A Gentleman in Moscow

1950 Adagio, Andante, Allegro

In the blink of an eye.”

That was how, on the twenty-first of June, Count Alexander Rostov summed up his daughter’s journey from thirteen to seventeen, when Vasily remarked on how much she had grown.

“One moment she is scampering up and down the stairwells—a veritable gadabout, a gadfly, a ne’er-do-well—and the next, she is a young woman of intelligence and refinement.”

And this was largely true. For if the Count had been premature in characterizing Sofia as demure when she was thirteen, he had perfectly anticipated her persona on the cusp of adulthood. With fair skin and long black hair (but for the white stripe that fell from the spot of her old injury), Sofia could sit for hours listening to music in their study. She could stitch for hours with Marina in the stitching room, or chat for hours with Emile in the kitchen without shifting once in her chair.

When Sofia was just five, the Count had assumed, naively perhaps, that she would grow up to be a dark-haired version of her mother. But while Sofia shared Nina’s clarity of perception and confidence of opinion, she was entirely different in demeanor. Where her mother was prone to express her impatience with the slightest of the world’s imperfections, Sofia seemed to presume that if the earth spun awry upon occasion, it was generally a well-intentioned planet. And where Nina would not hesitate to cut someone off in midassertion in order to make a contrary point and then declare the matter decided once and for all, Sofia would listen so attentively and with such a sympathetic smile that her interlocutor, having been given free rein to express his views at considerable length, often found his voice petering out as he began to question his own premises. . . .

Demure. That was the only word for it. And the transition had occurred in the blink of an eye.

“When you reach our age, Vasily, it all goes by so quickly. Whole seasons seem to pass without leaving the slightest mark on our memory.”

“How true . . . ,” agreed the concierge (as he sorted through an allotment of tickets).

“But surely, there is a comfort to be taken from that,” continued the Count. “For even as the weeks begin racing by in a blur for us, they are making the greatest of impressions upon our children. When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one’s senses are so alert, one’s sentiments so finely attuned that every conversation, every look, every laugh may be writ indelibly upon one’s memory. And the friends that one happens to make in those impressionable years? One will meet them forever after with a welling of affection.”

Having expressed this paradox, the Count happened to look across the lobby, where Grisha was lugging the luggage of one guest toward the front desk as Genya lugged the luggage of another toward the door.

“Perhaps it is a matter of celestial balance,” he reflected. “A sort of cosmic equilibrium. Perhaps the aggregate experience of Time is a constant and thus for our children to establish such vivid impressions of this particular June, we must relinquish our claims upon it.”

“So that they might remember, we must forget,” Vasily summed up.

“Exactly!” said the Count. “So that they might remember, we must forget. But should we take umbrage at the fact? Should we feel shortchanged by the notion that their experiences for the moment may be richer than ours? I think not. For it is hardly our purpose at this late stage to log a new portfolio of lasting memories. Rather, we should be dedicating ourselves to ensuring that they taste freely of experience. And we must do so without trepidation. Rather than tucking in blankets and buttoning up coats, we must have faith in them to tuck and button on their own. And if they fumble with their newfound liberty, we must remain composed, generous, judicious. We must encourage them to venture out from under our watchful gaze, and then sigh with pride when they pass at last through the revolving doors of life. . . .”

As if to illustrate, the Count gestured generously and judiciously toward the hotel’s entrance, while giving an exemplary sigh. Then he tapped the concierge’s desk.

“By the way. Do you happen to know where she is?”

Vasily looked up from his tickets.

“Miss Sofia?”

“Yes.”

“She is in the ballroom with Viktor, I believe.”

“Ah. She must be helping him polish the floors for an upcoming banquet.”

“No. Not Viktor Ivanovich. Viktor Stepanovich.”

“Viktor Stepanovich?”

“Yes. Viktor Stepanovich Skadovsky. The conductor of the orchestra at the Piazza.”

If in part, the Count had been trying to express to Vasily how in our golden years a passage of time can be so fleet and leave so little an impression upon our memory, that it is almost as if it never occurred—well then, here was a perfect example.

For the three minutes it took the Count to travel from a delightful conversation at the concierge’s desk to the ballroom, where he had grabbed a scoundrel by the lapels, had also passed in the blink of an eye. Why, it had passed so quickly, that the Count did not remember knocking the luggage from Grisha’s grip as he marched down the hall; nor did he remember throwing open the door and shouting Aha!; nor yanking the would-be Casanova up off the loveseat, where he had intertwined his fingers with Sofia’s.

