by Amor Towles
“I can’t believe that you have been having clandestine conversations with Sofia,” the Count said in a hushed voice, though no one else was about.
“They weren’t clandestine,” Anna whispered back. “They just happened to be while you were at work.”
“And you think that is somehow appropriate? To foster a friendship with my daughter in my absence?”
“Well, you do like your buttons in their boxes, Sasha. . . .”
“So I gather!”
The Count turned to go, but then came back.
“And if, perchance, I do like my buttons in their boxes, is there anything wrong with that?”
“Certainly not.”
“Would the world be a better place if we kept all the buttons in a big glass jar? In such a world, whenever you tried to reach in for a button of a particular color, the tips of your fingers would inevitably push it down below the other buttons until you couldn’t see it. Eventually, in a state of exasperation, you would end up pouring all of the buttons on the floor—and then spend an hour and a half having to pick them back up.”
“Are we talking about actual buttons now?” asked Anna with genuine interest. “Or is this still an allegory?”
“What is not an allegory,” said the Count, “is my appointment with an eminent professor. Which, by the way, will necessitate the cancellation of any further appointments for the evening!”
Ten minutes later, the Count was knocking on that door which he had answered a thousand times, but upon which he had never knocked.
“Ah, here you are,” said the professor. “Please come in.”
The Count had not been in his old suite in over twenty-five years—not since that night in 1926 when he had stood at the parapet.
Still styled in the manner of a nineteenth-century French salon, the rooms remained elegant, if a little worse for wear. Only one of the two gilded mirrors now hung on the wall; the dark red curtains had faded; the matching couch and chairs needed to be reupholstered; and while his family’s clock still stood guard near the door, its hands were stopped at 4:22—having become an aspect of the room’s décor, rather than an essential instrument for the keeping of engagements. But if one no longer heard the gentle sound of time advancing in the suite, in its place were the strains of a waltz emanating from an electric radio on the dining room mantel.
Following the professor into the sitting room, the Count habitually glanced at the northwest corner with its privileged view of the Bolshoi—and there, framed by the window, was the silhouette of a man gazing out into the night. Tall, thin, with an aristocratic bearing, it could have been a shadow of the Count from another time. But then the shadow turned and crossed the room with its hand outstretched.
“Alexander!”
. . .
“Richard?”
It was none other. Dressed in a tailored suit, Richard Vanderwhile smiled and took hold of the Count’s hand.
“It’s good to see you! How long has it been? Almost two years?”
From the dining room, the strains of the waltz grew a little louder. The Count looked over just in time to see Professor Sirovich closing the doors to his bedroom and turning the brass latch. Richard gestured to one of the chairs by the coffee table, on which was an assortment of zakuski.
“Have a seat. I gather you’ve eaten, but you won’t mind if I dig in, will you? I’m absolutely starving.” Sitting on the couch, Richard put a slice of smoked salmon on a piece of bread and chewed it with relish even as he spread caviar on a blini. “I saw Sofia from across the lobby this afternoon and I couldn’t believe my eyes. What a beauty she’s become! You must have all the boys in Moscow knocking at your door.”
“Richard,” said the Count with a wave at the room, “what are we doing here?”
Richard nodded, brushing the crumbs from his hands.
“I apologize for the theatrics. Professor Sirovich is an old friend, and generous enough to loan me his sitting room on occasion. I’m only in town for a few days, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to speak with you in private, as I’m not exactly sure when I’ll be back.”
“Has something happened?” the Count asked with concern.
Richard put up both hands.
“Not at all. In fact, they tell me it’s a promotion. I’ll be working out of the embassy in Paris for the next few years overseeing a little initiative of ours, which is likely to keep me tied to a desk. Actually, Alexander, that’s why I wanted to see you. . . .”
Richard sat a little forward on the couch, putting his elbows on his knees.
“Since the war, relations between our countries may not have been especially chummy, but they have been predictable. We launch the Marshall Plan, you launch the Molotov Plan. We form NATO; you form the Cominform. We develop an atom bomb, you develop an atom bomb. It’s been like a game of tennis—which is not only a good form of exercise, but awfully entertaining to watch. Vodka?”
Richard poured them both a glass.
“Za vas,” he said.
“Za vas,” replied the Count.
The men emptied their glasses and Richard refilled them.
“The problem is that your top player has played the game so well, for so long, he’s the only player we know. Were he to quit tomorrow, we’d have no idea which fellow would pick up his racket, and whether he’d play from the baseline or the net.”
Richard paused.
“You do play tennis?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Ah. Right. The point is, comrade Stalin appears to be on his last legs, and when he gives up his ghost, things are going to become very unpredictable. And not just in matters of international diplomacy. I mean right here in Moscow. Depending on who ends up in charge, the doors of the city could either be flung open to the world, or slammed shut and bolted from the inside.”
“We must hope for the former,” the Count declared.
