A Gentleman in Moscow

1924 Anonymity

Dreams of invisibility are as old as folklore. By means of some talisman or potion, or with the help of the gods themselves, the corporeal presence of the hero is rendered insubstantial, and for the duration of the spell he may wander among his fellow men unseen.

The advantages of having such a power can be rattled off for you by any child of ten. Whether slipping past dragons, eavesdropping on intriguers, and sneaking into treasuries, or plucking a pie from the pantry, knocking the cap off a constable, and lighting the schoolmaster’s coattails on fire, suffice it to say that a thousand tales have been told in acknowledgment of invisibility’s bounty.

But the tale that has less often been told is the one in which the spell of invisibility is cast upon the unknowing hero in the form of a curse. Having lived his life in the heat of battle, at the crux of conversation, and in the twentieth row with its privileged view of the ladies in the loges—that is, in the very thick of things—suddenly, he finds himself invisible to friend and foe alike. And the spell that had been cast over the Count by Anna Urbanova in 1923 was of this very sort.

On that fateful night when the Count had dined with the enchantress in her suite, she presumably had the power to render him invisible on the spot. Instead, to toy with his peace of mind, she had cast her spell to manifest itself over the course of a year, bit by bit.

In the weeks that followed, the Count suddenly noticed that he was disappearing from view for a few minutes at a time. He could be dining in the Piazza when a couple would approach his table with the clear intention of taking it as their own; or he could be standing near the front desk when a harried guest would nearly knock him off his feet. By winter, those prone to greet him with a wave or a smile often failed to see him until he was ten feet away. And now a year later? When he crossed the lobby, it often took a full minute for his closest friends to notice that he was standing right in front of them.

“Oh,” said Vasily, returning the telephone receiver to its cradle. “Excuse me, Count Rostov. I didn’t see you there. How can I be of service?”

The Count gave the concierge’s desk a delicate tap.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Nina is?”

In asking Vasily for Nina’s whereabouts, the Count was not making a passing inquiry of the first chap he happened to meet; for Vasily had an uncanny awareness of where people were at any given time.

“She is in the card room, I believe.”

“Ah,” said the Count with a knowing smile.

Turning about, he walked down the hall to the card room and quietly opened the door, assuming he would find four middle-aged ladies exchanging cookies and profanities over tricks of whist—as an attentive spirit held her breath in a cupboard. Instead, he found the object of his search sitting at the card table alone. With two stacks of paper in front of her and a pencil in hand, she appeared the very model of scholastic enthusiasm. The pencil was moving so brightly it looked like an honor guard—parading across the page with its head held high then pivoting at the margin to make the quick march back.

“Greetings, my friend.”

“Hello, Your Countship,” Nina replied without looking up from her work.

“Would you like to join me for an excursion before dinner? I was thinking of visiting the switchboard.”

“I’m afraid I can’t at the moment.”

The Count claimed the seat opposite Nina as she put a completed sheet of paper on one stack and took a fresh sheet of paper from the other. Out of habit, he picked up the deck of cards that sat on the corner of the table and shuffled it twice.

“Would you like to see a trick?”

“Some other time, perhaps.”

Neatening the deck, the Count replaced it on the table. Then he picked up the topmost sheet from the stack of completed papers. In carefully aligned columns, he found all of the cardinal numbers from 1,100 to 1,199. In accordance with some unknown system, thirteen of the numbers had been circled in red.

Needless to say, the Count was intrigued.

“What are we up to here?”

“Mathematics.”

“I see you are addressing the subject with vigor.”

“Professor Lisitsky says that one must wrestle with mathematics the way that one wrestles with a bear.”

“Is that so? And which species of bear are we wrestling with today? More polar than panda, I suspect.”

Nina looked up at the Count with her glint-extinguishing stare.

The Count cleared his throat and adopted a more serious tone.

“I take it the project involves some subset of integers. . . .”

“Do you know what a prime number is?”

“As in two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen . . . ?”

“Exactly,” said Nina. “Those whole numbers that are indivisible by any number other than one and itself.”

Given the dramatic manner with which she had said indivisible, one might have imagined Nina was speaking of the impregnability of a fortress.

“At any rate,” she said, “I am making a list of them all.”

“Them all!”

