Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

His point expertly made, the Count raised his own cup of tea, nodded once, and drank.

Nina looked at him expectantly.

“And then?”

The Count returned his cup to its saucer.

“And then what?”

“Did she marry the blacksmith’s son?”

“Marry the blacksmith’s son! Good God. Certainly not. After a glass of tea she climbed into her carriage and headed for home.”

Nina mulled this over. Clearly, she thought a marriage to the blacksmith’s son a more fitting conclusion. But despite the shortcomings of history, she nodded to acknowledge that the Count had delivered a well-told tale.

Preferring to preserve his success, the Count opted not to share his normal coda to this delightful bit of St. Petersburg lore: that the Countess Tushin had been greeting guests under her portico when Princess Golitsyn’s bright blue carriage, known the city over, slowed before the gates and then sped on. This resulted in a rift between the Golitsyns and the Tushins that would have taken three generations to repair—if a certain Revolution hadn’t brought an end to their outrage altogether. . . .

“It was behavior befitting a princess,” acknowledged Nina.

“Exactly,” said the Count.

Then he held out the tea cakes and Nina took two, putting one on her plate and one in her mouth.

The Count was not one to call attention to the social shortcomings of acquaintances, but giddy with his story’s reception, he could not resist pointing out with a smile:

“There is another example.”

“Where is another example?”

“A princess would be raised to say please when she asked for a cake, and thank you when she was offered one.”

Nina looked taken aback; and then dismissive.

“I can see that please would be quite appropriate for a princess to say when she has asked for a cake; but I can see no reason why she should have to say thank you when she has been offered one.”

“Manners are not like bonbons, Nina. You may not choose the ones that suit you best; and you certainly cannot put the half-bitten ones back in the box. . . .”

Nina eyed the Count with an expression of seasoned tolerance, and then presumably for his benefit, spoke a little more slowly.

“I understand that a princess should say please if she is asking for a cake, because she is trying to convince someone to give her the cake. And I suppose, if having asked for a cake, she is given a cake, then she has good reason to say thank you . But in the second part of your example, the princess in question didn’t ask for the cake; she was offered it. And I see no reason why she should have to say thank you when she is merely obliging someone by accepting what they’ve offered.”

To punctuate her point, Nina put a lemon tartlet in her mouth.

“I concede that there is some merit to your argument,” said the Count. “But I can only tell you from a life of experience that—”

Nina cut him off with a wave of a finger.

“But you have just said that you are quite young.”

“Indeed, I am.”

“Well then, it seems to me that your claim of ‘a life of experience’ may be premature.”

Yes, thought the Count, as this tea was making perfectly clear.

“I shall work upon my posture,” Nina said quite definitively, brushing the crumbs from her fingers. “And I will be sure to say please and thank you whenever I ask for things. But I have no intention of thanking people for things I never asked for in the first place.”

Around and About

On the twelfth of July at seven o’clock, as the Count was crossing the lobby on his way to the Boyarsky, Nina caught his eye from behind one of the potted palms and gave him the signal. It was the first time that she had hailed him for an excursion this late in the day.

“Quick,” she explained, when he had joined her behind the tree. “The gentleman has gone out to dine.”

The gentleman?

To avoid drawing attention to themselves, the two walked casually up the stairs. But as they turned onto the third floor, they ran smack into a guest who was patting his pockets for his key. On the landing directly across from the elevator, there was a stained-glass window of long-legged birds wading in shallows that the Count had passed a thousand times before. Nina began to study it with care.

“Yes, you were right,” she said. “It is some kind of crane.”

But as soon as the guest had let himself into his room, Nina forged ahead. Moving at a brisk pace along the carpet, they passed rooms 313, 314, and 315. They passed the little table with the statue of Hermes that stood outside the door of 316. Then with a certain dizziness, the Count realized that they were headed toward his old suite!

But wait.

We are ahead of ourselves. . . .

After the ill-fated night that ended on the second-floor steps, the Count had taken a break from his nightly aperitif, suspecting that the liquor had been an unhealthy influence on his mood. But this saintly abstinence did not prove a tonic to his soul. With so little to do and all the time in the world to do it, the Count’s peace of mind continued to be threatened by a sense of ennui—that dreaded mire of the human emotions.

And if this is how desultory one feels after three weeks, reflected the Count, then how desultory can one expect to feel after three years?

But for the virtuous who have lost their way, the Fates often provide a guide. On the island of Crete, Theseus had his Ariadne and her magical ball of thread to lead him safely from the lair of the Minotaur. Through those caverns where ghostly shadows dwell, Odysseus had his Tiresias just as Dante had his Virgil. And in the Metropol Hotel, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov had a nine-year-old girl by the name of Nina Kulikova.

For on the first Wednesday in July, as the Count sat in the lobby at a loss of what to do with himself, he happened to notice Nina zipping past with an unusually determined expression.

“Hello, my friend. Where are you headed?”

Turning about like one who’s been caught in the act, Nina composed herself, then answered with a wave of the hand:

“Around and about . . .”

The Count raised his eyebrows.

“And where is that exactly?”

. . .

“At this moment, the card room.”

“Ah. So you like to play at cards.”

“Not really . . .”

“Then why on earth are you going there?”

. . .

“Oh, come now,” the Count protested. “Surely, there are not going to be secrets between us !”

Nina weighed the Count’s remark, then looking once to her left and once to her right, she confided. She explained that while the card room was rarely used, at three o’clock on Wednesdays four women met there without fail for a regular game of whist; and if you arrived by two thirty and hid in the cupboard, you could hear their every word—which included a good deal of cursing; and when the ladies left, you could eat the rest of their cookies.

The Count sat upright.

“Where else do you spend your time?”

Again she weighed the Count’s remark, looked left and looked right.

“Meet me here,” she said, “tomorrow at two.”

And thus began the Count’s education.

Having lived at the Metropol for four years, the Count considered himself something of an expert on the hotel. He knew its staff by name, its services by experience, and the decorative styles of its suites by heart. But once Nina had taken him in hand, he realized what a novice he had been.

In the ten months that Nina had lived at the Metropol, she had been confronted with her own version of confinement. For, as her father had been posted only “temporarily” to Moscow, he had not bothered to enroll her in school. And as Nina’s governess still had one foot set firmly in the hinterlands, she preferred that her charge remain on the hotel’s premises where she was less likely to be corrupted by street lamps and trolley cars. So, if the door of the Metropol was known the world over for spinning without stop, it spun not for Nina. But, an enterprising and tireless spirit, the young lady had made the most of her situation by personally investigating the hotel until she knew every room, its purpose, and how it might be put to better use.