Achilles Agonistes

   Greetings, Arkady.”

“Greetings to you, Count Rostov. Is there something I can do for you this morning?”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you spare a bit of stationery?”

“Certainly.”

Standing at the front desk, the Count penned a one-sentence note under the hotel’s moniker and addressed the envelope in an appropriately slanted script; he waited until the bell captain was otherwise occupied, casually crossed the lobby, slipped the note onto the bell captain’s desk, and then headed downstairs for his weekly visit to the barber.

It had been many years since Yaroslav Yaroslavl had worked his magic in the barbershop of the Metropol, and in the interim any number of successors had attempted to fill his shoes. The most recent fellow—Boris Something-or-other-ovich—was perfectly qualified to shorten a man’s hair; but he was neither the artist nor the conversationalist that Yaroslav had been. In fact, he went about his business with such mute efficiency, one suspected he was part machine.

“Trim?” he asked the Count, wasting no time with subjects, verbs, or the other superfluities of language.

Given the Count’s thinning hair and the barber’s predisposition to efficiency, a trim might take all of ten minutes.

“Yes, a trim,” said the Count. “But perhaps a shave as well. . . .”

The barber furrowed his brow. The man in him, no doubt, was inclined to point out that the Count had obviously shaved a few hours before; but the machinery in him was so finely tuned, it was already putting down the scissors and reaching for the shaving brush.

Having whipped a sufficient lather, Boris dabbed it on those areas of the Count’s face where whiskers would have been had the Count been in need of a shave. He sharpened one of his razors on his strop, leaned over the chair, and with an unflinching hand shaved the Count’s right upper cheek in a single pass. Wiping the blade on the towel at his waist, he then leaned over the Count’s left upper cheek, and shaved it with equal alacrity.

At this rate, fretted the Count, he’ll be done in a minute and a half.

Using a bent knuckle, the barber now raised the Count’s chin. The Count could feel the metal of the razor make contact with his throat. And that’s when one of the new bellhops appeared in the door.

“Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes?” said the barber with his blade held fast at the Count’s jugular.

“I have a note for you.”

“On the bench.”

“But it is urgent,” said the young man with some anxiety.

“Urgent?”

“Yes, sir. From the manager.”

The barber looked back at the bellhop for the first time.

“The manager?”

“Yes, sir.”

After an extended exhalation, the barber removed the blade from the Count’s throat, accepted the missive, and—as the bellhop disappeared down the hall—slit the envelope open with his razor.

Unfolding the note, the barber stared at it for a full minute. In those sixty seconds, he must have read it ten times over because it was composed of only four words: Come see me immediately!

The barber exhaled again then looked at the wall.

“I can’t imagine,” he said to no one. Then having thought it over for another minute, he turned to the Count: “I must see to something.”

“By all means. Do what you must. I am in no hurry.”

To underscore his point, the Count leaned back his head and closed his eyes as if to nap; but when the barber’s footsteps had receded down the hall, the Count leapt from the chair like a cat.

 

When the Count was a young man, he prided himself on the fact that he was unmoved by the ticking of the clock. In the early years of the twentieth century, there were those of his acquaintance who brought a new sense of urgency to their slightest endeavor. They timed the consumption of their breakfast, the walk to their office, and the hanging of their hat on its hook with as much precision as if they were preparing for a military campaign. They answered the phone on the first ring, scanned the headlines, limited their conversations to whatever was most germane, and generally spent their days in pursuit of the second hand. God bless them.

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. After all, did not wine improve with age? Was it not the passage of years that gave a piece of furniture its delightful patina? 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.

Cups of tea and friendly chats! the modern man objects. If one is to make time for such idle pursuits, how could one ever attend to the necessities of adulthood?

Luckily, 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.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

But ever since Sofia returned home that night in late December with word of the Conservatory’s tour, the Count had had a very different perspective on the passage of time. Before they’d even finished celebrating the news, he’d calculated that less than six months remained before she was scheduled to depart. One hundred and seventy-eight days, to be exact; or 356 chimings of the twice-tolling clock. And in that brief span, there was so much to be done. . . .

Given the Count’s membership as a younger man to the ranks of the purposefully unrushed, one might have expected the ticking of this clock to buzz around his ears like a mosquito in the night; or prompt him, like Oblomov, to turn on his side and face the wall in a state of malaise. But what occurred was the opposite. In the days that followed, it brightened his step, sharpened his senses, and quickened his wits. For just like the rousing of Humphrey Bogart’s indignation, the clock’s ticking revealed the Count to be a Man of Intent.

