In an instant, he could tell that they were new to Moscow—three of the doves that Gorsky recruited from the provinces every September to join the corps de ballet. Their short torsos and long limbs were of the classical style preferred by the director, but their expressions had yet to acquire the aloofness of his more seasoned ballerinas. And the very fact that they were drinking at the Metropol unaccompanied hinted at a youthful na?veté. For while the proximity of the hotel to the Bolshoi made it a natural choice for young ballerinas who wished to slip away at the end of rehearsal, the same proximity also made it a favored spot of Gorsky’s whenever he wished to discuss matters of art with his prima ballerina. And should these doves be discovered by the director sipping muscat, they would soon be doing the pas de deux in Petropavlosk.
With that in mind, perhaps the Count should have warned them.
But freedom of the will has been a well-established tenet of moral philosophy since the time of the Greeks. And though the Count’s days of romancing were behind him, it goes against the nature of even the well-meaning gentleman to recommend that lovely young ladies leave his company on the basis of hypotheses.
So, instead, the Count remarked on the young ladies’ beauty, inquired what brought them to Moscow, congratulated them on their achievements, insisted upon paying for their wine, chatted with them about their hometowns, and eventually offered to perform a sleight of hand.
A deck of cards with the Metropol’s insignia was produced by the ever-attentive Audrius.
“It has been years since I have done this trick,” the Count admitted, “so you must bear with me.”
As he began to shuffle the pack, the three ballerinas watched him closely; but like demigods of ancient myth, they watched in three different ways: the first through the eyes of the innocent, the second through the eyes of the romantic, and the third through the eyes of the skeptic. It was the dove with the innocent eyes whom the Count had asked to pick a card.
As the ballerina was making her selection, the Count became aware of someone standing behind his shoulder, but this was to be expected. In the setting of a bar, a sleight of hand will inevitably attract a curious onlooker or two. But when he turned to his left to offer a wink, he found not a curious onlooker, but unflappable Arkady—looking unusually flapped.
“Pardon me, Count Rostov. I am sorry to interrupt. But may I have a moment?”
“Certainly, Arkady.”
Smiling apologetically to the ballerinas, the desk captain led the Count a few paces away, then let the facts of the evening speak for themselves: At half past six, a gentleman had knocked at the suite of Secretary Tarakovsky. When the esteemed Secretary opened the door, this gentleman demanded to know who he was and what he was doing there! Taken aback, comrade Tarakovsky explained that he was the current resident of the suite and that was what he was doing there. Unconvinced by this logic, the gentleman insisted he be admitted at once. When comrade Tarakovsky refused, the gentleman brushed him aside, crossed the threshold, and commenced searching the rooms one by one, including, ahem, the salle de bain—where Mrs. Tarakovsky was seeing to her nightly toilette.
This was the point at which Arkady had arrived on the scene, having been summoned urgently by phone. In an agitated state, comrade Tarakovsky waved his cane and demanded “as a regular guest of the Metropol and senior member of the Party” to see the manager at once.
The gentleman, who was now sitting on the couch with his arms crossed, replied that this suited him perfectly—as he had been about to summon the manager himself. And as to Party membership, he asserted that he had been a member of the Party since before comrade Tarakovsky was born—which seemed a rather incredible claim given that comrade Tarakovsky is eighty-two. . . .
Now, the Count, who had listened with interest to every word that Arkady had related, would be the first to admit that this was an enthralling tale. In fact, it was just the sort of colorful incident that an international hotel should aspire to have as part of its lore and that he, as a guest of the hotel, would be likely to retell at the first opportunity. But what he could not understand was why Arkady had chosen this particular moment to share this particular story with him.
“Why, because comrade Tarakovsky is staying in suite 317; and it is you for whom the gentleman in question was looking.”
“Me?”
“I am afraid so.”
“What is his name?”
“He refused to say.”
. . .
“Then where is he now?”
Arkady pointed toward the lobby.
“He is wearing out the carpet behind the potted palms.”
“Wearing out the carpet . . . ?”
The Count stuck his head out of the Shalyapin as Arkady leaned cautiously behind him. And sure enough, there on the other side of the lobby was the gentleman in question, making quick business of the ten feet between the pair of plants.
The Count smiled.
Though a few pounds heavier, Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich had the same ragged beard and restless pace that he had had when they were twenty-two.
“Do you know him?” asked the desk captain.
“Only like a brother.”
When the Count and Mikhail Fyodorovich first met at the Imperial University in St. Petersburg in the fall of 1907, the two were tigers of a very different stripe. While the Count had been raised in a twenty-room mansion with a staff of fourteen, Mikhail had been raised in a two-room apartment with his mother. And while the Count was known in all the salons of the capital as one who could be counted on for his wit, intelligence, and charm, Mikhail was known hardly anywhere as one who preferred to read in his room rather than fritter away the evening on frivolous conversations.
As such, the two young men hardly seemed fated for friendship. But Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do. Sure enough, while Mikhail was prone to throw himself into a scrape at the slightest difference of opinion, regardless of the number or size of his opponents, it just so happened that Count Alexander Rostov was prone to leap to the defense of an outnumbered man regardless of how ill conceived his cause. Thus, on the fourth day of their first year, the two students found themselves helping each other up off the ground, as they wiped the dust from their knees and the blood from their lips.
While the splendors that elude us in youth are likely to receive our casual contempt in adolescence and our measured consideration in adulthood, they forever hold us in their thrall. Thus, in the days that followed their meeting, the Count listened with as much amazement to Mikhail’s impassioned expression of ideals, as Mikhail did to the Count’s descriptions of the city’s salons. And within the year, they were sharing rented rooms above a cobbler’s shop off Sredny Prospekt.
As the Count would later observe, it was fortuitous that they ended up above a cobbler—for no one in all of Russia could wear out a shoe like Mikhail Mindich. He could easily pace twenty miles in a twenty-foot room. He could pace thirty miles in an opera box and fifty in a confessional. For simply put, pacing was Mishka’s natural state.
Say the Count secured them invitations to Platonov’s for drinks, the Petrovskys’ for supper, and Princess Petrossian’s for a dance—Mishka would invariably decline on the grounds that in the back of a bookshop he had just discovered a volume by someone named Flammenhescher that demanded to be read from beginning to end without delay. But once alone, having torn through the first fifty pages of Herr Flammenhescher’s little monograph, Mikhail would leap to his feet and start pacing from corner to corner in order to voice his fervid agreement or furious dissent with the author’s thesis, his style, or his use of punctuation. Such that by the time the Count returned at two in the morning, though Mishka had not advanced beyond the fiftieth page, he had worn out more shoe leather than a pilgrim on the road to St. Paul’s.
So, the storming of hotel suites and the wearing out of carpets was not particularly out of character for his old friend. But as Mishka had recently received a new appointment at their alma mater in St. Petersburg, the Count was surprised to have him appear so suddenly, and in such a state.
After embracing, the two men climbed the five flights to the attic. Having been told what to expect, Mishka took in his friend’s new circumstances without an expression of surprise. But he paused before the three-legged bureau and tilted his head to give its base a second look.
“The Essays of Montaigne?”
“Yes,” affirmed the Count.
“I gather they didn’t agree with you.”