“Absolutely,” agreed Richard. “We certainly have no business praying for the latter. But whatever happens, it is preferable to anticipate. Which brings us to the point of my visit. You see, the group I’ll be heading in Paris is in the intelligence field. A sort of research unit, as it were. And we are looking for some friends here and there who might be in a position now and then to shed some light on this or that. . . .”
“Richard,” said the Count in some surprise, “you’re not asking me to spy on my country.”
“What? Spy on your country? Absolutely not, Alexander. I like to think of it more as a form of cosmopolitan gossip. You know: who was invited to the dance and who showed up uninvited; who was holding hands in the corner; and who got hot under the collar. The typical topics of a Sunday morning breakfast anywhere in the world. And in exchange for these sorts of trifles, we could prove generous to a fault. . . .”
The Count smiled.
“Richard, I am no more inclined to gossip than I am to spy. So, let’s not speak of this again and we shall remain the best of friends.”
“To the best of friends then,” said Richard, clinking the Count’s glass with his own.
And for the next hour, the two men set aside the game of tennis and spoke instead of their lives. The Count spoke of Sofia, who was making wonderful strides at the Conservatory, and who remained so thoughtful and quiet. Richard spoke of his boys, who were making wonderful strides in the nursery, and who remained neither thoughtful nor quiet. They spoke of Paris and Tolstoy and Carnegie Hall. Then at nine o’clock, these two kindred spirits rose from their seats.
“It’s probably best if you see yourself out,” said Richard. “Oh, and should it ever come up, you and Professor Sirovich had a lengthy debate on the future of the sonnet. You were in favor, he was against.”
After they’d shaken hands, the Count watched Richard disappear into the bedroom, then he turned toward the door to let himself out. But as he pas
sed the grandfather clock, he hesitated. How loyally it had stood in his grandmother’s drawing room and sounded the time for tea, for supper, for bed. On Christmas Eve, it had signaled the moment when the Count and his sister could slide apart the seamless doors.
Opening the narrow glass door in the clock’s cabinet, the Count reached inside and found the little key still on its hook. Inserting it into the keyhole, the Count wound the clock to its limit, set the time, and gave the pendulum a nudge, thinking: Let the old man keep time for a few hours more.
Almost nine months later, on the third of March 1953, the man known variously as Dear Father, Vozhd, Koba, Soso, or simply Stalin would die in his Kuntsevo residence in the aftermath of a stroke.
The following day, workmen and trucks laden down with flowers arrived at the Palace of Unions on Theatre Square, and within a matter of hours the building’s facade was adorned with a portrait of Stalin three stories high.
On the sixth, Harrison Salisbury, the new Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times, stood in the Count’s old rooms (now occupied by the Mexican chargé d’affaires), to watch as members of the Presidium arrived in a cavalcade of ZIM limousines and as Soso’s coffin, taken from a bright blue ambulance, was borne ceremoniously inside. And on the seventh, when the Palace of Unions was opened to the public, Salisbury watched in some amazement as the line of citizens waiting to pay their respects stretched five miles across the city.
Why, many Western observers wondered, would over a million citizens stand in line to see the corpse of a tyrant? The flippant said it must have been to ensure that he was actually dead; but such a remark did not do justice to the men and women who waited and wept. In point of fact, legions mourned the loss of the man who had led them to victory in the Great Patriotic War against the forces of Hitler; legions more mourned the loss of the man who had so single-mindedly driven Russia to become a world power; while others simply wept in recognition that a new era of uncertainty had begun.
For, of course, Richard’s prediction proved perfectly right. When Soso breathed his last, there was no plan of succession, no obvious designee. Within the Presidium there were eight different men who could reasonably claim the right to lead: Minister of Security Beria, Minister of the Armed Forces Bulganin, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Malenkov, Minister of Foreign Trade Mikoyan, Foreign Minister Molotov, Secretariat members Kaganovich and Voroshilov, and even former mayor of Moscow Nikita Khrushchev—that blunt, brutish, and bald apparatchik who not long before had perfected the five-story concrete apartment building.
Much to the relief of the West, it seemed in the aftermath of the funeral that the man most likely to prevail was the progressive internationalist and outspoken critic of nuclear arms, Malenkov—because, like Stalin, he was appointed as both Premier of the Party and General Secretary of the Central Committee. But a consensus quickly formed within the Party’s upper ranks that no one man should ever be allowed to simultaneously hold both of these positions again. So ten days later, Party Premier Malenkov was forced to pass his chairmanship of the Secretariat to the conservative Khrushchev, setting the stage for a duumvirate of antagonists—a delicate balance of authority between two men of contrary views and ambiguous alliances, which would keep the world guessing for a few years to come.
“How can anyone live his life in expectation of the Latter?”
Despite having announced that he would have no more time for appointments that evening, when the Count asked this question, he was in Anna Urbanova’s bed. . . .
