A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

  Good God, he thought. Is it possible?

  Already?

  At the age of forty-eight?

  “Alexander Rostov, could it be that you have become settled in your ways?”

  As a young man, the Count would never have been inconvenienced by a fellow soul. He sought out congenial company the moment he awoke.

  When he had read in his chair, no interruption could be counted as a disturbance. In fact, he preferred to read with a little racket in the background. Like the shouts of a vendor in the street; or the scales of a piano in a neighboring apartment; or best of all, footsteps on the stair—footsteps that having quickly ascended two flights would suddenly stop, bang on his door, and breathlessly explain that two friends in a coach-and-four were waiting at the curb. (After all, isn’t that why the pages of books are numbered? To facilitate the finding of one’s place after a reasonable interruption?)

  As to possessions, he hadn’t cared a whit about them. He was the first to lend a book or an umbrella to an acquaintance (never mind that no acquaintance since Adam had returned a book or an umbrella).

  And routines? He had prided himself on never having one. He would breakfast at 10:00 A.M. one day and 2:00 P.M. the next. At his favorite restaurants, he had never ordered the same dish twice in a season. Rather, he traveled across their menus like Mr. Livingstone traveled across Africa and Magellan the seven seas.

  No, at the age of twenty-two, Count Alexander Rostov could not be inconvenienced, interrupted, or unsettled. For every unexpected appearance, comment, or turn of events had been welcomed like a burst of fireworks in a summer sky—as something to be marveled at and cheered.

  But apparently, this was no longer the case. . . .

  The unanticipated arrival of a thirty-pound package had torn the veil from his eyes. Without his even noticing—without his acknowledgment, input, or permission—routine had established itself within his daily life. Apparently, he now ate his breakfast at an appointed hour. Apparently, he must sip his coffee and nibble his biscuits without interruption. He must read in a particular chair tilted at a particular angle with no more than the scuffing of a pigeon’s feet to distract him. He must shave his right cheek, shave his left, and only then move on to the underside of his chin.

  To that end, the Count now tilted back his head and raised his razor, but the change in the angle of his gaze revealed two fathomless eyes staring back at him from the reflection in the mirror.

  “Egads!”

  “I have finished looking at the pictures,” she said.

  “Which ones?”

  “All of them.”

  “All of them!” It was now the Count’s eyes that opened wide. “Well, isn’t that splendid.”

  “I think this is for you,” she said, holding out a small envelope.

  “Where did that come from?”

  “It was slipped under your door. . . .”

  Taking the envelope in hand, the Count could tell that it was empty; but in place of an address, the query Three o’clock? was written in a willowy script.

  “Ah, yes,” said the Count, stuffing it in his pocket. “A small matter of business.” Then he thanked Sofia in a manner indicating that she could now be on her way.

  And she replied, “You’re welcome,” in a manner indicating that she had no intention of going anywhere.

  Thus had the Count leapt from his bed and clapped his hands at the first chime of the noon hour.

  “Right,” he said. “How about some lunch? You must be famished. I think you will find the Piazza positively delightful. More than simply a restaurant, the Piazza was designed to be an extension of the city—of its gardens, markets, and thoroughfares.”

  But as the Count continued with his description of the Piazza’s advantages, he noticed that Sofia was staring at his father’s clock with an expression of surprise. And when they passed over the threshold to go downstairs, she took another look back then hesitated—as if on the verge of asking how such a delicate device could generate such a lovely sound.

  Well, thought the Count as he began to close the door, if she wanted to know the secrets of the twice-tolling clock, she had come to the right place. For not only did the Count know something of chronometry, he knew absolutely everything there was to know about this particular—

  “Uncle Alexander,” Sofia said in the tender tone of one who must deliver unhappy news. “I fear your clock is broken.”

  Taken aback, the Count released his grip on the doorknob.

  “Broken? No, no, I assure you, Sofia, my clock keeps perfect time. In fact, it was made by craftsmen known the world over for their commitment to precision.”

  “It isn’t the timekeeper that is broken,” she explained. “It is the chime.”

  “But it just chimed beautifully.”

  “Yes. It chimed at noon. But it failed to chime at nine and ten and eleven.”

  “Ah,” the Count said with a smile. “Normally, you would be perfectly right, my dear. But, you see, this is a twice-tolling clock. It was made many years ago to my father’s specifications to toll only twice a day.”

  “But why?”

  “Why indeed, my friend, why indeed. I’ll tell you what. Let us adjourn to the Piazza where—having placed our order and made ourselves comfortable—we shall investigate all the whys and wherefores of my father’s clock. For there is nothing more essential to the enjoyment of a civilized lunch than to have a lively topic of conversation.”

  At 12:10 the Piazza was not yet bustling; but perhaps this was just as well, as the Count and Sofia received an excellent table and prompt attention from Martyn—a capable new waiter who pulled back Sofia’s chair with an admirable sense of politesse.

  “My niece,” explained the Count, as Sofia looked around the room in amazement.

  “I have a six-year-old of my own,” Martyn replied with a smile. “I’ll give you a moment.”

