by Amor Towles
According to Vasily, this nine-year-old with straight blond hair was the daughter of a widowed Ukrainian bureaucrat. As usual, she was sitting with her governess. When she realized the Count was looking her way, she disappeared behind her menu.
“Your soup,” said the Bishop.
“Ah. Thank you, my good man. It looks delicious. But don’t forget the wine!”
“Of course.”
Turning his attention to his okroshka, the Count could tell at a glance that it was a commendable execution—a bowl of soup that any Russian in the room might have been served by his grandmother. Closing his eyes in order to give the first spoonful its due consideration, the Count noted a suitably chilled temperature, a tad too much salt, a tad too little kvass, but a perfect expression of dill—that harbinger of summer which brings to mind the songs of crickets and the setting of one’s soul at ease.
But when the Count opened his eyes, he nearly dropped his spoon. For standing at the edge of his table was the young girl with the penchant for yellow—studying him with that unapologetic interest peculiar to children and dogs. Adding to the shock of her sudden appearance was the fact that her dress today was in the shade of a lemon.
“Where did they go?” she asked, without a word of introduction.
“I beg your pardon. Where did who go?”
She tilted her head to take a closer look at his face.
“Why, your moustaches.”
The Count had not much cause to interact with children, but he had been raised well enough to know that a child should not idly approach a stranger, should not interrupt him in the middle of a meal, and certainly should not ask him questions about his personal appearance. Was the minding of one’s own business no longer a subject taught in schools?
“Like swallows,” the Count answered, “they traveled elsewhere for the summer.”
Then he fluttered a hand from the table into the air in order to both mimic the flight of the swallows and suggest how a child might follow suit.
She nodded to express her satisfaction with his response.
“I too will be traveling elsewhere for part of the summer.”
The Count inclined his head to indicate his congratulations.
“To the Black Sea,” she added.
Then she pulled back the empty chair and sat.
“Would you like to join me?” he asked.
By way of response, she wiggled back and forth to make herself comfortable then rested her elbows on the table. Around her neck hung a small pendant on a golden chain, some lucky charm or locket. The Count looked toward the young lady’s governess with the hopes of catching her attention, but she had obviously learned from experience to keep her nose in her book.
The girl gave another canine tilt to her head.
“Is it true that you are a count?”
“’Tis true.”
Her eyes widened.
“Have you ever known a princess?”
“I have known many princesses.”
Her eyes widened further, then narrowed.
“Was it terribly hard to be a princess?”
“Terribly.”
At that moment, despite the fact that half of the okroshka remained in its bowl, the Bishop appeared with the Count’s filet of sole and swapped one for the other.
“Thank you,” said the Count, his spoon still in hand.
“Of course.”
The Count opened his mouth to inquire as to the whereabouts of the Baudelaire, but the Bishop had already vanished. When the Count turned back to his guest, she was staring at his fish.
“What is that?” she wanted to know.
“This? It is filet of sole.”
“Is it good?”
“Didn’t you have a lunch of your own?”
“I didn’t like it.”
The Count transferred a taste of his fish to a side plate and passed it across the table. “With my compliments.”
She forked the whole thing in her mouth.
“It’s yummy,” she said, which if not the most elegant expression was at least factually correct. Then she smiled a little sadly and let out a sigh as she directed her bright blue gaze upon the rest of his lunch.
“Hmm,” said the Count.
Retrieving the side plate, he transferred half his sole along with an equal share of spinach and baby carrots, and returned it. She wiggled back and forth once more, presumably to settle in for the duration. Then, having carefully pushed the vegetables to the edge of the plate, she cut her fish into four equal portions, put the right upper quadrant in her mouth, and resumed her line of inquiry.
“How would a princess spend her day?”
“Like any young lady,” answered the Count.
With a nod of the head, the girl encouraged him to continue.
“In the morning, she would have lessons in French, history, music. After her lessons, she might visit with friends or walk in the park. And at lunch she would eat her vegetables.”
“My father says that princesses personify the decadence of a vanquished era.”
The Count was taken aback.
“Perhaps a few,” he conceded. “But not all, I assure you.”
She waved her fork.
“Don’t worry. Papa is wonderful and he knows everything there is to know about the workings of tractors. But he knows absolutely nothing about the workings of princesses.”
The Count offered an expression of relief.
“Have you ever been to a ball?” she continued after a moment of thought.
“Certainly.”
“Did you dance?”
“I have been known to scuff the parquet.” The Count said this with the renowned glint in his eye—that little spark that had defused heated conversations and caught the eyes of beauties in every salon in St. Petersburg.
“Scuff the parquet?”
“Ahem,” said the Count. “Yes, I have danced at balls.”
“And have you lived in a castle?”
“Castles are not as common in our country as they are in fairy tales,” the Count explained. “But I have dined in a castle. . . .”
