A Gentleman in Moscow ← We Can Solve This

the Count bounced twice on his new mattress to identify the key of the bedsprings (G-sharp),

the window was only the size of a dinner invitation,

the Count would note that his lunch at the Jockey Club was scheduled for two o’clock—and that while his bankers were expecting him at half past ten, they were for all intents and purposes in the employ of their depositors, and thus could presumably be kept waiting.

On the Grand Duke’s desk stood a champagne flute and a brandy snifter. With the lean uprightness of the former looking down upon the squat rotundity of the latter, one could not help but think of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the plains of the Sierra Morena.

each promised heft and threatened impenetrability.

From an unexpected corner had come an expression of romantic interest, which could not in good conscience be ignored.

“Can we expect more verses from you?” The Count offered an appreciative smile. “I am sorry to say, Konstantin, that my days of poetry are behind me.” “If your days of poetry are behind you, Count Rostov, then it is we who are sorry.”

in a period of abundance any half-wit with a spoon can please a palate. To truly test a chef’s ingenuity, one must instead look to a period of want.

became as scarce in Moscow as butterflies at sea.

Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them, the Count thought it worth considering how one was most likely to achieve this aim when one had been sentenced to a life of confinement.

the Count had felt a touch of concern when he’d first lifted the book from the desk the day before. For as a single volume, it had the density of a dictionary or Bible—those books that one expects to consult, or possibly peruse, but never read.

that is, for when one had no desire to venture out and one’s friends had no desire to venture in.

“Your Excellency. How are you?” “Splendid, Yaroslav. At my utmost.”

Long had he believed that a gentleman should turn to a mirror with a sense of distrust. For rather than being tools of self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit. How many times had he watched as a young beauty turned thirty degrees before her mirror to ensure that she saw herself to the best advantage?

The Count took pride in wearing a well-tailored jacket; but he took greater pride in knowing that a gentleman’s presence was best announced by his bearing, his remarks, and his manners. Not by the cut of his coat.

when that celestial chime sounds, perhaps a mirror will suddenly serve its truer purpose—revealing to a man not who he imagines himself to be, but who he has become.

When the Count took his seat with a newspaper in hand—the international symbol of dining alone—the chap didn’t bother to clear the second setting; when the Count closed his menu and placed it beside his plate—the international symbol of readiness to order—the chap needed to be beckoned with a wave of the hand; and when the Count ordered the okroshka and filet of sole, the chap asked if he might like a glass of Sauterne. A perfect suggestion, no doubt, if only the Count had ordered foie gras!

Granted, a bottle of Baudelaire was something of an extravagance for a solitary lunch, but after spending another morning with the indefatigable Michel de Montaigne, the Count felt that his morale could use the boost.

“It’s yummy,” she said, which if not the most elegant expression was at least factually correct.

“My father says that princesses personify the decadence of a vanquished era.” The Count was taken aback. “Perhaps a few,” he conceded. “But not all, I assure you.”

“Were they in love with the same woman?” “I don’t think a woman was involved.” The girl looked at the Count with an expression of incredulity. “A woman is always involved,” she said.

“I prefer you without your moustaches,” she said. “Their absence improves your . . . countenance.”

the Count invited him into his train of thought.

Apparently, for all their powers of invention, the Russian masters could not come up with a better plot device than two central characters resolving a matter of conscience by means of pistols at thirty-two paces.”

while dueling may have begun as a response to high crimes—to treachery, treason, and adultery—by 1900 it had tiptoed down the stairs of reason, until they were being fought over the tilt of a hat, the duration of a glance, or the placement of a comma.

it is understood that the number of paces the offender and offended take before shooting should be in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the insult. That is, the most reprehensible affront should be resolved by a duel of the fewest paces, to ensure that one of the two men will not leave the field of honor alive. Well, if that was the case, concluded the Count, then in the new era, the duels should have been fought at no less than ten thousand paces. In

Suffice it to say that when Nina’s tone shifted, the Count was ready. Resting his forearms on his thighs and leaning forward at an angle of seventy degrees, he adopted an expression that was serious yet neutral, so that in an instant he could convey his sympathy, concern, or shared indignation as the circumstances required.

“The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.”

Nina eyed the Count with an expression of seasoned tolerance, and then presumably for his benefit, spoke a little more slowly.

