A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

  The next afternoon, the merchant’s son set sail for home in a ship laden with one bag of gold for every sack of salt.

  . . .

  “Your grandmother told you that?”

  “She did.”

  . . .

  “It is a good story. . . .”

  “Yes, it is.”

  . . .

  “But it doesn’t absolve you.”

  “I should think not.”

  An Alliance

  At 5:45, with his five waiters standing at their stations, the Count made his nightly rounds of the Boyarsky. Beginning in the northwest corner, he circulated through the twenty tables to ensure that every setting, every saltcellar, every vase of flowers was in its proper place.

  At table four a knife was realigned to be parallel with its fork. At table five a water glass was moved from midnight to one o’clock. At table six a wine glass that had a remnant of lipstick was whisked away, while at table seven the soap spots on a spoon were polished until the inverted image of the room could be clearly seen on the surface of the silver.

  This, one might be inclined to observe, is exactly how Napoleon must have appeared when in the hour before dawn he walked among his ranks, reviewing everything from the stores of munitions to the dress of the infantry—having learned from experience that victory on the field of battle begins with the shine on a boot.

  But many of Napoleon’s greatest battles lasted only a day and were never to be fought again. . . .

  As such, the more apt analogy might be that of Gorsky at the Bolshoi. Having studied the intent of the composer, collaborated closely with his conductor, trained his dancers, overseen the design of the costumes and sets, Gorsky also walked his ranks in the minutes before battle. But once the curtain fell and the audience departed, there would be no parade along the Champs-Élysées. For in less than twenty-four hours, his ballerinas, musicians, and technicians would reassemble to execute the same performance to the same standard of perfection. Now that was the life of the Boyarsky—a battle that must be waged with exacting precision while giving the impression of effortlessness, every single night of the year.

  Confident that all was in order in the dining room, at 5:55 the Count turned his attention, if briefly, to Emile’s kitchen. Peering through the little round window in the door, the Count could see that the chef’s assistants were standing at the ready in their freshly bleached coats; he could see that the sauces were simmering on the stovetop and the garnishes ready for plating. But what of that notorious misanthrope of a chef? With the opening of the Boyarsky’s doors just minutes away, wasn’t he railing against his staff, his customers, and all his fellow men?

  In point of fact, Emile Zhukovsky began his days in a state of the blackest pessimism. The very moment he looked out from under his covers, he met existence with a scowl, knowing it to be a cold and unforgiving condition. Having had his worst suspicions confirmed by the morning papers, at eleven o’clock he would be waiting at the curb for a crowded tram to rattle him to the hotel while muttering, “What a world.”

  But as the day unfolded, hour by hour Emile’s pessimism would slowly give way to the possibility that all was not lost. This rosier perspective would begin building quietly around noon, when he came into his kitchen and saw his copper pots. Hanging from their hooks, still shining from the previous night’s scrubbing, they seemed to suggest an indisputable sense of possibility. Stepping into the cooler, he would hoist a side of lamb over his shoulder, and when he dropped it on the counter with a satisfying thump, his worldview would brighten by another hundred lumens. Such that by 3:00, when he heard the sound of root vegetables being chopped and smelled the aroma of garlic being sizzled, Emile might begrudgingly acknowledge that existence had its consolations. Then at 5:30, if everything seemed in order, he might allow himself to sample the wine that he’d been cooking with—just to polish off the bottle, you understand; waste not want not; neither a borrower nor a lender be. And at around 6:25, that dark humor which had seemed at dawn to be the very foundation of Emile’s soul, would become irreversibly sanguine when the first order was delivered to his kitchen.

  So, what did the Count see when he looked through the window at 5:55? He saw Emile dip a spoon into a bowl of chocolate mousse and lick it clean. With that confirmation, the Count turned to Andrey and nodded. Then he assumed his station between table one and table two as the maître d’ threw the bolts to open the Boyarsky’s doors.

  Around nine o’clock, the Count reviewed the restaurant from corner to corner, satisfied that the first seating had gone without a hitch. Menus had been delivered and orders taken according to plan. Four inclinations toward overcooked lamb had been narrowly averted, more than five bottles of Latour had been poured, and the two members of the Politburo had been equitably seated and equitably served. But then Andrey (who had just led the Commissar of Transport to the opposite side of the room from the American journalists) signaled the Count with an expression of apparent distress.

  “What has happened?” asked the Count when he reached the maître d’s side.

  “I have just been notified that there is to be a private function in the Yellow Room, after all.”

  “How large?”

  “They weren’t specific, other than to say it would be small.”

  “Then we can send Vasenka. I’ll take tables five and six; Maxim can take tables seven and eight.”

  “But that’s just it,” said Andrey. “We cannot send Vasenka.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they have asked for you by name.”

