“Where?”
“At the Hotel St. Petersburg, in the stables.”
Vyalov nodded. “I think we can offer you something better than that,” he said.
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.
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 risque 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?”
