Амор Тоулз - A Gentleman in Moscow

“Yes, sir. From the manager.”

The barber looked back at the bellhop for the first time.

“The manager?”

“Yes, sir.”

After an extended exhalation, the barber removed the blade from the Count’s throat, accepted the missive, and—as the bellhop disappeared down the hall—slit the envelope open with his razor.

Unfolding the note, the barber stared at it for a full minute. In those sixty seconds, he must have read it ten times over because it was composed of only four words: Come see me immediately!

The barber exhaled again then looked at the wall.

“I can’t imagine,” he said to no one. Then having thought it over for another minute, he turned to the Count: “I must see to something.”

“By all means. Do what you must. I am in no hurry.”

To underscore his point, the Count leaned back his head and closed his eyes as if to nap; but when the barber’s footsteps had receded down the hall, the Count leapt from the chair like a cat.

When the Count was a young man, he prided himself on the fact that he was unmoved by the ticking of the clock. In the early years of the twentieth century, there were those of his acquaintance who brought a new sense of urgency to their slightest endeavor. They timed the consumption of their breakfast, the walk to their office, and the hanging of their hat on its hook with as much precision as if they were preparing for a military campaign. They answered the phone on the first ring, scanned the headlines, limited their conversations to whatever was most germane, and generally spent their days in pursuit of the second hand. God bless them.

For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour—disdaining even to wear a watch—he took the greatest satisfaction when assuring a friend that a worldly matter could wait in favor of a leisurely lunch or a stroll along the embankment. After all, did not wine improve with age? Was it not the passage of years that gave a piece of furniture its delightful patina? When all was said and done, the endeavors that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention.

Cups of tea and friendly chats! the modern man objects. If one is to make time for such idle pursuits, how could one ever attend to the necessities of adulthood?

Luckily, the answer to this conundrum was provided by the philosopher Zeno in the fifth century B.C. Achilles, a man of action and urgency, trained to measure his exertions to the tenth of a second, should be able to quickly dispense with a twenty-yard dash. But in order to advance a yard, the hero must first advance eighteen inches; and in order to advance eighteen inches, he must first advance nine; but to advance nine, he must first advance four and a half, and so on. Thus, on his way to completing the twenty-yard dash, Achilles must traverse an infinite number of lengths—which, by definition, would take an infinite amount of time. By extension (as the Count had liked to point out), the man who has an appointment at twelve has an infinite number of intervals between now and then in which to pursue the satisfactions of the spirit.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

But ever since Sofia returned home that night in late December with word of the Conservatory’s tour, the Count had had a very different perspective on the passage of time. Before they’d even finished celebrating the news, he’d calculated that less than six months remained before she was scheduled to depart. One hundred and seventy-eight days, to be exact; or 356 chimings of the twice-tolling clock. And in that brief span, there was so much to be done. . . .

Given the Count’s membership as a younger man to the ranks of the purposefully unrushed, one might have expected the ticking of this clock to buzz around his ears like a mosquito in the night; or prompt him, like Oblomov, to turn on his side and face the wall in a state of malaise. But what occurred was the opposite. In the days that followed, it brightened his step, sharpened his senses, and quickened his wits. For just like the rousing of Humphrey Bogart’s indignation, the clock’s ticking revealed the Count to be a Man of Intent.

In the last week of December, one of the Catherines the Count had retrieved from the Grand Duke’s desk was brought by Vasily to the basement of TsUM and cashed in for store credit. With the proceeds, the concierge purchased a small tan valise along with other necessities of travel, such as a towel, soap, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. These were wrapped in festive paper and presented to Sofia on Christmas Eve (at midnight).

Per Director Vavilov, Sofia’s performance of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto was to be the penultimate piece on the program, followed by a violin prodigy’s performance of a Dvorak concerto, both with full orchestra. The Count had no doubt that Rachmaninov’s Second was well within Sofia’s grasp; but even Horowitz had his Tarnowsky. So in early January, the Count hired Viktor Stepanovich to help her rehearse.

In late January, the Count commissioned Marina to fashion a new dress for the concert. After a design meeting that included Marina, Anna, and Sofia—and which, for some incomprehensible reason, excluded the Count—Vasily was dispatched back to TsUM for a bolt of blue taffeta.

Over the years, the Count had done an adequate job of teaching Sofia the rudiments of conversational French. Nonetheless, beginning in February, father and daughter set aside games of Zut in order to review the more practical applications of the French language while they awaited their appetizers.

“Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, avez-vous l’heure, s’il vous plaît?”

“Oui, Mademoiselle, il est dix heures.”

“Merci. Et pourriez-vous me dire où se trouvent les Champs-Élysées?”

“Oui, continuez tout droit dans cette direction.”

“Merci beaucoup.”

“Je vous en prie.”

Early in March, for the first time in years, the Count visited the Metropol’s basement. Passing by the furnace and electrical rooms, he made his way to the little corner where the hotel stowed those items left behind by guests. Kneeling before the shelf of books, he scanned the spines, paying special attention to those little red volumes with gold lettering: the Baedekers . Naturally enough, the majority of travel guides in the basement were dedicated to Russia, but a few were for other countries, having presumably been discarded at the end of an extended tour. Thus, scattered among the abandoned novels, the Count discovered one Baedeker for Italy; one for Finland; one for England; and, finally, two for the city of Paris.

Then on the twenty-first of March, the Count penned the slanted one-sentence insistence under the hotel’s moniker, slipped it on the bell captain’s desk, went on his weekly visit to the barber, and waited for the note to arrive. . . .

Having poked his head into the hallway in order to watch Boris mount the stairs, the Count closed the barbershop door and turned his attention to Yaroslav’s renowned glass cabinet. At the front of the cabinet were two rows of large white bottles bearing the insignia of the Hammer and Sickle Shampoo Company. But behind these soldiers in the fight for universal cleanliness, all but forgotten, was a selection of the brightly colored bottles from the old days. Taking out several of the shampoo bottles, the Count surveyed the tonics, soaps, and oils—but couldn’t find what he was looking for.

It must be here, he thought.