  Standing at attention in front of the Yellow Room was a Goliath that would have given any David pause. As the Count approached, the giant barely seemed to take note of his surroundings; then without a sign of acknowledgment, he suddenly stepped aside and deftly opened the door.

  It was not particularly surprising for the Count to find a giant at the door of a private function in the Metropol; what was surprising was how the dining room had been arranged within. For the majority of furniture had been cleared to the periphery, leaving a single table set for two under the chandelier—at which a middle-aged man in a dark gray suit sat alone.

  Though much smaller than the guard at the door and substantially better dressed, the man at the table struck the Count as one who was no stranger to brute force. His neck and wrists were as thick as a wrestler’s and his close-cropped hair revealed a scar above the left ear, which was presumably the result of a glancing blow that had hoped to cleave his skull. Apparently unhurried, the man was playing with his spoon.

  “Good evening,” said the Count with a bow.

  “Good evening,” replied the man with a smile, returning his spoon to the table.

  “May I bring you something to drink while you wait?”

  “There will be no one else coming.”

  “Ah,” said the Count. He began clearing the second place setting.

  “You needn’t clear those.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you weren’t expecting anyone else.”

  “I am not expecting anyone else. I am expecting you, Alexander Ilyich.”

  The two men studied each other for a moment.

  “Please,” said the man. “Have a seat.”

  The Count hesitated to take the offered chair.

  Under the circumstances, one might leap to the conclusion that the Count hesitated due to a suspicion or even dread about this stranger. But principally, he hesitated because as a matter of decorum, it seemed utterly inappropriate for one to sit at a table when one is dressed to wait upon it.

  “Come now,” the stranger said amiably. “You wouldn’t refuse a solitary diner the pleasure of your company.”

  “Certainly not,” replied the Count.

  But having accepted the chair, he did not place the napkin in his lap.

  After a rap at the door, it opened t
o admit the Goliath. Without looking at the Count, he approached the table and held out a bottle for the stranger’s consideration.

  The host leaned forward and squinted at the label.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Thank you, Vladimir.”

  Presumably, Vladimir could simply have broken the top off the bottle, but with surprising agility he produced a corkscrew from a pocket, spun it in his hand, and pulled the cork. Then, having received a nod from his superior, he placed the open bottle on the table and retreated back to the hall. The stranger poured a glass for himself. Then, with the bottle hovering over the table at a forty-five-degree angle, he looked to the Count.

  “Won’t you join me?”

  “With pleasure.”

  After the stranger poured, they both raised their glasses and drank.

  “Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov,” he said after returning his glass to the table. “Recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt . . .”

  “You have me at a disadvantage.”

  “You don’t know who I am?”

  “I know that you are a man who can secure one of the Boyarsky’s private rooms in which to dine alone while a behemoth waits at the door.”

  The stranger laughed.

  “Very good,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “What else do you see?”

  The Count studied his host more indiscreetly and then shrugged.

  “I’d say you were a man of forty and were a soldier once. I suspect you joined the infantry, but were a colonel by the end of the war.”

  “How would you know that I became a colonel?”

  “It is the business of a gentleman to distinguish between men of rank.”

  “The business of a gentleman,” the colonel repeated with a smile, as if he appreciated the turn of phrase. “And can you tell where I’m from?”

  The Count dismissed the question with a wave of the hand.

  “The surest way to insult a Walloon is to mistake him for a Frenchman, though they live but a few miles apart and share the same language.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” the colonel conceded. “Nonetheless. I’m interested in your guesswork; and I promise I won’t be insulted.”

  The Count took a sip of his wine and returned the glass to the table.

  “You are almost certainly from eastern Georgia.”

  The captain sat up with an expression of enthusiasm.

  “Extraordinary. Do I have an accent?”

  “Not that’s distinguishable. But then armies, like universities, are where accents are most commonly shed.”

  “Then why eastern Georgia?”

  The Count gestured to the wine.

  “Only an eastern Georgian would start his meal with a bottle of Rkatsiteli.”

  “Because he’s a hayseed?”

  “Because he misses home.”

  The colonel laughed again.

  “What a canny fellow you are.”

  There was another rap at the door and it opened to admit the giant pushing a Regency cart.

  “Ah. Excellent. Here we are.”

  When Vladimir had wheeled the cart to the table, the Count began to push back his chair, but his host gestured that he should remain seated. Vladimir removed the dome and placed a platter at the center of the table. As he left the room, the colonel picked up a carving knife and fork.

  “Let’s see. What do we have here? Ah, roasted duck. I’ve been told the Boyarsky’s is unparalleled.”

  “You are not misinformed. Make sure you take a few cherries and some of the skin.”

  The colonel doled out a portion for himself, including cherries and skin, and then served the Count.

