by Amor Towles
In the first fifteen minutes, six different administrative matters were raised and dispensed with in quick succession—leading one to imagine that this particular Assembly might actually be concluded before one’s back gave out. But next on the docket was a subject that proved more contentious. It was a proposal to amend the Union’s charter—or more precisely, the seventh sentence of the second paragraph, which the Secretary now read in full.
Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence—one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard. For its apparent purpose was to catalog without fear or hesitation every single virtue of the Union including but not limited to: its unwavering shoulders, its undaunted steps, the clanging of its hammers in summer, the shoveling of its coal in winter, and the hopeful sound of its whistles in the night. But in the concluding phrases of this impressive sentence, at the very culmination as it were, was the observation that through their tireless efforts, the Railway Workers of Russia “facilitate communication and trade across the provinces.”
After all the buildup, it was a bit of an anticlimax, conceded the Count.
But the objection being raised was not due to the phrase’s overall lack of verve; rather it was due to the word facilitate. Specifically, the verb had been accused of being so tepid and prim that it failed to do justice to the labors of the men in the room.
“We’re not helping a lady put on her jacket!” someone shouted from the rear.
“Or painting her nails!”
“Hear, hear!”
Well, fair enough.
But what verb would better express the work of the Union? What verb would do justice to the sweaty devotion of the engineers, the unflagging vigilance of the brakemen, and the rippling muscles of those who laid the tracks?
A flurry of proposals came from the floor:
To spur.
To propel.
To empower.
The merits and limitations of each of these alternatives were hotly debated. There were three-pointed arguments counted out on fingertips, rhetorical questions, emotional summations, and back-row catcalls punctuated by the banging of the gavel—as the ambient temperature of the balcony rose to 96˚.
Then, just as the Count began to sense some risk of riot, a suggestion came from a shy-looking lad in the tenth row that perhaps to facilitate could be replaced with to enable and ensure. This pairing, the lad explained (while his cheeks grew red as a raspberry), might encompass not only the laying of rails and the manning of engines, but the ongoing maintenance of the system.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Laying, manning, and maintenance.”
“To enable and ensure.”
With hearty applause from every corner, the lad’s proposal seemed to be barreling toward adoption as quickly and dependably as one of the Union’s locomotives barrels across the steppe. But just as it was nearing its terminus, a rather scrawny fellow in the second row stood. Such a wisp of a man was he that one wondered how he had secured a position in the Union in the first place. Once he had the attention of the room, this back-office clerk or accountant, this All-Russian pusher of pencils, asserted in a voice as tepid and prim as the word facilitate: “Poetic concision demands the avoidance of a pair of words when a single word will suffice.”
“What’s that?”
“What did he say?”
Several stood up with the intention of grabbing him by the collar and dragging him from the room. But before they could get their hands on him, a burly fellow in the fifth row spoke without rising to his feet.
“With all due respect to poetic concision, the male of the species was endowed with a pair when a single might have sufficed.”
Thunderous applause!
The resolution to replace facilitate with enable and ensure was adopted by a unanimous show of hands and a universal stomping of feet. While in the balcony, a private acknowledgment was made that perhaps political discourse wasn’t always so dull, after all.
At the conclusion of the Assembly, when the Count and Nina had crawled off the balcony and back into the hallway, the Count felt quite pleased with himself. He felt pleased with his little parallels between the respect-payers, back-patters, and latecomers of the present and those of the past. He also had a whole host of entertaining alternatives to the phrase enable and ensure ranging from bustle and trundle to carom and careen. And when Nina inevitably asked what he thought of the day’s debate, he was going to reply that it was positively Shakespearean. Shakespearean, that is, in the manner of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. Much ado about nothing, indeed. Or so the Count intended to quip.
But by a stroke of luck, he didn’t get the chance. For when Nina asked what he thought of the Assembly, unable to wait even a moment for his impressions, she barreled ahead with her own.
“Wasn’t that fascinating? Wasn’t it fantastic? Have you ever been on a train?”
“The train is my preferred means of travel,” said the Count, somewhat startled.
She nodded enthusiastically.
“Mine as well. And when you have traveled by train, have you watched the landscape rolling past the windows, and listened to the conversations of your fellow passengers, and drifted off to the clacking of the wheels?”
“I have done all of those things.”
“Exactly. But have you ever, for even one moment, considered how the coal finds its way into the locomotive’s engine? Have you considered in the middle of a forest or on a rocky slope how the tracks came to be there in the first place?”
The Count paused. Considered. Imagined. Admitted.
“Never.”
She gave him a knowing look.
“Isn’t it astounding.”
And when seen in that light, who could disagree?
A few minutes later, the Count was knocking on the office door of Marina, the shy delight, while holding a folded newpaper at the back of his pants.
