A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

  Laughter and applause.

  “To Sverdlov!” someone called and, as Khrushchev emptied his glass with a self-assured grin, all around the table followed suit.

  “Tonight,” continued Khrushchev, “we have the honor of witnessing another historic event at the Metropol. If you will join me at the windows, comrades, I believe that Minister Malyshev has an announcement. . . .”

  With expressions ranging from curious to bemused, the forty-four other attendees pushed back their chairs and approached the great windows overlooking Theatre Square, where Malyshev was already standing.

  “Thank you, General Secretary,” Malyshev said with a bow toward Khrushchev, followed by a weighty pause: “Comrades, as most of you know, three and a half years ago we began construction of our new power plant in the city of Obninsk. I am proud to announce that on Monday afternoon the Obninsk facility became fully operational—six months ahead of schedule.”

  Appropriate commendations and the nodding of heads.

  “Furthermore,” Malyshev continued, “at exactly eleven o’clock tonight—in less than two minutes—the plant will begin providing power to half the city of Moscow. . . .”

  With that, Malyshev turned and faced the windows (as the Count and Martyn quietly snuffed the candles on the table). Outside, the lights of Moscow glimmered in the same old fashion, such that as the seconds ticked by, the men in the room began shifting on their feet and exchanging remarks. But suddenly, in the far northwestern corner of the city, the lights in a neighborhood ten blocks square went out all at once. A moment later, the lights went out in the adjacent quarter. Then the darkness began moving across the city like a shadow across a plain, growing closer and closer, until at roughly 11:02, the eternally lit windows of the Kremlin went black, followed a few seconds later by those of the Metropol Hotel.

  In the darkness, the mutterings of a moment before rose in volume and shifted in tone, expressing some combination of surprise and consternation. But the attentive observer could see from Malyshev’s silhouette that when the darkness fell, he neither spoke nor moved. He continued to stare out the window. Suddenly, in the far northwest corner of the capital, the lights of those initially darkened blocks flickered back on. Now it was luminescence that was moving across the city, growing closer and closer, until the windows of the Kremlin flashed on followed by the chandelier overhead—and the combined dinner of the Presidium and the Council of Ministers erupted into justified applause. For, in fact, the lights of the city seemed to burn brighter with the electricity from the first nuclear power plant in the world.

  Without a doubt, the finale to this dinner of state was as fine a piece of political theater as Moscow had ever seen. But when the lights went out, were any of the city’s citizens inconvenienced?

  Luckily, in 1954 Moscow was not the world capital of electrical appliances. But in the brief course of the outage, at least three hundred thousand clocks stopped, forty thousand radios went silent, and five thousand televisions went black. Dogs howled and cats meowed. Standing lamps were toppled, children cried, parents banged their shins into coffee tables, and more than a few drivers—looking up through their windshields at the suddenly darkened buildings—ran into the fenders of the automobiles in front of them.

  In that little gray building on the corner of Dzerzhinsky Street, the little gray fellow who was charged with taking down the eavesdroppings of waitresses kept right on typing. For like any good bureaucrat, he knew how to type with his eyes closed. Although, when a few moments after the lights went out someone stumbled in the hallway and our startled typist looked up, his fingers inadvertently shifted one column of keys to the right, such that the second half of his report was either unintelligible, or in code, depending upon your point of view.

  Meanwhile, at the Maly Theatre, where Anna Urbanova—in a wig tinged with gray—was appearing as Irina Arkadina in Chekhov’s The Seagull, the audience let out muted exclamations of concern. Though Anna and her fellow actors were well practiced at leaving the stage in the dark, they made no move to do so. For having been trained in the methods of Stanislavsky, they immediately began acting exactly as their characters would have acted had they suddenly found themselves in a blackout:

  ARKADINA: [Alarmed] The lights have gone out!

  TRIGORIN: Stay where you are, my dear. I’ll look for a candle. [The sound of cautious movement as TRIGORIN exits right, followed by a moment of silence]

  ARKADINA: Oh, Konstantin. I’m frightened.

  KONSTANTIN: It is only darkness, Mother—that from which we have come and to which we shall return.

  ARKADINA: [As if she hasn’t listened to her son] Do you think the lights have gone out all over Russia?

  KONSTANTIN: No, Mother. They have gone out all over the world. . . .

  And at the Metropol? Two waiters in the Piazza carrying trays to their tables collided; four customers in the Shalyapin spilled their drinks and one was pinched; trapped in the elevator between the second and third floors, the American, Pudgy Webster, shared chocolate bars and cigarettes with his fellow passengers; while alone in his office, the hotel’s manager vowed “to get to the bottom of this.”

  But in the dining room of the Boyarsky, where for almost fifty years the ambience had been defined by candlelight, the customers were served without interruption.

  Anecdotes

  On the night of the sixteenth of June, beside Sofia’s empty suitcase and knapsack, the Count laid out all of the various items that he had collected on her behalf. The night before, when she’d returned from rehearsal, he had sat her down and explained exactly what it was that she must do.

  “Why have you waited until now to speak of this?” she asked, on the verge of tears.

