by Amor Towles
“An asparagus server,” he explained.
“Does a banquet really need an asparagus server?”
“Does an orchestra need a bassoon?”
As Nina returned it gently to the shelf, the Count wondered how many times he had been served by that implement? How many times had he eaten off these plates? The bicentennial of St. Petersburg had been celebrated in the Metropol’s ballroom, as had the centennial of Pushkin’s birth and the annual dinner of the Backgammon Club. And then there were the more intimate gatherings that took place in the two private dining rooms adjacent to the Boyarsky: the Yellow and Red Rooms. In their heyday, these retreats were so conducive to frank expressions of sentiment that if one were to eavesdrop at their tables for a month, one would be able to anticipate all of the bankruptcies, weddings, and wars of the year to come.
The Count let his eyes wander over the shelves, then shook his head to express a sense of mystification.
“Surely, the Bolsheviks have discovered this windfall. I wonder why it wasn’t carted off?”
Nina responded with the unclouded judgment of a child.
“Perhaps they need it here.”
Yes, thought the Count. That is it precisely.
For however decisive the Bolsheviks’ victory had been over the privileged classes on behalf of the Proletariat, they would be having banquets soon enough. Perhaps there would not be as many as there had been under the Romanovs—no autumn dances or diamond jubilees—but they were bound to celebrate something, whether the centennial of Das Kapital or the silver anniversary of Lenin’s beard. Guest lists would be drawn up and shortened. Invitations would be engraved and delivered. Then, having gathered around a grand circle of tables, the new statesmen would nod their heads in order to indicate to a waiter (without interrupting the long-winded fellow on his feet) that, yes, they would have a few more spears of asparagus.
For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too.
How humbly it bows its head as the emperor is dragged down the steps and tossed in the street. But then, having quietly bided its time, while helping the newly appointed leader on with his jacket, it compliments his appearance and suggests the wearing of a medal or two. Or, having served him at a formal dinner, it wonders aloud if a taller chair might not have been more fitting for a man with such responsibilities. The soldiers of the common man may toss the banners of the old regime on the victory pyre, but soon enough trumpets will blare and pomp will take its place at the side of the throne, having once again secured its dominion over history and kings.
Nina was running her fingers over the various serving implements with a blend of admiration and awe. Then she came to a stop.
“What is that?”
On the shelf behind a candelabra stood a three-inch-tall woman fashioned from silver with the hooped skirt and towering hair of a Marie Antoinette.
“It’s a summoner,” said the Count.
“A summoner?”
“To be placed on the table beside the hostess.”
The Count picked up the little lady by her bouffant and when he waggled her to and fro, out from under her skirt came that delightful jangle (at a high C) that had prompted the end of a thousand courses and the clearing of fifty thousand plates.
In the days that followed, Nina presented her curriculum systematically, leading her student from room to room. At the onset, the Count had assumed that all their classes would be held on the hotel’s lower levels, where its services were housed. But having visited the basement, the mail room, the switchboard, and all the other nooks of the first floor, one afternoon they proceeded up the staircase to the suites.
Now, admittedly, the exploration of private apartments represents something of a break with decorum, but Nina’s interest in visiting the rooms was not thievery. Nor was it snooping per se. It was the views.
Each of the rooms of the Metropol offered an entirely different perspective—one that was shaped not only by altitude and orientation, but by season and time of day. Thus, if by chance one cared to watch the battalions marching toward Red Square on the Seventh of November, one should go no further than room 322. But when one wished to drop snowballs on unsuspecting strollers, this was best accomplished from the deep-ledged windows of 405. Even room 244, a rather depressing little spot overlooking the alley behind the hotel, had its allure: for from there, if one leaned far enough out of the window, one could watch the fruit sellers gather at the kitchen door and catch the occasional apple tossed from below.
But if one wished to watch the arrival of guests at the Bolshoi on a summer night, the best vantage point, without question, was the northwest window of 317. And so . . .
On the twelfth of July at seven o’clock, as the Count was crossing the lobby, Nina caught his eye and gave him the signal. Two minutes later, having joined her on the stairs, he was trailing her past rooms 313, 314, and 315, toward the door of his old suite. And when Nina turned the key and slipped inside, the Count dutifully followed—but with a palpable sense of foreboding.
In a glance the Count reacquainted himself with every inch of the room. The couch and chairs upholstered in red remained, as did the grandfather clock and the large Chinese urns from Idlehour. On the French coffee table (that had been supplied to replace his grandmother’s) was a folded copy of Pravda, a silver service, and an unfinished cup of tea.
“Quick,” she said again, as she padded across the room to the window at the northwest corner.
Across Theatre Square the Bolshoi was lit from portico to pediment. The Bolsheviks who, as usual, were dressed like the cast of La Bohème, were taking advantage of the warm night air by mingling among the columns. Suddenly, the lights in the lobby flickered. Scuffing out their cigarettes, the men took their ladies by the elbow. But just as the last of the attendees was disappearing through the doors, a taxi pulled to the curb, the door flung open, and a woman in red dashed up the stairs with the hem of her dress in her hands.
