A Gentleman in Moscow / Джентльмен в Москве (by Amor Towles, 2016) - аудиокнига на английском

How well I remember When it came as a visitor on foot And dwelt a while amongst us A melody in the semblance of a mountain cat. Well, where is our purpose now? Like so many questions I answer this one With the eye-averted peeling of a pear. With a bow I bid goodnight And pass through terrace doors Into the simple splendors Of another temperate spring; But this much I know: It is not lost among the autumn leaves on Peter’s Square. It is not among the ashes in the Athenaeum ash cans. It is not inside the blue pagodas of your fine Chinoiserie. It is not in Vronsky’s saddlebags; Not in Sonnet XXX, stanza one; Not on twenty-seven red . . . Where Is It Now? (Lines 1–19) Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov 1913 21 June 1922 APPEARANCE OF COUNT ALEXANDER ILYICH ROSTOV BEFORE THE EMERGENCY COMMITTEE OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT FOR INTERNAL AFFAIRS Presiding: Comrades V. A. Ignatov, M. S. Zakovsky, A. N. Kosarev Prosecuting: A. Y. Vyshinsky Prosecutor Vyshinsky: State your name. Rostov: Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt. Vyshinsky: You may have your titles; they are of no use to anyone else. But for the record, are you not Alexander Rostov, born in St. Petersburg, 24 October 1889? Rostov: I am he. Vyshinsky: Before we begin, I must say, I do not think that I have ever seen a jacket festooned with so many buttons. Rostov: Thank you. Vyshinsky: It was not meant as a compliment. Rostov: In that case, I demand satisfaction on the field of honor. [Laughter.] Secretary Ignatov: Silence in the gallery. Vyshinsky: What is your current address? Rostov: Suite 317 at the Hotel Metropol, Moscow. Vyshinsky: How long have you lived there? Rostov: I have been in residence since the fifth of September 1918. Just under four years. Vyshinsky: And your occupation? Rostov: It is not the business of gentlemen to have occupations. Vyshinsky: Very well then. How do you spend your time? Rostov: Dining, discussing. Reading, reflecting. The usual rigmarole. Vyshinsky: And you write poetry? Rostov: I have been known to fence with a quill. Vyshinsky: [Holding up a pamphlet] Are you the author of this long poem of 1913: Where Is It Now? Rostov: It has been attributed to me. Vyshinsky: Why did you write the poem? Rostov: It demanded to be written. I simply happened to be sitting at the particular desk on the particular morning when it chose to make its demands. Vyshinsky: And where was that exactly? Rostov: In the south parlor at Idlehour. Vyshinsky: Idlehour? Rostov: The Rostov estate in Nizhny Novgorod. Vyshinsky: Ah, yes. Of course. How apt. But let us return our attention to your poem. Coming as it did—in the more subdued years after the failed revolt of 1905—many considered it a call to action. Would you agree with that assessment? Rostov: All poetry is a call to action. Vyshinsky: [Checking notes] And it was in the spring of the following year that you left Russia for Paris . . . ? Rostov: I seem to remember blossoms on the apple trees. So, yes, in all likelihood it was spring. Vyshinsky: May 16 to be precise. Now, we understand the reasons for your self-imposed exile; and we even have some sympathy with the actions that prompted your flight. What concerns us here is your return in 1918. One wonders if you came back with the intention of taking up arms and, if so, whether for or against the Revolution. Rostov: By that point, I’m afraid that my days of taking up arms were behind me. Vyshinsky: Why then did you come back? Rostov: I missed the climate. [Laughter.] Vyshinsky: Count Rostov, you do not seem to appreciate the gravity of your position. Nor do you show the respect that is due the men convened before you. Rostov: The Tsarina had the same complaints about me in her day. Ignatov: Prosecutor Vyshinsky. If I may . . . Vyshinsky: Secretary Ignatov. Ignatov: I have no doubt, Count Rostov, that many in the gallery are surprised to find you so charming; but I, for one, am not surprised in the least. History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisure class. What I do find surprising is that the author of the poem in question could have become a man so obviously without purpose. Rostov: I have lived under the impression that a man’s purpose is known only to God. Ignatov: Indeed. How convenient that must have been for you. [The Committee recesses for twelve minutes.] Ignatov: Alexander Ilyich Rostov, taking into full account your own testimony, we can only assume that the clear-eyed spirit who wrote the poem Where Is It Now? has succumbed irrevocably to the corruptions of his class—and now poses a threat to the very ideals he once espoused. On that basis, our inclination would be to have you taken from this chamber and put against the wall. But there are those within the senior ranks of the Party who count you among the heroes of the prerevolutionary cause. Thus, it is the opinion of this committee that you should be returned to that hotel of which you are so fond. But make no mistake: should you ever set foot outside of the Metropol again, you will be shot. Next matter. Bearing the signatures of V. A. Ignatov M. S. Zakovsky A. N. Kosarev BOOK ONE 1922 An Ambassador A t half past six on the twenty-first of June 1922, when Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin onto Red Square, it was glorious and cool. Drawing his shoulders back without breaking stride, the Count inhaled the air like one fresh from a swim. The sky was the very blue that the cupolas of St. Basil’s had been painted for. Their pinks, greens, and golds shimmered as if it were the sole purpose of a religion to cheer its Divinity. Even the Bolshevik girls conversing before the windows of the State Department Store seemed dressed to celebrate the last days of spring. “Hello, my good man,” the Count called to Fyodor, at the edge of the square. “I see the blackberries have come in early this year!” Giving the startled fruit seller no time to reply, the Count walked briskly on, his waxed moustaches spread like the wings of a gull. Passing through Resurrection Gate, he turned his back on the lilacs of the Alexander Gardens and proceeded toward Theatre Square, where the Hotel Metropol stood in all its glory. When he reached the threshold, the Count gave a wink to Pavel, the afternoon doorman, and turned with a hand outstretched to the two soldiers trailing behind him. “Thank you, gentlemen, for delivering me safely. I shall no longer be in need of your assistance.” Though strapping lads, both of the soldiers had to look up from under their caps to return the Count’s gaze—for like ten generations of Rostov men, the Count stood an easy six foot three. “On you go,” said the more thuggish of the two, his hand on the butt of his rifle. “We’re to see you to your rooms.” In the lobby, the Count gave a wide wave with which to simultaneously greet the unflappable Arkady (who was manning the front desk) and sweet Valentina (who was dusting a statuette). Though the Count had greeted them in this manner a hundred times before, both responded with a wide-eyed stare. It was the sort of reception one might have expected when arriving for a dinner party having forgotten to don one’s pants. Passing the young girl with the penchant for yellow who was reading a magazine in her favorite lobby chair, the Count came to an abrupt stop before the potted palms in order to address his escort. “The lift or the stairs, gentlemen?” The soldiers looked from one another to the Count and back again, apparently unable to make up their minds. “The stairs,” he determined on their behalf, then vaulted the steps two at a time, as had been his habit since the academy. On the third floor, the Count walked down the red-carpeted hallway toward his suite—an interconnected bedroom, bath, dining room, and grand salon with eight-foot windows overlooking the lindens of Theatre Square. And there the rudeness of the day awaited. For before the flung-open doors of his rooms stood a captain of the guards with Pasha and Petya, the hotel’s bellhops. The two young men met the Count’s gaze with looks of embarrassment, having clearly been conscripted into some duty they found distasteful. The Count addressed the officer. “What is the meaning of this, Captain?” The captain, who seemed mildly surprised by the question, had the good training to maintain the evenness of his affect. “I am here to show you to your quarters.” “These are my quarters.” Betraying the slightest suggestion of a smile, the captain replied, “No longer, I’m afraid.” Leaving Pasha and Petya behind, the captain led the Count and his escort to a utility stair hidden behind an inconspicuous door in the core of the hotel. The ill-lit ascent turned a sharp corner every five steps in the manner of a belfry. Up they wound three flights to where a door opened on a narrow corridor servicing a bathroom and six bedrooms reminiscent of monastic cells. This attic was originally built to house the butlers and ladies’ maids of the Metropol’s guests; but when the practice of traveling with servants fell out of fashion, the unused rooms had been claimed by the caprices of casual urgency—thenceforth warehousing scraps of lumber, broken furniture, and other assorted debris. Earlier that day, the room closest to the stairwell had been cleared of all but a cast-iron bed, a three-legged bureau, and a decade of dust. In the corner near the door was a small closet, rather like a telephone box, that had been dropped in the room as an afterthought. Reflecting the pitch of the roof, the ceiling sloped at a gradual incline as it moved away from the door, such that at the room’s outer wall the only place where the Count could stand to his full height was where a dormer accommodated a window the size of a chessboard. As the two guards looked on smugly from the hall, the good captain explained that he had summoned the bellhops to help the Count move what few belongings his new quarters would accommodate. “And the rest?” “Becomes the property of the People.” So this is their game, thought the Count. “Very well.” Back down the belfry he skipped as the guards hurried behind him, their rifles clacking against the wall. On the third floor, he marched along the hallway and into his suite where the two bellhops looked up with woeful expressions. “It’s all right, fellows,” the Count assured and then began pointing: “This. That. Those. All the books.” Among the furnishings destined for his new quarters, the Count chose two high-back chairs, his grandmother’s oriental coffee table, and a favorite set of her porcelain plates. He chose the two table lamps fashioned from ebony elephants and the portrait of his sister, Helena, which Serov had painted during a brief stay at Idlehour in 1908. He did not forget the leather case that had been fashioned especially for him by Asprey in London and which his good friend Mishka had so appropriately christened the Ambassador. Someone had shown the courtesy of having one of the Count’s traveling trunks brought to his bedroom. So, as the bellhops carried the aforementioned upward, the Count filled the trunk with clothes and personal effects. Noting that the guards were eyeing the two bottles of brandy on the console, the Count tossed them in as well. And once the trunk had been carried upstairs, he finally pointed to the desk. The two bellhops, their bright blue uniforms already smudged from their efforts, took hold of it by the corners. “But it weighs a ton,” said one to the other. “A king fortifies himself with a castle,” observed the Count, “a gentleman with a desk.” As the bellhops lugged it into the hall, the Rostovs’ grandfather clock, which was fated to be left behind, tolled a doleful eight. The captain had long since returned to his post and the guards, having swapped their belligerence for boredom, now leaned against the wall and let the ashes from their cigarettes fall on the parquet floor while into the grand salon poured the undiminished light of the Moscow summer solstice. With a wistful eye, the Count approached the windows at the suite’s northwest corner. How many hours had he spent before them? How many mornings dressed in his robe with his coffee in hand had he observed the new arrivals from St. Petersburg disembarking from their cabs, worn and weary from the overnight train? On how many winter eves had he watched the snow slowly descending as some lone silhouette, stocky and short, passed under a street lamp? At that very instant, at the square’s northern extreme a young Red Army officer rushed up the steps of the Bolshoi, having missed the first half hour of the evening’s performance. The Count smiled to remember his own youthful preference for arriving entr’acte. Having insisted at the English Club that he could only stay for one more drink, he stayed for three. Then leaping into the waiting carriage, he’d flash across the city, vault the fabled steps, and like this young fellow slip through the golden doors. As the ballerinas danced gracefully across the stage, the Count would be whispering his excusez-moi’s, making his way to his usual seat in the twentieth row with its privileged view of the ladies in the loges. Arriving late, thought the Count with a sigh. What a delicacy of youth. Then he turned on his heels and began to walk his rooms. First, he admired the salon’s grand dimensions and its two chandeliers. He admired the painted panels of the little dining room and the elaborate brass mechanics that allowed one to secure the double doors of the bedroom. In short, he reviewed the interior much as would a potential buyer who was seeing the rooms for the very first time. Once in the bedroom, the Count paused before the marble-topped table on which lay an assortment of curios. From among them, he picked up a pair of scissors that had been prized by his sister. Fashioned in the shape of an egret with the long silver blades representing the bird’s beak and the small golden screw at the pivot representing its eye, the scissors were so delicate he could barely fit his thumb and finger through the rings. Looking from one end of the apartment to the other, the Count took a quick inventory of all that would be left behind. What personal possessions, furnishings, and objets d’art he had brought to this suite four years before were already the product of a great winnowing. For when word had reached the Count of the Tsar’s execution, he had set out from Paris at once. Over twenty days, he had made his way across six nations and skirted eight battalions fighting under five different flags, finally arriving at Idlehour on the seventh of August 1918, with nothing but a rucksack on his back. Though he found the countryside on the verge of upheaval and the household in a state of distress, his grandmother, the Countess, was characteristically composed. “Sasha,” she said without rising from her chair, “how good of you to come. You must be famished. Join me for tea.” When he explained the necessity of her leaving the country and described the arrangements he had made for her passage, the Countess understood that there was no alternative. She understood that although every servant in her employ was ready to accompany her, she must travel with two. She also understood why her grandson and only heir, whom she had raised from the age of ten, would not be coming with her. When the Count was just seven, he was defeated so soundly by a neighboring boy in a game of draughts that, apparently, a tear was shed, a curse was uttered, and the game pieces were scattered across the floor. This lack of sportsmanship led to a stiff reprimand from the Count’s father and a trip to bed without supper. But as the young Count was gripping his blanket in misery, he was visited by his grandmother. Taking a seat at the foot of the bed, the Countess expressed a measure of sympathy: “There is nothing pleasant to be said about losing,” she began, “and the Obolensky boy is a pill. But, Sasha, my dear, why on earth would you give him the satisfaction?” It was in this spirit that he and his grandmother parted without tears on the docks in Peterhof. Then the Count returned to the family estate in order to administer its shuttering. In quick succession came the sweeping of chimneys, the clearing of pantries, and the shrouding of furniture. It was just as if the family were returning to St. Petersburg for the season, except that the dogs were released from their kennels, the horses from their stables, and the servants from their duties. Then, having filled a single wagon with some of the finest of the Rostovs’ furniture, the Count bolted the doors and set out for Moscow. ’Tis a funny thing, reflected the Count as he stood ready to abandon his suite. From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion. But, of course, a thing is just a thing. And so, slipping his sister’s scissors into his pocket, the Count looked once more at what heirlooms remained and then expunged them from his heartache forever. One hour later, as the Count bounced twice on his new mattress to identify the key of the bedsprings (G-sharp), he surveyed the furniture that had been stacked around him and reminded himself how, as a youth, he had longed for trips to France by steamship and Moscow by the overnight train. And why had he longed for those particular journeys? Because their berths had been so small! What a marvel it had been to discover the table that folded away without a trace; and the drawers built into the base of the bed; and the wall-mounted lamps just large enough to illuminate a page. This efficiency of design was music to the young mind. It attested to a precision of purpose and the promise of adventure. For such would have been the quarters of Captain Nemo when he journeyed twenty thousand leagues beneath the sea. And wouldn’t any young boy with the slightest gumption gladly trade a hundred nights in a palace for one aboard the Nautilus? Well. At long last, here he was. Besides, with half the rooms on the second floor temporarily commandeered by the Bolsheviks for the tireless typing of directives, at least on the sixth floor a man could hear himself think.* The Count stood and banged his head on the slope of the ceiling. “Just so,” he replied. Easing one of the high-back chairs aside and moving the elephant lamps to the bed, the Count opened his trunk. First, he took out the photograph of the Delegation and placed it on the desk where it belonged. Then he took out the two bottles of brandy and his father’s twice-tolling clock. But when he took out his grandmother’s opera glasses and placed them on the desk, a fluttering drew his attention toward the dormer. Though the window was only the size of a dinner invitation, the Count could see that a pigeon had landed outside on the copper stripping of the ledge. “Why, hello,” said the Count. “How kind of you to stop by.” The pigeon looked back with a decidedly proprietary air. Then it scuffed the flashing with its claws and thrust its beak at the window several times in quick succession. “Ah, yes,” conceded the Count. “There is something in what you say.” He was about to explain to his new neighbor the cause of his unexpected arrival, when from the hallway came the delicate clearing of a throat. Without turning, the Count could tell that this was Andrey, the ma?tre d’ of the Boyarsky, for it was his trademark interruption. Nodding once to the pigeon to indicate that they would resume their discussion anon, the Count rebuttoned his jacket and turned to find that it was not Andrey alone who had paid a visit: three members of the hotel’s staff were crowded in the doorway. There was Andrey with his perfect poise and long judicious hands; Vasily, the hotel’s inimitable concierge; and Marina, the shy delight with the wandering eye who had recently been promoted from chambermaid to seamstress. The three of them exhibited the same bewildered gaze that the Count had noticed on the faces of Arkady and Valentina a few hours before, and finally it struck him: When he had been carted off that morning, they had all assumed that he would never return. He had emerged from behind the walls of the Kremlin like an aviator from the wreckage of a crash. “My dear friends,” said the Count, “no doubt you are curious as to the day’s events. As you may know, I was invited to the Kremlin for a t?te-?-t?te. There, several duly goateed officers of the current regime determined that for the crime of being born an aristocrat, I should be sentenced to spend the rest of my days . . . in this hotel.” In response to the cheers, the Count shook hands with his guests one by one, expressing to each his appreciation for their fellowship and his heartfelt thanks. “Come in, come in,” he said. Together, the three staff members squeezed their way between the teetering towers of furniture. “If you would be so kind,” said the Count, handing Andrey one of the bottles of brandy. Then he kneeled before the Ambassador, threw the clasps, and opened it like a giant book. Carefully secured inside were fifty-two glasses—or more precisely, twenty-six pairs of glasses—each shaped to its purpose, from the grand embrace of the Burgundy glass down to those charming little vessels designed for the brightly colored liqueurs of southern Europe. In the spirit of the hour, the Count picked four glasses at random and passed them around as Andrey, having plucked the cork from the bottle, performed the honors. Once his guests had their brandy in hand, the Count raised his own on high. “To the Metropol,” he said. “To the Metropol!” they replied. The Count was something of a natural-born host and in the hour that ensued, as he topped a glass here and sparked a conversation there, he had an instinctive awareness of all the temperaments in the room. Despite the formality appropriate to his position, tonight Andrey exhibited a ready smile and an occasional wink. Vasily, who spoke with such pointed accuracy when providing directions to the city’s sights, suddenly had the lilt of one who may or may not remember tomorrow what he had said today. And at every jest, the shy Marina allowed herself to giggle without placing a hand in front of her lips. On this of all nights, the Count deeply appreciated their good cheer; but he was not so vain as to imagine it was founded solely on news of his narrow escape. For as he knew better than most, it was in September of 1905 that the members of the Delegation had signed the Treaty of Portsmouth to end the Russo-Japanese War. In the seventeen years since the making of that peace—hardly a generation—Russia had suffered a world war, a civil war, two famines, and the so-called Red Terror. In short, it had been through an era of upheaval that had spared none. Whether one’s leanings were left or right, Red or White, whether one’s personal circumstances had changed for the better or changed for the worse, surely at long last it was time to drink to the health of the nation. At ten o’clock, the Count walked his guests to the belfry and bid them goodnight with the same sense of ceremony that he would have exhibited at the door of his family’s residence in St. Petersburg. Returning to his quarters, he opened the window (though it was only the size of a postage stamp), poured the last of the brandy, and took a seat at the desk. Built in the Paris of Louis XVI with the gilded accents and leather top of the era, the desk had been left to the Count by his godfather, Grand Duke Demidov. A man of great white sideburns, pale blue eyes, and golden epaulettes, the Grand Duke spoke four languages and read six. Never to wed, he represented his country at Portsmouth, managed three estates, and generally prized industry over nonsense. But before all of that, he had served alongside the Count’s father as a devil-may-care cadet in the cavalry. Thus had the Grand Duke become the Count’s watchful guardian. And when the Count’s parents succumbed to cholera within hours of each other in 1900, it was the Grand Duke who took the young Count aside and explained that he must be strong for his sister’s sake; that adversity presents itself in many forms; and that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them. The Count ran his hand across the desk’s dimpled surface. How many of the Grand Duke’s words did those faint indentations reflect? Here over forty years had been written concise instructions to caretakers; persuasive arguments to statesmen; exquisite counsel to friends. In other words, it was a desk to be reckoned with. Emptying his glass, the Count pushed his chair back and sat on the floor. He ran his hand behind the desk’s right front leg until he found the catch. When he pressed it, a seamless door opened to reveal a velvet-lined hollow that, like the hollows in the other three legs, was stacked with pieces of gold. An Anglican Ashore W hen he began to stir at half past nine, in the shapeless moments before the return to consciousness Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov savored the taste of the day to come. Within the hour, he would be in the warm spring air striding along Tverskaya Street, his moustaches at full sail. En route, he would purchase the Herald from the stand on Gazetny Lane, he would pass Filippov’s (pausing only briefly to eye the pastries in the window) and then continue on to meet with his bankers. But coming to a halt at the curb (in order to the let the traffic pass), the Count would note that his lunch at the Jockey Club was scheduled for two o’clock—and that while his bankers were expecting him at half past ten, they were for all intents and purposes in the employ of their depositors, and thus could presumably be kept waiting. . . . With these thoughts in mind, he would double back and, taking his top hat from his head, open Filippov’s door. In an instant, his senses would be rewarded by the indisputable evidence of the baker’s mastery. Drifting in the air would be the gentle aroma of freshly baked pretzels, sweet rolls, and loaves of bread so unparalleled they were delivered daily to the Hermitage by train—while arranged in perfect rows behind the glass of the front case would be cakes topped in frostings as varied in color as the tulips of Amsterdam. Approaching the counter, the Count would ask the young lady with the light blue apron for a mille-feuille (how aptly named) and watch with admiration as she used a teaspoon to gently nudge the delicacy from a silver spade onto a porcelain plate. His refreshment in hand, the Count would take a seat as close as possible to the little table in the corner where young ladies of fashion met each morning to review the previous evening’s intrigues. Mindful of their surroundings, the three damsels would initially speak in the hushed voices of gentility; but swept away by the currents of their own emotions, their voices would inevitably rise, such that by 11:15, even the most discreet enjoyer of a pastry would have no choice but to eavesdrop on the thousand-layered complications of their hearts. By 11:45, having cleaned his plate and brushed the crumbs from his moustaches, having waved a thanks to the girl behind the counter and tipped his hat to the three young ladies with whom he had briefly chatted, he would step back onto Tverskaya Street and pause to consider: What next? Perhaps he would stop by Galerie Bertrand to see the latest canvases from Paris, or slip into the hall of the Conservatory where some youthful quartet was trying to master a bit of Beethoven; perhaps he would simply circle back to the Alexander Gardens, where he could find a bench and admire the lilacs as a pigeon cooed and shuffled its feet on the copper flashing of the sill. On the copper flashing of the sill . . . “Ah, yes,” acknowledged the Count. “I suppose there’s to be none of that.” If the Count were to close his eyes and roll to the wall, was it possible that he could return to his bench just in time to remark, What a lovely coincidence, when the three young ladies from Filippov’s happened by? Without a doubt. But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness. Sitting upright, the Count put the soles of his feet squarely on the uncarpeted floor and gave the compass points of his moustaches a twist. On the Grand Duke’s desk stood a champagne flute and a brandy snifter. With the lean uprightness of the former looking down upon the squat rotundity of the latter, one could not help but think of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the plains of the Sierra Morena. Or of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck in the shadows of Sherwood Forest. Or of Prince Hal and Falstaff before the gates of— But there was a knock at the door. The Count