A Gentleman in Moscow (30 page)

The Count turned to go, then turned back again.

“And, I'm sorry about earlier. . . .”

“It's all right, Alexander. You were anxious because you haven't spent time with children before. But I am certain that you are up to the challenge. If you are ever in doubt, just remember that unlike adults, children
want
to be happy. So they still have the ability to take the greatest pleasure in the simplest things.” By way of example, the seamstress placed something small and seemingly insignificant in the Count's hand with an assurance and a few words of instruction.

As a result, when the Count and Sofia had climbed the five flights back to their rooms and she had turned her deep blue gaze of expectation upon him, the Count was ready.

“Would you like to play a game?” he asked.

“I would,” she said.

“Then come this way.”

With a touch of ceremony, the Count ushered Sofia through the closet door into the study.

“Ooo,” she said as she emerged on the other side. “Is this your secret room?”

“It is
our
secret room,” the Count replied.

Sofia nodded gravely to show that she understood.

But then children understand the purpose of secret rooms better than they understand the purpose of congresses, courtrooms, and banks.

Somewhat shyly, Sofia pointed at the painting.

“Is that your sister?”

“Yes. Helena.”

“I like peaches too.” She ran a hand along the coffee table. “Is this where your grandma had tea?”

“Exactly.”

Sofia nodded gravely again.

“I am ready for the game.”

“All right then. Here's how we play. You will go back into the bedroom and count to two hundred. I shall remain in order to hide
this
within the boundaries of the study.” Then, as if from thin air, the Count produced the silver thimble that Marina had given him. “Sofia, you do know how to count to two hundred?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I can count to one hundred twice.”

“Well done.”

Sofia exited through the closet, pulling the door shut behind her.

The Count glanced about the room in search of an appropriate spot—one that would prove reasonably challenging for the child without taking unfair advantage of her age. After a few minutes of consideration, he approached the little bookcase and carefully placed the thimble on top of
Anna Karenina
; then he took a seat.

At the count of two hundred, the closet door opened a crack.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“Indeed, I am.”

When Sofia came in, the Count expected her to scamper about the room willy-nilly, looking every which way. Instead, she remained in the doorway and quietly, almost unsettlingly, studied the room from quadrant to quadrant. Upper left, lower left, upper right, lower right. Then without a word, she walked straight to the bookcase and picked the thimble off the top of Tolstoy. This had occurred in less time than it would have taken for the Count to count to one hundred once.

“Well done,” said the Count, not meaning it. “Let's play again.”

Sofia handed the Count the thimble. But as soon as she left the room, the Count chastised himself for not having considered his next hiding place before initiating the second round. Now he had only two hundred seconds to find a suitable spot. As if to unnerve him further, Sofia began counting so loudly that he could hear her through the closed closet door.

“Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .”

Suddenly it was the Count who was scampering about willy-nilly and looking every which way—discarding this spot for being too easy and that spot for being too hard. In the end, he tucked the thimble under the handle of the Ambassador—on the other side of the room from the bookcase.

When Sofia returned, she followed the same procedure as before. Although, as if anticipating the Count's petty little trick, this time she began her survey in the corner opposite from where she had found the thimble in the first round. It took her all of twenty seconds to pluck it from its hiding place.

Clearly, the Count had underestimated his adversary. But by placing
the thimble in such low locations, he had been playing to Sofia's natural strengths. In the next round, he would take advantage of her limitations by hiding it six or seven feet off the ground.

“Again?” he said with the smile of a fox.

“It's your turn.”

“What's that?”

“It is your turn to look, and my turn to hide.”

“No, you see, in this game I always do the hiding and you always do the hunting.”

Sofia studied the Count as her mother would have.

“If you
always
do the hiding and I
always
do the hunting, then it wouldn't be a game at all.”

The Count frowned at the indisputability of this point of view. And when she held out her hand, he dutifully placed the thimble in her palm. As if this turnabout weren't enough, when he reached for the doorknob, she tugged at his sleeve.

“Uncle Alexander, you won't peek, will you?”

Won't peek? The Count had a mind to say a word or two about the integrity of the Rostovs. Instead, he composed himself.

“No, Sofia. I will not peek.”

“You promise . . . ?”

. . .

“I promise.”

The Count went out into the bedroom muttering something about his word being his bond and never having cheated at cards or welched on a wager, and then he began to count. As he proceeded past 150, he could hear Sofia moving around the study, and when he reached 175, he heard a chair being pushed across the floor. Well aware of the difference between a gentleman and a cad, the Count counted until the room fell silent—that is, all the way to 222.

“Ready or not,” he called.

When he came into the room, Sofia was sitting in one of the high-back chairs.

With a bit of theatricality, the Count put his hands behind his back and circled the room while saying
hmmm
. But after two circuits, the little
silver thimble had yet to reveal itself. So he began to search a bit more in earnest. Taking a page from Sofia's book, he divided the room into quadrants and reviewed them systematically, but to no avail.

