A Gentleman in Moscow (28 page)

This entire exchange—from Nina's saying the Count's name to her passing through the hotel's doors—had taken less than fifteen minutes. So, the Count had little more than a moment to consider the nature of the commitment he was being asked to make.

Granted it was only for a month or two. He would not be responsible for the girl's education, her moral instruction, or her religious upbringing. But her health and comfort? He would be responsible for those even were he to care for her for one night. What was she to eat? Where was she to sleep? And, while it was his night off tonight, what was he to do with her the following evening, when he had to don the white jacket of the Boyarsky?

But let us imagine that before committing himself, the Count had had the time to see the problem in its full scope, to consider every challenge and obstacle, to acknowledge his own lack of experience, to concede that in all likelihood he was the least fitting, least well-equipped, and most
poorly situated man in Moscow to care for a child. Had he the time and presence of mind to weigh all of this, would he have denied Nina her request?

He would not even have attempted to dissuade her.

How could he?

This was the very woman who, as a child herself, had crossed the Piazza without hesitation in order to become his friend; who had shown him the hidden corners of the hotel and bestowed upon him, quite literally, the key to its mysteries. When such a friend has sought one out to ask for aid—particularly one for whom asking favors in a time of need does not come naturally—then there is only one acceptable response.

The Count slipped the photograph in his pocket. He composed himself. Then he turned to find his new charge looking up at him.

“Well, Sofia. Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?”

She shook her head.

“Then why don't we head upstairs and get ourselves situated.”

The Count helped Sofia down from the chair and led her across the lobby. But as he was about to mount the stairs, he noticed her staring when the elevator doors opened to let off two of the hotel's guests.

“Have you ever ridden on an elevator before?” he asked.

Gripping her doll by the neck, Sofia shook her head again.

“In that case . . .”

Holding the doors open, the Count gestured for Sofia to proceed. With an expression of cautious curiosity, she stepped onto the elevator, made room for the Count, and then watched as the doors slid shut.

With a theatrical flourish and the command of
Presto!
the Count pressed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator lurched and began to move. Sofia steadied herself; then she leaned a little to her right so that she could watch the floors pass by through the caging.

“
Voil
à
,” said the Count when they arrived a moment later at their destination.

Leading Sofia down the hall and into the belfry, the Count gestured again for her to proceed. But having looked up the narrow twisting stair, Sofia turned to the Count and raised both hands in the air in the international symbol of
Pick me up
.

“Hmm,” said the Count. Then despite his age, he picked her up.

She yawned.

Once in his room, the Count sat Sofia on his bed, put her knapsack on the Grand Duke's desk, and then told her he would be right back. He walked down the hall and retrieved a winter blanket from his trunk. His plan was to make her a small bed on the floor beside his own and lend her one of his pillows. He would just have to be careful not to step on her, should he wake in the night.

But the Count needn't have worried about stepping on Sofia. For when he returned to his room with the blanket, she had already climbed under his covers and fallen asleep.

N
ever had the toll of a bell been so welcome. Not in Moscow. Not in Europe. Not in all the world. When the Frenchman Carpentier faced the American Dempsey, he could not have felt more relief upon hearing the clang that signaled the end of the third round than the Count felt upon hearing his own clock strike twelve. Nor could the citizens of Prague upon hearing the church bells that signaled the end of their siege at the hands of Frederick the Great.

What was it about this child that prompted a grown man to count so carefully the minutes until lunch? Did she prattle on nonsensically? Did she flit about giggling? Did she dissolve into tears or launch into tantrums at the slightest provocation?

On the contrary. She was quiet.

Unsettlingly so.

Upon waking she rose, dressed, and made her bed without a word. When the Count served breakfast, she nibbled her biscuits like a Trappist. Then, having quietly cleared her plate, she climbed up onto the Count's desk chair, sat on her hands, and gazed at him in silence. And what a gaze it was. With irises as dark and foreboding as the deep, it was positively unnerving. Without shyness or impatience, it seemed simply to say:
What now, Uncle Alexander?

What now, indeed. For having made their beds and nibbled their biscuits, the two of them had the whole day before them. 16 hours. 960 minutes. 57,600 seconds!

The notion was indisputably daunting.

But who was Alexander Rostov, if not a seasoned conversationalist? At weddings and name-day celebrations from Moscow to St. Petersburg, he had inevitably been seated beside the most recalcitrant of dinner guests. The prudish aunts and pompous uncles. The mirthless, mordant, and shy. Why? Because Alexander Rostov could be counted upon to draw
his dinner companions into a lively conversation, whatever their dispositions.

