Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

Without a doubt, the finale to this dinner of state was as fine a piece of political theater as Moscow had ever seen. But when the lights went out, were any of the city’s citizens inconvenienced?

Luckily, in 1954 Moscow was not the world capital of electrical appliances. But in the brief course of the outage, at least three hundred thousand clocks stopped, forty thousand radios went silent, and five thousand televisions went black. Dogs howled and cats meowed. Standing lamps were toppled, children cried, parents banged their shins into coffee tables, and more than a few drivers—looking up through their windshields at the suddenly darkened buildings—ran into the fenders of the automobiles in front of them.

In that little gray building on the corner of Dzerzhinsky Street, the little gray fellow who was charged with taking down the eavesdroppings of waitresses kept right on typing. For like any good bureaucrat, he knew how to type with his eyes closed. Although, when a few moments after the lights went out someone stumbled in the hallway and our startled typist looked up, his fingers inadvertently shifted one column of keys to the right, such that the second half of his report was either unintelligible, or in code, depending upon your point of view.

Meanwhile, at the Maly Theatre, where Anna Urbanova—in a wig tinged with gray—was appearing as Irina Arkadina in Chekhov’s The Seagull , the audience let out muted exclamations of concern. Though Anna and her fellow actors were well practiced at leaving the stage in the dark, they made no move to do so. For having been trained in the methods of Stanislavsky, they immediately began acting exactly as their characters would have acted had they suddenly found themselves in a blackout:

ARKADINA: [ Alarmed ] The lights have gone out!

TRIGORIN: Stay where you are, my dear. I’ll look for a candle. [ The sound of cautious movement as TRIGORIN exits right, followed by a moment of silence ]

ARKADINA: Oh, Konstantin. I’m frightened.

KONSTANTIN: It is only darkness, Mother—that from which we have come and to which we shall return.

ARKADINA: [ As if she hasn’t listened to her son ] Do you think the lights have gone out all over Russia?

KONSTANTIN: No, Mother. They have gone out all over the world. . . .

And at the Metropol? Two waiters in the Piazza carrying trays to their tables collided; four customers in the Shalyapin spilled their drinks and one was pinched; trapped in the elevator between the second and third floors, the American, Pudgy Webster, shared chocolate bars and cigarettes with his fellow passengers; while alone in his office, the hotel’s manager vowed “to get to the bottom of this.”

But in the dining room of the Boyarsky, where for almost fifty years the ambience had been defined by candlelight, the customers were served without interruption.

Anecdotes

On the night of the sixteenth of June, beside Sofia’s empty suitcase and knapsack, the Count laid out all of the various items that he had collected on her behalf. The night before, when she’d returned from rehearsal, he had sat her down and explained exactly what it was that she must do.

“Why have you waited until now to speak of this?” she asked, on the verge of tears.

“I was afraid if I told you earlier, you would object.”

“But I do object.”

“I know,” he said, taking her hands. “But oftentimes, Sofia, our best course of action appears objectionable at the first step. In fact, it almost always does.”

What followed was a debate between father and daughter on the whys and wherefores, a contrasting of perspectives, a comparison of time horizons, and heartfelt expressions of conflicting hopes. But in the end, the Count asked Sofia that she trust him; and this proved to be a request that she did not know how to refuse. So, after a moment of shared silence, with the courage that she had shown since the first day they’d met, Sofia listened attentively as the Count went over every detail step by step.

Tonight, as he finished laying out the items, the Count reviewed the same details for himself, to ensure that nothing had been forgotten or overlooked; and he was feeling, at last, that everything was in order, when the door flung open.

“They have changed the venue!” Sofia exclaimed, out of breath.

Father and daughter traded anxious looks.

“To what?”

About to answer, Sofia stopped and closed her eyes. Then opened them with a suggestion of distress.

“I can’t remember.”

“It’s all right,” assured the Count, knowing full well that distress was no friend to recollection. “What did the director say exactly? Do you remember anything about the new location? Any aspect of its neighborhood or name?”

Sofia closed her eyes again.

“It was a hall, I think . . . , a salle . ”

“The Salle Pleyel?”

“That’s it!”

The Count breathed a sigh of relief.

“We needn’t worry. I know the spot well. A historic venue with fine acoustics—which also happens to be in the 8th. . .”

So, as Sofia packed her bags, the Count went down to the basement. Having found the second Paris Baedeker , he tore out the map, climbed the stairs, sat at the Grand Duke’s desk, and drew a new red line. Then when all the straps were tightened and the latches snapped, with a touch of ceremony the Count ushered Sofia through the closet door into the study, much as he had sixteen years before. And just as on that occasion, Sofia said: “Ooo.”

For since she had set out earlier that afternoon to attend her last rehearsal, their secret study had been transformed. On the bookcase a candelabra burned brightly. The two high-back chairs had been set at either end of the Countess’s oriental coffee table, which in turn had been draped with linen, decorated with a small arrangement of flowers, and set with the hotel’s finest silver.

“Your table awaits,” said the Count with a smile, pulling out Sofia’s chair.

“Okroshka?” she asked as she put her napkin in her lap.

“Absolutely,” said the Count, taking his seat. “Before one travels abroad, it is best to have a simple, heartwarming soup from home, so that one can recall it fondly should one ever happen to feel a little low.”

“I shall be sure to do so,” said Sofia with a smile, “the minute I become homesick.”

As they were finishing their soup, Sofia noticed that tucked beside the arrangement of flowers was a little silver lady in an eighteenth-century dress.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Why don’t you see for yourself.”

Sofia picked up the little lady and, hearing the hint of a jangle, waggled it back and forth. At the sound of the resulting chime, the door to the study swung open and in came Andrey pushing a Regency cart topped with a silver dome.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur! Bonsoir, Mademoiselle!”

Sofia laughed.

“I trust you enjoyed the soup,” he said.

“It was delicious.”

“ Très bien. ”

Andrey whisked the bowls from the table and stowed them on the bottom shelf of his cart as the Count and Sofia looked to the silver dome with anticipation. But when Andrey stood back up, instead of revealing what Chef Zhukovsky had in store for them, he produced a pad.

“Before I serve the next course,” he explained, “I will need you to confirm your satisfaction with the soup. Please sign here and here and here.”

The look of shock on the Count’s face prompted a burst of laughter from both Andrey and Sofia. Then with a flourish, the maître d’ raised the dome and presented Emile’s newest specialty: Goose à la Sofia. “In which,” he explained, “the goose is hoisted in a dumbwaiter, chased down a hall, and thrown from a window before being roasted.”