A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

  “Just so,” he said with a wily smile. Then he adopted an expression of perfect erudition as he pretended to read.

  But after five minutes, she hadn’t appeared.

  “Ah, well. I must have been mistaken,” he was conceding with some disappointment, when the door flung open. But it wasn’t Sofia.

  It was one of the chambermaids. In a state of distress.

  “Ilana. What is it?”

  “It’s Sofia! She has fallen!”

  The Count leapt from his chair.

  “Fallen! Where?”

  “In the service stair.”

  The Count brushed past the chambermaid and bolted down the belfry. After two flights of empty stairs, a voice in some corner of his mind began to reason that Ilana must have been mistaken; but as he rounded the third-floor landing, there Sofia was—splayed across the steps, her eyes closed, her hair matted with blood.

  “Oh, my God.”

  The Count fell to his knees.

  “Sofia . . .”

  She didn’t respond.

  Gently raising her head, the Count could see the gash above her brow. Her skull did not appear compromised, but she was bleeding and unconscious.

  Ilana was behind him now, in tears.

  “I will go for a doctor,” she said.

  But it was after eleven. Who could say how long that would take?

  The Count slid his arms under Sofia’s neck and knees, lifted her off the steps, and carried her down the remaining flights. At the ground floor, he pushed the door open with his shoulder and cut through the lobby. Only in the most remote sense was he aware of a middle-aged couple waiting for the elevator; of Vasily at his desk; of voices in the bar. And suddenly, he found himself on the steps of the Metropol in the warm summer air—for the first time in over twenty years.

  Rodion, the night doorman, looked at the Count in shock.

  “A taxi,” the Count said. “I need a taxi.”

  Over the doorman’s shoulder, he could see four of them parked fifty feet from the entrance, waiting for the last of the Shalyapin’s customers. Two drivers at the front of the line were smoking and chatting. Before Rodion could raise his whistle to his lips, the Count was running toward them.

  When the drivers noted the Count’s approach, the expression on one’s face was a knowing smirk and on the other’s a look of condemnation—having both concluded that the gentleman had a drunken girl in his arms. But they stood to attention when they saw the blood on her face.

  “My daughter,” said the Count.

  “Here,” said one of the drivers, throwing his cigarette on the ground and running to open the back door of the cab.

  “To St. Anselm’s,” said the Count.

  “St. Anselm’s . . . ?”

  “As fast as you can.”

  Putting the car in gear, the driver pulled onto Theatre Square and headed north as the Count, pressing a folded handkerchief against Sofia’s wound with one hand and combing her hair with the other, murmured assurances that went unheard—while the streets of the city raced past unregarded.

  In a matter of minutes, the cab came to a stop.

  “We’re here,” said the driver. He got out and opened the back door.

  The Count carefully slipped out with Sofia in his arms then suddenly stopped. “I have no money,” he said.

  “What money! For God’s sake, go.”

  The Count crossed the curb and rushed toward the hospital, but even as he passed through its doors, he knew that he had made a terrible mistake. In the entry hall, there were grown men sleeping on benches, like refugees in a railway station. Hallway lights flickered as if powered by a faulty generator, and in the air was the smell of ammonia and cigarette smoke. When the Count had been a young man, St. Anselm’s had been among the finest hospitals in the city. But that was thirty years ago. By now, the Bolsheviks had presumably built new hospitals—modern, bright, and clean—and this old facility had been left behind as some sort of clinic for veterans, the homeless, and the otherwise forsaken.

  Sidestepping a man who appeared to be asleep on his feet, the Count approached a desk where a young nurse was reading.

  “It is my daughter,” he said. “She has been injured.”

  Looking up, the nurse dropped her magazine. She disappeared through a door. After what seemed like an eternity, she returned with a young man in the white jacket of an internist. The Count held Sofia out while pulling back the blood-soaked handkerchief to show the wound. The internist ran his hand across his mouth.

  “This girl should be seen by a surgeon,” he said.

  “Is there one here?”

  “What? No, of course not.” He looked at a clock on the wall. “At six, perhaps.”

  “At six? Surely, she needs attention now. You must do something.”

  The internist rubbed his hand across his mouth again and then turned to the nurse.

  “Find Dr. Kraznakov. Have him report to Surgery Four.”

  As the nurse disappeared again, the internist wheeled over a gurney.

  “Lay her here and come with me.”

  With the Count at his side, the internist pushed Sofia down a hall and into an elevator. Once on the third floor, they passed through a pair of swinging doors into a long hallway in which there were two other gurneys, each with a sleeping patient.

  “In there.”

  The Count pushed open the door and the internist wheeled Sofia into Surgery Four. It was a cold room, tiled from floor to ceiling. In one corner, the tiles had begun falling from the plaster. There was a surgical table, craning lights, and a standing tray. After some minutes, the door opened and an ill-shaven physician entered with the young nurse. He looked as if he had just been wakened.

  “What is it?” he said in a weary voice.

  “A young girl with a head injury, Dr. Kraznakov.”