Leaning forward, Nina cupped her palms against the glass and squinted.
“If only I were there and she were here,” she sighed.
And there, thought the Count, was a suitable plaint for all mankind.
Later that night, as he sat alone on his bed, the Count mulled over his visit to his old suite.
What had stayed with him was not the sight of his family’s clock still ticking by the door, nor the grandeur of the architecture, nor even the view from the northwest window. What had lingered with him was the sight of the tea service on the table beside the folded paper.
That little tableaux, for all its innocence, was somehow suggestive of exactly what had been bearing down on the Count’s soul. For he understood every aspect of the scene at a glance. Having returned from some outing at four o’clock and having hung his jacket on the back of a chair, the room’s current resident had called for tea and an afternoon edition. Then he had settled himself down on the couch to while away a civilized hour before it was time to dress for dinner. In other words, what the Count had observed in suite 317 was not simply an afternoon tea, but a moment in the daily life of a gentleman at liberty.
In light of these thoughts, the Count reviewed his new room—the one hundred square feet that had been assigned to him. Never had it seemed so small. The bed crowded the coffee table, the coffee table crowded the high-back chair, and the high-back chair had to be shoved aside every time one wished to open the closet. Simply put, there was not enough space to accommodate such a civilized hour.
But as the Count gazed around him with this forlorn thought, a voice only half his own reminded him that in the Metropol there were rooms behind rooms, and doors behind doors. . . .
Rising from his bed, the Count navigated his way around his grandmother’s coffee table, set aside the high-back chair, and stood before his telephone box of a closet. Running along the perimeter of where the closet met the wall was an elegant molding. The Coun
t had always thought this flourish a little excessive; but what if the closet had been built in an old doorframe? Opening the door, the Count parted his clothes and tentatively rapped on the back wall. The sound was promisingly thin. With three fingers he gave the barrier a push and could feel it flex. He took all his jackets out and dumped them on the bed. Then holding the jambs of the door he kicked the inner wall with his heel. There came a pleasant crack. Leaning back, he kicked again and again until the barrier splintered. Then he pulled the jagged planks back into his room and slipped through the gap.
He was now inside a dark, narrow space that smelled of dry cedar, presumably the interior of the neighboring closet. Taking a breath, he turned the knob, opened the door, and entered a room that was the mirror image of his own—but in which five unused bedframes had been stored. At some point, two of the frames, which had been leaning against the wall, had fallen, pinning the hallway door shut. Pulling the frames aside, the Count opened the door, dragged everything out of the room, and began to refurnish.
First, he reunited the two high-back chairs with his grandmother’s coffee table. Then, taking the belfry stairs, he went down to the basement. From the cabinet of curiosities, he retrieved one of his rugs, the standing lamp, and the small bookcase in three separate trips. Then vaulting the steps two at a time, he made one final visit in order to claim ten of the weighty novels that had been abandoned. Once his new study was furnished, he went down the hall and borrowed the roofer’s hammer and five nails.
The Count had not wielded a hammer since he was a boy at Idlehour when he would help Tikhon, the old caretaker, repair the fencing in the first weeks of spring. What a fine feeling it had been to bring the hammer down squarely on the head of a nail, driving it through a plank into a fence post as the impact echoed in the morning air. But on the very first stroke of this hammer what the Count squarely hit was the back of his thumb. (Lest you have forgotten, it is quite excruciating to hammer the back of your thumb. It inevitably prompts a hopping up and down and the taking of the Lord’s name in vain.)
But Fortune does favor the bold. So, while the next swing of the hammer glanced off the nail’s head, on the third the Count hit home; and by the second nail, he had recovered the rhythm of set, drive, and sink—that ancient cadence which is not to be found in quadrilles, or hexameters, or in Vronsky’s saddlebags!
Suffice it to say that within half an hour four of the nails had been driven through the edge of the door into the doorframe—such that from that moment forward the only access to the Count’s new room would be through the sleeves of his jackets. The fifth nail he saved for the wall above the bookcase so that he could hang the portrait of his sister.
His work completed, the Count sat down in one of the high-back chairs and felt an almost surprising sense of bliss. The Count’s bedroom and this improvised study had identical dimensions, and yet, they exerted a completely different influence on his mood. To some degree, this difference stemmed from the manner in which the two rooms had been furnished. For while the room next door—with its bed, bureau, and desk—remained a realm of practical necessities, the study—with its books, the Ambassador, and Helena’s portrait—had been furnished in a manner more essential to the spirit. But in all likelihood, a greater factor in the difference between the two rooms was their provenance. For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine.
Rising from his chair, the Count took up the largest of the ten volumes that he had retrieved from the basement. True, it would not be a new venture for him. But need it be? Could one possibly accuse him of nostalgia or idleness, of wasting his time simply because he had read the story two or three times before?