stood and hit his head against the ceiling. “One moment,” he called, rubbing his crown and rummaging through his trunk for a robe. Once suitably attired, he opened the door to find an industrious young fellow standing in the hall with the Count’s daily breakfast—a pot of coffee, two biscuits, and a piece of fruit (today a plum). “Well done, Yuri! Come in, come in. Set it there, set it there.” As Yuri arranged the breakfast on top of the trunk, the Count sat at the Grand Duke’s desk and penned a quick note to one Konstantin Konstantinovich of Durnovksi Street. “Would you be so kind as to have this delivered, my boy?” Never one to shirk, Yuri happily took the note, promised to relay it by hand, and accepted a tip with a bow. Then at the threshold he paused. “Shall I . . . leave the door ajar?” It was a reasonable question. For the room was rather stuffy, and on the sixth floor there was hardly much risk of one’s privacy being compromised. “Please do.” As Yuri’s steps sounded down the belfry, the Count placed his napkin in his lap, poured a cup of coffee, and graced it with a few drops of cream. Taking his first sip, he noted with satisfaction that young Yuri must have sprinted up the extra three flights of stairs because the coffee was not one degree colder than usual. But while he was liberating a wedge of the plum from its pit with his paring knife, the Count happened to note a silvery shadow, as seemingly insubstantial as a puff of smoke, slipping behind his trunk. Leaning to his side in order to peer around a high-back chair, the Count discovered that this will-o’-the-wisp was none other than the Metropol’s lobby cat. A one-eyed Russian blue who let nothing within the hotel’s walls escape his notice, he had apparently come to the attic to review the Count’s new quarters for himself. Stepping from the shadows, he leapt from the floor to the Ambassador, from the Ambassador to the side table, and from the side table to the top of the three-legged bureau, without making a sound. Having achieved this vantage point, he gave the room a good hard look then shook his head in feline disappointment. “Yes,” said the Count after completing his own survey. “I see what you mean.” The crowded confusion of furniture gave the Count’s little domain the look of a consignment shop in the Arbat. In a room this size, he could have made do with a single high-back chair, a single bedside table, and a single lamp. He could have made do without his grandmother’s Limoges altogether. And the books? All of them! he had said with such bravado. But in the light of day, he had to admit that this instruction had been prompted less by good sense than by a rather childish impulse to impress the bellhops and put the guards in their place. For the books were not even to the Count’s taste. His personal library of majestic narratives by the likes of Balzac, Dickens, and Tolstoy had been left behind in Paris. The books the bellhops had lugged to the attic had been his father’s and, devoted as they were to studies of rational philosophy and the science of modern agriculture, each promised heft and threatened impenetrability. Without a doubt, one more winnowing was called for. So, having broken his fast, bathed, and dressed, the Count went about the business. First, he tried the door of the adjacent room. It must have been blocked on the inside by something quite heavy, for under the force of the Count’s shoulder it barely budged. In the next three rooms, the Count found flotsam and jetsam from floor to ceiling. But in the last room, amidst tiles of slate and strips of flashing, an ample space had been cleared around a dented old samovar where some roofers had once taken their tea. Back in his room, the Count hung a few jackets in his closet. He unpacked some trousers and shirts into the back right corner of his bureau (to ensure that the three-legged beast wouldn’t topple). Down the hall he dragged his trunk, half of his furniture, and all of his father’s books but one. Thus, within an hour he had reduced his room to its essentials: a desk and chair, a bed and bedside table, a high-back chair for guests, and a ten-foot passage just wide enough for a gentleman to circumambulate in reflection. With satisfaction the Count looked toward the cat (who was busy licking the cream from his paws in the comfort of the high-back chair). “What say you now, you old pirate?” Then he sat at his desk and picked up the one volume that he had retained. It must have been a decade since the Count had first promised himself to read this work of universal acclaim that his father had held so dear. And yet, every time he had pointed his finger at his calendar and declared: This is the month in which I shall devote myself to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne! some devilish aspect of life had poked its head in the door. From an unexpected corner had come an expression of romantic interest, which could not in good conscience be ignored. Or his banker had called. Or the circus had come to town. Life will entice, after all. But here, at last, circumstance had conspired not to distract the Count, but to present him with the time and solitude necessary to give the book its due. So, with the volume firmly in hand, he put one foot on the corner of the bureau, pushed back until his chair was balanced on its two rear legs, and began to read: By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End The commonest way of softening the hearts of those we have offended, when, vengeance in hand, they hold us at their mercy, is by submission to move them to commiseration and pity. However, audacity and steadfastness—entirely contrary means—have sometimes served to produce the same effect. . . . It was at Idlehour that the Count had first formed the habit of reading in a tilted chair. On those glorious spring days when the orchards were in bloom and the foxtails bobbed above the grass, he and Helena would seek out a pleasant corner to while away the hours. One day it might be under the pergola on the upper patio and the next beside the great elm that overlooked the bend in the river. As Helena embroidered, the Count would tilt back his chair—balancing himself by resting a foot lightly on the lip of the fountain or the trunk of the tree—in order to read aloud from her favorite works of Pushkin. And hour upon hour, stanza upon stanza, her little needle would go round and round. “Where are all those stitches headed?” he would occasionally demand at the end of a page. “Surely, by now, every pillow in the household has been graced by a butterfly and every handkerchief by a monogram.” And when he accused her of unwinding her stitches at night like Penelope just so that he would have to read her another volume of verse, she would smile inscrutably. Looking up from the pages of Montaigne, the Count rested his gaze on Helena’s portrait, which was leaning against the wall. Painted at Idlehour in the month of August, it depicted his sister at the dining room table before a plate of peaches. How well Serov had captured her likeness—with her hair as black as a raven’s, her cheeks lightly flushed, her expression tender and forgiving. Perhaps there had been something in those stitches, thought the Count, some gentle wisdom that she was mastering through the completion of every little loop. Yes, with such kindheartedness at the age of fourteen, one could only imagine the grace she might have exhibited at the age of twenty-five. . . . The Count was roused from this reverie by a delicate tapping. Closing his father’s book, he looked back to find a sixty-year-old Greek in the doorway. “Konstantin Konstantinovich!” Letting the front legs of his chair land on the floor with a thump, the Count crossed to the threshold and took his visitor’s hand. “I am so glad you could come. We have only met once or twice, so you may not remember, but I am Alexander Rostov.” The old Greek gave a bow to show that no reminder was necessary. “Come in, come in. Have a seat.” Waving Montaigne’s masterpiece at the one-eyed cat (who leapt to the floor with a hiss), the Count offered his guest the high-back chair and took the desk chair for himself. In the moment that ensued, the old Greek returned the Count’s gaze with an expression of moderate curiosity—which was to be expected, perhaps, given that they had never met on a matter of business. After all, the Count was not accustomed to losing at cards. So the Count took it upon himself to begin. “As you can see, Konstantin, my circumstances have changed.” The Count’s guest allowed himself an expression of surprise. “No, it is true,” said the Count. “They have changed quite a bit.” Looking once about the room, the old Greek raised his hands to acknowledge the doleful impermanence of circumstances, “Perhaps you are looking for access to some . . . capital?” he ventured. In making this suggestion, the old Greek paused ever so briefly before the word capital. And in the Count’s considered opinion, it was a perfect pause—one mastered over decades of delicate conversations. It was a pause with which he expressed an element of sympathy for his interlocutor without suggesting for even an instant that there had been a change in their relative stations. “No, no,” assured the Count with a shake of the head to emphasize that borrowing was not a habit of the Rostovs. “On the contrary, Konstantin, I have something that I think will be of interest to you.” Then, as if from thin air, the Count produced one of the coins from the Grand Duke’s desk, balancing it upright on the tip of a finger and thumb. The old Greek studied the coin for a second and then, in a sign of appreciation, slowly exhaled. For while Konstantin Konstantinovich was a lender by trade, his art was to see an item for a minute, to hold it for a moment, and to know its true worth. “May I . . . ?” he asked. “By all means.” He took the coin, turned it once, and handed it back with reverence. For not only was the piece pure in the metallurgical sense, the winking double eagle on the reverse confirmed to the experienced eye that it was one of the five thousand coins minted in commemoration of Catherine the Great’s coronation. Such a piece purchased from a gentleman in need could be sold at a reasonable profit to the most cautious of banking houses in the best of times. But in a period of upheaval? Even as the demand for common luxuries collapsed, the value of a treasure like this would be on the rise. “Excuse my curiosity, Your Excellency, but is that a . . . lonely piece?” “Lonely? Oh, no,” replied the Count with a shake of the head. “It lives like a soldier in a barracks. Like a slave in a galley. Not a moment to itself, I’m afraid.” The old Greek exhaled again. “Well then . . .” And in a matter of minutes the two men had struck an arrangement without a hem or haw. What is more, the old Greek said it would be his pleasure to personally deliver three notes, which the Count penned on the spot. Then they shook hands like familiars and agreed to see each other three months hence. But just as the old Greek was about to step through the door, he paused. “Your Excellency . . . May I ask a personal question?” “By all means.” He gestured almost shyly to the Grand Duke’s desk. “Can we expect more verses from you?” The Count offered an appreciative smile. “I am sorry to say, Konstantin, that my days of poetry are behind me.” “If your days of poetry are behind you, Count Rostov, then it is we who are sorry.” Tucked discreetly into the northeast corner of the hotel’s second floor was the Boyarsky—the finest restaurant in Moscow, if not in all of Russia. With vaulted ceilings and dark red walls reminiscent of a boyar’s retreat, the Boyarsky boasted the city’s most elegant d?cor, its most sophisticated waitstaff, and its most subtle chef de cuisine. So renowned was the experience of dining at the Boyarsky that on any given night one might have to elbow one’s way through a crowd of hopefuls just to catch the eye of Andrey, as he presided over the large black book in which the names of the fortunate were set down; and when beckoned ahead by the ma?tre d’, one could expect to be stopped five times in four languages on the way to one’s table in the corner, where one would be served flawlessly by a waiter in a white dinner jacket. That is, one could expect this until 1920 when, having already sealed the borders, the Bolsheviks decided to prohibit the use of rubles in fine restaurants—effectively closing them to 99 percent of the population. So tonight, as the Count began to eat his entr?e, water glasses clinked against cutlery, couples whispered awkwardly, and even the best of waiters found himself staring at the ceiling. But every period has its virtues, even a time of turmoil. . . . When Emile Zhukovsky was lured to the Metropol as chef de cuisine in 1912, he was given command of a seasoned staff and a sizable kitchen. In addition, he had the most celebrated larder east of Vienna. On his spice shelves was a compendium of the world’s predilections and in his cooler a comprehensive survey of birds and beasts hanging from hooks by their feet. As such, one might naturally leap to the conclusion that 1912 had been a perfect year in which to measure the chef’s talents. But in a period of abundance any half-wit with a spoon can please a palate. To truly test a chef’s ingenuity, one must instead look to a period of want. And what provides want better than war? In the Revolution’s aftermath—with its economic declines, failed crops, and halted trade—refined ingredients became as scarce in Moscow as butterflies at sea. The Metropol’s larder was depleted bushel by bushel, pound by pound, dash by dash, and its chef was left to meet the expectations of his audience with cornmeal, cauliflower, and cabbage—that is to say, with whatever he could get his hands on. Yes, some claimed Emile Zhukovsky was a curmudgeon and others called him abrupt. Some said he was a short man with a shorter temper. But none could dispute his genius. Just consider the dish the Count was finishing at that very moment: a saltimbocca fashioned from necessity. In place of a cutlet of veal, Emile had pounded flat a breast of chicken. In place of prosciutto de Parma, he had shaved a Ukrainian ham. And in place of sage, that delicate leaf that binds the flavors together? He had opted for an herb that was as soft and aromatic as sage, but more bitter to the taste. . . . It wasn’t basil or oregano, of that the Count was certain, but he had definitely encountered it somewhere before. . . . “How is everything this evening, Your Excellency?” “Ah, Andrey. As usual, everything is perfect.” “And the saltimbocca?” “Inspired. But I do have one question: The herb that Emile has tucked under the ham—I know it isn’t sage. By any chance, is it nettle?” “Nettle? I don’t believe so. But I will inquire.” Then with a bow, the ma?tre d’ excused himself. Without a doubt Emile Zhukovsky was a genius, reflected the Count, but the man who secured the Boyarsky’s reputation for excellence by ensuring that all within its walls ran smoothly was Andrey Duras. Born in the south of France, Andrey was handsome, tall, and graying at the temples, but his most distinguishing feature was not his looks, his height, or his hair. It was his hands. Pale and well manicured, his fingers were half an inch longer than the fingers of most men his height. Had he been a pianist, Andrey could easily have straddled a twelfth. Had he been a puppeteer, he could have performed the sword fight between Macbeth and Macduff as all three witches looked on. But Andrey was neither a pianist nor a puppeteer—or at least not in the traditional sense. He was the captain of the Boyarsky, and one watched in wonder as his hands fulfilled their purpose at every turn. Having just led a group of women to their table, for instance, Andrey seemed to pull back their chairs all at once. When one of the ladies produced a cigarette, he had a lighter in one hand and was guarding the flame with the other (as if a draft had ever been felt within the walls of the Boyarsky!). And when the woman holding the wine list asked for a recommendation, he didn’t point to the 1900 Bordeaux—at least not in the Teutonic sense. Rather, he slightly extended his index finger in a manner reminiscent of that gesture on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling with which the Prime Mover transmitted the spark of life. Then, excusing himself with a bow, he crossed the room and went through the kitchen door. But before a minute could pass, the door swung open again—and there was Emile. Five foot five and two hundred pounds, the chef glanced quickly about the room then marched toward the Count with Andrey trailing behind. As he crossed the dining room, the chef knocked into a customer’s chair and nearly toppled a busboy with his tray. Coming to an abrupt stop at the Count’s table, he looked him up and down as one might measure an opponent before challenging him to a duel. “Bravo, monsieur,” he said in a tone of indignation. “Bravo!” Then he turned on his heels and disappeared back into his kitchen. Andrey, a little breathless, bowed to express both apologies and congratulations. “Nettle it was, Your Excellency. Your palate remains unsurpassed.” Though the Count was not a man to gloat, he could not repress a smile of satisfaction. Knowing that the Count had a sweet tooth, Andrey gestured toward the dessert cart. “May I bring you a slice of plum tart with our compliments . . . ?” “Thank you for the thought, Andrey. Normally, I would leap at the chance. But tonight, I am otherwise committed.” Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them, the Count thought it worth considering how one was most likely to achieve this aim when one had been sentenced to a life of confinement. For Edmond Dant?s in the Ch?teau d’If, it was thoughts of revenge that kept him clear minded. Unjustly imprisoned, he sustained himself by plotting the systematic undoing of his personal agents of villainy. For Cervantes, enslaved by pirates in Algiers, it was the promise of pages as yet unwritten that spurred him on. While for Napoleon on Elba, strolling among chickens, fending off flies, and sidestepping puddles of mud, it was visions of a triumphal return to Paris that galvanized his will to persevere. But the Count hadn’t the temperament for revenge; he hadn’t the imagination for epics; and he certainly hadn’t the fanciful ego to dream of empires restored. No. His model for mastering his circumstances would be a different sort of captive altogether: an Anglican washed ashore. Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair, the Count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities. Having dispensed with dreams of quick discovery, the world’s Crusoes seek shelter and a source of fresh water; they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island’s topography, its climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand. It was to this end that the Count had given the old Greek three notes to deliver. Within a matter of hours, the Count had been visited by two messengers: a young lad from Muir and Mirrielees bearing fine linens and a suitable pillow; and another from Petrovsky Passage with four bars of the Count’s favorite soap. And the third respondent? She must have arrived while the Count was at dinner. For waiting on his bed was a light blue box with a single mille-feuille. An Appointment N ever had the chime of twelve been so welcome. Not in Russia. Not in Europe. Not in all the world. Had Romeo been told by Juliet that she would appear at her window at noon, the young Veronan’s rapture at the appointed hour could not have matched the Count’s. Had Dr. Stahlbaum’s children—Fritz and Clara—been told on Christmas morning that the drawing-room doors would be opened at midday, their elation could not have rivaled the Count’s upon the sounding of the first toll. For having successfully fended off thoughts of Tverskaya Street (and chance encounters with young ladies of fashion), having bathed, dressed, and finished his coffee and fruit (today a fig), shortly after ten the Count had eagerly taken up Montaigne’s masterpiece only to discover that at every fifteenth line, his gaze was drifting toward the clock . . . Admittedly, the Count had felt a touch of concern when he’d first lifted the book from the desk the day before. For as a single volume, it had the density of a dictionary or Bible—those books that one expects to consult, or possibly peruse, but never read. But it was the Count’s review of the Contents—a list of 107 essays on the likes of Constancy, Moderation, Solitude, and Sleep—that confirmed his initial suspicion that the book had been written with winter nights in mind. Without a doubt, it was a book for when the birds had flown south, the wood was stacked by the fireplace, and the fields were white with snow; that is, for when one had no desire to venture out and one’s friends had no desire to venture in. Nonetheless, with a resolute glance at the time, much as a seasoned sea captain when setting out on an extended journey will log the exact hour he sets sail from port, the Count plowed once again into the waves of the first meditation: “By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End.” In this opening essay—in which examples were expertly drawn from the annals of history—the author provided a most convincing argument that when one is at another’s mercy one should plead for one’s life. Or remain proud and unbent. At any rate, having firmly established that either approach might be the right one, the author proceeded to his second meditation: “Of Sadness.” Here, Montaigne quoted an array of unimpeachable authorities from the Golden Age who confirmed conclusively that sadness is an emotion best shared. Or kept to oneself. It was somewhere in the middle of the third essay that the Count found himself glancing at the clock for the fourth or fifth time. Or was it the sixth? While the exact number of glances could not be determined, the evidence did seem to suggest that the Count’s attention had been drawn to the clock more than once. But then, what a chronometer it was! Made to order for the Count’s father by the venerable firm of Breguet, the twice-tolling clock was a masterpiece in its own right. Its white enamel face had the circumference of a grapefruit and its lapis lazuli body sloped asymptotically from its top to its base, while its jeweled inner workings had been cut by craftsmen known the world over for an unwavering commitment to precision. And their reputation was certainly well founded. For as he progressed through the third essay (in which Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero had been crowded onto the couch with the Emperor Maximilian), the Count could hear every tick. Ten twenty and fifty-six seconds, the clock said. Ten twenty and fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Why, this clock accounted the seconds as flawlessly as Homer accounted his dactyls and Peter the sins of the sinners. But where were we? Ah, yes: Essay Three. The Count shifted his chair a little leftward in order to put the clock out of view, then he searched for the passage he’d been reading. He was almost certain it was in the fifth paragraph on the fifteenth page. But as he delved back into that paragraph’s prose, the context seemed utterly unfamiliar; as did the paragraphs that immediately preceded it. In fact, he had to turn back three whole pages before he found a passage that he recalled well enough to resume his progress in good faith. “Is that how it is with you?” the Count demanded of Montaigne. “One step forward and two steps back?” Intent upon showing who was master of whom, the Count vowed that he would not look up from the book again until he had reached the twenty-fifth essay. Spurred by his own resolve, the Count made quick work of Essays Four, Five, and Six. And when he dispatched Seven and Eight with even more alacrity, the twenty-fifth essay seemed as close at hand as a pitcher of water on a dining room table. But as the Count advanced through Essays Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen, his goal seemed to recede into the distance. It was suddenly as if the book were not a dining room table at all, but a sort of Sahara. And having emptied his canteen, the Count would soon be crawling across its sentences with the peak of each hard-won page revealing but another page beyond. . . . Well then, so be it. Onward crawled the Count. On past the hour of eleven. On past the sixteenth essay. Until, suddenly, that long-strided watchman of the minutes caught up with his bowlegged brother at the top of the dial. As the two embraced, the springs within the clock’s casing loosened, the wheels spun, and the miniature hammer fell, setting off the first of those dulcet tones that signaled the arrival of noon. The front feet of the Count’s chair fell to the floor with a bang, and Monsieur Montaigne turned twice in the air before landing on the bedcovers. By the fourth chime the Count was rounding the belfry stairs, and by the eighth he was passing the lobby en route to the lower floor for his weekly appointment with Yaroslav Yaroslavl, the peerless barber of the Metropol Hotel. For over two centuries (or so historians tell us), it was from the St. Petersburg salons that our country’s culture advanced. From those great rooms overlooking the Fontanka Canal, new cuisines, fashions, and ideas all took their first tentative steps into Russian society. But if this was so, it was largely due to the hive of activity beneath the parlor floors. For there, just a few steps below street level, were the butlers, cooks, and footmen who together ensured that when the notions of Darwin or Manet were first bandied about, all went off without a hitch. And so it was in the Metropol. Ever since its opening in 1905, the hotel’s suites and restaurants had been a gathering spot for the glamorous, influential, and erudite; but the effortless elegance on display would not have existed without the services of the lower floor: Coming off the wide marble steps that descended from the lobby, one first passed the newsstand, which offered a gentleman a hundred headlines, albeit now just in Russian. Next was the shop of Fatima Federova, the florist. A natural casualty of the times, Fatima’s shelves had been emptied and her windows papered over back in 1920, turning one of the hotel’s brightest spots into one of its most forlorn. But in its day, the shop had sold flowers by the acre. It had provided the towering arrangements for the lobby, the lilies for the rooms, the bouquets of roses that were tossed at the feet of the Bolshoi ballerinas, as well as the boutonnieres on the men who did the tossing. What’s more, Fatima was fluent in the floral codes that had governed polite society since the Age of Chivalry. Not only did she know the flower that should be sent as an apology, she knew which flower to send when one has been late; when one has spoken out of turn; and when, having taking notice of the young lady at the door, one has carelessly overtrumped one’s partner. In short, Fatima knew a flower’s fragrance, color, and purpose better than a bee. Well, Fatima’s may have been shuttered, reflected the Count, but weren’t the flower shops of Paris shuttered under the “reign” of Robespierre, and didn’t that city now abound in blossoms? Just so, the time for flowers in the Metropol would surely come again. At the very end of the hall, one finally came to Yaroslav’s barbershop. A land of optimism, precision, and political neutrality, it was the Switzerland of the hotel. If the Count had vowed to master his circumstances through practicalities, then here was a glimpse of the means: a religiously kept appointment for a weekly trim. When the Count entered the shop, Yaroslav was attending to a silver-haired customer in a light gray suit while a heavyset fellow in a rumpled jacket bided his time on the bench by the wall. Greeting the Count with a smile, the barber directed him to the empty chair at his side. As the Count climbed into the chair, he offered a friendly nod to the heavyset fellow, then leaned back and let his eyes settle on that marvel of Yaroslav’s shop: his cabinet. Were one to ask Larousse to define the word cabinet, the acclaimed lexicographer might reply: A piece of furniture often adorned with decorative detail in which items may be stowed away from sight. A serviceable definition, no doubt—one that would encompass everything from a kitchen cupboard in the countryside to a Chippendale in Buckingham Palace. But Yaroslav’s cabinet would not fit so neatly into such a description, for having been made solely of nickel and glass it