“That for each of the contributions I name, we three shall drink a glass of vodka together.”
The German, who was scowling, waved a hand in the air as if he were about to dismiss the Count, much as he had dismissed the country. But ever-attentive Audrius had already set three empty glasses on the bar and was filling them to the brim.
“Thank you, Audrius.”
“My pleasure, Your Excellency.”
“Number one,” said the Count, adding a pause for dramatic effect: “Chekhov and Tolstoy.”
The German let out a grunt.
“Yes, yes. I know what you’re going to say: that every nation has its poets in the pantheon. But with Chekhov and Tolstoy, we Russians have set the bronze bookends on the mantelpiece of narrative. Henceforth, writers of fictions from wheresoever they hail, will place themselves on the continuum that begins with the one and ends with the other. For who, I ask you, has exhibited better mastery of the shorter form than Chekhov in his flawless little stories? Precise and uncluttered, they invite us into some corner of a household at some discrete hour in which the entire human condition is suddenly within reach, if heartbreakingly so. While at the other extreme: Can you conceive of a work greater in scope than War and Peace? One that moves so deftly from the parlor to the battlefield and back again? That so fully investigates how the individual is shaped by history, and history by the individual? In the generations to come, I tell you there will be no new authors to supplant these two as the alpha and omega of narrative.”
“I daresay he has something there,” said the Brit. Then he raised his glass and emptied it. So the Count emptied his, and after a grumble, the German followed suit.
“Number two?” asked the Brit, as Audrius refilled the glasses.
“Act one, scene one of The Nutcracker.”
“Tchaikovsky!” the German guffawed.
“You laugh, mein Herr. And yet, I would wager a thousand crowns that you can picture it yourself. On Christmas Eve, having celebrated with family and friends in a room dressed with garlands, Clara sleeps soundly on the floor with her magnificent new toy. But at the stroke of midnight, with the one-eyed Drosselmeyer perched on the grandfather clock like an owl, the Christmas tree begins to grow. . . .”
As the Count raised his hands slowly over the bar to suggest the growth of the tree, the Brit began to whistle the famous march from the opening act.
“Yes, exactly,” said the Count to the Brit. “It is commonly said that the English know how to celebrate Advent best. But with all due respect, to witness the essence of winter cheer one must venture farther north than London. One must venture above the fiftieth parallel to where the course of the sun is its most elliptical and the force of the wind its most unforgiving. Dark, cold, and snowbound, Russia has the sort of climate in which the spirit of Christmas burns brightest. And that is why Tchaikovsky seems to have captured the sound of it better than anyone else. I tell you that not only will every European child of the twentieth century know the melodies of The Nutcracker, they will imagine their Christmas just as it is depicted in the ballet; and on the Christmas Eves of their dotage, Tchaikovsky’s tree will grow from the floor of their memories until they are gazing up in wonder once again.”
The Brit gave a sentimental laugh and emptied his glass.
“The story was written by a Prussian,” said the German, as he begrudgingly lifted his drink.
“I grant you that,” conceded the Count. “And but for Tchaikovsky, it would have remained in Prussia.”
As Audrius refilled the glasses, the ever-attentive tender at bar noted the Count’s look of inquiry and replied with a nod of confirmation.
“Third,” said the Count. Then in lieu of explanation, he simply gestured to the Shalyapin’s entrance where a waiter suddenly appeared with a silver platter balanced on the palm of his hand. Placing the platter on the bar between the two foreigners, he lifted the dome to reveal a generous serving of caviar accompanied by blini and sour cream. Even the German could not help but smile, his appetite getting the better of his prejudices.
Anyone who has spent an hour drinking vodka by the glass knows that size has surprisingly little to do with a man’s capacity. There are tiny men for whom the limit is seven and giants for whom it is two. For our German friend, the limit appeared to be three. For if the Tolstoy dropped him in a barrel, and the Tchaikovsky set him adrift, then the caviar sent him over the falls. So, having wagged a chastising finger at the Count, he moved to the corner of the bar, laid his head on his arms, and dreamed of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Taking this as a signal, the Count prepared to push back his stool, but the young Brit was refilling his glass.
“The caviar was a stroke of genius,” he said. “But how did you manage it? You never left our sight.”
“A magician never reveals his secrets.”
The Brit laughed. Then he studied the Count as if with renewed curiosity.
“Who are you?”
The Count shrugged.
“I am someone you have met in a bar.”
“No. That’s not quite it. I know a man of erudition when I meet one. And I heard how the bartender referred to you. Who are you, really?”
The Count offered a self-deprecating smile.
“At one time, I was Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov—recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt. . . .”
The young Brit held out his hand.
“Charles Abernethy—presumptive heir to the Earl of Westmorland, financier’s apprentice, and bowman of the losing Cambridge crew at Henley in 1920.”
The two gentlemen shook hands and drank. And then the presumptive heir to the Earl of Westmorland studied the Count again. “This must have been quite a decade for you. . . .”
“You could put it that way,” said the Count.
“Did you try to leave after the Revolution?”
“On the contrary, Charles; I came back because of it.”
Charles looked at the Count in surprise.
“You came back?”
“I was in Paris when the Hermitage fell. I had left the country before the war due to certain . . . circumstances.”
“You weren’t an anarchist, were you?”
The Count laughed.
“Hardly.”
“Then what?”
The Count looked into his empty glass. He hadn’t spoken of these events in so many years.
“It is late,” he said. “And the story is long.”
By way of response, Charles refilled their glasses.
So the Count took Charles all the way back to the fall of 1913, when on an inclement night he had set out for the twenty-first birthday of the Princess Novobaczky. He described the ice on the driveway, and Mrs. Trent’s roast, and the torn IOU—and how a few degrees here and there had landed him on the terrace in the arms of the Princess while the rash lieutenant retched in the grass.
Charles laughed.
“But, Alexander, that sounds splendid. Surely, it’s not the reason you left Russia.”