AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They all cheered and drank.
"Well!" said Ethel. "Da in the Two Crowns! I never thought I'd see the day. "
Fall of Giants
In Josef Vyalov's ultramodern prairie house in Buffalo, Lev Peshkov helped himself to a drink from the cocktail cabinet. He no longer drank vodka. Living with his wealthy father-in-law, he had developed a taste for Scotch whisky. He liked it the way Americans drank it, with lumps of ice.
Lev did not like living with his in-laws. He would have preferred for him and Olga to have a place of their own. But Olga preferred it this way, and her father paid for everything. Until Lev could build up a stash of his own he was stuck.
Josef was reading the paper and Lena was sewing. Lev raised his glass to them. "Long live the revolution!" he said exuberantly.
"Watch your words," said Josef. "It's going to be bad for business. "
Olga came in. "Pour me a little glass of sherry, please, darling," she said.
Lev suppressed a sigh. She loved to ask him to perfom little services, and in front of her parents he could not refuse. He poured sweet sherry into a small glass and handed it to her, bowing like a waiter. She smiled prettily, missing the irony.
He drank a mouthful of Scotch and savored the taste and the burn of it.
Mrs. Vyalov said: "I feel sorry for the poor tsaritsa and her children. What will they do?"
Josef said: "They'll all be killed by the mob, I shouldn't wonder. "
"Poor things. What did the tsar ever do to those revolutionaries, to deserve this?"
"I can answer that question," Lev said. He knew he should shut up, but he could not, especially with whisky warming his guts. "When I was eleven years old, the factory where my mother worked went on strike. "
Mrs. Vyalov tutted. She did not believe in strikes.
"The police rounded up all the children of the strikers. I'll never forget it. I was terrified. "
"Why would they do a thing like that?" said Mrs. Vyalov.
"The police flogged us all," Lev said. "On our bottoms, with canes. To teach our parents a lesson. "
Mrs. Vyalov had gone white. She could not bear cruelty to children or animals.
"That's what the tsar and his regime did to me, Mother," said Lev. He clinked ice in his glass. "That's why I toast the revolution. "
Fall of Giants
"What do you think, Gus?" said President Wilson. "You're the only person around here who's actually been to Petrograd. What's going to happen?"
"I hate to sound like a State Department official, but it could go either way," said Gus.
The president laughed. They were in the Oval Office, Wilson behind the desk, Gus standing in front of it. "Come on," Wilson said. "Take a guess. Will the Russians pull out of the war or not? It's the most important question of the year. "
"Okay. All the ministers in the new government belong to scary-sounding political parties with socialist and revolutionary in their names, but in fact they're middle-class businessmen and professionals. What they really want is a bourgeois revolution that gives them freedom to promote industry and commerce. But the people want bread, peace, and land: bread for the factory workers, peace for the soldiers, and land for the peasants. None of that really appeals to men like Lvov and Kerensky. So, to answer your question, I think Lvov's government will try for gradual change. In particular, they will carry on fighting the war. But the workers will not be satisfied. "
"And who will win in the end?"
Gus recalled his trip to St. Petersburg, and the man who had demonstrated the casting of a locomotive wheel in a dirty, tumbledown foundry at the Putilov factory. Later, Gus had seen the same man in a fight with a cop over some girl. He could not remember the man's name, but he could picture him now, his big shoulders and strong arms, one finger a stump, but most of all his fierce blue-eyed look of unstoppable determination. "The Russian people," Gus said. "They will win in the end. "
Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - April 1917
On a mild day in early spring Walter walked with Monika von der Helbard in the garden of her parents' town house in Berlin. It was a grand house and the garden was large, with a tennis pavilion, a bowling green, a riding school for exercising horses, and a children's playground with swings and a slide. Walter remembered coming here as a child and thinking it was paradise. However, it was no longer an idyllic playground. All but the oldest horses had gone to the army. Chickens scratched on the flagstones of the broad terrace. Monika's mother was fattening a pig in the tennis pavilion. Goats grazed the bowling green, and it was rumored that the grafin milked them herself.
