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AT HALF PAST six on the twenty-first of June 1922, when Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin onto Red Square, it was glorious and cool. Drawing his shoulders back without breaking stride, the Count inhaled the air like one fresh from a swim. The sky was the very blue that the cupolas of St. Basil’s had been painted for. Their pinks, greens, and golds shimmered as if it were the sole purpose of a religion to cheer its Divinity. Even the Bolshevik girls conversing before the windows of the State Department Store seemed dressed to celebrate the last days of spring.

“Hello, my good man,” the Count called to Fyodor, at the edge of the square. “I see the blackberries have come in early this year!”

Giving the startled fruit seller no time to reply, the Count walked briskly on, his waxed moustaches spread like the wings of a gull. Passing through Resurrection Gate, he turned his back on the lilacs of the Alexander Gardens and proceeded toward Theatre Square, where the Hotel Metropol stood in all its glory. When he reached the threshold, the Count gave a wink to Pavel, the afternoon doorman, and turned with a hand outstretched to the two soldiers trailing behind him.

“Thank you, gentlemen, for delivering me safely. I shall no longer be in need of your assistance.”

Though strapping lads, both of the soldiers had to look up from under their caps to return the Count’s gaze—for like ten generations of Rostov men, the Count stood an easy six foot three.

“On you go,” said the more thuggish of the two, his hand on the butt of his rifle. “We’re to see you to your rooms.”

In the lobby, the Count gave a wide wave with which to simultaneously greet the unflappable Arkady (who was manning the front desk) and sweet Valentina (who was dusting a statuette). Though the Count had greeted them in this manner a hundred times before, both responded with a wide-eyed stare. It was the sort of reception one might have expected when arriving for a dinner party having forgotten to don one’s pants.

Passing the young girl with the penchant for yellow who was reading a magazine in her favorite lobby chair, the Count came to an abrupt stop before the potted palms in order to address his escort.

The soldiers looked from one another to the Count and back again, apparently unable to make up their minds.

How is a soldier expected to prevail on the field of battle, the Count wondered, if he cannot be decisive about ascending to an upper floor?

“The stairs,” he determined on their behalf, then vaulted the steps two at a time, as had been his habit since the academy.

On the third floor, the Count walked down the red-carpeted hallway toward his suite—an interconnected bedroom, bath, dining room, and grand salon with eight-foot windows overlooking the lindens of Theatre Square. And there the rudeness of the day awaited. For before the flung-open doors of his rooms stood a captain of the guards with Pasha and Petya, the hotel’s bellhops. The two young men met the Count’s gaze with looks of embarrassment, having clearly been conscripted into some duty they found distasteful. The Count addressed the officer.

The captain, who seemed mildly surprised by the question, had the good training to maintain the evenness of his affect.

Betraying the slightest suggestion of a smile, the captain replied, “No longer, I’m afraid.”

Leaving Pasha and Petya behind, the captain led the Count and his escort to a utility stair hidden behind an inconspicuous door in the core of the hotel. The ill-lit ascent turned a sharp corner every five steps in the manner of a belfry. Up they wound three flights to where a door opened on a narrow corridor servicing a bathroom and six bedrooms reminiscent of monastic cells. This attic was originally built to house the butlers and ladies’ maids of the Metropol’s guests; but when the practice of traveling with servants fell out of fashion, the unused rooms had been claimed by the caprices of casual urgency—thenceforth warehousing scraps of lumber, broken furniture, and other assorted debris.

Earlier that day, the room closest to the stairwell had been cleared of all but a cast-iron bed, a three-legged bureau, and a decade of dust. In the corner near the door was a small closet, rather like a telephone box, that had been dropped in the room as an afterthought. Reflecting the pitch of the roof, the ceiling sloped at a gradual incline as it moved away from the door, such that at the room’s outer wall the only place where the Count could stand to his full height was where a dormer accommodated a window the size of a chessboard.

As the two guards looked on smugly from the hall, the good captain explained that he had summoned the bellhops to help the Count move what few belongings his new quarters would accommodate.

Back down the belfry he skipped as the guards hurried behind him, their rifles clacking against the wall. On the third floor, he marched along the hallway and into his suite where the two bellhops looked up with woeful expressions.

“It’s all right, fellows,” the Count assured and then began pointing: “This. That. Those. All the books.”

Among the furnishings destined for his new quarters, the Count chose two high-back chairs, his grandmother’s oriental coffee table, and a favorite set of her porcelain plates. He chose the two table lamps fashioned from ebony elephants and the portrait of his sister, Helena, which Serov had painted during a brief stay at Idlehour in 1908. He did not forget the leather case that had been fashioned especially for him by Asprey in London and which his good friend Mishka had so appropriately christened the Ambassador.