After the ill-fated night that ended on the second-floor steps, the Count had taken a break from his nightly aperitif, suspecting that the liquor had been an unhealthy influence on his mood. But this saintly abstinence did not prove a tonic to his soul. With so little to do and all the time in the world to do it, the Count’s peace of mind continued to be threatened by a sense of ennui—that dreaded mire of the human emotions.

He knew its staff by name, its services by experience, and the decorative styles of its suites by heart.

an enterprising and tireless spirit, the young lady had made the most of her situation by personally investigating the hotel until she knew every room, its purpose, and how it might be put to better use.

she gingerly opened a small cast-iron door in the furnace to reveal the fire that burned day and night, and which happened to be the best place in the hotel to destroy secret messages and illicit love letters. “You do receive illicit love letters, Count?” “Most certainly.”

“Surely, the Bolsheviks have discovered this windfall. I wonder why it wasn’t carted off?” Nina responded with the unclouded judgment of a child. “Perhaps they need it here.” Yes, thought the Count. That is it precisely.

pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too.

Each of the rooms of the Metropol offered an entirely different perspective—one that was shaped not only by altitude and orientation, but by season and time of day.

(Lest you have forgotten, it is quite excruciating to hammer the back of your thumb. It inevitably prompts a hopping up and down and the taking of the Lord’s name in vain.)

But Fortune does favor the bold. So, while the next swing of the hammer glanced off the nail’s head, on the third the Count hit home;

For while the room next door—with its bed, bureau, and desk—remained a realm of practical necessities, the study—with its books, the Ambassador, and Helena’s portrait—had been furnished in a manner more essential to the spirit.

a greater factor in the difference between the two rooms was their provenance. For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine.

every other one of them puffing on a cigarette. As best as the Count could determine, the Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor

As best as the Count could determine, the Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world’s oldest problems in its newest nomenclature.

the shoulder? Aren’t those workaday caps donned, like the bicorne

Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence—one that was on intimate terms with the comma,

when Nina inevitably asked what he thought of the day’s debate, he was going to reply that it was positively Shakespearean. Shakespearean, that is, in the manner of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. Much ado about nothing, indeed. Or so the Count intended to quip.

when you have traveled by train, have you watched the landscape rolling past the windows, and listened to the conversations of your fellow passengers, and drifted off to the clacking of the wheels?” “I have done all of those things.” “Exactly. But have you ever, for even one moment, considered how the coal finds its way into the locomotive’s engine? Have you considered in the middle of a forest or on a rocky slope how the tracks came to be there in the first place?” The Count paused. Considered. Imagined. Admitted. “Never.” She gave him a knowing look. “Isn’t it astounding.” And when seen in that light, who could disagree?

“When I dressed this morning, it was not my plan to go clambering about. But either way, I’ll have you know that these pants were custom-made on Savile Row.” “Yes. Custom-made for sitting in a sitting room, or drawing in a drawing room.” “But I have never drawn in a drawing room.”

With that in mind, perhaps the Count should have warned them. But freedom of the will has been a well-established tenet of moral philosophy since the time of the Greeks. And though the Count’s days of romancing were behind him, it goes against the nature of even the well-meaning gentleman to recommend that lovely young ladies leave his company on the basis of hypotheses.

when he turned to his left to offer a wink, he found not a curious onlooker, but unflappable Arkady—looking unusually flapped.

And as to Party membership, he asserted that he had been a member of the Party since before comrade Tarakovsky was born—which seemed a rather incredible claim given that comrade Tarakovsky is eighty-two.

As such, the two young men hardly seemed fated for friendship. But Fate would not have the reputation it has if it simply did what it seemed it would do.

the Countess was one of those dowagers whose natural independence of mind, authority of age, and impatience with the petty made her the ally of all irreverent youth.

She would not only abide, but enjoyed when her grandson would interrupt polite conversation to question the standing of the church or the ruling class. And when her guest grew red and responded in a huff, the Countess would give Mishka a conspiratorial wink, as if they stood arm in arm in the battle against boorish decorum and the outmoded attitudes of the times.

I shall be starting school.” “You don’t seem very excited by the prospect.” “I fear it will be dreadfully dull,” she admitted, “and positively overrun with children.” The Count nodded gravely to acknowledge the indisputable likelihood of children in the schoolhouse;

“The only difference between everybody and nobody is all the shoes.”

