A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

  “Perhaps we should drape her in sackcloth,” suggested the seamstress. “To ensure that the audience is not distracted.”

  “I would never counsel sackcloth,” protested the Count. “But there is such a thing as moderation, even within the bounds of glamour.”

  Marina stomped her foot again.

  “Enough! We have no interest in your scruples, Alexander Ilyich. Just because you witnessed the Comet of 1812, does not mean that Sofia must wear a petticoat and bustle.”

  The Count began to object, but Anna intervened.

  “Perhaps we should hear what Sofia has to say.”

  They all looked to Sofia who, oblivious to the course of the debate, was admiring herself in the mirror. She turned and took Marina’s hands.

  “I think it’s splendid.”

  Marina looked at the Count in triumph; then turning back to Sofia, she tilted her head and studied her handiwork with a more critical eye.

  “What is it?” asked Anna, taking up a position beside the seamstress.

  “It needs something. . . .”

  “A cape?” muttered the Count.

  All three women ignored him.

  “I know,” Anna said after a moment. Slipping into her bedroom, she returned with a choker that had a sapphire pendant. She handed it to Marina, who fastened it around Sofia’s neck, then the two older women stepped back.

  “Perfect,” they agreed.

  “Is it true?” asked Anna, as she and the Count walked down the hallway after the fitting.

  “Is what true?”

  “Did you really see the Comet of 1812?”

  The Count harrumphed.

  “Just because I am a man of decorum does not mean that I am stodgy.”

  Anna smiled.

  “You do realize that you just harrumphed.”

  “Maybe so. But I am still her father. What would you have me do? Abdicate my responsibilities?”

  “Abdicate!” replied Anna with a laugh. “Certainly not, Your Highness.”

  The two had reached the point in the hallway where the door to the service stair was hidden in plain sight. Stopping, the Count turned to Anna with the smile of the artificially polite.

  “It is time for the Boyarsky’s daily meeting. As a result, I am afraid that I must now bid you adieu.” Then with a nod the Count disappeared behind the door.

  Once he was descending the stairs, he felt a sense of relief. With its precise geometry and pervading silence, the belfry was much like a chapel or reading room—a place designed to provide one with solitude and respite. That is, until the door opened and Anna stepped onto the landing.

  In a state of disbelief, the Count remounted the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “I need to go to the lobby,” she replied. “I thought I’d keep you company on the way down.”

  “You can’t keep me company. This is the service stair!”

  “But I am a guest in the hotel.”

  “That is my point exactly. The service stair is reserved for those who serve. Right down the hallway is a glamorous staircase reserved for the glamorous.”

  Anna smiled and took a step toward the Count.

  “What’s gotten your goat?”

  “Nothing has gotten my goat. My goat is not gotten.”

  “I suppose it’s understandable,” she continued philosophically. “A father is bound to be a little unnerved by the discovery that his daughter has become a beautiful young woman.”

  “I was not unnerved,” the Count said, taking a step back. “My only point was that the back of the dress did not have to be cut quite as low.”

  “You must admit that her back is lovely.”

  “That may be so. But the world needn’t be presented with every single one of her vertebrae.”

  Anna took another step forward.

  “You have often admired my vertebrae. . . .”

  “That’s something else entirely.” The Count tried to take another step back, but came up against the wall.

  “I’ll give you the Comet of 1812,” Anna said.

  “Shall we begin?”

  This shockingly straightforward question came from none other than the man who ate, drank, and slept on the bias.

  With a grunt, Emile slid his menu across the desk.

  The Count and Andrey shifted in their chairs.

  Having begun attending the Boyarsky’s daily meeting in the summer of 1953, in April of 1954 the Bishop had switched the venue from Emile’s office to his own, on the grounds that the activity in the kitchen was proving a distraction. To accommodate the members of the Triumvirate, the manager had three French chairs lined up in front of his desk. The chairs had such delicate proportions one could only assume that they had originally been designed for handmaidens in the court of Louis XIV. Which is to say, it was virtually impossible for grown men to sit in them at ease, especially when tucked in a tight little row. The general effect was to make the Boyarsky’s maître d’, chef, and headwaiter feel like schoolboys called before their principal.