Someone had shown the courtesy of having one of the Count’s traveling trunks brought to his bedroom. So, as the bellhops carried the aforementioned upward, the Count filled the trunk with clothes and personal effects. Noting that the guards were eyeing the two bottles of brandy on the console, the Count tossed them in as well. And once the trunk had been carried upstairs, he finally pointed to the desk.

The two bellhops, their bright blue uniforms already smudged from their efforts, took hold of it by the corners.

“A king fortifies himself with a castle,” observed the Count, “a gentleman with a desk.”

As the bellhops lugged it into the hall, the Rostovs’ grandfather clock, which was fated to be left behind, tolled a doleful eight. The captain had long since returned to his post and the guards, having swapped their belligerence for boredom, now leaned against the wall and let the ashes from their cigarettes fall on the parquet floor while into the grand salon poured the undiminished light of the Moscow summer solstice.

With a wistful eye, the Count approached the windows at the suite’s northwest corner. How many hours had he spent before them? How many mornings dressed in his robe with his coffee in hand had he observed the new arrivals from St. Petersburg disembarking from their cabs, worn and weary from the overnight train? On how many winter eves had he watched the snow slowly descending as some lone silhouette, stocky and short, passed under a street lamp? At that very instant, at the square’s northern extreme a young Red Army officer rushed up the steps of the Bolshoi, having missed the first half hour of the evening’s performance.

The Count smiled to remember his own youthful preference for arriving entr’acte. Having insisted at the English Club that he could only stay for one more drink, he stayed for three. Then leaping into the waiting carriage, he’d flash across the city, vault the fabled steps, and like this young fellow slip through the golden doors. As the ballerinas danced gracefully across the stage, the Count would be whispering his excusez-moi’s, making his way to his usual seat in the twentieth row with its privileged view of the ladies in the loges.

Then he turned on his heels and began to walk his rooms. First, he admired the salon’s grand dimensions and its two chandeliers. He admired the painted panels of the little dining room and the elaborate brass mechanics that allowed one to secure the double doors of the bedroom. In short, he reviewed the interior much as would a potential buyer who was seeing the rooms for the very first time. Once in the bedroom, the Count paused before the marble-topped table on which lay an assortment of curios. From among them, he picked up a pair of scissors that had been prized by his sister. Fashioned in the shape of an egret with the long silver blades representing the bird’s beak and the small golden screw at the pivot representing its eye, the scissors were so delicate he could barely fit his thumb and finger through the rings.

Looking from one end of the apartment to the other, the Count took a quick inventory of all that would be left behind. What personal possessions, furnishings, and objets d’art he had brought to this suite four years before were already the product of a great winnowing. For when word had reached the Count of the Tsar’s execution, he had set out from Paris at once. Over twenty days, he had made his way across six nations and skirted eight battalions fighting under five different flags, finally arriving at Idlehour on the seventh of August 1918, with nothing but a rucksack on his back. Though he found the countryside on the verge of upheaval and the household in a state of distress, his grandmother, the Countess, was characteristically composed.

“Sasha,” she said without rising from her chair, “how good of you to come. You must be famished. Join me for tea.”

When he explained the necessity of her leaving the country and described the arrangements he had made for her passage, the Countess understood that there was no alternative. She understood that although every servant in her employ was ready to accompany her, she must travel with two. She also understood why her grandson and only heir, whom she had raised from the age of ten, would not be coming with her.

When the Count was just seven, he was defeated so soundly by a neighboring boy in a game of draughts that, apparently, a tear was shed, a curse was uttered, and the game pieces were scattered across the floor. This lack of sportsmanship led to a stiff reprimand from the Count’s father and a trip to bed without supper. But as the young Count was gripping his blanket in misery, he was visited by his grandmother. Taking a seat at the foot of the bed, the Countess expressed a measure of sympathy: “There is nothing pleasant to be said about losing,” she began, “and the Obolensky boy is a pill. But, Sasha, my dear, why on earth would you give him the satisfaction?” It was in this spirit that he and his grandmother parted without tears on the docks in Peterhof. Then the Count returned to the family estate in order to administer its shuttering.

In quick succession came the sweeping of chimneys, the clearing of pantries, and the shrouding of furniture. It was just as if the family were returning to St. Petersburg for the season, except that the dogs were released from their kennels, the horses from their stables, and the servants from their duties. Then, having filled a single wagon with some of the finest of the Rostovs’ furniture, the Count bolted the doors and set out for Moscow.