The Count’s assertion had seemed so axiomatic that he had not prepared an elaboration. So before responding, he signaled the Bishop for another glass of champagne. For centuries champagne has been used to launch marriages and ships. Most assume this is because the drink is so intrinsically celebratory; but, in fact, it is used at the onset of these dangerous enterprises because it so capably boosts one’s resolve. When the glass was placed on the table, the Count took a swig large enough to tickle his sinuses.

You may accuse a dog of eating without grace or of exhibiting a misplaced enthusiasm for the tossing of sticks, but you may never accuse one of giving up hope.

Naturally, the Count was disappointed by the news. After a discreet inquiry, he had learned that the evening’s special at the Boyarsky was roasted duck—the perfect dish for two old friends to share. And Andrey had promised to set aside a particular Grand Cru that not only complemented the duck, but would inevitably lead to a retelling of the infamous night when the Count had become locked in the Rothschilds’ wine cellar with the young Baroness.

Instinctively, the Count prepared to offer the woman a witty remark about the weather,

“It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life,” he began, “that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces. So I view it as an incredible stroke of good fortune at this stage in my life to have found such a fine new friend.”

On an ornate side table stood two towering arrangements of flowers—one of calla lilies and the other of long-stemmed roses. The fact that the two arrangements matched each other in extravagance while clashing in color suggested they were from competing admirers.

“Professor Lisitsky says that one must wrestle with mathematics the way that one wrestles with a bear.”

The Count took another look at the sheet in his hands with a heightened sense of respect. After all, an educated man should admire any course of study no matter how arcane, if it be pursued with curiosity and devotion.

the measure of fifteen minutes is entirely different for a man in step than for a man with nothing to do.

Paris had not been seated next to Helen when he dined in the court

Perhaps the Fates—who of all their children loved Reversal most—were set upon lifting his spirits.

the satisfaction that he had been of service to a friend.

For an instant, the Count considered sending him on his way and asking for a new table. But the Rostovs had always prided themselves on admitting when their behavior lacked charity.

As we age, we are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade. We are familiar with the songs our grandparents favored, after all, even though we never danced to them ourselves.

At festive holidays, the recipes we pull from the drawer are routinely decades old, and in some cases even written in the hand of a relative long since dead.

On this of all nights, was the Count disappointed that Nina and her young friend couldn’t join him for supper? Of course he was. And yet, the Count had always been of the opinion that God, who could easily have split the hours of darkness and light right down the middle, had chosen instead to make the days of summer longer for scientific expeditions of just this very sort.

the Count had a pleasant inkling that Boris might prove to be the first in a long line of earnest and attentive young men who would be dropping

the Count had a pleasant inkling that Boris might prove to be the first in a long line of earnest and attentive young men who would be dropping eggs from balustrades and riding bikes with buckets.

As he waited for the coffee to brew, he did thirty squats and thirty stretches and took thirty deep breaths.

twenty-fifth of February 1927, was the drafting of Article

headwaiter sighed in appreciation. Thanks

Nina Kulikova always was and would be a serious soul in search of serious ideas to be serious about.

Nina shook his hand just as soberly as she had shaken the Count’s and then walked across the square in the general direction of historical necessity.

To be conservative, the Count had set aside an hour for the lesson. It ended up taking eight hours over the course of four weeks.

“It’s true that we argued about ideas, Marina; but we never had any intention of doing anything about them.”

But having mastered the art of descending the stairs to a gathering of admirers, she had yet to master the art of ascending the stairs alone. (Perhaps no one has.)

“I invited him for a nightcap. He said he had an early start.” “I have never had an early start in my life,” said the Count.

gown in the closet), make herself comfortable with a book, and

Then at 5:30, if everything seemed in order, he might allow himself to sample the wine that he’d been cooking with—just to polish off the bottle, you understand; waste not want not; neither a borrower nor a lender be. And

“How would you know that I became a colonel?” “It is the business of a gentleman to distinguish between men of rank.” “The business of a gentleman,” the colonel repeated with a smile, as if he appreciated the turn of phrase.

as a boy in eastern Georgia dreamed of Moscow, and who as a man of thirty-nine in Moscow dreams of eastern Georgia.”

