Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

“Have you ever been in a duel?”

“An affaire d’honneur ?” The Count hesitated. “I suppose I have been in a duel of sorts. . . .”

“With pistols at thirty-two paces?”

“In my case, it was more of a duel in the figurative sense.”

When the Count’s guest expressed her disappointment at this unfortunate clarification, he found himself offering a consolation:

“My godfather was a second on more than one occasion.”

“A second?”

“When a gentleman has been offended and demands satisfaction on the field of honor, he and his counterpart each appoint seconds—in essence, their lieutenants. It is the seconds who settle upon the rules of engagement.”

“What sort of rules of engagement?”

“The time and place of the duel. What weapons will be used. If it is to be pistols, then how many paces will be taken and whether there will be more than one exchange of shots.”

“Your godfather, you say. Where did he live?”

“Here in Moscow.”

“Were his duels in Moscow?”

“One of them was. In fact, it sprang from a dispute that occurred in this hotel—between an admiral and a prince. They had been at odds for quite some time, I gather, but things came to a head one night when their paths collided in the lobby, and the gauntlet was thrown down on that very spot.”

“Which very spot?”

“By the concierge’s desk.”

“Right where I sit!”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Were they in love with the same woman?”

“I don’t think a woman was involved.”

The girl looked at the Count with an expression of incredulity.

“A woman is always involved,” she said.

“Yes. Well. Whatever the cause, an offense was taken followed by a demand for an apology, a refusal to provide one, and a slap of the glove. At the time, the hotel was managed by a German fellow named Keffler, who was reputedly a baron in his own right. And it was generally known that he kept a pair of pistols hidden behind a panel in his office, so that when an incident occurred, seconds could confer in privacy, carriages could be summoned, and the feuding parties could be whisked away with weapons in hand.”

“In the hours before dawn . . .”

“In the hours before dawn.”

“To some remote spot . . .”

“To some remote spot.”

She leaned forward.

“Lensky was killed by Onegin in a duel.”

She said this in a hushed voice, as if quoting the events of Pushkin’s poem required discretion.

“Yes,” whispered back the Count. “And so was Pushkin.”

She nodded in grave agreement.

“In St. Petersburg,” she said. “On the banks of the Black Rivulet.”

“On the banks of the Black Rivulet.”

The young lady’s fish was now gone. Placing her napkin on her plate and nodding her head once to suggest how perfectly acceptable the Count had proven as a luncheon companion, she rose from her chair. But before turning to go, she paused.

“I prefer you without your moustaches,” she said. “Their absence improves your . . . countenance.”

Then she performed an off-kilter curtsey and disappeared behind the fountain.

An affaire d’honneur . . .

Or so thought the Count with a touch of self-recrimination as he sat alone later that night in the hotel’s bar with a snifter of brandy.

Situated off the lobby, furnished with banquettes, a mahogany bar, and a wall of bottles, this American-style watering hole was affectionately referred to by the Count as the Shalyapin, in honor of the great Russian opera singer who had frequented the spot in the years before the Revolution. Once a beehive of activity, the Shalyapin was now more a chapel of prayer and reflection—but tonight that suited the Count’s cast of mind.

Yes, he continued in his thoughts, how fine almost any human endeavor can be made to sound when expressed in the proper French. . . .

“May I offer you a hand, Your Excellency?”

This was Audrius, the Shalyapin’s tender at bar. A Lithuanian with a blond goatee and a ready smile, Audrius was a man who knew his business. Why, the moment after you took a stool he would be leaning toward you with his forearm on the bar to ask your pleasure; and as soon as your glass was empty, he was there with a splash. But the Count wasn’t sure why he was choosing this particular moment to offer a hand.

“With your jacket,” the bartender clarified.

In point of fact, the Count did seem to be struggling to get his arm through the sleeve of his blazer—which he couldn’t quite remember having taken off in the first place. The Count had arrived at the Shalyapin at six o’clock, as usual, where he maintained a strict limit of one aperitif before dinner. But noting that he had never received his bottle of Baudelaire, the Count had allowed himself a second glass of Dubonnet. And then a snifter or two of brandy. And the next thing he knew, it was . . . , it was . . .

“What time is it, Audrius?”

“Ten, Your Excellency.”

“Ten!”

Audrius, who was suddenly on the customer side of the bar, was helping the Count off his stool. And as he guided the Count across the lobby (quite unnecessarily), the Count invited him into his train of thought.

“Did you know, Audrius, that when dueling was first discovered by the Russian officer corps in the early 1700s, they took to it with such enthusiasm that the Tsar had to forbid the practice for fear that there would soon be no one left to lead his troops.”

“I did not know that, Your Excellency,” the bartender replied with a smile.

“Well, it’s quite true. And not only is a duel central to the action of Onegin , one occurs at a critical juncture in War and Peace, Fathers and Sons, and The Brothers Karamazov ! Apparently, for all their powers of invention, the Russian masters could not come up with a better plot device than two central characters resolving a matter of conscience by means of pistols at thirty-two paces.”

“I see your point. But here we are. Shall I press for the fifth floor?”

The Count, who found himself standing in front of the elevator, looked at the bartender in shock.

“But, Audrius, I have never taken the lift in my life!”

Then, after patting the bartender on the shoulder, the Count began winding his way up the stairs; that is, until he reached the second-floor landing, where he sat on a step.

“Why is it that our nation above all others embraced the duel so wholeheartedly?” he asked the stairwell rhetorically.

Some, no doubt, would simply dismiss it as a by-product of barbarism. Given Russia’s long, heartless winters, its familiarity with famine, its rough sense of justice, and so on, and so on, it was perfectly natural for its gentry to adopt an act of definitive violence as the means of resolving disputes. But in the Count’s considered opinion, the reason that dueling prevailed among Russian gentlemen stemmed from nothing more than their passion for the glorious and grandiose.

True, duels were fought by convention at dawn in isolated locations to ensure the privacy of the gentlemen involved. But were they fought behind ash heaps or in scrapyards? Of course not! They were fought in a clearing among the birch trees with a dusting of snow. Or on the banks of a winding rivulet. Or at the edge of a family estate where the breezes shake the blossoms from the trees. . . . That is, they were fought in settings that one might have expected to see in the second act of an opera.

In Russia, whatever the endeavor, if the setting is glorious and the tenor grandiose, it will have its adherents. In fact, over the years, as the locations for duels became more picturesque and the pistols more finely manufactured, the best-bred men proved willing to defend their honor over lesser and lesser offenses. So while dueling may have begun as a response to high crimes—to treachery, treason, and adultery—by 1900 it had tiptoed down the stairs of reason, until they were being fought over the tilt of a hat, the duration of a glance, or the placement of a comma.