’Tis a funny thing, reflected the Count as he stood ready to abandon his suite. From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough.

But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion.

And so, slipping his sister’s scissors into his pocket, the Count looked once more at what heirlooms remained and then expunged them from his heartache forever.

One hour later, as the Count bounced twice on his new mattress to identify the key of the bedsprings (G-sharp), he surveyed the furniture that had been stacked around him and reminded himself how, as a youth, he had longed for trips to France by steamship and Moscow by the overnight train.

What a marvel it had been to discover the table that folded away without a trace; and the drawers built into the base of the bed; and the wall-mounted lamps just large enough to illuminate a page. This efficiency of design was music to the young mind. It attested to a precision of purpose and the promise of adventure. For such would have been the quarters of Captain Nemo when he journeyed twenty thousand leagues beneath the sea. And wouldn’t any young boy with the slightest gumption gladly trade a hundred nights in a palace for one aboard the Nautilus?

Besides, with half the rooms on the second floor temporarily commandeered by the Bolsheviks for the tireless typing of directives, at least on the sixth floor a man could hear himself think.fn1

Easing one of the high-back chairs aside and moving the elephant lamps to the bed, the Count opened his trunk. First, he took out the photograph of the Delegation and placed it on the desk where it belonged. Then he took out the two bottles of brandy and his father’s twice-tolling clock. But when he took out his grandmother’s opera glasses and placed them on the desk, a fluttering drew his attention toward the dormer. Though the window was only the size of a dinner invitation, the Count could see that a pigeon had landed outside on the copper stripping of the ledge.

The pigeon looked back with a decidedly proprietary air. Then it scuffed the flashing with its claws and thrust its beak at the window several times in quick succession.

He was about to explain to his new neighbor the cause of his unexpected arrival, when from the hallway came the delicate clearing of a throat. Without turning, the Count could tell that this was Andrey, the maître d’ of the Boyarsky, for it was his trademark interruption.

Nodding once to the pigeon to indicate that they would resume their discussion anon, the Count rebuttoned his jacket and turned to find that it was not Andrey alone who had paid a visit: three members of the hotel’s staff were crowded in the doorway.

There was Andrey with his perfect poise and long judicious hands; Vasily, the hotel’s inimitable concierge; and Marina, the shy delight with the wandering eye who had recently been promoted from chambermaid to seamstress. The three of them exhibited the same bewildered gaze that the Count had noticed on the faces of Arkady and Valentina a few hours before, and finally it struck him: When he had been carted off that morning, they had all assumed that he would never return. He had emerged from behind the walls of the Kremlin like an aviator from the wreckage of a crash.

“My dear friends,” said the Count, “no doubt you are curious as to the day’s events. As you may know, I was invited to the Kremlin for a tête-à-tête. There, several duly goateed officers of the current regime determined that for the crime of being born an aristocrat, I should be sentenced to spend the rest of my days . . . in this hotel.”

In response to the cheers, the Count shook hands with his guests one by one, expressing to each his appreciation for their fellowship and his heartfelt thanks.

Together, the three staff members squeezed their way between the teetering towers of furniture.

“If you would be so kind,” said the Count, handing Andrey one of the bottles of brandy. Then he kneeled before the Ambassador, threw the clasps, and opened it like a giant book. Carefully secured inside were fifty-two glasses—or more precisely, twenty-six pairs of glasses—each shaped to its purpose, from the grand embrace of the Burgundy glass down to those charming little vessels designed for the brightly colored liqueurs of southern Europe. In the spirit of the hour, the Count picked four glasses at random and passed them around as Andrey, having plucked the cork from the bottle, performed the honors.

The Count was something of a natural-born host and in the hour that ensued, as he topped a glass here and sparked a conversation there, he had an instinctive awareness of all the temperaments in the room. Despite the formality appropriate to his position, tonight Andrey exhibited a ready smile and an occasional wink. Vasily, who spoke with such pointed accuracy when providing directions to the city’s sights, suddenly had the lilt of one who may or may not remember tomorrow what he had said today. And at every jest, the shy Marina allowed herself to giggle without placing a hand in front of her lips.

On this of all nights, the Count deeply appreciated their good cheer; but he was not so vain as to imagine it was founded solely on news of his narrow escape. For as he knew better than most, it was in September of 1905 that the members of the Delegation had signed the Treaty of Portsmouth to end the Russo-Japanese War. In the seventeen years since the making of that peace—hardly a generation—Russia had suffered a world war, a civil war, two famines, and the so-called Red Terror. In short, it had been through an era of upheaval that had spared none. Whether one’s leanings were left or right, Red or White, whether one’s personal circumstances had changed for the better or changed for the worse, surely at long last it was time to drink to the health of the nation.