had been designed not to hide its contents, but to reveal them to the naked eye. And rightfully so. For this cabinet could be proud of all it contained: French soaps wrapped in waxed papers; British lathers in ivory drums; Italian tonics in whimsically shaped vials. And hidden in the back? That little black bottle that Yaroslav referred to with a wink as the Fountain of Youth. In the mirror’s reflection, the Count now let his gaze shift to where Yaroslav was working his magic on the silver-haired gentleman with two sets of scissors simultaneously. In Yaroslav’s hands, the scissors initially recalled the entrechat of the danseur in a ballet, his legs switching back and forth in midair. But as the barber progressed, his hands moved with increasing speed until they leapt and kicked like a Cossack doing the hopak! Upon the execution of the final snip, it would have been perfectly appropriate for a curtain to drop only to be raised again a moment later so that the audience could applaud as the barber took a bow. Yaroslav swung the white cape off his customer and snapped it in the air; he clicked his heels when accepting payment for a job well done; and as the gentleman exited the shop (looking younger and more distinguished than when he’d arrived), the barber approached the Count with a fresh cape. “Your Excellency. How are you?” “Splendid, Yaroslav. At my utmost.” “And what is on the docket for today?” “Just a trim, my friend. Just a trim.” As the scissors began their delicate snipping, it seemed to the Count that the heavyset customer on the bench had undergone something of a transformation. Although the Count had given his friendly nod just moments before, in the interim the fellow’s face seemed to have taken on a rosier hue. The Count was sure of it, in fact, because the color was spreading to his ears. The Count tried to make eye contact again, intending to offer another friendly nod, but the fellow had fixed his gaze on Yaroslav’s back. “I was next,” he said. Yaroslav, who like most artists tended to lose himself in his craft, continued clipping away with efficiency and grace. So, the fellow was forced to repeat himself, if a little more emphatically. “I was next.” Drawn from his artistic spell by the sharper intonation, Yaroslav offered a courteous reply: “I will be with you in just a moment, sir.” “That is what you said when I arrived.” This was said with such unmistakable hostility that Yaroslav paused in his clipping and turned to meet his customer’s glare with a startled expression. Though the Count had been raised never to interrupt a conversation, he felt that the barber should not be put in the position of having to explain the situation on his behalf. So, he interceded: “Yaroslav meant no offense, my good man. It just so happens that I have a standing appointment at twelve o’clock on Tuesdays.” The fellow now turned his glare upon the Count. “A standing appointment,” he repeated. “Yes.” Then he rose so abruptly that he knocked his bench back into the wall. At full height, he was no more than five foot six. His fists, which jutted from the cuffs of his jacket, were as red as his ears. When he advanced a step, Yaroslav backed against the edge of his counter. The fellow took another step toward the barber and wrested one of the scissors from his hand. Then, with the deftness of a much slighter man, he turned, took the Count by the collar, and severed the right wing of his moustaches with a single snip. Tightening his hold, he pulled the Count forward until they were nearly nose to nose. “You’ll have your appointment soon enough,” he said. Then shoving the Count back in the chair, he tossed the scissors on the floor and strolled from the shop. “Your Excellency,” exclaimed Yaroslav, aghast. “I have never seen the man in my life. I don’t even know if he resides in the hotel. But he is not welcome here again, I assure you of that.” The Count, who was standing now, was inclined to echo Yaroslav’s indignation and commend a punishment that fit the crime. But then, what did the Count know about his assailant? When he had first seen him sitting on the bench in his rumpled jacket, the Count had summed him up in an instant as some hardworking sort who, having stumbled upon the barbershop, had decided to treat himself to a cut. But for all the Count knew, this fellow could have been one of the new residents of the second floor. Having come of age in an ironworks, he could have joined a union in 1912, led a strike in 1916, captained a Red battalion in 1918, and now found himself in command of an entire industry. “He was perfectly right,” the Count said to Yaroslav. “He had been waiting in good faith. You only wished to honor my appointment. It was for me to cede the chair and suggest that you attend to him first.” “But what are we to do?” The Count turned to the mirror and surveyed himself. He surveyed himself, perhaps, for the first time in years. Long had he believed that a gentleman should turn to a mirror with a sense of distrust. For rather than being tools of self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit. How many times had he watched as a young beauty turned thirty degrees before her mirror to ensure that she saw herself to the best advantage? (As if henceforth all the world would see her solely from that angle!) How often had he seen a grande dame don a hat that was horribly out of fashion, but that seemed au courant to her because her mirror had been framed in the style of the same bygone era? The Count took pride in wearing a well-tailored jacket; but he took greater pride in knowing that a gentleman’s presence was best announced by his bearing, his remarks, and his manners. Not by the cut of his coat. Yes, thought the Count, the world does spin. In fact, it spins on its axis even as it revolves around the sun. And the galaxy turns as well, a wheel within a greater wheel, producing a chime of an entirely different nature than that of a tiny hammer in a clock. And when that celestial chime sounds, perhaps a mirror will suddenly serve its truer purpose—revealing to a man not who he imagines himself to be, but who he has become. The Count resumed his place in the chair. “A clean shave,” he said to the barber. “A clean shave, my friend.” An Acquaintanceship T here were two restaurants in the Hotel Metropol: the Boyarsky, that fabled retreat on the second floor that we have already visited, and the grand dining room off the lobby known officially as the Metropol, but referred to affectionately by the Count as the Piazza. Admittedly, the Piazza could not challenge the elegance of the Boyarsky’s d?cor, the sophistication of its service, or the subtlety of its cuisine. But the Piazza did not aspire to elegance, service, or subtlety. With eighty tables scattered around a marble fountain and a menu offering everything from cabbage piroghi to cutlets of veal, the Piazza was meant to be an extension of the city—of its gardens, markets, and thoroughfares. It was a place where Russians cut from every cloth could come to linger over coffee, happen upon friends, stumble into arguments, or drift into dalliances—and where the lone diner seated under the great glass ceiling could indulge himself in admiration, indignation, suspicion, and laughter without getting up from his chair. And the waiters? Like those of a Parisian caf?, the Piazza’s waiters could best be complimented as “efficient.” Accustomed to navigating crowds, they could easily seat your party of eight at a table for four. Having noted your preferences over the sound of the orchestra, within minutes they would return with the various drinks balanced on a tray and dispense them round the table in rapid succession without misplacing a glass. If, with your menu in hand, you hesitated for even a second to place your order, they would lean over your shoulder and poke at a specialty of the house. And when the last morsel of dessert had been savored, they would whisk away your plate, present your check, and make your change in under a minute. In other words, the waiters of the Piazza knew their trade to the crumb, the spoon, and the kopek. At least, that was how things were before the war. . . . Today, the dining room was nearly empty and the Count was being served by someone who appeared not only new to the Piazza, but new to the art of waiting. Tall and thin, with a narrow head and superior demeanor, he looked rather like a bishop that had been plucked from a chessboard. When the Count took his seat with a newspaper in hand—the international symbol of dining alone—the chap didn’t bother to clear the second setting; when the Count closed his menu and placed it beside his plate—the international symbol of readiness to order—the chap needed to be beckoned with a wave of the hand; and when the Count ordered the okroshka and filet of sole, the chap asked if he might like a glass of Sauterne. A perfect suggestion, no doubt, if only the Count had ordered foie gras! “Perhaps a bottle of the Ch?teau de Baudelaire,” the Count corrected politely. “Of course,” the Bishop replied with an ecclesiastical smile. Granted, a bottle of Baudelaire was something of an extravagance for a solitary lunch, but after spending another morning with the indefatigable Michel de Montaigne, the Count felt that his morale could use the boost. For several days, in fact, he had been fending off a state of restlessness. On his regular descent to the lobby, he caught himself counting the steps. As he browsed the headlines in his favorite chair, he found he was lifting his hands to twirl the tips of moustaches that were no longer there. He found he was walking through the door of the Piazza at 12:01 for lunch. And at 1:35, when he climbed the 110 steps to his room, he was already calculating the minutes until he could come back downstairs for a drink. If he continued along this course, it would not take long for the ceiling to edge downward, the walls to edge inward, and the floor to edge upward, until the entire hotel had been collapsed into the size of a biscuit tin. As the Count waited for his wine, he gazed around the restaurant, but his fellow diners offered no relief. Across the way was a table occupied by two stragglers from the diplomatic corps who picked at their food while they awaited an era of diplomacy. Over there in the corner was a spectacled denizen of the second floor with four enormous documents spread across his table, comparing them word for word. No one appeared particularly gay; and no one paid the Count any mind. That is, except for the young girl with the penchant for yellow who appeared to be spying on him from her table behind the fountain. According to Vasily, this nine-year-old with straight blond hair was the daughter of a widowed Ukrainian bureaucrat. As usual, she was sitting with her governess. When she realized the Count was looking her way, she disappeared behind her menu. “Your soup,” said the Bishop. “Ah. Thank you, my good man. It looks delicious. But don’t forget the wine!” “Of course.” Turning his attention to his okroshka, the Count could tell at a glance that it was a commendable execution—a bowl of soup that any Russian in the room might have been served by his grandmother. Closing his eyes in order to give the first spoonful its due consideration, the Count noted a suitably chilled temperature, a tad too much salt, a tad too little kvass, but a perfect expression of dill—that harbinger of summer which brings to mind the songs of crickets and the setting of one’s soul at ease. But when the Count opened his eyes, he nearly dropped his spoon. For standing at the edge of his table was the young girl with the penchant for yellow—studying him with that unapologetic interest peculiar to children and dogs. Adding to the shock of her sudden appearance was the fact that her dress today was in the shade of a lemon. “Where did they go?” she asked, without a word of introduction. “I beg your pardon. Where did who go?” She tilted her head to take a closer look at his face. “Why, your moustaches.” The Count had not much cause to interact with children, but he had been raised well enough to know that a child should not idly approach a stranger, should not interrupt him in the middle of a meal, and certainly should not ask him questions about his personal appearance. Was the minding of one’s own business no longer a subject taught in schools? “Like swallows,” the Count answered, “they traveled elsewhere for the summer.” Then he fluttered a hand from the table into the air in order to both mimic the flight of the swallows and suggest how a child might follow suit. She nodded to express her satisfaction with his response. “I too will be traveling elsewhere for part of the summer.” The Count inclined his head to indicate his congratulations. “To the Black Sea,” she added. Then she pulled back the empty chair and sat. “Would you like to join me?” he asked. By way of response, she wiggled back and forth to make herself comfortable then rested her elbows on the table. Around her neck hung a small pendant on a golden chain, some lucky charm or locket. The Count looked toward the young lady’s governess with the hopes of catching her attention, but she had obviously learned from experience to keep her nose in her book. The girl gave another canine tilt to her head. “Is it true that you are a count?” “’Tis true.” Her eyes widened. “Have you ever known a princess?” “I have known many princesses.” Her eyes widened further, then narrowed. “Was it terribly hard to be a princess?” “Terribly.” At that moment, despite the fact that half of the okroshka remained in its bowl, the Bishop appeared with the Count’s filet of sole and swapped one for the other. “Thank you,” said the Count, his spoon still in hand. “Of course.” The Count opened his mouth to inquire as to the whereabouts of the Baudelaire, but the Bishop had already vanished. When the Count turned back to his guest, she was staring at his fish. “What is that?” she wanted to know. “This? It is filet of sole.” “Is it good?” “Didn’t you have a lunch of your own?” “I didn’t like it.” The Count transferred a taste of his fish to a side plate and passed it across the table. “With my compliments.” She forked the whole thing in her mouth. “It’s yummy,” she said, which if not the most elegant expression was at least factually correct. Then she smiled a little sadly and let out a sigh as she directed her bright blue gaze upon the rest of his lunch. “Hmm,” said the Count. Retrieving the side plate, he transferred half his sole along with an equal share of spinach and baby carrots, and returned it. She wiggled back and forth once more, presumably to settle in for the duration. Then, having carefully pushed the vegetables to the edge of the plate, she cut her fish into four equal portions, put the right upper quadrant in her mouth, and resumed her line of inquiry. “How would a princess spend her day?” “Like any young lady,” answered the Count. With a nod of the head, the girl encouraged him to continue. “In the morning, she would have lessons in French, history, music. After her lessons, she might visit with friends or walk in the park. And at lunch she would eat her vegetables.” “My father says that princesses personify the decadence of a vanquished era.” The Count was taken aback. “Perhaps a few,” he conceded. “But not all, I assure you.” She waved her fork. “Don’t worry. Papa is wonderful and he knows everything there is to know about the workings of tractors. But he knows absolutely nothing about the workings of princesses.” The Count offered an expression of relief. “Have you ever been to a ball?” she continued after a moment of thought. “Certainly.” “Did you dance?” “I have been known to scuff the parquet.” The Count said this with the renowned glint in his eye—that little spark that had defused heated conversations and caught the eyes of beauties in every salon in St. Petersburg. “Scuff the parquet?” “Ahem,” said the Count. “Yes, I have danced at balls.” “And have you lived in a castle?” “Castles are not as common in our country as they are in fairy tales,” the Count explained. “But I have dined in a castle. . . .” Accepting this response as sufficient, if not ideal, the girl now furrowed her brow. She put another quadrant of fish in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Then she suddenly leaned forward. “Have you ever been in a duel?” “An affaire d’honneur?” The Count hesitated. “I suppose I have been in a duel of sorts. . . .” “With pistols at thirty-two paces?” “In my case, it was more of a duel in the figurative sense.” When the Count’s guest expressed her disappointment at this unfortunate clarification, he found himself offering a consolation: “My godfather was a second on more than one occasion.” “A second?” “When a gentleman has been offended and demands satisfaction on the field of honor, he and his counterpart each appoint seconds—in essence, their lieutenants. It is the seconds who settle upon the rules of engagement.” “What sort of rules of engagement?” “The time and place of the duel. What weapons will be used. If it is to be pistols, then how many paces will be taken and whether there will be more than one exchange of shots.” “Your godfather, you say. Where did he live?” “Here in Moscow.” “Were his duels in Moscow?” “One of them was. In fact, it sprang from a dispute that occurred in this hotel—between an admiral and a prince. They had been at odds for quite some time, I gather, but things came to a head one night when their paths collided in the lobby, and the gauntlet was thrown down on that very spot.” “Which very spot?” “By the concierge’s desk.” “Right where I sit!” “Yes, I suppose so.” “Were they in love with the same woman?” “I don’t think a woman was involved.” The girl looked at the Count with an expression of incredulity. “A woman is always involved,” she said. “Yes. Well. Whatever the cause, an offense was taken followed by a demand for an apology, a refusal to provide one, and a slap of the glove. At the time, the hotel was managed by a German fellow named Keffler, who was reputedly a baron in his own right. And it was generally known that he kept a pair of pistols hidden behind a panel in his office, so that when an incident occurred, seconds could confer in privacy, carriages could be summoned, and the feuding parties could be whisked away with weapons in hand.” “In the hours before dawn . . .” “In the hours before dawn.” “To some remote spot . . .” “To some remote spot.” She leaned forward. “Lensky was killed by Onegin in a duel.” She said this in a hushed voice, as if quoting the events of Pushkin’s poem required discretion. “Yes,” whispered back the Count. “And so was Pushkin.” She nodded in grave agreement. “In St. Petersburg,” she said. “On the banks of the Black Rivulet.” “On the banks of the Black Rivulet.” The young lady’s fish was now gone. Placing her napkin on her plate and nodding her head once to suggest how perfectly acceptable the Count had proven as a luncheon companion, she rose from her chair. But before turning to go, she paused. “I prefer you without your moustaches,” she said. “Their absence improves your . . . countenance.” Then she performed an off-kilter curtsey and disappeared behind the fountain. An affaire d’honneur . . . Or so thought the Count with a touch of self-recrimination as he sat alone later that night in the hotel’s bar with a snifter of brandy. Situated off the lobby, furnished with banquettes, a mahogany bar, and a wall of bottles, this American-style watering hole was affectionately referred to by the Count as the Shalyapin, in honor of the great Russian opera singer who had frequented the spot in the years before the Revolution. Once a beehive of activity, the Shalyapin was now more a chapel of prayer and reflection—but tonight that suited the Count’s cast of mind. Yes, he continued in his thoughts, how fine almost any human endeavor can be made to sound when expressed in the proper French. . . . “May I offer you a hand, Your Excellency?” This was Audrius, the Shalyapin’s tender at bar. A Lithuanian with a blond goatee and a ready smile, Audrius was a man who knew his business. Why, the moment after you took a stool he would be leaning toward you with his forearm on the bar to ask your pleasure; and as soon as your glass was empty, he was there with a splash. But the Count wasn’t sure why he was choosing this particular moment to offer a hand. “With your jacket,” the bartender clarified. In point of fact, the Count did seem to be struggling to get his arm through the sleeve of his blazer—which he couldn’t quite remember having taken off in the first place. The Count had arrived at the Shalyapin at six o’clock, as usual, where he maintained a strict limit of one aperitif before dinner. But noting that he had never received his bottle of Baudelaire, the Count had allowed himself a second glass of Dubonnet. And then a snifter or two of brandy. And the next thing he knew, it was . . . , it was . . . “What time is it, Audrius?” “Ten, Your Excellency.” “Ten!” Audrius, who was suddenly on the customer side of the bar, was helping the Count off his stool. And as he guided the Count across the lobby (quite unnecessarily), the Count invited him into his train of thought. “Did you know, Audrius, that when dueling was first discovered by the Russian officer corps in the early 1700s, they took to it with such enthusiasm that the Tsar had to forbid the practice for fear that there would soon be no one left to lead his troops.” “I did not know that, Your Excellency,” the bartender replied with a smile. “Well, it’s quite true. And not only is a duel central to the action of Onegin, one occurs at a critical juncture in War and Peace, Fathers and Sons, and The Brothers Karamazov! Apparently, for all their powers of invention, the Russian masters could not come up with a better plot device than two central characters resolving a matter of conscience by means of pistols at thirty-two paces.” “I see your point. But here we are. Shall I press for the fifth floor?” The Count, who found himself standing in front of the elevator, looked at the bartender in shock. “But, Audrius, I have never taken the lift in my life!” Then, after patting the bartender on the shoulder, the Count began winding his way up the stairs; that is, until he reached the second-floor landing, where he sat on a step. “Why is it that our nation above all others embraced the duel so wholeheartedly?” he asked the stairwell rhetorically. Some, no doubt, would simply dismiss it as a by-product of barbarism. Given Russia’s long, heartless winters, its familiarity with famine, its rough sense of justice, and so on, and so on, it was perfectly natural for its gentry to adopt an act of definitive violence as the means of resolving disputes. But in the Count’s considered opinion, the reason that dueling prevailed among Russian gentlemen stemmed from nothing more than their passion for the glorious and grandiose. True, duels were fought by convention at dawn in isolated locations to ensure the privacy of the gentlemen involved. But were they fought behind ash heaps or in scrapyards? Of course not! They were fought in a clearing among the birch trees with a dusting of snow. Or on the banks of a winding rivulet. Or at the edge of a family estate where the breezes shake the blossoms from the trees. . . . That is, they were fought in settings that one might have expected to see in the second act of an opera. In Russia, whatever the endeavor, if the setting is glorious and the tenor grandiose, it will have its adherents. In fact, over the years, as the locations for duels became more picturesque and the pistols more finely manufactured, the best-bred men proved willing to defend their honor over lesser and lesser offenses. So while dueling may have begun as a response to high crimes—to treachery, treason, and adultery—by 1900 it had tiptoed down the stairs of reason, until they were being fought over the tilt of a hat, the duration of a glance, or the placement of a comma. In the old and well-established code of dueling, it is understood that the number of paces the offender and offended take before shooting should be in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the insult. That is, the most reprehensible affront should be resolved by a duel of the fewest paces, to ensure that one of the two men will not leave the field of honor alive. Well, if that was the case, concluded the Count, then in the new era, the duels should have been fought at no less than ten thousand paces. In fact, having thrown down the gauntlet, appointed seconds, and chosen weapons, the offender should board a steamer bound for America as the offended boards another for Japan where, upon arrival, the two men could don their finest coats, descend their gangplanks, turn on the docks, and fire. Anyway . . . F ive days later, the Count was pleased to accept a formal invitation to tea from his new acquaintance, Nina Kulikova. The engagement was for three o’clock in the hotel’s coffeehouse at the northwest corner of the ground floor. Arriving at a quarter till, the Count claimed a table for two near the window. When at five past the hour his hostess arrived in the manner of a daffodil—wearing a light yellow dress with a dark yellow sash—the Count rose and held out her chair. “Merci,” she said. “Je t’en prie.” In the minutes that followed, a waiter was signaled, a samovar was ordered, and with thunderclouds accumulating over Theatre Square, remarks were exchanged on the bittersweet likelihood of rain. But once the tea was poured and the tea cakes on the table, Nina adopted a more serious expression—intimating the time had come to speak of weightier concerns. Some might have found this transition a little abrupt or out of keeping with the hour, but not the Count. Quite to the contrary, he thought a prompt dispensing of pleasantries and a quick shift to the business at hand utterly in keeping with the etiquette of tea—perhaps even essential to the institution. After all, every tea the Count had ever attended in response to a formal invitation had followed this pattern. Whether it took place in a drawing room overlooking the Fontanka Canal or a teahouse in a public garden, before the first cake was sampled the purpose of the invitation would be laid upon the table. In fact, after a few requisite pleasantries, the most accomplished of hostesses could signal the transition with a single word of her choosing. For the Count’s grandmother, the word had been Now, as in Now, Alexander. I have heard some very distressing things about you, my boy. . . . For Princess Poliakova, a perennial victim of her own heart, it had been Oh, as in Oh, Alexander. I have made a terrible mistake. . . . And for young Nina, the word was apparently Anyway, as in: “You’re absolutely right, Alexander Ilyich. Another afternoon of rain and the lilac blossoms won’t stand a fighting chance. Anyway . . .” Suffice it to say that when Nina’s tone shifted, the Count was ready. Resting his forearms on his thighs and leaning forward at an angle of seventy degrees, he adopted an expression that was serious yet neutral, so that in an instant he could convey his sympathy, concern, or shared indignation as the circumstances required. “. . . I would be ever so grateful,” Nina continued, “if you would share with me some of the rules of being a princess.” “The rules?” “Yes. The rules.” “But, Nina,” the Count said with a smile, “being a princess is not a game.” Nina stared at the Count with an expression of patience. “I am certain that you know what I mean. Those things that were expected of a princess.” “Ah, yes. I see.” The Count leaned back to give his hostess’s inquiry a more appropriate consideration. “Well,” he said after a moment, “setting aside the study of the liberal arts, which we discussed the other day, I suppose the rules of being a princess would begin with a refinement of manners. To that end, she would be taught how to comport herself in society; she would be taught terms of address, table manners, posture . . .” Having nodded favorably at the various items on the Count’s list, Nina looked up sharply at the last one. “Posture? Is posture a type of manners?” “Yes,” replied the Count, albeit a little tentatively, “it is. A slouching posture tends to suggest a certain laziness of character, as well as a lack of interest in others. Whereas an upright posture can confirm a sense of self-possession, and a quality of engagement—both of which are befitting of a princess.” Apparently swayed by this argument, Nina sat a little more upright. “Go on.” The Count reflected. “A princess would be raised to show respect for her elders.” Nina bowed her head toward the Count in deference. He