  Accepting the menu, the Bishop squared it with the edge of his desk. Then with the tip of his pencil he reviewed each item in the manner of a banker double-checking the sums of his apprentice.

  Naturally enough, in the interim the three schoolboys found themselves looking about. If only the walls had been decorated with maps of the world or a periodic table, they could have made fruitful use of the time—by imagining they were Columbus crossing the Atlantic or an alchemist in ancient Alexandria. With only the portraits of Stalin, Lenin, and Marx to consider, the three men had no choice but to fidget.

  When the Bishop had edited Emile’s menu and returned it to the chef, with a sniff he turned to Andrey, who dutifully delivered the Book. As usual, the Bishop opened to the beginning and the Triumvirate watched in mute exasperation as he turned through the pages until he finally reached the last night of May.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  Again, the tip of the banker’s pencil moved from entry to entry, column by column, row by row. The Bishop provided Andrey with seating instructions for the night and set down his pencil.

  Sensing the meeting was about to end, the members of the Triumvirate moved to the edge of their chairs. But rather than close the Book, the Bishop suddenly flipped ahead to survey the upcoming weeks. After turning a few pages, he paused.

  “How are preparations coming for the combined dinner of the Presidium and the Council of Ministers . . . ?”

  Andrey cleared his throat.

  “All is in order. At official request, the dinner is to be held not in the Red Room but in suite 417, which Arkady has arranged to be free; Emile has just finalized the menu; and Alexander, who will be overseeing the dinner, has been working closely with comrade Propp, our liaison from the Kremlin, to ensure the evening runs smoothly.”

  The Bishop looked up from the Book.

  “Given the importance of the event, shouldn’t you be overseeing it personally, Maître d’ Duras?”

  “It was my intention to stay in the Boyarsky, as usual. But I could certainly attend to the dinner, if you thought that preferable.”

  “Excellent,” said the Bishop. “Then Headwaiter Rostov can stay at the restaurant to ensure that all goes accordingly there.”

  As the Bishop closed the Book, the Count went cold.

  The dinner for the Presidium and Council of Ministers was tailor made to his intentions. He could not conceive of a better occasion. But even if there were one, with just sixteen days until the Conservatory’s tour, the Count was simply out of time.

  The Bishop slid the Book back across his desk and the meeting was concluded.

  As usual, the members of the Triumvirate walked from the principal’s office to the stairwell in silence. But at the landing, when Emile began c
limbing the stairs to the second floor, the Count took Andrey by the sleeve.

  “Andrey, my friend,” he said under his breath. “Can you spare a moment . . . ?”

  An Announcement

  At 6:45 on the eleventh of June, Count Alexander Rostov stood in suite 417 dressed in the white jacket of the Boyarsky, ensuring that the place settings were properly arranged and his men properly attired before opening the doors for the 1954 combined dinner of the Presidium and the Council of Ministers.

  Eleven days earlier, as we know, the Count had been excused from this duty rather unceremoniously. But early on the afternoon of the tenth of June, Maître d’ Duras arrived at the Boyarsky’s daily meeting with distressing news. For some time, he said, he had been experiencing a tremor of the hands consistent with the onset of palsy. After a troubled night’s sleep, he had awakened to discover that the condition had grown considerably worse. By way of illustration, he held his right hand over the table where it trembled like a leaf.

  Emile looked on with an expression of shock. What sort of Divinity, he seemed to be thinking, would devise a world in which an aging man’s malady afflicts the very attribute that has set him apart from his fellow men and elevated him in the eyes of all?

  What sort of Divinity, Emile? The very same who rendered Beethoven deaf and Monet blind. For what the Lord giveth, is precisely what he cometh later to taketh away.