At ten o’clock, the Count walked his guests to the belfry and bid them goodnight with the same sense of ceremony that he would have exhibited at the door of his family’s residence in St. Petersburg. Returning to his quarters, he opened the window (though it was only the size of a postage stamp), poured the last of the brandy, and took a seat at the desk.

Built in the Paris of Louis XVI with the gilded accents and leather top of the era, the desk had been left to the Count by his godfather, Grand Duke Demidov. A man of great white sideburns, pale blue eyes, and golden epaulettes, the Grand Duke spoke four languages and read six. Never to wed, he represented his country at Portsmouth, managed three estates, and generally prized industry over nonsense. But before all of that, he had served alongside the Count’s father as a devil-may-care cadet in the cavalry. Thus had the Grand Duke become the Count’s watchful guardian. And when the Count’s parents succumbed to cholera within hours of each other in 1900, it was the Grand Duke who took the young Count aside and explained that he must be strong for his sister’s sake; that adversity presents itself in many forms; and that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.

How many of the Grand Duke’s words did those faint indentations reflect? Here over forty years had been written concise instructions to caretakers; persuasive arguments to statesmen; exquisite counsel to friends. In other words, it was a desk to be reckoned with.

Emptying his glass, the Count pushed his chair back and sat on the floor. He ran his hand behind the desk’s right front leg until he found the catch. When he pressed it, a seamless door opened to reveal a velvet-lined hollow that, like the hollows in the other three legs, was stacked with pieces of gold.

An Anglican Ashore

WHEN HE BEGAN to stir at half past nine, in the shapeless moments before the return to consciousness Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov savored the taste of the day to come.

Within the hour, he would be in the warm spring air striding along Tverskaya Street, his moustaches at full sail. En route, he would purchase the Herald from the stand on Gazetny Lane, he would pass Filippov’s (pausing only briefly to eye the pastries in the window) and then continue on to meet with his bankers.

But coming to a halt at the curb (in order to the let the traffic pass), the Count would note that his lunch at the Jockey Club was scheduled for two o’ clock—and that while his bankers were expecting him at half past ten, they were for all intents and purposes in the employ of their depositors, and thus could presumably be kept waiting. . . . With these thoughts in mind, he would double back and, taking his top hat from his head, open Filippov’s door.

In an instant, his senses would be rewarded by the indisputable evidence of the baker’s mastery. Drifting in the air would be the gentle aroma of freshly baked pretzels, sweet rolls, and loaves of bread so unparalleled they were delivered daily to the Hermitage by train—while arranged in perfect rows behind the glass of the front case would be cakes topped in frostings as varied in color as the tulips of Amsterdam. Approaching the counter, the Count would ask the young lady with the light blue apron for a mille-feuille (how aptly named) and watch with admiration as she used a teaspoon to gently nudge the delicacy from a silver spade onto a porcelain plate.

His refreshment in hand, the Count would take a seat as close as possible to the little table in the corner where young ladies of fashion met each morning to review the previous evening’s intrigues. Mindful of their surroundings, the three damsels would initially speak in the hushed voices of gentility; but swept away by the currents of their own emotions, their voices would inevitably rise, such that by 11:15, even the most discreet enjoyer of a pastry would have no choice but to eavesdrop on the thousand-layered complications of their hearts.

By 11:45, having cleaned his plate and brushed the crumbs from his moustaches, having waved a thanks to the girl behind the counter and tipped his hat to the three young ladies with whom he had briefly chatted, he would step back onto Tverskaya Street and pause to consider: What next? Perhaps he would stop by Galerie Bertrand to see the latest canvases from Paris, or slip into the hall of the Conservatory where some youthful quartet was trying to master a bit of Beethoven; perhaps he would simply circle back to the Alexander Gardens, where he could find a bench and admire the lilacs as a pigeon cooed and shuffled its feet on the copper flashing of the sill.

“Ah, yes,” acknowledged the Count. “I suppose there’s to be none of that.”

If the Count were to close his eyes and roll to the wall, was it possible that he could return to his bench just in time to remark, What a lovely coincidence, when the three young ladies from Filippov’s happened by?

Without a doubt. But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness.

Sitting upright, the Count put the soles of his feet squarely on the uncarpeted floor and gave the compass points of his moustaches a twist.

