by Amor Towles
Nina smiled in a manner that suggested (rather unconvincingly) that he absolutely shouldn’t have. Then she unwrapped the paper to reveal the Countess Rostov’s hexagonal opera glasses.
“They were my grandmother’s,” said the Count.
For the first time in their acquaintance, Nina was struck dumb. She turned the little binoculars in her hands, admiring the mother-of-pearl scopes and delicate brass fittings. Then she held them to her eyes so she could slowly scan the room.
“You know me better than anyone,” she said after a moment. “I shall treasure them to my dying day.”
That she had not thought to bring a present for the Count struck him as perfectly understandable. After all, she was only a child; and the days of unwrapping surprises were decidedly behind him.
“It’s getting late,” said the Count. “I wouldn’t want you to keep your father waiting.”
“Yes,” she admitted regretfully. “It is time for me to go.”
Then looking back toward the captain’s station, she raised a hand as one who signals for the check. But when the captain approached the table, he did not have the check. Instead, he had a large yellow box tied with dark green ribbon.
“Here,” Nina said, “is a little something for you. But you must promise that you will not open it until the stroke of midnight.”
When Nina left the Piazza to join her father, the Count’s intention had been to settle the check, proceed to the Boyarsky (for an herb-encrusted lamb chop), and then retire to his study with a glass of port to await the chime of twelve. But as the accordion player launched into a second carol, the Count found himself turning his attention to the neighboring table, where a young man seemed to be in the earliest stages of romantic discovery.
In some lecture hall, this lad with a hint of a moustache had presumably admired his fellow student for the sharpness of her intellect and the seriousness of her mien. Eventually, he had worked up the nerve to invite her out, perhaps under the pretense of discussing some matter of ideological interest. And now here she was, sitting before him in the Piazza looking about the room without a smile on her face or a word on her lips.
Attempting to break the silence, the lad remarked on the upcoming conference to unify the Soviet republics—a reasonable gambit given her apparent intensity. Sure enough, the young lady had views on the subject; but as she voiced her opinion on the Transcaucas question, the tenor of the conversation turned decidedly technical. What’s more, the young man, having adopted an expression as serious as hers, was clearly out of his depth. Were he to venture his own opinion now, he would almost certainly be revealed as a poseur, as one who was inadequately informed on the crucial issues of the day. From there, the evening could only get worse, and he would end up dragging his hopes behind him in the manner of the chastened child who drags his stuffed bear thumping up the stairs.
But just as the young lady was inviting him to share his thoughts on the matter, the accordion player began a little number with a Spanish flair. It must have struck a chord, because she interrupted herself in order to look at the musician and wonder aloud where that melody was from.
“It is from the The Nutcracker,” the young man responded without a thought.
“The Nutcracker . . . ,” she repeated.
Given the prevailing sobriety of her expression, it was unclear what she thought of this music from another era. As such, many a veteran would have counseled the young man to proceed with caution—to wait and hear what associations the music held for her. Instead, he acted; and he acted boldly.
“When I was a boy, my grandmother took me every year.”
The young lady turned back from the musician to face her companion.
“I suppose some think the music sentimental,” he continued, “but I never fail to attend the ballet when it is performed in December, even if it means attending alone.”
Well done, lad.
The expression on the girl’s face softened noticeably and her eyes displayed a hint of interest, that here was an unexpected aspect of her new acquaintance, something pure and heartfelt and unapologetic. Her lips parted as she prepared to ask a question—
“Are you ready to order?”
It was the Bishop leaning over their table.
Of course they are not ready to order, the Count wished to shout. As any fool can see!
If the young man were wise, he would send the Bishop packing and ask the young lady to go on with her question. Instead, he dutifully picked up the menu. Perhaps he imagined that the perfect dish would leap off the page and identify itself by name. But for a hopeful young man trying to impress a serious young woman, the menu of the Piazza was as perilous as the Straits of Messina. On the left was a Scylla of lower-priced dishes that could suggest a penny-pinching lack of flair; and on the right was a Charybdis of delicacies that could empty one’s pockets while painting one pretentious. The young man’s gaze drifted back and forth between these opposing hazards. But in a stroke of genius, he ordered the Latvian stew.
While this traditional dish of pork, onions, and apricots was reasonably priced, it was also reasonably exotic; and it somehow harkened back to that world of grandmothers and holidays and sentimental melodies that they had been about to discuss when so rudely interrupted.
“I’ll have the same,” said our serious young lady.
The same!
And then she glanced at her hopeful young acquaintance with a touch of that tenderness that Natasha had shown Pierre in War and Peace at the end of Volume Two.
“And would you like some wine to go with your stew?” asked the Bishop.
The young man hesitated and then picked up the wine list with uncertain hands. It may well have been the first time in his life that he had ordered a bottle of wine. Never mind that he didn’t grasp the merits of the 1900 versus the 1901, he didn’t know a Burgundy from a Bordeaux.
Giving the young man no more than a minute to consider his options, the Bishop leaned forward and poked the list with a condescending smile.
