A Gentleman in Moscow (38 page)

“How so?”

The captain pointed discreetly down the bar to where a bushy-eyebrowed apparatchik was chatting with a young brunette. Both of them were holding drinks in a striking shade of magenta.

“I gather from Audrius that that concoction contains ten different ingredients. In addition to vodka, rum, brandy, and grenadine, it boasts an extraction of rose, a dash of bitters, and a melted lollipop. But a cocktail is not meant to be a mélange. It is not a potpourri or an Easter parade. At its best, a cocktail should be crisp, elegant, sincere—and limited to two ingredients.”

“Just two?”

“Yes. But they must be two ingredients that complement each other; that laugh at each other's jokes and make allowances for each other's faults; and that never shout over each other in conversation. Like gin and tonic,” he said, pointing to his drink. “Or bourbon and water . . . Or whiskey and soda . . .” Shaking his head, he raised his glass and drank from it. “Excuse me for expounding.”

“That's quite all right.”

The captain nodded in gratitude, but then after a moment inquired, “Do you mind if I make an observation? I mean of the personal sort.”

“Not at all,” said the Count.

The captain slid his drink down the bar and moved a stool closer.

“You seem like something is weighing on your mind. I mean, you set that brandy in motion about half an hour ago. If you're not careful, the vortex you've created will drill a hole right through the floor and we'll all end up in the basement.”

The Count set the snifter down with a laugh.

“I suppose you're right. Something must be weighing on my mind.”

“Well then,” said Richard, gesturing to the empty bar, “you have come to the right place. Since days of old, well-mannered men have assembled in watering holes such as this one in order to unburden themselves in the company of sympathetic souls.”

“Or strangers?”

The captain raised a finger in the air.

“There are no more sympathetic souls
than
strangers. So, what say we skip the preambling. Is it women? Money? Writer's block?”

The Count laughed again; and then like other well-mannered men since days of old, he unburdened himself to this sympathetic soul. He described Mishka and his notion that Russians were somehow unusually adept at destroying that which they have created. Then he described Osip and his notion that Mishka was perfectly right, but that the destruction of monuments and masterpieces was essential to the progress of a nation.

“Oh, so that's it,” said the captain, as if this would have been his fourth guess.

“Yes. But what conclusions would you draw from it all?” asked the Count.

“What conclusions?”

Richard took a drink.

“I think that both of your friends are very sharp. I mean it takes a good bit of dexterity to pull a thread out of the fabric all in one piece. But I can't help feeling that they're missing something. . . .”

He drummed his fingers on the bar as he tried to formulate his thoughts.

“I understand that there's a little history of dismantling here in Russia; and that the razing of a beautiful old building is bound to engender a little sorrow for what's gone and some excitement for what's to come. But when all is said and done, I can't help suspecting that grand things persist.

“Take that fellow Socrates. Two thousand years ago, he wandered around the marketplace sharing his thoughts with whomever he bumped into; and he wouldn't even take the time to write them down. Then, in something of a fix, he punched his own ticket; pulled his own plug; collapsed his own umbrella. Adios. Adieu. Finis.

“Time marched on, as it will. The Romans took over. Then the barbarians. And then we threw the whole Middle Ages at him. Hundreds of years of plagues and poisonings and the burning of books. And somehow, after all of that, the grand things this fellow happened to say in the marketplace are still with us.

“I guess the point I'm trying to make is that as a species we're just no good at writing obituaries. We don't know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March. Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back.”

They were both silent for a moment. Then the captain emptied his glass and pointed a finger at the Count's brandy.

“Tell me, though, is that thing pulling its weight?”

When the Count left the Shalyapin an hour later (having joined Captain Vanderwhile for two rounds of Audrius's magenta-colored concoction),
he was surprised to see Sofia still reading in the lobby. Catching her eye, he gave a little wave and she gave a little wave back before returning to her book, demurely. . . .

It took all of the Count's presence of mind to cross the lobby at a stroll. With the undeniable appearance of a man at ease, he carefully mounted the stairs and slowly began to ascend. But the moment he turned the corner, he broke into a sprint.

As he vaulted upward, he could barely contain his sense of glee. The hidden genius of Sofia's game had always been that she chose when it was played. Naturally, she would wait for those moments when he was distracted or off his guard, such that the game was generally over before he even knew it had begun. But tonight, things were going to be different—because by the casualness of Sofia's wave, the Count could tell the game was afoot.

I've got her now, he thought as he passed the second floor with a sinister little laugh. But as he turned the landing on the third floor, he was forced to acknowledge a second advantage that Sofia had in this game: her youth. For without question, his pace had begun to slow considerably. If his shortness of breath was any indication, he would be crawling by the time he reached the sixth floor—assuming he reached it alive. To be on the safe side, when he got to the fifth floor he slowed his pace to a purposeful walk.

Opening the door to the belfry, he paused to listen. Looking down the stairs, he couldn't see a thing. Could she have already flown past? Impossible. She hadn't the time. Still, on the off chance that she had transported herself by means of witchcraft, the Count climbed the final flight on the tips of his toes and when he opened their door, he did so with an affect of indifference—only to find that, in fact, the room was empty.

Rubbing his hands together, he wondered:
Where should I place myself?
He considered climbing into bed and acting like he was asleep, but he wanted to see the expression on her face. So he sat in the desk chair, tilted it back on two legs, and grabbed the closest book at hand, which happened to be Monsieur Montaigne. Opening the tome at random, he landed on the essay “Of the Education of Children.”