No, the Count did not remember any of it. But to ensure a celestial balance and the equilibrium of the cosmos, this moustachioed scoundrel in evening clothes was sure to remember every single second for the rest of his life.

“Your Excellency,” he implored, as he dangled in the air. “There has been a terrible misunderstanding!”

Looking up at the startled face above his fists, the Count confirmed that there had been no misunderstanding. It was definitely the very same fellow who waved his baton so blithely on the bandstand in the Piazza. And though he apparently knew how to produce an honorific in a timely fashion, he was clearly as villainous a viper as had ever slithered from the underbrush of Eden.

But whatever his level of villainy, the current situation did pose a quandary. For once you have hoisted a scoundrel by the lapels, what are you to do with him? At least when you have a fellow by the scruff of the neck, you can carry him out the door and toss him down the stairs. But when you have him by the lapels, he isn’t so easy to dispense with. Before the Count could solve his conundrum, Sofia expressed a conundrum of her own.

“Papa! What are you doing?”

“Go to your room, Sofia. This gentleman and I have a few matters to discuss—before I give him the drubbing of a lifetime.”

“The drubbing of a lifetime? But Viktor Stepanovich is my instructor.”

Keeping one eye on the scoundrel, the Count glanced at his daughter with the other.

“Your what?”

“My instructor. He is teaching me piano.”

The so-called instructor nodded four times in quick succession.

Without releasing his hold on the cad’s lapels, the Count leaned his head back so that he could study the mise-en-scène with a little more care. Upon closer inspection, the loveseat the two had been sitting on did, in fact, appear to be the bench of a piano. And in the spot where their hands had been intertwined there was an orderly row of ivory keys.

The Count tightened his grip.

“So that’s your game, is it? Seducing young women with jitterbugs?”

The so-called instructor looked aghast.

“Absolutely not, Your Excellency. I have never seduced a soul with a jitterbug. We have been playing scales and sonatas. I myself trained at the Conservatory—where I received the Mussorgsky Medal. I only conduct in the restaurant in order to make ends meet.” Taking advantage of the Count’s hesitation, he gestured toward the piano with his head. “Let us show you. Sofia, why don’t you play the nocturne that we have been practicing?”

The nocturne . . . ?

“As you wish, Viktor Stepanovich,” Sofia replied politely, then turned to the keyboard in order to arrange her sheet music.

“Perhaps . . . ,” the instructor said to the Count with another nod toward the piano. “If I could just . . .”

“Oh,” said the Count. “Yes, of course.”

The Count set him back on the ground and gave his lapels a quick brushing.

Then the instructor joined his student on the bench.

“All right, Sofia.”

Straightening her posture, Sofia laid her fingers on the keys; then with the utmost delicacy, she began to play.

At the sound of the first measure, the Count took two steps back.

Were those eight notes familiar to him? Did he recognize them in the least? Why, he would have known them if he hadn’t seen them in thirty years and they happened to enter his compartment on a train. He would have known them if he bumped into them on the streets of Florence at the height of the season. In a word, he would have known them anywhere.

It was Chopin.

Opus 9, number 2, in E-flat major.

As she completed the first iteration of the melody in a perfect pianissimo and transitioned to the second with its suggestion of rising emotional force, the Count took another two steps back and found himself sitting in a chair.

Had he felt pride in Sofia before? Of course he had. On a daily basis. He was proud of her success in school, of her beauty, of her composure, of the fondness with which she was regarded by all who worked in the hotel. And that is how he could be certain that what he was experiencing at that moment could not be referred to as pride. For there is something knowing in the state of pride. Look, it says, didn’t I tell you how special she is? How bright? How lovely? Well, now you can see it for yourself. But in listening to Sofia play Chopin, the Count had left the realm of knowing and entered the realm of astonishment.

On one level he was astonished by the revelation that Sofia could play the piano at all; on another, that she tackled the primary and subordinate melodies with such skill. But what was truly astonishing was the sensitivity of her musical expression. One could spend a lifetime mastering the technical aspects of the piano and never achieve a state of musical expression—that alchemy by which the performer not only comprehends the sentiments of the composer, but somehow communicates them to her audience through the manner of her play.

Whatever personal sense of heartache Chopin had hoped to express through this little composition—whether it had been prompted by a loss of love, or simply the sweet anguish one feels when witnessing a mist on a meadow in the morning—it was right there, ready to be experienced to its fullest, in the ballroom of the Hotel Metropol one hundred years after the composer’s death. But how, the question remained, could a seventeen-year-old girl achieve this feat of expression, if not by channeling a sense of loss and longing of her own?

