Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

Katerina, who had listened to this story intently, was suddenly holding back tears.

“Ah, but there you have him,” she said.

They were both silent as she regained her composure.

“I want you to know,” said the Count, “how much I appreciate your coming to tell me in person.” But Katerina dismissed his gratitude.

“I came at Mikhail’s request. He asked me to bring you something.”

From her satchel she took out a rectangular package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with twine.

Taking the package in hand, the Count could tell from its weight that it was a book.

“It is his project,” said the Count with a smile.

“Yes,” she said. Then she added with pointed emphasis: “He slaved over it.”

The Count nodded to express his understanding and to assure Katerina that he did not take the bestowal lightly.

Katerina looked once more around the room with a light shake of the head as if it somehow exemplified the mystery of outcomes; then she said that she should go.

The Count rose to his feet with her, setting Mishka’s project on the chair.

“Are you going back to Yavas?” he asked.

“No.”

“Will you be staying in Moscow?”

“No.”

“Where then?”

“Does it matter?”

She turned to go.

“Katerina . . .”

“Yes?”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

Katerina looked surprised at first by the Count’s offer, then ready to dismiss it. But after a moment, she said: “Remember him.”

Then she went out the door.

Returning to his chair, the Count sat in silence. After a few minutes, he took up Mishka’s legacy, untied the twine, and folded back the paper. Inside there was a small volume bound in leather. Tooled into the cover was a simple geometric design, at the center of which was the work’s title: Bread and Salt . From the roughly cut pages and loose threads, one could tell that the binding was the work of a dedicated amateur.

After running his hand over the surface of the cover, the Count opened the book to the title page. There, tucked in the seam, was the photograph that had been taken in 1912 at the Count’s insistence, and much to Mishka’s chagrin. On the left, the young Count stood with a top hat on his head, a glint in his eye, and moustaches that extended beyond the limits of his cheeks; while on the right stood Mishka, looking as if he were about to sprint from the frame.

And yet, he had kept the picture all these years.

With a sorrowful smile, the Count set the photograph down and then turned the title leaf to the first page of his old friend’s book. All it contained was a single quotation in a slightly uneven typeset:

And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you . . . In the sweat of your face you shall eat BREADtill you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis

3:17–19

The Count turned to the second page, on which there was also one quotation:

And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of BREAD.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by BREADalone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”

Matthew

4:3–4

And then to the third . . .

And he took BREAD, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Luke

22:19

As the Count continued turning slowly through the pages, he found himself laughing. For here was Mishka’s project in a nutshell: a compendium of quotations from seminal texts arranged in chronological order, but in each of which the word bread had been capitalized and printed in bold. Beginning with the Bible, the citations proceeded right through the works of the Greeks and Romans onto the likes of Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe. But particular tribute was paid to the golden age of Russian literature:

For the sake of propriety, Ivan Yakovlevich put his tailcoat on over his undershirt and, settling at the table, poured out some salt, prepared two onions, took a knife in his hands, and, assuming a significant air, began cutting the BREAD. Having cut the loaf in two, he looked into the middle and, to his surprise, saw something white. Ivan Yakovlevich poked cautiously with his knife and felt with his finger. “Firm!” he said to himself. “What could it be?”

He stuck in his fingers and pulled out—a nose!

“The Nose”

Nikolai Gogol

(1836)

When a man isn’t meant to live upon the earth, the sunshine doesn’t warm him as it does others, and BREADdoesn’t nourish him and make him strong.

A Sportsman’s Sketches

Ivan Turgenev

(1852)

The past and the present merged together. He was dreaming he had reached the promised land flowing with milk and honey, where people ate BREADthey had not earned and went clothed in gold and silver. . . .

Oblomov

Ivan Goncharov

(1859)

“It’s all nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there was nothing to be troubled about! Just some physical disorder. One glass of beer, a piece of dry BREAD, and see—in an instant the mind gets stronger, the thoughts clearer, the intentions firmer!”

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

(1866)

I, the vile Lebedev, do not believe in the carts that deliver BREADto mankind! For carts that deliver BREADto all mankind, without any moral foundations for their action, may quite cold-bloodedly exclude a considerable part of mankind from enjoying what they deliver.

The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky

(1869)

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without BREAD, and it only cannot live without beauty. . . .

Demons

Fyodor Dostoevsky

(1872)

All this happened at the same time: a boy ran up to a pigeon and, smiling, looked at Levin; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered off, sparkling in the sun amidst the air trembling with snowdust, while the smell of baked BREADwafted from the window as the rolls appeared in it. All this together was so extraordinarily good that Levin laughed and wept from joy.

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

(1877)

Do you see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into BREADand mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient. . . . But you did not want to deprive man of freedom and rejected the offer, for what sort of freedom is it, you reasoned, if obedience is bought with loaves of BREAD?

From “The Grand Inquisitor”

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

(1880)

As the Count turned the pages, he smiled in recognition of the characteristic feistiness that Mishka’s project expressed. But following the quote from “The Grand Inquisitor,” there was a second citation from The Brothers Karamazov from a scene the Count had all but forgotten. It related to the little boy, Ilyushechka—the one who was hounded by his schoolmates until falling dangerously ill. When the boy finally dies, his heartstricken father tells the saintly Alyosha Karamazov that his son had made one final request: