“No need, my friend. I shall see to it.”
As Martyn backed away with a bow, the Count circled the table and in a few quick strokes had cut Sofia’s veal into eight pieces. Then, on the verge of setting down her cutlery, he cut the eight pieces into sixteen. By the time he had returned to his seat, she had already eaten four.
Having regained her energy through sustenance, Sofia now unleashed a cavalcade of Whys. Why was it better to commune with work in the morning and nature in the afternoon? Why would a man read three newspapers? Why should one walk under the willows rather than some other sort of tree? And what was a pergola? Which in turn led to additional inquiries regarding Idlehour, the Countess, and Helena.
In principle, the Count generally regarded a barrage of interrogatives as bad form. Left to themselves, the words who, what, why, when, and where do not a conversation make. But as the Count began to answer Sofia’s litany of queries, sketching the layout of Idlehour on the tablecloth with the tines of his fork, describing the personalities of family members and referencing various traditions—he noticed that Sofia was entirely, absolutely, and utterly engaged. What elephants and princesses had failed to accomplish, the life at Idlehour had apparently achieved. And just like that, her veal was gone.
When the plates had been cleared away, Martyn reappeared to inquire if they would be having dessert. The Count looked to Sofia with a smile, assuming that she would leap at the chance. But she bit her lower lip and shook her head.
“Are you quite sure?” the Count asked. “Ice cream? Cookies? A piece of cake?”
But shifting a bit in her chair, she shook her head again.
Enter the new generation, thought the Count with a shrug, while returning the dessert menu to Martyn.
“Apparently, we are done.”
Martyn accepted the menu, but once again lingered. Then, turning his back slightly to the table, he actually leaned over with the clear intention of whispering in the Count’s ear.
For goodness sake, thought the Count. What now?
“Count Rostov, I believe that your niece . . . may need to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
Martyn hesitated.
“To the privy . . .”
The Count looked up at the waiter and then at Sofia.
“Say no more, Martyn.”
The waiter bowed and excused himself.
“Sofia,” the Count suggested tentatively, “shall we visit the ladies’ room?”
Still biting her lip, Sofia nodded.
“Do you need me to . . . accompany you inside?” he asked, after leading her down the hallway.
Sofia shook her head and disappeared behind the washroom door.
As he waited, the Count chastised himself for his lug-headedness. Not only had he failed to cut her meat and bring her to the ladies’ room, he clearly hadn’t thought to help her unpack, because she was wearing the exact same clothes she had worn the day before.
“And you call yourself a waiter . . . ,” he said to himself.
A moment later, Sofia emerged, looking relieved. But then, despite her readily apparent love of interrogatives, she hesitated like one who is struggling with whether to ask a question.
“What is it, my dear? Is there something on your mind?”
Sofia struggled for another moment, then worked up the nerve: “Can we still have dessert, Uncle Alexander?”
Now, it was the Count who looked relieved.
“Without a doubt, my dear. Without a doubt.”
Ascending, Alighting
At two o’clock, when Marina answered her office door to find the Count at the threshold in the company of a little girl with a rag doll gripped tightly by the neck, she was so surprised her eyes almost came into alignment.
“Ah, Marina,” said the Count, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. “You remember Nina Kulikova? May I present her daughter, Sofia. She will be staying with us in the hotel for a bit. . . .”
As a mother of two, Marina did not need the Count’s signal to tell her that something weighty had occurred in the life of the child. But she could also see that the girl was curious about the whirring sound coming from the other end of the room.
“What a pleasure to meet you, Sofia,” she said. “I knew your mother well when she was just a few years older than you are now. But tell me: Have you ever seen a sewing machine?”
Sofia shook her head.
“Well then. Come and let me show you one.”
Offering Sofia her hand, Marina led the girl to the other side of the room, where her assistant was mending a royal blue drape. Dropping down so that she would be at Sofia’s level, Marina pointed to various parts of the machine and explained their use. Then, asking the young seamstress to show Sofia their collection of fabrics and buttons, she came back to the Count with an expression of inquiry.
In a hushed voice, he quickly recounted the events of the previous day.
“You can see the predicament that I’m in,” concluded the Count.
“I can see the predicament that Sofia is in,” corrected Marina.
“Yes. You’re absolutely right,” the Count admitted contritely. Then, just as he was about to continue, he had a notion—a notion so inspired, it was incredible he hadn’t thought of it before. “I came, Marina, to see if you’d be willing to watch Sofia for an hour while I am at the Boyarsky’s daily meeting. . . .”
“Of course I will,” said Marina.
“As I say, I came with that intention. . . . But as you have so rightly pointed out, it is Sofia who deserves our support and consideration. And watching you together just now, seeing your instinctive tenderness, and seeing the way that she felt instantly at ease in your company, it was suddenly so obvious that what she needs, especially at this juncture in her life, is a mother’s touch, a mother’s way, a mother’s—”
But Marina cut him off. And from the bottom of her heart, she said:
“Do not ask that of me, Alexander Ilyich. Ask it of yourself.”
I can do this, said the Count to himself as he skipped up the stairs to the Boyarsky. After all, it was really just a matter of making some minor adjustments—a rearranging of some furniture and a shifting of some habits. Since Sofia was too young to be left alone, he would eventually need to find someone who could sit with her while he was at work. For tonight, he would simply request an evening off, suggesting that his tables be divided between Denis and Dmitry.
But in an extraordinary example of a friend anticipating the needs of a friend, when the Count arrived at the meeting of the Triumvirate a few minutes late, Andrey said: “There you are, Alexander. Emile and I were just discussing that Denis and Dmitry can share your tables tonight.”
Collapsing into his chair, the Count let out a sigh of relief.
“Perfect,” he said. “By tomorrow, I shall have come up with a longer-term solution.”
The chef and the ma?tre d’ looked at the Count in confusion.
“A longer-term solution?”
“Weren’t you splitting my tables so that I could be free for the evening?”
“Free for the evening!” gasped Andrey.
Emile guffawed.
“Alexander, my friend, it’s the third Saturday of the month. You’ll be expected in the Yellow Room at ten. . . .”
Mein Gott, thought the Count. He had completely forgotten.
“. . . What’s more, the GAZ dinner is in the Red Room at half past seven.”
The director of Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, the state’s leading automotive manufacturing agency, was hosting a formal dinner to commemorate their fifth anniversary. In addition to key staff members, the event was to be attended by the Commissar of Heavy Industry, and three representatives of the Ford Motor Company—who didn’t speak a word of Russian.
“I shall see to it personally,” said the Count.
“Good,” said the ma?tre d’. “Dmitry has already set up the room.”
Then he slid two envelopes across the table to the Count.