Later that night, as he sat alone on his bed, the Count mulled over his visit to his old suite.
What had stayed with him was not the sight of his family’s clock still ticking by the door, nor the grandeur of the architecture, nor even the view from the northwest window. What had lingered with him was the sight of the tea service on the table beside the folded paper.
That little tableaux, for all its innocence, was somehow suggestive of exactly what had been bearing down on the Count’s soul. For he understood every aspect of the scene at a glance. Having returned from some outing at four o’clock and having hung his jacket on the back of a chair, the room’s current resident had called for tea and an afternoon edition. Then he had settled himself down on the couch to while away a civilized hour before it was time to dress for dinner. In other words, what the Count had observed in suite 317 was not simply an afternoon tea, but a moment in the daily life of a gentleman at liberty.
In light of these thoughts, the Count reviewed his new room—the one hundred square feet that had been assigned to him. Never had it seemed so small. The bed crowded the coffee table, the coffee table crowded the high-back chair, and the high-back chair had to be shoved aside every time one wished to open the closet. Simply put, there was not enough space to accommodate such a civilized hour.
But as the Count gazed around him with this forlorn thought, a voice only half his own reminded him that in the Metropol there were rooms behind rooms, and doors behind doors. . . .
Rising from his bed, the Count navigated his way around his grandmother’s coffee table, set aside the high-back chair, and stood before his telephone box of a closet. Running along the perimeter of where the closet met the wall was an elegant molding. The Count had always thought this flourish a little excessive; but what if the closet had been built in an old doorframe? Opening the door, the Count parted his clothes and tentatively rapped on the back wall. The sound was promisingly thin. With three fingers he gave the barrier a push and could feel it flex. He took all his jackets out and dumped them on the bed. Then holding the jambs of the door he kicked the inner wall with his heel. There came a pleasant crack. Leaning back, he kicked again and again until the barrier splintered. Then he pulled the jagged planks back into his room and slipped through the gap.
He was now inside a dark, narrow space that smelled of dry cedar, presumably the interior of the neighboring closet. Taking a breath, he turned the knob, opened the door, and entered a room that was the mirror image of his own—but in which five unused bedframes had been stored. At some point, two of the frames, which had been leaning against the wall, had fallen, pinning the hallway door shut. Pulling the frames aside, the Count opened the door, dragged everything out of the room, and began to refurnish.
First, he reunited the two high-back chairs with his grandmother’s coffee table. Then, taking the belfry stairs, he went down to the basement. From the cabinet of curiosities, he retrieved one of his rugs, the standing lamp, and the small bookcase in three separate trips. Then vaulting the steps two at a time, he made one final visit in order to claim ten of the weighty novels that had been abandoned. Once his new study was furnished, he went down the hall and borrowed the roofer’s hammer and five nails.
The Count had not wielded a hammer since he was a boy at Idlehour when he would help Tikhon, the old caretaker, repair the fencing in the first weeks of spring. What a fine feeling it had been to bring the hammer down squarely on the head of a nail, driving it through a plank into a fence post as the impact echoed in the morning air. But on the very first stroke of this hammer what the Count squarely hit was the back of his thumb. (Lest you have forgotten, it is quite excruciating to hammer the back of your thumb. It inevitably prompts a hopping up and down and the taking of the Lord’s name in vain.)
But Fortune does favor the bold. So, while the next swing of the hammer glanced off the nail’s head, on the third the Count hit home; and by the second nail, he had recovered the rhythm of set, drive, and sink—that ancient cadence which is not to be found in quadrilles, or hexameters, or in Vronsky’s saddlebags!
Suffice it to say that within half an hour four of the nails had been driven through the edge of the door into the doorframe—such that from that moment forward the only access to the Count’s new room would be through the sleeves of his jackets. The fifth nail he saved for the wall above the bookcase so that he could hang the portrait of his sister.
His work completed, the Count sat down in one of the high-back chairs and felt an almost surprising sense of bliss. The Count’s bedroom and this improvised study had identical dimensions, and yet, they exerted a completely different influence on his mood. To some degree, this difference stemmed from the manner in which the two rooms had been furnished. For while the room next door—with its bed, bureau, and desk—remained a realm of practical necessities, the study—with its books, the Ambassador, and Helena’s portrait—had been furnished in a manner more essential to the spirit. But in all likelihood, a greater factor in the difference between the two rooms was their provenance. For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine.
Rising from his chair, the Count took up the largest of the ten volumes that he had retrieved from the basement. True, it would not be a new venture for him. But need it be? Could one possibly accuse him of nostalgia or idleness, of wasting his time simply because he had read the story two or three times before?
Sitting back down, the Count put one foot on the edge of the coffee table and tilted back until his chair was balanced on its two hind legs, then he turned to the opening sentence:
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
“Marvelous,” said the Count.
An Assembly
Oh, come along.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy.”
“I am not a fuddy-duddy.”
“Can you be so sure?”
“A man can never be entirely sure that he is not a fuddy-duddy. That is axiomatic to the term.”
“Exactly.”
In this manner, Nina coerced the Count to join her on one of her favorite excursions: spying from the balcony of the ballroom. The Count was reluctant to accompany Nina on this particular journey for two reasons. First, the ballroom’s balcony was narrow and dusty, and to stay out of sight one was forced to remain hunched behind the balustrade—a decidedly uncomfortable position for a grown man over six feet tall. (The last time the Count had accompanied Nina to the balcony, he had torn the seam of his pants and it took three days for him to lose the crick in his neck.) But second, this afternoon’s gathering was almost certain to be another Assembly.
Over the course of the summer, the Assemblies had been occurring at the hotel with increasing frequency. At various times of day, small groups of men would come barreling through the lobby, already gesticulating, interrupting, and eager to make their points. In the ballroom, they would join their brethren milling shoulder to shoulder, every other one of them puffing on a cigarette.