The Count reached over, borrowed Anna’s cigarette, and took a puff. Having thought for a moment, he waved the cigarette at the ceiling.
“In recent years, I have waited on Americans who have traveled all the way to Moscow to attend one performance at the Bolshoi. Meanwhile, our haphazard little trio in the Shalyapin will take a stab at any little bit of American music they’ve heard on the radio. These are unquestionably the forces of the Former on display.”
The Count took another puff.
“When Emile is in his kitchen, does he cook the Latter? Of course not. He simmers, sears, and serves the Former. A veal from Vienna, a pigeon from Paris, or a seafood stew from the south of France. Or consider the case of Viktor Stepanovich—”
“You’re not going to start in on the moths of Manchester again?”
“No,” said the Count peevishly. “I am making a different point entirely. When Viktor and Sofia sit down at the piano, do they play Mussorgsky, Mussorgsky, and Mussorgsky? No. They play Bach and Beethoven, Rossini and Puccini, while at Carnegie Hall the audience responds to Horowitz’s performance of Tchaikovsky with thunderous applause.”
The Count turned on his side to study the actress.
“You’re keeping unusually quiet,” he said, returning her cigarette. “Perhaps you don’t agree?”
Anna took a drag and slowly exhaled.
“It’s not that I disagree with you, Sasha. But I’m not so sure that one can simply dance away one’s life to the tune of the Former, as you call it. Certain realities must be faced wherever you live, and in Russia that may mean a bit of bending to the Latter. Take your beloved bouillabaisse, or that ovation in Carnegie Hall. It is no coincidence that the cities from which your examples spring are port cities: Marseille and New York. I daresay, you could find similar examples in Shanghai and Rotterdam. But Moscow is not a port, my love. At the center of all that is Russia—of its culture, its psychology, and perhaps, its destiny—stands the Kremlin, a walled fortress a thousand years old and four hundred miles from sea. Physically speaking, its walls are no longer high enough to fend off attack; and yet, they still cast a shadow across the entire country.”
The Count rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
“Sasha, I know you don’t want to accept the notion that Russia may be inherently inward looking, but do you think in America they are even having this conversation? Wondering if the gates of New York are about to be opened or closed? Wondering if the Former is more likely than the Latter? By all appearances, America was founded on the Former. They don’t even know what the Latter is.”
“You sound as if you dreamed of living in America.”
“Everyone dreams of living in America.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous? Half of the inhabitants of Europe would move there tomorrow just for the conveniences.”
“Conveniences! What conveniences?”
Turning on her side, Anna tamped out her cigarette, opened the drawer in the bedside table, and produced a large American magazine, which, the Count noted, was rather presumptuously entitled LIFE. Flipping through the pages, Anna began pointing to various brightly colored photographs. Each one seemed to show the same woman in a different dress smiling before some newfangled contraption.
“Dishwashing machines. Clothes-washing machines. Vacuum cleaners. Toasters. Televisions. And look here, an automatic garage door.”
“What is an automatic garage door?”
“It is a garage door that opens and closes itself on your behalf. What do you think of that?”
“I think if I were a garage door, I should rather miss the old days.”
Anna lit another cigarette and handed it to the Count. He took a drag and watched the smoke spiral toward the ceiling where the Muses looked down from the clouds.
“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”
Anna Urbanova took the cigarette from the Count’s fingers, dropped it in a water glass, and kissed him on the nose.
1953
Apostles and Apostates
Like the wheeling of the stars,” muttered the Count as he paced.
That is how time passes when one is left waiting unaccountably. The hours become interminable. The minutes relentless. And the seconds? Why, not only does every last one of them demand its moment on the stage, it insists upon making a soliloquy full of weighty pauses and artful hesitations and then leaps into an encore at the slightest hint of applause.
But hadn’t the Count once waxed poetic over how slowly the stars advanced? Hadn’t he rhapsodized over how the constellations seemed to halt in their course when on a warm summer’s night one lay on one’s back and listened for footsteps in the grass—as if nature itself were conspiring to lengthen the last few hours before daybreak, so that they could be savored to the utmost?
Well, yes. Certainly that was the case when one was twenty-two and waiting for a young lady in a meadow—having climbed the ivy and rapped on the glass. But to keep a man waiting when he is sixty-three? When his hair has thinned, his joints have stiffened, and his every breath might be his last? There is such a thing as courtesy, after all.
It must be nearly one in the morning, calculated the Count. The performance was scheduled to end by eleven. The reception by twelve. They should have been here half an hour ago.
“Are there no taxis left in Moscow? No trolley cars?” he wondered aloud.
Or had they stopped somewhere on the way home . . . ? Was it possible that in passing a café they could not resist the impulse to slip inside and share a pastry while he waited and waited and waited? Could they have been so heartless? (If so, they dare not attempt to hide the fact, for he could tell if a pastry had been eaten from a distance of fifty feet!)
The Count paused in his pacing to peek behind the Ambassador, where he had carefully hidden the Dom Pérignon.
Preparing for a potential celebration is a tricky business. If Fortune smiles, then one must be ready to hit the ceiling with the cork. But if Fortune shrugs, then one must be prepared to act as if this were just another night, one of no particular consequence—and then later sink the unopened bottle to the bottom of the sea.
The Count stuck his hand into the bucket. The ice was nearly half melted and the temperature of the water a perfect 50?. If they did not return soon, the temperature would become so tepid that the bottle belonged at the bottom of the sea.
Well, it would serve them right.
But as the Count withdrew his hand and stood to his full height, he heard an extraordinary sound emanating from the next room. It was the chime of the twice-tolling clock. Reliable Breguet announcing the stroke of midnight.
Impossible! The Count had been waiting for at least two hours. He had paced over twenty miles. It had to be half past one. Not a minute earlier.
“Perhaps reliable Breguet was no longer quite so reliable,” muttered the Count. After all, the clock was over fifty years old, and even the finest timepieces must be subject to the ravages of Time. Cogs will eventually lose their coginess just as springs will lose their springiness. But as the Count was having this thought, through the little window in the eaves he heard a clock tower in the distance tolling once, then twice, then thrice. . . .
“Yes, yes,” he said, collapsing into his chair. “You’ve made your point.”
Apparently, this was destined to be a day of exasperations.