“Open that drawer over by there and pass me the scissors and a reel of cotton.”
Ethel tied two knots in the cord, then snipped it between the knots. “There,” she said. She unbuttoned the front of her dress. “I don’t suppose you’ll be embarrassed, after what you’ve seen,” she said, and she took out a breast and put the nipple to the baby’s mouth. He began to suck.
She was right: Billy was not embarrassed. An hour ago he would have been mortified by the sight of his sister’s bare breast, but such a feeling seemed trivial now. All he felt was enormous relief that the baby was all right. He stared, watching him suckle, marveling at the tiny fingers. He felt as if he had witnessed a miracle. His face was wet with tears, and he wondered when he had cried: he had no memory of doing so.
Quite soon the baby fell asleep. Ethel buttoned her dress. “We’ll wash him in a minute,” she said. Then she closed her eyes. “My God,” she said. “I didn’t know it was going to hurt that much.”
Billy said: “Who’s his father, Eth?”
“Earl Fitzherbert,” she said. Then she opened her eyes. “Oh, bugger, I never meant to tell you that.”
“The bloody swine,” said Billy. “I’ll kill him.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – June to September1915
As the ship entered New York harbor, it occurred to Lev Peshkov that America might not be as wonderful as his brother, Grigori, said. He steeled himself for a terrible disappointment. But that was unnecessary. America was all the things he had hoped for: rich, busy, exciting, and free.
Three months later, on a hot afternoon in June, he was working at a hotel in Buffalo, in the stables, grooming a guest’s horse. The place was owned by Josef Vyalov, who had put an onion dome on top of the old Central Tavern and renamed it the St. Petersburg Hotel, perhaps out of nostalgia for the city he had left when he was a child.
Lev worked for Vyalov, as did many of Buffalo’s Russian immigrants, but he had never met the man. If he ever did, he was not sure what he would say. The Vyalov family in Russia had cheated Lev by dumping him in Cardiff, and that rankled. On the other hand, the papers supplied by the St. Petersburg Vyalovs had got Lev through U.S. immigration without a hitch. And mentioning the name of Vyalov in a bar on Canal Street had got him a job immediately.
He had been speaking English every day for a year now, ever since he landed in Cardiff, and he was becoming fluent. Americans said he had a British accent, and they were not familiar with some of the expressions he had learned in Aberowen, such as by here and by there, or is it? and isn’t it? at the ends of sentences. But he could say just about anything he needed to, and girls were charmed when he called them my lovely.
At a few minutes to six o’clock, shortly before he finished work for the day, his friend Nick came into the stable yard, a cigarette between his lips. “Fatima brand,” he said. He drew in smoke with exaggerated satisfaction. “Turkish tobacco. Beautiful.”
Nick’s full name was Nicolai Davidovich Fomek, but here he was called Nick Forman. He occasionally played the role previously taken by Spirya and Rhys Price in Lev’s card games, though mostly he was a thief.
“How much?” said Lev.
“In the stores, fifty cents for a tin of a hundred cigarettes. To you, ten cents. Sell them for a quarter.”
Lev knew that Fatima was a popular brand. It would be easy to sell them at half price. He looked around the yard. The boss was nowhere to be seen. “All right.”
“How many do you want? I’ve got a trunkful.”
Lev had one dollar in his pocket. “Twenty tins,” he said. “I’ll give you a dollar now and a dollar later.”
“I don’t give credit.”
Lev grinned and put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Come on, buddy, you can trust me. Are we pals, or not?”
“Twenty it is. I’ll be right back.”
Lev found an old feed sack in a corner. Nick returned with twenty long green tins, each with a picture of a veiled woman on the lid. Lev put the tins in the sack and gave Nick a dollar. “Always nice to give a helping hand to a fellow Russian,” Nick said, and he sauntered away.
Lev cleaned his curry comb and hoofpick. At five past six he said good-bye to the chief ostler and headed for the First Ward. He felt a little conspicuous, carrying a feed sack through the streets, and he wondered what he would say if a cop stopped him and demanded to see what was in the sack. But he was not very worried: he could talk his way out of most situations.
He went to a large, popular bar called the Irish Rover. He pushed through the crowd, bought a tankard of beer, and downed half of it thirstily. Then he sat next to a group of workingmen speaking a mixture of Polish and English. After a few moments he said: “Anyone here smoke Fatimas?”
A bald man in a leather apron said: “Yeah, I’ll smoke a Fatima now and again.”
“Want to buy a tin at half price? Twenty-five cents for a hundred smokes.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They got lost. Someone found them.”
“Sounds a little risky.”
“I tell you what. Put your money on the table. I won’t pick it up until you tell me to.”
The men were interested now. The bald man fished in his pocket and came up with a quarter. Lev took a tin from his sack and handed it over. The man opened the tin. He took out a small rectangle of folded paper and opened it to disclose a photograph. “Hey, it’s even got a baseball card!” he said. He put one of the cigarettes in his mouth and lit it. “All right,” he said to Lev. “Pick up your quarter.”
Another man was watching over Lev’s shoulder. “How much?” he said. Lev told him, and he bought two tins.
In the next half hour Lev sold all the cigarettes. He was pleased: he had turned two dollars into five in less than an hour. At work it took him a day and a half to earn three dollars. Maybe he would buy some more stolen tins from Nick tomorrow.
He bought another beer, drank it, and went out, leaving the empty sack on the floor. Outside, he turned toward the Lovejoy district, a poor neighborhood of Buffalo where most of the Russians lived, along with many Italians and Poles. He could buy a steak on the way home and fry it with potatoes. Or he could pick up Marga and take her dancing. Or he could buy a new suit.
He ought to save it toward Grigori’s fare to America, he thought, guiltily knowing he would do no such thing. Three dollars was a drop in the bucket. What he needed was a really big score. Then he could send Grigori the money all in one go, before he was tempted to spend it.
He was startled out of his reverie by a tap on his shoulder.
His heart gave a guilty leap. He turned, half expecting to see a police uniform. But the person who had stopped him was no cop. He was a heavily built man in overalls, with a broken nose and an aggressive scowl. Lev tensed: such a man had only one function.
The man said: “Who told you to sell smokes in the Irish Rover?”
“I’m just trying to make a few bucks,” Lev said with a smile. “I hope I didn’t offend anyone.”
“Was it Nicky Forman? I heard Nick knocked over a truckload of cigarettes.”
Lev was not going to give that information to a stranger. “I never met anyone by that name,” he said, still using a pleasant tone of voice.
“Don’t you know the Irish Rover belongs to Mister V?”
Lev felt a surge of anger. Mister V had to be Josef Vyalov. He dropped the conciliatory tone. “So put up a sign.”
“You don’t sell stuff in Mister V’s bars ’less he tells you.”
Lev shrugged. “I didn’t know that.”
“Here’s something to help you remember,” the man said, and he swung his fist.
Lev was expecting the blow, and he stepped back sharply. The thug’s arm swept through empty space and he staggered, off balance. Lev stepped forward and kicked him in the shin. A fist was a poor weapon, generally, nowhere near as hard as a booted foot. Lev kicked as powerfully as he could, but it was not enough to break a bone. The man roared with anger, swung again, and missed again.
