by Amor Towles
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 maître 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 tête-à-tête. 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 purpos
e, 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
When 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, p
romised 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.
