A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

  Whatever personal sense of heartache Chopin had hoped to express through this little composition—whether it had been prompted by a loss of love, or simply the sweet anguish one feels when witnessing a mist on a meadow in the morning—it was right there, ready to be experienced to its fullest, in the ballroom of the Hotel Metropol one hundred years after the composer’s death. But how, the question remained, could a seventeen-year-old girl achieve this feat of expression, if not by channeling a sense of loss and longing of her own?

  As Sofia began the third iteration of the melody, Viktor Stepanovich looked over his shoulder with his eyebrows raised, as if to say: Can you believe it? Have you ever in all your years even imagined? Then he quickly looked back to the piano and dutifully turned the page for Sofia almost in the manner of an apprentice turning the page for his master.

  After the Count had led Viktor Stepanovich into the hall, where they could confer for a moment in private, he returned to the ballroom. Finding Sofia still at the piano, he took a seat at her side with his back to the keys.

  They were both silent.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were studying piano?” the Count asked after a moment.

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” she said. “For your birthday. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m so sorry if I did.”

  “Sofia, if anyone should be apologizing, it should be me. You have done nothing wrong. On the contrary. That was wonderful—and unambiguously so.”

  Sofia blushed and looked down at the keyboard.

  “It is a lovely composition,” she said.

  “Well, yes,” agreed the Count with a laugh, “it is a lovely composition. But it is also a piece of paper with circles, lines, and dots. Nearly every student of piano for a century has learned to play that little bit of Chopin. But for most of them, it is an act of recitation. Only one in a thousand—or even a hundred thousand—can bring the music to life as you just have.”

  Sofia continued to look at the keyboard. The Count hesitated. And then with a touch of trepidation, he asked:

  “Is everything all right?”

  Sofia looked up, a little surprised. Then seeing how grave her father’s expression was, she smiled.

  “Of course, Papa. Why do you ask?”

  The Count shook his head.

  “I’ve never played an instrument in my life, but I understand something of music. To have played the opening measures of that piece with feelings so perfectly evocative of heartache, one can only assume that you have drawn on some wellspring of sorrow within yourself.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said. Then with the enthusiasm of a young scholar she began to explain: “Viktor Stepanovich calls that the mood. He says that before one plays a note, one must discover an example of the composition’s mood hidden away in one’s heart. So for this piece, I think about my mother. I think of how my few memories of her seem to be fading, and then I begin to play.”

  The Count was quiet, overwhelmed by another wave of astonishment.

  “Does that make sense?” Sofia asked.

  “Abundantly,” he said. Then after a moment of reflection, he added: “As a younger man, I used to feel the same way about my sister. Every year that passed, it seemed a little more of her had slipped away; and I began to fear that one day I would come to forget her altogether. But the truth is: No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.”

  They were both quiet now. Then looking about him, the Count gestured with his hand.

  “This was a favorite room of hers.”

  “Of your sister’s?”

  “No, no. Of your mother’s.”

  Sofia looked around with some surprise.

  “The ballroom . . . ?”

  “Most definitely. After the Revolution, all the old ways of doing things were abandoned—which was the point, I suppose. But the new ways of doing things had yet to be established. So all across Russia, all manner of groups—trade unions, citizens’ committees, commissariats—gathered in rooms like this one in order to hash things out.”

  The Count pointed to the balcony.

  “When your mother was nine, she would crouch up there behind the balustrade to watch these Assemblies for hours on end. She found it all very thrilling. The shuffling of chairs and the heartfelt speeches and the pounding of the gavel. And in retrospect, she was perfectly right. After all, a new course for the country was being charted right before our eyes. But at the time, what with the crawling and the hunching, it just gave me a crick in the neck.”

  “You would go up there too?”

  “Oh, she insisted.”

  The Count and Sofia both smiled.

  “Come to think of it,” added the Count after a moment, “that’s how I came to know your Aunt Marina. Because every other visit to the balcony, I’d split the seat of my pants.”

  Sofia laughed. Then the Count wagged a finger in the manner of one who has remembered something else.

  “Later, when your mother was thirteen or fourteen, she would come here to enact experiments . . .”

  “Experiments!”

  “Your mother was not one to take anything on faith. If she hadn’t witnessed a phenomenon with her own eyes, then as far as she was concerned it was a hypothesis. And that included all the laws of physics and mathematics. One day, I found her here testing the principles of Galileo and Newton by dropping various objects from the balcony and timing their descent with a sprinter’s watch.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “It was for your mother.”

  They were quiet for another moment, then Sofia turned and kissed the Count on the cheek.

  When Sofia had gone off to meet a friend, the Count went to the Piazza and treated himself to a glass of wine with lunch—something that he had done on a daily basis in his thirties and had rarely done since. Given the morning’s revelations, it seemed only appropriate. In fact, when his plate had been cleared and he had dutifully declined dessert, he ordered a second glass.

