A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

“A king fortifies himself with a castle,” observed the Count, “a gentleman with a desk.”

Arriving late, thought the Count with a sigh. What a delicacy of youth.

But as the young Count was gripping his blanket in misery, he was visited by his grandmother. Taking a seat at the foot of the bed, the Countess expressed a measure of sympathy: “There is nothing pleasant to be said about losing,” she began, “and the Obolensky boy is a pill. But, Sasha, my dear, why on earth would you give him the satisfaction?”

It was in this spirit that he and his grandmother parted without tears on the docks in Peterhof.

From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion. But, of course, a thing is just a thing.

On this of all nights, the Count deeply appreciated their good cheer; but he was not so vain as to imagine it was founded solely on news of his narrow escape. For as he knew better than most, it was in September of 1905 that the members of the Delegation had signed the Treaty of Portsmouth to end the Russo-Japanese War. In the seventeen years since the making of that peace—hardly a generation—Russia had suffered a world war, a civil war, two famines, and the so-called Red Terror. In short, it had been through an era of upheaval that had spared none. Whether one’s leanings were left or right, Red or White, whether one’s personal circumstances had changed for the better or changed for the worse, surely at long last it was time to drink to the health of the nation.

if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.

This is the overall theme, of how the count rises above his circumstances, to live a fulfilling life in the premises of the Metropol

Count would ask the young lady with the light blue apron for a mille-feuille

thousand-layered complications of their hearts.

But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness.

Life will entice, after all.

By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End

“Surely, by now, every pillow in the household has been graced by a butterfly and every handkerchief by a monogram.” And when he accused her of unwinding her stitches at night like Penelope just so that he would have to read her another volume of verse, she would smile inscrutably.

Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them,

And the third respondent? She must have arrived while the Count was at dinner. For waiting on his bed was a light blue box with a single mille-feuille.

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.

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.

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

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

How humbly it bows its head as the emperor is dragged down the steps and tossed in the street. But then, having quietly bided its time, while helping the newly appointed leader on with his jacket,

it compliments his appearance and suggests the wearing of a medal or two. Or, having served him at a formal dinner, it wonders aloud if a taller chair might not have been more fitting for a man with such responsibilities. The soldiers of the common man may toss the banners of the old regime on the victory pyre, but soon enough trumpets will blare and pomp will take it...

“If only I were there and she were here,” she sighed. And there, thought the Count, was a suitable plaint for all mankind.

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.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

man can never be entirely sure that he is not a fuddy-duddy. That is axiomatic to the term.”

Not ten years before, all of Moscow society would have been gathered in their finery under the grand chandeliers to dance the mazurka and toast the Tsar. But after witnessing a few of the Assemblies, the Count had come to an even more astonishing conclusion: that despite the Revolution, the room had barely changed at all.

“With all due respect to poetic concision, the male of the species was endowed with a pair when a single might have sufficed.”

“Mine as well. And 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?”

“According to local lore, hidden deep within the forest was a tree with apples as black as coal—and if you could find this tree and eat of its fruit, you could start your life anew.”

Black apple to start life a new

Then he would shed this mortal coil, once and for all.

“Yes, yes. I know what you’re going to say: that every nation has its poets in the pantheon. But with Chekhov and Tolstoy, we Russians have set the bronze bookends on the mantelpiece of narrative. Henceforth, writers of fictions from wheresoever they hail, will place themselves on the continuum that begins with the one and ends with the other. For who, I ask you, has exhibited better mastery of the shorter form than Chekhov in his flawless little stories? Precise and uncluttered, they invite us into some corner of a household at some discrete hour in which the entire human condition is suddenly within reach, if heartbreakingly so. While at the other extreme: Can you conceive of a work greater in scope than War and Peace? One that moves so deftly from the parlor to the battlefield and back again? That so fully investigates how the individual is shaped by history, and history by the individual? In the generations to come, I tell you there will be no new authors to supplant these two as the alpha and omega of narrative.”

History is the business of identifying momentous events from the comfort of a high-back chair. With the benefit of time, the historian looks back and points to a date in the manner of a gray-haired field marshal pointing to a bend in a river on a map: There it was, he says. The turning point. The decisive factor. The fateful day that fundamentally altered all that was to follow.

Established in 1923, the OGPU replaced the Cheka as Russia’s central organ of the secret police. In 1934, the OGPU would be replaced by the NKVD, which in turn would be replaced by the MGB in 1943 and the KGB in 1954. On the surface, this may seem confusing. But the good news is that unlike political parties, artistic movements, or schools of fashion—which go through such sweeping reinventions—the methodologies and intentions of the secret police never change. So you should feel no need to distinguish one acronym from the next.]

(after all, despite its considerable size, the neck of a dragon has been known to whip about like that of an asp).

That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love.

“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.”

It was the symphony or silence.

bouillabaisse.

Would love to try this out

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

Since the beginning of storytelling, he explained, Death has called on the unwitting.

Then just when the hero has a moment of respite from his daily affairs, Death pays him a visit.

“Allow me to tell you what is inevitable. 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.

Didnt really follow

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

Left to themselves, the words who, what, why, when, and where do not a conversation make.

just remember that unlike adults, children want to be happy. So they still have the ability to take the greatest pleasure in the simplest things.”

It was true, his father said, that in a relatively static environment the pace of evolution should decelerate, as individual species have little new to adapt to. But environments are never static for long. The forces of nature inevitably unleash themselves in such a manner that the necessity for adaptation will be stirred.

And that is why nature designed the forces of evolution to play out over generations rather than eons—to ensure that moths and men have a chance to adapt.

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

Papa, when they put the dirt on my grave, crumble a crust of BREAD on it so the sparrows will come, and I’ll hear that they’ve come and be glad that I’m not lying alone.

Here in Berlin, we’ve taken a comfortable room in the best hotel. I am very much enjoying the life here and haven’t eaten so well and with such an appetite in a long time. The BREAD here is amazing, I’ve been stuffing myself with it, the coffee is excellent, and the dinners are beyond words. People who have never been abroad don’t know how good BREAD can be. . . .