On the Grand Duke’s desk stood a champagne flute and a brandy snifter. With the lean uprightness of the former looking down upon the squat rotundity of the latter, one could not help but think of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the plains of the Sierra Morena. Or of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck in the shadows of Sherwood Forest. Or of Prince Hal and Falstaff before the gates of—

“One moment,” he called, rubbing his crown and rummaging through his trunk for a robe. Once suitably attired, he opened the door to find an industrious young fellow standing in the hall with the Count’s daily breakfast—a pot of coffee, two biscuits, and a piece of fruit (today a plum).

As Yuri arranged the breakfast on top of the trunk, the Count sat at the Grand Duke’s desk and penned a quick note to one Konstantin Konstantinovich of Durnovksi Street.

Never one to shirk, Yuri happily took the note, promised to relay it by hand, and accepted a tip with a bow. Then at the threshold he paused.

It was a reasonable question. For the room was rather stuffy, and on the sixth floor there was hardly much risk of one’s privacy being compromised.

As Yuri’s steps sounded down the belfry, the Count placed his napkin in his lap, poured a cup of coffee, and graced it with a few drops of cream. Taking his first sip, he noted with satisfaction that young Yuri must have sprinted up the extra three flights of stairs because the coffee was not one degree colder than usual.

But while he was liberating a wedge of the plum from its pit with his paring knife, the Count happened to note a silvery shadow, as seemingly insubstantial as a puff of smoke, slipping behind his trunk. Leaning to his side in order to peer around a high-back chair, the Count discovered that this will-o’-the-wisp was none other than the Metropol’s lobby cat. A one-eyed Russian blue who let nothing within the hotel’s walls escape his notice, he had apparently come to the attic to review the Count’s new quarters for himself. Stepping from the shadows, he leapt from the floor to the Ambassador, from the Ambassador to the side table, and from the side table to the top of the three-legged bureau, without making a sound. Having achieved this vantage point, he gave the room a good hard look then shook his head in feline disappointment.

“Yes,” said the Count after completing his own survey. “I see what you mean.”

The crowded confusion of furniture gave the Count’s little domain the look of a consignment shop in the Arbat. In a room this size, he could have made do with a single high-back chair, a single bedside table, and a single lamp. He could have made do without his grandmother’s Limoges altogether.

And the books? All of them! he had said with such bravado. But in the light of day, he had to admit that this instruction had been prompted less by good sense than by a rather childish impulse to impress the bellhops and put the guards in their place. For the books were not even to the Count’s taste. His personal library of majestic narratives by the likes of Balzac, Dickens, and Tolstoy had been left behind in Paris. The books the bellhops had lugged to the attic had been his father’s and, devoted as they were to studies of rational philosophy and the science of modern agriculture, each promised heft and threatened impenetrability.

So, having broken his fast, bathed, and dressed, the Count went about the business. First, he tried the door of the adjacent room. It must have been blocked on the inside by something quite heavy, for under the force of the Count’s shoulder it barely budged. In the next three rooms, the Count found flotsam and jetsam from floor to ceiling. But in the last room, amidst tiles of slate and strips of flashing, an ample space had been cleared around a dented old samovar where some roofers had once taken their tea.

Back in his room, the Count hung a few jackets in his closet. He unpacked some trousers and shirts into the back right corner of his bureau (to ensure that the three-legged beast wouldn’t topple). Down the hall he dragged his trunk, half of his furniture, and all of his father’s books but one. Thus, within an hour he had reduced his room to its essentials: a desk and chair, a bed and bedside table, a high-back chair for guests, and a ten-foot passage just wide enough for a gentleman to circumambulate in reflection.

With satisfaction the Count looked toward the cat (who was busy licking the cream from his paws in the comfort of the high-back chair). “What say you now, you old pirate?”

Then he sat at his desk and picked up the one volume that he had retained. It must have been a decade since the Count had first promised himself to read this work of universal acclaim that his father had held so dear. And yet, every time he had pointed his finger at his calendar and declared: This is the month in which I shall devote myself to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne! some devilish aspect of life had poked its head in the door. From an unexpected corner had come an expression of romantic interest, which could not in good conscience be ignored. Or his banker had called. Or the circus had come to town.

But here, at last, circumstance had conspired not to distract the Count, but to present him with the time and solitude necessary to give the book its due. So, with the volume firmly in hand, he put one foot on the corner of the bureau, pushed back until his chair was balanced on its two rear legs, and began to read:

By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End

The commonest way of softening the hearts of those we have offended, when, vengeance in hand, they hold us at their mercy, is by submission to move them to commiseration and pity. However, audacity and steadfastness—entirely contrary means—have sometimes served to produce the same effect. . . .

It was at Idlehour that the Count had first formed the habit of reading in a tilted chair.

