Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

The gentleman, who was now sitting on the couch with his arms crossed, replied that this suited him perfectly—as he had been about to summon the manager himself. And as to Party membership, he asserted that he had been a member of the Party since before comrade Tarakovsky was born—which seemed a rather incredible claim given that comrade Tarakovsky is eighty-two. . . .

Now, the Count, who had listened with interest to every word that Arkady had related, would be the first to admit that this was an enthralling tale. In fact, it was just the sort of colorful incident that an international hotel should aspire to have as part of its lore and that he, as a guest of the hotel, would be likely to retell at the first opportunity. But what he could not understand was why Arkady had chosen this particular moment to share this particular story with him .

“Why, because comrade Tarakovsky is staying in suite 317; and it is you for whom the gentleman in question was looking.”

“Me?”

“I am afraid so.”

“What is his name?”

“He refused to say.”

. . .

“Then where is he now?”

Arkady pointed toward the lobby.

“He is wearing out the carpet behind the potted palms.”

“Wearing out the carpet . . . ?”

The Count stuck his head out of the Shalyapin as Arkady leaned cautiously behind him. And sure enough, there on the other side of the lobby was the gentleman in question, making quick business of the ten feet between the pair of plants.

The Count smiled.

Though a few pounds heavier, Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich had the same ragged beard and restless pace that he had had when they were twenty-two.

“Do you know him?” asked the desk captain.

“Only like a brother.”

When the Count and Mikhail Fyodorovich first met at the Imperial University in St. Petersburg in the fall of 1907, the two were tigers of a very different stripe. While the Count had been raised in a twenty-room mansion with a staff of fourteen, Mikhail had been raised in a two-room apartment with his mother. And while the Count was known in all the salons of the capital as one who could be counted on for his wit, intelligence, and charm, Mikhail was known hardly anywhere as one who preferred to read in his room rather than fritter away the evening on frivolous conversations.

As such, the two young men hardly seemed fated for friendship. But Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do. Sure enough, while Mikhail was prone to throw himself into a scrape at the slightest difference of opinion, regardless of the number or size of his opponents, it just so happened that Count Alexander Rostov was prone to leap to the defense of an outnumbered man regardless of how ill conceived his cause. Thus, on the fourth day of their first year, the two students found themselves helping each other up off the ground, as they wiped the dust from their knees and the blood from their lips.

While the splendors that elude us in youth are likely to receive our casual contempt in adolescence and our measured consideration in adulthood, they forever hold us in their thrall. Thus, in the days that followed their meeting, the Count listened with as much amazement to Mikhail’s impassioned expression of ideals, as Mikhail did to the Count’s descriptions of the city’s salons. And within the year, they were sharing rented rooms above a cobbler’s shop off Sredny Prospekt.

As the Count would later observe, it was fortuitous that they ended up above a cobbler—for no one in all of Russia could wear out a shoe like Mikhail Mindich. He could easily pace twenty miles in a twenty-foot room. He could pace thirty miles in an opera box and fifty in a confessional. For simply put, pacing was Mishka’s natural state.

Say the Count secured them invitations to Platonov’s for drinks, the Petrovskys’ for supper, and Princess Petrossian’s for a dance—Mishka would invariably decline on the grounds that in the back of a bookshop he had just discovered a volume by someone named Flammenhescher that demanded to be read from beginning to end without delay. But once alone, having torn through the first fifty pages of Herr Flammenhescher’s little monograph, Mikhail would leap to his feet and start pacing from corner to corner in order to voice his fervid agreement or furious dissent with the author’s thesis, his style, or his use of punctuation. Such that by the time the Count returned at two in the morning, though Mishka had not advanced beyond the fiftieth page, he had worn out more shoe leather than a pilgrim on the road to St. Paul’s.

So, the storming of hotel suites and the wearing out of carpets was not particularly out of character for his old friend. But as Mishka had recently received a new appointment at their alma mater in St. Petersburg, the Count was surprised to have him appear so suddenly, and in such a state.

After embracing, the two men climbed the five flights to the attic. Having been told what to expect, Mishka took in his friend’s new circumstances without an expression of surprise. But he paused before the three-legged bureau and tilted his head to give its base a second look.

“The Essays of Montaigne?”

“Yes,” affirmed the Count.

“I gather they didn’t agree with you.”

“On the contrary. I found them to be the perfect height. But tell me, my friend, what brings you to Moscow?”

“Nominally, Sasha, I am here to help plan the inaugural congress of RAPP, which is to be held in June. But of greater consequence . . .”

Here Mishka reached into a shoulder satchel and produced a bottle of wine with an image of two crossed keys embossed in the glass above the label.

“I hope I am not too late.”

The Count took the bottle in hand. He ran his thumb over the surface of the insignia. Then he shook his head with the smile of the deeply moved.

“No, Mishka. As always, you are right on time.” Then he led his old friend through his jackets.

As the Count excused himself to rinse a pair of glasses from the Ambassador, Mishka surveyed his friend’s study with a sympathetic gaze. For the tables, the chairs, the objets d’art , he recognized them all. And well he knew that they had been culled from the halls of Idlehour as reminders of Elysian days.

It must have been in 1908 that Alexander began inviting him to Idlehour for the month of July. Having traveled from St. Petersburg by a series of consecutively smaller trains, they would finally arrive at that little halt in the high grass on the branch line, where they would be met by a Rostov coach-and-four. With their bags on top, the driver in the carriage, and Alexander at the reins, they would charge across the countryside waving at every peasant girl until they turned onto the road lined with apple trees that led to the family seat.

As they shed their coats in the entry hall, their bags would be whisked to the grand bedrooms of the east wing, where velvet cords could be pulled to summon a cold glass of beer, or hot water for a bath. But first, they would proceed to the drawing room where—at this very table with its red pagoda—the Countess would be hosting some blue-blooded neighbor for tea.

Invariably dressed in black, the Countess was one of those dowagers whose natural independence of mind, authority of age, and impatience with the petty made her the ally of all irreverent youth. She would not only abide, but enjoyed when her grandson would interrupt polite conversation to question the standing of the church or the ruling class. And when her guest grew red and responded in a huff, the Countess would give Mishka a conspiratorial wink, as if they stood arm in arm in the battle against boorish decorum and the outmoded attitudes of the times.