As Sofia began the third iteration of the melody, Viktor Stepanovich looked over his shoulder with his eyebrows raised, as if to say: Can you believe it? Have you ever in all your years even imagined? Then he quickly looked back to the piano and dutifully turned the page for Sofia almost in the manner of an apprentice turning the page for his master.

After the Count had led Viktor Stepanovich into the hall, where they could confer for a moment in private, he returned to the ballroom. Finding Sofia still at the piano, he took a seat at her side with his back to the keys.

They were both silent.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were studying piano?” the Count asked after a moment.

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” she said. “For your birthday. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m so sorry if I did.”

“Sofia, if anyone should be apologizing, it should be me. You have done nothing wrong. On the contrary. That was wonderful—and unambiguously so.”

Sofia blushed and looked down at the keyboard.

“It is a lovely composition,” she said.

“Well, yes,” agreed the Count with a laugh, “it is a lovely composition. But it is also a piece of paper with circles, lines, and dots. Nearly every student of piano for a century has learned to play that little bit of Chopin. But for most of them, it is an act of recitation. Only one in a thousand—or even a hundred thousand—can bring the music to life as you just have.”

Sofia continued to look at the keyboard. The Count hesitated. And then with a touch of trepidation, he asked:

“Is everything all right?”

Sofia looked up, a little surprised. Then seeing how grave her father’s expression was, she smiled.

“Of course, Papa. Why do you ask?”

The Count shook his head.

“I’ve never played an instrument in my life, but I understand something of music. To have played the opening measures of that piece with feelings so perfectly evocative of heartache, one can only assume that you have drawn on some wellspring of sorrow within yourself.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. Then with the enthusiasm of a young scholar she began to explain: “Viktor Stepanovich calls that the mood. He says that before one plays a note, one must discover an example of the composition’s mood hidden away in one’s heart. So for this piece, I think about my mother. I think of how my few memories of her seem to be fading, and then I begin to play.”

The Count was quiet, overwhelmed by another wave of astonishment.

“Does that make sense?” Sofia asked.

“Abundantly,” he said. Then after a moment of reflection, he added: “As a younger man, I used to feel the same way about my sister. Every year that passed, it seemed a little more of her had slipped away; and I began to fear that one day I would come to forget her altogether. But the truth is: No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.”

They were both quiet now. Then looking about him, the Count gestured with his hand.

“This was a favorite room of hers.”

“Of your sister’s?”

“No, no. Of your mother’s.”

Sofia looked around with some surprise.

“The ballroom . . . ?”

“Most definitely. After the Revolution, all the old ways of doing things were abandoned—which was the point, I suppose. But the new ways of doing things had yet to be established. So all across Russia, all manner of groups—trade unions, citizens’ committees, commissariats—gathered in rooms like this one in order to hash things out.”

The Count pointed to the balcony.

“When your mother was nine, she would crouch up there behind the balustrade to watch these Assemblies for hours on end. She found it all very thrilling. The shuffling of chairs and the heartfelt speeches and the pounding of the gavel. And in retrospect, she was perfectly right. After all, a new course for the country was being charted right before our eyes. But at the time, what with the crawling and the hunching, it just gave me a crick in the neck.”

“You would go up there too?”

“Oh, she insisted.”

The Count and Sofia both smiled.

“Come to think of it,” added the Count after a moment, “that’s how I came to know your Aunt Marina. Because every other visit to the balcony, I’d split the seat of my pants.”

Sofia laughed. Then the Count wagged a finger in the manner of one who has remembered something else.

“Later, when your mother was thirteen or fourteen, she would come here to enact experiments . . .”

“Experiments!”

“Your mother was not one to take anything on faith. If she hadn’t witnessed a phenomenon with her own eyes, then as far as she was concerned it was a hypothesis. And that included all the laws of physics and mathematics. One day, I found her here testing the principles of Galileo and Newton by dropping various objects from the balcony and timing their descent with a sprinter’s watch.”

“Is that even possible?”

“It was for your mother.”

They were quiet for another moment, then Sofia turned and kissed the Count on the cheek.

When Sofia had gone off to meet a friend, the Count went to the Piazza and treated himself to a glass of wine with lunch—something that he had done on a daily basis in his thirties and had rarely done since. Given the morning’s revelations, it seemed only appropriate. In fact, when his plate had been cleared and he had dutifully declined dessert, he ordered a second glass.