Not long ago, the Count recalled, there had been three seamstresses at work in this room, each before an American-made sewing machine. Like the three Fates, together they had spun and measured and cut—taking in gowns, raising hems, and letting out pants with all of the fateful implications of their predecessors. In the aftermath of the Revolution, all three had been discharged; the silenced sewing machines had, presumably, become the property of the People; and the room? It had been idled like Fatima’s flower shop. For those had not been years for the taking in of gowns or the raising of hems any more than they had been for the throwing of bouquets or the sporting of boutonnieres.
Then in 1921, confronted with a backlog of fraying sheets, tattered curtains, and torn napkins—which no one had any intention of replacing—the hotel had promoted Marina, and once again a trustworthy seam was being sewn within the walls of the hotel.
“Ah, Marina,” said the Count when she opened the door with needle and thread in hand. “How good to find you stitching away in the stitching room.”
Marina looked at the Count with a touch of suspicion.
“What else would I be doing?”
“Quite so,” said the Count. Then offering his most endearing smile, he turned ninety degrees, briefly lifted the newspaper, and humbly asked for her assistance.
“Didn’t I repair a pair of your pants just last week?”
“I was spying with Nina again,” he explained. “From the balcony of the ballroom.”
The seamstress looked at the Count with one eye expressing consternation and the other disbelief.
“If you’re going to clamber about with a nine-year-old girl, then why do you insist upon wearing pants like those?”
The Count was a little taken aback by the seamstress’s tone.
“When I dressed this morning, it was not my plan to go clambering about. But either way, I’ll have you know that these pants were custom-made on Savi
le Row.”
“Yes. Custom-made for sitting in a sitting room, or drawing in a drawing room.”
“But I have never drawn in a drawing room.”
“Which is just as well, since you probably would have spilled the ink.”
As Marina seemed neither particularly shy nor delightful that day, the Count offered her the bow of one who would now be on his way.
“Oh, enough of that,” she said. “Behind the screen and off with your pants.”
Without another word the Count went behind the dressing screen, stripped to his shorts, and handed Marina his pants. From the ensuing silence, he could tell that she had found her spool, licked her thread, and was carefully directing it through the eye of the needle.
“Well,” she said, “you might as well tell me what you were doing up in the balcony.”
So, as Marina began stitching the Count’s pants—the laying of locomotive tracks writ small, if you will—he described the Assembly and all his various impressions. Then, almost wistfully, he noted that even as he was seeing the intractability of social conventions and the human tendency to take itself too seriously, Nina was becoming enthralled by the Assembly’s energy and its sense of purpose.
“And what is wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” admitted the Count. “It’s just that only a few weeks ago, she was inviting me to tea in order to ask about the rules of being a princess. . . .”
Handing the Count’s pants back over the screen, Marina shook her head like one who must now deliver a hard truth to an innocent of mind.
“All little girls outgrow their interest in princesses,” she said. “In fact, they outgrow their interest in princesses faster than little boys outgrow their interest in clambering about.”
When the Count left Marina’s office with a thanks, a wave, and the seat of his pants intact, he practically fell over one of the bellhops, who happened to be standing outside the door.
“Excuse me, Count Rostov!”
“That’s quite all right, Petya. No need to apologize. It was my fault, I’m sure.”
The poor lad, who looked positively wide-eyed, hadn’t even noticed that he’d lost his cap. So, picking it up from the floor and placing it back on the bellhop’s head, the Count wished him God’s speed in his business and turned to go.
“But my business is with you.”
“With me?”
“It is Mr. Halecki. He wishes to have a word. In his office.”
No wonder the lad was wide-eyed. Not only had the Count never been summoned by Mr. Halecki, in the four years that he had been in residence in the Metropol he had not seen the manager on more than five occasions.
For Jozef Halecki was one of those rare executives who had mastered the secret of delegation—that is, having assigned the oversight of the hotel’s various functions to capable lieutenants, he made himself scarce. Arriving at the hotel at half past eight, he would head straight to his office with a harried expression, as if he were already late for a meeting. Along the way, he would return greetings with an abbreviated nod, and when he passed his secretary he would inform her (while still in motion) that he was not to be disturbed. Then he would disappear behind his door.
And what happened once he was inside his office?
It was hard to tell, since so few had ever seen it. (Although, those who had caught a glimpse reported that his desk was impressively free of papers, his telephone rarely rang, and along the wall was a burgundy chaise with cushions that were deeply impressed. . . .)
When the manager’s lieutenants had no choice but to knock—due to a fire in the kitchen or a dispute about a bill—the manager would open his door with an expression of such fatigue, such disappointment, such moral defeat that the interrupters would inevitably feel a surge of sympathy, assure him that they could see to the matter themselves, then apologetically back out the door. As a result, the Metropol ran as flawlessly as any hotel in Europe.
