When Sofia was just five, the Count had assumed, naively perhaps, that she would grow up to be a dark-haired version of her mother. But while Sofia shared Nina’s clarity of perception and confidence of opinion, she was entirely different in demeanor. Where her mother was prone to express her impatience with the slightest of the world’s imperfections, Sofia seemed to presume that if the earth spun awry upon occasion, it was generally a well-intentioned planet. And where Nina would not hesitate to cut someone off in midassertion in order to make a contrary point and then declare the matter decided once and for all, Sofia would listen so attentively and with such a sympathetic smile that her interlocutor, having been given free rein to express his views at considerable length, often found his voice petering out as he began to question his own premises. . . .
Demure. That was the only word for it. And the transition had occurred in the blink of an eye.
“When you reach our age, Vasily, it all goes by so quickly. Whole seasons seem to pass without leaving the slightest mark on our memory.”
“How true . . . ,” agreed the concierge (as he sorted through an allotment of tickets).
“But surely, there is a comfort to be taken from that,” continued the Count. “For even as the weeks begin racing by in a blur for us, they are making the greatest of impressions upon our children. When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one’s senses are so alert, one’s sentiments so finely attuned that every conversation, every look, every laugh may be writ indelibly upon one’s memory. And the friends that one happens to make in those impressionable years? One will meet them forever after with a welling of affection.”
Having expressed this paradox, the Count happened to look across the lobby, where Grisha was lugging the luggage of one guest toward the front desk as Genya lugged the luggage of another toward the door.
“Perhaps it is a matter of celestial balance,” he reflected. “A sort of cosmic equilibrium. Perhaps the aggregate experience of Time is a constant and thus for our children to establish such vivid impressions of this particular June, we must relinquish our claims upon it.”
“So that they might remember, we must forget,” Vasily summed up.
“Exactly!” said the Count. “So that they might remember, we must forget. But should we take umbrage at the fact? Should we feel shortchanged by the notion that their experiences for the moment may be richer than ours? I think not. For it is hardly our purpose at this late stage to log a new portfolio of lasting memories. Rather, we should be dedicating ourselves to ensuring that they taste freely of experience. And we must do so without trepidation. Rather than tucking in blankets and buttoning up coats, we must have faith in them to tuck and button on their own. And if they fumble with their newfound liberty, we must remain composed, generous, judicious. We must encourage them to venture out from under our watchful gaze, and then sigh with pride when they pass at last through the revolving doors of life. . . .”
As if to illustrate, the Count gestured generously and judiciously toward the hotel’s entrance, while giving an exemplary sigh. Then he tapped the concierge’s desk.
“By the way. Do you happen to know where she is?”
Vasily looked up from his tickets.
“Miss Sofia?”
“Yes.”
“She is in the ballroom with Viktor, I believe.”
“Ah. She must be helping him polish the floors for an upcoming banquet.”
“No. Not Viktor Ivanovich. Viktor Stepanovich.”
“Viktor Stepanovich?”
“Yes. Viktor Stepanovich Skadovsky. The conductor of the orchestra at the Piazza.”
If in part, the Count had been trying to express to Vasily how in our golden years a passage of time can be so fleet and leave so little an impression upon our memory, that it is almost as if it never occurred—well then, here was a perfect example.
For the three minutes it took the Count to travel from a delightful conversation at the concierge’s desk to the ballroom, where he had grabbed a scoundrel by the lapels, had also passed in the blink of an eye. Why, it had passed so quickly, that the Count did not remember knocking the luggage from Grisha’s grip as he marched down the hall; nor did he remember throwing open the door and shouting Aha!; nor yanking the would-be Casanova up off the loveseat, where he had intertwined his fingers with Sofia’s.
No, the Count did not remember any of it. But to ensure a celestial balance and the equilibrium of the cosmos, this moustachioed scoundrel in evening clothes was sure to remember every single second for the rest of his life.
“Your Excellency,” he implored, as he dangled in the air. “There has been a terrible misunderstanding!”
Looking up at the startled face above his fists, the Count confirmed that there had been no misunderstanding. It was definitely the very same fellow who waved his baton so blithely on the bandstand in the Piazza. And though he apparently knew how to produce an honorific in a timely fashion, he was clearly as villainous a viper as had ever slithered from the underbrush of Eden.
But whatever his level of villainy, the current situation did pose a quandary. For once you have hoisted a scoundrel by the lapels, what are you to do with him? At least when you have a fellow by the scruff of the neck, you can carry him out the door and toss him down the stairs. But when you have him by the lapels, he isn’t so easy to dispense with. Before the Count could solve his conundrum, Sofia expressed a conundrum of her own.
“Papa! What are you doing?”
“Go to your room, Sofia. This gentleman and I have a few matters to discuss—before I give him the drubbing of a lifetime.”
“The drubbing of a lifetime? But Viktor Stepanovich is my instructor.”
Keeping one eye on the scoundrel, the Count glanced at his daughter with the other.
“Your what?”
“My instructor. He is teaching me piano.”
The so-called instructor nodded four times in quick succession.
Without releasing his hold on the cad’s lapels, the Count leaned his head back so that he could study the mise-en-scène with a little more care. Upon closer inspection, the loveseat the two had been sitting on did, in fact, appear to be the bench of a piano. And in the spot where their hands had been intertwined there was an orderly row of ivory keys.
The Count tightened his grip.
“So that’s your game, is it? Seducing young women with jitterbugs?”
The so-called instructor looked aghast.
“Absolutely not, Your Excellency. I have never seduced a soul with a jitterbug. We have been playing scales and sonatas. I myself trained at the Conservatory—where I received the Mussorgsky Medal. I only conduct in the restaurant in order to make ends meet.” Taking advantage of the Count’s hesitation, he gestured toward the piano with his head. “Let us show you. Sofia, why don’t you play the nocturne that we have been practicing?”
The nocturne . . . ?
“As you wish, Viktor Stepanovich,” Sofia replied politely, then turned to the keyboard in order to arrange her sheet music.
“Perhaps . . . ,” the instructor said to the Count with another nod toward the piano. “If I could just . . .”
“Oh,” said the Count. “Yes, of course.”
The Count set him back on the ground and gave his lapels a quick brushing.
Then the instructor joined his student on the bench.
“All right, Sofia.”
Straightening her posture, Sofia laid her fingers on the keys; then with the utmost delicacy, she began to play.
At the sound of the first measure, the Count took two steps back.
Were those eight notes familiar to him? Did he recognize them in the least? Why, he would have known them if he hadn’t seen them in thirty years and they happened to enter his compartment on a train. He would have known them if he bumped into them on the streets of Florence at the height of the season. In a word, he would have known them anywhere.
It was Chopin.
Opus 9, number 2, in E-flat major.
As she completed the first iteration of the melody in a perfect pianissimo and transitioned to the second with its suggestion of rising emotional force, the Count took another two steps back and found himself sitting in a chair.