Accepting this response as sufficient, if not ideal, the girl now furrowed her brow. She put another quadrant of fish in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Then she suddenly leaned forward.
“Have you ever been in a duel?”
“An affaire d’honneur?” The Count hesitated. “I suppose I have been in a duel of sorts. . . .”
“With pistols at thirty-two paces?”
“In my case, it was more of a duel in the figurative sense.”
When the Count’s guest expressed her disappointment at this unfortunate clarification, he found himself offering a consolation:
“My godfather was a second on more than one occasion.”
“A second?”
“When a gentleman has been offended and demands satisfaction on the field of honor, he and his counterpart each appoint seconds—in essence, their lieutenants. It is the seconds who settle upon the rules of engagement.”
“What sort of rules of engagement?”
“The time and place of the duel. What weapons will be used. If it is to be pistols, then how many paces will be taken and whether there will be more than one exchange of shots.”
“Your godfather, you say. Where did he live?”
“Here in Moscow.”
“Were his duels in Moscow?”
“One of them was. In fact, it sprang from a dispute that occurred in this hotel—between an admiral and a prince. They had been at odds for quite some time, I gather, but things came to a head one night when their paths collided in the lobby, and the gauntlet was thrown down on that very spot.”
“Which very spot?”
“By the concierge’s desk.”
“Right where I sit!”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Were they in love with the same woman?”
“I don’t think a woman was involved.”
The girl looked at the Count with an expression of incredulity.
“A woman is always involved,” she said.
“Yes. Well. Whatever the cause, an offense was taken followed by a demand for an apology, a refusal to provide one, and a slap of the glove. At the time, the hotel was managed by a German fellow named Keffler, who was reputedly a baron in his own right. And it was generally known that he kept a pair of pistols hidden behind a panel in his office, so that when an incident occurred, seconds could confer in privacy, carriages could be summoned, and the feuding parties could be whisked away with weapons in hand.”
“In the hours before dawn . . .”
“In the hours before dawn.”
“To some remote spot . . .”
“To some remote spot.”
She leaned forward.
“Lensky was killed by Onegin in a duel.”
She said this in a hushed voice, as if quoting the events of Pushkin’s poem required discretion.
“Yes,” whispered back the Count. “And so was Pushkin.”
She nodded in grave agreement.
“In St. Petersburg,” she said. “On the banks of the Black Rivulet.”
“On the banks of the Black Rivulet.”
The young lady’s fish was now gone. Placing her napkin on her plate and nodding her head once to suggest how perfectly acceptable the Count had proven as a luncheon companion, she rose from her chair. But before turning to go, she paused.
“I prefer you without your moustaches,” she said. “Their absence improves your . . . countenance.”
Then she performed an off-kilter curtsey and disappeared behind the fountain.
An affaire d’honneur . . .
Or so thought the Count with a touch of self-recrimination as he sat alone later that night in the hotel’s bar with a snifter of brandy.
Situated off the lobby, furnished with banquettes, a mahogany bar, and a wall of bottles, this American-style watering hole was affectionately referred to by the Count as the Shalyapin, in honor of the great Russian opera singer who had frequented the spot in the years before the Revolution. Once a beehive of activity, the Shalyapin was now more a chapel of prayer and reflection—but tonight that suited the Count’s cast of mind.
Yes, he continued in his thoughts, how fine almost any human endeavor can be made to sound when expressed in the proper French. . . .
“May I offer you a hand, Your Excellency?”
This was Audrius, the Shalyapin’s tender at bar. A Lithuanian with a blond goatee and a ready smile, Audrius was a man who knew his business. Why, the moment after you took a stool he would be leaning toward you with his forearm on the bar to ask your pleasure; and as soon as your glass was empty, he was there with a splash. But the Count wasn’t sure why he was choosing this particular moment to offer a hand.
“With your jacket,” the bartender clarified.
In point of fact, the Count did seem to be struggling to get his arm through the sleeve of his blazer—which he couldn’t quite remember having taken off in the first place. The Count had arrived at the Shalyapin at six o’clock, as usual, where he maintained a strict limit of one aperitif before dinner. But noting that he had never received his bottle of Baudelaire, the Count had allowed himself a second glass of Dubonnet. And then a snifter or two of brandy. And the next thing he knew, it was . . . , it was . . .
“What time is it, Audrius?”
“Ten, Your Excellency.”
“Ten!”
Audrius, who was suddenly on the customer side of the bar, was helping the Count off his stool. And as he guided the Count across the lobby (quite unnecessarily), the Count invited him into his train of thought.
“Did you know, Audrius, that when dueling was first discovered by the Russian officer corps in the early 1700s, they took to it with such enthusiasm that the Tsar had to forbid the practice for fear that there would soon be no one left to lead his troops.”
