A Gentleman in Moscow

Antagonists at Arms (And an Absolution)

Good evening and welcome to the Boyarsky,” began the Count in Russian, as the middle-aged couple with blond hair and blue eyes looked up from their menus.

“Do you speak English?” the husband asked in English, though with a decidedly Scandinavian cadence.

“Good evening and welcome to the Boyarsky,” the Count translated accordingly. “My name is Alexander and I will be your waiter tonight. But before describing our specials, may I offer you an aperitif?”

“I think we are ready to order,” said the husband.

“We have just arrived in the hotel after a long day of travel,” explained the wife with a weary smile.

The Count hesitated.

“And where, if I may ask, have you been traveling from . . . ?”

“Helsinki,” said the husband with a hint of impatience.

“Well then, tervetuloa Moskova,” said the Count.

“Kiitos,” replied the wife with a smile.

“Given your long journey, I will see to it that you are served a delightful meal without delay. But before I take your order, would you be so kind as to give me your room number . . . ?”

From the beginning, the Count had determined that he would need to filch a few things from a Norwegian, a Dane, a Swede, or a Finn. On the face of it, this task should not have posed a significant challenge, as Scandinavian visitors were reasonably common at the Metropol. The problem was that the visitor in question was sure to notify the hotel’s manager as soon as he discovered that his pocket had been picked, which in turn might lead to the notification of authorities, the official interviewing of hotel staff, perhaps even the searching of rooms and the posting of guards at railway stations. So, the pocket picking would have to take place at the very last minute. In the meantime, the Count could only cross his fingers that a Scandinavian man would be residing in the hotel at the critical juncture.

With grim attention, he had watched as a salesman from Stockholm checked out of the hotel on the thirteenth of June. Then on the seventeenth, a journalist from Oslo had been recalled by his paper. In no small terms, the Count berated himself for not acting sooner. When, lo and behold, with only twenty-four hours to spare, a pair of beleaguered Finns came into the Boyarsky and sat right at his table.

But there remained one small complication: The primary item that the Count hoped to secure was the gentleman’s passport. And as most foreigners in Russia carried their passports about on their person, the Count would not be able to pay a visit to the Finns’ suite on the following morning when they were touring about the city; he would need to visit the suite tonight—while they were in it.

As much as we hate to admit the fact, Fate does not take sides. It is fair-minded and generally prefers to maintain some balance between the likelihood of success and failure in all our endeavors. Thus, having put the Count in the challenging position of having to lift a passport at the very last minute, Fate offered the Count a small consolation: for at 9:30, when he asked the Finns if they would like to see the dessert cart, they declined on the grounds that they were exhausted and ready for bed.

Shortly after midnight, when the Boyarsky was closed and the Count had bid goodnight to Andrey and Emile, he climbed the stairs to the third floor, went halfway down the hall, took off his shoes, and then by means of Nina’s key slipped into suite 322 in his stocking feet.

Many years before, under a spell cast by a certain actress, the Count had dwelt for a time among the ranks of the invisible. So, as he tiptoed into the Finns’ bedroom, he called upon Venus to veil him in a mist—just as she had for her son, Aeneas, when he wandered the streets of Carthage—so that his footfalls would be silent, his heartbeat still, and his presence in the room no more notable than a breath of air.

As it was late in June, the Finns had drawn their curtains to block out the glow of the white nights, but a sliver of light remained where the two drapes met. By this narrow illumination, the Count approached the foot of the bed and took in the sleeping forms of the travelers. Thanks be to God, they were about forty years old. Fifteen years younger, they would not have been asleep. Having stumbled back from a late dinner in the Arbat at which they had ordered two bottles of wine, they would now be in each other’s arms. Fifteen years older, they would be tossing and turning, getting up twice a night to visit the loo. But at forty? They had enough appetite to eat well, enough temperance to drink in moderation, and enough wisdom to celebrate the absence of their children by getting a good night’s sleep.

Within a matter of minutes the Count had secured the gentleman’s passport and 150 Finnish marks from the bureau, tiptoed through the sitting room, and slipped back into the hallway, which was empty.

In fact, it was so empty that even his shoes weren’t in it.

“Confound it,” said the Count to himself. “They must have been picked up by the night service for shining.”

After issuing a litany of self-recriminations, the Count took comfort that in all likelihood on the following morning his shoes would simply be returned by the Finns to the main desk, where they would be cast into the hotel’s collection of unidentifiable misplaced possessions. As he climbed the stairs of the belfry he took additional comfort that all else had gone according to plan. By this time tomorrow night . . . , he was thinking as he opened his bedroom door—only to discover the Bishop, sitting at the Grand Duke’s desk.