“It is a Sisyphean task,” she admitted (though with an enthusiasm that prompted one to wonder if she had a complete command of the term’s etymology).

She pointed to the already inscribed pages on the table.

“The list of prime numbers begins with two, three, and five, as you say. But prime numbers grow increasingly rare the larger they become. So it is one thing to land upon a seven or eleven. But to land upon a one thousand and nine is another thing altogether. Can you imagine identifying a prime number in the hundreds of thousands . . . ? In the millions . . . ?”

Nina looked off in the distance, as if she could see that largest and most impregnable of all the numbers situated on its rocky promontory where for thousands of years it had withstood the onslaughts of fire-breathing dragons and barbarian hordes. Then she resumed her work.

The Count took another look at the sheet in his hands with a heightened sense of respect. After all, an educated man should admire any course of study no matter how arcane, if it be pursued with curiosity and devotion.

“Here,” he said in the tone of one chipping in. “This number is not prime.”

Nina looked up with an expression of disbelief.

“Which number?”

He laid the paper in front of her and tapped a figure circled in red.

“One thousand one hundred and seventy-three.”

“How do you know it isn’t prime?”

“If a number’s individual digits sum to a number that is divisible by three, then it too is divisible by three.”

Confronted with this extraordinary fact, Nina replied:

“Mon Dieu.”

Then she leaned back in her chair and appraised the Count in a manner acknowledging that she may have underestimated him.

Now, when a man has been underestimated by a friend, he has some cause for taking offense—since it is our friends who should overestimate our capacities. They should have an exaggerated opinion of our moral fortitude, our aesthetic sensibilities, and our intellectual scope. Why, they should practically imagine us leaping through a window in the nick of time with the works of Shakespeare in one hand and a pistol in the other! But in this particular instance, the Count had to admit he had little grounds for taking offense. Because, for the life of him, he could not imagine from what dark corner of his adolescent mind this extraordinary fact had materialized.

“Well,” said Nina, pointing to the stack of completed papers in front of the Count. “You’d better hand me those.”

Leaving Nina to her work, the Count consoled himself that he was to meet Mishka for dinner in fifteen minutes; and besides, he had yet to read the daily papers. So, returning to the lobby, he picked up a copy of Pravda from the coffee table and made himself comfortable in the chair between the potted palms.

After scanning the headlines, the Count delved into an article on a Moscow manufacturing plant that was exceeding its quotas. He then read a sketch on various improvements in Russian village life. When he shifted his attention to a report on the grateful schoolchildren of Kazan, he couldn’t help but remark on the repetitiveness of the new journalistic style. Not only did the Bolsheviks seem to dwell on the same sort of subject matter day to day, they celebrated such a narrow set of views with such a limited vocabulary that one inevitably felt as if one had read it all before.

It wasn’t until the fifth article that the Count realized he had read it all before. For this was yesterday’s paper. With a grunt, he tossed it back on the table and looked at the clock behind the front desk, which indicated that Mishka was now fifteen minutes late.

But then, the measure of fifteen minutes is entirely different for a man in step than for a man with nothing to do. If for the Count the prior twelve months could be characterized politely as uneventful, the same could not be said for Mishka. The Count’s old friend had left the 1923 RAPP congress with a commission to edit and annotate a multivolume anthology of the Russian short story. That alone would have provided him with a reasonable excuse for being late; but there was a second development in Mishka’s life that earned him even more latitude with his appointments. . . .

As a boy, the Count had a well-deserved reputation for marksmanship. He had been known to hit the schoolhouse bell with a rock while standing behind the bushes on the other side of the yard. He had been known to sink a kopek into an inkwell from across the classroom. And with an arrow and bow, he could pierce an orange at fifty paces. But he had never hit a tighter mark from a greater distance than when he noted his friend’s interest in Katerina from Kiev. In the months after the 1923 congress, her beauty became so indisputable, her heart so tender, her demeanor so kind, that Mishka had no choice but to barricade himself behind a stack of books at the old Imperial Library in St. Petersburg.

“She’s a firefly, Sasha. A pinwheel.” Or so said Mishka with the wistful amazement of one who has been given only a moment to admire a wonder of the world.

