Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

You see?

If Mrs. Trent had not so perfectly mastered the art of roasting, the young lieutenant might have kept his attention on the Princess instead of washing down a third helping of beef with an eighth glass of wine. If the temperature that night had not dropped six degrees in as many hours, the ice might not have formed in the drive, your portly friend might not have fallen, and the card game might not have been played. And if the sight of snow hadn’t prompted the footmen to build the fires so high, you might not have ended up on the terrace in the arms of the birthday girl—as a young Hussar returned his supper to the pasture from whence it came.

And what is more, thought the Count with a grave expression, all the sorry events that followed might never have come to pass. . . .

“What is this? Who are you?”

Turning from the window, the Count discovered a middle-aged couple standing in the doorway with the key to the suite in their hands.

“What are you doing here?” the husband demanded.

“I am . . . from the drapers,” the Count replied.

Turning back to the window, he took hold of the curtain and gave it a tug.

“Yes,” he said. “Everything seems in order.”

Then he doffed the cap he wasn’t wearing and escaped into the hall.

“Good evening, Vasily.”

“Oh. Good evening, Count Rostov.”

The Count gave the desk a delicate tap.

“Have you seen Nina about?”

“She is in the ballroom, I believe.”

“Ah. Just so.”

The Count was pleasantly surprised to hear that Nina was back in one of her old haunts. Now thirteen, Nina had all but given up her youthful pastimes in favor of books and professors. To have set aside her studies, there must have been quite an Assembly assembled.

But when the Count opened the door, there was no shuffling of chairs or pounding of podiums. Nina was sitting alone at a small table under the central chandelier. The Count noted that her hair was tucked behind her ears, an unfailing indication that something of significance was in the works. Sure enough, on the pad before her was a six by three grid, while on the table sat a set of scales, a measuring tape, and a sprinter’s watch.

“Greetings, my friend.”

“Oh, hello, Your Countship.”

“What, pray tell, are you up to?”

“We are preparing for an experiment.”

The Count looked around the ballroom.

“We?”

Nina pointed with her pencil to the balcony.

Looking up, the Count discovered a boy Nina’s age crouching in their old perch behind the balustrade. Simply though neatly dressed, the boy had wide eyes and an expression that was earnest and attentive. Along the balustrade were lined a series of objects of different shapes and sizes.

Nina made the introductions.

“Count Rostov, Boris. Boris, Count Rostov.”

“Good afternoon, Boris.”

“Good afternoon, sir.”

The Count turned back to Nina.

“What is the nature of this endeavor?”

“We intend to test the hypotheses of two renowned mathematicians in a single experiment. Specifically, we will be testing Newton’s calculation of the speed of gravity and Galileo’s principle that objects with different mass fall at an equivalent rate.”

From the balustrade, wide-eyed Boris nodded earnestly and attentively.

By way of illustration, Nina pointed her pencil to the first column of her grid, in which six objects were listed in ascending order of size.

“Where did you get the pineapple?”

“From the fruit bowl in the lobby,” Boris called down with enthusiasm.

Nina set down her pencil.

“ Let’s start with the kopek, Boris. Remember to hold it precisely at the top of the balustrade, and drop it exactly when I tell you to do so.”

For a moment, the Count wondered if the height of the balcony was sufficient to measure the influence of mass on the descent of varying objects. After all, hadn’t Galileo climbed the Tower of Pisa when he executed his experiment? And surely, the balcony wasn’t high enough to calculate the acceleration of gravity. But it is hardly the role of the casual observer to call into question the methodology of the seasoned scientist. So, the Count kept his wonderings where they belonged.

Boris took up the kopek and, showing due consideration for the seriousness of his task, he carefully arranged himself so that he could hold the designated object precisely at the top of the balustrade.

After making a notation on her pad, Nina picked up her watch.

“On the count of three, Boris. One. Two. Three!”

Boris released the coin and after a moment of silence, it pinged against the floor.

Nina looked at her watch.

“One point two five seconds,” she called to Boris.

“Check,” he replied.

Carefully noting the datum in its corresponding square, on a separate sheet of paper Nina divided the figure by a factor, carried its remainder, subtracted the difference, and so on and so forth, until she rounded the solution to the second decimal. Then she shook her head in apparent disappointment.

“Thirty-two feet per second per second.”

Boris responded with an expression of scientific concern.

“The egg,” Nina said.

The egg (which presumably had been liberated from the Piazza’s kitchen) was held precisely, released exactly, and timed to the centisecond. The experiment continued with a teacup, a billiard ball, a dictionary, and the pineapple, all of which completed their journey to the dance floor in the same amount of time. Thus, in the ballroom of the Metropol Hotel on the twenty-first of June 1926, was the heretic, Galileo of Galilei, vindicated by a ping, a splat, a smash, a thunk, a thump, and a thud.

Of the six objects, the teacup was the Count’s personal favorite. It not only made a satisfying smash upon impact, but in the immediate aftermath one could hear the shards of porcelain skidding across the floor like acorns across the ice.

Having completed her tally, Nina observed a little sadly:

“Professor Lisitsky said that these hypotheses have been tested over time. . . .”

“Yes,” said the Count. “I imagine they have. . . .”

Then to lighten her spirits, he suggested that as it was almost eight o’clock, perhaps she and her young friend might join him for supper at the Boyarsky. Alas, she and Boris had another experiment to perform—one that involved a bucket of water, a bicycle, and the perimeter of Red Square.

On this of all nights, was the Count disappointed that Nina and her young friend couldn’t join him for supper? Of course he was. And yet, the Count had always been of the opinion that God, who could easily have split the hours of darkness and light right down the middle, had chosen instead to make the days of summer longer for scientific expeditions of just this very sort. In addition, the Count had a pleasant inkling that Boris might prove to be the first in a long line of earnest and attentive young men who would be dropping eggs from balustrades and riding bikes with buckets.

“Then I leave you to it,” said the Count with a smile.

“All right. But had you come for something in particular?”

“No,” the Count replied after a pause, “nothing in particular.” But as he turned toward the door, something did occur to him. “Nina . . .”

She looked up from her work.

“Even though these hypotheses have been tested over time, I think you were perfectly right to test them again.”

Nina studied the Count for a moment.

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “You have always known me the best.”

At ten o’clock the Count was seated in the Boyarsky with an empty plate and a nearly empty bottle of White on the table. With the day drawing rapidly to a close, he took some pride in knowing that everything was in order.