“Just so,” he said with a wily smile. Then he adopted an expression of perfect erudition as he pretended to read.

But after five minutes, she hadn't appeared.

“Ah, well. I must have been mistaken,” he was conceding with some disappointment, when the door flung open. But it wasn't Sofia.

It was one of the chambermaids. In a state of distress.

“Ilana. What is it?”

“It's Sofia! She has fallen!”

The Count leapt from his chair.

“Fallen! Where?”

“In the service stair.”

The Count brushed past the chambermaid and bolted down the belfry. After two flights of empty stairs, a voice in some corner of his mind began to reason that Ilana must have been mistaken; but as he rounded the third-floor landing, there Sofia was—splayed across the steps, her eyes closed, her hair matted with blood.

“Oh, my God.”

The Count fell to his knees.

“Sofia . . .”

She didn't respond.

Gently raising her head, the Count could see the gash above her brow. Her skull did not appear compromised, but she was bleeding and unconscious.

Ilana was behind him now, in tears.

“I will go for a doctor,” she said.

But it was after eleven. Who could say how long that would take?

The Count slid his arms under Sofia's neck and knees, lifted her off the steps, and carried her down the remaining flights. At the ground floor, he pushed the door open with his shoulder and cut through the lobby. Only in the most remote sense was he aware of a middle-aged couple waiting for the elevator; of Vasily at his desk; of voices in the bar. And suddenly, he found himself on the steps of the Metropol in the warm summer air—for the first time in over twenty years.

Rodion, the night doorman, looked at the Count in shock.

“A taxi,” the Count said. “I need a taxi.”

Over the doorman's shoulder, he could see four of them parked fifty feet from the entrance, waiting for the last of the Shalyapin's customers. Two drivers at the front of the line were smoking and chatting.
Before Rodion could raise his whistle to his lips, the Count was running toward them.

When the drivers noted the Count's approach, the expression on one's face was a knowing smirk and on the other's a look of condemnation—having both concluded that the gentleman had a drunken girl in his arms. But they stood to attention when they saw the blood on her face.

“My daughter,” said the Count.

“Here,” said one of the drivers, throwing his cigarette on the ground and running to open the back door of the cab.

“To St. Anselm's,” said the Count.

“St. Anselm's . . . ?”

“As fast as you can.”

Putting the car in gear, the driver pulled onto Theatre Square and headed north as the Count, pressing a folded handkerchief against Sofia's wound with one hand and combing her hair with the other, murmured assurances that went unheard—while the streets of the city raced past unregarded.

In a matter of minutes, the cab came to a stop.

“We're here,” said the driver. He got out and opened the back door.

The Count carefully slipped out with Sofia in his arms then suddenly stopped. “I have no money,” he said.

“What money! For God's sake, go.”

The Count crossed the curb and rushed toward the hospital, but even as he passed through its doors, he knew that he had made a terrible mistake. In the entry hall, there were grown men sleeping on benches, like refugees in a railway station. Hallway lights flickered as if powered by a faulty generator, and in the air was the smell of ammonia and cigarette smoke. When the Count had been a young man, St. Anselm's had been among the finest hospitals in the city. But that was thirty years ago. By now, the Bolsheviks had presumably built new hospitals—modern, bright, and clean—and this old facility had been left behind as some sort of clinic for veterans, the homeless, and the otherwise forsaken.

Sidestepping a man who appeared to be asleep on his feet, the Count approached a desk where a young nurse was reading.

“It is my daughter,” he said. “She has been injured.”

Looking up, the nurse dropped her magazine. She disappeared
through a door. After what seemed like an eternity, she returned with a young man in the white jacket of an internist. The Count held Sofia out while pulling back the blood-soaked handkerchief to show the wound. The internist ran his hand across his mouth.

“This girl should be seen by a surgeon,” he said.

“Is there one here?”

“What? No, of course not.” He looked at a clock on the wall. “At six, perhaps.”

“At six? Surely, she needs attention now. You must do something.”

The internist rubbed his hand across his mouth again and then turned to the nurse.

“Find Dr. Kraznakov. Have him report to Surgery Four.”

As the nurse disappeared again, the internist wheeled over a gurney.

“Lay her here and come with me.”

With the Count at his side, the internist pushed Sofia down a hall and into an elevator. Once on the third floor, they passed through a pair of swinging doors into a long hallway in which there were two other gurneys, each with a sleeping patient.

“In there.”

The Count pushed open the door and the internist wheeled Sofia into Surgery Four. It was a cold room, tiled from floor to ceiling. In one corner, the tiles had begun falling from the plaster. There was a surgical table, craning lights, and a standing tray. After some minutes, the door opened and an ill-shaven physician entered with the young nurse. He looked as if he had just been wakened.

“What is it?” he said in a weary voice.

“A young girl with a head injury, Dr. Kraznakov.”

“All right, all right,” he said. Then waving a hand at the Count, he added: “No visitors in the surgery.”

The internist took the Count by the elbow.

“Wait a second,” the Count said. “Is this man capable?”

Looking at the Count, Kraznakov grew red in the face. “What did he say?”

The Count continued to address the young internist.

“You said she needed to be seen by a surgeon. Is this man a surgeon?”