coughed. “I wasn’t referring to me, Nina. After all, I am practically a youth like yourself. No, by ‘elders,’ I meant the gray haired.” Nina nodded to express her understanding. “You mean the grand dukes and grand duchesses.” “Well, yes. Certainly them. But I mean elders of every social class. The shopkeepers and milkmaids, blacksmiths and peasants.” Never hesitant to express her sentiments with facial expressions, Nina frowned. The Count elaborated. “The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.” As Nina still looked unconvinced, the Count considered how best to make his point; and it so happened that at that very moment, through the great windows of the coffeehouse could be seen the first hoisting of umbrellas. “An example,” he said. Thus commenced the story of Princess Golitsyn and the crone of Kudrovo: One stormy night in St. Petersburg, related the Count, young Princess Golitsyn was on her way to the annual ball at the Tushins’. As her carriage crossed the Lomonosov Bridge, she happened to notice an eighty-year-old woman on foot, hunched against the rain. Without a second thought, she called for her driver to stop the carriage and invited the unfortunate soul inside. The old woman, who was nearly blind, climbed aboard with the footman’s help and thanked the Princess profusely. In the back of the Princess’s mind may well have been the presumption that her passenger lived nearby. After all, how far was an old, blind woman likely to journey on a night like this? But when the Princess asked where the old woman was headed, she replied that she was going to visit her son, the blacksmith, in Kudrovo—more than seven miles away! Now, the Princess was already expected at the Tushins’. And in a matter of minutes they would be passing the house—lit from cellar to ceiling with a footman on every step. So, it would have been well within the bounds of courtesy for the Princess to excuse herself and send the carriage on to Kudrovo with the old woman. In fact, as they approached the Tushins’, the driver slowed the horses and looked to the Princess for instruction. . . . Here the Count paused for effect. “Well,” Nina asked, “what did she do?” “She told him to drive on.” The Count smiled with a touch of triumph. “And what is more, when they arrived in Kudrovo and the blacksmith’s family gathered round the carriage, the old woman invited the Princess in for tea. The blacksmith winced, the coachman gasped, and the footman nearly fainted. But Princess Golitsyn graciously accepted the old woman’s invitation—and missed the Tushins’ altogether.” His point expertly made, the Count raised his own cup of tea, nodded once, and drank. Nina looked at him expectantly. “And then?” The Count returned his cup to its saucer. “And then what?” “Did she marry the blacksmith’s son?” “Marry the blacksmith’s son! Good God. Certainly not. After a glass of tea she climbed into her carriage and headed for home.” Nina mulled this over. Clearly, she thought a marriage to the blacksmith’s son a more fitting conclusion. But despite the shortcomings of history, she nodded to acknowledge that the Count had delivered a well-told tale. Preferring to preserve his success, the Count opted not to share his normal coda to this delightful bit of St. Petersburg lore: that the Countess Tushin had been greeting guests under her portico when Princess Golitsyn’s bright blue carriage, known the city over, slowed before the gates and then sped on. This resulted in a rift between the Golitsyns and the Tushins that would have taken three generations to repair—if a certain Revolution hadn’t brought an end to their outrage altogether. . . . “It was behavior befitting a princess,” acknowledged Nina. “Exactly,” said the Count. Then he held out the tea cakes and Nina took two, putting one on her plate and one in her mouth. The Count was not one to call attention to the social shortcomings of acquaintances, but giddy with his story’s reception, he could not resist pointing out with a smile: “There is another example.” “Where is another example?” “A princess would be raised to say please when she asked for a cake, and thank you when she was offered one.” Nina looked taken aback; and then dismissive. “I can see that please would be quite appropriate for a princess to say when she has asked for a cake; but I can see no reason why she should have to say thank you when she has been offered one.” “Manners are not like bonbons, Nina. You may not choose the ones that suit you best; and you certainly cannot put the half-bitten ones back in the box. . . .” Nina eyed the Count with an expression of seasoned tolerance, and then presumably for his benefit, spoke a little more slowly. “I understand that a princess should say please if she is asking for a cake, because she is trying to convince someone to give her the cake. And I suppose, if having asked for a cake, she is given a cake, then she has good reason to say thank you. But in the second part of your example, the princess in question didn’t ask for the cake; she was offered it. And I see no reason why she should have to say thank you when she is merely obliging someone by accepting what they’ve offered.” To punctuate her point, Nina put a lemon tartlet in her mouth. “I concede that there is some merit to your argument,” said the Count. “But I can only tell you from a life of experience that—” Nina cut him off with a wave of a finger. “But you have just said that you are quite young.” “Indeed, I am.” “Well then, it seems to me that your claim of ‘a life of experience’ may be premature.” Yes, thought the Count, as this tea was making perfectly clear. “I shall work upon my posture,” Nina said quite definitively, brushing the crumbs from her fingers. “And I will be sure to say please and thank you whenever I ask for things. But I have no intention of thanking people for things I never asked for in the first place.” Around and About O n the twelfth of July at seven o’clock, as the Count was crossing the lobby on his way to the Boyarsky, Nina caught his eye from behind one of the potted palms and gave him the signal. It was the first time that she had hailed him for an excursion this late in the day. “Quick,” she explained, when he had joined her behind the tree. “The gentleman has gone out to dine.” The gentleman? To avoid drawing attention to themselves, the two walked casually up the stairs. But as they turned onto the third floor, they ran smack into a guest who was patting his pockets for his key. On the landing directly across from the elevator, there was a stained-glass window of long-legged birds wading in shallows that the Count had passed a thousand times before. Nina began to study it with care. “Yes, you were right,” she said. “It is some kind of crane.” But as soon as the guest had let himself into his room, Nina forged ahead. Moving at a brisk pace along the carpet, they passed rooms 313, 314, and 315. They passed the little table with the statue of Hermes that stood outside the door of 316. Then with a certain dizziness, the Count realized that they were headed toward his old suite! But wait. We are ahead of ourselves. . . . After the ill-fated night that ended on the second-floor steps, the Count had taken a break from his nightly aperitif, suspecting that the liquor had been an unhealthy influence on his mood. But this saintly abstinence did not prove a tonic to his soul. With so little to do and all the time in the world to do it, the Count’s peace of mind continued to be threatened by a sense of ennui—that dreaded mire of the human emotions. And if this is how desultory one feels after three weeks, reflected the Count, then how desultory can one expect to feel after three years? But for the virtuous who have lost their way, the Fates often provide a guide. On the island of Crete, Theseus had his Ariadne and her magical ball of thread to lead him safely from the lair of the Minotaur. Through those caverns where ghostly shadows dwell, Odysseus had his Tiresias just as Dante had his Virgil. And in the Metropol Hotel, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov had a nine-year-old girl by the name of Nina Kulikova. For on the first Wednesday in July, as the Count sat in the lobby at a loss of what to do with himself, he happened to notice Nina zipping past with an unusually determined expression. “Hello, my friend. Where are you headed?” Turning about like one who’s been caught in the act, Nina composed herself, then answered with a wave of the hand: “Around and about . . .” The Count raised his eyebrows. “And where is that exactly?” . . . “At this moment, the card room.” “Ah. So you like to play at cards.” “Not really . . .” “Then why on earth are you going there?” . . . “Oh, come now,” the Count protested. “Surely, there are not going to be secrets between us!” Nina weighed the Count’s remark, then looking once to her left and once to her right, she confided. She explained that while the card room was rarely used, at three o’clock on Wednesdays four women met there without fail for a regular game of whist; and if you arrived by two thirty and hid in the cupboard, you could hear their every word—which included a good deal of cursing; and when the ladies left, you could eat the rest of their cookies. The Count sat upright. “Where else do you spend your time?” Again she weighed the Count’s remark, looked left and looked right. “Meet me here,” she said, “tomorrow at two.” And thus began the Count’s education. Having lived at the Metropol for four years, the Count considered himself something of an expert on the hotel. He knew its staff by name, its services by experience, and the decorative styles of its suites by heart. But once Nina had taken him in hand, he realized what a novice he had been. In the ten months that Nina had lived at the Metropol, she had been confronted with her own version of confinement. For, as her father had been posted only “temporarily” to Moscow, he had not bothered to enroll her in school. And as Nina’s governess still had one foot set firmly in the hinterlands, she preferred that her charge remain on the hotel’s premises where she was less likely to be corrupted by street lamps and trolley cars. So, if the door of the Metropol was known the world over for spinning without stop, it spun not for Nina. But, an enterprising and tireless spirit, the young lady had made the most of her situation by personally investigating the hotel until she knew every room, its purpose, and how it might be put to better use. Yes, the Count had gone to the little window at the back of the lobby to ask for his mail, but had he been to the sorting room where the incoming envelopes were spilled on a table at ten and at two—including those that were stamped in red with the unambiguous instruction For Immediate Delivery? And yes, he had visited Fatima’s in the days when it was open, but had he been inside the cutting room? Through a narrow door at the back of her shop was that niche with a light green counter where stems had been snipped and roses dethorned, where even now one could find scattered across the floor the dried petals of ten perennials essential to the making of potions. Of course, exclaimed the Count to himself. Within the Metropol there were rooms behind rooms and doors behind doors. The linen closets. The laundries. The pantries. The switchboard! It was like sailing on a steamship. Having enjoyed an afternoon shooting clay pigeons off the starboard bow, a passenger dresses for dinner, dines at the captain’s table, outplays the cocky French fellow at baccarat, and then strolls under the stars on the arm of a new acquaintance—all the while congratulating himself that he has made the most of a journey at sea. But in point of fact, he has only exposed himself to a glimpse of life on the ship—having utterly ignored those lower levels that teem with life and make the passage possible. Nina had not contented herself with the views from the upper decks. She had gone below. Behind. Around. About. In the time that Nina had been in the hotel, the walls had not grown inward, they had grown outward, expanding in scope and intricacy. In her first weeks, the building had grown to encompass the life of two city blocks. In her first months, it had grown to encompass half of Moscow. If she lived in the hotel long enough, it would encompass all of Russia. To initiate the Count’s course of study, Nina quite sensibly began at the bottom—the basement and its network of corridors and cul-de-sacs. Tugging open a heavy steel door, she led him first into the boiler room, where billows of steam escaped from a concertina of valves. With the aid of the Count’s handkerchief, she gingerly opened a small cast-iron door in the furnace to reveal the fire that burned day and night, and which happened to be the best place in the hotel to destroy secret messages and illicit love letters. “You do receive illicit love letters, Count?” “Most certainly.” Next was the electrical room, where Nina’s admonition that the Count touch nothing was quite unnecessary, since the metallic buzzing and sulfurous smell would have counseled caution to the most reckless of adventurers. There, on the back wall amidst a confusion of wires, Nina showed him the very lever that, when pulled, could throw the ballroom into darkness, providing perfect cover for the snatching of pearls. After a turn to the left and two to the right, they came to a small cluttered room—a sort of cabinet of curiosities—showcasing all the items that the hotel’s guests had left behind, such as umbrellas, Baedekers, and the weighty novels they had yet to finish but could no longer bear to lug about. While tucked away in the corner, looking no worse for wear, were two small oriental rugs, a standing lamp, and the small satinwood bookcase that the Count had abandoned in his old suite. At the far end of the basement, as the Count and Nina approached the narrow back stair, they passed a bright blue door. “What do we have here?” asked the Count. Nina looked uncharacteristically flummoxed. “I don’t think I’ve been inside.” The Count tried the knob. “Ah, well. I’m afraid that it’s locked.” But Nina looked left and looked right. The Count followed suit. Then she raised her hands under her hair and unhooked the delicate chain that she wore around her neck. Dangling at the bottom of the golden parabola was the pendant the Count had first observed at the Piazza, but it was neither a lucky charm nor locket. It was a passkey for the hotel! Nina slid the key from its chain and handed it to the Count so that he could do the honors. Slipping it through the skull-shaped hole in the escutcheon, the Count turned gently and listened as the tumblers fell into place with a satisfying click. Then he opened the door and Nina gasped, for inside there was a treasure trove. Quite literally. On shelves that lined the walls from floor to ceiling was the hotel’s silver service, shimmering as if it had been polished that very morning. “What is it all for?” she asked in amazement. “For banquets,” replied the Count. Alongside the stacks of S?vres plates bearing the hotel’s insignia were samovars that stood two feet tall and soup tureens that looked like the goblets of the gods. There were coffeepots and gravy boats. There was an assortment of utensils, each of which had been designed with the greatest care to serve a single culinary purpose. From among them, Nina picked up what looked like a delicate spade with a plunger and an ivory handle. Depressing the lever, Nina watched as the two opposing blades opened and shut, then she looked to the Count in wonder. “An asparagus server,” he explained. “Does a banquet really need an asparagus server?” “Does an orchestra need a bassoon?” As Nina returned it gently to the shelf, the Count wondered how many times he had been served by that implement? How many times had he eaten off these plates? The bicentennial of St. Petersburg had been celebrated in the Metropol’s ballroom, as had the centennial of Pushkin’s birth and the annual dinner of the Backgammon Club. And then there were the more intimate gatherings that took place in the two private dining rooms adjacent to the Boyarsky: the Yellow and Red Rooms. In their heyday, these retreats were so conducive to frank expressions of sentiment that if one were to eavesdrop at their tables for a month, one would be able to anticipate all of the bankruptcies, weddings, and wars of the year to come. The Count let his eyes wander over the shelves, then shook his head to express a sense of mystification. “Surely, the Bolsheviks have discovered this windfall. I wonder why it wasn’t carted off?” Nina responded with the unclouded judgment of a child. “Perhaps they need it here.” Yes, thought the Count. That is it precisely. For however decisive the Bolsheviks’ victory had been over the privileged classes on behalf of the Proletariat, they would be having banquets soon enough. Perhaps there would not be as many as there had been under the Romanovs—no autumn dances or diamond jubilees—but they were bound to celebrate something, whether the centennial of Das Kapital or the silver anniversary of Lenin’s beard. Guest lists would be drawn up and shortened. Invitations would be engraved and delivered. Then, having gathered around a grand circle of tables, the new statesmen would nod their heads in order to indicate to a waiter (without interrupting the long-winded fellow on his feet) that, yes, they would have a few more spears of asparagus. For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too. How humbly it bows its head as the emperor is dragged down the steps and tossed in the street. But then, having quietly bided its time, while helping the newly appointed leader on with his jacket, it compliments his appearance and suggests the wearing of a medal or two. Or, having served him at a formal dinner, it wonders aloud if a taller chair might not have been more fitting for a man with such responsibilities. The soldiers of the common man may toss the banners of the old regime on the victory pyre, but soon enough trumpets will blare and pomp will take its place at the side of the throne, having once again secured its dominion over history and kings. Nina was running her fingers over the various serving implements with a blend of admiration and awe. Then she came to a stop. “What is that?” On the shelf behind a candelabra stood a three-inch-tall woman fashioned from silver with the hooped skirt and towering hair of a Marie Antoinette. “It’s a summoner,” said the Count. “A summoner?” “To be placed on the table beside the hostess.” The Count picked up the little lady by her bouffant and when he waggled her to and fro, out from under her skirt came that delightful jangle (at a high C) that had prompted the end of a thousand courses and the clearing of fifty thousand plates. In the days that followed, Nina presented her curriculum systematically, leading her student from room to room. At the onset, the Count had assumed that all their classes would be held on the hotel’s lower levels, where its services were housed. But having visited the basement, the mail room, the switchboard, and all the other nooks of the first floor, one afternoon they proceeded up the staircase to the suites. Now, admittedly, the exploration of private apartments represents something of a break with decorum, but Nina’s interest in visiting the rooms was not thievery. Nor was it snooping per se. It was the views. Each of the rooms of the Metropol offered an entirely different perspective—one that was shaped not only by altitude and orientation, but by season and time of day. Thus, if by chance one cared to watch the battalions marching toward Red Square on the Seventh of November, one should go no further than room 322. But when one wished to drop snowballs on unsuspecting strollers, this was best accomplished from the deep-ledged windows of 405. Even room 244, a rather depressing little spot overlooking the alley behind the hotel, had its allure: for from there, if one leaned far enough out of the window, one could watch the fruit sellers gather at the kitchen door and catch the occasional apple tossed from below. But if one wished to watch the arrival of guests at the Bolshoi on a summer night, the best vantage point, without question, was the northwest window of 317. And so . . . On the twelfth of July at seven o’clock, as the Count was crossing the lobby, Nina caught his eye and gave him the signal. Two minutes later, having joined her on the stairs, he was trailing her past rooms 313, 314, and 315, toward the door of his old suite. And when Nina turned the key and slipped inside, the Count dutifully followed—but with a palpable sense of foreboding. In a glance the Count reacquainted himself with every inch of the room. The couch and chairs upholstered in red remained, as did the grandfather clock and the large Chinese urns from Idlehour. On the French coffee table (that had been supplied to replace his grandmother’s) was a folded copy of Pravda, a silver service, and an unfinished cup of tea. “Quick,” she said again, as she padded across the room to the window at the northwest corner. Across Theatre Square the Bolshoi was lit from portico to pediment. The Bolsheviks who, as usual, were dressed like the cast of La Boh?me, were taking advantage of the warm night air by mingling among the columns. Suddenly, the lights in the lobby flickered. Scuffing out their cigarettes, the men took their ladies by the elbow. But just as the last of the attendees was disappearing through the doors, a taxi pulled to the curb, the door flung open, and a woman in red dashed up the stairs with the hem of her dress in her hands. Leaning forward, Nina cupped her palms against the glass and squinted. “If only I were there and she were here,” she sighed. And there, thought the Count, was a suitable plaint for all mankind. Later that night, as he sat alone on his bed, the Count mulled over his visit to his old suite. What had stayed with him was not the sight of his family’s clock still ticking by the door, nor the grandeur of the architecture, nor even the view from the northwest window. What had lingered with him was the sight of the tea service on the table beside the folded paper. That little tableaux, for all its innocence, was somehow suggestive of exactly what had been bearing down on the Count’s soul. For he understood every aspect of the scene at a glance. Having returned from some outing at four o’clock and having hung his jacket on the back of a chair, the room’s current resident had called for tea and an afternoon edition. Then he had settled himself down on the couch to while away a civilized hour before it was time to dress for dinner. In other words, what the Count had observed in suite 317 was not simply an afternoon tea, but a moment in the daily life of a gentleman at liberty. In light of these thoughts, the Count reviewed his new room—the one hundred square feet that had been assigned to him. Never had it seemed so small. The bed crowded the coffee table, the coffee table crowded the high-back chair, and the high-back chair had to be shoved aside every time one wished to open the closet. Simply put, there was not enough space to accommodate such a civilized hour. But as the Count gazed around him with this forlorn thought, a voice only half his own reminded him that in the Metropol there were rooms behind rooms, and doors behind doors. . . . Rising from his bed, the Count navigated his way around his grandmother’s coffee table, set aside the high-back chair, and stood before his telephone box of a closet. Running along the perimeter of where the closet met the wall was an elegant molding. The Count had always thought this flourish a little excessive; but what if the closet had been built in an old doorframe? Opening the door, the Count parted his clothes and tentatively rapped on the back wall. The sound was promisingly thin. With three fingers he gave the barrier a push and could feel it flex. He took all his jackets out and dumped them on the bed. Then holding the jambs of the door he kicked the inner wall with his heel. There came a pleasant crack. Leaning back, he kicked again and again until the barrier splintered. Then he pulled the jagged planks back into his room and slipped through the gap. He was now inside a dark, narrow space that smelled of dry cedar, presumably the interior of the neighboring closet. Taking a breath, he turned the knob, opened the door, and entered a room that was the mirror image of his own—but in which five unused bedframes had been stored. At some point, two of the frames, which had been leaning against the wall, had fallen, pinning the hallway door shut. Pulling the frames aside, the Count opened the door, dragged everything out of the room, and began to refurnish. First, he reunited the two high-back chairs with his grandmother’s coffee table. Then, taking the belfry stairs, he went down to the basement. From the cabinet of curiosities, he retrieved one of his rugs, the standing lamp, and the small bookcase in three separate trips. Then vaulting the steps two at a time, he made one final visit in order to claim ten of the weighty novels that had been abandoned. Once his new study was furnished, he went down the hall and borrowed the roofer’s hammer and five nails. The Count had not wielded a hammer since he was a boy at Idlehour when he would help Tikhon, the old caretaker, repair the fencing in the first weeks of spring. What a fine feeling it had been to bring the hammer down squarely on the head of a nail, driving it through a plank into a fence post as the impact echoed in the morning air. But on the very first stroke of this hammer what the Count squarely hit was the back of his thumb. (Lest you have forgotten, it is quite excruciating to hammer the back of your thumb. It inevitably prompts a hopping up and down and the taking of the Lord’s name in vain.) But Fortune does favor the bold. So, while the next swing of the hammer glanced off the nail’s head, on the third the Count hit home; and by the second nail, he had recovered the rhythm of set, drive, and sink—that ancient cadence which is not to be found in quadrilles, or hexameters, or in Vronsky’s saddlebags! Suffice it to say that within half an hour four of the nails had been driven through the edge of the door into the doorframe—such that from that moment forward the only access to the Count’s new room would be through the sleeves of his jackets. The fifth nail he saved for the wall above the bookcase so that he could hang the portrait of his sister. His work completed, the Count sat down in one of the high-back chairs and felt an almost surprising sense of bliss. The Count’s bedroom and this improvised study had identical dimensions, and yet, they exerted a completely different influence on his mood. To some degree, this difference stemmed from the manner in which the two rooms had been furnished. For while the room next door—with its bed, bureau, and desk—remained a realm of practical necessities, the study—with its books, the Ambassador, and Helena’s portrait—had been furnished in a manner more essential to the spirit. But in all likelihood, a greater factor in the difference between the two rooms was their provenance. For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine. Rising from his chair, the Count took up the largest of the ten volumes that he had retrieved from the basement. True, it would not be a new venture for him. But need it be? Could one possibly accuse him of nostalgia or idleness, of wasting his time simply because he had read the story two or three times before? Sitting back down, the Count put one foot on the edge of the coffee table and tilted back until his chair was balanced on its two hind legs, then he turned to the opening sentence: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. “Marvelous,” said the Count. An Assembly O h, come along.” “I’d rather not.” “Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy.” “I am not a fuddy-duddy.” “Can you be so sure?” “A man can never be entirely sure that he is not a fuddy-duddy. That is axiomatic to the term.” “Exactly.” In this manner, Nina coerced the Count to join her on one of her favorite excursions: spying from the balcony of the ballroom. The Count was reluctant to accompany Nina on this particular journey for two reasons. First, the ballroom’s balcony was narrow and dusty, and to stay out of sight one was forced to remain hunched behind the balustrade—a decidedly uncomfortable position for a grown man over six feet tall. (The last time the Count had accompanied Nina to the balcony, he had torn the seam of his pants and it took three days for him to lose the crick in his neck.) But