But then one autumn afternoon, she appeared in his alcove in need of a confidant. Behind his volumes, they whispered for an hour, and when the library sounded its closing bell, they took their conversation out onto Nevsky Prospekt and wandered all the way to Tikhvin Cemetery where, on a spot overlooking the Neva River, this firefly, this pinwheel, this wonder of the world had suddenly taken his hand.

“Ah, Count Rostov,” exclaimed Arkady in passing. “There you are. I believe I have a message for you. . . .” Returning to the front desk, Arkady quickly rifled through some notes. “Here.”

The message, which had been taken down by the hotel’s receptionist, conveyed Mishka’s apologies and explained that as Katerina was under the weather, he was returning to St. Petersburg earlier than planned. Taking a moment to mask his disappointment, the Count looked up from the note to thank Arkady, but the desk captain had already turned his attention to another guest.

“Good evening, Count Rostov.” Andrey took a quick look in the Book. “A party of two tonight, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a party of one, Andrey.”

“Nonetheless, it is our pleasure to have you. Your table should be ready in just a few minutes.”

With the recent recognition of the USSR by Germany, England, and Italy, a wait of a few minutes had become increasingly common at the Boyarsky; but such was the price of being welcomed back into the sisterhood of nations and the brotherhood of trade.

As the Count stepped aside, a man with a pointed beard came marching down the hallway with a protégé in tow. Though the Count had only seen him once or twice before, the Count could tell he was the Commissar of Something-or-Other, for he walked with urgency, talked with urgency, and even came to a stop with urgency.

“Good evening, comrade Soslovsky,” said Andrey with a welcoming smile.

“Yes,” pronounced Soslovsky—as if he’d just been asked whether he wanted to be seated immediately.

With a nod of understanding, Andrey signaled a waiter, handed him two menus, and directed him to lead the gentlemen to table fourteen.

Geometrically speaking, the Boyarsky was a square at the center of which was a towering arrangement of flora (today forsythia branches in bloom), around which were twenty tables of various sizes. If one considered the tables in respect to the cardinal points of a compass, then, at Andrey’s instruction, the waiter was now leading the Commissar and his protégé to the table for two at the northeast corner—right next to where a jowly-faced Belarusian was dining.

“Andrey, my friend . . .”

The maître d’ looked up from his Book.

“Isn’t he the chap who had an exchange of words with that bulldog of a fellow a few days ago?”

An “exchange of words” was something of a polite diminution of the facts. For on the afternoon in question, when this Soslovsky had wondered aloud to his luncheon companions why the Belarusians seemed particularly slow to embrace the ideas of Lenin, the bulldog (who had been sitting at a neighboring table) had cast his napkin on his plate and demanded to know “the meaning of this!” With a disregard as pointed as his beard, Soslovsky suggested there were three reasons, and he began to tick them off:

“First, there is the relative laziness of the population—a trait for which the Belarusians are known the world over. Second, there is their infatuation with the West, which presumably stems from their long history of intermarriage with the Poles. But third, and above all else—”

Alas, the restaurant was never to hear the above-all-else. For the bulldog, who had knocked back his chair at the word intermarriage, now hoisted Soslovsky off his seat. In the scramble that ensued, it took three waiters to separate the various hands from the various lapels, and two busboys to sweep the chicken Maréchal from the floor.

Recalling the scene in a flash, Andrey looked back toward table thirteen, where the bulldog in question was currently seated with a woman of such similar aspect that any seasoned logician would conclude she was his wife. Spinning on his heels, Andrey rounded the forsythia blossoms, headed off Soslovsky and his protégé, and led them back to table three—a lovely spot at south-southeast, which could comfortably accommodate a party of four.

“Merci beaucoup,” said Andrey upon his return.

“De rien,” replied the Count.

In replying It is nothing to Andrey, the Count was not simply resorting to a Gallic figure of speech. In point of fact, the Count deserved as much thanks for his little intervention as a swallow deserves for its trill. For since the age of fifteen, Alexander Rostov had been a master of seating tables.

Whenever he was home for the holidays, his grandmother would inevitably call him into the library, where she liked to knit by the fireplace in a solitary chair.

“Come in, my boy, and sit with me a moment.”

“Certainly, Grandmother,” replied the Count, balancing himself on the edge of the fire grate. “How can I be of assistance?”