“Perhaps the Rioja.”
The Rioja? Now there was a wine that would clash with the stew as Achilles clashed with Hector. It would slay the dish with a blow to the head and drag it behind its chariot until it tested the fortitude of every man in Troy. Besides, it plainly cost three times what the young man could afford.
With a shake of the head, the Count reflected that there was simply no substitute for experience. Here had been an ideal opportunity for a waiter to fulfill his purpose. By recommending a suitable wine, he could have put a young man at ease, perfected a meal, and furthered the cause of romance, all in a stroke. But whether from a lack of subtlety or a lack of sense, the Bishop had not only failed in his purpose, he had put his customer in a corner. And the young man, clearly unsure of what to do and beginning to feel as if the whole restaurant were watching, was on the verge of accepting the Bishop’s suggestion.
“If I may,” the Count interjected. “For a serving of Latvian stew, you will find no better choice than a bottle of the Mukuzani.”
Leaning toward their table and mimicking the perfectly parted fingers of Andrey, the Count gestured to the entry on the list. That this wine was a fraction of the cost of the Rioja need not be a matter of a discussion between gentlemen. Instead, the Count simply noted: “The Georgians practically grow their grapes in the hopes that one day they will accompany such a stew.”
The young man exchanged a brief glance with his companion as if to say, Who is this eccentric? But then he turned to the Bishop.
“A bottle of the Mukuzani.”
“Of course,” replied the Bishop.
Minutes later, the wine had been presented and poured, and the young woman was asking her companion what his grandmother was like. While for his part, the Count cast off any thoughts of herb-encrusted lamb at the Boyarsky. Instead, he summoned Petya to take Nina’s present to
his room and ordered the Latvian stew and a bottle of the Mukuzani for himself.
And just as he’d suspected, it was the perfect dish for the season. The onions thoroughly caramelized, the pork slowly braised, and the apricots briefly stewed, the three ingredients came together in a sweet and smoky medley that simultaneously suggested the comfort of a snowed-in tavern and the jangle of a Gypsy tambourine.
As the Count took a sip of his wine, the young couple caught his eye and raised their own glasses in a toast of gratitude and kinship. Then they returned to their conversation, which had grown so intimate, it could no longer be heard over the sound of the accordion.
Young love, thought the Count with a smile. There is nothing novaya about it.
“Will there be anything else?”
It was the Bishop addressing the Count. He considered for a moment, then he asked for a single scoop of vanilla ice cream.
As the Count entered the lobby, he noticed four men in evening dress coming through the door with black leather cases in hand, clearly one of the string quartets that occasionally played in the private dining rooms upstairs.
Three of the musicians looked as if they had been performing together since the nineteenth century, sharing the same white hair and weary professionalism. But the second violinist stood out from the others as he couldn’t have been more than twenty-two and retained a certain brightness to his step. It was only as the quartet approached the elevator that the Count recognized him.
The Count probably hadn’t seen Nikolai Petrov since 1914 when the Prince had been no more than a lad of thirteen; and given the passage of time, the Count might not have recognized him at all were it not for his unassuming smile—a distinguishing feature of the Petrov line for generations.
“Nikolai?”
When the Count spoke, the four musicians turned from the elevator and eyed him with curiosity.
“Alexander Ilyich . . . ?” the Prince asked after a moment.
“None other.”
The Prince encouraged his colleagues to go ahead and then offered the Count the familial smile.
“It’s good to see you, Alexander.”
“And you.”
They were quiet for a moment, then the Prince’s expression changed from one of surprise to curiosity.
“Is that . . . ice cream?”
“What? Oh! Yes, it is. Though not for me.”
The Prince nodded in bemusement, but without further remark.
“Tell me,” the Count ventured, “have you heard from Dmitry?”
“I believe he is in Switzerland.”
“Ah,” said the Count with a smile. “The purest air in Europe.”
The Prince shrugged, as if to say he had heard something of the sort, but wouldn’t know firsthand.
“The last time I saw you,” observed the Count, “you were playing Bach at one of your grandmother’s dinner parties.”
The Prince laughed and held up his case.
“I guess I am still playing Bach at dinner parties.”
Then he gestured toward the departed elevator and said with unmistakable fondness:
“That was Sergei Eisenov.”
“No!”
At the turn of the century, Sergei Eisenov had given music lessons to half the boys on the Boulevard Ring.
“It’s not easy for our likes to find work,” said the Prince. “But Sergei hires me when he can.”
The Count had so many questions: Were there other members of the Petrov family still in Moscow? Was his grandmother alive? Was he still living in that wonderful house on Pushkin Square? But the two were standing in the middle of a hotel lobby as men and women headed up the stairs—including some in formal clothes.
“They’ll be wondering what’s become of me,” said the Prince.
“Yes, of course. I didn’t mean to keep you.”
The Prince nodded and turned to mount the stairs, but then turned back.
“We are playing here again on Saturday night,” he said. “Perhaps we could meet afterwards for a drink.”