On those glorious spring days when the orchards were in bloom and the foxtails bobbed above the grass, he and Helena would seek out a pleasant corner to while away the hours. One day it might be under the pergola on the upper patio and the next beside the great elm that overlooked the bend in the river. As Helena embroidered, the Count would tilt back his chair—balancing himself by resting a foot lightly on the lip of the fountain or the trunk of the tree—in order to read aloud from her favorite works of Pushkin. And hour upon hour, stanza upon stanza, her little needle would go round and round.

“Where are all those stitches headed?” he would occasionally demand at the end of a page. “Surely, by now, every pillow in the household has been graced by a butterfly and every handkerchief by a monogram.” And when he accused her of unwinding her stitches at night like Penelope just so that he would have to read her another volume of verse, she would smile inscrutably.

Looking up from the pages of Montaigne, the Count rested his gaze on Helena’s portrait, which was leaning against the wall. Painted at Idle-hour in the month of August, it depicted his sister at the dining room table before a plate of peaches. How well Serov had captured her likeness—with her hair as black as a raven’s, her cheeks lightly flushed, her expression tender and forgiving. Perhaps there had been something in those stitches, thought the Count, some gentle wisdom that she was mastering through the completion of every little loop. Yes, with such kindheartedness at the age of fourteen, one could only imagine the grace she might have exhibited at the age of twenty-five. . . .

The Count was roused from this reverie by a delicate tapping. Closing his father’s book, he looked back to find a sixty-year-old Greek in the doorway.

Letting the front legs of his chair land on the floor with a thump, the Count crossed to the threshold and took his visitor’s hand.

“I am so glad you could come. We have only met once or twice, so you may not remember, but I am Alexander Rostov.”

Waving Montaigne’s masterpiece at the one-eyed cat (who leapt to the floor with a hiss), the Count offered his guest the high-back chair and took the desk chair for himself.

In the moment that ensued, the old Greek returned the Count’s gaze with an expression of moderate curiosity—which was to be expected, perhaps, given that they had never met on a matter of business. After all, the Count was not accustomed to losing at cards. So the Count took it upon himself to begin.

Looking once about the room, the old Greek raised his hands to acknowledge the doleful impermanence of circumstances,

In making this suggestion, the old Greek paused ever so briefly before the word capital. And in the Count’s considered opinion, it was a perfect pause—one mastered over decades of delicate conversations. It was a pause with which he expressed an element of sympathy for his interlocutor without suggesting for even an instant that there had been a change in their relative stations.

“No, no,” assured the Count with a shake of the head to emphasize that borrowing was not a habit of the Rostovs. “On the contrary, Konstantin, I have something that I think will be of interest to you.” Then, as if from thin air, the Count produced one of the coins from the Grand Duke’s desk, balancing it upright on the tip of a finger and thumb.

The old Greek studied the coin for a second and then, in a sign of appreciation, slowly exhaled. For while Konstantin Konstantinovich was a lender by trade, his art was to see an item for a minute, to hold it for a moment, and to know its true worth.

He took the coin, turned it once, and handed it back with reverence. For not only was the piece pure in the metallurgical sense, the winking double eagle on the reverse confirmed to the experienced eye that it was one of the five thousand coins minted in commemoration of Catherine the Great’s coronation. Such a piece purchased from a gentleman in need could be sold at a reasonable profit to the most cautious of banking houses in the best of times. But in a period of upheaval? Even as the demand for common luxuries collapsed, the value of a treasure like this would be on the rise.

“Lonely? Oh, no,” replied the Count with a shake of the head. “It lives like a soldier in a barracks. Like a slave in a galley. Not a moment to itself, I’m afraid.”

And in a matter of minutes the two men had struck an arrangement without a hem or haw. What is more, the old Greek said it would be his pleasure to personally deliver three notes, which the Count penned on the spot. Then they shook hands like familiars and agreed to see each other three months hence.

“If your days of poetry are behind you, Count Rostov, then it is we who are sorry.”

Tucked discreetly into the northeast corner of the hotel’s second floor was the Boyarsky—the finest restaurant in Moscow, if not in all of Russia. With vaulted ceilings and dark red walls reminiscent of a boyar’s retreat, the Boyarsky boasted the city’s most elegant décor, its most sophisticated waitstaff, and its most subtle chef de cuisine.

So renowned was the experience of dining at the Boyarsky that on any given night one might have to elbow one’s way through a crowd of hopefuls just to catch the eye of Andrey, as he presided over the large black book in which the names of the fortunate were set down; and when beckoned ahead by the maître d’, one could expect to be stopped five times in four languages on the way to one’s table in the corner, where one would be served flawlessly by a waiter in a white dinner jacket.