“But by all accounts,” continued Glebnikov, “you seem to have reconciled yourself to your situation.” “As both a student of history and a man devoted to living in the present, I admit that I do not spend a lot of time imagining how things might otherwise have been. But I do like to think there is a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it.”

no one in all of Moscow could write a report to such drab perfection. With limited instruction, he had perfected the art of withholding his insights, forgoing his witticisms, curbing the use of metaphors, similes, and analogies—in essence, exercising every muscle of poetic restraint

ever the professional, Audrius confined his surprise to the movement of his eyebrow.

Like the American correspondents, jazz seemed a naturally gregarious force

Like his counterpart on the chessboard, the Bishop of the Metropol never moved along the rank or file.

Of Andrey’s four-year-old son and Emile’s four-year-old lumbago.

feeling that this moment, this hour, this universe could not be improved upon.

what is rarely related is the fact that Life is every bit as devious as Death. It too can wear a hooded coat. It too can slip into town, lurk in an alley, or wait in the back of a tavern.

What is inevitable is that Life will pay Nina a visit too. She may be as sober as St. Augustine, but she is too alert and too vibrant for Life to let her shake a hand and walk off alone. Life will follow her in a taxi. It will bump into her by chance. It will work its way into her affections. And to do so, it will beg, barter, collude, and if necessary, resort to chicanery.

Yes, generally speaking such a remark falling from the lips of a statesman should be swept from the floor with the dust and the lint. But when it fell from the lips of Soso, one had good reason to lend it credence. For it was often through secondary remarks in secondary speeches that the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party signaled the shifts in his thinking.

not unlike that fellow in Genesis who said Let there be this, or Let there be that, and there was this or that, when Soso said Life has improved, comrades, life—in fact—improved!

not a seasoned conversationalist? At weddings and name

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.

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?”

(After all, isn’t that why the pages of books are numbered? To facilitate the finding of one’s place after a reasonable interruption?)

Quite simply, the Count’s father had believed that while a man should attend closely to life, he should not attend too closely to the clock.

A student of both the Stoics and Montaigne, the Count’s father believed that our Creator had set aside the morning hours for industry. That is, if a man woke no later than six, engaged in a light repast, and then applied himself without interruption, by the hour of noon he should have accomplished a full day’s labor.

the toll of twelve was a moment of reckoning. When the noon bell sounded, the diligent man could take pride in having made good use of the morning and sit down to his lunch with a clear conscience.

In the afternoon, the Count’s father believed that a man should take care not to live by the watch in his waistcoat—marking the minutes as if the events of one’s life were stations on a railway line. Rather, having been suitably industrious before lunch, he should spend his afternoon in wise liberty. That is, he should walk among the willows, read a timeless text, converse with a friend beneath the pergola, or reflect before the fire—engaging in those endeavors that have no appointed hour, and that dictate their own beginnings and ends.

And the second chime? The Count’s father was of the mind that one should never hear it. If one had lived one’s day well—in the service of industry, liberty, and the Lord—one should be soundly asleep long before twelve. So the second chime of the twice-tolling clock was most definitely a remonstrance.

Lifting the mattress onto its edge, he leaned it against the wall and warned it to stay put, if it knew what was good for it.

If you are ever in doubt, just remember that unlike adults, children want to be happy.

With a touch of ceremony, the Count ushered Sofia through the closet door into the study. “Ooo,” she said as she emerged on the other side. “Is this your secret room?” “It is our secret room,” the Count replied. Sofia nodded gravely to show that she understood. But then children understand the purpose of secret rooms better than they understand the purpose of congresses, courtrooms, and banks.

“Sofia, you do know how to count to two hundred?” “No,” she admitted. “But I can count to one hundred twice.”

“Well done,” said the Count, not meaning it.

Well aware of the difference between a gentleman and a cad, the Count counted until the room fell silent—that is, all the way to 222.

relentless if well-deserved pride in Shakespeare,

“Here was a man,” said Mishka to himself (as he stood in the middle of the sidewalk ignoring the passersby), “who once wrote with such fresh and unsentimental directness that his memories of youth became our memories of youth.”

it must have seemed that Russia had become the land of ten thousand lines. For there were lines at the tram stops, lines before the grocer, lines at the agencies of labor, education, and housing. But in point of fact, there were not ten thousand lines, or even ten. There was one all-encompassing line, which wound across the country and back through time.

