A Gentleman in Moscow (55 page)

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Authors: Amor Towles

BOOK: A Gentleman in Moscow
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“You weren't . . . expecting me?” asked Sofia tentatively.

“Of course we were! But your father has grown quite fond of all this cloak-and-dagger business. He assured me that you were coming, but he wouldn't let me know when, where, or how. And he certainly didn't tell me you'd be arriving as a barefoot boy.” Richard pointed to Sofia's knapsack. “Is that all you brought with you?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“Are you hungry?” asked Mrs. Vanderwhile.

Before Sofia could respond, Richard chimed in: “Of course she's hungry. I'm hungry and I've just returned from a dinner. I'll tell you what, my dear: Why don't you see if you can scare up some clothes for Sofia, while she and I have a chat. Then we can all rendezvous in the kitchen.”

While Mrs. Vanderwhile went in search of clothes, Richard led Sofia into his study and sat on the edge of his desk.

“I can't tell you how excited we are to have you in house, Sofia. And I do so hate putting business before pleasure. But once we sit down to eat, I suspect we'll be swept away with stories of your adventures. So, before we go to the kitchen, your father mentioned that you might have something for me. . . .”

Sofia looked shy and hesitant.

“My father said that you might have something for me first. . . .”

Richard laughed and slapped his hands together.

“Right you are! I'd forgotten all about it.”

Richard crossed the room to one of the bookcases. Standing on his
tiptoes, he reached to the uppermost shelf and removed what looked like a large book—but which turned out to be a package wrapped in brown paper. Richard set it down on his desk with a thud.

In turn, Sofia began to reach into her knapsack.

“Before giving anything to me,” Richard cautioned, “you should probably make sure that this is what it's supposed to be. . . .”

“Oh, yes. I see.”

“Besides,” he added, “I've been dying of curiosity.”

Joining Richard at his desk, Sofia untied the strings and pulled back the folds of paper. Inside was an old edition of Montaigne's
Essays
.

“Well,” said Richard a little bemused, “you've got to give that old Frenchman credit. He's substantially heavier than Adam Smith or Plato. I really had no idea.”

But then Sofia opened the book, revealing a rectangular cavity cut into the pages, in which there were eight small stacks of gold coins.

“Naturally,” said Richard.

Sofia closed the book and retied the strings. Then taking off her knapsack, she emptied its contents onto a chair and handed the empty bag to Richard.

“Father said you should cut the seam at the top of the straps.”

There was a knock at the door and Mrs. Vanderwhile poked in her head.

“I've got some clothes to show you, Sofia. Are you ready?”

“Perfect timing,” said Richard while giving a nod to Sofia. “I'll follow you in a minute.”

Left alone, Richard took a penknife from his pocket. He switched out the blade and carefully cut the seam that had been expertly sewn along the top of the shoulder straps. In the narrow gap that ran behind the length of one of the straps had been slipped a tightly rolled piece of paper.

Easing the roll from its hiding place, Richard sat down and spread it across his desk. On the top side there was a diagram entitled “Combined Dinner of Council of Ministers and Presidium, June 11, 1954.” The diagram itself depicted a long U with forty-six names inscribed around its periphery. Under the name of each person was their title and a summation of their personality in three words. On the verso was a detailed description of the evening in question.

Certainly, the Count described the announcement concerning the Obninsk nuclear power plant and the theatric display of its connection to the Moscow grid. But what he emphasized in the course of his report were the evening's social nuances.

First, the Count observed that when the guests appeared at the dinner, virtually all were surprised by the venue. They had obviously arrived at the hotel expecting they would be dining in one of the Boyarsky's formal rooms, only to be directed instead to suite 417. The one exception was Khrushchev—who entered the room with the cool satisfaction of one who not only knew where the dinner would be held, but was pleased to see that everything was perfectly in order. The General Secretary erased any doubt as to his personal involvement in the planning of the evening when, having been unusually quiet, he stood at ten minutes to eleven to make a toast that referenced the history of the suite two floors below.

