Fall of Giants

But the kaiser did not want war with America and, to Gus’s immense relief, Wilson’s gamble paid off. At the end of August the Germans promised not to attack passenger ships without warning. It was not a fully satisfactory reassurance, but it ended the standoff.

The American newspapers, missing all the nuances, were ecstatic. On September 2 Gus triumphantly read aloud to Wilson a paragraph from a laudatory article in that day’s New York Evening Post. “Without mobilizing a regiment or assembling a fleet, by sheer, dogged, unwavering persistence in advocating the right, he has compelled the surrender of the proudest, the most arrogant, the best armed of nations.”

“They haven’t surrendered yet,” said the president.

{IX}

One evening in late September they took Lev to the warehouse, stripped him naked, and tied his hands behind his back. Then Vyalov came out of his office. “You dog,” he said. “You mad dog.”

“What have I done?” Lev pleaded.

“You know what you’ve done, you filthy cur,” said Vyalov.

Lev was terrified. He could not talk his way out of this if Vyalov would not listen.

Vyalov took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Bring it to me,” he said.

Norman Niall, his weedy accountant, went into the office and returned with a knout.

Lev stared at it. It was the standard Russian pattern, traditionally used to punish criminals. It had a long wooden handle and three hardened leather thongs each terminating in a lead ball. Lev had never been flogged, but he had seen it done. In the countryside it was a common punishment for petty theft or adultery. In St. Petersburg the knout was often used on political offenders. Twenty lashes could cripple a man; a hundred would kill him.

Vyalov, still wearing his waistcoat with the gold watch chain, hefted the knout. Niall giggled. Ilya and Theo looked on with interest.

Lev cowered away, turning his back, pressing himself up against a stack of tires. The whip came down with a cruel swish, biting into his neck and shoulders, and he screamed in pain.

Vyalov brought the whip down again. This time it hurt more.

Lev could not believe what a fool he had been. He had fucked the virgin daughter of a powerful and violent man. What had he been thinking of? Why could he never resist temptation?

Vyalov lashed again. This time Lev flung himself away from the knout, trying to dodge the blow. Only the very ends of the thongs connected, but they still dug agonizingly into his flesh, and he cried out in pain again. He tried to get away, but Vyalov’s men pushed him back, laughing.

Vyalov raised the whip again, started to bring it down, stopped in midswipe as Lev dodged, then struck. Lev’s legs were slashed, and he saw blood pouring from the cuts. When Vyalov lashed again, Lev desperately flung himself away, then stumbled and fell to the concrete floor. As he lay on his back, losing strength rapidly, Vyalov whipped his front, striking his belly and thighs. Lev rolled over, too agonized and terror-struck to get to his feet, but the knout kept coming down. He summoned the energy to crawl a short way on his knees, like a baby, but he slipped in his own blood, and the whip came down again. He stopped screaming: he had no breath. Vyalov was going to flog him to death, he decided. He longed for oblivion to come.

But Vyalov denied him that relief. He dropped the knout, panting with exertion. “I ought to kill you,” he said when he had caught his breath. “But I can’t.”

Lev was baffled. He lay in a pool of blood, staring at his torturer.

“She’s pregnant,” Vyalov said.

In a haze of fear and pain, Lev tried to think. They had used condoms. You could buy them in any big American city. He had always put one on-except for that first time, of course, when he had not been expecting anything… and the time she had been showing him around the empty house and they had done it on the big bed in the guest room… and once in the garden after dark…

There had been several times, he realized.

“She was going to marry Senator Dewar’s boy,” Vyalov said, and Lev could hear bitterness as well as rage in his harsh voice. “My grandson might have been a president.”

It was hard for Lev to think straight, but he realized that the wedding would have to be called off. Gus Dewar would not marry a girl who was pregnant with someone else’s baby, no matter how much he loved her. Unless…

Lev managed to croak a few words. “She doesn’t have to have the baby… there are doctors right here in town… ”

Vyalov snatched up the knout, and Lev cowered away. Vyalov screamed: “Never even think about that! It’s against the will of God!”

Lev was amazed. Every Sunday he drove the Vyalov family to church, but he had assumed religion was a sham for Josef. The man lived by dishonesty and violence. Yet he could not bear to hear mention of abortion! Lev wanted to ask whether his church did not prohibit bribery and beating people up.