second, this afternoon’s gathering was almost certain to be another Assembly. Over the course of the summer, the Assemblies had been occurring at the hotel with increasing frequency. At various times of day, small groups of men would come barreling through the lobby, already gesticulating, interrupting, and eager to make their points. In the ballroom, they would join their brethren milling shoulder to shoulder, every other one of them puffing on a cigarette. As best as the Count could determine, the Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world’s oldest problems in its newest nomenclature. If the Count was reluctant to observe these gatherings, it was not because he found the ideological leanings of the attendees distasteful. He would no sooner have crouched behind a balustrade to watch Cicero debating Catiline, or Hamlet debating himself. No, it was not a matter of ideology. Simply put, the Count found political discourse of any persuasion to be tedious. But then, wasn’t that exactly what a fuddy-duddy would argue . . . ? Needless to say, the Count followed Nina up the stairs to the second floor. Having skirted the entrance to the Boyarsky and ensured the coast was clear, they used Nina’s key to open the unmarked door to the balcony. Down below, a hundred men were already in their chairs and another hundred were conferring in the aisles as three impressive fellows took their seats behind a long wooden table on the dais. Which is to say, the Assembly had nearly Assembled. As this was the second of August and there had already been two Assemblies earlier that day, the temperature in the ballroom was 91?. Nina skirted out behind the balustrade on her hands and knees. When the Count bent over to do the same, the seam in the back of his pants gave way again. “Merde,” he muttered. “Shh,” said Nina. The first time the Count had joined Nina on the balcony, he couldn’t help but feel some astonishment at how profoundly the life of the ballroom had changed. Not ten years before, all of Moscow society would have been gathered in their finery under the grand chandeliers to dance the mazurka and toast the Tsar. But after witnessing a few of the Assemblies, the Count had come to an even more astonishing conclusion: that despite the Revolution, the room had barely changed at all. At that very moment, for example, two young men were coming through the doors looking game for the fray; but before exchanging a word with a soul, they crossed the room in order to pay their respects to an old man seated by the wall. Presumably, this elder had taken part in the 1905 revolution, or penned a pamphlet in 1880, or dined with Karl Marx back in 1852. Whatever his claim to eminence, the old revolutionary acknowledged the deference of the two young Bolsheviks with a self-assured nod of the head—all the while sitting in the very chair from which the Grand Duchess Anapova had received the greetings of dutiful young princes at her annual Easter Ball. Or consider the charming-looking chap who, in the manner of Prince Tetrakov, was now touring the room, shaking hands and patting backs. Having systematically made an impression in every corner—with a weighty remark here and a witty remark there—he now excused himself “for just a moment.” But once through the door, he will not reappear. For having ensured that everyone in the ballroom has noted his attendance, he will now head off to an altogether different sort of Assembly—one that is to take place in a cozy little room in the Arbat. Later, no doubt, some dashing young Turk who is rumored to have Lenin’s ear will make a point of arriving when the business of the evening is nearly done—just as Captain Radyanko had when he had the ear of the Tsar—thus exhibiting his indifference to the smaller conventions of etiquette while reinforcing his reputation as a man with so much to attend to and so little time to attend to it. Of course, there is now more canvas than cashmere in the room, more gray than gold. But is the patch on the elbow really that much different from the epaulette on the shoulder? Aren’t those workaday caps donned, like the bicorne and shako before them, in order to strike a particular note? Or take that bureaucrat on the dais with his gavel. Surely, he can afford a tailored jacket and a creased pair of pants. If he is wearing this ragged fare, it is in order to assure all assembled that he too is a hardened member of the working class! As if hearing the Count’s thoughts, this Secretary suddenly rapped his gavel on the tabletop—calling to order the Second Meeting of the First Congress of the Moscow Branch of the All-Russian Union of Railway Workers. The doors were closed, seats were taken, Nina held her breath, and the Assembly was underway. In the first fifteen minutes, six different administrative matters were raised and dispensed with in quick succession—leading one to imagine that this particular Assembly might actually be concluded before one’s back gave out. But next on the docket was a subject that proved more contentious. It was a proposal to amend the Union’s charter—or more precisely, the seventh sentence of the second paragraph, which the Secretary now read in full. Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence—one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard. For its apparent purpose was to catalog without fear or hesitation every single virtue of the Union including but not limited to: its unwavering shoulders, its undaunted steps, the clanging of its hammers in summer, the shoveling of its coal in winter, and the hopeful sound of its whistles in the night. But in the concluding phrases of this impressive sentence, at the very culmination as it were, was the observation that through their tireless efforts, the Railway Workers of Russia “facilitate communication and trade across the provinces.” After all the buildup, it was a bit of an anticlimax, conceded the Count. But the objection being raised was not due to the phrase’s overall lack of verve; rather it was due to the word facilitate. Specifically, the verb had been accused of being so tepid and prim that it failed to do justice to the labors of the men in the room. “We’re not helping a lady put on her jacket!” someone shouted from the rear. “Or painting her nails!” “Hear, hear!” Well, fair enough. But what verb would better express the work of the Union? What verb would do justice to the sweaty devotion of the engineers, the unflagging vigilance of the brakemen, and the rippling muscles of those who laid the tracks? A flurry of proposals came from the floor: To spur. To propel. To empower. The merits and limitations of each of these alternatives were hotly debated. There were three-pointed arguments counted out on fingertips, rhetorical questions, emotional summations, and back-row catcalls punctuated by the banging of the gavel—as the ambient temperature of the balcony rose to 96?. Then, just as the Count began to sense some risk of riot, a suggestion came from a shy-looking lad in the tenth row that perhaps to facilitate could be replaced with to enable and ensure. This pairing, the lad explained (while his cheeks grew red as a raspberry), might encompass not only the laying of rails and the manning of engines, but the ongoing maintenance of the system. “Yes, that’s it.” “Laying, manning, and maintenance.” “To enable and ensure.” With hearty applause from every corner, the lad’s proposal seemed to be barreling toward adoption as quickly and dependably as one of the Union’s locomotives barrels across the steppe. But just as it was nearing its terminus, a rather scrawny fellow in the second row stood. Such a wisp of a man was he that one wondered how he had secured a position in the Union in the first place. Once he had the attention of the room, this back-office clerk or accountant, this All-Russian pusher of pencils, asserted in a voice as tepid and prim as the word facilitate: “Poetic concision demands the avoidance of a pair of words when a single word will suffice.” “What’s that?” “What did he say?” Several stood up with the intention of grabbing him by the collar and dragging him from the room. But before they could get their hands on him, a burly fellow in the fifth row spoke without rising to his feet. “With all due respect to poetic concision, the male of the species was endowed with a pair when a single might have sufficed.” Thunderous applause! The resolution to replace facilitate with enable and ensure was adopted by a unanimous show of hands and a universal stomping of feet. While in the balcony, a private acknowledgment was made that perhaps political discourse wasn’t always so dull, after all. At the conclusion of the Assembly, when the Count and Nina had crawled off the balcony and back into the hallway, the Count felt quite pleased with himself. He felt pleased with his little parallels between the respect-payers, back-patters, and latecomers of the present and those of the past. He also had a whole host of entertaining alternatives to the phrase enable and ensure ranging from bustle and trundle to carom and careen. And when Nina inevitably asked what he thought of the day’s debate, he was going to reply that it was positively Shakespearean. Shakespearean, that is, in the manner of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. Much ado about nothing, indeed. Or so the Count intended to quip. But by a stroke of luck, he didn’t get the chance. For when Nina asked what he thought of the Assembly, unable to wait even a moment for his impressions, she barreled ahead with her own. “Wasn’t that fascinating? Wasn’t it fantastic? Have you ever been on a train?” “The train is my preferred means of travel,” said the Count, somewhat startled. She nodded enthusiastically. “Mine as well. And when you have traveled by train, have you watched the landscape rolling past the windows, and listened to the conversations of your fellow passengers, and drifted off to the clacking of the wheels?” “I have done all of those things.” “Exactly. But have you ever, for even one moment, considered how the coal finds its way into the locomotive’s engine? Have you considered in the middle of a forest or on a rocky slope how the tracks came to be there in the first place?” The Count paused. Considered. Imagined. Admitted. “Never.” She gave him a knowing look. “Isn’t it astounding.” And when seen in that light, who could disagree? A few minutes later, the Count was knocking on the office door of Marina, the shy delight, while holding a folded newpaper at the back of his pants. Not long ago, the Count recalled, there had been three seamstresses at work in this room, each before an American-made sewing machine. Like the three Fates, together they had spun and measured and cut—taking in gowns, raising hems, and letting out pants with all of the fateful implications of their predecessors. In the aftermath of the Revolution, all three had been discharged; the silenced sewing machines had, presumably, become the property of the People; and the room? It had been idled like Fatima’s flower shop. For those had not been years for the taking in of gowns or the raising of hems any more than they had been for the throwing of bouquets or the sporting of boutonnieres. Then in 1921, confronted with a backlog of fraying sheets, tattered curtains, and torn napkins—which no one had any intention of replacing—the hotel had promoted Marina, and once again a trustworthy seam was being sewn within the walls of the hotel. “Ah, Marina,” said the Count when she opened the door with needle and thread in hand. “How good to find you stitching away in the stitching room.” Marina looked at the Count with a touch of suspicion. “What else would I be doing?” “Quite so,” said the Count. Then offering his most endearing smile, he turned ninety degrees, briefly lifted the newspaper, and humbly asked for her assistance. “Didn’t I repair a pair of your pants just last week?” “I was spying with Nina again,” he explained. “From the balcony of the ballroom.” The seamstress looked at the Count with one eye expressing consternation and the other disbelief. “If you’re going to clamber about with a nine-year-old girl, then why do you insist upon wearing pants like those?” The Count was a little taken aback by the seamstress’s tone. “When I dressed this morning, it was not my plan to go clambering about. But either way, I’ll have you know that these pants were custom-made on Savile Row.” “Yes. Custom-made for sitting in a sitting room, or drawing in a drawing room.” “But I have never drawn in a drawing room.” “Which is just as well, since you probably would have spilled the ink.” As Marina seemed neither particularly shy nor delightful that day, the Count offered her the bow of one who would now be on his way. “Oh, enough of that,” she said. “Behind the screen and off with your pants.” Without another word the Count went behind the dressing screen, stripped to his shorts, and handed Marina his pants. From the ensuing silence, he could tell that she had found her spool, licked her thread, and was carefully directing it through the eye of the needle. “Well,” she said, “you might as well tell me what you were doing up in the balcony.” So, as Marina began stitching the Count’s pants—the laying of locomotive tracks writ small, if you will—he described the Assembly and all his various impressions. Then, almost wistfully, he noted that even as he was seeing the intractability of social conventions and the human tendency to take itself too seriously, Nina was becoming enthralled by the Assembly’s energy and its sense of purpose. “And what is wrong with that?” “Nothing, I suppose,” admitted the Count. “It’s just that only a few weeks ago, she was inviting me to tea in order to ask about the rules of being a princess. . . .” Handing the Count’s pants back over the screen, Marina shook her head like one who must now deliver a hard truth to an innocent of mind. “All little girls outgrow their interest in princesses,” she said. “In fact, they outgrow their interest in princesses faster than little boys outgrow their interest in clambering about.” When the Count left Marina’s office with a thanks, a wave, and the seat of his pants intact, he practically fell over one of the bellhops, who happened to be standing outside the door. “Excuse me, Count Rostov!” “That’s quite all right, Petya. No need to apologize. It was my fault, I’m sure.” The poor lad, who looked positively wide-eyed, hadn’t even noticed that he’d lost his cap. So, picking it up from the floor and placing it back on the bellhop’s head, the Count wished him God’s speed in his business and turned to go. “But my business is with you.” “With me?” “It is Mr. Halecki. He wishes to have a word. In his office.” No wonder the lad was wide-eyed. Not only had the Count never been summoned by Mr. Halecki, in the four years that he had been in residence in the Metropol he had not seen the manager on more than five occasions. For Jozef Halecki was one of those rare executives who had mastered the secret of delegation—that is, having assigned the oversight of the hotel’s various functions to capable lieutenants, he made himself scarce. Arriving at the hotel at half past eight, he would head straight to his office with a harried expression, as if he were already late for a meeting. Along the way, he would return greetings with an abbreviated nod, and when he passed his secretary he would inform her (while still in motion) that he was not to be disturbed. Then he would disappear behind his door. And what happened once he was inside his office? It was hard to tell, since so few had ever seen it. (Although, those who had caught a glimpse reported that his desk was impressively free of papers, his telephone rarely rang, and along the wall was a burgundy chaise with cushions that were deeply impressed. . . .) When the manager’s lieutenants had no choice but to knock—due to a fire in the kitchen or a dispute about a bill—the manager would open his door with an expression of such fatigue, such disappointment, such moral defeat that the interrupters would inevitably feel a surge of sympathy, assure him that they could see to the matter themselves, then apologetically back out the door. As a result, the Metropol ran as flawlessly as any hotel in Europe. Needless to say, the Count was both anxious and intrigued by the manager’s sudden desire to see him. Without further ado, Petya led him down the hall, through the hotel’s back offices, and finally to the manager’s door, which predictably was closed. Expecting Petya to formally announce him, the Count paused a few feet short of the office, but the bellhop made a sheepish gesture toward the door and then vanished. With no clear alternative, the Count knocked. There followed a brief rustling, a moment of silence, and a beleaguered call to come in. When the Count opened the door, he found Mr. Halecki seated at his desk with a pen firmly in hand, but without a piece of paper in sight. And though the Count was not one to draw conclusions, he did note that the manager’s hair was matted on one side of his head and his reading glasses were crooked on his nose. “You wished to see me?” “Ah. Count Rostov. Please. Come in.” As the Count approached one of the two empty chairs that faced the desk, he noted that hanging above the burgundy chaise was a lovely series of hand-tinted engravings depicting hunting scenes in the English style. “Those are excellent specimens,” said the Count as he took his seat. “What’s that? Oh, yes. The prints. Quite excellent. Yes.” But having said this, the manager removed his glasses and ran a hand over his eyes. Then he shook his head and sighed. And as he did so, the Count felt a welling of that famed sympathy. “How can I be of service to you?” asked the Count, on the edge of his seat. The manager gave a nod of familiarity, having presumably heard this question a thousand times before, then put both hands on his desk. “Count Rostov,” he began. “You have been a guest of this hotel for many years. In fact, I gather your first visit here dates back to the days of my predecessor. . . .” “That’s right,” the Count confirmed with a smile. “It was in August 1913.” “Quite so.” “Room 215, I believe.” “Ah. A delightful room.” The two men were silent. “It has been brought to my attention,” the manager continued, if somewhat haltingly, “that various members of the staff when speaking to you . . . have continued to make use of certain . . . honorifics.” “Honorifics?” “Yes. More precisely, I gather they have been addressing you as Your Excellency. . . .” The Count considered the manager’s assertion for a moment. “Well, yes. I suppose that some of your staff address me in that fashion.” The manager nodded his head then smiled a little sadly. “I’m sure you can see the position that this puts me in.” In point of fact, the Count could not see the position that this put the manager in. But given the Count’s unmitigated feelings of sympathy, he decidedly did not want to put him in any position. So, he listened attentively as Mr. Halecki went on: “If it were up to me, of course, it goes without saying. But what with . . .” Here, just when the manager might have pinpointed the most specific of causes, he instead gave an indefinite twirl of the hand and let his voice drift off. Then he cleared his throat. “Naturally, I have little choice but to insist that my staff refrain from using such terms when addressing you. After all, I think we can agree without exaggeration or fear of contradiction that the times have changed.” In concluding thus, the manager looked to the Count so hopefully, that the Count took immediate pains to reassure him. “It is the business of the times to change, Mr. Halecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them.” The manager looked to the Count with an expression of profound gratitude—that someone should understand what he had said so perfectly no further explication was required. There was a knock at the door and it opened to reveal Arkady, the hotel’s desk captain. The manager’s shoulders slumped at the sight of him. He gestured toward the Count. “As you can see, Arkady, I am in the midst of a conversation with one of our guests.” “My apologies, Mr. Halecki, Count Rostov.” Arkady bowed to both men, but did not retreat. “All right then,” said the manager. “What is it?” Arkady gave a slight gesture of the head to suggest that what he had to relate might best be related in private. “Very well.” Pushing himself up with both hands, the manager shuffled past his desk, out into the hall, and closed the door, such that the Count found himself alone. Your Excellency, the Count reflected philosophically. Your Eminence, Your Holiness, Your Highness. Once upon a time, the use of such terms was a reliable indication that one was in a civilized country. But now, what with . . . Here, the Count gave an indefinite twirl of the hand. “Well. It is probably for the best,” he said. Then rising from his chair, he approached the engravings, which upon closer inspection depicted three phases of a foxhunt: “The Scent,” “Tallyho,” and “The Chase.” In the second print, a young man in stiff black boots and a bright red jacket was blowing on a brass horn that turned a full 360 degrees from its mouthpiece to its bell. Without a doubt, the horn was a carefully crafted object expressive of beauty and tradition, but was it essential to the modern world? For that matter, did we really need a crew of nattily dressed men, purebred horses, and well-trained dogs to corner a fox in a hole? Without exaggeration or fear of contradiction, the Count could answer his own question in the negative. For the times do, in fact, change. They change relentlessly. Inevitably. Inventively. And as they change, they set into bright relief not only outmoded honorifics and hunting horns, but silver summoners and mother-of-pearl opera glasses and all manner of carefully crafted things that have outlived their usefulness. Carefully crafted things that have outlived their usefulness, thought the Count. I wonder . . . Moving quietly across the room, the Count put an ear to the door, where he could hear the voices of the manager, Arkady, and a third party talking outside. Though muted, their tones suggested they were still a few steps from resolution. Quickly, the Count returned to the wall with the etchings and counted two panels beyond the depiction of “The Chase.” Placing his hand in the center of the panel, he gave a firm push. The panel depressed slightly. When a click sounded, the Count pulled back his fingers and the panel popped open, revealing a hidden cabinet. Inside, just as the Grand Duke had described, was an inlaid box with brass fittings. Reaching into the cabinet, the Count gently lifted the lid of the box and there they were, perfectly crafted and peacefully at rest. “Marvelous,” he said. “Simply marvelous.” Archeologies P ick a card,” the Count was saying to the smallest of the three ballerinas. When he had entered the Shalyapin for his reinstated nightly aperitif, the Count had discovered them standing in a row, their delicate fingers resting on the bar as if they intended to pli?. But for a solitary drinker hunched over his consolation, the young ladies were alone in the bar; so it seemed only appropriate that the Count should join them in a bit of conversation. In an instant, he could tell that they were new to Moscow—three of the doves that Gorsky recruited from the provinces every September to join the corps de ballet. Their short torsos and long limbs were of the classical style preferred by the director, but their expressions had yet to acquire the aloofness of his more seasoned ballerinas. And the very fact that they were drinking at the Metropol unaccompanied hinted at a youthful na?vet?. For while the proximity of the hotel to the Bolshoi made it a natural choice for young ballerinas who wished to slip away at the end of rehearsal, the same proximity also made it a favored spot of Gorsky’s whenever he wished to discuss matters of art with his prima ballerina. And should these doves be discovered by the director sipping muscat, they would soon be doing the pas de deux in Petropavlosk. With that in mind, perhaps the Count should have warned them. But freedom of the will has been a well-established tenet of moral philosophy since the time of the Greeks. And though the Count’s days of romancing were behind him, it goes against the nature of even the well-meaning gentleman to recommend that lovely young ladies leave his company on the basis of hypotheses. So, instead, the Count remarked on the young ladies’ beauty, inquired what brought them to Moscow, congratulated them on their achievements, insisted upon paying for their wine, chatted with them about their hometowns, and eventually offered to perform a sleight of hand. A deck of cards with the Metropol’s insignia was produced by the ever-attentive Audrius. “It has been years since I have done this trick,” the Count admitted, “so you must bear with me.” As he began to shuffle the pack, the three ballerinas watched him closely; but like demigods of ancient myth, they watched in three different ways: the first through the eyes of the innocent, the second through the eyes of the romantic, and the third through the eyes of the skeptic. It was the dove with the innocent eyes whom the Count had asked to pick a card. As the ballerina was making her selection, the Count became aware of someone standing behind his shoulder, but this was to be expected. In the setting of a bar, a sleight of hand will inevitably attract a curious onlooker or two. But when he turned to his left to offer a wink, he found not a curious onlooker, but unflappable Arkady—looking unusually flapped. “Pardon me, Count Rostov. I am sorry to interrupt. But may I have a moment?” “Certainly, Arkady.” Smiling apologetically to the ballerinas, the desk captain led the Count a few paces away, then let the facts of the evening speak for themselves: At half past six, a gentleman had knocked at the suite of Secretary Tarakovsky. When the esteemed Secretary opened the door, this gentleman demanded to know who he was and what he was doing there! Taken aback, comrade Tarakovsky explained that he was the current resident of the suite and that was what he was doing there. Unconvinced by this logic, the gentleman insisted he be admitted at once. When comrade Tarakovsky refused, the gentleman brushed him aside, crossed the threshold, and commenced searching the rooms one by one, including, ahem, the salle de bain—where Mrs. Tarakovsky was seeing to her nightly toilette. This was the point at which Arkady had arrived on the scene, having been summoned urgently by phone. In an agitated state, comrade Tarakovsky waved his cane and demanded “as a regular guest of the Metropol and senior member of the Party” to see the manager at once. The gentleman, who was now sitting on the couch with his arms crossed, replied that this suited him perfectly—as he had been about to summon the manager himself. And as to Party membership, he asserted that he had been a member of the Party since before comrade Tarakovsky was born—which seemed a rather incredible claim given that comrade Tarakovsky is eighty-two. . . . Now, the Count, who had listened with interest to every word that Arkady had related, would be the first to admit that this was an enthralling tale. In fact, it was just the sort of colorful incident that an international hotel should aspire to have as part of its lore and that he, as a guest of the hotel, would be likely to retell at the first opportunity. But what he could not understand was why Arkady had chosen this particular moment to share this particular story with him. “Why, because comrade Tarakovsky is staying in suite 317; and it is you for whom the gentleman in question was looking.” “Me?” “I am afraid so.” “What is his name?” “He refused to say.” . . . “Then where is he now?” Arkady pointed toward the lobby. “He is wearing out the carpet behind the potted palms.” “Wearing out the carpet . . . ?” The Count stuck his head out of the Shalyapin as Arkady leaned cautiously behind him. And sure enough, there on the other side of the lobby was the gentleman in question, making quick business of the ten feet between the pair of plants. The Count smiled. Though a few pounds heavier, Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich had the same ragged beard and restless pace that he had had when they were twenty-two. “Do you know him?” asked the desk captain. “Only like a brother.” When the Count and Mikhail Fyodorovich first met at the Imperial University in St. Petersburg in the fall of 1907, the two were tigers of a very different stripe. While the Count had been