“I gather you are an early riser, Alexander Ilyich,” he said after a moment of silence. “Men of purpose usually are.”

The Swiss diplomat, who spoke both Russian and Italian fluently, exemplified his nation’s reputation for neutrality by listening to both men with his mouth shut.

Stymied at the very instant of decisive action, the general expressed his exasperation with the fecklessness of civilians, walked into the prelate’s apartment, and tossed the goose out the window.

One of the advantages of working together for many years is that the daily rigmarole can be dispensed with quickly, leaving ample time for discussions of weightier concerns—such as rheumatism, the inadequacy of public transit, and the petty behavior of the inexplicably promoted

“Our churches, known the world over for their idiosyncratic beauty, for their brightly colored spires and improbable cupolas, we raze one by one. We topple the statues of old heroes and strip their names from the streets, as if they had been figments of our imagination. Our poets we either silence, or wait patiently for them to silence themselves.” Mishka picked up his fork, stuck it in the untouched veal, and raised it in the air. “Do you know that back in ’30, when they announced the mandatory collectivization of farming, half our peasants slaughtered their own livestock rather than give them up to the cooperatives? Fourteen million head of cattle left to the buzzards and flies.”

I suddenly understood that this propensity for self-destruction was not an abomination, not something to be ashamed of or abhorred; it was our greatest strength. We turn the gun on ourselves not because we are more indifferent and less cultured than the British, or the French, or the Italians. On the contrary. We are prepared to destroy that which we have created because we believe more than any of them in the power of the picture, the poem, the prayer, or the person.”

As I’ve said to you before, we and the Americans will lead the rest of this century because we are the only nations who have learned to brush the past aside instead of bowing before it. But where they have done so in service of their beloved individualism, we are attempting to do so in service of the common good.”

the Count wondered if Osip didn’t have his analysis upside down. Certainly, it seemed true that glittering musicals and slapstick comedies had flourished during the 1930s in America. But so too had jazz and skyscrapers. Were these also narcotics designed to put a restless nation to sleep? Or were they signs of a native spirit so irrepressible that even a Depression couldn’t squelch it?

“Oh, so that’s it,” said the captain, as if this would have been his fourth guess.

“Take that fellow Socrates. Two thousand years ago, he wandered around the marketplace sharing his thoughts with whomever he bumped into; and he wouldn’t even take the time to write them down. Then, in something of a fix, he punched his own ticket; pulled his own plug; collapsed his own umbrella. Adios. Adieu. Finis. “Time marched on, as it will. The Romans took over. Then the barbarians. And then we threw the whole Middle Ages at him. Hundreds of years of plagues and poisonings and the burning of books. And somehow, after all of that, the grand things this fellow happened to say in the marketplace are still with us.

as a species we’re just no good at writing obituaries. We don’t know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March. Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back.”

“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.

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.

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.

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?

when you have him by the lapels, he isn’t so easy to dispense with.

that is how he could be certain that what he was experiencing at that moment could not be referred to as pride. For there is something knowing in the state of pride. Look, it says, didn’t I tell you how special she is? How bright? How lovely? Well, now you can see it for yourself. But in listening to Sofia play Chopin, the Count had left the realm of knowing and entered the realm of astonishment.

“Viktor Stepanovich calls that the mood. He says that before one plays a note, one must discover an example of the composition’s mood hidden away in one’s heart. So for this piece, I think about my mother. I think of how my few memories of her seem to be fading, and then I begin to play.”

the tenure of friendships has never been governed by the passage of time. These two would have felt like old friends had they met just hours before. To some degree, this was because they were kindred spirits—finding ample evidence of common ground and cause for laughter in the midst of effortless conversation; but it was also almost certainly a matter of upbringing.

“One must make ends meet,” confirmed Audrius matter-of-factly, “or meet one’s end.”

For a moment, the Count considered going over to the young man, but he seemed to be applying his skills with such satisfaction that it would be a crime to interrupt him.

when life makes it impossible for a man to pursue his dreams, he will connive to pursue them anyway.

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!)

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.

When Sofia had selected the composition, the Count had attempted to signal his concerns diplomatically, by referring to the piece as “pleasant” and “quite diverting”; and then he had kept his peace.

