A Gentleman in Moscow (21 page)

The chef and maître d' nodded.

“And for those who cannot?”

The Count considered.

“Perhaps a Côtes du Rhône.”

“Excellent,” said Andrey.

Picking up his chopper, Emile pointed at the rest of the rack and cautioned the Count: “Tell your boys that my lamb is served rare. If someone wants it medium, they can go to a canteen.”

The Count expressed his comprehension and willingness to comply. Then Andrey closed the Book and Emile wiped his chopper. But as they began pushing back their chairs, the Count remained where he was.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “Just one more thing before we adjourn. . . .”

Given the expression on the Count's face, the chef and the maître d' pulled their chairs back to the table.

The Count looked through the window into the kitchen to confirm that the staff were consumed with their work. Then from his jacket pocket he took the envelope that had been slipped under his door. When he tipped it over Emile's unused teacup, out poured filaments of a red and golden hue.

The three men were silent for a moment.

Emile sat back.

“
Bravo
,” he said again.

“May I?” asked Andrey.

“Certainly.”

Andrey picked up the teacup and tipped it back and forth. Then he replaced it so gently on its saucer that the porcelain didn't make a sound.

“Is it enough?”

Having watched the filaments spill from the envelope, the chef didn't need a second look.

“Without a doubt.”

“Do we still have the fennel?”

“There are a few bulbs at the back of the larder. We'll have to discard the outer leaves, but otherwise they're fine.”

“Did you hear back about the oranges?” asked the Count.

With a somber look, the chef shook his head.

“How many would we need?” asked Andrey.

“Two. Maybe three.”

“I think I know where some can be found. . . .”

“Can they be found today?” asked the chef.

Andrey pulled the pocket watch from his vest and consulted it in the palm of his hand.

“With any luck.”

Where would Andrey be able to acquire three oranges on such short notice? Another restaurant? One of the special stores for hard currencies? A patron in the upper echelons of the Party? Well, for that matter, where did the Count acquire an ounce and a half of saffron? Such questions had stopped being asked years ago. Suffice it to say, the saffron was in hand and the oranges within reach.

The three conspirators exchanged satisfied glances and then pushed back their chairs. Andrey put his glasses back on his head as Emile turned to the Count.

“You'll get the menus in their hands directly and their orders taken promptly, eh? No malingering?”

“No malingering.”

“Well then,” concluded the chef. “We meet at half past twelve.”

When the Count left the Boyarsky with his white jacket draped across his arm, there was a smile on his lips and a jauntiness to his step. In fact, there was a brightness in his whole demeanor.

“Greetings, Grisha,” he said as he passed the bellhop (who was on his way up the stairs with a vase of tiger lilies two feet tall).

“
Guten tag
,” he said to the lovely young Fraulein in the lavender blouse (who was waiting by the elevator door).

The Count's good humor was due in part, no doubt, to the reading on the thermometer. Over the previous three weeks, the temperature had climbed four and a half degrees, setting in motion that course of natural and human events which culminates in hints of mint in cucumber soups, lavender blouses at elevator doors, and midday deliveries of tiger lilies two feet tall. Also lightening his step were the promises of an afternoon assignation and a midnight rendezvous. But the factor that most directly
contributed to the Count's good humor was the double
bravo
from Emile. This was something that had occurred only once or twice in four years.

Passing through the lobby, the Count returned the friendly wave from the new fellow at the mail window and hailed Vasily, who was hanging up his phone (having undoubtedly secured another two tickets for some sold-out performance).

“Good afternoon, my friend. Hard at work I see.”

In acknowledgment, the concierge gestured to the lobby, which bustled almost as much as it had in its prewar prime. As if on cue, the telephone on his desk began to ring, the bellhop's bell triple-chimed, and someone called out, “Comrade! Comrade!”

Ah,
comrade,
thought the Count. Now, there was a word for the ages. . . .

When the Count was a boy in St. Petersburg, one rarely bumped into it. It was always prowling at the back of a mill or under the table in a tavern, occasionally leaving its paw marks on the freshly printed pamphlets that were drying on a basement floor. Now, thirty years later, it was the most commonly heard word in the Russian language.

A wonder of semantic efficiency,
comrade
could be used as a greeting, or a word of parting. As a congratulations, or a caution. As a call to action, or a remonstrance. Or it could simply be the means of securing someone's attention in the crowded lobby of a grand hotel. And thanks to the word's versatility, the Russian people had finally been able to dispense with tired formalities, antiquated titles, bothersome idioms—even names! Where else in all of Europe could one shout a single word to hail any of one's countrymen be they male or female, young or old, friend or foe?

“Comrade!” someone called again—this time with a little more urgency. And then he tugged on the Count's sleeve.

Startled, the Count turned to find the new fellow from the mail window at his elbow.

“Well, hello there. How can I be of service to you, young man?”

The fellow looked perplexed at the Count's question, having assumed that it was his position to be of service to someone else.

“There is a letter for you,” he explained.

“For me?”

“Yes, comrade. It came yesterday.”

The young fellow pointed back toward the window to indicate where the letter remained.

“Well, in that case, after you,” said the Count.

Civil servant and customer proceeded to their appropriate stations on either side of that small window which separates the written from the read.

“Here it is,” he said, after a moment of sorting.

“Thank you, my good man.”