Sitting back down, the Count put one foot on the edge of the coffee table and tilted back until his chair was balanced on its two hind legs, then he turned to the opening sentence:
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
“Marvelous,” said the Count.
An Assembly
Oh, come along.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy.”
“I am not a fuddy-duddy.”
“Can you be so sure?”
“A man can never be entirely sure that he is not a fuddy-duddy. That is axiomatic to the term.”
“Exactly.”
In this manner, Nina coerced the Count to join her on one of her favorite excursions: spying from the balcony of the ballroom. The Count was reluctant to accompany Nina on this particular journey for two reasons. First, the ballroom’s balcony was narrow and dusty, and to stay out of sight one was forced to remain hunched behind the balustrade—a decidedly uncomfortable position for a grown man over six feet tall. (The last time the Count had accompanied Nina to the balcony, he had torn the seam of his pants and it took three days for him to lose the crick in his neck.) But second, this afternoon’s gathering was almost certain to be another Assembly.
Over the course of the summer, the Assemblies had been occurring at the hotel with increasing frequency. At various times of day, small groups of men would come barreling through the lobby, already gesticulating, interrupting, and eager to make their points. In the ballroom, they would join their brethren milling shoulder to shoulder, every other one of them puffing on a cigarette.
As best as the Count could determine, the Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world’s oldest problems in its newest nomenclature.
If the Count was reluctant to observe these gatherings, it was not because he found the ideological leanings of the attendees distasteful. He would no sooner have crouched behind a balustrade to watch Cicero debating Catiline, or Hamlet debating himself. No, it was not a matter of ideology. Simply put, the Count found political discourse of any persuasion to be tedious.
But then, wasn’t that exactly what a fuddy-duddy would argue . . . ?
Needless to say, the Count followed Nina up the stairs to the second floor. Having skirted the entrance to the Boyarsky and ensured the coast was clear, they used Nina’s key to open the unmarked door to the balcony.
Down below, a hundred men were already in their chairs and another hundred were conferring in the aisles as three impressive fellows took their seats behind a long wooden table on the dais. Which is to say, the Assembly had nearly Assembled.
As this was the second of August and there had already been two Assemblies earlier that day, the temperature in the ballroom was 91˚. Nina skirted out behind the balustrade on her hands and knees. When the Count bent over to do the same, the seam in the back of his pants gave way again.
“Merde,” he muttered.
“Shh,” said Nina.
The first time the Count had joined Nina on the balcony, he couldn’t help but feel some astonishment at how profoundly the life of the ballroom had changed. Not ten years before, all of Moscow society would have been gathered in their finery under the grand chandeliers to dance the mazurka and toast the Tsar. But after witnessing a few of the Assemblies, the Count had come to an even more astonishing conclusion: that despite the Revolution, the room had barely changed at all.
At that very moment, for example, two young men were coming through the doors looking game for the fray; but before exchanging a word with a soul, they crossed the room in order to pay their respects to an old man seated by the wall. Presumably, this elder had taken part in the 1905 revolution, or penned a pamphlet in 1880, or dined with Karl Marx back in 1852. Whatever his claim to eminence, the old revolutionary acknowledged the deference of the two young Bolsheviks with a self-a
ssured nod of the head—all the while sitting in the very chair from which the Grand Duchess Anapova had received the greetings of dutiful young princes at her annual Easter Ball.
Or consider the charming-looking chap who, in the manner of Prince Tetrakov, was now touring the room, shaking hands and patting backs. Having systematically made an impression in every corner—with a weighty remark here and a witty remark there—he now excused himself “for just a moment.” But once through the door, he will not reappear. For having ensured that everyone in the ballroom has noted his attendance, he will now head off to an altogether different sort of Assembly—one that is to take place in a cozy little room in the Arbat.
Later, no doubt, some dashing young Turk who is rumored to have Lenin’s ear will make a point of arriving when the business of the evening is nearly done—just as Captain Radyanko had when he had the ear of the Tsar—thus exhibiting his indifference to the smaller conventions of etiquette while reinforcing his reputation as a man with so much to attend to and so little time to attend to it.
Of course, there is now more canvas than cashmere in the room, more gray than gold. But is the patch on the elbow really that much different from the epaulette on the shoulder? Aren’t those workaday caps donned, like the bicorne and shako before them, in order to strike a particular note? Or take that bureaucrat on the dais with his gavel. Surely, he can afford a tailored jacket and a creased pair of pants. If he is wearing this ragged fare, it is in order to assure all assembled that he too is a hardened member of the working class!
As if hearing the Count’s thoughts, this Secretary suddenly rapped his gavel on the tabletop—calling to order the Second Meeting of the First Congress of the Moscow Branch of the All-Russian Union of Railway Workers. The doors were closed, seats were taken, Nina held her breath, and the Assembly was underway.