A Gentleman in Moscow (29 page)

“But why?”

“Why indeed, my friend, why indeed. I'll tell you what. Let us adjourn to the Piazza where—having placed our order and made ourselves comfortable—we shall investigate all the whys and wherefores of my father's clock. For there is nothing more essential to the enjoyment of a civilized lunch than to have a lively topic of conversation.”

At 12:10 the Piazza was not yet bustling; but perhaps this was just as well, as the Count and Sofia received an excellent table and prompt attention from Martyn—a capable new waiter who pulled back Sofia's chair with an admirable sense of politesse.

“My niece,” explained the Count, as Sofia looked around the room in amazement.

“I have a six-year-old of my own,” Martyn replied with a smile. “I'll give you a moment.”

Granted, Sofia was not so unworldly as to be unfamiliar with elephants, but she had never seen anything quite like the Piazza. Not only was she marveling at the room's scale and elegance, but at each of the individual elements that seemed to turn common sense on its head: A ceiling made of glass. A tropical garden indoors. A fountain in the middle of a room!

When Sofia completed her survey of the Piazza's paradoxes, she seemed to understand instinctively that such a setting deserved an elevated standard of behavior. For she suddenly took her doll off the table and placed it on the empty chair to her right; when the Count slipped his napkin out from under his silverware to place it in his lap, Sofia followed suit, taking particular care not to jangle her fork and knife; and when, having placed their order with Martyn, the Count said
Thank you so much, my good man
, Sofia echoed the Count word for word. Then she looked to the Count, expectantly.

“Now?” she asked.

“Now what, my dear?”

“Is now when you will tell me about the twice-tolling clock?”

“Oh, yes. Precisely.”

But where to start?

Naturally enough, at the beginning.

The twice-tolling clock, the Count explained, had been commissioned by his father from the venerable firm of Breguet. Establishing their shop in Paris in 1775, the Breguets were quickly known the world over not only for the precision of their chronometers (that is, the accuracy of their clocks), but for the elaborate means by which their clocks could signal the passage of time. They had clocks that played a few measures of Mozart at the end of the hour. They had clocks that chimed not only at the hour but at the half and the quarter. They had clocks that displayed the phases of the moon, the progress of the seasons, and the cycle of the tides. But when the Count's father visited their shop in 1882, he posed a very different sort of challenge for the firm: a clock that tolled only twice a day.

“
Why
would he do so?” asked the Count (in anticipation of his young listener's favorite interrogative).

Quite simply, the Count's father had believed that while a man should attend closely to life, he should not attend too closely to the clock. A student of both the Stoics and Montaigne, the Count's father believed that our Creator had set aside the morning hours for industry. That is, if a man woke no later than six, engaged in a light repast, and then applied himself without interruption, by the hour of noon he should have accomplished a full day's labor.

Thus, in his father's view, the toll of twelve was a moment of
reckoning. When the noon bell sounded, the diligent man could take pride in having made good use of the morning and sit down to his lunch with a clear conscience. But when it sounded for the frivolous man—the man who had squandered his morning in bed, or on breakfast with three papers, or on idle chatter in the sitting room—he had no choice but to ask for his Lord's forgiveness.

In the afternoon, the Count's father believed that a man should take care not to live by the watch in his waistcoat—marking the minutes as if the events of one's life were stations on a railway line. Rather, having been suitably industrious before lunch, he should spend his afternoon in wise liberty. That is, he should walk among the willows, read a timeless text, converse with a friend beneath the pergola, or reflect before the fire—engaging in those endeavors that have no appointed hour, and that dictate their own beginnings and ends.

And the second chime?

The Count's father was of the mind that one should never hear it. If one had lived one's day well—in the service of industry, liberty, and the Lord—one should be soundly asleep long before twelve. So the second chime of the twice-tolling clock was most definitely a remonstrance.
What are
you
doing up?
it was meant to say.
Were you so profligate with your daylight that you must hunt about for things to do in the dark?

“Your veal.”

“Ah. Thank you, Martyn.”

