A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

It was now Emile’s turn to express disbelief: “Do we have cultural relations with foreign countries?”

Lol

The three were quiet, each lost for a moment in their respective memories of the City of Light. “Do you think it has changed?” wondered Andrey. “Yes,” said Emile. “As much as the pyramids.”

But to toast Fate is to tempt Fate;

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.”

Now if, as a rule, the Count generally avoided drinking after eleven, he absolutely never drank after midnight. In fact, he had even found himself quoting his father to Sofia on the subject, asserting that the only things that came from the practice were foolhardy acts, ill-advised liaisons, and gambling debts.

But at least he fared better than Lavrentiy Beria. The former head of the secret police, who many Western observers thought well positioned to inherit the throne when Stalin died, instead was decorated by the Party with a pistol shot to the head. And then there were six.]

“Maybe it’s a little preposterous,” conceded Osip, “but I don’t want to watch Casablanca.” Not one to be outmaneuvered by another man’s childishness, the Count pouted. “All right,” Osip sighed. “But if you get to pick the film, I get to pick the food.”

So, as he tiptoed into the Finns’ bedroom, he called upon Venus to veil him in a mist—just as she had for her son, Aeneas, when he wandered the streets of Carthage—so that his footfalls would be silent, his heartbeat still, and his presence in the room no more notable than a breath of air.

It has been said that Admiral Lord Nelson, having been blinded in one eye during the Battle of the Nile in 1798, three years later during the Battle of Copenhagen held his telescope to his dead eye when his commander raised the signal for retreat—thus continuing his attack until the Danish navy was willing to negotiate a truce.

For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.