A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

  Mein Gott, thought the Count. He had completely forgotten.

  “. . . What’s more, the GAZ dinner is in the Red Room at half past seven.”

  The director of Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, the state’s leading automotive manufacturing agency, was hosting a formal dinner to commemorate their fifth anniversary. In addition to key staff members, the event was to be attended by the Commissar of Heavy Industry, and three representatives of the Ford Motor Company—who didn’t speak a word of Russian.

  “I shall see to it personally,” said the Count.

  “Good,” said the maître d’. “Dmitry has already set up the room.”

  Then he slid two envelopes across the table to the Count.

  In accordance with Bolshevik custom, the tables in the Red Room had been laid out in the shape of a long U with chairs arranged on the outer perimeter—such that all the men seated could watch the head of the table without craning their necks. Satisfied that the settings were in order, the Count turned his attention to the envelopes that Andrey had given him. Unsealing the smaller of the two, he removed the seating chart, which had presumably been prepared in some office in the Kremlin. Then he opened the larger envelope, spilled out the place cards, and began positioning them accordingly. Having circled the table a second time in order to double-check the precision of his own execution, the Count stuffed the two envelopes into the pocket of his pants—only to discover another envelope. . . .

  Removing the third envelope, the Count considered it with a furrowed brow. That is, until he turned it over and saw the willowy script.

  “Great Scott!”

  According to the clock on the wall, it was already 3:15.

  The Count dashed out of the Red Room, down the hall, and up a flight of stairs. Finding the door to suite 311 ajar, he slipped inside, closed the door, and crossed the grand salon. In the bedroom, a silhouette turned from the window as her dress fell to the floor with a delicate whoosh.

  The Count replied with a slight cough.

  “Anna, my love . . .”

  Noting the expression on the Count’s face, the actress pulled her dress back up toward her shoulders.

  “I’m terribly sorry, but due to a confluence of unexpected events, I am not going to be able to keep our appointment today. In fact, for related reasons, I may need to ask a small favor. . . .”

  In the fifteen years that they had known each other, the Count had only asked Anna for one favor, and that had weighed less than two ounces.

  “Of course, Alexander,” she replied. “What is it?”

  “How many suitcases do you travel with?”

  A few minutes later, the Count was hurrying down the staff stairwell—two Parisian traveling cases in hand. With renewed respect, he thought of Grisha and Genya and all their predecessors. For though Anna’s cases had been fashioned from the finest materials, they seemed to have been designed without the slightest consideration for having to be carried. The little leather handles were so small one could barely slip two fingers through them; and the cases’ dimensions were so generous that at every step they banged from the banister into one’s knee. How could the bellhops possibly manage to carry these things around so effortlessly? And often with a hatbox thrown in for good measure!

  Arriving at the subfloor, the Count pushed his way through the staff doors into the laundry. In the first suitcase, he stowed two sheets, a bedcover, and a towel. In the second, he packed a pair of pillows. Then back up six flights he went, banging his knees at every turn of the belfry stairs. In his room, he unloaded the linens and then went down the hall to get a second mattress from one of the abandoned rooms.

  This had seemed an excellent idea to the Count when it had struck him, but the mattress was decidedly against it. When he bent over to lift the mattress from the bedsprings, it crossed its arms, held its breadth, and refused to budge. When he managed to get it upright, it immediately flopped over his head, nearly knocking him off his feet. And when he’d finally dragged it down the hall and flumped it in his room, it spread out its limbs, claiming every spare inch of the floor.

  This will not do, thought the Count with his hands on his hips. If he left the mattress there, how were they to move about? And he certainly wasn’t going to drag it in and out of the room on a daily basis. But in a flash of inspiration, the Count was reminded of that morning sixteen years before, when he had consoled himself that living in this room would provide the satisfactions of traveling by train.

  Yes, he thought. That is it, exactly.

  Lifting the mattress onto its edge, he leaned it against the wall and warned it to stay put, if it knew what was good for it. Then he took Anna’s suitcases and ran down four flights to the pantry of the Boyarsky, where the canned tomatoes were stored. With an approximate height of eight inches and a diameter of six, they were perfectly suited to the task. So having lugged them back upstairs (with a healthy measure of huffing and puffing), he stacked, hoisted, pulled, and perched until the room was ready. Then, having returned Anna’s cases, he dashed down the stairs.

  When the Count arrived at Marina’s office (more than an hour late), he was relieved to find the seamstress and Sofia seated on the floor in close consultation. Bounding up, Sofia held out her doll, which was now in a royal blue dress with little black buttons down the front.

  “Do you see what we made for Dolly, Uncle Alexander?”

  “How lovely!”

  “She is quite a seamstress,” said Marina.

  Sofia hugged Marina and then skipped into the hall with her newly attired companion. The Count began to follow his charge, but Marina called him back.

  “Alexander: What arrangements have you made for Sofia while you are at work tonight . . . ?”

  The Count bit his lip.