Quite appropriately, Martyn placed the first dish before Sofia and the second before the Count. Then he lingered a little closer to the table than was necessary.

“Thank you,” the Count said again in a polite sign of dismissal. But as the Count took up his silverware and began recalling for Sofia's benefit how he and his sister would sit by the twice-tolling clock on the last night of December in order to ring in the New Year, Martyn took a step even closer.

“Yes?” asked the Count, somewhat impatiently.

Martyn hesitated.

“Shall I . . . cut the young lady's meat?”

The Count looked across the table to where Sofia, fork in hand, was staring at her plate.

Mon Dieu,
thought the Count.

“No need, my friend. I shall see to it.”

As Martyn backed away with a bow, the Count circled the table and in a few quick strokes had cut Sofia's veal into eight pieces. Then, on the verge of setting down her cutlery, he cut the eight pieces into sixteen. By the time he had returned to his seat, she had already eaten four.

Having regained her energy through sustenance, Sofia now unleashed a cavalcade of
Whys
. Why was it better to commune with work in the morning and nature in the afternoon? Why would a man read three newspapers? Why should one walk under the willows rather than some other sort of tree? And what was a pergola? Which in turn led to additional inquiries regarding Idlehour, the Countess, and Helena.

In principle, the Count generally regarded a barrage of interrogatives as bad form. Left to themselves, the words
who
,
what
,
why
,
when
, and
where
do not a conversation make. But as the Count began to answer Sofia's litany of queries, sketching the layout of Idlehour on the tablecloth with the tines of his fork, describing the personalities of family members and referencing various traditions—he noticed that Sofia was entirely, absolutely, and utterly engaged. What elephants and princesses had failed to accomplish, the life at Idlehour had apparently achieved. And just like that, her veal was gone.

When the plates had been cleared away, Martyn reappeared to inquire if they would be having dessert. The Count looked to Sofia with a smile, assuming that she would leap at the chance. But she bit her lower lip and shook her head.

“Are you quite sure?” the Count asked. “Ice cream? Cookies? A piece of cake?”

But shifting a bit in her chair, she shook her head again.

Enter the new generation, thought the Count with a shrug, while returning the dessert menu to Martyn.

“Apparently, we are done.”

Martyn accepted the menu, but once again lingered. Then, turning his back slightly to the table, he actually leaned over with the clear intention of whispering in the Count's ear.

For goodness sake, thought the Count. What now?

“Count Rostov, I believe that your niece . . . may need to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

Martyn hesitated.

“To the privy . . .”

The Count looked up at the waiter and then at Sofia.

“Say no more, Martyn.”

The waiter bowed and excused himself.

“Sofia,” the Count suggested tentatively, “shall we visit the ladies' room?”

Still biting her lip, Sofia nodded.

“Do you need me to . . . accompany you inside?” he asked, after leading her down the hallway.

Sofia shook her head and disappeared behind the washroom door.

As he waited, the Count chastised himself for his lug-headedness. Not only had he failed to cut her meat and bring her to the ladies' room, he clearly hadn't thought to help her unpack, because she was wearing the exact same clothes she had worn the day before.

“And you call yourself a waiter . . . ,” he said to himself.

A moment later, Sofia emerged, looking relieved. But then, despite her readily apparent love of interrogatives, she hesitated like one who is struggling with whether to ask a question.

“What is it, my dear? Is there something on your mind?”

Sofia struggled for another moment, then worked up the nerve:

“Can we still have dessert, Uncle Alexander?”

Now, it was the Count who looked relieved.

“Without a doubt, my dear. Without a doubt.”

A
t two o'clock, when Marina answered her office door to find the Count at the threshold in the company of a little girl with a rag doll gripped tightly by the neck, she was so surprised her eyes almost came into alignment.

“Ah, Marina,” said the Count, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. “You remember Nina Kulikova? May I present her daughter, Sofia. She will be staying with us in the hotel for a bit. . . .”

As a mother of two, Marina did not need the Count's signal to tell her that something weighty had occurred in the life of the child. But she could also see that the girl was curious about the whirring sound coming from the other end of the room.

