The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 74
“You’d like her, Gig,” Rye said. “She’s got a lot of fight.”
But Gig said nothing. He sat, each night, as close to the fire as he could get, staring at the crackling flames.
One day, a week after Gig got out, Rye was downtown, making a delivery for the shop, when he walked past the big new Carnegie Library. It was a stately two-story pillared building—more like a church than any church Rye had ever seen. He stepped inside the big doors and watched well-dressed people move among the tall stacks. He felt intimidated. He was about to turn and leave when a young librarian, all neck and no chin, approached and asked if he could help in some way.
Rye explained that his brother was in the process of reading Count Tolstoy’s War and Peace but had only read volumes one and three so far.
The librarian looked confused. “Books one and three? Of the four?”
“I thought there were five.”
“Ah. I see,” the librarian said, nodding. “I’m guessing he’s reading the ’03 Scribner. Tolstoy’s collected, of which War and Peace makes up five of twenty volumes.” The librarian made a face as if tasting something rancid. “It’s a reprint of Gottsberger, from 1886, translated from the French by Clara Bell. Don’t get me wrong, Clara Bell is a real talent, her Dante impeccable, but an English translation of a French translation of a Russian novel? Isn’t that more like reading a rumor than a book?”
It seemed as if Rye was supposed to laugh, so he did. This pleased the librarian, who took him by the arm. “Come on. I want to show you something.” He led Rye to a tall bookshelf near a window overlooking the river. With a practiced movement, he eased three volumes out inches from the other books, so that they seemed to float out from the shelf. They had dark blue boards, the color of a lake in winter, with a lighter blue and gold design down the spine, and a gold inlaid crown on top with the raised words WAR AND PEACE, TOLSTOY I, II, AND III, and below that what appeared to be a blue and gold heart-shaped scepter.
They were the loveliest books Rye had ever seen.
“Aren’t they something?” the librarian asked. “The 1904 McClure, Phillips and Company edition. The four books and epilogue are in three volumes, translated directly from the Russian by Constance Garnett.” He leaned in as if sharing a secret. “She nearly went blind doing the translation.”
The librarian handed over the first volume and Rye opened it, careful with the onionskin title page. He looked around. “Is it . . . I mean, can I just . . .”
The librarian seemed uncertain what he was asking.
“I don’t know how this works,” Rye said.
“A library?” The man smiled.
That day, Rye checked out Volume I of Constance Garnett’s newer translation of War and Peace and proudly presented it to Gig as they sat by the fire. Rye tried to explain all the librarian had told him: “Reading a book translated from Russian to French to English is like— It’s like—” But he couldn’t remember the librarian’s droll comment. “Anyway, it’s not as good,” he said. “But the man at the library said this is the best one. And I can check out the next volume when I return this one.”
Gig said nothing. He looked pained. He held the book to his chest. “Rye, I don’t—” He shook his head. “You can’t keep doing this. Gloves. And books. I’m not—I can’t.” He just shook his head and didn’t speak again. He went to bed that night without cracking the book.
Gig was still asleep the next day when Rye left for work.
As Rye walked toward the streetcar, he saw a familiar car parked at the end of the block. He leaned in the window and startled Willard, finger up his nose to the knuckle.
“Jesus!” Willard said. “Make some noise, kid.”
“Sorry,” Rye said. “Shouldn’t you be—” He didn’t finish the sentence but thought, Better at this?
Willard reached in his coat and offered him a cigarette, but Rye shook it off.
“Anything yet?” Willard asked.
“From Early,” Rye said. “No.”
“And the money?”
“Still there.”
Willard looked at him suspiciously. “And has your brother heard from Reston?”
“No,” Rye said. “Gig hasn’t left his bed.”
Willard looked concerned. “Is he bad off?”
“He’ll be fine,” Rye said. “He just needs some rest.”
But that night, when Rye got home from work, Gig was gone. Rye checked to see that the money was still there—it was—then ate dinner alone with Mrs. Ricci. Afterward, Rye sat by the fire reading the papers for stories about Gurley and the union. There was a story in the Chronicle about police raiding a printer in Hillyard, confiscating and burning three thousand copies of the Industrial Worker. The newspaper had tried to publish “a crude and libelous story alleging wholly fabricated charges against city officials, an account so vile as to shred the very cloth of decency that shrouds this city,” the Chronicle story said. Even the labor-friendly Press wouldn’t characterize what was in this scandalous story that had gotten the Industrial Worker confiscated, except to say that it had been written by Gurley Flynn, and the judge in her case was considering revoking her bail because of it.
Rye went to bed and was asleep when Gig finally staggered in sometime after midnight, smelling like booze and vomit and woodsmoke. He moaned and farted his way under the blanket on his cot, and a few minutes later, he began vomiting again. Rye ran over and tilted Gig’s head over the side of the cot. He got a basin and went to the outhouse, came back, and cleaned the floor, Gig muttering the whole time: “Leave me alone.” Rye tried washing his face, but Gig pushed his hands away. “Goddamn it, Rye, leave it. I didn’t want this. Any of it.”
He was sleeping it