Fall of Giants

“I’m taking you out of the club. Too many goddamn girls here.”

Lev’s heart sank. He loved the Monte Carlo. “But what would I do?”

“I own a foundry down by the harbor. There are no women employees. The manager got sick, he’s in the hospital. You can keep an eye on it for me.”

“A foundry?” Lev was incredulous. “Me?”

“You worked at the Putilov factory.”

“In the stables!”

“And in a coal mine.”

“Same thing.”

“So, you know the environment.”

“And I hate it!”

“Did I ask you what you like? Jesus Christ, I just caught you with your pants down. You’re lucky not to get worse.”

Lev shut up.

“Go outside and get in the goddamn car,” said Vyalov.

Lev left the dressing room and walked through the club, with Vyalov following. He could hardly believe he was leaving for good. The barman and the hat-check girl stared, sensing something wrong. Vyalov said to the barman: “You’re in charge tonight, Ivan.”

“Yes, boss.”

Vyalov’s Packard Twin Six was waiting at the curb. A new chauffeur stood proudly beside it, a kid from Kiev. The commissionaire hurried to open the rear door for Lev. At least I’m still riding in the back, Lev thought.

He was living like a Russian nobleman, if not better, he reminded himself for consolation. He and Olga had the nursery wing of the spacious prairie house. Rich Americans did not keep as many servants as the Russians, but their houses were cleaner and brighter than Petrograd palaces. They had modern bathrooms, iceboxes and vacuum cleaners, and central heating. The food was good. Vyalov did not share the Russian aristocracy’s love of champagne, but there was always whisky on the sideboard. And Lev had six suits.

Whenever he felt oppressed by his bullying father-in-law he cast his mind back to the old days in Petrograd: the single room he shared with Grigori, the cheap vodka, the coarse black bread, and the turnip stew. He remembered thinking what a luxury it would be to ride the streetcars instead of walking everywhere. Stretching out his legs in the back of Vyalov’s limousine, he looked at his silk socks and shiny black shoes, and told himself to be grateful.

Vyalov got in after him and they drove to the waterfront. Vyalov’s foundry was a small version of the Putilov works: same dilapidated buildings with broken windows, same tall chimneys and black smoke, same drab workers with dirty faces. Lev’s heart sank.

“It’s called the Buffalo Metal Works, but it makes only one thing,” Vyalov said. “Fans.” The car drove through the narrow gateway. “Before the war it was losing money. I bought it and cut the men’s pay to keep it going. Lately business has picked up. We’ve got a long list of orders for airplane and ship propellers and fans for armored car engines. They want a pay raise now, but I need to get back some of what I’ve spent before I start giving money away.”

Lev was dreading working here, but his fear of Vyalov was stronger, and he did not want to fail. He resolved that he would not be the one to give the men a raise.

Vyalov showed him around the factory. Lev wished he were not wearing his tuxedo. But the place was not like the Putilov works inside. It was a lot cleaner. There were no children running around. Apart from the furnaces, everything worked by electric power. Where the Russians would get twelve men hauling on a rope to lift a locomotive boiler, here a mighty ship’s propeller was raised by an electric hoist.

Vyalov pointed to a bald man wearing a collar and tie under his overalls. “That’s your enemy,” he said. “Brian Hall, secretary of the local union branch.”

Lev studied Hall. The man was adjusting a heavy stamping machine, turning a nut with a long-handled wrench. He had a pugnacious air and, when he glanced up and saw Lev and Vyalov, he gave them a challenging look, as if he might be about to ask whether they wanted to make trouble.

Vyalov shouted over the noise of a nearby grinder. “Come here, Hall.”

The man took his time, replacing the wrench in a toolbox and wiping his hands on a rag before approaching.

Vyalov said: “This is your new boss, Lev Peshkov.”

“How do,” Hall said to Lev, then he turned back to Vyalov. “Peter Fisher got a nasty cut on his face from a flying shard of steel this morning. Had to be taken to the hospital.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Vyalov said. “Metalworking is a hazardous industry, but no one is forced to work here.”

“It just missed his eye,” Hall said indignantly. “We ought to have goggles.”

“No one has lost an eye in my time here.”

Hall became angry quickly. “Do we have to wait until someone is blinded before we get goggles?”

“How else will I know you need them?”

“A man who has never been robbed still puts a lock on the door of his house.”

“But he’s paying for it himself.”

Hall nodded as if he had been expecting nothing better and, with an air of weary wisdom, returned to his machine.

“They’re always asking for something,” Vyalov said to Lev.

Lev gathered that Vyalov wanted him to be tough. Well, he knew how to do that. It was the way all factories were run in Petrograd.