Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

“My father was a peasant from Poltava.”

. . .

“But why would you fabricate such a ridiculous story?”

“I think I thought it would appeal to you.”

“You think you thought?”

“Exactly.”

The Count reflected for a moment.

“What about the deboning of the fish!”

“I worked in a tavern in Odessa after I ran away from home.”

The Count shook his head.

“How dispiriting.”

Anna rolled on her side to face the Count.

“You told me that preposterous story about the apples of Nizhny Novgorod.”

“But that story’s true!”

“Oh, come on. Apples as big as cannonballs? In every color of the rainbow?”

The Count was silent for a moment. Then he tamped out the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table.

“I should be going,” he said, and began climbing out of bed.

“All right,” she said, pulling him back. “I remember one.”

“One what?”

“A sea story.”

He rolled his eyes.

“No. I’m serious. It’s a story my grandmother used to tell me.”

“A sea story.”

“With a young adventurer, and a deserted island, and a fortune in gold . . .”

Begrudgingly, the Count lay back on the pillows and gestured for her to begin.

Once upon a time, Anna related, there was a rich merchant with a fleet of ships and three sons, the youngest of whom was rather small in stature. One spring, the merchant gave his older sons ships laden down with furs, carpets, and fine linens, instructing one to sail east and one to sail west in search of new kingdoms with which to trade. When the youngest son asked where his boat was, the merchant and the older boys laughed. In the end, the merchant gave his youngest son a rickety sloop with raggedy sails, a toothless crew, and empty sacks for ballast. When the young man asked his father in which direction he should sail, the merchant replied that he should sail until the sun never set in December.

So the son sailed southward with his scurvy crew. After three times three months on the open seas, they reached a land where the sun never set in December. There, they landed on an island that appeared to have a mountain of snow, but which turned out to have a mountain of salt. Salt was so plentiful in his homeland that housewives cast it over their shoulders for good luck without a second thought. Nonetheless, the young man instructed his crew to fill the sacks in the hull with the salt, if for no other reason than to add to the ship’s ballast.

Sailing truer and faster than before, they soon came upon a great kingdom. The king received the merchant’s son in his court and asked what he had to trade. The young man replied that he had a hull full of salt. Remarking that he had never heard of it, the king wished him well and sent him on his way. Undaunted, the young man paid a visit to the king’s kitchens, where he discreetly sprinkled salt onto the mutton, into the soup, over the tomatoes, and into custard.

That night, the king was amazed at the flavor of his food. The mutton was better, the soup was better, the tomatoes were better, even the custard was better. Calling his chefs before him, he excitedly asked what new technique they were using. Befuddled, the chefs admitted they had done nothing different; although they had been visited in the kitchen by the young stranger from the sea. . . .

The next afternoon, the merchant’s son set sail for home in a ship laden with one bag of gold for every sack of salt.

. . .

“Your grandmother told you that?”

“She did.”

. . .

“It is a good story. . . .”

“Yes, it is.”

. . .

“But it doesn’t absolve you.”

“I should think not.”

An Alliance

At 5:45, with his five waiters standing at their stations, the Count made his nightly rounds of the Boyarsky. Beginning in the northwest corner, he circulated through the twenty tables to ensure that every setting, every saltcellar, every vase of flowers was in its proper place.

At table four a knife was realigned to be parallel with its fork. At table five a water glass was moved from midnight to one o’clock. At table six a wine glass that had a remnant of lipstick was whisked away, while at table seven the soap spots on a spoon were polished until the inverted image of the room could be clearly seen on the surface of the silver.

This, one might be inclined to observe, is exactly how Napoleon must have appeared when in the hour before dawn he walked among his ranks, reviewing everything from the stores of munitions to the dress of the infantry—having learned from experience that victory on the field of battle begins with the shine on a boot.

But many of Napoleon’s greatest battles lasted only a day and were never to be fought again. . . .

As such, the more apt analogy might be that of Gorsky at the Bolshoi. Having studied the intent of the composer, collaborated closely with his conductor, trained his dancers, overseen the design of the costumes and sets, Gorsky also walked his ranks in the minutes before battle. But once the curtain fell and the audience departed, there would be no parade along the Champs-Élysées. For in less than twenty-four hours, his ballerinas, musicians, and technicians would reassemble to execute the same performance to the same standard of perfection. Now that was the life of the Boyarsky—a battle that must be waged with exacting precision while giving the impression of effortlessness, every single night of the year.

Confident that all was in order in the dining room, at 5:55 the Count turned his attention, if briefly, to Emile’s kitchen. Peering through the little round window in the door, the Count could see that the chef’s assistants were standing at the ready in their freshly bleached coats; he could see that the sauces were simmering on the stovetop and the garnishes ready for plating. But what of that notorious misanthrope of a chef? With the opening of the Boyarsky’s doors just minutes away, wasn’t he railing against his staff, his customers, and all his fellow men?

In point of fact, Emile Zhukovsky began his days in a state of the blackest pessimism. The very moment he looked out from under his covers, he met existence with a scowl, knowing it to be a cold and unforgiving condition. Having had his worst suspicions confirmed by the morning papers, at eleven o’clock he would be waiting at the curb for a crowded tram to rattle him to the hotel while muttering, “What a world.”

But as the day unfolded, hour by hour Emile’s pessimism would slowly give way to the possibility that all was not lost. This rosier perspective would begin building quietly around noon, when he came into his kitchen and saw his copper pots. Hanging from their hooks, still shining from the previous night’s scrubbing, they seemed to suggest an indisputable sense of possibility. Stepping into the cooler, he would hoist a side of lamb over his shoulder, and when he dropped it on the counter with a satisfying thump, his worldview would brighten by another hundred lumens. Such that by 3:00, when he heard the sound of root vegetables being chopped and smelled the aroma of garlic being sizzled, Emile might begrudgingly acknowledge that existence had its consolations. Then at 5:30, if everything seemed in order, he might allow himself to sample the wine that he’d been cooking with—just to polish off the bottle, you understand; waste not want not; neither a borrower nor a lender be. And at around 6:25, that dark humor which had seemed at dawn to be the very foundation of Emile’s soul, would become irreversibly sanguine when the first order was delivered to his kitchen.

So, what did the Count see when he looked through the window at 5:55? He saw Emile dip a spoon into a bowl of chocolate mousse and lick it clean. With that confirmation, the Count turned to Andrey and nodded. Then he assumed his station between table one and table two as the maître d’ threw the bolts to open the Boyarsky’s doors.