  “All right,” she said. “I will stay with her this evening. But tomorrow, you need to find someone else. You should speak with one of the younger chambermaids. Perhaps Natasha. She is unmarried and would be good with children. But you have to pay her a reasonable wage.”

  “Natasha,” confirmed the Count with gratitude. “I’ll speak to her first thing tomorrow. And a reasonable wage, absolutely. Thank you so much, Marina. I’ll send you and Sofia dinner from the Boyarsky around seven; and if last night is any indication, she will be sound asleep by nine.”

  The Count turned to go, then turned back again.

  “And, I’m sorry about earlier. . . .”

  “It’s all right, Alexander. You were anxious because you haven’t spent time with children before. But I am certain that you are up to the challenge. If you are ever in doubt, just remember that unlike adults, children want to be happy. So they still have the ability to take the greatest pleasure in the simplest things.” By way of example, the seamstress placed something small and seemingly insignificant in the Count’s hand with an assurance and a few words of instruction.

  As a result, when the Count and Sofia had climbed the five flights back to their rooms and she had turned her deep blue gaze of expectation upon him, the Count was ready.

  “Would you like to play a game?” he asked.

  “I would,” she said.

  “Then come this way.”

  With a touch of ceremony, the Count ushered Sofia through the closet door into the study.

  “Ooo,” she said as she emerged on the other side. “Is this your secret room?”

  “It is our secret room,” the Count replied.

  Sofia nodded gravely to show that she understood.

  But then children understand the purpose of secret rooms better than they understand the purpose of congresses, courtrooms, and banks.

  Somewhat shyly, Sofia pointed at the painting.

  “Is that your sister?”

  “Yes. Helena.”

  “I like peaches too.” She ran a hand along the coffee table. “Is this where your grandma had tea?”


  “Exactly.”

  Sofia nodded gravely again.

  “I am ready for the game.”

  “All right then. Here’s how we play. You will go back into the bedroom and count to two hundred. I shall remain in order to hide this within the boundaries of the study.” Then, as if from thin air, the Count produced the silver thimble that Marina had given him. “Sofia, you do know how to count to two hundred?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But I can count to one hundred twice.”

  “Well done.”

  Sofia exited through the closet, pulling the door shut behind her.

  The Count glanced about the room in search of an appropriate spot—one that would prove reasonably challenging for the child without taking unfair advantage of her age. After a few minutes of consideration, he approached the little bookcase and carefully placed the thimble on top of Anna Karenina; then he took a seat.

  At the count of two hundred, the closet door opened a crack.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Indeed, I am.”

  When Sofia came in, the Count expected her to scamper about the room willy-nilly, looking every which way. Instead, she remained in the doorway and quietly, almost unsettlingly, studied the room from quadrant to quadrant. Upper left, lower left, upper right, lower right. Then without a word, she walked straight to the bookcase and picked the thimble off the top of Tolstoy. This had occurred in less time than it would have taken for the Count to count to one hundred once.

  “Well done,” said the Count, not meaning it. “Let’s play again.”

  Sofia handed the Count the thimble. But as soon as she left the room, the Count chastised himself for not having considered his next hiding place before initiating the second round. Now he had only two hundred seconds to find a suitable spot. As if to unnerve him further, Sofia began counting so loudly that he could hear her through the closed closet door.

  “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .”

  Suddenly it was the Count who was scampering about willy-nilly and looking every which way—discarding this spot for being too easy and that spot for being too hard. In the end, he tucked the thimble under the handle of the Ambassador—on the other side of the room from the bookcase.

  When Sofia returned, she followed the same procedure as before. Although, as if anticipating the Count’s petty little trick, this time she began her survey in the corner opposite from where she had found the thimble in the first round. It took her all of twenty seconds to pluck it from its hiding place.

  Clearly, the Count had underestimated his adversary. But by placing the thimble in such low locations, he had been playing to Sofia’s natural strengths. In the next round, he would take advantage of her limitations by hiding it six or seven feet off the ground.

  “Again?” he said with the smile of a fox.

  “It’s your turn.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It is your turn to look, and my turn to hide.”

  “No, you see, in this game I always do the hiding and you always do the hunting.”

  Sofia studied the Count as her mother would have.

  “If you always do the hiding and I always do the hunting, then it wouldn’t be a game at all.”

  The Count frowned at the indisputability of this point of view. And when she held out her hand, he dutifully placed the thimble in her palm. As if this turnabout weren’t enough, when he reached for the doorknob, she tugged at his sleeve.

  “Uncle Alexander, you won’t peek, will you?”

  Won’t peek? The Count had a mind to say a word or two about the integrity of the Rostovs. Instead, he composed himself.

  “No, Sofia. I will not peek.”

  “You promise . . . ?”

  . . .

  “I promise.”

  The Count went out into the bedroom muttering something about his word being his bond and never having cheated at cards or welched on a wager, and then he began to count. As he proceeded past 150, he could hear Sofia moving around the study, and when he reached 175, he heard a chair being pushed across the floor. Well aware of the difference between a gentleman and a cad, the Count counted until the room fell silent—that is, all the way to 222.

  “Ready or not,” he called.

