A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

“But tell me, Alexander: What are we to make of his assertion that democracy is particularly suited to industry?” The Count leaned back in his chair and moved about his utensils. “Yes. The question of industry. That is an excellent place to dig in, Osip. Right at the heart of it. What do you make of it?” “But I was asking what you made of it, Alexander.” “And you shall hear what I think without fail. But as your tutor, I would be remiss were I to skew your impressions before you had the chance to formulate them yourself. So let us begin with the freshness of your thoughts.”

But it had been the Count’s experience that men prone to pace are always on the verge of acting impulsively.

when our lives are in flux, despite the comfort of our beds, we are bound to keep ourselves awake grappling with anxieties—no matter how great or small, how real or imagined.

They had created the poetry of silence.

“Yes, silence can be an opinion,” said Mishka. “Silence can be a form of protest. It can be a means of survival. But it can also be a school of poetry—one with its own meter, tropes, and conventions. One that needn’t be written with pencils or pens; but that can be written in the soul with a revolver to the chest.”

Popular wisdom tells us that when the reel of our concerns interferes with our ability to fall asleep, the best remedy is the counting of sheep in a meadow.

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

“I’m sorry, Papa. I was immersed in my reading.” “Hmm. And what might that be?” “It is an essay on cannibalism.” “An essay on cannibalism!” “By Michel de Montaigne.” “Ah. Yes. Well. That’s time well spent, I’m sure,” conceded the Count. But as he headed toward the study, he thought, Michel de Montaigne . . .? Then he shot a glance at the base of their bureau.

out with it—before we expire from anticipation.”

“Every country has its grand canvas, Sasha—the so-called masterpiece that hangs in a hallowed hall and sums up the national identity for generations to come. For the French it is Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People; for the Dutch, Rembrandt’s Night Watch; for the Americans, Washington Crossing the Delaware; and for we Russians? It is a pair of twins: Nikolai Ge’s Peter the Great Interrogating Alexei and Ilya Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son.

“Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle.”

but isn’t it possible that he is right in his opinions while being wrong in his sentiments?”

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.”

“Well then,” said Richard, gesturing to the empty bar, “you have come to the right place. Since days of old, well-mannered men have assembled in watering holes such as this one in order to unburden themselves in the company of sympathetic souls.” “Or strangers?” The captain raised a finger in the air. “There are no more sympathetic souls than strangers. So, what say we skip the preambling. Is it women? Money? Writer’s block?”

“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.

“I guess the point I’m trying to make is that as a species we’re just no good at writing obituaries.

Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back.”

How did he spend the ensuing minutes? How would any man spend them. He prayed for the first time since childhood. He allowed himself to imagine the worst, then assured himself that everything would be all right, reviewing the surgeon’s few remarks over and over.

For all the varied concerns attendant to the raising of a child—over schoolwork, dress, and manners—in the end, a parent’s responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment.

As the Count began to offer his thanks, the man in the black suit opened the door at the end of the hall once again, only this time it was for Osip Glebnikov. “Excuse me,” said the surgeon to the Count. Meeting halfway down the hall, Osip and Lazovsky conferred for a minute in lowered voices while the Count watched in astonishment. When the surgeon disappeared into the surgery, Osip joined the Count on the bench.

Cried1

“Alexander,” he said with a smile, “you have been at my service for over fifteen years. It is a pleasure for once to be at yours.”

Then for the first time that night, he let himself weep, his chest heaving lightly with the release.

Andrey had thought the whole venture rather preposterous—as if by keeping a few belongings in place, one might actually protect a moment from the relentless onslaught of time.

he worried that this carefully preserved room had begun to sustain rather than alleviate their grief;

“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. “Exactly!” said the Count. “So that they might remember, we must forget.

And if they fumble with their newfound liberty, we must remain composed, generous, judicious.

“I’ve never played an instrument in my life, but I understand something of music. To have played the opening measures of that piece with feelings so perfectly evocative of heartache, one can only assume that you have drawn on some wellspring of sorrow within yourself.”

“As a younger man, I used to feel the same way about my sister. Every year that passed, it seemed a little more of her had slipped away; and I began to fear that one day I would come to forget her altogether.

But the truth is: No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.”

“Ah,” said the Count. “Because a photograph cannot capture the feeling of a place!” “Actually,” replied the architect, “because a photograph too readily captures the condition of a place.”

“I suppose a room is the summation of all that has happened inside it.”

the tenure of friendships has never been governed by the passage of time.

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

The pace of evolution was not something to be frightened by. For while nature doesn’t have a stake in whether the wings of a peppered moth are black or white, it genuinely hopes that the peppered moth will persist. 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.

young beauties, the theater seemed to understand the virtues of age.

the bitterness of joy and the sweetness of despair.

Zut alors! was the only appropriate exclamation in the face of defeat.

“I know there is something quixotic in dreaming of the Former,” he continued, “but when all is said and done, if the Former is even a remote possibility, then how can one submit to the likelihood of the Latter? To do so would be contrary to the human spirit. So fundamental is our desire to catch a glimpse of another way of life, or to share a glimpse of our way of life with another, that even when the forces of the Latter have bolted the city’s doors, the forces of the Former will find a means to slip through the cracks.”

at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”

But even as the Count was delivering this quip, he was reminded by the expression on the Bishop’s face that one should generally avoid quips in which a man’s marriage played a part. . . . “I don’t see that my wife has anything to do with this,” said the Bishop. “No,” agreed the Count. “That was poorly put. What I am trying to say is that Andrey, Emile, and I—”

For it is the role of the parent to express his concerns and then take three steps back.

the applause when she finished! If only you could have heard it, Sasha. It shook the dust from the chandeliers.”

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

Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich was a man of devotions.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Katerina looked surprised at first by the Count’s offer, then ready to dismiss it. But after a moment, she said: “Remember him.”

generous yet temperamental soul who only briefly found his moment in time—and who, like this forlorn child, was disinclined to condemn the world for all its injustices.

“Well informed is well prepared,” said the Count.

“À tout à l’heure,” said the maître d’, as he headed down to the flower shop. “À bientôt,” said the Count as he headed up to his rooms.

The designs of men are notoriously subservient to happenstance, hesitation, and haste;