“That would be splendid,” said the Count.*
When the Count arrived on the sixth floor, he clicked his tongue three times then went into his bedroom, leaving the door ajar. On the desk sat Nina’s gift where Petya had left it. Taking it under an arm, the Count passed through his jackets into his study, set the present on his grandmother’s table, and put the bowl of melted ice cream on the floor. As the Count poured himself a glass of port, a silvery shadow swerved around his feet and approached the bowl.
“Happy holidays to you, Herr Drosselmeyer.”
“Meow,” replied the cat.
According to the twice-tolling clock, it was only eleven. So with his port in one hand and A Christmas Carol in the other, the Count tilted back his chair and dutifully waited for the chime of twelve. Admittedly, it takes a certain amount of discipline to sit in a chair and read a novel, even a seasonal one, when a beautifully wrapped present waits within arm’s reach and the only witness is a one-eyed cat. But this was a discipline the Count had mastered as a child when, in the days leading up to Christmas, he had marched past the closed drawing-room doors with the unflinching stare of a Buckingham Palace guard.
The young Count’s self-mastery did not stem from a precocious admiration of military regimentation, nor a priggish adherence to household rules. By the time he was ten, it was perfectly clear that the Count was neither priggish nor regimental (as a phalanx of educators, caretakers, and constables could attest). No, if the Count mastered the discipline of marching past the closed drawing-room doors, it was because experience had taught him that this was the best means of ensuring the splendor of the season.
For on Christmas Eve, when his father finally gave the signal and he and Helena were allowed to pull the doors apart—there was the twelve-foot spruce lit up from trunk to tip and garlands hanging from every shelf. There were the bowls of oranges from Seville and the brightly colored candies from Vienna. And hidden somewhere under the tree was that unexpected gift—be it a wooden sword with which to defend the ramparts, or a lantern with which to explore a mummy’s tomb.
Such is the magic of Christmas in childhood, thought the Count a little wistfully, that a single gift can provide one with endless hours of adventure while not even requiring one to leave one’s house.
Drosselmeyer, who had retired to the other high-back chair to lick his paws, suddenly turned his one-eyed gaze toward the closet door with his little ears upright. What he must have heard was the whirring of inner wheels, for a second later came the first of midnight’s chimes.
Setting his book and his port aside, the Count placed Nina’s gift in his lap with his fingers on the dark green bow and listened to the tolling of the clock. Only with the twelfth and final chime did he pull the ribbon’s ends.
“What do you think, mein Herr? A dapper hat?”
The cat looked up at the Count and in deference to the season began to purr. The Count replied with a nod and then carefully lifted the lid . . . only to discover another box wrapped in yellow and tied with a dark green bow.
Setting the empty box aside, the Count nodded again to the cat, pulled the strands of the second bow, and lifted the second lid . . . only to discover a third box. Dutifully, the Count repeated the debowing and unlidding with the next three boxes, until he held one the size of a matchbox. But when he untied the bow and lifted the lid on this box, inside the cozy chamber, strung on a bit of the dark green ribbon, was Nina’s passkey to the hotel.
When the Count climbed into bed with his Dickens at 12:15, he assumed he would only read a paragraph or two before switching off the light; but instead, he found himself reading with the greatest interest.
He had reached the part in the story where Scrooge is being spirited around by that jolly giant, the Ghost of Christmas Present. Over the course of his childhood, the
Count had been read A Christmas Carol no less than three times. So, he certainly remembered the visit Scrooge and his guide paid to the laughter-filled party at Scrooge’s nephew’s house; just as he remembered the visit they paid to the humble, yet heartfelt celebration at the Cratchits’. But he had completely forgotten that upon leaving the Cratchits’, the Second Spirit had taken Scrooge out of the city of London altogether, to a bleak and deserted moor where a family of miners was celebrating the season in their ramshackle hut at the edge of the mine; and from there to a lighthouse on a rocky outpost where the waves thundered as the two craggy keepers of the beacon joined their hands in yuletide song; and from there, further and further the Spirit carried Scrooge, into the howling darkness of the rolling sea, until they alit upon the deck of a ship where every man good or bad had fond thoughts of home and a kinder word for his mates.
Who knows.
Perhaps what stirred the Count were these far-flung figures sharing in the fellowship of the season despite their lives of hard labor in inhospitable climes. Perhaps it was the sight earlier in the evening of that modern young couple proceeding toward romance in the age-old fashion. Perhaps it was the chance meeting with Nikolai, who, despite his heritage, seemed to be finding a place for himself in the new Russia. Or perhaps it was the utterly unanticipated blessing of Nina’s friendship. Whatever the cause, when the Count closed his book and turned out the light, he fell asleep with a great sense of well-being.
But had the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come suddenly appeared and roused the Count to give him a glimpse of the future, he would have seen that his sense of well-being had been premature. For less than four years later, after another careful accounting of the twice-tolling clock’s twelve chimes, Alexander Ilyich Rostov would be climbing to the roof of the Metropol Hotel in his finest jacket and gamely approaching its parapet in order to throw himself into the street below.
BOOK TWO
1923