As he leaned back with his wine in hand, he regarded the young man at the neighboring table, who was sketching in his sketchbook. The Count had noticed him in the lobby the day before with the book in his lap and a small tin of colored pencils at his side.

The Count leaned a little to his right.

“Landscape, portrait, or still life?”

The young man looked up with a touch of surprise.

“Excuse me?”

“I couldn’t help but notice you sketching away. I was just wondering if it was a landscape, a portrait, or a still life.”

“None of the above, I’m afraid,” the young man replied politely. “It is an interior.”

“Of the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“May I see?”

The young man hesitated then handed the Count his book.

As soon as the Count had it in hand, he regretted his reference to sketching. The word hardly did justice to the young man’s skills as an artist, for he had captured the Piazza perfectly. The guests at the tables were rendered with the short, bright strokes of Impressionism, adding to the sense that they were engaged in lively conversations; while the waiters moving deftly between the tables were rendered in something of a blur. But the suggestive style with which the young man had drawn the people was sharply contrasted by the level of detail with which he had drawn the room itself. The columns, the fountain, the arches were all realized in perfect perspective to perfect proportion, with every ornament in place.

“It’s a wonderful drawing,” said the Count. “But I must say, your sense of space is particularly exquisite.”

The stranger smiled a little wistfully.

“That’s because I’m an architect by training, not an artist.”

“Are you designing a hotel?”

The architect gave a laugh.

“The way things stand, I’d be happy to design a birdhouse.”

Given the Count’s expression of curiosity, the young man elaborated: “For the time being, there are a lot of buildings being built in Moscow, but little need for architects. So I have taken a job with Intourist. They’re putting together a brochure of the city’s finer hotels and I’m drawing the interiors.”*

“Ah,” said the Count. “Because a photograph cannot capture the feeling of a place!”

“Actually,” replied the architect, “because a photograph too readily captures the condition of a place.”

“Oh, I see,” said the Count, feeling a little insulted on the Piazza’s behalf. In its defense, he couldn’t help pointing out that while the restaurant had been celebrated for its elegance in its time, the room’s grandeur had never been defined by its furnishings or architectural details.

“By what then?” the young man asked.

“The citizenry.”

“How do you mean?”

The Count turned his chair so that he could better face his neighbor.

“In my day, I had the luxury of doing a good bit of travel. And I can tell you from personal experience that the majority of hotel restaurants—not simply in Russia, you understand, but across Europe—were designed for and have served the guests of the hotel. But this restaurant wasn’t and hasn’t. It was designed to be and has been a gathering place for the entire city of Moscow.”

The Count gestured toward the center of the room.

“For most of the last forty years, on a typical Saturday night you could find Russians cut from every cloth crowded around that fountain, stumbling into conversations with whosoever happened to be at the neighboring table. Naturally, this has led to impromptu romances and heartfelt debates on the merits of Pushkin over Petrarch. Why, I’ve watched cabbies rub elbows with commisars and bishops with black marketeers; and on at least one occasion, I have actually seen a young lady change an old man’s point of view.”

The Count pointed to a spot about twenty feet away.

“You see those two tables there? One afternoon in 1939 I watched as two strangers, finding each other vaguely familiar, spent their appetizer, entrée, and dessert going over their entire lives step by step in search of the moment when they must have met.”

Looking around the restaurant with renewed appreciation, the architect observed:

“I suppose a room is the summation of all that has happened inside it.”

“Yes, I think it is,” agreed the Count. “And though I’m not exactly sure what has come of all the intermingling in this particular room, I am fairly certain that the world has been a better place because of it.”

The Count was quiet for a moment as he too looked around. Then pointing a finger, he directed the architect’s attention to the bandstand on the far side of the room.

“Have you ever happened to see the orchestra play here in the evening?”

“No, I haven’t. Why?”

“The most extraordinary thing happened to me today. . . .”

“Apparently, he was walking down the hallway when he happened to hear a Mozart Variation emanating from the ballroom. Intrigued, he poked his head inside and discovered Sofia at the keyboard.”

“No!” exclaimed Richard Vanderwhile.

“Naturally, the fellow asked where she was studying. He was taken aback to learn that she hadn’t been studying with anyone. She had taught herself to play the piece by listening to one of the recordings you had given me and then sounding out the notes one by one.”

“Incredible.”

“The fellow was so impressed with her natural abilities that he took her on as a student right then and there; and he has been teaching her the classical repertoire in the ballroom ever since.”