Naturally enough, the Count’s first instinct at the sight was a feeling of indignation. Not only had this accountant of discrepancies, this stripper of wine labels entered the Count’s quarters without invitation, he had actually rested his elbows on that dimpled surface where once had been written persuasive arguments to statesmen and exquisite counsel to friends. The Count was just opening his mouth to demand an explanation, when he saw that a drawer had been opened, and that a sheet of paper was in the Bishop’s hand.

The letters, the Count realized with a feeling of dread.

Oh, if it had only been the letters. . . .

Carefully written expressions of fondness and fellowship may not have been common between colleagues, but they were hardly suspicious in and of themselves. A man has every right—and some responsibility—to communicate his good feelings to his friends. But it was not one of the recently written letters that the Bishop was holding. It was the first of the Baedeker maps—the one on which the Count had drawn the bright red line connecting the Palais Garnier to the American Embassy by way of the Avenue George V.

Then again, perhaps whether it was a letter or a map mattered not. For when the Bishop had turned at the sound of the door, he had witnessed the transition in the Count’s expression from indignation to horror—a transition that confirmed a state of guilt even before an accusation had been made.

“Headwaiter Rostov,” said the Bishop, as if surprised to see the Count in his own room. “You truly are a man of many interests: Wine . . . Cuisine . . . The streets of Paris . . .”

“Yes,” said the Count while attempting to compose himself. “I have been reading a bit of Proust lately, and thus have been reacquainting myself with the arrangement of the city’s arrondissements.”

“Of course,” said the Bishop.

Cruelty knows that it has no need of histrionics. It can be as calm and quiet as it likes. It can sigh, or lightly shake its head in disbelief, or offer a sympathetic apology for whatever it must do. It can move slowly, methodically, inevitably. Thus, the Bishop, having gently laid the map on the dimpled surface of the Grand Duke’s desk, now rose from the chair, walked across the room, and slipped past the Count without a word.

What went through the mind of the Bishop as he descended the five flights from the attic to the ground floor? What emotion did he feel?

Perhaps it was gloating. Having felt belittled by the Count for over thirty years, perhaps he now felt the pleasure of finally putting this pretentious polymath in his place. Or perhaps it was righteousness. Maybe comrade Leplevsky was so dedicated to the brotherhood of the Proletariat (from which he’d sprung), that the persistence of this Former Person in the new Russia galled his sense of justice. Or maybe it was simply the cold satisfaction of the envious. For those who had difficulty in school or at making friends when they were young will forever recognize with a bitter glance those for whom life has seemed to come easy.

Gloating, righteousness, satisfaction, who can say? But the emotion the Bishop felt upon opening the door to his office was almost certainly that of shock—for the adversary that he had left in the attic just minutes before was now sitting behind the manager’s desk with a pistol in his hand.

How was this possible?

When the Bishop left the Count’s bedroom, the Count was frozen in place by a torrent of emotions—by feelings of fury, incredulity, self-recrimination, and fear. Rather than burn the map, like a fool he had slipped it in his drawer. Six months of the most careful planning and painstaking execution overturned by a single misstep. And what was worse, he had put Sofia at risk. What price was she to pay for his carelessness?

But if the Count was frozen in place, he was frozen for all of five seconds. For these perfectly understandable sentiments, which threatened to drain the blood from his heart, were swept aside by resolve.

Turning on his heels, the Count went to the head of the belfry and listened until the Bishop had descended the first two flights of stairs. Still in his stocking feet, the Count began to follow in the Bishop’s footsteps; but when he got to the fifth floor, he exited the belfry, sped down the hallway, and ran down the main staircase, just as Sofia had at the age of thirteen.

As if he were still enshrouded in a mist, when the Count alit from the stairs, he ran down the hall and entered the executive offices without being seen by a soul; but upon reaching the Bishop’s door, he discovered it was locked. Even as he was taking the Lord’s name in vain, the Count slapped his hands against his vest with relief. For he still had Nina’s passkey in his pocket. Letting himself in, the Count relocked the door and crossed to the wall where the filing cabinets had taken the place of Mr. Halecki’s chaise. Counting from the portrait of Karl Marx, the Count placed his hand in the center of the second panel to the right, gave a push, and popped it open. Taking the inlaid box from its chamber, the Count set it on the desk and opened the lid.

“Simply marvelous,” he said.

Then sitting in the manager’s chair, the Count removed the two pistols, loaded them, and waited. He guessed that he had only a matter of seconds before the door would open, but he used them as best he could to moderate his breathing, lower his heart rate, and calm his nerves; such that by the time the Bishop’s key turned in the lock, he was as cold as a killer.