But for the Count, the genius of the evening was in Khrushchev's casual display of his alignment with Malyshev. In recent months, Malenkov had made no secret of his disagreement with Khrushchev regarding nuclear armament. Malenkov foresaw that a nuclear arms race with the West could only have devastating results, referring to it as an “apocalyptic policy.” But with this little event of political theater, Khrushchev had performed the perfect sleight of hand—switching out the threat of nuclear Armageddon for the uplifting sight of a city sparkling with nuclear power. In a stroke, the conservative hawk had cast himself as a man of the future and his progressive opponent as a reactionary.

Sure enough, with the lights of the city shining brightly and freshly chilled bottles of vodka on the table, Malyshev crossed the room to confer with the General Secretary. As most of the others were still milling about with smiles on their faces, Malyshev quite naturally took the empty chair at Khrushchev's side. So, when everyone began to resume their places, Malenkov found himself stranded behind Khrushchev and Malyshev; and as the Premier of the Communist Party waited awkwardly for them to finish their conversation so that he could reclaim his seat, no one at the table even batted an eye.

As Richard finished reading the Count's description, he leaned back in his chair and smiled, thinking he could use a hundred men like
Alexander Rostov. And that's when he noticed the small, slightly curled piece of paper lying on his desk. Picking it up, Richard immediately recognized the Count's cursive. The note, which had presumably been rolled up in the report, included a straightforward instruction of how to confirm that Sofia had arrived at the embassy safely, followed by a long sequence of seven-digit numbers.

Richard jumped to his feet.

“Billy!”

After a moment the door swung open and the attaché stuck in his head.

“Sir?”

“If it is almost ten in Paris, what time is it almost in Moscow?”

“Midnight.”

“How many girls are on the switchboard?”

“I'm not certain,” admitted the lieutenant, a little flustered. “At this hour, two; maybe three?”

“That's not enough! Go to the typing pool, the decoding room, the kitchen. Round up everyone with a finger on their hand!”

When the Count arrived in the lobby with his rucksack on his shoulder and sat in his chair between the potted palms, he didn't fidget. He didn't get up and walk about, or read the evening edition. Nor did he check the time on the Bishop's watch.

If asked in advance to imagine what sitting there under these circumstances would feel like, the Count would have predicted a definite sense of anxiety. But as the minutes ticked away, the Count didn't find the wait distressing at all; he found it surprisingly peaceful. With a patience that was almost otherworldly, he watched the guests of the hotel come and go. He saw the elevator doors open and close. He heard the sound of music and laughter emanating from the Shalyapin Bar.

At that moment, it somehow seemed to the Count that no one was out of place; that every little thing happening was part of some master plan; and that within the context of that plan, he was meant to sit in the chair between the potted palms and wait. And almost exactly at midnight, the
Count's patience was rewarded. For in accordance with the instructions he'd written to Richard, every telephone on the first floor of the Metropol began to ring.

All four telephones at the main desk rang. The two house phones that were on a side table by the elevator rang. The telephones at Vasily's desk and the bell captain's station rang. As did the four telephones in the Piazza, the three in the coffeehouse, the eight in the executive offices, and the two on the Bishop's desk. All told, there must have been thirty phones ringing at once.

What a simple thing in concept, the simultaneous ringing of thirty phones. And yet, it immediately created a sense of pandemonium. Those who were in the lobby began looking from corner to corner. What could bring about the ringing of thirty phones at twelve o'clock at night? Had the Metropol been struck by lightning? Was Russia under attack? Or were the spirits of the past exacting their toll on the present?

Whatever the cause, the sound was utterly disconcerting.

When a single telephone rings, our immediate instinct is to pick up the receiver and say hello. But when thirty ring at once, our instinct is to take two steps back and stare. The limited crew of the night shift found themselves running from phone to phone without the fortitude to answer a single one. The drunken crowd in the Shalyapin began spilling into the lobby, as guests, who had been awakened on the second floor, came marching down the stairs. And in the midst of this commotion, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov quietly donned the journalist's hat and coat, shouldered his rucksack, and walked out of the Metropol
Hotel.

AFTERWORD
Afterwards . . .

O
n the twenty-first of June 1954, Viktor Stepanovich Skadovsky left his apartment shortly before midnight in order to keep an appointment.

His wife had urged him not to go. What good could come from an appointment at this hour, she wanted to know. Did he think the police didn't walk the streets at midnight? The police
made a point
of walking the streets at midnight. Because since the beginning of time, that's when fools have kept their appointments!