Recalling that he had heard one of the chairs being moved, and accounting for Sofia's height and arm extension, the Count estimated that she could have reached a spot at least five feet off the ground. So, he looked behind the frame of his sister's portrait; he looked under the mechanics of the little window; he even looked above the doorframe.

Still no thimble.

Occasionally, he would look back at Sofia in the hopes that she would give herself away by glancing at her hiding place. But she maintained an infuriatingly disinterested expression, as if she hadn't the slightest awareness of the hunt that was underway. And all the while, swinging her little feet back and forth.

As a student of psychology, the Count decided he must attempt to solve the problem from his opponent's point of view. Just as he had wanted to take advantage of her limited height, perhaps she had taken advantage of his stature.
Of course,
he thought. The sound of moving furniture didn't have to mean that she was climbing up on a chair; it could have been her pulling something aside in order to hide something
beneath
it. The Count dropped to the floor and crawled like a lizard from the bookcase to the Ambassador and back again.

And still she sat there swinging her little feet.

The Count stood to his full height, banging his head against the slope of the ceiling. What's more, his kneecaps hurt from the hardwood floor, and his jacket was covered in dust. Suddenly, as he looked a little wildly around the room, he became aware of a quietly encroaching eventuality. It was slinking slowly toward him like a cat across the lawn; and the name of this cat was Defeat.

Could it be?

Was he, a Rostov, preparing to surrender?

Well, in a word: Yes.

There were no two ways about it. He had been bested and he knew it. Naturally, there would have to be a word or two of self-recrimination, but first he cursed Marina and the alleged pleasures of simple games. He
breathed deeply and exhaled. Then he presented himself to Sofia as General Mack had presented himself to Napoleon, having let the Russian army slip through his grasp.

“Well done, Sofia,” he said.

Sofia looked directly at the Count for the first time since he'd come into the room.

“Are you giving up?”

“I am conceding,” said the Count.

“Is that the same as giving up?”

. . .

“Yes, it is the same as giving up.”

“Then you should say so.”

Naturally. His humiliation must be brought to its full realization.

“I give up,” he said.

Without a hint of gloating, Sofia accepted his surrender. Then she jumped off her chair and walked toward him. He stepped a little out of her way, assuming that she must have hid the thimble somewhere in the bookcase. But she didn't approach the bookcase. Instead, she stopped in front of him, reached into his jacket pocket, and withdrew the thimble.

The Count was aghast.

In fact, he actually sputtered.

“But, but, but, Sofia—that's not fair!”

Sofia studied the Count with curiosity.

“Why is it not fair?”

Always with that damnable Why.

“Because it's not,” replied the Count.

“But you said we could hide it anywhere in the room.”

“That's just it, Sofia. My pocket wasn't in the room.”

“Your pocket was in the room when I hid the thimble; and it was in the room when you hunted. . . .”

And as the Count gazed into her innocent little face, it all became clear. He, a master of nuance and sleight of hand, had been played at every turn. When she had called him back to insist he not peek and had so sweetly tugged at his sleeve, that was a ploy to mask the slipping of the thimble into his pocket. And the moving of the furniture as the
two-hundredth second approached? Pure theater. A ruthless case of dissembling. And even as he searched, there she sat, clutching her little Dolly in its bright blue dress, without ever once betraying her wiles.

The Count took one step back and bowed at the waist.

At six o'clock, having descended to the ground floor to deliver Sofia into Marina's care, returned up to the sixth floor to retrieve Sofia's doll, and then down to the ground floor to deliver it, the Count proceeded to the Boyarsky.

Apologizing to Andrey for being late, he quickly assessed his team, reviewed the tables, adjusted the glasses, aligned the silver, took a peek at Emile, and finally gave the signal that the restaurant could be opened. At half past seven, he went to the Red Room to oversee the GAZ dinner. Then at ten, he headed down the hall to where the doors of the Yellow Room were being guarded by a Goliath.

Ever since 1930, the Count and Osip had been dining together on the third Saturday of the month in order to further the former Red Army colonel's understanding of the West.

Having dedicated the first several years to a study of the French (covering their idioms and forms of address, the personalities of Napoleon, Richelieu, and Talleyrand, the essence of the Enlightenment, the genius of Impressionism, and their prevailing aptitude for
je ne sais quoi
), the Count and Osip spent the next few years studying the British (covering the necessity of tea, the implausible rules of cricket, the etiquette of foxhunting, their relentless if well-deserved pride in Shakespeare, and the all-encompassing, overriding importance of the pub). But more recently, they had shifted their attention to the United States.

To that end, tonight on the table beside their nearly empty plates were two copies of Alexis de Tocqueville's masterpiece,
Democracy in America
. Osip had been somewhat intimidated by its length, but the Count had assured him that there was no better text with which to establish a fundamental understanding of American culture. So, the former colonel had burned the midnight oil for three weeks and arrived in the
Yellow Room with the eagerness of the well-prepared schoolboy at his baccalaureate. And having seconded the Count's fondness for summer nights, echoed his compliments on the
sauce
au poivre
, and shared his appreciation of the claret's nose, Osip was itching to get down to business.