  But if Emile’s face expressed an almost sacrilegious indignation at his friend’s condition, the Bishop’s expressed the grimace of the inconvenienced.

  Noting the manager’s annoyance, Andrey sought to set his mind at ease.

  “You needn’t worry, Manager Leplevsky. I have already contacted comrade Propp at the Kremlin and assured him that while I cannot oversee tomorrow night’s event, Headwaiter Rostov will be assuming my responsibilities. Needless to say,” the maître d’ added, “comrade Propp was greatly relieved by the news.”

  “Of course,” said the Bishop.

  In reporting that comrade Propp was greatly relieved to have Headwaiter Rostov at the helm of this dinner of state, Andrey was not exaggerating. Born ten years after the Revolution, comrade Propp didn’t know that Headwaiter Rostov was under house arrest at the Metropol; he didn’t even know that Headwaiter Rostov was a Former Person. What he did know—and from personal experience—was that Headwaiter Rostov could be counted upon to attend to every detail on the table and respond immediately to the slightest hint of a customer’s dissatisfaction. And though comrade Propp was still relatively inexperienced in the ways of the Kremlin, he was experienced enough to know that any shortcomings in the evening would be laid at his door as surely as if he had set the table, cooked the meal, and poured the wine himself.

  Comrade Propp personally communicated his relief to the Count during a brief meeting on the morning of the event. At a table for two in the Boyarsky, the young liaison reviewed with the Count, quite unnecessarily, all the details of the evening: the timing (the doors were to be opened promptly at 9:00); the layout of the tables (a long U with twenty seats on either side and six at the head); the menu (Chef Zhukovsky’s interpretation of a traditional Russian feast); the wine (a Ukrainian white); and the necessity of dousing the candles at exactly 10:59. Then, perhaps to emphasize the evening’s importance, comrade Propp gave the Count a glimpse of the guest list.

  While it’s true that the Count generally hadn’t concerned himself with the inner workings of the Kremlin, that is not to suggest that he was unfamiliar with the names on that piece of paper—for he had served them all. Certainly, he had served them at formal functions in the Red and Yellow Rooms, but he had also served them at the more intimate and less guarded tables of the Boyarsky when they had dined with wives or mistresses, friends or enemies, patrons or protégés. He knew the boorish from the abrupt and the bitter from the boastful. He had seen all of them sober and most of them drunk.

  “All will be seen to,” said the Count as the young apparatchik stood to go. “But, comrade Propp . . .”

  Comrade Propp paused.

  “Yes, Headwaiter Rostov? Have I forgotten something?”

  “You haven’t given me the seating arrangement.”

  “Ah. Not to worry. Tonight there is to be no seating arrangement.”

  “Then rest assured,” the Count replied with a smile, “the evening is bound to be a success.”

  Why was the Count so pleased to hear that this dinner of state would have no seating arrangement?

  For a thousand years, civilizations the world over have recognized the head of the table as a privileged spot. Upon seeing a formally set table, one knows instinctively that the seat at the head is more desirable than those along the sides—because it inevitably confers upon its occupant an appearance of power, importance, and legitimacy. By extension, one also knows that the farther one sits from the head, the less powerful, important, and legitimate one is likely to be perceived. So, to invite forty-six leaders of a political party to dine around the periphery of an extended U without a seating arrangement was to risk a certain amount of disorder. . . .

  Thomas Hobbes, no doubt, would have likened the situation to “Man in a State of Nature” and would have counseled one to expect a scuffle. Born with similar faculties and driven by similar desires, the forty-six men in attendance had equal right to any seat at the table. As such, what was most likely to ensue was a scrum for the head, animated by accusations, recriminations, fisticuffs, and possibly gunfire.