That is, one could expect this until 1920 when, having already sealed the borders, the Bolsheviks decided to prohibit the use of rubles in fine restaurants—effectively closing them to 99 percent of the population. So tonight, as the Count began to eat his entrée, water glasses clinked against cutlery, couples whispered awkwardly, and even the best of waiters found himself staring at the ceiling.

When Emile Zhukovsky was lured to the Metropol as chef de cuisine in 1912, he was given command of a seasoned staff and a sizable kitchen. In addition, he had the most celebrated larder east of Vienna. On his spice shelves was a compendium of the world’s predilections and in his cooler a comprehensive survey of birds and beasts hanging from hooks by their feet. As such, one might naturally leap to the conclusion that 1912 had been a perfect year in which to measure the chef’s talents. But in a period of abundance any half-wit with a spoon can please a palate. To truly test a chef’s ingenuity, one must instead look to a period of want. And what provides want better than war?

In the Revolution’s aftermath—with its economic declines, failed crops, and halted trade—refined ingredients became as scarce in Moscow as butterflies at sea. The Metropol’s larder was depleted bushel by bushel, pound by pound, dash by dash, and its chef was left to meet the expectations of his audience with cornmeal, cauliflower, and cabbage—that is to say, with whatever he could get his hands on.

Yes, some claimed Emile Zhukovsky was a curmudgeon and others called him abrupt. Some said he was a short man with a shorter temper. But none could dispute his genius. Just consider the dish the Count was finishing at that very moment: a saltimbocca fashioned from necessity. In place of a cutlet of veal, Emile had pounded flat a breast of chicken. In place of prosciutto de Parma, he had shaved a Ukrainian ham. And in place of sage, that delicate leaf that binds the flavors together? He had opted for an herb that was as soft and aromatic as sage, but more bitter to the taste. . . . It wasn’t basil or oregano, of that the Count was certain, but he had definitely encountered it somewhere before. . . .

“Inspired. But I do have one question: The herb that Emile has tucked under the ham—I know it isn’t sage. By any chance, is it nettle?”

Without a doubt Emile Zhukovsky was a genius, reflected the Count, but the man who secured the Boyarsky’s reputation for excellence by ensuring that all within its walls ran smoothly was Andrey Duras.

Born in the south of France, Andrey was handsome, tall, and graying at the temples, but his most distinguishing feature was not his looks, his height, or his hair. It was his hands. Pale and well manicured, his fingers were half an inch longer than the fingers of most men his height. Had he been a pianist, Andrey could easily have straddled a twelfth. Had he been a puppeteer, he could have performed the sword fight between Macbeth and Macduff as all three witches looked on. But Andrey was neither a pianist nor a puppeteer—or at least not in the traditional sense. He was the captain of the Boyarsky, and one watched in wonder as his hands fulfilled their purpose at every turn.

Having just led a group of women to their table, for instance, Andrey seemed to pull back their chairs all at once. When one of the ladies produced a cigarette, he had a lighter in one hand and was guarding the flame with the other (as if a draft had ever been felt within the walls of the Boyarsky!). And when the woman holding the wine list asked for a recommendation, he didn’t point to the 1900 Bordeaux—at least not in the Teutonic sense. Rather, he slightly extended his index finger in a manner reminiscent of that gesture on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling with which the Prime Mover transmitted the spark of life. Then, excusing himself with a bow, he crossed the room and went through the kitchen door.

But before a minute could pass, the door swung open again—and there was Emile.

Five foot five and two hundred pounds, the chef glanced quickly about the room then marched toward the Count with Andrey trailing behind. As he crossed the dining room, the chef knocked into a customer’s chair and nearly toppled a busboy with his tray. Coming to an abrupt stop at the Count’s table, he looked him up and down as one might measure an opponent before challenging him to a duel.

Andrey, a little breathless, bowed to express both apologies and congratulations.

Though the Count was not a man to gloat, he could not repress a smile of satisfaction.

Knowing that the Count had a sweet tooth, Andrey gestured toward the dessert cart.

“Thank you for the thought, Andrey. Normally, I would leap at the chance. But tonight, I am otherwise committed.”

Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them, the Count thought it worth considering how one was most likely to achieve this aim when one had been sentenced to a life of confinement.

For Edmond Dantès in the Château d’If, it was thoughts of revenge that kept him clear minded. Unjustly imprisoned, he sustained himself by plotting the systematic undoing of his personal agents of villainy. For Cervantes, enslaved by pirates in Algiers, it was the promise of pages as yet unwritten that spurred him on. While for Napoleon on Elba, strolling among chickens, fending off flies, and sidestepping puddles of mud, it was visions of a triumphal return to Paris that galvanized his will to persevere.