“What a pleasure to meet you, Sofia,” she said. “I knew your mother well when she was just a few years older than you are now. But tell me: Have you ever seen a sewing machine?”

Sofia shook her head.

“Well then. Come and let me show you one.”

Offering Sofia her hand, Marina led the girl to the other side of the room, where her assistant was mending a royal blue drape. Dropping down so that she would be at Sofia's level, Marina pointed to various parts of the machine and explained their use. Then, asking the young seamstress to show Sofia their collection of fabrics and buttons, she came back to the Count with an expression of inquiry.

In a hushed voice, he quickly recounted the events of the previous day.

“You can see the predicament that I'm in,” concluded the Count.

“I can see the predicament that Sofia is in,” corrected Marina.

“Yes. You're absolutely right,” the Count admitted contritely. Then, just as he was about to continue, he had a notion—a notion so inspired, it was incredible he hadn't thought of it before. “I came, Marina, to see if
you'd be willing to watch Sofia for an hour while I am at the Boyarsky's daily meeting. . . .”

“Of course I will,” said Marina.

“As I say, I came with that intention. . . . But as you have so rightly pointed out, it is Sofia who deserves our support and consideration. And watching you together just now, seeing your instinctive tenderness, and seeing the way that she felt instantly at ease in your company, it was suddenly so obvious that what she needs, especially at this juncture in her life, is a mother's touch, a mother's way, a mother's—”

But Marina cut him off. And from the bottom of her heart, she said:

“Do not ask that of me, Alexander Ilyich. Ask it of yourself.”

I can do this
, said the Count to himself as he skipped up the stairs to the Boyarsky. After all, it was really just a matter of making some minor adjustments—a rearranging of some furniture and a shifting of some habits. Since Sofia was too young to be left alone, he would eventually need to find someone who could sit with her while he was at work. For tonight, he would simply request an evening off, suggesting that his tables be divided between Denis and Dmitry.

But in an extraordinary example of a friend anticipating the needs of a friend, when the Count arrived at the meeting of the Triumvirate a few minutes late, Andrey said:

“There you are, Alexander. Emile and I were just discussing that Denis and Dmitry can share your tables tonight.”

Collapsing into his chair, the Count let out a sigh of relief.

“Perfect,” he said. “By tomorrow, I shall have come up with a longer-term solution.”

The chef and the maître d' looked at the Count in confusion.

“A longer-term solution?”

“Weren't you splitting my tables so that I could be free for the evening?”

“Free for the evening!” gasped Andrey.

Emile guffawed.

“Alexander, my friend, it's the third Saturday of the month. You'll be expected in the Yellow Room at ten. . . .”

Mein Gott,
thought the Count. He had completely forgotten.

“. . . What's more, the GAZ dinner is in the Red Room at half past seven.”

The director of
Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod
, the state's leading automotive manufacturing agency, was hosting a formal dinner to commemorate their fifth anniversary. In addition to key staff members, the event was to be attended by the Commissar of Heavy Industry, and three representatives of the Ford Motor Company—who didn't speak a word of Russian.

“I shall see to it personally,” said the Count.

“Good,” said the maître d'. “Dmitry has already set up the room.”

Then he slid two envelopes across the table to the Count.

In accordance with Bolshevik custom, the tables in the Red Room had been laid out in the shape of a long U with chairs arranged on the outer perimeter—such that all the men seated could watch the head of the table without craning their necks. Satisfied that the settings were in order, the Count turned his attention to the envelopes that Andrey had given him. Unsealing the smaller of the two, he removed the seating chart, which had presumably been prepared in some office in the Kremlin. Then he opened the larger envelope, spilled out the place cards, and began positioning them accordingly. Having circled the table a second time in order to double-check the precision of his own execution, the Count stuffed the two envelopes into the pocket of his pants—only to discover another envelope. . . .

Removing the third envelope, the Count considered it with a furrowed brow. That is, until he turned it over and saw the willowy script.

“Great Scott!”