  John Locke, on the other hand, would argue that once the dining room’s doors were opened, after a brief moment of confusion the better natures of the forty-six men would prevail, and their predisposition to reason would lead them to a fair and orderly process of seat taking. Thus, in all likelihood, the attendees would draw lots to decide their placement, or simply reconfigure the tables into a circle—just as King Arthur had, to ensure the equity of his knights.

  Chiming in from the mid-eighteenth century, Jean Jacques Rousseau would inform Messrs. Locke and Hobbes that the forty-six guests—freed at long last from the tyranny of social conventions—would shove the tables aside, gather the fruits of the earth in hand, and share them freely in a state of natural bliss!

  But the Communist Party was not a “State of Nature.” Quite to the contrary, it was one of the most intricate and purposeful constructions ever manufactured by man. In essence: the hierarchy of all hierarchies.

  So, when the guests arrived, the Count was fairly certain that there would be no raising of fists, drawing of lots, or free-spirited sharing of fruits. Rather, with only the slightest jostling and jockeying, each of the forty-six attendees would find their proper place at the table; and this “spontaneous” arrangement would tell the studious observer all he needed to know about the governance of Russia for the next twenty years.

  At the Count’s signal, the doors to suite 417 were opened at precisely 9:00 P.M. By 9:15, forty-six men of various rank and seniority were taking the seats appropriate to their station. Without a word of orchestration, the head of the table was left to Bulganin, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Molotov, and Voroshilov—the six most eminent members of the Party—with the two center seats reserved for Premier Malenkov and General Secretary Khrushchev.*

  In fact, as if to make the point, when Khrushchev entered the room he didn’t even walk in the direction of the table’s head. Rather, he exchanged a few remarks with Vyacheslav Malyshev, the rather mundane Minister of Medium Machine Building who was sitting near the table’s end. Only when everyone else was comfortable did the former mayor of Moscow pat Malyshev on the shoulder and casually work his way to the seat beside Malenkov—the last empty chair in the room.

  Over the next two hours, the men in attendance ate heartily, drank freely, and gave toasts that ranged in tone from the high-minded to the humorous, but always in the most patriotic of spirits. And in between toasts, as the Count presented courses, refilled glasses, repla
ced utensils, whisked away plates, and swept crumbs from the linens, the attendees made asides to the men on their left, conferred with the men on their right, or muttered to themselves under the hum of the festivities.

  Upon reading this, you may be tempted to ask a little sardonically whether Count Rostov—this self-proclaimed man of propriety—allowed himself to overhear any of the private exchanges around the table? But your question and your cynicism would be entirely misplaced. For as with the best manservants, it is the business of capable waiters to overhear.

  Consider the example of Grand Duke Demidov’s butler. In his day, Kemp could stand for hours at the edge of the library as silent and stiff as a statue. But should one of the Grand Duke’s guests even mention that he was thirsty, Kemp was there with an offer of a drink. Should someone complain quietly of a chill, Kemp was at the fireside stirring the coals. And when the Grand Duke observed to a friend that while the Countess Shermatova was “a delight,” her son was “unreliable,” Kemp would know without being told that should either of the Shermatovas appear at the door unannounced, the Grand Duke was available to the one and indisposed to the other.

  So, did the Count overhear any of the private exchanges of the attendees? Did he hear any of the sly observations, pointed asides, or dismissive remarks uttered sotto voce?

  He heard every single word.

  Every man has his own personality at table, and one needn’t have waited upon members of the Communist Party for twenty-eight years to know that while comrade Malenkov only toasted upon occasion and then with a glass of white wine, comrade Khrushchev would give four toasts in an evening and always with vodka. Thus, it did not escape the Count’s notice that during the course of the meal, the former mayor of Moscow never once rose to his feet. But at ten minutes to eleven, when the meal was nearly over, the General Secretary rapped on his glass with the blade of his knife.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, “the Metropol is no stranger to historic events. In fact, in 1918 comrade Sverdlov locked the members of the constitutional drafting committee in the suite two floors below us—informing them that they would not be let out until their work was done.”