If he had happened to be seated beside Sofia at a dinner party—or, for that matter, in the compartment of a train traveling across the countryside—what would he do? Naturally, he would ask about her life:
Where are you from, my friend? Ivanovo, you say. I have never been, but always wanted to go. What is the best season to visit? And what should one see whilst one is there?

“So, tell me . . . ,” the Count began with a smile, as Sofia's eyes opened wide.

But even as the words were leaving his lips, the Count was having second thoughts. For he was decidedly not seated beside Sofia at a dinner party, or in a railway car. She was a child who, with little explanation, had been uprooted from her home. To pursue a line of inquiry about the sights and seasons of Ivanovo or daily life with her parents was almost certain to raise a host of sad associations, spurring feelings of longing and loss.

“So, tell me . . . ,” he said again, feeling the onset of dizziness, as her eyes opened wider. But just in time, he had a flash of inspiration:

“What is your dolly's name?”

A sure step, that one, thought the Count, with an inward pat on the back.

“Dolly doesn't have a name.”

“What's that? No name? But surely, your doll
must
have a name.”

Sofia stared at the Count for a moment then tilted her head like a raven.

“Why?”

“Why?” repeated the Count. “Why, so that she can be addressed. So that she can be invited for tea; called to from across the room; discussed in conversation when absent; and included in your prayers. That is, for all the very reasons that
you
benefit from having a name.”

As Sofia considered this, the Count leaned forward, ready to elaborate on the matter to the smallest detail. But nodding once, the girl said, “I shall call her Dolly.” Then she looked to the Count with her big blue eyes as if to say:
Now that that's decided, what next?

The Count leaned back in his chair and began to sort through his vast catalog of casual questions, discarding one after another. But as luck would have it, he noticed that Sofia's gaze had shifted almost furtively toward something behind him.

Discreetly, the Count glanced back.

The ebony elephant, he realized with a smile. Raised her entire life in a rural province, the child had probably never even imagined that such an animal existed.
What sort of fantastical beast is that?
she must be wondering.
Is it mammal or reptile? Fact or fable?

“Have you ever seen one of those before?” the Count asked with a backward gesture and a smile.

“An elephant?” she asked. “Or a lamp?”

The Count coughed.

“I meant an elephant.”

“Only in books,” she admitted a little sadly.

“Ah. Well. It is a magnificent animal. A wonder of creation.”

Sofia's interest piqued, the Count launched into a description of the species, animating each of its characteristics with an illustrative flourish of the arms. “A native of the Dark Continent, the mature example can weigh over ten thousand pounds. Its legs are as thick as tree trunks, and it bathes itself by drawing water into its proboscis and spraying it into the air—”

“So, you have seen one?” she interrupted brightly. “On the Dark Continent?”

The Count fidgeted.

“Not exactly on the Dark Continent . . .”

“Then where?”

“In various books . . .”

“Oh,” said Sofia, bringing the topic to a close with the efficiency of the guillotine.

. . .

. . .

The Count considered for a moment what other sort of wonder might capture her imagination, but which he had actually seen in person.

“Would you like to hear a story about a princess?” he suggested.

Sofia sat upright.

“The age of the nobility has given way to the age of the common man,” she said with the pride of one who has recited her times tables correctly. “It was historically inevitable.”

“Yes,” said the Count. “So I've been told.”

. . .

. . .

“Do you enjoy pictures?” he asked, picking up an illustrated guide to the Louvre that he had borrowed from the basement. “Here is a lifetime's supply. While I wash up, why don't you delve in?”

Sofia moved a little in order to set Dolly at her side and then accepted the book in a ready and determined manner.

Retreating to the safety of the washroom, the Count took off his shirt, bathed his upper body, and lathered his cheeks, all the while muttering the principal riddle of the day:

“She is no more than thirty pounds; no more than three feet tall; her entire bag of belongings could fit in a single drawer; she rarely speaks unless spoken to; and her heart beats no louder than a bird's. So how is it possible that she takes up so much space?!”

Over the years, the Count had come to think of his rooms as rather ample. In the morning, they easily accommodated twenty squats and twenty stretches, a leisurely breakfast, and the reading of a novel in a tilted chair. In the evenings after work, they fostered flights of fancy, memories of travel, and meditations on history all crowned by a good night's sleep. Yet somehow, this little visitor with her kit bag and her rag doll had altered every dimension of the room. She had simultaneously brought the ceiling downward, the floor upward, and the walls inward, such that anywhere he hoped to move she was already there. Having roused himself from a fitful night on the floor, when the Count was ready for his morning calisthenics, she was standing in the calisthenics spot. At breakfast, she ate more than her fair share of the strawberries; then when he was about to dip his second biscuit in his second cup of coffee, she was staring at it with such longing that he had no choice but to ask if she wanted it. And when, at last, he was ready to lean back in his chair with his book, she was already sitting in it, staring up at him expectantly.