“I know there is something quixotic in dreaming of the Former,” he continued, “but when all is said and done, if the Former is even a remote possibility, then how can one submit to the likelihood of the Latter? To do so would be contrary to the human spirit. So fundamental is our desire to catch a glimpse of another way of life, or to share a glimpse of our way of life with another, that even when the forces of the Latter have bolted the city’s doors, the forces of the Former will find a means to slip through the cracks.”
The Count reached over, borrowed Anna’s cigarette, and took a puff. Having thought for a moment, he waved the cigarette at the ceiling.
“In recent years, I have waited on Americans who have traveled all the way to Moscow to attend one performance at the Bolshoi. Meanwhile, our haphazard little trio in the Shalyapin will take a stab at any little bit of American music they’ve heard on the radio. These are unquestionably the forces of the Former on display.”
The Count took another puff.
“When Emile is in his kitchen, does he cook the Latter? Of course not. He simmers, sears, and serves the Former. A veal from Vienna, a pigeon from Paris, or a seafood stew from the south of France. Or consider the case of Viktor Stepanovich—”
“You’re not going to start in on the moths of Manchester again?”
“No,” said the Count peevishly. “I am making a different point entirely. When Viktor and Sofia sit down at the piano, do they play Mussorgsky, Mussorgsky, and Mussorgsky? No. They play Bach and Beethoven, Rossini and Puccini, while at Carnegie Hall the audience responds to Horowitz’s performance of Tchaikovsky with thunderous applause.”
The Count turned on his side to study the actress.
“You’re keeping unusually quiet,” he said, returning her cigarette. “Perhaps you don’t agree?”
Anna took a drag and slowly exhaled.
“It’s not that I disagree with you, Sasha. But I’m not so sure that one can simply dance away one’s life to the tune of the Former, as you call it. Certain realities must be faced wherever you live, and in Russia that may mean a bit of bending to the Latter. Take your beloved bouillabaisse, or that ovation in Carnegie Hall. It is no coincidence that the cities from which your examples spring are port cities: Marseille and New York. I daresay, you could find similar examples in Shanghai and Rotterdam. But Moscow is not a port, my love. At the center of all that is Russia—of its culture, its psychology, and perhaps, its destiny—stands the Kremlin, a walled fortress a thousand years old and four hundred miles from sea. Physically speaking, its walls are no longer high enough to fend off attack; and yet, they still cast a shadow across the entire country.”
The Count rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
“Sasha, I know you don’t want to accept the notion that Russia may be inherently inward looking, but do you think in America they are even having this conversation? Wondering if the gates of New York are about to be opened or closed? Wondering if the Former is more likely than the Latter? By all appearances, America was founded on the Former. They don’t even know what the Latter is.”
“You sound as if you dreamed of living in America.”
“Everyone dreams of living in America.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous? Half of the inhabitants of Europe would move there tomorrow just for the conveniences.”
“Conveniences! What conveniences?”
Turning on her side, Anna tamped out her cigarette, opened the drawer in the bedside table, and produced a large American magazine, which, the Count noted, was rather presumptuously entitled LIFE. Flipping through the pages, Anna began pointing to various brightly colored photographs. Each one seemed to show the same woman in a different dress smiling before some newfangled contraption.
“Dishwashing machines. Clothes-washing machines. Vacuum cleaners. Toasters. Televisions. And look here, an automatic garage door.”
“What is an automatic garage door?”
“It is a garage door that opens and closes itself on your behalf. What do you think of that?”
“I think if I were a garage door, I should rather miss the old days.”
Anna lit another cigarette and handed it to the Count. He took a drag and watched the smoke spiral toward the ceiling where the Muses looked down from the clouds.
“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a mo
ment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”
Anna Urbanova took the cigarette from the Count’s fingers, dropped it in a water glass, and kissed him on the nose.
1953
Apostles and Apostates
Like the wheeling of the stars,” muttered the Count as he paced.
That is how time passes when one is left waiting unaccountably. The hours become interminable. The minutes relentless. And the seconds? Why, not only does every last one of them demand its moment on the stage, it insists upon making a soliloquy full of weighty pauses and artful hesitations and then leaps into an encore at the slightest hint of applause.
But hadn’t the Count once waxed poetic over how slowly the stars advanced? Hadn’t he rhapsodized over how the constellations seemed to halt in their course when on a warm summer’s night one lay on one’s back and listened for footsteps in the grass—as if nature itself were conspiring to lengthen the last few hours before daybreak, so that they could be savored to the utmost?
Well, yes. Certainly that was the case when one was twenty-two and waiting for a young lady in a meadow—having climbed the ivy and rapped on the glass. But to keep a man waiting when he is sixty-three? When his hair has thinned, his joints have stiffened, and his every breath might be his last? There is such a thing as courtesy, after all.
It must be nearly one in the morning, calculated the Count. The performance was scheduled to end by eleven. The reception by twelve. They should have been here half an hour ago.