Viktor responded to his wife that this was nonsense; that she was being melodramatic. But when he left their building, he walked ten blocks to the Garden Ring before boarding a bus, and he took comfort from the indifference with which the others on the bus received him.

Yes, his wife was upset that he had an appointment at midnight. But if she had known the purpose of the appointment, she would have been beside herself. And if, upon learning of his intentions, she had demanded to know why on earth he had agreed to do something so foolhardy, he wouldn't have been able to answer her. He wasn't certain himself.

It wasn't simply because of Sofia. Of course, he felt an almost fatherly pride in her achievement as a pianist. The very notion of helping a young artist discover her talent was a fantasy that Viktor had long since abandoned; and to experience it so unexpectedly was beyond description. What's more, it was the hours of teaching Sofia that had ultimately led him to pursue another abandoned dream: playing the classical repertoire in a chamber orchestra. But even so, it wasn't simply because of her.

To a greater degree, it was because of the Count. For, however unaccountably, Viktor felt a profound sense of loyalty to Alexander Ilyich Rostov; a sense of loyalty that was grounded in feelings of respect that Viktor
could hardly articulate—and that his wife, for all her virtues, would never have understood.

But perhaps most of all, he had agreed to the Count's request because it felt right to do so; and that feeling of conviction, in itself, was a pleasure that had become increasingly rare.

With that thought, Viktor stepped off the bus, entered the old St. Petersburg Station, and walked across the central hall toward the brightly lit café where he had been instructed to wait.

Viktor was sitting in a booth in the corner—watching an old accordion player move from table to table—when the Count entered the café. He was wearing an American trench coat and a dark gray fedora. Seeing Viktor, he crossed the café, set down his rucksack, shed the coat and hat, and joined him in the booth. When a moment later the waitress appeared, he ordered a cup of coffee and then waited for the coffee to arrive before sliding a little red book across the table.

“I want to thank you for doing this,” he said.

“You needn't thank me, Your Excellency.”

“Please, Viktor. Call me Alexander.”

Viktor was about to ask if the Count had received any word from Sofia, but he was interrupted by a scuffle on the other side of the café. Two haggard-looking fruit sellers carrying woven baskets had gotten into a territorial dispute. Given that it was so late, both men were down to a few sorry pieces of produce; and while this may have lent an air of futility to their argument in the eyes of the observers, it in no way diminished the stakes for the principals. To that end, after a brief exchange of insults, one struck the other in the face. With blood on his lip and fruit on the floor, the assaulted man responded in kind.

As the customers in the café stopped their conversations to watch the skirmish with weary, knowing expressions, the café's manager rounded the bar and dragged the combatants out by their collars. For a moment, the room was silent while everyone stared out the café window to the spot where the two fruit sellers remained sitting on the ground a few feet apart. Then all of a sudden, the old accordion player—who had stopped performing during the scuffle—struck up a friendly tune, presumably in the hopes of restoring some sense of goodwill.

As Viktor took a sip from his coffee, the Count watched the accordion player with interest.

“Have you ever seen
Casablanca
?” he asked.

Somewhat bewildered, Viktor admitted that he had not.

“Ah. You must see it one day.”

And so the Count told Viktor about his friend Osip and their recent viewing of the movie. In particular, he described the scene in which a small-time crook was dragged away by the police and how the American saloonkeeper, having assured his customers that everything was all right, casually instructed his bandleader to play on.

“My friend was very impressed with this,” explained the Count. “He saw the saloonkeeper's instruction to the piano player to start playing so soon after the arrest as evidence of his indifference to the fates of other men. But I wonder. . . .”

The following morning at half past eleven, two officers of the KGB arrived at the Metropol Hotel in order to question Headwaiter Alexander Rostov on an undisclosed matter.