But the Count hadn’t the temperament for revenge; he hadn’t the imagination for epics; and he certainly hadn’t the fanciful ego to dream of empires restored. No. His model for mastering his circumstances would be a different sort of captive altogether: an Anglican washed ashore. Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair, the Count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities. Having dispensed with dreams of quick discovery, the world’s Crusoes seek shelter and a source of fresh water; they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island’s topography, its climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand.

It was to this end that the Count had given the old Greek three notes to deliver. Within a matter of hours, the Count had been visited by two messengers: a young lad from Muir & Mirrielees bearing fine linens and a suitable pillow; and another from Petrovsky Passage with four bars of the Count’s favorite soap.

And the third respondent? She must have arrived while the Count was at dinner. For waiting on his bed was a light blue box with a single mille-feuille.

An Appointment

NEVER HAD THE chime of twelve been so welcome. Not in Russia. Not in Europe. Not in all the world. Had Romeo been told by Juliet that she would appear at her window at noon, the young Veronan’s rapture at the appointed hour could not have matched the Count’s. Had Dr. Stahl-baum’s children—Fritz and Clara—been told on Christmas morning that the drawing-room doors would be opened at midday, their elation could not have rivaled the Count’s upon the sounding of the first toll.

For having successfully fended off thoughts of Tverskaya Street (and chance encounters with young ladies of fashion), having bathed, dressed, and finished his coffee and fruit (today a fig), shortly after ten the Count had eagerly taken up Montaigne’s masterpiece only to discover that at every fifteenth line, his gaze was drifting toward the clock . . .

Admittedly, the Count had felt a touch of concern when he’d first lifted the book from the desk the day before. For as a single volume, it had the density of a dictionary or Bible—those books that one expects to consult, or possibly peruse, but never read. But it was the Count’s review of the Contents—a list of 107 essays on the likes of Constancy, Moderation, Solitude, and Sleep—that confirmed his initial suspicion that the book had been written with winter nights in mind. Without a doubt, it was a book for when the birds had flown south, the wood was stacked by the fireplace, and the fields were white with snow; that is, for when one had no desire to venture out and one’s friends had no desire to venture in.

Nonetheless, with a resolute glance at the time, much as a seasoned sea captain when setting out on an extended journey will log the exact hour he sets sail from port, the Count plowed once again into the waves of the first meditation: “By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End.”

In this opening essay—in which examples were expertly drawn from the annals of history—the author provided a most convincing argument that when one is at another’s mercy one should plead for one’s life.

At any rate, having firmly established that either approach might be the right one, the author proceeded to his second meditation: “Of Sadness.”

Here, Montaigne quoted an array of unimpeachable authorities from the Golden Age who confirmed conclusively that sadness is an emotion best shared.

It was somewhere in the middle of the third essay that the Count found himself glancing at the clock for the fourth or fifth time. Or was it the sixth? While the exact number of glances could not be determined, the evidence did seem to suggest that the Count’s attention had been drawn to the clock more than once.

Made to order for the Count’s father by the venerable firm of Breguet, the twice-tolling clock was a masterpiece in its own right. Its white enamel face had the circumference of a grapefruit and its lapis lazuli body sloped asymptotically from its top to its base, while its jeweled inner workings had been cut by craftsmen known the world over for an unwavering commitment to precision. And their reputation was certainly well founded. For as he progressed through the third essay (in which Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero had been crowded onto the couch with the Emperor Maximilian), the Count could hear every tick.

Why, this clock accounted the seconds as flawlessly as Homer accounted his dactyls and Peter the sins of the sinners.

The Count shifted his chair a little leftward in order to put the clock out of view, then he searched for the passage he’d been reading. He was almost certain it was in the fifth paragraph on the fifteenth page. But as he delved back into that paragraph’s prose, the context seemed utterly unfamiliar; as did the paragraphs that immediately preceded it. In fact, he had to turn back three whole pages before he found a passage that he recalled well enough to resume his progress in good faith.

“Is that how it is with you?” the Count demanded of Montaigne. “One step forward and two steps back?”

Intent upon showing who was master of whom, the Count vowed that he would not look up from the book again until he had reached the twenty-fifth essay. Spurred by his own resolve, the Count made quick work of Essays Four, Five, and Six. And when he dispatched Seven and Eight with even more alacrity, the twenty-fifth essay seemed as close at hand as a pitcher of water on a dining room table.

1922

An Ambassador

An Anglican Ashore

An Appointment