Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

Fully aware that he was being watched, the Count closed his eyes to attend more closely to his impressions.

How to describe it?

One first tastes the broth—that simmered distillation of fish bones, fennel, and tomatoes, with their hearty suggestions of Provence. One then savors the tender flakes of haddock and the briny resilience of the mussels, which have been purchased on the docks from the fisherman. One marvels at the boldness of the oranges arriving from Spain and the absinthe poured in the taverns. And all of these various impressions are somehow collected, composed, and brightened by the saffron—that essence of summer sun which, having been harvested in the hills of Greece and packed by mule to Athens, has been sailed across the Mediterranean in a felucca. In other words, with the very first spoonful one finds oneself transported to the port of Marseille—where the streets teem with sailors, thieves, and madonnas, with sunlight and summer, with languages and life.

The Count opened his eyes.

“ Magnifique ,” he said.

Andrey, who had put down his spoon, brought his elegant hands together in a respectful show of silent applause.

Beaming, the chef bowed to his friends and then joined them in their long-awaited meal.

Over the next two hours, the three members of the Triumvirate each ate three bowls of the bouillabaisse, each drank a bottle of wine, and each spoke openly in turn.

And what did these old friends talk about? What did they not talk about! They talked of their childhoods in St. Petersburg, Minsk, and Lyon. Of their first and second loves. Of Andrey’s four-year-old son and Emile’s four-year-old lumbago. They spoke of the once and the was, of the wishful and the wonderful.

Rarely awake at this hour, Emile was in an unprecedented state of euphoria. As youthful stories were told, he laughed so heartily that his head rolled on his shoulders, and the corner of his napkin was raised to his eyes twice as often as it was raised to his lips.

And the pièce de résistance ? At three in the morning, Andrey referred briefly, offhandedly, almost parenthetically to his days under the big top.

“Eh? What’s that? Under what?”

“Did you say ‘the big top’?”

Yes. In point of fact: the circus.

Raised by a widowed father who was prone to drunken violence, at the age of sixteen Andrey had run away to join a traveling circus. It was with this troupe that he had come to Moscow in 1913 where, having fallen in love with a bookseller in the Arbat, he had bid the circus adieu . Two months later, he was hired as a waiter at the Boyarsky, and he had been there ever since.

“What did you do in the circus?” asked the Count.

“An acrobat?” suggested Emile. “A clown?”

“A lion tamer?”

“I juggled.”

“No,” said Emile.

In lieu of a response, the maître d’ rose from the table and gathered three of the unused oranges from the countertop. With the fruit in his hands, he stood perfectly erect. Or rather, he stood at a slight tilt induced by the wine, a sort of 12:02. Then after a brief pause, he set the spheres in motion.

In all honesty, the Count and Emile had been skeptical of their old friend’s claim; but as soon as he began, they could only wonder that they had not guessed at it before. For Andrey’s hands had been crafted by God to juggle. So deft was his touch that the oranges seemed to move of their own accord. Or better yet, they moved like planets governed by a force of gravity that simultaneously propelled them forward and kept them from flinging off into space; while Andrey, who was standing before these planets, seemed to be simply plucking them from their orbits and releasing them a moment later to pursue their natural course.

So gentle and rhythmic was the motion of Andrey’s hands that one was at constant risk of falling under hypnosis. And, in fact, without Emile or the Count noticing, another orange had suddenly joined the solar system. And then with a courtly flourish, Andrey caught all four spheres and bowed at the waist.

Now it was the Count and Emile’s turn to applaud.

“But surely, you didn’t juggle oranges,” said Emile.

“No,” Andrey admitted, as he carefully returned the oranges to the counter. “I juggled knives.”

Before the Count and Emile could express their disbelief, Andrey had taken three blades from a drawer and set them in motion. These were no planets. They spun through the air like the parts of some infernal machine, an effect that was heightened by the flashes of light from whenever the candle’s flame was reflected on the surface of the blades. And then, just as suddenly as the knives had been set in motion, their hilts were fixed in Andrey’s hands.

“Ah, but can you do four of those ?” teased the Count.

Without a word, Andrey moved back toward the knife drawer; but before he could reach inside, Emile had risen to his feet. With the expression of a boy enthralled by a street magician, he shyly stepped from the crowd and held out his chopper—that blade which had not been touched by another human hand in almost fifteen years. With an appropriate sense of ceremony, Andrey bowed from the waist to accept it. And when he set the four knives in motion, Emile leaned back in his chair and with a tear in his eye watched as his trusted blade tumbled effortlessly through space, feeling that this moment, this hour, this universe could not be improved upon.

At half past three in the morning, the Count swayed up the stairs, veered to his room, lurched through his closet, emptied his pockets onto the bookcase, poured himself a brandy, and with a sigh of satisfaction dropped into his chair. While from her place on the wall, Helena took him in with a tender, knowing smile.

“Yes, yes,” he admitted. “It is a little late, and I am a little drunk. But in my defense, it has been an eventful day.”

As if to make his point, the Count suddenly rose from his chair and tugged at one of the folds of his jacket.

“Do you see this button? I’ll have you know that I sewed it on myself.” Then dropping back in his chair, the Count picked up his brandy, took a sip, and reflected. “She was perfectly right, you know. Marina, I mean. Absolutely, positively, perfectly right.” The Count sighed again. Then he shared with his sister a notion.

Since the beginning of storytelling, he explained, Death has called on the unwitting. In one tale or another, it arrives quietly in town and takes a room at an inn, or lurks in an alleyway, or lingers in the marketplace, surreptitiously. Then just when the hero has a moment of respite from his daily affairs, Death pays him a visit.

This is all well and good, allowed the Count. But what is rarely related is the fact that Life is every bit as devious as Death. It too can wear a hooded coat. It too can slip into town, lurk in an alley, or wait in the back of a tavern.

Hadn’t it paid such a visit to Mishka? Hadn’t it found him hiding behind his books, lured him out of the library, and taken his hand on a secluded spot overlooking the Neva?

Hadn’t it found Andrey in Lyon and beckoned him to the big top?

Emptying his glass, the Count rose from his chair and stumbled into the bookcase as he reached for the brandy.

“ Excusez-moi , monsieur .”

The Count poured himself a tad, just a drop, no more than a sip, and fell back into his seat. Then waving a finger gently in the air, he continued:

“The collectivization of collectives, Helena, and the dekulaking of kulaks—in all probability, these are quite probable. They’re even likely to be likely. But inevitable ?”

With a knowing smile, the Count shook his head at the very sound of the word.