  When he came into the room, Sofia was sitting in one of the high-back chairs.

  With a bit of theatricality, the Count put his hands behind his back and circled the room while saying hmmm. But after two circuits, the little silver thimble had yet to reveal itself. So he began to search a bit more in earnest. Taking a page from Sofia’s book, he divided the room into quadrants and reviewed them systematically, but to no avail.

  Recalling that he had heard one of the chairs being moved, and accounting for Sofia’s height and arm extension, the Count estimated that she could have reached a spot at least five feet off the ground. So, he looked behind the frame of his sister’s portrait; he looked under the mechanics of the little window; he even looked above the doorframe.

  Still no thimble.

  Occasionally, he would look back at Sofia in the hopes that she would give herself away by glancing at her hiding place. But she maintained an infuriatingly disinterested expression, as if she hadn’t the slightest awareness of the hunt that was underway. And all the while, swinging her little feet back and forth.

  As a student of psychology, the Count decided he must attempt to solve the problem from his opponent’s point of view. Just as he had wanted to take advantage of her limited height, perhaps she had taken advantage of his stature. Of course, he thought. The sound of moving furniture didn’t have to mean that she was climbing up on a chair; it could have been her pulling something aside in order to hide something beneath it. The Count dropped to the floor and crawled like a lizard from the bookcase to the Ambassador and back again.

  And still she sat there swinging her little feet.

  The Count stood to his full height, banging his head against the slope of the ceiling. What’s more, his kneecaps hurt from the hardwood floor, and his jacket was covered in dust. Suddenly, as he looked a little wildly around the room, he became aware of a quietly encroaching eventuality. It was slinking slowly toward him like a cat across the lawn; and the name of this cat was Defeat.

  Could it be?

  Was he, a Rostov, preparing to surrender?

  Well, in a word: Yes.

  There were no two ways about it. He had been bested and he knew it. Naturally, there would have to be a word or two of self-recrimination, but first he cursed Marina and the alleged pleasures of simple games. He breathed deeply and exhaled. Then he presented himself to Sofia as General Mack had presented himself to Napoleon, having let the Russian army slip through his grasp.

  “Well done, Sofia,” he said.

  Sofia looked directly at the Count for the first time since he’d come into the room.

  “Are you giving up?”

  “I am conceding,” said the Count.

  “Is that the same as giving up?”

  . . .

  “Yes, it is the same as giving up.”

  “Then you should say so.”

  Naturally. His humiliation must be brought to its full realization.

  “I give up,” he said.

  Without a hint of gloating, Sofia accepted his surrender. Then she jumped off her chair and walked toward him. He stepped a little out of her way, assuming that she must have hid the thimble somewhere in the bookcase. But she didn’t approach the bookcase. Instead, she stopped in front of him, reached into his jacket pocket, and withdrew the thimble.

  The Count was aghast.

  In fact, he actually sputtered.

  “But, but, but, Sofia—that’s not fair!”

  Sofia studied the Count with curiosity.

  “Why is it not fair?”

 
; Always with that damnable Why.

  “Because it’s not,” replied the Count.

  “But you said we could hide it anywhere in the room.”

  “That’s just it, Sofia. My pocket wasn’t in the room.”

  “Your pocket was in the room when I hid the thimble; and it was in the room when you hunted. . . .”

  And as the Count gazed into her innocent little face, it all became clear. He, a master of nuance and sleight of hand, had been played at every turn. When she had called him back to insist he not peek and had so sweetly tugged at his sleeve, that was a ploy to mask the slipping of the thimble into his pocket. And the moving of the furniture as the two-hundredth second approached? Pure theater. A ruthless case of dissembling. And even as he searched, there she sat, clutching her little Dolly in its bright blue dress, without ever once betraying her wiles.

  The Count took one step back and bowed at the waist.

  At six o’clock, having descended to the ground floor to deliver Sofia into Marina’s care, returned up to the sixth floor to retrieve Sofia’s doll, and then down to the ground floor to deliver it, the Count proceeded to the Boyarsky.

  Apologizing to Andrey for being late, he quickly assessed his team, reviewed the tables, adjusted the glasses, aligned the silver, took a peek at Emile, and finally gave the signal that the restaurant could be opened. At half past seven, he went to the Red Room to oversee the GAZ dinner. Then at ten, he headed down the hall to where the doors of the Yellow Room were being guarded by a Goliath.

  Ever since 1930, the Count and Osip had been dining together on the third Saturday of the month in order to further the former Red Army colonel’s understanding of the West.

  Having dedicated the first several years to a study of the French (covering their idioms and forms of address, the personalities of Napoleon, Richelieu, and Talleyrand, the essence of the Enlightenment, the genius of Impressionism, and their prevailing aptitude for je ne sais quoi), the Count and Osip spent the next few years studying the British (covering the necessity of tea, the implausible rules of cricket, the etiquette of foxhunting, their relentless if well-deserved pride in Shakespeare, and the all-encompassing, overriding importance of the pub). But more recently, they had shifted their attention to the United States.