  Granted, Sofia was not so unworldly as to be unfamiliar with elephants, but she had never seen anything quite like the Piazza. Not only was she marveling at the room’s scale and elegance, but at each of the individual elements that seemed to turn common sense on its head: A ceiling made of glass. A tropical garden indoors. A fountain in the middle of a room!

  When Sofia completed her survey of the Piazza’s paradoxes, she seemed to understand instinctively that such a setting deserved an elevated standard of behavior. For she suddenly took her doll off the table and placed it on the empty chair to her right; when the Count slipped his napkin out from under his silverware to place it in his lap, Sofia followed suit, taking particular care not to jangle her fork and knife; and when, having placed their order with Martyn, the Count said Thank you so much, my good man, Sofia echoed the Count word for word. Then she looked to the Count, expectantly.

  “Now?” she asked.

  “Now what, my dear?”

  “Is now when you will tell me about the twice-tolling clock?”

  “Oh, yes. Precisely.”

  But where to start?

  Naturally enough, at the beginning.

  The twice-tolling clock, the Count explained, had been commissioned by his father from the venerable firm of Breguet. Establishing their shop in Paris in 1775, the Breguets were quickly known the world over not only for the precision of their chronometers (that is, the accuracy of their clocks), but for the elaborate means by which their clocks could signal the passage of time. They had clocks that played a few measures of Mozart at the end of the hour. They had clocks that chimed not only at the hour but at the half and the quarter. They had clocks that displayed the phases of the moon, the progress of the seasons, and the cycle of the tides. But when the Count’s father visited their shop in 1882, he posed a very different sort of challenge for the firm: a clock that tolled only twice a day.

  “Why would he do so?” asked the Count (in anticipation of his youn
g listener’s favorite interrogative).

  Quite simply, the Count’s father had believed that while a man should attend closely to life, he should not attend too closely to the clock. A student of both the Stoics and Montaigne, the Count’s father believed that our Creator had set aside the morning hours for industry. That is, if a man woke no later than six, engaged in a light repast, and then applied himself without interruption, by the hour of noon he should have accomplished a full day’s labor.

  Thus, in his father’s view, the toll of twelve was a moment of reckoning. When the noon bell sounded, the diligent man could take pride in having made good use of the morning and sit down to his lunch with a clear conscience. But when it sounded for the frivolous man—the man who had squandered his morning in bed, or on breakfast with three papers, or on idle chatter in the sitting room—he had no choice but to ask for his Lord’s forgiveness.

  In the afternoon, the Count’s father believed that a man should take care not to live by the watch in his waistcoat—marking the minutes as if the events of one’s life were stations on a railway line. Rather, having been suitably industrious before lunch, he should spend his afternoon in wise liberty. That is, he should walk among the willows, read a timeless text, converse with a friend beneath the pergola, or reflect before the fire—engaging in those endeavors that have no appointed hour, and that dictate their own beginnings and ends.

  And the second chime?

  The Count’s father was of the mind that one should never hear it. If one had lived one’s day well—in the service of industry, liberty, and the Lord—one should be soundly asleep long before twelve. So the second chime of the twice-tolling clock was most definitely a remonstrance. What are you doing up? it was meant to say. Were you so profligate with your daylight that you must hunt about for things to do in the dark?

  “Your veal.”

  “Ah. Thank you, Martyn.”

  Quite appropriately, Martyn placed the first dish before Sofia and the second before the Count. Then he lingered a little closer to the table than was necessary.

  “Thank you,” the Count said again in a polite sign of dismissal. But as the Count took up his silverware and began recalling for Sofia’s benefit how he and his sister would sit by the twice-tolling clock on the last night of December in order to ring in the New Year, Martyn took a step even closer.

  “Yes?” asked the Count, somewhat impatiently.

  Martyn hesitated.

  “Shall I . . . cut the young lady’s meat?”

  The Count looked across the table to where Sofia, fork in hand, was staring at her plate.

  Mon Dieu, thought the Count.

  “No need, my friend. I shall see to it.”

  As Martyn backed away with a bow, the Count circled the table and in a few quick strokes had cut Sofia’s veal into eight pieces. Then, on the verge of setting down her cutlery, he cut the eight pieces into sixteen. By the time he had returned to his seat, she had already eaten four.

  Having regained her energy through sustenance, Sofia now unleashed a cavalcade of Whys. Why was it better to commune with work in the morning and nature in the afternoon? Why would a man read three newspapers? Why should one walk under the willows rather than some other sort of tree? And what was a pergola? Which in turn led to additional inquiries regarding Idlehour, the Countess, and Helena.

  In principle, the Count generally regarded a barrage of interrogatives as bad form. Left to themselves, the words who, what, why, when, and where do not a conversation make. But as the Count began to answer Sofia’s litany of queries, sketching the layout of Idlehour on the tablecloth with the tines of his fork, describing the personalities of family members and referencing various traditions—he noticed that Sofia was entirely, absolutely, and utterly engaged. What elephants and princesses had failed to accomplish, the life at Idlehour had apparently achieved. And just like that, her veal was gone.