raised in a twenty-room mansion with a staff of fourteen, Mikhail had been raised in a two-room apartment with his mother. And while the Count was known in all the salons of the capital as one who could be counted on for his wit, intelligence, and charm, Mikhail was known hardly anywhere as one who preferred to read in his room rather than fritter away the evening on frivolous conversations. As such, the two young men hardly seemed fated for friendship. But Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do. Sure enough, while Mikhail was prone to throw himself into a scrape at the slightest difference of opinion, regardless of the number or size of his opponents, it just so happened that Count Alexander Rostov was prone to leap to the defense of an outnumbered man regardless of how ill conceived his cause. Thus, on the fourth day of their first year, the two students found themselves helping each other up off the ground, as they wiped the dust from their knees and the blood from their lips. While the splendors that elude us in youth are likely to receive our casual contempt in adolescence and our measured consideration in adulthood, they forever hold us in their thrall. Thus, in the days that followed their meeting, the Count listened with as much amazement to Mikhail’s impassioned expression of ideals, as Mikhail did to the Count’s descriptions of the city’s salons. And within the year, they were sharing rented rooms above a cobbler’s shop off Sredny Prospekt. As the Count would later observe, it was fortuitous that they ended up above a cobbler—for no one in all of Russia could wear out a shoe like Mikhail Mindich. He could easily pace twenty miles in a twenty-foot room. He could pace thirty miles in an opera box and fifty in a confessional. For simply put, pacing was Mishka’s natural state. Say the Count secured them invitations to Platonov’s for drinks, the Petrovskys’ for supper, and Princess Petrossian’s for a dance—Mishka would invariably decline on the grounds that in the back of a bookshop he had just discovered a volume by someone named Flammenhescher that demanded to be read from beginning to end without delay. But once alone, having torn through the first fifty pages of Herr Flammenhescher’s little monograph, Mikhail would leap to his feet and start pacing from corner to corner in order to voice his fervid agreement or furious dissent with the author’s thesis, his style, or his use of punctuation. Such that by the time the Count returned at two in the morning, though Mishka had not advanced beyond the fiftieth page, he had worn out more shoe leather than a pilgrim on the road to St. Paul’s. So, the storming of hotel suites and the wearing out of carpets was not particularly out of character for his old friend. But as Mishka had recently received a new appointment at their alma mater in St. Petersburg, the Count was surprised to have him appear so suddenly, and in such a state. After embracing, the two men climbed the five flights to the attic. Having been told what to expect, Mishka took in his friend’s new circumstances without an expression of surprise. But he paused before the three-legged bureau and tilted his head to give its base a second look. “The Essays of Montaigne?” “Yes,” affirmed the Count. “I gather they didn’t agree with you.” “On the contrary. I found them to be the perfect height. But tell me, my friend, what brings you to Moscow?” “Nominally, Sasha, I am here to help plan the inaugural congress of RAPP, which is to be held in June. But of greater consequence . . .” Here Mishka reached into a shoulder satchel and produced a bottle of wine with an image of two crossed keys embossed in the glass above the label. “I hope I am not too late.” The Count took the bottle in hand. He ran his thumb over the surface of the insignia. Then he shook his head with the smile of the deeply moved. “No, Mishka. As always, you are right on time.” Then he led his old friend through his jackets. As the Count excused himself to rinse a pair of glasses from the Ambassador, Mishka surveyed his friend’s study with a sympathetic gaze. For the tables, the chairs, the objets d’art, he recognized them all. And well he knew that they had been culled from the halls of Idlehour as reminders of Elysian days. It must have been in 1908 that Alexander began inviting him to Idlehour for the month of July. Having traveled from St. Petersburg by a series of consecutively smaller trains, they would finally arrive at that little halt in the high grass on the branch line, where they would be met by a Rostov coach-and-four. With their bags on top, the driver in the carriage, and Alexander at the reins, they would charge across the countryside waving at every peasant girl until they turned onto the road lined with apple trees that led to the family seat. As they shed their coats in the entry hall, their bags would be whisked to the grand bedrooms of the east wing, where velvet cords could be pulled to summon a cold glass of beer, or hot water for a bath. But first, they would proceed to the drawing room where—at this very table with its red pagoda—the Countess would be hosting some blue-blooded neighbor for tea. Invariably dressed in black, the Countess was one of those dowagers whose natural independence of mind, authority of age, and impatience with the petty made her the ally of all irreverent youth. She would not only abide, but enjoyed when her grandson would interrupt polite conversation to question the standing of the church or the ruling class. And when her guest grew red and responded in a huff, the Countess would give Mishka a conspiratorial wink, as if they stood arm in arm in the battle against boorish decorum and the outmoded attitudes of the times. Having paid their respects to the Countess, Mishka and Alexander would head out the terrace doors in search of Helena. Sometimes they would find her under the pergola overlooking the gardens and sometimes under the elm tree at the bend in the river; but wherever they found her, at the sound of their approach she would look up from her book and offer a welcoming smile—not unlike the one captured in this portrait on the wall. With Helena, Alexander was always his most outlandish, claiming as he collapsed on the grass that they had just met Tolstoy on the train; or that he had decided after careful consideration to join a monastery and take an eternal vow of silence. Immediately. Without a moment’s delay. Or, as soon as they’d had lunch. “Do you really think that silence would suit you?” Helena would ask. “Like deafness suited Beethoven.” Then, after casting a friendly glance at Mishka, Helena would laugh, look back at her brother, and ask, “What is to become of you, Alexander?” They all asked that question of the Count. Helena, the Countess, the Grand Duke. What is to become of you, Alexander? But they asked it in three different ways. For the Grand Duke the question was, of course, rhetorical. Confronted with a report of a failed semester or an unpaid bill, the Grand Duke would summon his godson to his library, read the letter aloud, drop it on his desk, and ask the question without expectation of a response, knowing full well that the answer was imprisonment, bankruptcy, or both. For his grandmother, who tended to ask the question when the Count had said something particularly scandalous, What is to become of you, Alexander? was an admission to all in earshot that here was her favorite, so you needn’t expect her to rein in his behavior. But when Helena asked the question, she did so as if the answer were a genuine mystery. As if, despite her brother’s erratic studies and carefree ways, the world had yet to catch a glimpse of the man he was bound to become. “What is to become of you, Alexander?” Helena would ask. “That is the question,” the Count would agree. And then he would lie back in the grass and gaze thoughtfully at the figure eights of the fireflies as if he too were pondering this essential enigma. Yes, those were Elysian days, thought Mishka. But like Elysium they belonged in the past. They belonged with waistcoats and corsets, with quadrilles and bezique, with the ownership of souls, the payment of tribute, and the stacking of icons in the corner. They belonged in an age of elaborate artifice and base superstition—when a lucky few dined on cutlets of veal and the majority endured in ignorance. They belong with those, thought Mishka, as he turned his gaze from Helena’s portrait to the nineteenth-century novels that lined the familiar little bookcase. All those adventures and romances spun in the fanciful styles that his old friend so admired. But here, on top of the bookcase in its long narrow frame, was a genuine artifact—the black-and-white photograph of the men who signed the Treaty of Portsmouth to end the Russo-Japanese War. Mishka picked up the picture and surveyed the visages, sober and assured. Standing in formal configuration, the Japanese and Russian delegates all wore high white collars, moustaches, bow ties, and expressions suggestive of some grand sense of accomplishment—having just concluded with the stroke of a pen the war that their likes had started in the first place. And there, just left of center, stood the Grand Duke himself: special envoy from the court of the Tsar. It was at Idlehour in 1910 that Mishka first witnessed the Rostovs’ long-standing tradition—of gathering on the tenth anniversary of a family member’s death to raise a glass of Ch?teauneuf-du-Pape. Two days after the Count and he had arrived for their holiday, the guests began to appear. By four in the afternoon the drive was lined with surreys, britzkas, droshkies, and gigs from Moscow and St. Petersburg and all the neighboring districts. And when the family gathered in the hall at five, it was the Grand Duke who was given the honor of raising the first glass in memory of the Count’s parents, who had died just hours apart. What a formidable figure the Grand Duke had been. Seemingly born in full dress, he rarely sat, never drank, and died on the back of his horse on the twenty-first of September 1912—ten years ago to the day. “He was a right old soul.” Mishka turned to find the Count standing behind him with two Bordeaux glasses in hand. “A man of another time,” Mishka said, not without reverence, returning the picture to its shelf. Then the bottle was opened, the wine was poured, and the two old friends raised their glasses on high. “What a group we have gathered, Sasha. . . .” Having toasted the Grand Duke and reminisced of days gone by, the old friends shifted their attention to the upcoming congress of RAPP, which turned out to be the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. “It will be an extraordinary assembly. An extraordinary assembly at an extraordinary time. Akhmatova, Bulgakov, Mayakovksy, Mandelstam—the sort of writers who not long ago couldn’t have dined at the same table without fear of arrest—will all be there. Yes, over the years they have championed their differing styles, but in June they will gather to forge novaya poeziya, a new poetry. One that is universal, Sasha. One that doesn’t hesitate and needn’t kowtow. One that has the human spirit as its subject and the future as its muse!” Just before uttering his first One that, Mishka had leapt to his feet and now paced the Count’s little study from corner to corner, as if formulating his ideas in the privacy of his own apartment. “You remember, no doubt, that work by the Dane Thomsen. . . .” (The Count did not remember that work by the Dane Thomsen. But he would no sooner have interrupted Mikhail on his feet than Vivaldi on his violin.) “As an archeologist, when Thomsen divided the ages of man into Stone, Bronze, and Iron, naturally enough, he did so in accordance with the physical tools that defined each epoch. But what of man’s spiritual development? What of his moral development? I tell you, they progressed along the very same lines. In the Stone Age, the ideas in the caveman’s head were as blunt as the club in his hand; they were as rough as the flint from which he struck a spark. In the Age of Bronze, when a canny few discovered the science of metallurgy, how long did it take for them to fashion coins, crowns, and swords? That unholy trinity to which the common man was enslaved for the next one thousand years.” Mishka paused to consider the ceiling. “Then came the Age of Iron—and with it the steam engine, the printing press, and the gun. Here was a very different trinity, indeed. For while these tools had been developed by the Bourgeoisie to further their own interests, it was through the engine, the press, and the pistol that the Proletariat began to free itself from labor, ignorance, and tyranny.” Mishka shook his head in appreciation of either history’s trajectory or his turns of phrase. “Well, my friend, I think we can agree that a new age has begun: the Age of Steel. We now have the ability to build power stations, skyscrapers, airplanes.” Mishka turned to the Count. “You have seen the Shukhov Radio Tower?” The Count had not. “What a thing of beauty, Sasha. A two-hundred-foot structure of spiraling steel from which we can broadcast the latest news and intelligence—and, yes, the sentimental strains of your Tchaikovsky—into the home of every citizen within a hundred miles. And with each one of these advances, the Russian morality has been keeping step. In our time, we may witness the end of ignorance, the end of oppression, and the advent of the brotherhood of man.” Mishka stopped and waved a hand in the air. “But what of poetry? you ask. What of the written word? Well, I can assure you that it too is keeping pace. Once fashioned from bronze and iron, it is now being fashioned from steel. No longer an art of quatrains and dactyls and elaborate tropes, our poetry has become an art of action. One that will speed across the continents and transmit music to the stars!” Had the Count overheard such a speech spilling forth from a student in a coffeehouse, he might have observed with a glint in his eye that, apparently, it was no longer enough for a poet to write verse. Now, a poem must spring from a school with its own manifesto and stake its claim on the moment by means of the first-person plural and the future tense, with rhetorical questions and capital letters and an army of exclamation points! And above all else, it must be novaya. But as noted, these would have been the Count’s thoughts had he overheard someone else speaking. Hearing the speech spill forth from Mishka filled the Count with joy. For it is a fact that a man can be profoundly out of step with his times. A man may have been born in a city famous for its idiosyncratic culture and yet, the very habits, fashions, and ideas that exalt that city in the eyes of the world may make no sense to him at all. As he proceeds through life, he looks about in a state of confusion, understanding neither the inclinations nor the aspirations of his peers. For such a fellow, forget any chance of romance or professional success; those are the provenance of men in step with their times. Instead, for this fellow the options will be to bray like a mule or find what solace he can from overlooked volumes discovered in overlooked bookshops. And when his roommate stumbles home at two in the morning, he has little choice but to listen in silent mystification as he is recounted the latest dramas from the city’s salons. This had been Mishka’s lot for most of his life. But events can unfold in such a manner that overnight the man out of step finds himself in the right place at the right time. The fashions and attitudes that had seemed so alien to him are suddenly swept aside and supplanted by fashions and attitudes in perfect sympathy with his deepest sentiments. Then, like a lone sailor adrift for years on alien seas, he wakes one night to discover familiar constellations overhead. And when this occurs—this extraordinary realignment of the stars—the man so long out of step with his times experiences a supreme lucidity. Suddenly all that has passed comes into focus as a necessary course of events, and all that promises to unfold has the clearest rhyme and reason. When the twice-tolling clock struck twelve, even Mishka could see the merit in having another glass of wine; and toasts were made not only to the Grand Duke, but to Helena and the Countess, to Russia and Idlehour, to poetry and pacing, and to every other worthy facet of life that they could think of. Advent O ne evening in late December, as he was walking the hallway to the Piazza, the Count distinctly felt a gust of frozen air, despite being fifty yards from the nearest exit to the street. It brushed past him with all the freshness and clarity of a starlit winter’s night. After pausing and searching about, he realized that the draft was coming . . . from the coatroom. Which Tanya, the attendant, had left unattended. So, with a look to his left and a look to his right, the Count stepped within. In the preceding minutes, there must have been such a rush of parties arriving for dinner that the winter air had yet to dissipate from the fabric of their coats. Here was the greatcoat of a soldier with a dusting of snow on its shoulders; here the woolen jacket of a bureaucrat still damp; and here was a black mink coat with a collar of ermine (or was it sable?) that was in all probability worn by the mistress of a commissar. Raising a sleeve to his face, the Count could detect smoke from a fireplace and the hint of an oriental eau de cologne. Setting out from some elegant house on the Boulevard Ring, this young beauty presumably arrived in an automobile as black as her coat. Or perhaps she had opted to walk down Tverskaya Street, where Pushkin’s statue stood pensive but undaunted in the freshly fallen snow. Or better yet, she had come by sleigh with the hooves of the horses sounding on the cobbled streets and the crack of the whip matching the driver’s Hyah! That was how the Count and his sister would brave the cold on Christmas Eve. Promising their grandmother that they would be no later than midnight, the siblings would set out on their troika into the crisp night air to call on their neighbors. With the Count at the reins and the pelt of a wolf on their laps, they would cut across the lower pasture to the village road, where the Count would call: Who shall it be first? The Bobrinskys? Or the Davidovs? But whether they ventured to the one, the other, or somewhere else entirely, there would be a feast, a fire, and open arms. There would be bright dresses, and flushed skin, and sentimental uncles making misty-eyed toasts as children spied from the stairs. And music? There would be songs that emptied your glass and called you to your feet. Songs that led you to leap and alight in a manner that belied your age. Songs that made you reel and spin until you lost your bearings not only between the parlor and the salon, but between heaven and earth. As midnight approached, the Rostov siblings would stumble from their second or third visit in search of their sleigh. Their laughter would echo under the stars and their steps would weave in wide curves back and forth across the straight tracks that they had made upon their arrival—such that in the morning their hosts would find the giant figure of a G clef transcribed by their boots in the snow. Back in the troika they would charge across the countryside, cutting through the village of Petrovskoye, where the Church of the Ascension stood not far from its monastery’s walls. Erected in 1814 in honor of Napoleon’s defeat, the church’s campanile was rivaled only by that of the Ivan the Great tower in the Kremlin. Its twenty bells had been forged from cannons that the Interloper had been forced to abandon during his retreat, such that every peal seemed to sound: Long live Russia! Long live the Tsar! But as they came to the bend in the road where the Count would normally give a snap of the reins to speed the horses home, Helena would place a hand on his arm to signal that he should slow the team—for midnight had just arrived, and a mile behind them the bells of Ascension had begun to swing, their chimes cascading over the frozen land in holy canticle. And in the pause between hymns, if one listened with care, above the pant of the horses, above the whistle of the wind, one could hear the bells of St. Michael’s ten miles away—and then the bells of St. Sofia’s even farther afield—calling one to another like flocks of geese across a pond at dusk. The bells of Ascension . . . When the Count had passed through Petrovskoye in 1918 on his hurried return from Paris, he had come upon a gathering of peasants milling in mute consternation before the monastery’s walls. The Red Cavalry, it seems, had arrived that morning with a caravan of empty wagons. At the instruction of their young captain, a troop of Cossacks had climbed the campanile and heaved the bells from the steeple one by one. When it came time to heave the Great Bell, a second troop of Cossacks was sent up the stairs. The old giant was hoisted from its hook, balanced on the rail, and tipped into the air, where it somersaulted once before landing in the dust with a thud. When the abbot rushed from the monastery to confront the captain—demanding in the name of the Lord that they cease this desecration at once—the captain leaned against a post and lit a cigarette. “One should render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” he said, “and unto God what is God’s.” With that, he instructed his men to drag the abbot up the belfry steps and hurl him from the steeple into the arms of his Maker. Presumably, the bells of the Church of the Ascension had been reclaimed by the Bolsheviks for the manufacture of artillery, thus returning them to the realm from whence they came. Though for all the Count knew, the cannons that had been salvaged from Napoleon’s retreat to make the Ascension’s bells had been forged by the French from the bells at La Rochelle; which in turn had been forged from British blunderbusses seized in the Thirty Years’ War. From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. Such is the fate of iron ore. “Count Rostov . . . ?” The Count looked up from his reverie to find Tanya standing in the doorway. “Sable I should think,” said the Count, dropping the sleeve. “Yes, most definitely sable.” December in the Piazza . . . From the day the Metropol opened its doors, the good people of Moscow had looked to the Piazza to set the tone of the season. For by five o’clock on the first of December, the room had already been festooned in anticipation of the New Year. Evergreen garlands with bright red berries hung from the fountain. Strings of lights fell from the balconies. And revelers? From all across Moscow they came, such that by eight o’clock, when the orchestra struck up its first festive song, every table was spoken for. By nine, the waiters were dragging chairs in from the corridors so that latecomers could hang their arms over the shoulders of friends. And at the center of every table—whether it was hosted by the high or the humble—was a serving of caviar, for it is the genius of this particular delicacy that it may be enjoyed by the ounce or the pound. As such, it was with a touch of disappointment that the Count entered the Piazza on this winter solstice to find the room ungarlanded, the balustrades unstrung, an accordion player on the bandstand, and two-thirds of the tables empty. But then, as every child knows, the drumbeat of the season must sound from within. And there, at her usual table by the fountain, was Nina with a dark green ribbon tied around the waist of her bright yellow dress. “Merry Christmas,” said the Count with a bow when he reached the table. Nina stood and curtsied. “The joys of the season to you, sir.” When they were seated with their napkins in their laps, Nina explained that as she would be meeting her father for dinner a little later, she had taken the liberty of ordering herself an hors d’oeuvre. “Quite sensible,” said the Count. At that moment, the Bishop appeared, carrying a small tower of ice creams. “The hors d’oeuvre?” “Oui,” Nina replied. Having placed the dish before Nina with a priestly smile, the Bishop turned and asked if the Count would like a menu (as if he didn’t know it by heart!). “No thank you, my good man. Just a glass of champagne and a spoon.” Systematic in all matters of importance, Nina ate her ice cream one flavor at a time, moving from the lightest to the darkest in shade. Thus, having already dispatched her French vanilla, she was now moving on to a scoop of lemon, which perfectly matched her dress. “So,” said the Count, “are you looking forward to your visit home?” “Yes, it will be nice to see everyone,” said Nina. “But when we return to Moscow in January, I shall be starting school.” “You don’t seem very excited by the prospect.” “I fear it will be dreadfully dull,” she admitted, “and positively overrun with children.” The Count nodded gravely to acknowledge the indisputable likelihood of children in the schoolhouse; then, as he dipped his own spoon into the scoop of strawberry, he noted that he had enjoyed school very much. “Everybody tells me that.” “I loved reading the Odyssey and the Aeneid; and I made some of the finest friends of my life. . . .” “Yes, yes,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Everybody tells me that too.” “Well, sometimes everybody tells you something because it is true.” “Sometimes,” Nina clarified, “everybody tells you something because they are everybody. But why should one listen to everybody? Did everybody write the Odyssey? Did everybody write the Aeneid?” She shook her head then concluded definitively: “The only difference between everybody and nobody is all the shoes.” Perhaps the Count should have left it at that. But he hated the idea of his young friend beginning her Moscow school days with such a desolatory view. As she progressed through the dark purple scoop (presumably blackberry), he considered how best to articulate the virtues of a formal education. “While there are certainly some irksome aspects to school,” he conceded after a moment, “I think you will find to your eventual delight that the experience has broadened your horizons.” Nina looked up. “What do you mean by that?” “What do I mean by what?” “By broadened your horizons.” The Count’s assertion had seemed so axiomatic that he had not prepared an elaboration. So before responding, he signaled the Bishop for another glass of champagne. For centuries champagne has been used to launch marriages and ships. Most assume this is because the drink is so intrinsically celebratory; but, in fact, it is used at the onset of these dangerous enterprises because it so capably boosts one’s resolve. When the glass was placed on the table, the Count took a swig large enough to tickle his sinuses. “By broadening your horizons,” he ventured, “what I meant is that education will give you a sense of the world’s scope, of its wonders, of its many and varied ways of life.” “Wouldn’t travel achieve that more effectively?” “Travel?” “We are talking about horizons, aren’t we? That horizontal line at the limit of sight? Rather than sitting in orderly rows in a schoolhouse, wouldn’t one be better served by working her way toward an actual horizon, so that she could see what lay beyond it? That’s what Marco Polo did when he traveled to China. And what Columbus did when he traveled to America. And what Peter the Great did when he traveled through Europe incognito!” Nina paused to take a great mouthful of the chocolate, and when the Count appeared about to reply she waved her spoon to indicate that she was not yet finished. He waited attentively for her to swallow. “Last night my father took me to Scheherazade.” “Ah,” the Count replied (grateful for the change of subject). “Rimsky-Korsakov at his best.” “Perhaps. I wouldn’t know. The point is: According to the program, the composition was intended to ‘enchant’ the listeners with ‘the world of the Arabian Nights.’” “That realm of Aladdin and the lamp,” said the Count with a smile. “Exactly. And, in fact, everyone in the theater seemed utterly enchanted.” “Well, there you are.” “And yet, not one of them has any intention of going to Arabia—even though that is where the lamp is.” By some extraordinary conspiracy of fate, at the very instant Nina made this pronouncement, the accordion player concluded an old favorite and the sparsely populated room broke into applause. Sitting back, Nina gestured to her fellow customers with both hands as if their ovation were the final proof of her position. It is the mark of a fine chess player to tip over his own king when he sees that defeat is inevitable, no matter how many moves