“I did not know that, Your Excellency,” the bartender replied with a smile.
“Well, it’s quite true. And not only is a duel central to the action of Onegin, one occurs at a critical juncture in War and Peace, Fathers and Sons, and The Brothers Karamazov! Apparently, for all their powers of invention, the Russian masters could not come up with a better plot device than two central characters resolving a matter of conscience by means of pistols at thirty-two paces.”
“I see your point. But here we are. Shall I press for the fifth floor?”
The Count, who found himself standing in front of the elevator, looked at the bartender in shock.
“But, Audrius, I have never taken the lift in my life!”
Then, after patting the bartender on the shoulder, the Count began winding his way up the stairs; that is, until he reached the second-floor landing, where he sat on a step.
“Why is it that our nation above all others embraced the duel so wholeheartedly?” he asked the stairwell rhetorically.
Some, no doubt, would simply dismiss it as a by-product of barbarism. Given Russia’s long, heartless winters, its familiarity with famine, its rough sense of justice, and so on, and so on, it was perfectly natural for its gentry to adopt an act of definitive violence as the means of resolving disputes. But in the Count’s considered opinion, the reason that dueling prevailed among Russian gentlemen stemmed from nothing more than their passion for the glorious and grandiose.
True, duels were fought by convention at dawn in isolated locations to ensure the privacy of the gentlemen involved. But were they fought behind ash heaps or in scrapyards? Of course not! They were fought in a clearing among the birch trees with a dusting of snow. Or on the banks of a winding rivulet. Or at the edge of a family estate where the breezes shake the blossoms from the trees. . . . That is, they were fought in settings that one might have expected to see in the second act of an opera.
In Russia, whatever the endeavor, if the setting is glorious and the tenor grandiose, it will have its adherents. In fact, over the years, as the locations for duels became more picturesque and the pistols more finely manufactured, the best-bred men proved willing to defend their honor over lesser and lesser offenses. So while dueling may have begun as a response to high crimes—to treachery, treason, and adultery—by 1900 it had tiptoed down the stairs of reason, until they were being fought over the tilt of a hat, the duration of a glance, or the placement of a comma.
In the old and well-established code of dueling, it is understood that the number of paces the offender and offended take before shooting should be in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the insult. That is, the most reprehensible affront should be resolved by a duel of the fewest paces, to ensure that one of the two men will not leave the field of honor alive. Well, if that was the case, concluded the Count, then in the new era, the duels should have been fought at no less than ten thousand paces. In fact, having thrown down the gauntlet, appointed seconds, and chosen weapons, the offender should board a steamer bound for America as the offended boards another for Japan where, upon arrival, the two men could don their finest coats, descend their gangplanks, turn on the docks, and fire.
Anyway . . .
Five days later, the Count was pleased to accept a formal invitation to tea from his new acquaintance, Nina Kulikova. The engagement was for three o’clock in the hotel’s coffeehouse at the northwest corner of the ground floor. Arriving at a quarter till, the Count claimed a table for two near the window. When at five past the hour his hostess arrived in the manner of a daffodil—wearing a light yellow dress with a dark yellow sash—the Count rose and held out her chair.
“Merci,” she said.
“Je t’en prie.”
&nb
sp; In the minutes that followed, a waiter was signaled, a samovar was ordered, and with thunderclouds accumulating over Theatre Square, remarks were exchanged on the bittersweet likelihood of rain. But once the tea was poured and the tea cakes on the table, Nina adopted a more serious expression—intimating the time had come to speak of weightier concerns.
Some might have found this transition a little abrupt or out of keeping with the hour, but not the Count. Quite to the contrary, he thought a prompt dispensing of pleasantries and a quick shift to the business at hand utterly in keeping with the etiquette of tea—perhaps even essential to the institution.
After all, every tea the Count had ever attended in response to a formal invitation had followed this pattern. Whether it took place in a drawing room overlooking the Fontanka Canal or a teahouse in a public garden, before the first cake was sampled the purpose of the invitation would be laid upon the table. In fact, after a few requisite pleasantries, the most accomplished of hostesses could signal the transition with a single word of her choosing.
For the Count’s grandmother, the word had been Now, as in Now, Alexander. I have heard some very distressing things about you, my boy. . . . For Princess Poliakova, a perennial victim of her own heart, it had been Oh, as in Oh, Alexander. I have made a terrible mistake. . . . And for young Nina, the word was apparently Anyway, as in:
“You’re absolutely right, Alexander Ilyich. Another afternoon of rain and the lilac blossoms won’t stand a fighting chance. Anyway . . .”
Suffice it to say that when Nina’s tone shifted, the Count was ready. Resting his forearms on his thighs and leaning forward at an angle of seventy degrees, he adopted an expression that was serious yet neutral, so that in an instant he could convey his sympathy, concern, or shared indignation as the circumstances required.