Fall of Giants

Gus was discomfited. It was an open secret in Washington that Wilson had fallen passionately, boyishly in love, only eight months after the death of his wife, with the voluptuous Mrs. Edith Galt. The president was fifty-eight, his paramour forty-one. Right now they were together in New Hampshire. Gus was among a very small group who also knew that Wilson had proposed marriage a month ago, but Mrs. Galt had not yet given him an answer. He said to Olga: “Who told you that?”

“Is it true?”

He was desperate to impress her with his inside knowledge, but he managed to resist the temptation. “I can’t talk about that sort of thing,” he said reluctantly.

“Oh, how disappointing. I was hoping you’d give me the inside gossip.”

“I’m sorry to be such a letdown.”

“Don’t be silly.” She touched his arm, giving him a thrill like an electric shock. “I’m having a tennis party tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Do you play?”

Gus had long arms and legs, and was a fairly good player. “I do,” he said. “I love the game.”

“Will you come?”

“I’d be delighted,” he said.

{III}

Lev learned to drive in a day. The other main skill of a chauffeur, changing punctured tires, took him a couple of hours to master. By the end of a week he could also fill the tank, change the oil, and adjust the brakes. If the car would not go he knew how to check for a flat battery or a blocked fuel line.

Horses were the transport of the past, Josef Vyalov told him. Stablehands were low-paid: there were plenty of them. Chauffeurs were scarce, and earned high wages.

In addition, Vyalov liked to have a driver who was tough enough to double as a bodyguard.

Vyalov’s car was a brand-new Packard Twin Six, a seven-passenger limousine. Other chauffeurs were impressed. The model had been launched only a few weeks ago, and its twelve-cylinder engine was the envy even of drivers of the Cadillac V8.

Lev was not so taken with Vyalov’s ultramodern mansion. To him it looked like the world’s largest cowshed. It was long and low, with broad overhanging eaves. The head gardener told him it was a “prairie house” in the latest fashion.

“If I had a house this big, I’d want it to look like a palace,” Lev said.

He thought of writing to Grigori and telling him all about Buffalo and the job and the car; but he hesitated. He would want to say that he had put aside some money for Grigori’s ticket, but in fact he had nothing saved. When he had a little stash he would write, he vowed. Meanwhile Grigori could not write because he did not know Lev’s address.

There were three people in the Vyalov family: Josef himself; his wife, Lena, who rarely spoke; and Olga, a pretty daughter of about Lev’s age with a bold look in her eye. Josef was attentive and courteous with his wife, even though he spent most evenings out with his cronies. To his daughter he was affectionate but strict. He often drove home at midday to have lunch with Lena and Olga. After lunch he and Lena would take a nap.

While Lev was waiting to drive Josef back downtown, he sometimes talked to Olga.

She liked to smoke cigarettes, something that was forbidden by her father, who was fiercely determined that she should be a respectable young lady and marry into the Buffalo social elite. There were a few places on the property where Josef never went, and the garage was one of them, so Olga came there to smoke. She would sit in the backseat of the Packard, her silk dress on the new leather, and Lev would lean on the door, with his foot up on the runningboard, and chat to her.

He was aware that he looked handsome in the chauffeur’s uniform, and he wore the cap tilted jauntily back. He soon discovered that the way to please Olga was to compliment her on being high-class. She loved to be told that she walked like a princess, talked like a president’s wife, and dressed like a Parisian socialite. She was a snob, and so was her father. Most of the time Josef was a bully and a thug, but Lev noticed how he became well-mannered, almost deferential, when talking to high-status men such as bank presidents and congressmen.

Lev had a quick intuition, and soon had Olga figured out. She was an overprotected rich girl who had no outlet for her natural romantic and sexual impulses. Unlike the girls Lev had known in the slums of St. Petersburg, Olga could not slip out to meet a boy at twilight and let him feel her up in the darkness of a shop doorway. She was twenty years old and a virgin. It was even possible she had never been kissed.