remain in the game. Thus, the Count inquired: “How was your hors d’oeuvre?” “Splendid.” The accordion player now began to play a jaunty little melody reminiscent of an English carol. Taking this as his signal, the Count indicated that he would like to make a toast. “It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life,” he began, “that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces. So I view it as an incredible stroke of good fortune at this stage in my life to have found such a fine new friend.” With that, the Count reached into his pocket and presented Nina with a gift. “Here is a little something that I made great use of when I was your age. May it tide you over until you travel incognito.” Nina smiled in a manner that suggested (rather unconvincingly) that he absolutely shouldn’t have. Then she unwrapped the paper to reveal the Countess Rostov’s hexagonal opera glasses. “They were my grandmother’s,” said the Count. For the first time in their acquaintance, Nina was struck dumb. She turned the little binoculars in her hands, admiring the mother-of-pearl scopes and delicate brass fittings. Then she held them to her eyes so she could slowly scan the room. “You know me better than anyone,” she said after a moment. “I shall treasure them to my dying day.” That she had not thought to bring a present for the Count struck him as perfectly understandable. After all, she was only a child; and the days of unwrapping surprises were decidedly behind him. “It’s getting late,” said the Count. “I wouldn’t want you to keep your father waiting.” “Yes,” she admitted regretfully. “It is time for me to go.” Then looking back toward the captain’s station, she raised a hand as one who signals for the check. But when the captain approached the table, he did not have the check. Instead, he had a large yellow box tied with dark green ribbon. “Here,” Nina said, “is a little something for you. But you must promise that you will not open it until the stroke of midnight.” When Nina left the Piazza to join her father, the Count’s intention had been to settle the check, proceed to the Boyarsky (for an herb-encrusted lamb chop), and then retire to his study with a glass of port to await the chime of twelve. But as the accordion player launched into a second carol, the Count found himself turning his attention to the neighboring table, where a young man seemed to be in the earliest stages of romantic discovery. In some lecture hall, this lad with a hint of a moustache had presumably admired his fellow student for the sharpness of her intellect and the seriousness of her mien. Eventually, he had worked up the nerve to invite her out, perhaps under the pretense of discussing some matter of ideological interest. And now here she was, sitting before him in the Piazza looking about the room without a smile on her face or a word on her lips. Attempting to break the silence, the lad remarked on the upcoming conference to unify the Soviet republics—a reasonable gambit given her apparent intensity. Sure enough, the young lady had views on the subject; but as she voiced her opinion on the Transcaucas question, the tenor of the conversation turned decidedly technical. What’s more, the young man, having adopted an expression as serious as hers, was clearly out of his depth. Were he to venture his own opinion now, he would almost certainly be revealed as a poseur, as one who was inadequately informed on the crucial issues of the day. From there, the evening could only get worse, and he would end up dragging his hopes behind him in the manner of the chastened child who drags his stuffed bear thumping up the stairs. But just as the young lady was inviting him to share his thoughts on the matter, the accordion player began a little number with a Spanish flair. It must have struck a chord, because she interrupted herself in order to look at the musician and wonder aloud where that melody was from. “It is from the The Nutcracker,” the young man responded without a thought. “The Nutcracker . . . ,” she repeated. Given the prevailing sobriety of her expression, it was unclear what she thought of this music from another era. As such, many a veteran would have counseled the young man to proceed with caution—to wait and hear what associations the music held for her. Instead, he acted; and he acted boldly. “When I was a boy, my grandmother took me every year.” The young lady turned back from the musician to face her companion. “I suppose some think the music sentimental,” he continued, “but I never fail to attend the ballet when it is performed in December, even if it means attending alone.” Well done, lad. The expression on the girl’s face softened noticeably and her eyes displayed a hint of interest, that here was an unexpected aspect of her new acquaintance, something pure and heartfelt and unapologetic. Her lips parted as she prepared to ask a question— “Are you ready to order?” It was the Bishop leaning over their table. Of course they are not ready to order, the Count wished to shout. As any fool can see! If the young man were wise, he would send the Bishop packing and ask the young lady to go on with her question. Instead, he dutifully picked up the menu. Perhaps he imagined that the perfect dish would leap off the page and identify itself by name. But for a hopeful young man trying to impress a serious young woman, the menu of the Piazza was as perilous as the Straits of Messina. On the left was a Scylla of lower-priced dishes that could suggest a penny-pinching lack of flair; and on the right was a Charybdis of delicacies that could empty one’s pockets while painting one pretentious. The young man’s gaze drifted back and forth between these opposing hazards. But in a stroke of genius, he ordered the Latvian stew. While this traditional dish of pork, onions, and apricots was reasonably priced, it was also reasonably exotic; and it somehow harkened back to that world of grandmothers and holidays and sentimental melodies that they had been about to discuss when so rudely interrupted. “I’ll have the same,” said our serious young lady. The same! And then she glanced at her hopeful young acquaintance with a touch of that tenderness that Natasha had shown Pierre in War and Peace at the end of Volume Two. “And would you like some wine to go with your stew?” asked the Bishop. The young man hesitated and then picked up the wine list with uncertain hands. It may well have been the first time in his life that he had ordered a bottle of wine. Never mind that he didn’t grasp the merits of the 1900 versus the 1901, he didn’t know a Burgundy from a Bordeaux. Giving the young man no more than a minute to consider his options, the Bishop leaned forward and poked the list with a condescending smile. “Perhaps the Rioja.” The Rioja? Now there was a wine that would clash with the stew as Achilles clashed with Hector. It would slay the dish with a blow to the head and drag it behind its chariot until it tested the fortitude of every man in Troy. Besides, it plainly cost three times what the young man could afford. With a shake of the head, the Count reflected that there was simply no substitute for experience. Here had been an ideal opportunity for a waiter to fulfill his purpose. By recommending a suitable wine, he could have put a young man at ease, perfected a meal, and furthered the cause of romance, all in a stroke. But whether from a lack of subtlety or a lack of sense, the Bishop had not only failed in his purpose, he had put his customer in a corner. And the young man, clearly unsure of what to do and beginning to feel as if the whole restaurant were watching, was on the verge of accepting the Bishop’s suggestion. “If I may,” the Count interjected. “For a serving of Latvian stew, you will find no better choice than a bottle of the Mukuzani.” Leaning toward their table and mimicking the perfectly parted fingers of Andrey, the Count gestured to the entry on the list. That this wine was a fraction of the cost of the Rioja need not be a matter of a discussion between gentlemen. Instead, the Count simply noted: “The Georgians practically grow their grapes in the hopes that one day they will accompany such a stew.” The young man exchanged a brief glance with his companion as if to say, Who is this eccentric? But then he turned to the Bishop. “A bottle of the Mukuzani.” “Of course,” replied the Bishop. Minutes later, the wine had been presented and poured, and the young woman was asking her companion what his grandmother was like. While for his part, the Count cast off any thoughts of herb-encrusted lamb at the Boyarsky. Instead, he summoned Petya to take Nina’s present to his room and ordered the Latvian stew and a bottle of the Mukuzani for himself. And just as he’d suspected, it was the perfect dish for the season. The onions thoroughly caramelized, the pork slowly braised, and the apricots briefly stewed, the three ingredients came together in a sweet and smoky medley that simultaneously suggested the comfort of a snowed-in tavern and the jangle of a Gypsy tambourine. As the Count took a sip of his wine, the young couple caught his eye and raised their own glasses in a toast of gratitude and kinship. Then they returned to their conversation, which had grown so intimate, it could no longer be heard over the sound of the accordion. Young love, thought the Count with a smile. There is nothing novaya about it. “Will there be anything else?” It was the Bishop addressing the Count. He considered for a moment, then he asked for a single scoop of vanilla ice cream. As the Count entered the lobby, he noticed four men in evening dress coming through the door with black leather cases in hand, clearly one of the string quartets that occasionally played in the private dining rooms upstairs. Three of the musicians looked as if they had been performing together since the nineteenth century, sharing the same white hair and weary professionalism. But the second violinist stood out from the others as he couldn’t have been more than twenty-two and retained a certain brightness to his step. It was only as the quartet approached the elevator that the Count recognized him. The Count probably hadn’t seen Nikolai Petrov since 1914 when the Prince had been no more than a lad of thirteen; and given the passage of time, the Count might not have recognized him at all were it not for his unassuming smile—a distinguishing feature of the Petrov line for generations. “Nikolai?” When the Count spoke, the four musicians turned from the elevator and eyed him with curiosity. “Alexander Ilyich . . . ?” the Prince asked after a moment. “None other.” The Prince encouraged his colleagues to go ahead and then offered the Count the familial smile. “It’s good to see you, Alexander.” “And you.” They were quiet for a moment, then the Prince’s expression changed from one of surprise to curiosity. “Is that . . . ice cream?” “What? Oh! Yes, it is. Though not for me.” The Prince nodded in bemusement, but without further remark. “Tell me,” the Count ventured, “have you heard from Dmitry?” “I believe he is in Switzerland.” “Ah,” said the Count with a smile. “The purest air in Europe.” The Prince shrugged, as if to say he had heard something of the sort, but wouldn’t know firsthand. “The last time I saw you,” observed the Count, “you were playing Bach at one of your grandmother’s dinner parties.” The Prince laughed and held up his case. “I guess I am still playing Bach at dinner parties.” Then he gestured toward the departed elevator and said with unmistakable fondness: “That was Sergei Eisenov.” “No!” At the turn of the century, Sergei Eisenov had given music lessons to half the boys on the Boulevard Ring. “It’s not easy for our likes to find work,” said the Prince. “But Sergei hires me when he can.” The Count had so many questions: Were there other members of the Petrov family still in Moscow? Was his grandmother alive? Was he still living in that wonderful house on Pushkin Square? But the two were standing in the middle of a hotel lobby as men and women headed up the stairs—including some in formal clothes. “They’ll be wondering what’s become of me,” said the Prince. “Yes, of course. I didn’t mean to keep you.” The Prince nodded and turned to mount the stairs, but then turned back. “We are playing here again on Saturday night,” he said. “Perhaps we could meet afterwards for a drink.” “That would be splendid,” said the Count.* When the Count arrived on the sixth floor, he clicked his tongue three times then went into his bedroom, leaving the door ajar. On the desk sat Nina’s gift where Petya had left it. Taking it under an arm, the Count passed through his jackets into his study, set the present on his grandmother’s table, and put the bowl of melted ice cream on the floor. As the Count poured himself a glass of port, a silvery shadow swerved around his feet and approached the bowl. “Happy holidays to you, Herr Drosselmeyer.” “Meow,” replied the cat. According to the twice-tolling clock, it was only eleven. So with his port in one hand and A Christmas Carol in the other, the Count tilted back his chair and dutifully waited for the chime of twelve. Admittedly, it takes a certain amount of discipline to sit in a chair and read a novel, even a seasonal one, when a beautifully wrapped present waits within arm’s reach and the only witness is a one-eyed cat. But this was a discipline the Count had mastered as a child when, in the days leading up to Christmas, he had marched past the closed drawing-room doors with the unflinching stare of a Buckingham Palace guard. The young Count’s self-mastery did not stem from a precocious admiration of military regimentation, nor a priggish adherence to household rules. By the time he was ten, it was perfectly clear that the Count was neither priggish nor regimental (as a phalanx of educators, caretakers, and constables could attest). No, if the Count mastered the discipline of marching past the closed drawing-room doors, it was because experience had taught him that this was the best means of ensuring the splendor of the season. For on Christmas Eve, when his father finally gave the signal and he and Helena were allowed to pull the doors apart—there was the twelve-foot spruce lit up from trunk to tip and garlands hanging from every shelf. There were the bowls of oranges from Seville and the brightly colored candies from Vienna. And hidden somewhere under the tree was that unexpected gift—be it a wooden sword with which to defend the ramparts, or a lantern with which to explore a mummy’s tomb. Such is the magic of Christmas in childhood, thought the Count a little wistfully, that a single gift can provide one with endless hours of adventure while not even requiring one to leave one’s house. Drosselmeyer, who had retired to the other high-back chair to lick his paws, suddenly turned his one-eyed gaze toward the closet door with his little ears upright. What he must have heard was the whirring of inner wheels, for a second later came the first of midnight’s chimes. Setting his book and his port aside, the Count placed Nina’s gift in his lap with his fingers on the dark green bow and listened to the tolling of the clock. Only with the twelfth and final chime did he pull the ribbon’s ends. “What do you think, mein Herr? A dapper hat?” The cat looked up at the Count and in deference to the season began to purr. The Count replied with a nod and then carefully lifted the lid . . . only to discover another box wrapped in yellow and tied with a dark green bow. Setting the empty box aside, the Count nodded again to the cat, pulled the strands of the second bow, and lifted the second lid . . . only to discover a third box. Dutifully, the Count repeated the debowing and unlidding with the next three boxes, until he held one the size of a matchbox. But when he untied the bow and lifted the lid on this box, inside the cozy chamber, strung on a bit of the dark green ribbon, was Nina’s passkey to the hotel. When the Count climbed into bed with his Dickens at 12:15, he assumed he would only read a paragraph or two before switching off the light; but instead, he found himself reading with the greatest interest. He had reached the part in the story where Scrooge is being spirited around by that jolly giant, the Ghost of Christmas Present. Over the course of his childhood, the Count had been read A Christmas Carol no less than three times. So, he certainly remembered the visit Scrooge and his guide paid to the laughter-filled party at Scrooge’s nephew’s house; just as he remembered the visit they paid to the humble, yet heartfelt celebration at the Cratchits’. But he had completely forgotten that upon leaving the Cratchits’, the Second Spirit had taken Scrooge out of the city of London altogether, to a bleak and deserted moor where a family of miners was celebrating the season in their ramshackle hut at the edge of the mine; and from there to a lighthouse on a rocky outpost where the waves thundered as the two craggy keepers of the beacon joined their hands in yuletide song; and from there, further and further the Spirit carried Scrooge, into the howling darkness of the rolling sea, until they alit upon the deck of a ship where every man good or bad had fond thoughts of home and a kinder word for his mates. Who knows. Perhaps what stirred the Count were these far-flung figures sharing in the fellowship of the season despite their lives of hard labor in inhospitable climes. Perhaps it was the sight earlier in the evening of that modern young couple proceeding toward romance in the age-old fashion. Perhaps it was the chance meeting with Nikolai, who, despite his heritage, seemed to be finding a place for himself in the new Russia. Or perhaps it was the utterly unanticipated blessing of Nina’s friendship. Whatever the cause, when the Count closed his book and turned out the light, he fell asleep with a great sense of well-being. But had the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come suddenly appeared and roused the Count to give him a glimpse of the future, he would have seen that his sense of well-being had been premature. For less than four years later, after another careful accounting of the twice-tolling clock’s twelve chimes, Alexander Ilyich Rostov would be climbing to the roof of the Metropol Hotel in his finest jacket and gamely approaching its parapet in order to throw himself into the street below. BOOK TWO 1923 An Actress, an Apparition, an Apiary A t five o’clock on the twenty-first of June, the Count stood before his closet with his hand on his plain gray blazer and hesitated. In a few minutes, he would be on his way to the barbershop for his weekly visit, and then to the Shalyapin to meet Mishka, who would probably be wearing the same brown jacket he’d worn since 1913. As such, the gray blazer seemed a perfectly suitable choice of attire. That is, until one considered that it was an anniversary of sorts—for it had been one year to the day since the Count had last set foot outside of the Metropol Hotel. But how was one to celebrate such an anniversary? And should one? For while house arrest is a definitive infringement upon one’s liberty, presumably it is also intended to be something of a humiliation. So both pride and common sense would suggest that such an anniversary might best be left unmarked. And yet . . . Even men in the most trying of circumstances—like those lost at sea or confined to prison—will find the means to carefully account the passing of a year. Despite the fact that all the splendid modulations of the seasons and those colorful festivities that recur in the course of normal life have been replaced by a tyranny of indistinguishable days, the men in such situations will carve their 365 notches into a piece of wood or scratch them into the walls of their cell. Why do they go to such lengths to mark time? When, ostensibly, to do so should matter to them least of all? Well, for one, it provides an occasion to reflect on the inevitable progress of the world they’ve left behind: Ah, Alyosha must now be able to climb the tree in the yard; and Vanya must be entering the academy; and Nadya, dear Nadya, will soon be of an age to marry. . . . But just as important, a careful accounting of days allows the isolated to note that another year of hardship has been endured; survived; bested. Whether they have found the strength to persevere through a tireless determination or some foolhardy optimism, those 365 hatch marks stand as proof of their indomitability. For after all, if attentiveness should be measured in minutes and discipline measured in hours, then indomitability must be measured in years. Or, if philosophical investigations are not to your taste, then let us simply agree that the wise man celebrates what he can. Thus, the Count donned his finest smoking jacket (custom-made in Paris from a burgundy velvet) and headed down the stairs. When the Count reached the lobby, before he could continue to the barbershop his eyes were drawn to a willowy figure coming through the hotel’s doors. But then all eyes in the lobby were drawn to her. A tall woman in her midtwenties with arched eyebrows and auburn hair, she was indisputably striking. And as she approached the front desk, she walked with a breezy sureness as seemingly unaware of the feathers projecting from her hat as of the bellhops dragging her luggage behind her. But what guaranteed her position as the natural center of attention were the two borzois she had on leash. In an instant the Count could see that they were magnificent beasts. Their coats silver, their loins lean, their every sense alert, these dogs had been raised to give chase in the cold October air with a hunting party hot on their heels. And at day’s end? They were meant to sit at the feet of their master before a fire in a manor house—not adorn the hands of a willow in the lobby of a grand hotel. . . . The injustice of this was not lost on the dogs. As their mistress addressed Arkady at the front desk, they tugged every which way, sniffing about for familiar landmarks. “Stop it!” the willow commanded in a surprisingly husky voice. Then she yanked in a manner that showed she had no more familiarity with the wolfhounds on her leashes than she had with the birds that had feathered her hat. The Count gave the situation the shake of the head it deserved. But as he turned to go, he noticed with some amusement that a slender shadow suddenly jumped from behind a wingback chair to the edge of one of the potted palms. It was none other than Field Marshal Kutuzov attaining higher ground to take measure of his foes. When the dogs turned their heads in unison with their ears upright, the one-eyed cat slipped behind the trunk of the tree. Then having satisfied himself that the dogs were securely tethered, the cat alit from the palm to the floor and without even bothering to arch his back opened his little jaws and hissed. With a terrific volley of barking, the dogs leapt to the extent of their leashes, tugging their mistress from the front desk as the ledger pen clattered to the floor. “Whoa,” she shouted. “Whoa!” Apparently unfamiliar with equine commands, the wolfhounds leapt again and, freeing themselves from the willow’s grip, scrambled toward their prey. Kutuzov was off like a shot. Slipping under the western embankment of lobby chairs, the one-eyed cat dashed toward the front door, as if intending to escape into the street. Without a moment’s hesitation, the dogs gave chase. Opting for a pincer movement, they split at the potted palms and pursued the cat on opposite sides of the chairs in the hopes of cutting him off at the door. A lamp that blocked the path of the first hound was knocked to the floor in a shower of sparks, while a standing ashtray that blocked the second was sent head over heels, discharging a cloud of dust. But just as the dogs were closing ranks, Kutuzov—who like his namesake had the advantage of familiar terrain—suddenly reversed course. Cutting in front of a coffee table, he dashed under the eastern embankment of lobby chairs and headed back toward the staircase. It took only a few seconds for the borzois to recognize the cat’s tactic; but if attentiveness is measured in minutes, discipline in hours, and indomitability in years, then the attaining of the upper hand on the field of battle is measured in the instant. For just as the wolfhounds registered the cat’s reversal and attempted to turn, the lobby’s expansive oriental carpet came to an end, and the dogs’ momentum sent them skidding across the marble floor into the luggage of an arriving guest. With an advantage over his adversaries of a hundred feet, Kutuzov skipped up the first few steps of the staircase, paused for a moment to admire his handiwork, then disappeared around the corner. You may accuse a dog of eating without grace or of exhibiting a misplaced enthusiasm for the tossing of sticks, but you may never accuse one of giving up hope. Despite the fact that the cat had a decisive lead and knew every nook and cranny of the hotel’s upper floors, once the dogs regained their footing, they charged across the lobby in full chorus with every intention of mounting the stairs. But the Hotel Metropol was not a hunting ground. It was a residence par excellence, an oasis for the worn and weary. So, with a slight curl of the tongue, the Count gave an upward sloping whistle in G major. At the sound, the dogs broke pursuit and began restlessly circling at the foot of the stairs. The Count gave two more whistles in quick succession and the dogs, resigning themselves to the fact that the day was lost, trotted to the Count and heeled at his feet. “Well, my boys,” he said, giving them a good scratching behind the ears, “where do you hail from?” “Arf,” replied the dogs. “Ah,” said the Count. “How lovely.” After smoothing her skirt and straightening her hat, the willowy one gracefully crossed the lobby to the Count, where, thanks to a pair of French heels, she met him eye to eye. At such proximity the Count could see that she was even more beautiful than he had suspected; and haughtier too. His natural sympathies remained with the dogs. “Thank you,” she said (with a smile that presumed to launch armadas). “I’m afraid that they are quite ill bred.” “On the contrary,” replied the Count, “they appear to be perfectly bred.” The willow made a second effort at her smile. “What I meant to say is that they are ill behaved.” “Yes, perhaps ill behaved; but that is a matter of handling, not breeding.” As the willow studied the Count, he noted that the arches over her eyebrows were very much like the marcato notation in music—that accent which instructs one to play a phrase a little more loudly. This, no doubt, accounted for the willow’s preference for issuing commands and the resulting huskiness of her voice. But as the Count was coming to this conclusion, the willow was apparently coming to a conclusion of her own, for she now dispensed with any intent to charm. “Handling does seem to have a way of eclipsing breeding,” she said acerbically. “And for that very reason, I should think that even some of the best-bred dogs belong on the shortest leashes.” “An understandable conclusion,” replied the Count. “But I should think the best-bred dogs belong in the surest hands.” One hour later, with his hair neatly trimmed and his chin cleanly shaved, the Count entered the Shalyapin and selected a small table in the corner at which to wait for Mishka, who was in town for the inaugural congress of RAPP. It was only as he settled in that he realized the willowy beauty, now in a long blue dress, was sitting on the banquette directly opposite his own. She had spared the bar the spectacle of trying to manage her dogs, but in their place she had brought along a round-faced fellow with a receding hairline for whom puppylike devotion seemed to come a little more naturally. While the Count was smiling at his own observation, he happened to meet the willow’s gaze. As was only fitting, the two adults immediately acted as if they hadn’t seen each other, the one by turning to her puppy and the other by turning to the door. And as luck would have it, there was Mishka right on time—but with a brand-new jacket and a well-groomed beard. . . . The Count came out from behind the table in order to embrace his friend. Then, rather than reclaim his seat, he offered the banquette to Mishka—an action that seemed at once courteous and opportune, since it allowed the Count to turn his back on the willow. “Well now,” said the Count with a clap of the hands. “What shall it be, my friend? Champagne? Ch?teau d’Yquem? A dish of beluga before supper?” But with a shake of the head, Mishka asked for a beer and explained that he could not stay for dinner, after all. Naturally, the Count was disappointed by the news. After a discreet inquiry, he had learned that the evening’s special at the Boyarsky was roasted duck—the perfect dish for two old friends to share. And Andrey had promised to set aside a particular Grand Cru that not only complemented the duck, but would inevitably lead to a retelling of the infamous night when the Count had become locked in the Rothschilds’ wine cellar with the young Baroness. . . . But while the Count was disappointed, he could see from his old friend’s fidgeting that he had his own stories to tell. So, as soon as their beers were before them, the Count asked how things were progressing at the congress. Taking a drink, Mishka nodded that here was the topic of the hour—the very conversation that would soon be engrossing all of Russia, if not the world. “There were no hushed voices today, Sasha. No dozing or fiddling with pencils. For in every corner from every hand there was work being done.” If offering Mishka the banquette had been gracious and opportune, it also had the added benefit of keeping him in his seat. For were he not trapped behind the table, he would already have leapt to his feet and been pacing the bar. And what was the work being done at this congress? As best as the Count could determine, it included the drafting of “Declarations of Intent,” “Proclamations of Allegiance,” and “Open Statements of Solidarity.” Indeed, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers didn’t hesitate to express their solidarity. In fact, they expressed it not only with their fellow writers, publishers, and editors, but with the masons and stevedores, the welders and riveters, even the street sweepers.