“This one,” he said.
Licking the thread and closing an eye (just as Marina had taught him), the Count threaded the needle faster than saints enter the gates of heaven. Forming a double loop, tying off a knot, and snipping the thread from the spool, the Count sat upright and set about his work as Marina set about hers (the repair of a pillowcase).
As with any sewing circle since the beginning of time, the two in this one were accustomed to sharing observations from their day as they stitched. Most of these observations were met with a Hmm, or an Is that so? without a break in the rhythm of the work; but occasionally, some item that warranted greater attention would bring the stitching to a stop. Just so, having exchanged remarks on the weather, and Pavel’s handsome new topcoat, Marina’s needle suddenly froze in midstitch when the Count mentioned that he had run into Nina.
“Nina Kulikova?” she asked in surprise.
“None other.”
“Where?”
“In the lobby. She had been having lunch with three of her comrades.”
“Did you speak?”
“At some length.”
“What did she have to say for herself?”
“It seems they are off to Ivanovo to rationalize kulaks and collectivize tractors, and what have you.”
“Never mind that, Alexander. How was she?”
Here the Count stopped his stitching.
“She was every bit herself,” he said after a moment. “Still full of curiosity and passion and self-assurance.”
“Wonderful,” Marina said with a smile.
The Count watched as she resumed her stitching.
“And yet . . .”
Marina stopped again and met his gaze.
“And yet?”
. . .
“It’s nothing.”
“Alexander. There is clearly something on your mind.”
. . .
“It’s just that to hear Nina talk of her upcoming journey, she is so passionate, so self-assured, and perhaps so single-minded, that she seems almost humorless. Like some dauntless explorer, she seems ready to place her flag in a polar ice cap and claim it in the name of Inevitability. But I can’t help suspecting that all the while, her happiness may be waiting in another latitude altogether.”
“Come now, Alexander. Little Nina must be nearly eighteen. Surely, when you were that age you and your friends spoke with passion and self-assurance.”
“Of course we did,” said the Count. “We sat in cafés and argued about ideas until they mopped the floors and doused the lights.”
“Well, there you are.”
“It’s true that we argued about ideas, Marina; but we never had any intention of doing anything about them.”
Marina rolled one of her eyes.
“Heaven forbid you should do something about an idea.”
“No, I am serious. Nina is so determined, I fear that the force of her convictions will interfere with the joys of her youth.”
Marina put her sewing in her lap.
“You have always been fond of little Nina.”
“Of course I have.”
“And in part, that is because she is such an independent spirit.”
“Precisely.”
“Then you must trust in her. And even if she is single-minded to a fault, you must trust that life will find her in time. For eventually, it finds us all.”
The Count nodded for a moment, reflecting on Marina’s position. Then returning to his task, he looped through the button’s holes, wound the shank, tied off the knot, and snapped the thread with his teeth. Poking Marina’s needle back into its cushion, he noted it was already 4:05, a fact that confirmed once again how quickly time flies when one is immersed in a pleasant task accompanied by pleasant conversation.
Wait a moment . . . , thought the Count.
Already 4:05?
“Great Scott!”
Thanking Marina, the Count grabbed his jacket, dashed to the lobby, and vaulted up the stairs two by two. When he arrived at suite 311, he found the door ajar. Looking left and looking right, he slipped inside and closed the door.
On the side table before an ornate mirror were the two-foot tiger lilies that had passed him earlier in the day. After taking a quick look around, the Count crossed the empty sitting room and entered the bedchamber, where a willowy figure stood in silhouette before one of the great windows. At the sound of his approach, she turned and let her dress slip to the floor with a delicate whoosh. . . .
An Afternoon Assignation
After taking a quick look around, the Count crossed the empty sitting room and entered the bedchamber, where a willowy figure stood in silhouette before one of the great windows. At the sound of his approach, she turned and let her dress slip to the floor with a delicate whoosh. . . .
What’s this!
When we last left this pair in 1923, did not Anna Urbanova dismiss the Count with a definitive instruction to “draw the curtains”? And when he closed the door behind him with a click, did he not assume the aspect of a ghost before drifting forlornly to the roof? And now, as she slips beneath the bedcovers, this once haughty figure offers a smile suggestive of patience, tenderness, even gratitude—traits that are mirrored almost exactly in the smile of her former adversary as he hangs the white jacket of the Boyarsky on the back of a chair and begins to unbutton his shirt!
What possibly could have happened to reunite these contrary souls? What twisting path could have led them to suite 311 and back into each other’s arms?
Well, it was not the path of the Count that twisted. For Alexander Rostov had spent the intervening years traveling up and down the Metropol’s staircase from his bedroom to the Boyarsky and back again. No, the path that twisted, turned, veered, and doubled back was not the Count’s; it was Anna’s.
When we first encountered Miss Urbanova in the Metropol’s lobby in 1923, the haughtiness the Count noted in her bearing was not without foundation, for it was a by-product of her unambiguous celebrity. Discovered in a regional theater on the outskirts of Odessa in 1919 by Ivan Rosotsky, Anna was cast as leading lady in his next two films. Both of these were historical romances that celebrated the moral purity of those who toiled, while disparaging the corruption of those who did not. In the first, Anna played an eighteenth-century kitchen maid for whom a young nobleman abandons the trappings of court. In the second, she was a nineteenth-century heiress who turns her back on her legacy to wed a blacksmith’s apprentice. Setting his fables in the palaces of yesteryear, Rosotsky lit them in the hazy aura of dreams, shot them in the soft focus of memories, and capped the first, second, and third acts with close-ups of his starlet: Anna aspiring; Anna distraught; Anna at long last in love. Both of the films were popular with the public, both found favor with the Politburo (which was eager to give the People some respite from the war years through suitably themed diversions), and our young starlet reaped the effortless rewards of fame.