The job of nightclub manager was ideal for him. His main responsibility was to make sure no one was stealing. As a thief himself, he knew how to do that. Otherwise he just had to see that there was enough drink behind the bar and a decent band onstage. As well as his salary, he had free cigarettes and all the booze he could take without falling down. He always wore formal evening dress, which made him feel like a prince. Josef Vyalov left him alone to run the place. As long as the profits were coming in, his father-in-law had no other interest in the club, except to turn up occasionally with his cronies and watch the show.
Lev had only one problem: his wife.
Olga had changed. For a few weeks, back in the summer of 1915, she had been a sexpot, always hungry for his body. But that had been uncharacteristic, he now knew. Since they got married, everything he did displeased her. She wanted him to bathe every day and use a toothbrush and stop farting. She did not like dancing or drinking and she asked him not to smoke. She never came to the club. They slept in separate beds. She called him low-class. “I am low-class,” he had said to her one day. “That’s why I was the chauffeur.” She continued dissatisfied.
So he had hired Marga.
His old flame was onstage now, rehearsing a new number with the band, while two black women in head scarves wiped the tables and swept the floor. Marga wore a tight dress and red lipstick. Lev had given her a job as a dancer, having no idea whether she was good. She had turned out to be not just good but a star. Now she was belting out a suggestive number about waiting all night for her man to come.
Though I suffer from frustrations
The anticipation’s
A boost to our relations
When he comes
Lev knew exactly what she meant.
He watched her until she was done. She came offstage and kissed his cheek. He got two bottles of beer and followed her to her dressing room. “That’s a great number,” he said as he went in.
“Thanks.” She put the bottle in her mouth and tilted it. Lev watched her red lips on the neck. She took a long drink. She caught him watching her, swallowed, and grinned. “That remind you of something?”
“You bet it does.” He embraced her and ran his hands over her body. After a couple of minutes she knelt down, unbuttoned his pants, and took him into her mouth. She was good at this, the best he had ever known. Either she really liked it, or she was the greatest actor in America. He closed his eyes and sighed with pleasure.
The door opened and Josef Vyalov came in.
“So it’s true!” he said furiously.
Two of his thugs, Ilya and Theo, followed him in.
Lev was scared half to death. He hastily tried to button his pants and apologize at the same time.
Marga stood up quickly and wiped her mouth. “You’re in my dressing room!” she protested.
Vyalov said: “And you’re in my nightclub. But not for much longer. You’re fired.” He turned to Lev. “When you’re married to my daughter, you don’t screw the help!”
Marga said defiantly: “He wasn’t screwing me, Vyalov, didn’t you notice that?”
Vyalov punched her in the mouth. She cried out and fell back, her lip bleeding. “You’ve been fired,” he said to her. “Fuck off.”
She picked up her bag and left.
Vyalov looked at Lev. “You asshole,” he said. “Haven’t I done enough for you?”
Lev said: “I’m sorry, Pa.” He was terrified of his father-in-law. Vyalov would do anything: people who displeased him might be flogged, tortured, maimed, or murdered. He had no mercy and no fear of the law. In his way he was as powerful as the tsar.
“Don’t tell me it’s the first time, either,” said Vyalov. “I been hearing these rumors ever since I put you in charge here.”
Lev said nothing. The rumors were true. There had been others, although not since Marga was hired.
“I’m moving you,” Vyalov said.
“What do you mean?”
“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.