  “Absolutely delicious,” he said, when he had taken his first bite.

  The Count bowed his head to accept the compliment on Emile’s behalf.

  The colonel gestured to the Count with his fork.

  “You have a very interesting file, Alexander Ilyich.”

  “I have a file?”

  “I’m sorry. A terrible habit of speech. What I meant to say is that you have an interesting background.”

  “Ah, yes. Well. Life has been generous to me in its variety.”

  The colonel smiled. Then he commenced in the tone of one who is trying to do justice to the facts.

  “You were born in Leningrad. . . .”

  “I was born in St. Petersburg.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. In St. Petersburg. As your parents died when you were young, you were raised by your grandmother. You attended the academy and then the Imperial University in . . . St. Petersburg.”

  “All correct.”

  “And you have traveled broadly, I gather.”

  The Count shrugged.

  “Paris. London. Firenze.”

  “But when you last left the country in 1914, you went to France?”

  “On the sixteenth of May.”

  “That’s right. A few days after the incident with Lieutenant Pulonov. Tell me, why did you shoot the fellow? Wasn’t he an aristocrat like yourself?”

  The Count showed an expression of mild shock.

  “I shot him because he was an aristocrat.”

  The colonel laughed and waved his fork again.

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But yes, that’s an idea that we Bolsheviks should understand. So you were in Paris at the time of the Revolution, and shortly thereafter you made your way home.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Now, I think I understand why you hurried back: to help your grandmother safely from the country. But having arranged for her escape, why did you choose to stay?”

  “For the cuisine.”

  “No, I am serious.”

  . . .

  “My days of leaving Russia were behind me.”

  “But you didn’t take up arms with the Whites.”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t strike me as a coward. . . .”

  “I should hope not.”

  “So why didn’t you join in the fray?”

  The Count paused, then shrugged.

  “When I left for Paris in 1914, I swore I would never shoot another one of my countrymen.”

  “And you count the Bolsheviks as your countrymen.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Do you count them as gentlemen?”

  “That’s another thing entirely. But certainly some of them are.”

  “I see. But even from the manner in which you say that, I can tell that you do not count me a gentleman. Now, why is that?”

  The Count responded with a light laugh, as much as to say that no gentleman would ever answer such a question.

  “Come now,” the colonel persisted. “Here we two are dining together on the Boyarsky’s roasted duck with a bottle of Georgian wine, which practically makes us old friends. And I am genuinely interested. What is it about me that makes you so sure that I am not a gentleman?”

  As a sign of encouragement, the colonel leaned across the table to refill the Count’s glass.

  “It isn’t any one thing,” the Count said after a moment. “It is an assembly of small details.”

  “Like in a mosaic.”

  “Yes. Like in a mosaic.”

  “So, give me an example of one of these smaller details.”

  The Count took a sip from his glass and replaced it on the table at one o’clock.

  “As a host, it was perfectly appropriate for you to take up the serving tools. But a gentleman would have served his guest before he served himself.”

  The colonel, who had just taken a bite of duck, smiled at the Count’s first example and waved his fork.

  “Continue,” he said.

  “A gentleman wouldn’t gesture at another man with hi
s fork,” said the Count, “or speak with his mouth full. But perhaps most importantly, he would have introduced himself at the beginning of a conversation—particularly when he had the advantage over his guest.”

  The colonel put his utensils down.

  “And I ordered the wrong wine,” he added with a smile.

  The Count put a finger in the air.

  “No. There are many reasons for ordering a particular bottle of wine. And memories of home are among the best.”

  “Then allow me to introduce myself: I am Osip Ivanovich Glebnikov—former colonel of the Red Army and an officer of the Party, who as a boy in eastern Georgia dreamed of Moscow, and who as a man of thirty-nine in Moscow dreams of eastern Georgia.”

  “It is a pleasure meeting you,” said the Count, reaching across the table. The two men shook hands and then resumed eating. After a moment, the Count ventured:

  “If I may be so bold, Osip Ivanovich: What is it exactly that you do as an officer of the Party?”

  “Let’s just say that I am charged with keeping track of certain men of interest.”

  “Ah. Well, I imagine that becomes rather easy to achieve when you place them under house arrest.”

  “Actually,” corrected Glebnikov, “it is easier to achieve when you place them in the ground. . . .”

  The Count conceded the point.

  “But by all accounts,” continued Glebnikov, “you seem to have reconciled yourself to your situation.”

  “As both a student of history and a man devoted to living in the present, I admit that I do not spend a lot of time imagining how things might otherwise have been. But I do like to think there is a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it.”

  Glebnikov let out a laugh and gave the table a light slap.

  “There you go. That’s just the sort of nuance that has brought me begging to your door.”

  Setting his silverware down, the Count looked to his host with interest.