  “I was afraid if I told you earlier, you would object.”

  “But I do object.”

  “I know,” he said, taking her hands. “But oftentimes, Sofia, our best course of action appears objectionable at the first step. In fact, it almost always does.”

  What followed was a debate between father and daughter on the whys and wherefores, a contrasting of perspectives, a comparison of time horizons, and heartfelt expressions of conflicting hopes. But in the end, the Count asked Sofia that she trust him; and this proved to be a request that she did not know how to refuse. So, after a moment of shared silence, with the courage that she had shown since the first day they’d met, Sofia listened attentively as the Count went over every detail step by step.

  Tonight, as he finished laying out the items, the Count reviewed the same details for himself, to ensure that nothing had been forgotten or overlooked; and he was feeling, at last, that everything was in order, when the door flung open.

  “They have changed the venue!” Sofia exclaimed, out of breath.

  Father and daughter traded anxious looks.

  “To what?”

  About to answer, Sofia stopped and closed her eyes. Then opened them with a suggestion of distress.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “It’s all right,” assured the Count, knowing full well that distress was no friend to recollection. “What did the director say exactly? Do you remember anything about the new location? Any aspect of its neighborhood or name?”

  Sofia closed her eyes again.

  “It was a hall, I think . . . , a salle.”

  “The Salle Pleyel?”

  “That’s it!”

  The Count breathed a sigh of relief.

  “We needn’t worry. I know the spot well. A historic venue with fine acoustics—which also happens to be in the 8th. . .”

  So, as Sofia packed her bags, the Count went down to the basement. Having found the second Paris Baedeker, he tore out the map, climbed the stairs, sat at the Grand Duke’s desk, and drew a new red line. Then when all the straps were tightened and the latches snapped, with a touch of ceremony the Count ushered Sofia through the closet doo
r into the study, much as he had sixteen years before. And just as on that occasion, Sofia said: “Ooo.”

  For since she had set out earlier that afternoon to attend her last rehearsal, their secret study had been transformed. On the bookcase a candelabra burned brightly. The two high-back chairs had been set at either end of the Countess’s oriental coffee table, which in turn had been draped with linen, decorated with a small arrangement of flowers, and set with the hotel’s finest silver.

  “Your table awaits,” said the Count with a smile, pulling out Sofia’s chair.

  “Okroshka?” she asked as she put her napkin in her lap.

  “Absolutely,” said the Count, taking his seat. “Before one travels abroad, it is best to have a simple, heartwarming soup from home, so that one can recall it fondly should one ever happen to feel a little low.”

  “I shall be sure to do so,” said Sofia with a smile, “the minute I become homesick.”

  As they were finishing their soup, Sofia noticed that tucked beside the arrangement of flowers was a little silver lady in an eighteenth-century dress.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you see for yourself.”

  Sofia picked up the little lady and, hearing the hint of a jangle, waggled it back and forth. At the sound of the resulting chime, the door to the study swung open and in came Andrey pushing a Regency cart topped with a silver dome.

  “Bonsoir, Monsieur! Bonsoir, Mademoiselle!”

  Sofia laughed.

  “I trust you enjoyed the soup,” he said.

  “It was delicious.”

  “Très bien.”

  Andrey whisked the bowls from the table and stowed them on the bottom shelf of his cart as the Count and Sofia looked to the silver dome with anticipation. But when Andrey stood back up, instead of revealing what Chef Zhukovsky had in store for them, he produced a pad.

  “Before I serve the next course,” he explained, “I will need you to confirm your satisfaction with the soup. Please sign here and here and here.”

  The look of shock on the Count’s face prompted a burst of laughter from both Andrey and Sofia. Then with a flourish, the maître d’ raised the dome and presented Emile’s newest specialty: Goose à la Sofia. “In which,” he explained, “the goose is hoisted in a dumbwaiter, chased down a hall, and thrown from a window before being roasted.”

  Andrey carved the bird, served the vegetables, and poured the Château Margaux all in a single motion of the hands. Then he wished the diners “Bon appétit” as he backed out the door.

  While the two enjoyed Emile’s latest creation, the Count recalled for Sofia in some detail the commotion he had found on the fourth floor that morning in 1946—including the army-issue briefs that Richard Vanderwhile had saluted. And this somehow led to a retelling of the time that Anna Urbanova threw all her clothes out the window, only to gather them back up in the middle of the night. Which is to say, they shared those humorous little stories of which family lore is made.

  Perhaps some will find this surprising, having supposed that the Count would reserve this particular dinner for an offering of Polonial advice or expressions of heartache. But the Count had quite intentionally chosen to see to all of that the night before, after their discussion of what was to be done.

  Showing a sense of personal restraint that was almost out of character, the Count had restricted himself to two succinct pieces of parental advice. The first was that if one did not master one’s circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne’s maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness. But when it came to expressing admissions of heartache, the Count had not held back. He told her exactly how sad he would be in her absence, and yet, how joyful he would feel at the slightest thought of her grand adventure.