Taking the envelope in hand, the Count was half expecting to find it addressed to
Comrade
, but there (under two postage stamps bearing the likeness of Lenin) was the Count's full name—written in an indifferently groomed, relatively reclusive, occasionally argumentative script.

When the Count had come down to the lobby from the Boyarsky, he had been on his way to the office of the shy delight, where he hoped to secure a length of white thread for a button that had been compromised on his jacket. But he had not seen Mishka in almost half a year; and at the very moment that he recognized his old friend's script, a lady with a lapdog rose from his favorite chair between the potted palms. Ever respectful of Fate, the Count postponed his visit to the seamstress, claimed his seat, and opened the letter.

Leningrad

June 14, 1930

Dear Sasha,

At four this morning, unable to sleep, I ventured out into the old city. As the revelers of the white nights had already stumbled home and the tram conductors had yet to don their caps, I strolled along Nevsky Prospekt through a stillness of spring that seemed stolen from another province, if not another time.

Nevsky, like the city itself, bears a new name: October 25th Prospekt—a worthy day staking its claim on a storied street. But at this hour, it was just as you remember it, my friend. And with no destination in mind, I crossed the Moika and Fontanka Canals, I passed the shops, and the rose-hued facades of the grand old homes until, at last, I reached Tikhvin Cemetery, where the bodies of
Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky slumber a few feet apart. (Do you remember how late into the night we would debate the genius of the one over the other?)

And suddenly it struck me that walking the length of Nevsky Prospekt was like walking the length of Russian literature. Right there at the beginning—just off the avenue on the Moika embankment—is the house where Pushkin ended his years. A few paces on are the rooms where Gogol began Dead Souls. Then the National Library, where Tolstoy scoured the archives. And here, behind the cemetery walls, lies brother Fyodor, our restless witness of the human soul entombed beneath the cherry trees.

As I was standing lost in thought, the sun rose above the cemetery walls, shining its light down the Prospekt and, nearly overcome, I recalled that great affirmation, that proclamation, that promise:

Always to shine,

to shine everywhere,

to the very depths of the last days . . .

Before turning to the second page of his old friend's letter, the Count found himself looking up, deeply moved.

It was not the memories of St. Petersburg that affected him so—not some nostalgia for his youth among the rose-hued facades, or for his years with Mishka in the apartment above the cobbler's. Nor was it Mishka's sentimental reminders of Russia's literary greatness. What moved the Count was the thought of his old friend venturing out into this stolen spring barely aware of where he was headed. For from the letter's first line, the Count had known exactly where Mishka was headed.

It had been four years since Mishka had moved to Kiev with Katerina; it had been one year since she had left him for another man; and six months since he had returned to St. Petersburg to barricade himself once again behind his books. Then one spring night at four in the morning, unable to sleep, he finds himself on Nevsky Prospekt following the very same route that he had walked with Katerina on the day that she had first taken his hand. And there, as the sun begins to rise, he is overcome with thoughts of an affirmation, a proclamation, a promise—a promise
to shine everywhere and always to very depths of the last days—which, after all, is all that anyone has ever asked of love.

As these thoughts passed through the Count's mind, was he concerned that Mishka still pined for Katerina? Was he concerned that his old friend was morbidly retracing the footsteps of a lapsed romance?

Concerned? Mishka would pine for Katerina the rest of his life! Never again would he walk Nevsky Prospekt, however they chose to rename it, without feeling an unbearable sense of loss. And that is just how it should be. That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love.

The Count picked up Mishka's letter with the intention of reading on, but as he turned the page, three youths leaving the Piazza happened to stop on the other side of one of the potted palms to carry on some weighty conversation.

The trio was made up of a good-looking Komsomol type in his early twenties, and two younger women—one blonde, one brunette. The three were apparently headed for the Ivanovo Province in some official capacity and the young man, who was their captain, now warned his compatriots of the privations they would inevitably face while assuring them of their work's historical significance.

When he finished, the brunette asked how large the province was, but before he could answer, the blonde obliged: “It is over three hundred square miles with a population of half a million. And while the region is largely agricultural, it has only eight machine tractor stations and six modern mills.”

The handsome captain did not seem the least put out by his younger comrade answering on his behalf. On the contrary, it was plain from the expression on his face that he held her in the highest regard.

As the blonde concluded her geography lesson, a fourth member of the party jogged up from the direction of the Piazza. Shorter and younger than the leader, he was wearing the sailor's cap that had been favored among landlocked youth ever since
Battleship Potemkin
. In his hand he had a canvas jacket, which he now held out to the blonde.

“I took the liberty of getting your coat,” he said eagerly, “when I picked up mine.”

The blonde accepted the coat with a nod, and without a word of thanks.

Without a word of thanks . . . ?

The Count rose to his feet.

“Nina?”

All four youths turned toward the potted palm.

Leaving his white jacket and Mishka's letter in his chair, the Count stepped from behind the fronds.

“Nina Kulikova!” he exclaimed. “What a delightful surprise.”

And that is exactly what it was for the Count: a delightful surprise. For he had not seen Nina in over two years; and many had been the time that he had passed the card room or the ballroom and found himself wondering where she was and what she was doing.

But in an instant, the Count could see that for Nina his sudden appearance was less opportune. Perhaps she'd rather not have to explain to her comrades about her acquaintance with a Former Person. Perhaps she hadn't mentioned that she had lived as a child in such a fine hotel. Or perhaps she simply wanted to carry on this purposeful conversation with her purposeful friends.