So unanticipated was the Count’s presence behind the desk that the Bishop had swung the door closed before even noticing that he was there. But if every man has his strengths, one of the Bishop’s was that he was never more than a step away from petty protocol and an inherent sense of superiority.

“Headwaiter Rostov,” he said almost peevishly, “you have no business being in this office. I insist that you leave immediately.”

The Count raised one of the pistols.

“Sit down.”

“How dare you!”

“Sit down,” the Count repeated more slowly.

The Bishop would be the first to admit that he had no experience with firearms. In fact, he could barely distinguish between a revolver and a semiautomatic. But any fool could see that what the Count was holding was an antique. A museum piece. A curiosity.

“You leave me no choice but to alert the authorities,” he said. Then stepping forward, he took up the receiver from one of his two telephones.

The Count shifted his aim from the Bishop to the portrait of Stalin and shot the former Premier between the eyes.

Shocked by either the sound or the sacrilege, the Bishop jumped back, dropping the receiver with a clatter.

The Count raised the second pistol and leveled it at the Bishop’s chest.

“Sit down,” he said again.

This time, the Bishop obliged.

With the second gun still trained on the Bishop’s chest, the Count now stood. He replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle. He backed around the Bishop’s chair and locked the office door. Then he returned to his seat behind the desk.

The two men were quiet as the Bishop restored his sense of superiority.

“Well, Headwaiter Rostov, it seems that by threat of violence, you have succeeded in keeping me against my will. What do you intend to do now?”

“We’re going to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

The Count didn’t answer.

After a few moments, one of the telephones began to ring. Instinctively, the Bishop reached for it, but the Count shook his head. It rang eleven times before it went silent.

“How long do you expect to hold me here?” insisted the Bishop. “An hour? Two? Until morning?”

It was a good question. The Count looked around the walls of the room for a clock, but couldn’t find one.

“Give me your watch,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

The Bishop removed the watch from his wrist and tossed it on the desk. Generally speaking, the Count was not in favor of relieving men of their possessions at gunpoint, but having prided himself on ignoring the second hand for so many years, the time had come for the Count to attend to it.

According to the Bishop’s watch (which was probably set five minutes fast to ensure that he was never late for work), it was almost 1:00 A.M. There would still be a few of the hotel’s guests returning from late suppers, a few stragglers in the bar, the clearing and setting up of the Piazza, the vacuuming of the lobby. But by 2:30, the hotel would be quiet in every corner.

“Make yourself comfortable,” said the Count. Then to pass the time, he began to whistle a bit of Mozart from Così fan tutte. Somewhere in the second movement, he became conscious of the fact that the Bishop was smiling dismissively.

“Is there something on your mind?” asked the Count.

The left upper corner of the Bishop’s mouth twitched.

“Your sort,” he sneered. “How convinced you have always been of the rightness of your actions. As if God Himself was so impressed with your precious manners and delightful way of putting things that He blessed you to do as you pleased. What vanity.”

The Bishop let out what must have passed in his household for a laugh.

“Well, you have had your time,” he continued. “You have had your chance to dance with your illusions and act with impunity. But your little orchestra has stopped playing. Whatever you say or do now, whatever you think, even if it is at two or three in the morning behind a locked door, will come to light. And when it does, you will be held to account.”

The Count listened to the Bishop with genuine interest and a touch of surprise. His sort? The Lord’s blessing that he could do as he pleased? While dancing with his illusions? The Count had no idea what the Bishop was talking about. After all, he had now lived under house arrest in the Metropol Hotel for over half his life. He almost smiled, on the verge of making some quip about the large imaginations of small men—but his expression instead grew sober, as he considered the Bishop’s smug assurance that all would “come to light.”

His gaze shifted to the filing cabinets, of which there were now five.

With the barrel of the pistol still trained on the Bishop, the Count crossed to the filing cabinets and pulled at the left uppermost drawer. It was locked.

“Where is the key?”

“You have no business opening those cabinets. They contain my personal files.”

The Count went around to the back of the desk and opened the drawers. They were surprisingly empty.

Where would a man like the Bishop keep the key to his personal files? Why, on his person. Of course.

The Count came around the desk and stood over the Bishop.

“You can give me that key,” he said, “or I can take it from you. But there is no third way.”

When the Bishop looked up with an expression of mild indignation, he saw that the Count had raised the old pistol in the air with the clear intention of bringing it down across his face. The Bishop took a small ring of keys from a pocket and threw it on the desk.