  When the plates had been cleared away, Martyn reappeared to inquire if they would be having dessert. The Count looked to Sofia with a smile, assuming that she would leap at the chance. But she bit her lower lip and shook her head.

  “Are you quite sure?” the Count asked. “Ice cream? Cookies? A piece of cake?”

  But shifting a bit in her chair, she shook her head again.

  Enter the new generation, thought the Count with a shrug, while returning the dessert menu to Martyn.

  “Apparently, we are done.”

  Martyn accepted the menu, but once again lingered. Then, turning his back slightly to the table, he actually leaned over with the clear intention of whispering in the Count’s ear.

  For goodness sake, thought the Count. What now?

  “Count Rostov, I believe that your niece . . . may need to go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  Martyn hesitated.

  “To the privy . . .”

  The Count looked up at the waiter and then at Sofia.

  “Say no more, Martyn.”

  The waiter bowed and excused himself.

  “Sofia,” the Count suggested tentatively, “shall we visit the ladies’ room?”

  Still biting her lip, Sofia nodded.

  “Do you need me to . . . accompany you inside?” he asked, after leading her down the hallway.

  Sofia shook her head and disappeared behind the washroom door.

  As he waited, the Count chastised himself for his lug-headedness. Not only had he failed to cut her meat and bring her to the ladies’ room, he clearly hadn’t thought to help her unpack, because she was wearing the exact same clothes she had worn the day before.

  “And you call yourself a waiter . . . ,” he said to himself.

  A moment later, Sofia emerged, looking relieved. But then, despite her readily apparent love of interrogatives, she hesitated like one who is struggling with whether to ask a question.

  “What is it, my dear? Is there something on your mind?”

  Sofia struggled for another moment, then worked up the nerve:

  “Can we still have dessert, Uncle Alexander?”

  Now, it was the Count who looked relieved.

  “Without a doubt, my dear. Without a doubt.”

  Ascending, Alighting

  At two o’clock, when Marina answered her office door to find the Count at the threshold in the company of a little girl with a rag doll gripped tightly by the neck, she was so surprised her eyes almost came into alignment.

  “Ah, Marina,” said the Count, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. “You remember Nina Kulikova? May I present her daughter, Sofia. She will be staying with us in the hotel for a bit. . . .”

  As a mother of two, Marina did not need the Count’s signal to tell her that something weighty had occurred in the life of the child. But she could also see that the girl was curious about the whirring sound coming from the other end of the room.

  “What a pleasure to meet you, Sofia,” she said. “I knew your mother well when she was just a few years older than you are now. But tell me: Have you ever seen a sewing machine?”

  Sofia shook her head.

  “Well then. Come and let me show you one.”

  Offering Sofia her hand, Marina led the girl to the other side of the room, where her assistant was mending a royal blue drape. Dropping down so that she would be at Sofia’s level, Marina pointed to various parts of the machine and explained their use. Then, asking the young seamstress to show Sofia their collection of fabrics and buttons, she came back to the Count with an expression of inquiry.

  In a hushed voice, he quickly recounted the events of the previous day.

  “You can see the predicament that I’m in,” concluded the Count.

  “I can see the predicament that Sofia is in,” corrected Marina.

  “Yes. You’re absolutely right,” the Count admitted contritely. Then, just as he was about to continue, he had a
notion—a notion so inspired, it was incredible he hadn’t thought of it before. “I came, Marina, to see if you’d be willing to watch Sofia for an hour while I am at the Boyarsky’s daily meeting. . . .”

  “Of course I will,” said Marina.

  “As I say, I came with that intention. . . . But as you have so rightly pointed out, it is Sofia who deserves our support and consideration. And watching you together just now, seeing your instinctive tenderness, and seeing the way that she felt instantly at ease in your company, it was suddenly so obvious that what she needs, especially at this juncture in her life, is a mother’s touch, a mother’s way, a mother’s—”

  But Marina cut him off. And from the bottom of her heart, she said:

  “Do not ask that of me, Alexander Ilyich. Ask it of yourself.”

  I can do this, said the Count to himself as he skipped up the stairs to the Boyarsky. After all, it was really just a matter of making some minor adjustments—a rearranging of some furniture and a shifting of some habits. Since Sofia was too young to be left alone, he would eventually need to find someone who could sit with her while he was at work. For tonight, he would simply request an evening off, suggesting that his tables be divided between Denis and Dmitry.

  But in an extraordinary example of a friend anticipating the needs of a friend, when the Count arrived at the meeting of the Triumvirate a few minutes late, Andrey said:

  “There you are, Alexander. Emile and I were just discussing that Denis and Dmitry can share your tables tonight.”

  Collapsing into his chair, the Count let out a sigh of relief.

  “Perfect,” he said. “By tomorrow, I shall have come up with a longer-term solution.”

  The chef and the maître d’ looked at the Count in confusion.

  “A longer-term solution?”

  “Weren’t you splitting my tables so that I could be free for the evening?”

  “Free for the evening!” gasped Andrey.

  Emile guffawed.

  “Alexander, my friend, it’s the third Saturday of the month. You’ll be expected in the Yellow Room at ten. . . .”