  As he leaned back with his wine in hand, he regarded the young man at the neighboring table, who was sketching in his sketchbook. The Count had noticed him in the lobby the day before with the book in his lap and a small tin of colored pencils at his side.

  The Count leaned a little to his right.

  “Landscape, portrait, or still life?”

  The young man looked up with a touch of surprise.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I couldn’t help but notice you sketching away. I was just wondering if it was a landscape, a portrait, or a still life.”

  “None of the above, I’m afraid,” the young man replied politely. “It is an interior.”

  “Of the restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I see?”

  The young man hesitated then handed the Count his book.

  As soon as the Count had it in hand, he regretted his reference to sketching. The word hardly did justice to the young man’s skills as an artist, for he had captured the Piazza perfectly. The guests at the tables were rendered with the short, bright strokes of Impressionism, adding to the sense that they were engaged in lively conversations; while the waiters moving deftly between the tables were rendered in something of a blur. But the suggestive style with which the young man had drawn the people was sharply contrasted by the level of detail with which he had drawn the room itself. The columns, the fountain, the arches were all realized in perfect perspective to perfect proportion, with every ornament in place.

  “It’s a wonderful drawing,” said the Count. “But I must say, your sense of space is particularly exquisite.”

  The stranger smiled a little wistfully.

  “That’s because I’m an architect by training, not an artist.”

  “Are you designing a hotel?”

  The architect gave a laugh.


  “The way things stand, I’d be happy to design a birdhouse.”

  Given the Count’s expression of curiosity, the young man elaborated: “For the time being, there are a lot of buildings being built in Moscow, but little need for architects. So I have taken a job with Intourist. They’re putting together a brochure of the city’s finer hotels and I’m drawing the interiors.”*

  “Ah,” said the Count. “Because a photograph cannot capture the feeling of a place!”

  “Actually,” replied the architect, “because a photograph too readily captures the condition of a place.”

  “Oh, I see,” said the Count, feeling a little insulted on the Piazza’s behalf. In its defense, he couldn’t help pointing out that while the restaurant had been celebrated for its elegance in its time, the room’s grandeur had never been defined by its furnishings or architectural details.

  “By what then?” the young man asked.

  “The citizenry.”

  “How do you mean?”

  The Count turned his chair so that he could better face his neighbor.

  “In my day, I had the luxury of doing a good bit of travel. And I can tell you from personal experience that the majority of hotel restaurants—not simply in Russia, you understand, but across Europe—were designed for and have served the guests of the hotel. But this restaurant wasn’t and hasn’t. It was designed to be and has been a gathering place for the entire city of Moscow.”

  The Count gestured toward the center of the room.

  “For most of the last forty years, on a typical Saturday night you could find Russians cut from every cloth crowded around that fountain, stumbling into conversations with whosoever happened to be at the neighboring table. Naturally, this has led to impromptu romances and heartfelt debates on the merits of Pushkin over Petrarch. Why, I’ve watched cabbies rub elbows with commisars and bishops with black marketeers; and on at least one occasion, I have actually seen a young lady change an old man’s point of view.”

  The Count pointed to a spot about twenty feet away.

  “You see those two tables there? One afternoon in 1939 I watched as two strangers, finding each other vaguely familiar, spent their appetizer, entrée, and dessert going over their entire lives step by step in search of the moment when they must have met.”

  Looking around the restaurant with renewed appreciation, the architect observed:

  “I suppose a room is the summation of all that has happened inside it.”

  “Yes, I think it is,” agreed the Count. “And though I’m not exactly sure what has come of all the intermingling in this particular room, I am fairly certain that the world has been a better place because of it.”

  The Count was quiet for a moment as he too looked around. Then pointing a finger, he directed the architect’s attention to the bandstand on the far side of the room.

  “Have you ever happened to see the orchestra play here in the evening?”

  “No, I haven’t. Why?”

  “The most extraordinary thing happened to me today. . . .”

  “Apparently, he was walking down the hallway when he happened to hear a Mozart Variation emanating from the ballroom. Intrigued, he poked his head inside and discovered Sofia at the keyboard.”

  “No!” exclaimed Richard Vanderwhile.

  “Naturally, the fellow asked where she was studying. He was taken aback to learn that she hadn’t been studying with anyone. She had taught herself to play the piece by listening to one of the recordings you had given me and then sounding out the notes one by one.”

  “Incredible.”

  “The fellow was so impressed with her natural abilities that he took her on as a student right then and there; and he has been teaching her the classical repertoire in the ballroom ever since.”

  “And this is the chap from the Piazza, you say?”

  “None other.”

  “The one who waves the baton?”

  “The very same.”

  Richard shook his head in wonder. “Audrius, have you heard all of this? We’ve got to raise a glass to the young lady, and as soon as possible. Two Goldenrods, my good man.”