  Why was the Count so careful to ensure that all of this was covered on the night before Sofia’s journey? Because well he knew that when one is traveling abroad for the first time, one does not wish to look back on laborsome instructions, weighty advice, or tearful sentiments. Like the memory of the simple soup, when one is homesick what one will find most comforting to recall are those lighthearted little stories that have been told a thousand times before.

  That said, when their plates were finally empty, the Count attempted to broach a new subject that had clearly weighed on his mind.

  “I was thinking . . . ,” he began rather haltingly. “Or rather, it occurred to me, that you might like . . . Or at some point, perhaps . . .”

  Amused to see her father so uncharacteristically flummoxed, Sofia laughed.

  “What is it, Papa? What might I like?”

  Reaching into his jacket, the Count sheepishly removed the photograph that Mishka had tucked into the pages of his project.

  “I know how you treasure the photograph of your parents, so I thought . . . you might like a picture of me, as well.” Blushing for the first time in over forty years, he handed her the picture, adding: “It’s the only one I have.”

  Genuinely moved, Sofia accepted the photograph with every intention of expressing her deepest gratitude; but getting a look at the picture, she clapped a hand over her mouth and began to laugh.

  “Your moustaches!” she blurted.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “Although, believe it or not, at one time, they were the envy of the Jockey Club. . . .”

  Sofia laughed aloud again.

  “All right,” said the Count, holding out his hand. “If you don’t want it, I understand.”

  But she gripped the picture to her chest.

  “I wouldn’t part with it for the world.” Smiling, she took another peek at his moustaches then looked up at her father in wonder. “Whatever happened to them?”

  “What happened to them, indeed . . .”

  Taking a considerable drink of his wine, the Count told Sofia of the afternoon in 1922 when one of his moustaches had been clipped so unceremoniously by a heavyset fellow in the hotel’s barbershop.

  “What a brute.”

  “Yes,” agreed the Count, “and a glimpse of things to come. But, in a way, I have that fellow to thank for my life with you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  The Count explained how a few days after the incident in the barbershop, her mother had popped up at his table in the Piazza to ask, in essence, the very same question that Sofia had just asked: Where did they go? And with that simple inquiry, their friendship had commenced.

  Now it was Sofia who took a drink from her wine.

  “Do you ever regret coming back to Russia?” she asked after a moment. “I mean after the Revolution.”

  The Count studied his daughter. If when Sofia had stepped out of Anna’s room in her blue dress, the Count had felt she was crossing the threshold into adulthood, then here was a perfect confirmation. For in both tone and intent, when Sofia posed this question she did not do so as a child asks a parent, but as one adult asks another about the choices he has made. So the Count gave the question its due consideration. Then he told her the truth:

  “Looking back, it seems to me that there are people who play an essential role at every turn. And I don’t just mean the Napoleons who influence the course of history; I mean men and women who routinely appear at critical junctures in the progress of art, or commerce, or the evolution of ideas—as if Life itself has summoned them once again to help fulfill its purpose. Well, since the day I was born, Sofia, there was only one time when Life needed me to be in a particular place at a particular time, and that was when your mother brought you to the lobby of the Metropol. And I would not accept the Tsarship of all the Russias in exchange for being in this hotel at that hour.”

  Sofia rose from the table to give her father a kiss on the cheek. Then returning to her chair, she leaned back, squinted, and said: “Famous threesomes.”

  “Ha-ha!” exc
laimed the Count.

  Thus, as the candles were consumed by their flames and the bottle of Margaux was drunk to its lees, reference was made to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; Purgatory, Heaven, and Hell; the three rings of Moscow; the three Magi; the three Fates; the Three Musketeers; the gray ladies from Macbeth; the riddle of the Sphinx; the heads of Cerberus; the Pythagorean theorem; forks, spoons, and knives; reading, writing, and arithmetic; faith, hope, and love (with the greatest of these being love).

  “Past, present, future.”

  “Beginning, middle, end.”

  “Morning, noon, and night.”

  “The sun, the moon, the stars.”

  And with this particular category, perhaps the game could have gone on all night long, but for the fact that the Count tipped over his own king with a bow of the head when Sofia said:

  “Andrey, Emile, and Alexander.”

  At ten o’clock, when the Count and Sofia snuffed the candles and returned to their bedroom, there was a delicate knock at the door. The two looked at each other with the wistful smiles of those who know the hour has come.

  “Enter,” said the Count.

  It was Marina, in her hat and coat.

  “I’m sorry if I’m late.”

  “No, no. You’re right on time.”

  As Sofia took a jacket from the closet, the Count picked up her suitcase and knapsack from the bed. Then the three of them headed down the belfry to the fifth floor, where they exited, crossed the hallway, and continued their descent on the main staircase.

  Earlier that day, Sofia had already said her good-byes to Arkady and Vasily; nonetheless, they came out from behind their desks to see her off, and they were joined a moment later by Andrey in his tuxedo and Emile in his apron. Even Audrius appeared from behind the bar of the Shalyapin, leaving his customers unattended for a change. This little assembly gathered around Sofia in a circle of well-wishing, while feeling that touch of envy which is perfectly acceptable among family and friends, from one generation to the next.