“So, tell me . . . ,” the Count began with a smile, as Sofia’s eyes opened wide.
But even as the words were leaving his lips, the Count was having second thoughts. For he was decidedly not seated beside Sofia at a dinner party, or in a railway car. She was a child who, with little explanation, had been uprooted from her home. To pursue a line of inquiry about the sights and seasons of Ivanovo or daily life with her parents was almost certain to raise a host of sad associations, spurring feelings of longing and loss.
“So, tell me . . . ,” he said again, feeling the onset of dizziness, as her eyes opened wider. But just in time, he had a flash of inspiration: “What is your dolly’s name?”
A sure step, that one, thought the Count, with an inward pat on the back.
“Dolly doesn’t have a name.”
“What’s that? No name? But surely, your doll must have a name.”
Sofia stared at the Count for a moment then tilted her head like a raven.
“Why?”
“Why?” repeated the Count. “Why, so that she can be addressed. So that she can be invited for tea; called to from across the room; discussed in conversation when absent; and included in your prayers. That is, for all the very reasons that you benefit from having a name.”
As Sofia considered this, the Count leaned forward, ready to elaborate on the matter to the smallest detail. But nodding once, the girl said, “I shall call her Dolly.” Then she looked to the Count with her big blue eyes as if to say: Now that that’s decided, what next?
The Count leaned back in his chair and began to sort through his vast catalog of casual questions, discarding one after another. But as luck would have it, he noticed that Sofia’s gaze had shifted almost furtively toward something behind him.
Discreetly, the Count glanced back.
The ebony elephant, he realized with a smile. Raised her entire life in a rural province, the child had probably never even imagined that such an animal existed. What sort of fantastical beast is that? she must be wondering. Is it mammal or reptile? Fact or fable?
“Have you ever seen one of those before?” the Count asked with a backward gesture and a smile.
“An elephant?” she asked. “Or a lamp?”
The Count coughed.
“I meant an elephant.”
“Only in books,” she admitted a little sadly.
“Ah. Well. It is a magnificent animal. A wonder of creation.”
Sofia’s interest piqued, the Count launched into a description of the species, animating each of its characteristics with an illustrative flourish of the arms. “A native of the Dark Continent, the mature example can weigh over ten thousand pounds. Its legs are as thick as tree trunks, and it bathes itself by drawing water into its proboscis and spraying it into the air—”
“So, you have seen one?” she interrupted brightly. “On the Dark Continent?”
The Count fidgeted.
“Not exactly on the Dark Continent . . .”
“Then where?”
“In various books . . .”
“Oh,” said Sofia, bringing the topic to a close with the efficiency of the guillotine.
. . .
. . .
The Count considered for a moment what other sort of wonder might capture her imagination, but which he had actually seen in person.
“Would you like to hear a story about a princess?” he suggested.
Sofia sat upright.
“The age of the nobility has given way to the age of the common man,” she said with the pride of one who has recited her times tables correctly. “It was historically inevitable.”
“Yes,” said the Count. “So I’ve been told.”
. . .
. . .
“Do you enjoy pictures?” he asked, picking up an illustrated guide to the Louvre that he had borrowed from the basement. “Here is a lifetime’s supply. While I wash up, why don’t you delve in?”
Sofia moved a little in order to set Dolly at her side and then accepted the book in a ready and determined manner.
Retreating to the safety of the washroom, the Count took off his shirt, bathed his upper body, and lathered his cheeks, all the while muttering the principal riddle of the day: “She is no more than thirty pounds; no more than three feet tall; her entire bag of belongings could fit in a single drawer; she rarely speaks unless spoken to; and her heart beats no louder than a bird’s. So how is it possible that she takes up so much space?!”
Over the years, the Count had come to think of his rooms as rather ample. In the morning, they easily accommodated twenty squats and twenty stretches, a leisurely breakfast, and the reading of a novel in a tilted chair. In the evenings after work, they fostered flights of fancy, memories of travel, and meditations on history all crowned by a good night’s sleep. Yet somehow, this little visitor with her kit bag and her rag doll had altered every dimension of the room. She had simultaneously brought the ceiling downward, the floor upward, and the walls inward, such that anywhere he hoped to move she was already there. Having roused himself from a fitful night on the floor, when the Count was ready for his morning calisthenics, she was standing in the calisthenics spot. At breakfast, she ate more than her fair share of the strawberries; then when he was about to dip his second biscuit in his second cup of coffee, she was staring at it with such longing that he had no choice but to ask if she wanted it. And when, at last, he was ready to lean back in his chair with his book, she was already sitting in it, staring up at him expectantly.
But having caught himself waving his shaving brush emphatically at his own reflection, the Count stopped cold.
Good God, he thought. Is it possible?
Already?
At the age of forty-eight?
“Alexander Rostov, could it be that you have become settled in your ways?”
As a young man, the Count would never have been inconvenienced by a fellow soul. He sought out congenial company the moment he awoke.
When he had read in his chair, no interruption could be counted as a disturbance. In fact, he preferred to read with a little racket in the background. Like the shouts of a vendor in the street; or the scales of a piano in a neighboring apartment; or best of all, footsteps on the stair—footsteps that having quickly ascended two flights would suddenly stop, bang on his door, and breathlessly explain that two friends in a coach-and-four were waiting at the curb. (After all, isn’t that why the pages of books are numbered? To facilitate the finding of one’s place after a reasonable interruption?) As to possessions, he hadn’t cared a whit about them. He was the first to lend a book or an umbrella to an acquaintance (never mind that no acquaintance since Adam had returned a book or an umbrella).
And routines? He had prided himself on never having one. He would breakfast at 10:00 A.M. one day and 2:00 P.M. the next. At his favorite restaurants, he had never ordered the same dish twice in a season. Rather, he traveled across their menus like Mr. Livingstone traveled across Africa and Magellan the seven seas.
No, at the age of twenty-two, Count Alexander Rostov could not be inconvenienced, interrupted, or unsettled. For every unexpected appearance, comment, or turn of events had been welcomed like a burst of fireworks in a summer sky—as something to be marveled at and cheered.
But apparently, this was no longer the case. . . .
The unanticipated arrival of a thirty-pound package had torn the veil from his eyes. Without his even noticing—without his acknowledgment, input, or permission—routine had established itself within his daily life. Apparently, he now ate his breakfast at an appointed hour. Apparently, he must sip his coffee and nibble his biscuits without interruption. He must read in a particular chair tilted at a particular angle with no more than the scuffing of a pigeon’s feet to distract him. He must shave his right cheek, shave his left, and only then move on to the underside of his chin.
To that end, the Count now tilted back his head and raised his razor, but the change in the angle of his gaze revealed two fathomless eyes staring back at him from the reflection in the mirror.
“Egads!”
“I have finished looking at the pictures,” she said.
“Which ones?”