Having been escorted by a bellhop to Rostov's room on the sixth floor, the officers found no sign of him there. Nor was he receiving a trim in the barbershop, lunching at the Piazza, or reading the papers in the lobby. Several of Rostov's closest associates, including Chef Zhukovsky and Maître d' Duras, were questioned, but none had seen Rostov since the previous night. (The officers also endeavored to speak with the hotel's manager, only to find that he had not yet reported to work—a fact that was duly noted in his file!) At one o'clock, two additional KGB men were summoned so that a more thorough search could be made of the hotel. At two, the senior officer conducting the investigation was encouraged to speak with Vasily, the concierge. Finding him at his desk in the lobby (where he was in the midst of securing theater tickets for a guest), the officer did not beat about the bush. He put his question to the concierge unambiguously:

“Do you know the whereabouts of Alexander Rostov?”

To which the concierge replied: “I haven't the slightest idea.”

Having learned that both Manager Leplevsky and Headwaiter Rostov had gone missing, Chef Zhukovsky and Maître d' Duras convened at 2:15 for their daily meeting in the chef's office, where they immediately engaged in close conversation. To be perfectly frank, there was little time spent on consideration of Manager Leplevsky's absence. But there was a good deal of time spent on Headwaiter Rostov's. . . .

Initially concerned when they had received word of their friend's disappearance, the two members of the Triumvirate took comfort from the KGB's obvious frustration—for it confirmed that the Count was not in their grips. But the question remained:
Where could he possibly be?

Then a certain rumor began to spread among the hotel's staff. For though the officers of the KGB were trained to be inscrutable, gestures, language, and facial expressions have a fundamentally unruly syntax. Thus, over the course of the morning, implications had slipped out and inferences had been made that Sofia had gone missing in Paris.

“Is it possible . . . ?” wondered Andrey aloud, clearly implying to Emile that their friend may also have escaped into the night.

As it was only 2:25, and Chef Zhukovsky had yet to turn the corner from pessimist to optimist, he curtly replied: “Of course not!”

This led to a debate between the two men on the differences between what was probable, plausible, and possible—a debate that might have gone on for an hour, but for a knock at the door. Responding with an irritated “Yes?” Emile turned, expecting to find Ilya with his wooden spoon, but it was the clerk from the mail room.

The chef and maître d' were so confounded by his sudden appearance that they simply stared.

“Are you Chef Zhukovsky and Maître d' Duras?” he asked after a moment.

“Of course we are!” declared the chef. “Who else would we be?”

Without a word, the clerk presented two of the five envelopes that had been dropped in his slot the night before (having already made visits to the seamstress's office, the bar, and the concierge's desk). A professional through and through, the clerk showed no curiosity as to the contents of
these letters despite their unusual weight; and he certainly didn't wait around for them to be opened, having plenty of his own work to attend to, thank you very much.

With the mail clerk's departure, Emile and Andrey looked down at their respective envelopes in wonder. In an instant, they could see that the letters had been addressed in a script that was at once proper, proud, and openhearted. Meeting each other's gaze, they raised their eyebrows then tore the envelopes open. Inside, they each found a letter of parting that thanked them for their fellowship, assured them that the Night of the Bouillabaisse would never be forgotten, and asked that they accept the enclosed as a small token of undying friendship. The “enclosed” happened to be four gold coins.

The two men, who had opened their letters at the same time, and read them at the same time, now dropped them on the table at the same time.

“It's true!” gasped Emile.

A man of discretion and civility, Andrey did not for one second consider saying:
I told you so.
Although with a smile he did observe: “So it seems . . .”

But when Emile had recovered from these happy surprises (four pieces of gold
and
an old friend purposefully at large!), he shook his head as one forlorn.

“What is it?” asked Andrey in concern.

“With Alexander gone and you afflicted with palsy,” the chef said, “what is to become of me?”

Andrey looked at the chef for a moment then smiled.

“Afflicted with palsy! My friend, my hands are as agile as they have ever been.”

Then to prove his point, Andrey picked up the four gold Catherines and sent them spinning in the air.

At five o'clock that afternoon, in a nicely appointed office of the Kremlin (with a view of the lilacs in the Alexander Gardens, no less), the Chief Administrator of a special branch of the country's elaborate security apparatus sat behind his desk reviewing a file. Dressed in a dark gray
suit, the Chief Administrator might have been described as relatively indistinguishable when compared to any other balding bureaucrat in his early sixties, were it not for the scar above his left ear where, by all appearances, someone had once attempted to cleave his skull.

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