Over the next two hours, the men in attendance ate heartily, drank freely, and gave toasts that ranged in tone from the high-minded to the humorous, but always in the most patriotic of spirits. And in between toasts, as the Count presented courses, refilled glasses, replaced utensils, whisked away plates, and swept crumbs from the linens, the attendees made asides to the men on their left, conferred with the men on their right, or muttered to themselves under the hum of the festivities.
Upon reading this, you may be tempted to ask a little sardonically whether Count Rostov—this self-proclaimed man of propriety—allowed himself to overhear any of the private exchanges around the table? But your question and your cynicism would be entirely misplaced. For as with the best manservants, it is the business of capable waiters to overhear.
Consider the example of Grand Duke Demidov’s butler. In his day, Kemp could stand for hours at the edge of the library as silent and stiff as a statue. But should one of the Grand Duke’s guests even mention that he was thirsty, Kemp was there with an offer of a drink. Should someone complain quietly of a chill, Kemp was at the fireside stirring the coals. And when the Grand Duke observed to a friend that while the Countess Shermatova was “a delight,” her son was “unreliable,” Kemp would know without being told that should either of the Shermatovas appear at the door unannounced, the Grand Duke was available to the one and indisposed to the other.
So, did the Count overhear any of the private exchanges of the attendees? Did he hear any of the sly observations, pointed asides, or dismissive remarks uttered sotto voce?
He heard every single word.
Every man has his own personality at table, and one needn’t have waited upon members of the Communist Party for twenty-eight years to know that while comrade Malenkov only toasted upon occasion and then with a glass of white wine, comrade Khrushchev would give four toasts in an evening and always with vodka. Thus, it did not escape the Count’s notice that during the course of the meal, the former mayor of Moscow never once rose to his feet. But at ten minutes to eleven, when the meal was nearly over, the General Secretary rapped on his glass with the blade of his knife.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “the Metropol is no stranger to historic events. In fact, in 1918 comrade Sverdlov locked the members of the constitutional drafting committee in the suite two floors below us—informing them that they would not be let out until their work was done.”
Laughter and applause.
“To Sverdlov!” someone called and, as Khrushchev emptied his glass with a self-assured grin, all around the table followed suit.
“Tonight,” continued Khrushchev, “we have the honor of witnessing another historic event at the Metropol. If you will join me at the windows, comrades, I believe that Minister Malyshev has an announcement. . . .”
With expressions ranging from curious to bemused, the forty-four other attendees pushed back their chairs and approached the great windows overlooking Theatre Square, where Malyshev was already standing.
“Thank you, General Secretary,” Malyshev said with a bow toward Khrushchev, followed by a weighty pause: “Comrades, as most of you know, three and a half years ago we began construction of our new power plant in the city of Obninsk. I am proud to announce that on Monday afternoon the Obninsk facility became fully operational—six months ahead of schedule.”
Appropriate commendations and the nodding of heads.
“Furthermore,” Malyshev continued, “at exactly eleven o’clock tonight—in less than two minutes—the plant will begin providing power to half the city of Moscow. . . .”
With that, Malyshev turned and faced the windows (as the Count and Martyn quietly snuffed the candles on the table). Outside, the lights of Moscow glimmered in the same old fashion, such that as the seconds ticked by, the men in the room began shifting on their feet and exchanging remarks. But suddenly, in the far northwestern corner of the city, the lights in a neighborhood ten blocks square went out all at once. A moment later, the lights went out in the adjacent quarter. Then the darkness began moving across the city like a shadow across a plain, growing closer and closer, until at roughly 11:02, the eternally lit windows of the Kremlin went black, followed a few seconds later by those of the Metropol Hotel.
In the darkness, the mutterings of a moment before rose in volume and shifted in tone, expressing some combination of surprise and consternation. But the attentive observer could see from Malyshev’s silhouette that when the darkness fell, he neither spoke nor moved. He continued to stare out the window. Suddenly, in the far northwest corner of the capital, the lights of those initially darkened blocks flickered back on. Now it was luminescence that was moving across the city, growing closer and closer, until the windows of the Kremlin flashed on followed by the chandelier overhead—and the combined dinner of the Presidium and the Council of Ministers erupted into justified applause. For, in fact, the lights of the city seemed to burn brighter with the electricity from the first nuclear power plant in the world.
Without a doubt, the finale to this dinner of state was as fine a piece of political theater as Moscow had ever seen. But when the lights went out, were any of the city’s citizens inconvenienced?
Luckily, in 1954 Moscow was not the world capital of electrical appliances. But in the brief course of the outage, at least three hundred thousand clocks stopped, forty thousand radios went silent, and five thousand televisions went black. Dogs howled and cats meowed. Standing lamps were toppled, children cried, parents banged their shins into coffee tables, and more than a few drivers—looking up through their windshields at the suddenly darkened buildings—ran into the fenders of the automobiles in front of them.
In that little gray building on the corner of Dzerzhinsky Street, the little gray fellow who was charged with taking down the eavesdroppings of waitresses kept right on typing. For like any good bureaucrat, he knew how to type with his eyes closed. Although, when a few moments after the lights went out someone stumbled in the hallway and our startled typist looked up, his fingers inadvertently shifted one column of keys to the right, such that the second half of his report was either unintelligible, or in code, depending upon your point of view.
Meanwhile, at the Maly Theatre, where Anna Urbanova—in a wig tinged with gray—was appearing as Irina Arkadina in Chekhov’s The Seagull, the audience let out muted exclamations of concern. Though Anna and her fellow actors were well practiced at leaving the stage in the dark, they made no move to do so. For having been trained in the methods of Stanislavsky, they immediately began acting exactly as their characters would have acted had they suddenly found themselves in a blackout:
ARKADINA: [Alarmed] The lights have gone out!
TRIGORIN: Stay where you are, my dear. I’ll look for a candle. [The sound of cautious movement as TRIGORIN exits right, followed by a moment of silence]
ARKADINA: Oh, Konstantin. I’m frightened.
KONSTANTIN: It is only darkness, Mother—that from which we have come and to which we shall return.
ARKADINA: [As if she hasn’t listened to her son] Do you think the lights have gone out all over Russia?
KONSTANTIN: No, Mother. They have gone out all over the world. . . .
And at the Metropol? Two waiters in the Piazza carrying trays to their tables collided; four customers in the Shalyapin spilled their drinks and one was pinched; trapped in the elevator between the second and third floors, the American, Pudgy Webster, shared chocolate bars and cigarettes with his fellow passengers; while alone in his office, the hotel’s manager vowed “to get to the bottom of this.”
But in the dining room of the Boyarsky, where for almost fifty years the ambience had been defined by candlelight, the customers were served without interruption.
Anecdotes
On the night of the sixteenth of June, beside Sofia’s empty suitcase and knapsack, the Count laid out all of the various items that he had collected on her behalf. The night before, when she’d returned from rehearsal, he had sat her down and explained exactly what it was that she must do.
“Why have you waited until now to speak of this?” she asked, on the verge of tears.