“The prelate is coming for dinner on Friday night—as are the Duchess Obolensky, Count Keragin, and the Minsky-Polotovs. . . .”

Here she would let her voice trail off without further explanation; but no further explanation was needed. The Countess was of a mind that dinner should provide one with respite from life’s trials and tribulations. Thus, she could not countenance discussions of religion, politics, or personal sorrows at her table. Further complicating matters, the prelate was deaf in his left ear, partial to Latin epigrams, and prone to stare at décolletage whenever he drank a glass of wine; while the Duchess Obolensky, who was particularly caustic in summer, frowned upon pithy sayings and could not abide discussions of the arts. And the Keragins? Their great-grandfather had been called a Bonapartist by Prince Minsky-Polotov in 1811, and they had not exchanged a word with a Minsky-Polotov since.

“How many will be in attendance?” asked the Count.

“Forty.”

“The usual assembly?”

“More or less.”

“The Osipovs?”

“Yes. But Pierre is in Moscow. . . .”

“Ah,” said the Count with the smile of the chess champion who has been confronted with a new gambit.

The Nizhny Novgorod Province had a hundred prominent families, which over the course of two centuries had intermarried and divorced, borrowed and lent, accepted and regretted, offended, defended, and dueled—while championing an array of conflicting positions that varied by generation, gender, and house. And at the center of this maelstrom was the Countess Rostov’s dining room with its two tables for twenty standing side by side.

“Not to worry, Grand-mère,” assured the Count. “A solution is close at hand.”

Out in the garden, as the Count closed his eyes to begin moving through the individual permutations one by one, his sister enjoyed making light of his task.

“Why do you furrow your brow so, Sasha? However the table is arranged, we always have such delightful conversations when we dine.”

“However the table is arranged!” the Count would exclaim. “Delightful conversations! I’ll have you know, dear sister, that careless seating has torn asunder the best of marriages and led to the collapse of the longest-standing détentes. In fact, if Paris had not been seated next to Helen when he dined in the court of Menelaus, there never would have been a Trojan War.”

A charming rejoinder, no doubt, reflected the Count, from across the years. But where were the Obolenskys and the Minsky-Polotovs now?

With Hector and Achilles.

“Your table is ready, Count Rostov.”

“Ah. Thank you, Andrey.”

Two minutes later, the Count was comfortably seated at his table with a glass of champagne (a small gesture of thanks from Andrey for his timely intervention).

Taking a sip, the Count reviewed the menu in reverse order as was his habit, having learned from experience that giving consideration to appetizers before entrées can only lead to regrets. And here was a perfect example. For the very last item on the menu was the evening’s sole necessity: osso buco—a dish that was best preceded by a light and lively appetizer.

Closing his menu, the Count surveyed the restaurant. Undeniably, he had felt a little low when he had climbed the stairs to the Boyarsky; but here he was with a glass of champagne in hand, osso buco in the offing, and the satisfaction that he had been of service to a friend. Perhaps the Fates—who of all their children loved Reversal most—were set upon lifting his spirits.

“Do you have any questions?”

Thus came an inquiry from behind the Count’s back.

Without hesitation, the Count began to reply that he was ready to order, but as he turned in his chair, he was struck dumb to discover that it was the Bishop who was leaning over his shoulder—in the white jacket of the Boyarsky.

Now admittedly, with the recent return of international guests to the hotel, the Boyarsky had become a little understaffed. So the Count could well appreciate why Andrey had decided to bolster his crew. But of all the waiters at the Piazza, of all the waiters in the world, why would he choose this one?

The Bishop seemed to be following the Count’s train of thought, for his smile became especially smug. Yes, he seemed to be saying, here I am in your famed Boyarsky, one of the chosen few who pass with impunity through the doors of Chef Zhukovsky’s kitchen.

“Perhaps you need more time . . . ?” the Bishop suggested, his pencil poised over his pad.

For an instant, the Count considered sending him on his way and asking for a new table. But the Rostovs had always prided themselves on admitting when their behavior lacked charity.

“No, my good man,” replied the Count. “I am ready to place my order. I will have the fennel and orange salad to start, and the osso buco to follow.”

“Of course,” said the Bishop. “And how will you be having the osso buco?”