  “All right, all right,” he said. Then waving a hand at the Count, he added: “No visitors in the surgery.”

  The internist took the Count by the elbow.

  “Wait a second,” the Count said. “Is this man capable?”

  Looking at the Count, Kraznakov grew red in the face. “What did he say?”

  The Count continued to address the young internist.

  “You said she needed to be seen by a surgeon. Is this man a surgeon?”

  “Get him out of here, I tell you!” shouted Kraznakov.

  But the door to the surgery swung open again and a tall man in his late forties entered in the company of a primly dressed associate.

  “Who is in charge here?” he asked.

  “I am in charge,” said Kraznakov. “Who are you? What is this?”

  Brushing Kraznakov aside, the newcomer approached the table and leaned over Sofia. He gingerly parted her hair to examine the wound. He raised one of her eyelids with a thumb and then took her pulse by holding her wrist and glancing at his watch. Only then did he turn to Kraznakov.

  “I’m Lazovsky, chief of surgery at First Municipal. I will be seeing to this patient.”

  “What’s that? Now listen here!”

  Lazovsky turned to the Count.

  “Are you Rostov?”

  “Yes,” said the Count, astounded.

  “Tell me when and how this happened. Be as precise as you can.”

  “She fell while running up a staircase. I think she hit her head on the edge of the landing. It was at the Metropol Hotel. It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes ago.”

  “Had she been drinking?”

  “What? No. She’s a child.”

  “How old?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Her name?”

  “Sofia.”

  “All right. Very good.”

  Ignoring Kraznakov’s ongoing protests, Lazovsky turned his attention to th
e primly dressed associate and began giving her instructions: that she find scrubs for the team and a suitable place to wash; that she gather the necessary surgical tools; that she sterilize everything.

  The door swung open and a young man appeared, wearing the cavalier expression of one who has just come from a ball.

  “Good evening, comrade Lazovsky,” he said with a smile. “What a charming place you have here.”

  “All right, Antonovich. That’ll be enough of that. It’s a fracture at the front of the left parietal bone with a likely risk of subdural hematoma. Suit up. And see if you can do something about this lighting.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But first, get them out of here.”

  As Antonovich began corralling the two resident physicians out of the surgery with his carefree smile, Lazovsky pointed at the young nurse who had been manning the desk downstairs.

  “Not you. Get yourself ready to assist.”

  Then he turned to the Count.

  “Your daughter has taken quite a crack, Rostov, but she hasn’t fallen headfirst from a plane. The skull was designed to withstand a certain amount of rough treatment. In these sorts of cases, the greatest risk is from swelling rather than direct damage. But that’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before. We’re going to attend to your daughter immediately. In the meantime, you will need to sit outside. I will come and report to you as soon as I can.”

  The Count was led to a bench right outside the surgery. It took him a few moments to realize that in the preceding minutes the hallway had been cleared: the two gurneys with their sleeping patients were gone. The door at the end of the hallway suddenly swung open to admit Antonovich, who was now in scrubs and whistling. As the door swung closed, the Count could see that a man in a black suit had held the door open for him. When Antonovich went back into Surgery Four, the Count was alone in the empty hallway.

  How did he spend the ensuing minutes? How would any man spend them.

  He prayed for the first time since childhood. He allowed himself to imagine the worst, then assured himself that everything would be all right, reviewing the surgeon’s few remarks over and over.

  “The skull was designed for rough treatment,” he repeated to himself.

  Yet against his will, he was visited by contrary examples. He recalled a genial woodsman from the village of Petrovskoye, for instance, who had been hit in the head in the prime of his life by a falling limb. When he regained consciousness, he was as strong as ever, but sullen; on occasion he failed to recognize his friends; and without the slightest provocation he could explode in anger toward his own sisters—as if he’d been put to bed one man and had risen from bed another.

  The Count began to chastise himself: How could he have let Sofia play such a reckless game? How could he while away an hour in a bar fretting over history paintings and statues—while Fate was preparing to hold his daughter’s life in the balance?

  For all the varied concerns attendant to the raising of a child—over schoolwork, dress, and manners—in the end, a parent’s responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment.

  Untold minutes passed.

  The door to the surgery opened and Dr. Lazovsky appeared. He had his mask pulled below his chin. His hands were bare but there was blood on his smock.

  The Count leapt up.

  “Please, Rostov,” said the surgeon. “Have a seat.”

  The Count sat back on the bench.

  Lazovsky didn’t join him; rather he put his fists on his hips and looked down at the Count with an unmistakable expression of competence.

  “As I told you, in these situations the greatest risk is swelling. We have alleviated that risk. Nonetheless, she has suffered a concussion, which is basically a bruising of the brain. She is going to have headaches and will need a good deal of rest. But in a week, she will be up and about.”

  The surgeon turned to go.

  The Count extended a hand.

  “Dr. Lazovsky . . . ,” he said, in the manner of one who wishes to ask a question, yet suddenly can’t find the means of doing so.

  But the surgeon, who had stood in this spot before, understood well enough.

