A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

If the Count were to close his eyes and roll to the wall, was it possible that he could return to his bench just in time to remark, What a lovely coincidence, when the three young ladies from Filippov’s happened by? Without a doubt. But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness.

A one-eyed Russian blue who let nothing within the hotel’s walls escape his notice, he had apparently come to the attic to review the Count’s new quarters for himself. Stepping from the shadows, he leapt from the floor to the Ambassador, from the Ambassador to the side table, and from the side table to the top of the three-legged bureau, without making a sound. Having achieved this vantage point, he gave the room a good hard look then shook his head in feline disappointment. “Yes,” said the Count after completing his own survey. “I see what you mean.”

Why, this clock accounted the seconds as flawlessly as Homer accounted his dactyls and Peter the sins of the sinners.

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? (As if henceforth all the world would see her solely from that angle!) How often had he seen a grande dame don a hat that was horribly out of fashion, but that seemed au courant to her because her mirror had been framed in the style of the same bygone era? 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.

Yes, thought the Count, the world does spin. In fact, it spins on its axis even as it revolves around the sun. And the galaxy turns as well, a wheel within a greater wheel, producing a chime of an entirely different nature than that of a tiny hammer in a clock. And 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.

“Where did they go?” she asked, without a word of introduction. “I beg your pardon. Where did who go?” She tilted her head to take a closer look at his face. “Why, your moustaches.” The Count had not much cause to interact with children, but he had been raised well enough to know that a child should not idly approach a stranger, should not interrupt him in the middle of a meal, and certainly should not ask him questions about his personal appearance. Was the minding of one’s own business no longer a subject taught in schools? “Like swallows,” the Count answered, “they traveled elsewhere for the summer.” Then he fluttered a hand from the table into the air in order to both mimic the flight of the swallows and suggest how a child might follow suit.

But in all likelihood, 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.

Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence—one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.