“And this is the chap from the Piazza, you say?”

“None other.”

“The one who waves the baton?”

“The very same.”

Richard shook his head in wonder. “Audrius, have you heard all of this? We’ve got to raise a glass to the young lady, and as soon as possible. Two Goldenrods, my good man.”

The ever-attentive tender at bar was already lining up bottles of various sizes including yellow chartreuse, bitters, honey, and a vodka infused with lemon. On that night in 1946 when the Count and Richard had first become acquainted over Audrius’s magenta concoction, the American had challenged the bartender to design a cocktail in each of the colors of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Thus were born the Goldenrod, the Robin’s Egg, the Brick Wall, and a dark green potion called the Christmas Tree. In addition, it had become generally known in the bar that anyone who could drink all four cocktails back to back earned the right to be called “The Patriarch of All Russia”—as soon as he regained consciousness.

Though Richard, who was now attached to the State Department, tended to stay at the embassy when in Moscow, he would still stop by the Metropol on occasion in order to have a nightcap with the Count. Thus, the Goldenrods were poured and the two gentlemen clinked their glasses with the toast: “To old friends.”

Some might wonder that the two men should consider themselves to be old friends having only known each other for four years; but the tenure of friendships has never been governed by the passage of time. These two would have felt like old friends had they met just hours before. To some degree, this was because they were kindred spirits—finding ample evidence of common ground and cause for laughter in the midst of effortless conversation; but it was also almost certainly a matter of upbringing. Raised in grand homes in cosmopolitan cities, educated in the liberal arts, graced with idle hours, and exposed to the finest things, though the Count and the American had been born ten years and four thousand miles apart, they had more in common with each other than they had with the majority of their own countrymen.

This, of course, is why the grand hotels of the world’s capitals all look alike. The Plaza in New York, the Ritz in Paris, Claridge’s in London, the Metropol in Moscow—built within fifteen years of each other, they too were kindred spirits, the first hotels in their cities with central heating, with hot water and telephones in the rooms, with international newspapers in the lobbies, international cuisine in the restaurants, and American bars off the lobby. These hotels were built for the likes of Richard Vanderwhile and Alexander Rostov, so that when they traveled to a foreign city, they would find themselves very much at home and in the company of kin.

“I still can’t believe it’s that fellow from the Piazza,” said Richard with another shake of the head.

“I know,” said the Count. “But he actually studied at the Conservatory here in Moscow where he was the recipient of the Mussorgsky Medal. He only conducts at the Piazza in order to make ends meet.”

“One must make ends meet,” confirmed Audrius matter-of-factly, “or meet one’s end.”

Richard studied the bartender for a moment.

“Well, that’s the very essence of it, isn’t it?”

Audrius shrugged, acknowledging that the essence-of-it was a bartender’s stock-in-trade, and then he excused himself to answer the phone behind the bar. As he walked away, the Count seemed particularly struck by the bartender’s remark.

“Are you familiar with the moths of Manchester?” he asked Richard.

“The moths of Manchester . . . Isn’t that a soccer team?”

“No,” said the Count with a smile. “It is not a soccer team. It is an extraordinary case from the annals of the natural sciences that my father related to me as a child.”

But before the Count could elaborate, Audrius returned.

“That was your wife on the phone, Mr. Vanderwhile. She asked me to remind you of your appointment in the morning; and to alert you that your driver is waiting outside.”

Though most of the customers in the bar had never met Mrs. Vanderwhile, she was known to be as unflappable as Arkady, as attentive as Audrius, and as aware of whereabouts as Vasily—when it came to drawing Mr. Vanderwhile’s evenings to a close.

“Ah, yes,” conceded Mr. Vanderwhile.

Agreeing that duty comes first, the Count and Mr. Vanderwhile shook hands and wished each other well till next they met.

When Richard left, the Count looked once around the room to see if there was anyone he knew, and was pleased to discover that the young architect from the Piazza was at a table in the corner, bent over his sketchbook, presumably rendering the bar.

He too, thought the Count, is one of the moths of Manchester.

When the Count was nine years old, his father had sat him down in order to explain Darwin’s theory of natural selection. As the Count listened, the essence of the Englishman’s idea seemed perfectly intuitive—that over tens of thousands of years a species would slowly evolve in order to maximize its chances of survival. After all, if the claws of the lion grow sharper, the gazelle had best grow more fleet of foot. But what had disconcerted the Count was when his father clarified that natural selection didn’t need tens of thousands of years to take place. It didn’t even need a hundred. It had been observed unfolding over the course of a few decades.