The Count almost betrayed his amazement. How will I be having it? Does he expect me to dictate the temperature of a piece of stewed meat?

“As the chef prepares it,” replied the Count magnanimously.

“Of course. And will you be having wine?”

“Absolutely. A bottle of the San Lorenzo Barolo, 1912.”

“Will you be having the red or the white?”

“A Barolo,” the Count explained as helpfully as he could, “is a full-bodied red from northern Italy. As such, it is the perfect accompaniment to the osso buco of Milan.”

“So then, you will be having the red.”

The Count studied the Bishop for a moment. The fellow gives no evidence of being deaf, he reflected; and his accent would suggest that Russian is his native tongue. So surely, by now, he should have been on his way to the kitchen? But as the Countess Rostov liked to remark: If patience wasn’t so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue. . . .

“Yes,” said the Count after counting to five. “The Barolo is a red.”

The Bishop continued to stand there with his pencil poised over his pad.

“I apologize,” he said unapologetically, “if I am not being clear. But for your selection of a wine tonight, there are only two options: white and red.”

The two men stared at each other.

“Perhaps you could ask Andrey to stop by for a moment.”

“Of course,” said the Bishop, backing away with an ecclesiastical bow.

The Count drummed the tabletop with his fingers.

Of course, he says. Of course, of course, of course. Of course what? Of course you are there and I am here? Of course you have said something and I have replied? Of course a man’s time on earth is finite and may come to an end at any moment!

“Is something the matter, Count Rostov?”

“Ah, Andrey. It’s about your new man. I’m quite familiar with him from his work downstairs. And in that venue I suppose a certain lack of experience is to be tolerated, or even expected. But here at the Boyarsky . . .”

The Count opened both hands to gesture toward the hallowed room and then looked to the maître d’ with an expectation of understanding.

No one who knew Andrey in the slightest would ever describe his demeanor as gay. He was not some barker at a carnival, or an impresario of light entertainments. His position as the maître d’ of the Boyarsky called for judiciousness, tact, decorum. So the Count was quite accustomed to Andrey having a solemn expression. But in all his years of dining at the Boyarsky, he had never seen Andrey appear this solemn.

“He was promoted at the instruction of Mr. Halecki,” explained the maître d’ quietly.

“But why?”

“I am not certain. I presume he has a friend.”

“A friend?”

Uncharacteristically, Andrey shrugged.

“A friend with influence. Someone within the Table Servers Union, perhaps; or at the Commissariat of Labor; or in the upper echelons of the Party. These days, who can tell?”

“My sympathies,” said the Count.

Andrey bowed in gratitude.

“Well, you certainly can’t be held accountable if they foist the fellow upon you; and I will adjust my expectations accordingly. But before you go, can you do me a small service? For some incomprehensible reason, he will not let me order my wine. I was just hoping to get a bottle of the San Lorenzo Barolo to accompany the osso buco.”

If such a thing could be imagined, Andrey’s expression grew even more solemn.

“Perhaps you should come with me. . . .”

Having followed Andrey across the dining room, through the kitchen, and down a long, winding stair, the Count found himself in a place that even Nina had never been: the wine cellar of the Metropol.

With its archways of brick and its cool, dark climate, the Metropol’s wine cellar recalled the somber beauty of a catacomb. Only, instead of sarcophagi bearing the likenesses of saints, receding into the far reaches of the chamber were rows of racks laden with bottles of wine. Here was assembled a staggering collection of Cabernets and Chardonnays, Rieslings and Syrahs, ports and Madeiras—a century of vintages from across the continent of Europe.

All told, there were almost ten thousand cases. More than a hundred thousand bottles. And every one of them without a label.

“What has happened!” gasped the Count.

Andrey nodded in grim acknowledgment.

“A complaint was filed with comrade Teodorov, the Commissar of Food, claiming that the existence of our wine list runs counter to the ideals of the Revolution. That it is a monument to the privilege of the nobility, the effeteness of the intelligentsia, and the predatory pricing of speculators.”

“But that’s preposterous.”

For the second time in an hour, the unshrugging Andrey shrugged.

“A meeting was held, a vote was taken, an order was handed down. . . . Henceforth, the Boyarsky shall sell only red and white wine with every bottle at a single price.”