According to the clock on the wall, it was already 3:15.

The Count dashed out of the Red Room, down the hall, and up a flight of stairs. Finding the door to suite 311 ajar, he slipped inside, closed the door, and crossed the grand salon. In the bedroom, a silhouette turned from the window as her dress fell to the floor with a delicate whoosh.

The Count replied with a slight cough.

“Anna, my love . . .”

Noting the expression on the Count's face, the actress pulled her dress back up toward her shoulders.

“I'm terribly sorry, but due to a confluence of unexpected events, I am not going to be able to keep our appointment today. In fact, for related reasons, I may need to ask a small favor. . . .”

In the fifteen years that they had known each other, the Count had only asked Anna for one favor, and that had weighed less than two ounces.

“Of course, Alexander,” she replied. “What is it?”

“How many suitcases do you travel with?”

A few minutes later, the Count was hurrying down the staff stairwell—two Parisian traveling cases in hand. With renewed respect, he thought of Grisha and Genya and all their predecessors. For though Anna's cases had been fashioned from the finest materials, they seemed to have been designed without the slightest consideration for having to be carried. The little leather handles were so small one could barely slip two fingers through them; and the cases' dimensions were so generous that at every step they banged from the banister into one's knee. How could the bellhops possibly manage to carry these things around so effortlessly? And often with a hatbox thrown in for good measure!

Arriving at the subfloor, the Count pushed his way through the staff doors into the laundry. In the first suitcase, he stowed two sheets, a bedcover, and a towel. In the second, he packed a pair of pillows. Then back up six flights he went, banging his knees at every turn of the belfry stairs. In his room, he unloaded the linens and then went down the hall to get a second mattress from one of the abandoned rooms.

This had seemed an excellent idea to the Count when it had struck him, but the mattress was decidedly against it. When he bent over to lift the mattress from the bedsprings, it crossed its arms, held its breadth, and refused to budge. When he managed to get it upright, it immediately flopped over his head, nearly knocking him off his feet. And when he'd finally dragged it down the hall and flumped it in his room, it spread out its limbs, claiming every spare inch of the floor.

This will not do, thought the Count with his hands on his hips. If he left the mattress there, how were they to move about? And he certainly wasn't going to drag it in and out of the room on a daily basis. But in a flash of inspiration, the Count was reminded of that morning sixteen
years before, when he had consoled himself that living in this room would provide the satisfactions of traveling by train.

Yes, he thought. That is it, exactly
.

Lifting the mattress onto its edge, he leaned it against the wall and warned it to stay put, if it knew what was good for it. Then he took Anna's suitcases and ran down four flights to the pantry of the Boyarsky, where the canned tomatoes were stored. With an approximate height of eight inches and a diameter of six, they were perfectly suited to the task. So having lugged them back upstairs (with a healthy measure of huffing and puffing), he stacked, hoisted, pulled, and perched until the room was ready. Then, having returned Anna's cases, he dashed down the stairs.

When the Count arrived at Marina's office (more than an hour late), he was relieved to find the seamstress and Sofia seated on the floor in close consultation. Bounding up, Sofia held out her doll, which was now in a royal blue dress with little black buttons down the front.

“Do you see what we made for Dolly, Uncle Alexander?”

“How lovely!”

“She is quite a seamstress,” said Marina.

Sofia hugged Marina and then skipped into the hall with her newly attired companion. The Count began to follow his charge, but Marina called him back.

“Alexander: What arrangements have you made for Sofia while you are at work tonight . . . ?”

The Count bit his lip.

“All right,” she said. “I will stay with her this evening. But tomorrow, you need to find someone else. You should speak with one of the younger chambermaids. Perhaps Natasha. She is unmarried and would be good with children. But you have to pay her a reasonable wage.”

“Natasha,” confirmed the Count with gratitude. “I'll speak to her first thing tomorrow. And a reasonable wage, absolutely. Thank you so much, Marina. I'll send you and Sofia dinner from the Boyarsky around seven; and if last night is any indication, she will be sound asleep by nine.”