Even as they landed in a jangle, the Count could see that the Bishop had undergone something of a transformation. He had suddenly lost his sense of superiority, as if all along it had been secured by his possession of these keys. Picking up the ring, the Count sorted through them until he found the smallest, then he unlocked all of the Bishop’s filing cabinets one by one.

In the first three cabinets, there was an orderly collection of reports on the hotel’s operations: revenues; occupancy rates; staffing; maintenance expenditures; inventories; and yes, discrepancies. But in the remainder of the cabinets, the files were dedicated to individuals. In addition to files on various guests who had stayed in the hotel over the years, in alphabetical arrangement were files on members of the staff. On Arkady, Vasily, Andrey, and Emile. Even Marina. The Count needed no more than a glance at them to know their purpose. They were a careful accounting of human flaws, noting specific instances of tardiness, impertinence, disaffection, drunkenness, sloth, desire. One could not exactly call the contents of these files spurious or inaccurate. No doubt, all of the aforementioned had been guilty of these human frailties at one point or another; but for any one of them the Count could have compiled a file fifty times larger that cataloged their virtues. Having pulled the files of his friends and dumped them on the desk, the Count returned to the cabinets and double-checked among the Rs. When he found his own file, he was pleased to discover that it was among the thickest.

The Count looked at his watch (or rather the Bishop’s). It was 2:30 in the morning: the hour of ghosts. The Count reloaded the first pistol, tucked it through his belt, and then pointed the other at the Bishop.

“It’s time to go,” he said, then he waved at the files on the desk with the pistol. “They’re your property, you carry them.”

The Bishop gathered them up without protest.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

The Count led the Bishop through the empty offices, into an enclosed stairwell, and down two flights below street level.

For all his persnickety command of the hotel’s minutiae, the Bishop had obviously never been in the basement. Coming through the door at the bottom of the stairs, he looked around with a mixture of fear and disgust.

“First stop,” the Count said, pulling open the heavy steel door that led into the boiler room. The Bishop hesitated, so the Count poked him with the barrel of the gun. “Over there.” Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, the Count opened the small door in the furnace. “In they go,” he said.

Without a word, the Bishop fed the flames with his files. Perhaps it was his proximity to the furnace, or the exertion of carrying the stack of dossiers down two flights of stairs, but the Bishop had begun to sweat in a manner that was distinctly out of character.

“Come on,” said the Count. “Next stop.”

Once outside the boiler room, the Count prodded the Bishop down the hall to the cabinet of curiosities.

“There. On the lower shelf. Get that small red book.”

The Bishop did as he was told and handed the Count the Baedeker for Finland.

The Count nodded his head to indicate they were headed farther into the basement. The Bishop now looked quite pale, and after a few steps it seemed his knees might buckle beneath him.

“Just a little farther,” coaxed the Count. And a moment later they were at the bright blue door.

Taking Nina’s key from his pocket, the Count opened it. “In you go,” he said.

The Bishop stepped in and turned. “What are you going to do with me?”

“I’m not going to do anything with you.”

“Then when are you coming back?”

“I am never coming back.”

“You can’t leave me here,” said the Bishop. “It could be weeks before someone finds me!”

“You attend the daily meeting of the Boyarsky, comrade Leplevsky. If you were listening at the last one, you’d recall that there is a banquet on Tuesday night in the ballroom. I have no doubt that someone will find you then.”

At which point, the Count closed the door and locked the Bishop into that room where pomp bides its time.

They should get along just famously, thought the Count.

It was three in the morning when the Count entered the belfry on the lobby floor. As he climbed, he felt the relief of the narrow escape. Reaching in his pocket, he removed the stolen passport and the Finnish marks and tucked them in the Baedeker. But when he turned the corner on the fourth floor, a shiver ran down his spine. For on the landing just above him was the ghost of the one-eyed cat. From his elevated position, the cat looked down upon this Former Person—who was standing there in his stocking feet with pistols in his belt and stolen goods in his hand.

It has been said that Admiral Lord Nelson, having been blinded in one eye during the Battle of the Nile in 1798, three years later during the Battle of Copenhagen held his telescope to his dead eye when his commander raised the signal for retreat—thus continuing his attack until the Danish navy was willing to negotiate a truce.

Though this story was a favorite of the Grand Duke’s and often retold to the young Count as an example of courageous perseverance in the face of impossible odds, the Count had always suspected it was a little apocryphal. After all, in the midst of armed conflicts, facts are bound to be just as susceptible to injury as ships and men, if not more so. But at the onset of the summer solstice of 1954, the one-eyed cat of the Metropol turned his blind eye upon the Count’s ill-gotten gains, and without the slightest expression of disappointment, disappeared down the stairs.