With a hand that was never meant to serve such a purpose, Andrey gestured to the corner, where beside five barrels of water a confusion of labels lay on the floor. “It took ten men ten days to complete the task,” he said sadly.

“But who on earth would file such a complaint?”

“I am not certain; though I have been told it may have originated with your friend. . . .”

“My friend?”

“Your waiter from downstairs.”

The Count looked at Andrey in amazement. But then a memory presented itself—a memory of a Christmas past when the Count had leaned from his chair to correct a certain waiter’s recommendation of a Rioja to accompany a Latvian stew. How smugly the Count had observed at the time that there was no substitute for experience.

Well, thought the Count, here is your substitute.

With Andrey a few paces behind him, the Count began walking the cellar’s center aisle, much as a commander and his lieutenant might walk through a field hospital in the aftermath of battle. Near the end of the aisle, the Count turned down one of the rows. With a quick accounting of columns and shelves, the Count determined that in this row alone, there were over a thousand bottles—a thousand bottles virtually identical in shape and weight.

Picking up one at random, he reflected how perfectly the curve of the glass fit in the palm of the hand, how perfectly its volume weighed upon the arm. But inside? Inside this dark green glass was what exactly? A Chardonnay to complement a Camembert? A Sauvignon Blanc to go with some chèvre?

Whichever wine was within, it was decidedly not identical to its neighbors. On the contrary, the contents of the bottle in his hand was the product of a history as unique and complex as that of a nation, or a man. In its color, aroma, and taste, it would certainly express the idiosyncratic geology and prevailing climate of its home terrain. But in addition, it would express all the natural phenomena of its vintage. In a sip, it would evoke the timing of that winter’s thaw, the extent of that summer’s rain, the prevailing winds, and the frequency of clouds.

Yes, a bottle of wine was the ultimate distillation of time and place; a poetic expression of individuality itself. Yet here it was, cast back into the sea of anonymity, that realm of averages and unknowns.

And suddenly, the Count had his own moment of lucidity. Just as Mishka had come to understand the present as the natural by-product of the past, and could see with perfect clarity how it would shape the future, the Count now understood his place in the passage of time.

As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. We are familiar with the songs our grandparents favored, after all, even though we never danced to them ourselves. At festive holidays, the recipes we pull from the drawer are routinely decades old, and in some cases even written in the hand of a relative long since dead. And the objects in our homes? The oriental coffee tables and well-worn desks that have been handed down from generation to generation? Despite being “out of fashion,” not only do they add beauty to our daily lives, they lend material credibility to our presumption that the passing of an era will be glacial.

But under certain circumstances, the Count finally acknowledged, this process can occur in the comparative blink of an eye. Popular upheaval, political turmoil, industrial progress—any combination of these can cause the evolution of a society to leapfrog generations, sweeping aside aspects of the past that might otherwise have lingered for decades. And this must be especially so, when those with newfound power are men who distrust any form of hesitation or nuance, and who prize self-assurance above all.

For years now, with a bit of a smile, the Count had remarked that this or that was behind him—like his days of poetry or travel or romance. But in so doing, he had never really believed it. In his heart of hearts, he had imagined that, even if unattended to, these aspects of his life were lingering somewhere on the periphery, waiting to be recalled. But looking at the bottle in his hand, the Count was struck by the realization that, in fact, it was all behind him. Because the Bolsheviks, who were so intent upon recasting the future from a mold of their own making, would not rest until every last vestige of his Russia had been uprooted, shattered, or erased.

Returning the bottle to its slot, the Count went to join Andrey at the foot of the stairs. But as he passed among the shelves, it occurred to him that it was almost all behind him. For he had one last duty to attend to.

“Just a moment, Andrey.”

Starting at the end of the cellar, the Count began weaving back and forth through the rows systematically, scanning the racks from top to bottom, until Andrey must have thought he’d lost his reason. But in the sixth row he came to a stop. Reaching down to a shelf at the height of his knee, the Count carefully took a bottle from among the thousands. Holding it up with a wistful smile, he ran his thumb over the insignia of the two crossed keys that was embossed on the glass.

On the twenty-second of June 1926—the tenth anniversary of Helena’s death—Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov would drink to his sister’s memory. Then he would shed this mortal coil, once and for all.