspaper called the Buffalo Anarchist, and Gus said: “Are anarchists interested in art?”