Амор Тоулз: A Gentleman in Moscow

“How is everything this evening, Your Excellency?”

“Ah, Andrey. As usual, everything is perfect.”

“And the saltimbocca?”

“Inspired. But I do have one question: The herb that Emile has tucked under the ham—I know it isn’t sage. By any chance, is it nettle?”

“Nettle? I don’t believe so. But I will inquire.”

Then with a bow, the maître d’ excused himself.

Without a doubt Emile Zhukovsky was a genius, reflected the Count, but the man who secured the Boyarsky’s reputation for excellence by ensuring that all within its walls ran smoothly was Andrey Duras.

Born in the south of France, Andrey was handsome, tall, and graying at the temples, but his most distinguishing feature was not his looks, his height, or his hair. It was his hands. Pale and well manicured, his fingers were half an inch longer than the fingers of most men his height. Had he been a pianist, Andrey could easily have straddled a twelfth. Had he been a puppeteer, he could have performed the sword fight between Macbeth and Macduff as all three witches looked on. But Andrey was neither a pianist nor a puppeteer—or at least not in the traditional sense. He was the captain of the Boyarsky, and one watched in wonder as his hands fulfilled their purpose at every turn.

Having just led a group of women to their table, for instance, Andrey seemed to pull back their chairs all at once. When one of the ladies produced a cigarette, he had a lighter in one hand and was guarding the flame with the other (as if a draft had ever been felt within the walls of the Boyarsky!). And when the woman holding the wine list asked for a recommendation, he didn’t point to the 1900 Bordeaux—at least not in the Teutonic sense. Rather, he slightly extended his index finger in a manner reminiscent of that gesture on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling with which the Prime Mover transmitted the spark of life. Then, excusing himself with a bow, he crossed the room and went through the kitchen door.

But before a minute could pass, the door swung open again—and there was Emile.

Five foot five and two hundred pounds, the chef glanced quickly about the room then marched toward the Count with Andrey trailing behind. As he crossed the dining room, the chef knocked into a customer’s chair and nearly toppled a busboy with his tray. Coming to an abrupt stop at the Count’s table, he looked him up and down as one might measure an opponent before challenging him to a duel.

“ Bravo, monsieur ,” he said in a tone of indignation. “ Bravo! ”

Then he turned on his heels and disappeared back into his kitchen.

Andrey, a little breathless, bowed to express both apologies and congratulations.

“Nettle it was, Your Excellency. Your palate remains unsurpassed.”

Though the Count was not a man to gloat, he could not repress a smile of satisfaction.

Knowing that the Count had a sweet tooth, Andrey gestured toward the dessert cart.

“May I bring you a slice of plum tart with our compliments . . . ?”

“Thank you for the thought, Andrey. Normally, I would leap at the chance. But tonight, I am otherwise committed.”

Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them, the Count thought it worth considering how one was most likely to achieve this aim when one had been sentenced to a life of confinement.

For Edmond Dantès in the Château d’If, it was thoughts of revenge that kept him clear minded. Unjustly imprisoned, he sustained himself by plotting the systematic undoing of his personal agents of villainy. For Cervantes, enslaved by pirates in Algiers, it was the promise of pages as yet unwritten that spurred him on. While for Napoleon on Elba, strolling among chickens, fending off flies, and sidestepping puddles of mud, it was visions of a triumphal return to Paris that galvanized his will to persevere.

But the Count hadn’t the temperament for revenge; he hadn’t the imagination for epics; and he certainly hadn’t the fanciful ego to dream of empires restored. No. His model for mastering his circumstances would be a different sort of captive altogether: an Anglican washed ashore. Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair, the Count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities . Having dispensed with dreams of quick discovery, the world’s Crusoes seek shelter and a source of fresh water; they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island’s topography, its climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand.

It was to this end that the Count had given the old Greek three notes to deliver. Within a matter of hours, the Count had been visited by two messengers: a young lad from Muir & Mirrielees bearing fine linens and a suitable pillow; and another from Petrovsky Passage with four bars of the Count’s favorite soap.

And the third respondent? She must have arrived while the Count was at dinner. For waiting on his bed was a light blue box with a single mille-feuille.

An Appointment

Never had the chime of twelve been so welcome. Not in Russia. Not in Europe. Not in all the world. Had Romeo been told by Juliet that she would appear at her window at noon, the young Veronan’s rapture at the appointed hour could not have matched the Count’s. Had Dr. Stahlbaum’s children—Fritz and Clara—been told on Christmas morning that the drawing-room doors would be opened at midday, their elation could not have rivaled the Count’s upon the sounding of the first toll.

For having successfully fended off thoughts of Tverskaya Street (and chance encounters with young ladies of fashion), having bathed, dressed, and finished his coffee and fruit (today a fig), shortly after ten the Count had eagerly taken up Montaigne’s masterpiece only to discover that at every fifteenth line, his gaze was drifting toward the clock . . .

Admittedly, the Count had felt a touch of concern when he’d first lifted the book from the desk the day before. For as a single volume, it had the density of a dictionary or Bible—those books that one expects to consult, or possibly peruse, but never read . But it was the Count’s review of the Contents—a list of 107 essays on the likes of Constancy, Moderation, Solitude, and Sleep—that confirmed his initial suspicion that the book had been written with winter nights in mind. Without a doubt, it was a book for when the birds had flown south, the wood was stacked by the fireplace, and the fields were white with snow; that is, for when one had no desire to venture out and one’s friends had no desire to venture in.

Nonetheless, with a resolute glance at the time, much as a seasoned sea captain when setting out on an extended journey will log the exact hour he sets sail from port, the Count plowed once again into the waves of the first meditation: “By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End.”

In this opening essay—in which examples were expertly drawn from the annals of history—the author provided a most convincing argument that when one is at another’s mercy one should plead for one’s life.

Or remain proud and unbent.

At any rate, having firmly established that either approach might be the right one, the author proceeded to his second meditation: “Of Sadness.”

Here, Montaigne quoted an array of unimpeachable authorities from the Golden Age who confirmed conclusively that sadness is an emotion best shared.

Or kept to oneself.

It was somewhere in the middle of the third essay that the Count found himself glancing at the clock for the fourth or fifth time. Or was it the sixth? While the exact number of glances could not be determined, the evidence did seem to suggest that the Count’s attention had been drawn to the clock more than once.