But having caught himself waving his shaving brush emphatically at his own reflection, the Count stopped cold.

Good God
, he thought. Is it possible?

Already?

At the age of forty-eight?

“Alexander Rostov, could it be that you have become settled in your ways?”

As a young man, the Count would
never
have been inconvenienced by a fellow soul. He sought out congenial company the moment he awoke.

When he had read in his chair, no interruption could be counted as a disturbance. In fact, he preferred to read with a little racket in the background. Like the shouts of a vendor in the street; or the scales of a piano in a neighboring apartment; or best of all, footsteps on the stair—footsteps that having quickly ascended two flights would suddenly stop, bang on his door, and breathlessly explain that two friends in a coach-and-four were waiting at the curb. (After all, isn't that why the pages of books are numbered? To facilitate the finding of one's place after a reasonable interruption?)

As to possessions, he hadn't cared a whit about them. He was the first to lend a book or an umbrella to an acquaintance (never mind that no acquaintance since Adam had returned a book or an umbrella).

And routines? He had prided himself on never having one. He would breakfast at 10:00
A.M.
one day and 2:00
P.M.
the next. At his favorite restaurants, he had never ordered the same dish twice in a season. Rather, he traveled across their menus like Mr. Livingstone traveled across Africa and Magellan the seven seas.

No, at the age of twenty-two, Count Alexander Rostov could not be inconvenienced, interrupted, or unsettled. For every unexpected appearance, comment, or turn of events had been welcomed like a burst of fireworks in a summer sky—as something to be marveled at and cheered.

But apparently, this was no longer the case. . . .

The unanticipated arrival of a thirty-pound package had torn the veil from his eyes. Without his even noticing—without his acknowledgment, input, or permission—routine had established itself within his daily life. Apparently, he now ate his breakfast at an appointed hour. Apparently, he must sip his coffee and nibble his biscuits without interruption. He must read in a particular chair tilted at a particular angle with no more than the scuffing of a pigeon's feet to distract him. He must shave his right cheek, shave his left, and only then move on to the underside of his chin.

To that end, the Count now tilted back his head and raised his razor,
but the change in the angle of his gaze revealed two fathomless eyes staring back at him from the reflection in the mirror.

“Egads!”

“I have finished looking at the pictures,” she said.

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

“All of them!” It was now the Count's eyes that opened wide. “Well, isn't that splendid.”

“I think this is for you,” she said, holding out a small envelope.

“Where did that come from?”

“It was slipped under your door. . . .”

Taking the envelope in hand, the Count could tell that it was empty; but in place of an address, the query
Three o'clock?
was written in a willowy script.

“Ah, yes,” said the Count, stuffing it in his pocket. “A small matter of business.” Then he thanked Sofia in a manner indicating that she could now be on her way.

And she replied, “You're welcome,” in a manner indicating that she had no intention of going anywhere.

Thus had the Count leapt from his bed and clapped his hands at the first chime of the noon hour.

“Right,” he said. “How about some lunch? You must be famished. I think you will find the Piazza positively delightful. More than simply a restaurant, the Piazza was designed to be an extension of the city—of its gardens, markets, and thoroughfares.”

But as the Count continued with his description of the Piazza's advantages, he noticed that Sofia was staring at his father's clock with an expression of surprise. And when they passed over the threshold to go downstairs, she took another look back then hesitated—as if on the verge of asking how such a delicate device could generate such a lovely sound.

Well, thought the Count as he began to close the door, if she wanted to know the secrets of the twice-tolling clock, she had come to the right place
.
For not only did the Count know something of chronometry, he knew absolutely everything there was to know about this particular—

“Uncle Alexander,” Sofia said in the tender tone of one who must deliver unhappy news. “I fear your clock is broken.”

Taken aback, the Count released his grip on the doorknob.

“Broken? No, no, I assure you, Sofia, my clock keeps
perfect
time. In fact, it was made by craftsmen known the world over for their commitment to precision.”

“It isn't the timekeeper that is broken,” she explained. “It is the chime.”

“But it just chimed beautifully.”

“Yes. It chimed at
noon
. But it failed to chime at nine and ten and eleven.”

“Ah,” the Count said with a smile. “Normally, you would be perfectly right, my dear. But, you see, this is a twice-tolling clock. It was made many years ago to my father's specifications to toll only twice a day.”