It is one of the intrinsic limitations of being young, my dear, that you can never tell when a grand adventure has just begun.

“Alexander Ilyich,” he demanded: “What in the name of Ivan were you doing in the closet?” “In the closet?” asked the Count. “Why, I . . . I was . . .” His voice trailed off diminuendo. Andrey offered a sympathetic smile and then made a little sweeping motion with his hands, as if to say: The world is wide, and wondrous are the ways of men. . . . But Emile furrowed his brow at Andrey, as if to say: Nonsense.

“He was a loyal friend,” said the Count. “He was a man of devotions,” corrected Katerina.

But, of course, the Count also wept for himself. For despite his friendships with Marina and Andrey and Emile, despite his love for Anna, despite Sofia—that extraordinary blessing that had struck him from the blue—when Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich died, there went the last of those who had known him as a younger man. Though, as Katerina had so rightfully observed, at least he remained to remember.

It is a well-known fact that of all the species on earth Homo sapiens is among the most adaptable. Settle a tribe of them in a desert and they will wrap themselves in cotton, sleep in tents, and travel on the backs of camels; settle them in the Arctic and they will wrap themselves in sealskin, sleep in igloos, and travel by dog-drawn sled. And if you settle them in a Soviet climate? They will learn to make friendly conversation with strangers while waiting in line;

certainly one aspect of adaptation for those Russians who had seen Paris before the Revolution was the acceptance that they would never, ever see Paris again.

The daily meeting commenced with a detailed description of the evening’s special offerings. Naturally, the Bishop had dispensed with the tradition of tasting the specials, on the grounds that the chef knew perfectly well what his food tasted like,

Despite the fact that it was one of the last days of 1953, the Bishop opened the Book to the first page and turned through the weeks of the year one by one.

For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”

“I assure you, my dear, were you to play the piano on the moon, I would hear every chord.”

For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour—disdaining even to wear a watch—he took the greatest satisfaction when assuring a friend that a worldly matter could wait in favor of a leisurely lunch or a stroll along the embankment.

When all was said and done, the endeavors that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention.

the answer to this conundrum was provided by the philosopher Zeno in the fifth century B.C. Achilles, a man of action and urgency, trained to measure his exertions to the tenth of a second, should be able to quickly dispense with a twenty-yard dash. But in order to advance a yard, the hero must first advance eighteen inches; and in order to advance eighteen inches, he must first advance nine; but to advance nine, he must first advance four and a half, and so on. Thus, on his way to completing the twenty-yard dash, Achilles must traverse an infinite number of lengths—which, by definition, would take an infinite amount of time. By extension (as the Count had liked to point out), the man who has an appointment at twelve has an infinite number of intervals between now and then in which to pursue the satisfactions of the spirit.

just like the rousing of Humphrey Bogart’s indignation, the clock’s ticking revealed the Count to be a Man of Intent.

having snuck into the room of this American and arranged for a message to be delivered, it suddenly struck the Count that Humphrey Bogart would never turn down an offer of a drink after midnight. In fact, all evidence suggested that Bogart preferred his drinking after midnight

For a moment, the Man of Intent was a Man Who Didn’t Know What to Do.

Showing a sense of personal restraint that was almost out of character, the Count had restricted himself to two succinct pieces of parental advice. The first was that if one did not master one’s circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne’s maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.

Why was the Count so careful to ensure that all of this was covered on the night before Sofia’s journey? Because well he knew that when one is traveling abroad for the first time, one does not wish to look back on laborsome instructions, weighty advice, or tearful sentiments. Like the memory of the simple soup, when one is homesick what one will find most comforting to recall are those lighthearted little stories that have been told a thousand times before.

If when Sofia had stepped out of Anna’s room in her blue dress, the Count had felt she was crossing the threshold into adulthood, then here was a perfect confirmation. For in both tone and intent, when Sofia posed this question she did not do so as a child asks a parent,

Not one to be outmaneuvered by another man’s childishness, the Count pouted.

As much as we hate to admit the fact, Fate does not take sides. It is fair-minded and generally prefers to maintain some balance between the likelihood of success and failure in all our endeavors.

When a single telephone rings, our immediate instinct is to pick up the receiver and say hello. But when thirty ring at once, our instinct is to take two steps back and stare.