  The ever-attentive tender at bar was already lining up bottles of various sizes including yellow chartreuse, bitters, honey, and a vodka infused with lemon. On that night in 1946 when the Count and Richard had first become acquainted over Audrius’s magenta concoction, the American had challenged the bartender to design a cocktail in each of the colors of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Thus were born the Goldenrod, the Robin’s Egg, the Brick Wall, and a dark green potion called the Christmas Tree. In addition, it had become generally known in the bar that anyone who could drink all four cocktails back to back earned the right to be called “The Patriarch of All Russia”—as soon as he regained consciousness.

  Though Richard, who was now attached to the State Department, tended to stay at the embassy when in Moscow, he would still stop by the Metropol on occasion in order to have a nightcap with the Count. Thus, the Goldenrods were poured and the two gentlemen clinked their glasses with the toast: “To old friends.”

  Some might wonder that the two men should consider themselves to be old friends having only known each other for four years; but the tenure of friendships has never been governed by the passage of time. These two would have felt like old friends had they met just hours before. To some degree, this was because they were kindred spirits—finding ample evidence of common ground and cause for laughter in the midst of effortless conversation; but it was also almost certainly a matter of upbringing. Raised in grand homes in cosmopolitan cities, educated in the liberal arts, graced with idle hours, and exposed to the finest things, though the Count and the American had been born ten years and four thousand miles apart, they had more in common with each other than they had with the majority of their own countrymen.

  This, of course, is why the grand hotels of the world’s capitals all look alike. The Plaza in New York, the Ritz in Paris, Claridge’s in London, the Metropol in Moscow—built within fifteen years of each other, they too were kindred spirits, the first hotels in their cities with central heating, with hot water and telephones in the rooms, with international newspapers in the lobbies, international cuisine in the restaurants, and American bars off the lobby. These hotels were built for the likes of Richard Vanderwhile and Alexander Rostov, so that when they traveled to a foreign city, they would find themselves very much at home and in the company of kin.

  “I still can’t believe it’s that fellow from the Piazza,” said Richard with another shake of the head.

  “I know,” said the Count. “But he actually studied at the Conservatory here in Moscow where he was the recipient of the Mussorgsky Medal. He only conducts at the Piazza in order to make ends meet.”

  “One must make ends meet,” confirmed Audrius matter-of-factly, “or meet one’s end.”

  Richard studied the bartender for a moment.

  “Well, that’s the very essence of it, isn’t it?”

  Audrius shrugged, acknowledging that the essence-of-it was a bartender’s stock-in-trade, and then he excused himself to answer the phone behind the bar. As he walked away, the Count seemed particularly struck by the bartender’s remark.

  “Are you familiar with the moths of Manchester?” he asked Richard.

  “The moths of Manchester . . . Isn’t that a soccer team?”

  “No,” said the Count with a smile. “It is not a soccer team. It is an extraordinary case from the annals of the natural sciences that my father related to me as a child.”

  But before the Count could elaborate, Audrius returned.

  “That was your wife on the phone, Mr. Vanderwhile. She asked me to remind you of your appointment in the morning; and to alert you that your driver is waiting outside.”

  Though most of the customers in the bar had never met Mrs. Vanderwhile, she
was known to be as unflappable as Arkady, as attentive as Audrius, and as aware of whereabouts as Vasily—when it came to drawing Mr. Vanderwhile’s evenings to a close.

  “Ah, yes,” conceded Mr. Vanderwhile.

  Agreeing that duty comes first, the Count and Mr. Vanderwhile shook hands and wished each other well till next they met.

  When Richard left, the Count looked once around the room to see if there was anyone he knew, and was pleased to discover that the young architect from the Piazza was at a table in the corner, bent over his sketchbook, presumably rendering the bar.

  He too, thought the Count, is one of the moths of Manchester.

  When the Count was nine years old, his father had sat him down in order to explain Darwin’s theory of natural selection. As the Count listened, the essence of the Englishman’s idea seemed perfectly intuitive—that over tens of thousands of years a species would slowly evolve in order to maximize its chances of survival. After all, if the claws of the lion grow sharper, the gazelle had best grow more fleet of foot. But what had disconcerted the Count was when his father clarified that natural selection didn’t need tens of thousands of years to take place. It didn’t even need a hundred. It had been observed unfolding over the course of a few decades.

  It was true, his father said, that in a relatively static environment the pace of evolution should decelerate, as individual species have little new to adapt to. But environments are never static for long. The forces of nature inevitably unleash themselves in such a manner that the necessity for adaptation will be stirred. An extended drought, an unusually cold winter, a volcanic eruption, any one of these could alter the balance between those traits that improve a species’ chance for survival and those that hinder it. In essence, this is what had occurred in Manchester, England, in the nineteenth century, when the city became one of the first capitals of the industrial revolution.