  “She’s going to be every bit herself, Rostov.”

  As the Count began to offer his thanks, the man in the black suit opened the door at the end of the hall once again, only this time it was for Osip Glebnikov.

  “Excuse me,” said the surgeon to the Count.

  Meeting halfway down the hall, Osip and Lazovsky conferred for a minute in lowered voices while the Count watched in astonishment. When the surgeon disappeared into the surgery, Osip joined the Count on the bench.

  “Well, my friend,” he said with his hands on his knees. “Your little Sofia has given us quite a scare.”

  “Osip . . . What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to make sure that you were both all right.”

  “But how did you come to find us?”

  Osip smiled.

  “As I’ve told you, Alexander, it is my business to keep track of certain men of interest. But that doesn’t matter at the moment. What does matter is that Sofia’s going to be fine. Lazovsky is the best surgeon in the city. Tomorrow morning, he will be taking her to First Municipal, where she can recover in comfort. But I’m afraid that you can’t stay here any longer.”

  The Count began to protest, but Osip raised a calming hand.

  “Listen to me, Sasha. If I know what has happened tonight, others will soon know too. And it would not be in your best interest, or Sofia’s for that matter, if they were to find you sitting here. So this is what you must do: There is a staircase at that end of this hall. You need to go down to the ground floor and through the black metal door, which leads to the alley behind the hospital. In the alley, there will be two men waiting who will take you back to the hotel.”

  “I can’t leave Sofia,” said the Count.

  “You have to, I’m afraid. But your concern is perfectly understandable. So I have arranged for someone to stay with Sofia in your stead until she is ready to go home.”

  At this remark, the door was opened to admit a middle-aged woman looking bewildered and frightened. It was Marina. Behind the seamstress was a matron in uniform.

  “Ah,” said Osip, standing. “Here she is.”

  Because Osip stood, Marina looked to him first. Having never seen him before, she met his gaze with anxiety. But then she saw the Count sitting on the bench and ran forward.

  “Alexander! What has happened? What are you doing here? They wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

  “It’s Sofia, Marina. She had a bad fall on the service stairs of the hotel, but a surgeon is with her now. She is going to be all right.”

  “Thank God.”

  The Count turned to Osip as if he were about to introduce him, but Osip preempted.

  “Comrade Samarova,” he said with a smile. “We haven’t met, but I too am a friend of Alexander’s. I’m afraid that he needs to return to the Metropol. But it would be such a comfort to him if you could remain with Sofia until her recovery. Isn’t that so, my friend?”

  Osip laid a hand on the Count’s shoulder without taking his gaze off Marina.

  “I know it is a great deal to ask, Marina,” said the Count. “But . . .”

  “Not another word, Alexander. Of course I will stay.”

  “Excellent,” said Osip.

  He turned to the uniformed woman.

  “You’ll see that comrade Samarova receives everything that she requires?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Osip offered Marina one more reassuring smile and then took the Count by the elbow.

  “This way, my friend.”

  Osip led the Count down the hall and i
nto the back staircase. They descended a flight together without speaking and then Osip stopped on the landing.

  “This is where we part. Remember: down another flight and out the black metal door. Naturally, it would be best if you never mentioned to anyone that either of us were here.”

  “Osip, I don’t know how to repay you.”

  “Alexander,” he said with a smile, “you have been at my service for over fifteen years. It is a pleasure for once to be at yours.” Then he was gone.

  The Count descended the last flight and went through the black metal door. It was nearly dawn and, despite finding himself in an alley, the Count could sense the gentleness of spring in the air. Across the alley, there was a white van with the words Red Star Baking Collective painted in large letters on its side. An ill-shaven young man was leaning against the passenger door smoking. When he saw the Count, he tossed his cigarette and thumped the door behind him. Without asking the Count who he was, he went behind the van and opened the rear door.

  “Thank you,” said the Count as he climbed inside, receiving no reply.

  It was only when the door closed and the Count found himself bent over at the waist in the back of the van that he became aware of an extraordinary sensation: the smell of freshly baked bread. When he had seen the insignia of the baking collective, he had assumed it was a ruse. But on the shelves that ran along one side of the van were over two hundred loaves in orderly arrangement. Gently, almost in disbelief, the Count reached out to lay a hand on one and found it to be soft and warm. It couldn’t have been more than an hour from the oven.

  Outside, the passenger door slammed shut and the van’s engine started. The Count quickly sat on the metal bench that faced the shelves and they were underway.

  In the silence, the Count listened to the gears of the van shifting. Having sped up and slowed down as it came into and out of various turns, the van’s engine now accelerated to the speed of an open road.

  Shuffling to the rear of the van with his back hunched, the Count looked out the little square window in the door. As he watched the buildings and canopies and shop signs flying past, for a moment he couldn’t tell where he was. Then suddenly he saw the old English Club and realized that they must be on Tverskaya—the ancient road that radiated from the Kremlin in the direction of St. Petersburg, and that he had strolled a thousand times before.