It was true, his father said, that in a relatively static environment the pace of evolution should decelerate, as individual species have little new to adapt to. But environments are never static for long. The forces of nature inevitably unleash themselves in such a manner that the necessity for adaptation will be stirred. An extended drought, an unusually cold winter, a volcanic eruption, any one of these could alter the balance between those traits that improve a species’ chance for survival and those that hinder it. In essence, this is what had occurred in Manchester, England, in the nineteenth century, when the city became one of the first capitals of the industrial revolution.

For thousands of years, the peppered moths of Manchester had white wings with black flecking. This coloring provided the species with perfect camouflage whenever they landed on the light gray bark of the region’s trees. In any generation there might be a few aberrations—such as moths with pitch-black wings—but they were snapped off the trees by the birds before they had a chance to mate.

But when Manchester became crowded with factories in the early 1800s, the soot from the smokestacks began to settle on every conceivable surface, including the bark of the trees; and the lightly speckled wings that had served to protect the majority of peppered moths suddenly exposed them remorselessly to their predators—even as the darker wings of the aberrations rendered them invisible. Thus, the pitch-black varieties that had represented less than 10 percent of the Manchester moth population in 1800, represented over 90 percent by the end of the century. Or so explained the Count’s father, with the pragmatic satisfaction of the scientifically minded.

But the lesson did not sit well with the young Count. If this could happen so easily to moths, he thought, then what was to stop it from happening to children? What would happen to him and his sister, for instance, should they be exposed to excess chimney smoke or sudden extremes of weather? Couldn’t they become victims of accelerated evolution? In fact, so disconcerted by this notion became the Count that when Idlehour was deluged by rainstorms that September, giant black moths harrowed his dreams.

Some years later, the Count would come to understand that he had been looking at the matter upside down. The pace of evolution was not something to be frightened by. For while nature doesn’t have a stake in whether the wings of a peppered moth are black or white, it genuinely hopes that the peppered moth will persist. And that is why nature designed the forces of evolution to play out over generations rather than eons—to ensure that moths and men have a chance to adapt.

Like Viktor Stepanovich, the Count reflected. A husband and father of two, he must make ends meet. So he waves his baton in the Piazza, ostensibly putting the classical repertoire behind him. Then one afternoon, when he happens to stumble upon a young pianist with promise, in what little time he has to spare, he teaches her the nocturnes of Chopin on a borrowed piano. Just so, Mishka has his “project”; and this young architect, unable to build buildings, takes pride and pleasure from the careful drafting of hotel interiors in his sketchbook.

For a moment, the Count considered going over to the young man, but he seemed to be applying his skills with such satisfaction that it would be a crime to interrupt him. So, instead, the Count emptied his glass, tapped the bar twice, and headed upstairs for bed.

Of course, the Count was perfectly right. For when life makes it impossible for a man to pursue his dreams, he will connive to pursue them anyway. Thus, even as the Count was brushing his teeth, Viktor Stepanovich was setting aside an arrangement that he had been working on for his orchestra in order to sort through the Goldberg Variations—in search of one that might be just right for Sofia. While in the village of Yavas, in a rented room not much larger than the Count’s, by the light of a candle, Mikhail Mindich was sitting hunched over a table, sewing another signature of sixteen pages. And down in the Shalyapin? The young architect continued to take pride and pleasure in his work. But contrary to the Count’s supposition, he was not adding a rendering of the bar to his collection of hotel interiors. In fact, he was working in a different sketchbook altogether.

On the first of this book’s many pages was the design for a skyscraper two hundred stories tall—with a diving board on the roof from which the tenants could parachute to a grassy park below. On another page was a cathedral to atheism with fifty different cupolas, several of which could be launched like rockets to the moon. And on another was a giant museum of architecture showcasing life-size replicas of all the grand old buildings that had been razed in the city of Moscow to make way for the new.

But at this particular moment, what the architect was working on was a detailed drawing of a crowded restaurant that looked very much like the Piazza. Only, under the floor of this restaurant was an elaborate mechanics of axles, cogs, and gears; and jutting from an outside wall was a giant crank, at the turn of which, each of the restaurant’s chairs would pirouette like a ballerina on a music box, then spin around the space until they came to a stop at an entirely different table. And towering over this tableau, peering down through the glass ceiling, was a gentleman of sixty with his hand on the crank, preparing to set the diners in motion.