* So fevered was the first day of the congress that dinner wasn’t served until eleven o’clock. And then at a table set for sixty, they heard from Mayakovsky himself. There were no lecterns, mind you. When the plates had been served, he simply banged on the table and stood on his chair. In the interests of realism, Mishka tried to stand on the banquette, nearly knocking over his beer. He settled for a seated oration with a finger in the air: Suddenly—I shone in all my might, and morning rang its round. Always to shine, to shine everywhere, to the very depths of the last days, to shine— and to hell with everything else! That is my motto— and the sun’s! Naturally, Mayakovsky’s poem prompted unrestrained applause and the smashing of glasses. But then, just as everyone had settled down and was preparing to slice into their chicken, some fellow named Zelinsky was up on his chair. “For, of course, we must hear from Zelinsky,” muttered Mishka. “As if he stands shoulder to shoulder with Mayakovsky. As if he stands shoulder to shoulder with a bottle of milk.” Mishka took another sip. “You remember Zelinsky. No? The one who was a few years behind us at the university? The one who wore a monocle in ’16 and a sailor’s cap the following year? Well, anyway, you know the sort, Sasha—the type who must always have their hands on the wheel. At the end of dinner, say two of you are lingering in your chairs to continue a discussion from earlier in the day—well, there is Zelinsky proclaiming that he knows just the place to carry on the conversation. Next thing you know, there are ten of you being crowded around a table in some basement caf?. When you go to take a seat, he has a hand on your shoulder, steering you to this end of the table or that. And when someone calls for bread, he has a better idea. They have the best zavitushki in Moscow, he says. And before you know it, he’s snapping his fingers in the air.” Here Mishka snapped his fingers three times so emphatically that the Count had to wave off the ever-attentive Audrius, who was already halfway across the room. “And his ideas!” Mishka continued in disdain. “On and on he goes with his declarations, as if he is in a position to enlighten anyone on matters of verse. And what does he have to say to the impressionable young student at his side? That all poets must eventually bow before the haiku. Bow before the haiku! Can you imagine.” “For my part,” contributed the Count, “I am glad that Homer wasn’t born in Japan.” Mishka stared at the Count for a moment then burst out laughing. “Yes,” he said, slapping the table and wiping a tear from his eye. “Glad that Homer wasn’t born in Japan. I shall have to remember to tell that one to Katerina.” Mishka smiled in apparent anticipation of telling that one to Katerina. “Katerina . . . ?” asked the Count. Mishka casually reached for his beer. “Katerina Litvinova. Have I not mentioned her before? She’s a talented young poet from Kiev—in her second year at the university. We sit on a committee together.” Mishka leaned back in order to drink from his glass. The Count leaned back in order to smile at his companion—as the entire picture came into focus. A new jacket and a well-groomed beard . . . A discussion after dinner continued from earlier in the day . . . And a Zelinsky who, having dragged everyone to his favorite little nightspot, steers an impressionable young poet to one end of the table and a Mishka to the other. . . . As Mishka continued with his description of the previous evening, the irony of the situation did not escape the Count: that during all those years they had lived above the cobbler’s, it was Mishka who had stayed put and the Count who, having apologized that he couldn’t join his friend for dinner, had returned hours later with tales of lively toasts and t?te-?-t?tes and impromptu outings to candlelit caf?s. Did the Count take some pleasure in hearing about Mishka’s late-night skirmishes? Of course he did. Particularly when he learned that at the end of the evening, as the group was about to climb into three different cabs, Mishka reminded Zelinsky that he had forgotten his hat; and when Zelinsky dashed back inside to retrieve it, Katerina from Kiev leaned from her cab to call: Here, Mikhail Fyodorovich, why don’t you ride with us. . . . Yes, the Count took pleasure in his old friend’s romantic skirmish; but that is not to suggest that he didn’t feel the sting of envy. Half an hour later, after the Count had sent Mishka off to a discussion on the future of meter (at which Katerina from Kiev would presumably be in attendance), he headed to the Boyarsky, apparently destined to dine on duck alone. But just as he was leaving, Audrius beckoned. Sliding a folded piece of paper across the bar, Audrius explained under his breath: “I was instructed to relay this to you.” “To me? From whom?” “Miss Urbanova.” “Miss Urbanova?” “Anna Urbanova. The movie star.” Since the Count still showed no sign of understanding, the bartender explained a little more loudly: “The one who was sitting at that table across from you.” “Ah, yes. Thank you.” As Audrius returned to his work, the Count unfolded the piece of paper, which bore the following request in a willowy script: Please allow me a second chance at a first impression in suite 208 When the Count knocked on the door of suite 208, it was opened by an older woman who regarded him with impatience. “Yes?” “I am Alexander Rostov. . . .” “You’re expected. Come in. Miss Urbanova will be a moment.” Instinctively, the Count prepared to offer the woman a witty remark about the weather, but when he stepped inside she stepped out and closed the door, leaving him alone in the entryway. Decorated in the style of a Venetian palazzo, suite 208 was one of the finest accommodations on the floor and looked no worse for wear now that the tireless typers of directives had finally moved to the Kremlin. With a bedroom and drawing room on either side of a grand salon, its ceilings were painted with allegorical figures gazing down from the heavens. On an ornate side table stood two towering arrangements of flowers—one of calla lilies and the other of long-stemmed roses. The fact that the two arrangements matched each other in extravagance while clashing in color suggested they were from competing admirers. One could only imagine what a third admirer would feel obliged to send. . . . “I’ll be right out,” called a voice from the bedroom. “Take your time,” called back the Count. At the sound of his voice, there was a light clacking of nails on the floor as the borzois appeared from the drawing room. “Hello, boys,” he said, giving them another scratch behind the ears. Having paid their respects, the dogs trotted to the windows overlooking Theatre Square and rested their forepaws on the sills in order to watch the movement of the cars below. “Count Rostov!” Turning, the Count found the actress dressed in her third outfit of the day: black pants and an ivory blouse. With the smile of an old acquaintance and her hand extended, she approached. “I’m so pleased you could come.” “The pleasure is mine, Miss Urbanova.” “I doubt that. But please, call me Anna.” Before the Count could reply, there was a knock at the door. “Ah,” she said. “Here we are.” Swinging the door open, she stepped aside to let Oleg from room service pass. When Oleg caught sight of the Count, he nearly ran his dinner cart into the competing arrangements of flowers. “Perhaps over there by the window,” suggested the actress. “Yes, Miss Urbanova,” said Oleg, who, having regained his composure, set a table for two, lit a candle, and backed out the door. The actress turned to the Count. “Have you eaten? I’ve been in two restaurants and a bar today and haven’t had a bite. I’m absolutely starving. Won’t you join me?” “Certainly.” The Count pulled back a chair for his hostess and, as he took his seat on the opposite side of the candle, the borzois looked back from their windows. Presumably, here was a scene that neither of the dogs could have anticipated earlier that day. But having long since lost interest in the fickle course of human affairs, they dropped to the floor and trotted back to the drawing room without a second glance. The actress watched them retire a little wistfully. “I confess that I am not a dog lover.” “Then why do you have them?” “They were . . . a gift.” “Ah. From an admirer.” She responded with a wry smile. “I would have settled for a necklace.” The Count returned the smile. “Well,” she said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” Removing the silver dome from the serving plate, the actress revealed one of Emile’s signature dishes: whole bass roasted with black olives, fennel, and lemon. “Lovely,” she said. And the Count could not agree more. For by setting his oven to 450?, Emile ensured that the flesh of the fish was tender, the fennel aromatic, and the lemon slices blackened and crisp. “So, two restaurants and a bar without having a bite to eat . . .” Thus began the Count, with the natural intention of letting the actress recount her day while he prepared her plate. But before he could lift a finger, she had taken the knife and serving fork in hand. And as she began to relate the professional obligations that had commandeered her afternoon, she scored the fish’s spine with the tip of the knife and made diagonal cuts at its head and tail. Then slipping the serving fork between the fish’s spine and its flesh, she deftly liberated the filet. In a few succinct movements, she had served portions of the fennel and olives, and topped the filet with the charred lemon. Handing the Count this perfectly prepared plate, she plucked the spine from the fish and served herself the second filet with accompaniments—an operation that took no more than a minute. Then placing the serving utensils on the platter, she turned her attention to the wine. Good God, thought the Count. So engrossed had he been in watching her technique, he had neglected his own responsibilities. Leaping from his chair, he took the bottle by the neck. “May I?” “Thank you.” As the Count poured the wine, he noted it was a dry Montrachet, the perfect complement to Emile’s bass and clearly the handiwork of Andrey. The Count raised his glass to his hostess. “I must say that you deboned that fish like an expert.” She laughed. “Is that a compliment?” “Of course it’s a compliment! Well. At least, it was intended as one. . . .” “In that case, thank you. But I wouldn’t make too much of it. I was raised in a fishing village on the Black Sea, so I’ve tied more than my share of knots and filleted more than my share of fish.” “You could do worse than dining on fish every night.” “That’s true. But when you live in a fisherman’s house, you tend to eat what can’t be sold. So more often than not, we dined on flatfish and bream.” “The bounty of the sea . . .” “The bottom of the sea.” And with that disarming memory, Anna Urbanova was suddenly describing how as a girl she would steal away from her mother at dusk and wind her way down the sloping streets of her village so that she could meet her father on the beach and help him mend his nets. And as she talked, the Count had to acknowledge once again the virtues of withholding judgment. After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour. Take the simple case of Anna Urbanova’s voice. In the context of the lobby, where the actress was struggling to rein in her hounds, the hoarseness of her voice had given the impression of an imperious young lady prone to shouting. Very well. But here in suite 208 in the company of charred lemons, French wine, and memories of the sea, her voice was revealed as that of a woman whose profession rarely allowed her the chance for repose, never mind the enjoyment of a decent meal. As the Count refilled their glasses, he was struck by a memory of his own that seemed in keeping with the conversation. “I spent a good part of my youth in the province of Nizhny Novgorod,” he said, “which happens to be the world capital of the apple. In Nizhny Novgorod, there are not simply apple trees scattered about the countryside; there are forests of apple trees—forests as wild and ancient as Russia itself—in which apples grow in every color of the rainbow and in sizes ranging from a walnut to a cannonball.” “I take it you ate your fair share of apples.” “Oh, we’d find them tucked in our omelets at breakfast, floating in our soups at lunch, and stuffed in our pheasants at dinner. Come Christmas, we had eaten every single variety the woods had to offer.” The Count was about to lift his glass to toast the comprehensiveness of their apple eating, when he waved a self-correcting finger. “Actually, there was one apple that we did not eat. . . .” The actress raised one of her bedeviling eyebrows. “Which?” “According to local lore, hidden deep within the forest was a tree with apples as black as coal—and if you could find this tree and eat of its fruit, you could start your life anew.” The Count took a generous drink of the Montrachet, pleased to have summoned this little folktale from the past. “So would you?” the actress asked. “Would I what?” “If you found that apple hidden in the forest, would you take a bite?” The Count put his glass on the table and shook his head. “There’s certainly some allure to the idea of a fresh start; but how could I relinquish my memories of home, of my sister, of my school years.” The Count gestured to the table. “How could I relinquish my memory of this?” And Anna Urbanova, having put her napkin on her plate and pushed back her chair, came round the table, took the Count by the collar, and kissed him on the mouth. Ever since reading her note in the Shalyapin Bar, the Count had felt one step behind Miss Urbanova. The casual reception in her suite, the candlelit dinner for two, the deboning of the fish followed by memories of childhood—he had not anticipated any one of these developments. Certainly he had been caught off guard by the kiss. And now, here she was strolling into her bedroom, unbuttoning her blouse, and letting it slip to the floor with a delicate whoosh. As a young man, the Count had prided himself on being one step ahead. The timely appearance, the apt expression, the anticipation of a need, to the Count these had been the very hallmarks of the well-bred man. But under the circumstances, he discovered that being a step behind had merits of its own. For one, it was so much more relaxing. To be a step ahead in matters of romance requires constant vigilance. If one hopes to make a successful advance, one must be mindful of every utterance, attend to every gesture, and take note of every look. In other words, to be a step ahead in romance is exhausting. But to be a step behind? To be seduced? Why, that was a matter of leaning back in one’s chair, sipping one’s wine, and responding to a query with the very first thought that has popped into one’s head. And yet, paradoxically, if being a step behind was more relaxing than being a step ahead, it was also more exciting. From his relaxed position, the one-step-behinder imagines that his evening with a new acquaintance will transpire like any other—with a little chit, a little chat, and a friendly goodnight at the door. But halfway through dinner there is an unexpected compliment and an accidental brushing of fingers against one’s hand; there is a tender admission and a self-effacing laugh; then suddenly a kiss. From here the surprises only grow in power and scope. Such as when one discovers (as the blouse falls to the floor) that a back is as decorated with freckles as the skies are decorated with stars. Or when (having slipped modestly under the covers) the sheets are cast aside and one finds oneself on one’s back with a pair of hands pressing on one’s chest and a pair of lips issuing breathless instructions. But while each one of these surprises inspires a new state of wonder, nothing can compare to the awe one experiences when at one in the morning a woman rolling on her side utters unambiguously: “As you go, be sure to draw the curtains.” Suffice it to say that once the Count’s clothes had been gathered, the curtains were dutifully drawn. What’s more, before he had tiptoed to the door half dressed, he took a moment to ensure that the actress’s ivory blouse had been picked off the floor and hung on its hanger. After all, as the Count himself had observed just hours before: the best-bred dogs belong in the surest hands. The sound of the door clicking shut behind you . . . The Count wasn’t sure he had ever heard it before, exactly. In tone it was delicate and unobtrusive; and yet, it had a definitive suggestion of dismissal—which was apt to put one in a philosophical frame of mind. Even if a person generally frowned upon rude and abrupt behavior, under the circumstances he might have to admit a certain rough justice upon finding himself in an empty hallway with his shoes in his hand and his shirt untucked—as the woman he’s just left falls soundly asleep. For if a man has had the good fortune to be plucked from the crowd by an impetuous beauty, shouldn’t he expect to be sent on his way without ceremony? Well, maybe so. But standing in the empty corridor across from a half-eaten bowl of borscht, the Count felt less like a philosopher than a ghost. Yes, a ghost, thought the Count, as he moved silently down the hall. Like Hamlet’s father roaming the ramparts of Elsinore after the midnight watch . . . Or like Akaky Akakievich, that forsaken spirit of Gogol’s who in the wee hours haunted the Kalinkin Bridge in search of his stolen coat . . . Why is it that so many ghosts prefer to travel the halls of night? Ask the living and they will tell you that these spirits either have some unquenched desire or an unaddressed grievance that stirs them from their sleep and sends them out into the world in search of solace. But the living are so self-centered. Of course they would judge a spirit’s nocturnal wanderings as the product of earthly memories. When, in fact, if these restless souls wanted to harrow the bustling avenues of noon, there is nothing to stop them from doing so. No. If they wander the halls of night, it is not from a grievance with or envy of the living. Rather, it is because they have no desire to see the living at all. Any more than snakes hope to see gardeners, or foxes the hounds. They wander about at midnight because at that hour they can generally do so without being harried by the sound and fury of earthly emotions. After all those years of striving and struggling, of hoping and praying, of shouldering expectations, stomaching opinions, navigating decorum, and making conversation, what they seek, quite simply, is a little peace and quiet. At least, that is what the Count told himself as he drifted down the hall. While, as a rule, the Count always took the stairs, when he approached the second-floor landing that night, on some ghostly whim he called for the elevator, assuming he would have it to himself. But when the doors slid open, there was the one-eyed cat. “Kutuzov!” he exclaimed in surprise. Taking in every detail of the Count’s appearance, the cat responded exactly as the Grand Duke had responded under similar circumstances many years before—that is, with a stern look and a disappointed silence. “Ahem,” said the Count, as he stepped onto the elevator while trying to tuck in his shirt without dropping his shoes. Parting with the cat on the fifth floor, the Count trudged up the steps of the belfry in woeful acknowledgment that the celebration of his anniversary had been a fiasco. Having set out to gamely etch his mark on the wall, the wall had etched its mark on him. And as experience had taught the Count many years before, when this happens, it is best to wash one’s face, brush one’s teeth, and pull one’s covers over one’s head. But as the Count was about to open the door to his rooms, on the back of his neck he felt a breath of air that was distinctly reminiscent of a summer breeze. Turning to his left, the Count stood motionless. There it was again, coming from the other end of the floor. . . . Intrigued, the Count walked down the hall only to find that all the doors were tightly shut. At the hallway’s end, there seemed to be nothing but a confusion of pipes and flues. But in the farthest corner, in the shadow of the largest pipe, he discovered a wall-mounted ladder that led to a hatch in the roof—which someone had left open. Putting on his shoes, the Count quietly climbed up the ladder and out into the night. The summer breeze that had beckoned the Count now wrapped him in its full embrace. Warm and forgiving, it called up feelings of summer nights from earlier in his life—from when he was five and ten and twenty on the streets of St. Petersburg or the pastures of Idlehour. Nearly overcome by the surge of old sentiments, he needed to pause a moment before continuing to the western edge of the roof. Before him lay the ancient city of Moscow, which, after waiting patiently for two hundred years, was once again the seat of Russian governance. Despite the hour, the Kremlin shimmered with electric light from every window, as if its newest denizens were still too drunk with power to sleep. But if the lights of the Kremlin shimmered brightly, like all earthly lights before them they were diminished in their beauty by the majesty of the constellations overhead. Craning his neck, the Count tried to identify the few that he had learned in his youth: Perseus, Orion, the Great Bear, each flawless and eternal. To what end, he wondered, had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a man with feelings of inspiration one day and insignificance the next? Lowering his gaze to the horizon, the Count looked out beyond the limits of the city—to where that ancient comfort of sailors, the Morning Star, burned brightest in all the firmament. And then blinked. “Good morning, Your Excellency.” The Count spun about. Standing a few feet behind him was a man in his early sixties wearing a canvas cap. When the man took a step forward, the Count recognized him as one of the handymen who battled the hotel’s leaky pipes and creaky doors. “That’s the Shukhov all right,” he said. “The Shukhov?” “The radio tower.” He pointed in the distance toward the comfort of sailors. Ah, thought the Count with a smile. Mishka’s spiraling structure of steel broadcasting the latest news and intelligence . . . The two men were silent for a moment, as if waiting for the beacon to blink again—which it reliably did. “Well. The coffee’ll be ready. You might as well come along.” The old handyman led the Count to the northeast corner of the roof, where he had established something of a camp between two chimneys. In addition to a three-legged stool, there was a small fire burning in a brazier on which a coffeepot was steaming. The old man had chosen the spot well, for while it was out of the wind he still had a view of the Bolshoi that was only slightly impaired by some old crates stacked at the edge of the roof. “I don’t get many visitors,” the handyman said, “so I don’t have a second stool.” “That’s quite all right,” said the Count, picking up a two-foot plank, setting it on end, and balancing himself on its edge. “Can I pour you a cup?” “Thank you.” As the coffee was being poured, the Count wondered whether this was the beginning or end of the old man’s day. Either way, he figured a cup of coffee would hit the spot. For what is more versatile? As at home in tin as it is in Limoges, coffee can energize the industrious at dawn, calm the reflective at noon, or raise the spirits of the beleagured in the middle of the night. “It’s perfect,” said the Count. The old man leaned forward. “The secret is in the grinding.” He pointed to a little wooden apparatus with an iron crank. “Not a minute before you brew.” The Count raised his eyebrows with the appreciation of the uninitiated. Yes, in the open air on a summer night the old man’s coffee was perfect. In fact, the only thing that spoiled the moment was a humming in the air—the sort that might be emitted from a faulty fuse or a radio receiver. “Is that the tower?” the Count asked. “Is what the tower?” “The humming.” The old man looked up in the air for a moment then cackled. “That’ll be the boys at work.” “The boys?” The old man pointed with a thumb to the crates that compromised his view of the Bolshoi. In the predawn light, the Count could just make out a whirl of activity above them. “Are those . . . bees?” “Indeed they are.” “What are they doing here?” “Making honey.” “Honey!” The old man cackled again. “Making honey is what bees does. Here.” Leaning forward, the old man held out a roof tile on which there were two slices of black bread slathered with honey. The Count accepted one and took a bite. The first thing that struck him was actually the black bread. For when was the last time he had even eaten it? If asked outright, he would have been embarrassed to admit. Tasting of dark rye and darker molasses, it was a perfect complement to a cup of coffee. And the honey? What an extraordinary contrast it provided. If the bread was somehow earthen, brown, and brooding, the honey was sunlit, golden, and gay. But there was another dimension to it. . . . An elusive, yet familiar element . . . A grace note hidden beneath, or behind, or within the sensation of sweetness. “What is that flavor . . . ?” the Count asked almost to himself. “The lilacs,” the old man replied. Without turning, he pointed with his thumb back in the direction of the Alexander Gardens. Of course, thought the Count. That was it precisely. How could he have missed it? Why, there was a time when he knew the lilacs of the Alexander Gardens better than any man in Moscow. When the trees were in season, he could spend whole afternoons in happy repose under their white and purple blossoms. “How extraordinary,” the Count said with an appreciative shake of the head. “It is and isn’t,” said the old man. “When the lilacs are in bloom, the bees’ll buzz to the Alexander Gardens and the honey’ll taste like the lilacs. But in a week or so, they’ll be buzzing to the Garden Ring, and then you’ll be tasting the cherry trees.” “The Garden Ring! How far will they go?” “Some say a bee’ll cross the ocean for a flower,” answered the old man with a smile. “Though I’ve never known one to do so.” The Count shook his head, took another bite, and accepted a second cup of coffee. “As a boy, I spent a good deal of time in Nizhny Novgorod,” he recalled for the second time that day. “Where the apple blossoms fall like snow,” the old man said with a smile. “I was raised there myself. My father was the caretaker on the Chernik estate.” “I know it well!” exclaimed the Count. “What a beautiful part of the world . . .” So as the summer sun began to rise, the fire began to die, and the bees began to circle overhead, the two men spoke of days from their childhoods when the wagon wheels rattled in the road, and the dragonflies skimmed the grass, and the apple trees blossomed for as far as the eye could see.