Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

The blonde accepted the coat with a nod, and without a word of thanks.

Without a word of thanks . . . ?

The Count rose to his feet.

“Nina?”

All four youths turned toward the potted palm.

Leaving his white jacket and Mishka’s letter in his chair, the Count stepped from behind the fronds.

“Nina Kulikova!” he exclaimed. “What a delightful surprise.”

And that is exactly what it was for the Count: a delightful surprise. For he had not seen Nina in over two years; and many had been the time that he had passed the card room or the ballroom and found himself wondering where she was and what she was doing.

But in an instant, the Count could see that for Nina his sudden appearance was less opportune. Perhaps she’d rather not have to explain to her comrades about her acquaintance with a Former Person. Perhaps she hadn’t mentioned that she had lived as a child in such a fine hotel. Or perhaps she simply wanted to carry on this purposeful conversation with her purposeful friends.

“I’ll be just a minute,” she told them, then crossed over to the Count.

Naturally, after such a long separation the Count’s instinct was to embrace little Nina like a bear; but she seemed to dissuade his impulse with her posture.

“It is good to see you, Nina.”

“And you, Alexander Ilyich.”

The old friends took each other in for a moment; then Nina made a gesture toward the white jacket hanging over the arm of the chair.

“I see you are still presiding over tables at the Boyarsky.”

“Yes,” he said with a smile, though unsure from her businesslike tone whether he should take the remark as a compliment or criticism. . . . He was tempted in turn to ask (with a glint in his eye) if she had had an “hors d’oeuvre” at the Piazza, but thought better of it.

“I gather you are on the verge of an adventure,” he said instead.

“I suppose there will be adventurous aspects,” she replied. “But mostly there will be a good deal of work.”

The four of them, she explained, were leaving the next morning with ten other cadres of local Komsomol youth for the Kady District—an ancient agricultural center in the heart of the Ivanovo Province—to aid the udarniks , or “shock workers,” in the collectivization of the region. At the end of 1928, only 10 percent of the farms in Ivanovo had been operating as collectives. By the end of 1931, nearly all of them would be.

“For generations the kulaks have farmed the land for themselves, organizing the local peasant labor to their own ends. But the time has come for the common land to serve the common good. It is a historical necessity,” she added matter-of-factly, “an inevitability. After all, does a teacher only teach his own children? Does a physician only care for his parents?”

As Nina began this little speech, the Count was taken aback for a moment by her tone and terminology—by her exacting assessment of kulaks and the “inevitable” need for collectivization. But when she tucked her hair behind her ears, he realized that her fervor shouldn’t have come as a surprise. She was simply bringing to the Komsomol the same unwavering enthusiasm and precise attention to detail that she had brought to the mathematics of Professor Lisitsky. Nina Kulikova always was and would be a serious soul in search of serious ideas to be serious about.

Nina had told her comrades that she would only be a minute, but as she elaborated on the work that lay ahead, she seemed to forget that they were still standing on the other side of the potted palm.

With an inward smile, the Count noted over her shoulder that the handsome captain, having volunteered to wait for Nina, was sending the others on ahead—a reasonable gambit under any ideology.

“I should go,” she said, after drawing her remarks to a close.

“Yes. Absolutely,” replied the Count. “You must have a great deal to see to.”

In sober acknowledgment, she shook his hand; and when she turned, she barely seemed to notice that two of her comrades had already left—as if having a handsome fellow wait for her was something to which she had already become accustomed.

As the two young idealists left the hotel, the Count watched through the revolving doors. He watched as the young man spoke to Pavel, and Pavel signaled a taxi. But when the taxi appeared and the young man opened the door, Nina gestured across Theatre Square, indicating that she was headed in another direction. The handsome captain made a similar gesture, presumably offering to accompany her, but Nina shook his hand just as soberly as she had shaken the Count’s and then walked across the square in the general direction of historical necessity.

“Isn’t that more of a cream than a pearl?”

Together, the Count and Marina were staring at a spool that she had just taken from a drawer filled with threads in every possible shade of white.

“I am so sorry, Your Excellency,” Marina replied. “Now that you bring it to my attention, it does seem more creamy than pearly.”

The Count looked up from the spool into Marina’s stationary eye, which was filled with concern; but her wandering eye seemed filled with mirth. Then she laughed like a schoolgirl.

“Oh, give me that,” he said.

“Here,” she said in a conciliatory tone. “Let me.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Oh, come now.”

“I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself, thank you.”

But to the Count’s credit, he was not simply making a peevish point. He was, in fact, perfectly capable of doing it himself.

It stands to reason that if you wish to be a good waiter you must be master of your own appearance. You must be clean, well groomed, and graceful. But you must also be neatly dressed. You certainly can’t wander around the dining room with fraying collars or cuffs. And God forbid you should presume to serve with a dangling button—for next thing you knew, it would be floating in a customer’s vichyssoise. So, three weeks after joining the staff of the Boyarsky, the Count had asked Marina to teach him Arachne’s art. To be conservative, the Count had set aside an hour for the lesson. It ended up taking eight hours over the course of four weeks.

Who knew that there was such a plethora of stitches? The backstitch, cross-stitch, slip stitch, topstitch, whipstitch. Aristotle, Larousse, and Diderot—those great encyclopedists who spent their lives segmenting, cataloging, and defining all manner of phenomena—would never have imagined that there were so many, and each one suited to a different purpose!

With his creamy thread in hand, the Count settled himself into a chair; and when Marina held out her pincushion, he surveyed the needles as a child surveys chocolates in a box.

“This one,” he said.

Licking the thread and closing an eye (just as Marina had taught him), the Count threaded the needle faster than saints enter the gates of heaven. Forming a double loop, tying off a knot, and snipping the thread from the spool, the Count sat upright and set about his work as Marina set about hers (the repair of a pillowcase).

As with any sewing circle since the beginning of time, the two in this one were accustomed to sharing observations from their day as they stitched. Most of these observations were met with a Hmm , or an Is that so? without a break in the rhythm of the work; but occasionally, some item that warranted greater attention would bring the stitching to a stop. Just so, having exchanged remarks on the weather, and Pavel’s handsome new topcoat, Marina’s needle suddenly froze in midstitch when the Count mentioned that he had run into Nina.

“Nina Kulikova?” she asked in surprise.

“None other.”

“Where?”

“In the lobby. She had been having lunch with three of her comrades.”