Needless to say, the Count was both anxious and intrigued by the manager’s sudden desire to see him. Without further ado, Petya led him down the hall, through the hotel’s back offices, and finally to the manager’s door, which predictably was closed. Expecting Petya to formally announce him, the Count paused a few feet short of the office, but the bellhop made a sheepish gesture toward the door and then vanished. With no clear alternative, the Count knocked. There followed a brief rustling, a moment of silence, and a beleaguered call to come in.
When the Count opened the door, he found Mr. Halecki seated at his desk with a pen firmly in hand, but without a piece of paper in sight. And though the Count was not one to draw conclusions, he did note that the manager’s hair was matted on one side of his head and his reading glasses were crooked on his nose.
“You wished to see me?”
“Ah. Count Rostov. Please. Come in.”
As the Count approached one of the two empty chairs that faced the desk, he noted that hanging above the burgundy chaise was a lovely series of hand-tinted engravings depicting hunting scenes in the English style.
“Those are excellent specimens,” said the Count as he took his seat.
“What’s that? Oh, yes. The prints. Quite excellent. Yes.”
But having said this, the manager removed his glasses and ran a hand over his eyes. Then he shook his head and sighed. And as he did so, the Count felt a welling of that famed sympathy. “How can I be of service to you?” asked the Count, on the edge of his seat.
The manager gave a nod of familiarity, having presumably heard this question a thousand times before, then put both hands on his desk.
“Count Rostov,” he began. “You have been a guest of this hotel for many years. In fact, I gather your first visit here dates back to the days of my predecessor. . . .”
“That’s right,” the Count confirmed with a smile. “It was in August 1913.”
“Quite so.”
“Room 215, I believe.”
“Ah. A delightful room.”
The two men were silent.
“It has been brought to my attention,” the manager continued, if somewhat haltingly, “that various members of the staff when speaking to you . . . have continued to make use of certain . . . honorifics.”
“Honorifics?”
“Yes. More precisely, I gather they have been addressing you as Your Excellency. . . .”
The Count considered the manager’s assertion for a moment.
“Well, yes. I suppose that some of your staff address me in that fashion.”
The manager nodded his head then smiled a little sadly.
“I’m sure you can see the position that this puts me in.”
In point of fact, the Count could not see the position that this put the manager in. But given the Count’s unmitigated feelings of sympathy, he decidedly did not want to put him in any position. So, he listened attentively as Mr. Halecki went on:
“If it were up to me, of course, it goes without saying. But what with . . .”
Here, just when the manager might have pinpointed the most specific of causes, he instead gave an indefinite twirl of the hand and let his voice drift off. Then he cleared his throat.
“Naturally, I have little choice but to insist that my staff refrain from using such terms when addressing you. After all, I think we can agree without exaggeration or fear of contradiction that the times have changed.”
In concluding thus, the manager looked to the Count so hopefully, that the Count took immediate pains to reassure him.
“It is the business of the times to change, Mr. Halecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them.”
The manager looked to the Count with an expression of profound gratitude—that someone should understand what he had said so perfectly no further explication was required.
There was a knock at the door and it opened to rev
eal Arkady, the hotel’s desk captain. The manager’s shoulders slumped at the sight of him. He gestured toward the Count.
“As you can see, Arkady, I am in the midst of a conversation with one of our guests.”
“My apologies, Mr. Halecki, Count Rostov.”
Arkady bowed to both men, but did not retreat.
“All right then,” said the manager. “What is it?”
Arkady gave a slight gesture of the head to suggest that what he had to relate might best be related in private.
“Very well.”
Pushing himself up with both hands, the manager shuffled past his desk, out into the hall, and closed the door, such that the Count found himself alone.
Your Excellency, the Count reflected philosophically. Your Eminence, Your Holiness, Your Highness. Once upon a time, the use of such terms was a reliable indication that one was in a civilized country. But now, what with . . .
Here, the Count gave an indefinite twirl of the hand.
“Well. It is probably for the best,” he said.
Then rising from his chair, he approached the engravings, which upon closer inspection depicted three phases of a foxhunt: “The Scent,” “Tallyho,” and “The Chase.” In the second print, a young man in stiff black boots and a bright red jacket was blowing on a brass horn that turned a full 360 degrees from its mouthpiece to its bell. Without a doubt, the horn was a carefully crafted object expressive of beauty and tradition, but was it essential to the modern world? For that matter, did we really need a crew of nattily dressed men, purebred horses, and well-trained dogs to corner a fox in a hole? Without exaggeration or fear of contradiction, the Count could answer his own question in the negative.
For the times do, in fact, change. They change relentlessly. Inevitably. Inventively. And as they change, they set into bright relief not only outmoded honorifics and hunting horns, but silver summoners and mother-of-pearl opera glasses and all manner of carefully crafted things that have outlived their usefulness.
Carefully crafted things that have outlived their usefulness, thought the Count. I wonder . . .