In the last week of December, one of the Catherines the Count had retrieved from the Grand Duke’s desk was brought by Vasily to the basement of TsUM and cashed in for store credit. With the proceeds, the concierge purchased a small tan valise along with other necessities of travel, such as a towel, soap, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. These were wrapped in festive paper and presented to Sofia on Christmas Eve (at midnight).

Per Director Vavilov, Sofia’s performance of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto was to be the penultimate piece on the program, followed by a violin prodigy’s performance of a Dvorak concerto, both with full orchestra. The Count had no doubt that Rachmaninov’s Second was well within Sofia’s grasp; but even Horowitz had his Tarnowsky. So in early January, the Count hired Viktor Stepanovich to help her rehearse.

In late January, the Count commissioned Marina to fashion a new dress for the concert. After a design meeting that included Marina, Anna, and Sofia—and which, for some incomprehensible reason, excluded the Count—Vasily was dispatched back to TsUM for a bolt of blue taffeta.

Over the years, the Count had done an adequate job of teaching Sofia the rudiments of conversational French. Nonetheless, beginning in February, father and daughter set aside games of Zut in order to review the more practical applications of the French language while they awaited their appetizers.

“Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, avez-vous l’heure, s’il vous plaît?”

“Oui, Mademoiselle, il est dix heures.”

“Merci. Et pourriez-vous me dire où se trouvent les Champs-Élysées?”

“Oui, continuez tout droit dans cette direction.”

“Merci beaucoup.”

“Je vous en prie.”

Early in March, for the first time in years, the Count visited the Metropol’s basement. Passing by the furnace and electrical rooms, he made his way to the little corner where the hotel stowed those items left behind by guests. Kneeling before the shelf of books, he scanned the spines, paying special attention to those little red volumes with gold lettering: the Baedekers. Naturally enough, the majority of travel guides in the basement were dedicated to Russia, but a few were for other countries, having presumably been discarded at the end of an extended tour. Thus, scattered among the abandoned novels, the Count discovered one Baedeker for Italy; one for Finland; one for England; and, finally, two for the city of Paris.

Then on the twenty-first of March, the Count penned the slanted one-sentence insistence under the hotel’s moniker, slipped it on the bell captain’s desk, went on his weekly visit to the barber, and waited for the note to arrive. . . .

 

Having poked his head into the hallway in order to watch Boris mount the stairs, the Count closed the barbershop door and turned his attention to Yaroslav’s renowned glass cabinet. At the front of the cabinet were two rows of large white bottles bearing the insignia of the Hammer and Sickle Shampoo Company. But behind these soldiers in the fight for universal cleanliness, all but forgotten, was a selection of the brightly colored bottles from the old days. Taking out several of the shampoo bottles, the Count surveyed the tonics, soaps, and oils—but couldn’t find what he was looking for.

It must be here, he thought.

The Count began moving the bottles about like chess pieces—to see what was hiding behind what. And there, tucked in the corner behind two vials of French cologne, covered in dust, was that little black bottle that Yaroslav Yaroslavl had referred to with a wink as the Fountain of Youth.

The Count put the bottle in his pocket, reloaded the cabinet, and closed its doors. Scurrying back into his chair, he smoothed his smock and leaned back his head; but even as he closed his eyes, he was struck by the image of Boris slitting open the envelope with his razor. Leaping again from the chair, the Count snatched one of the spares from the counter, slipped it into his pocket, and resumed his place—just as the barber came through the door grumbling about fools’ errands and wasted time.

 

Upstairs in his room, the Count put the little black bottle at the back of his drawer then sat at his desk with the Paris Baedeker. Consulting the table of contents, he turned to the fiftieth page, where the section on the 8th arrondissement began. Sure enough, before the descriptions of the Arc de Triomphe and the Grand Palais, of the Madeleine and Maxim’s, was a thin paper foldout with a detailed map of the neighborhood. Taking Boris’s razor from his pocket, the Count used the edge to cut the map cleanly from its guide; then with a red pen he carefully drew a zigzagging line from the Avenue George V to Rue Pierre Charron and down the Champs-Élysées.

When he was done with the map, the Count went to his study and retrieved his father’s copy of Montaigne’s Essays from the bookcase where it had resided in comfort ever since Sofia had liberated it from under the bureau. Taking the book back to the Grand Duke’s desk, the Count began turning through the pages, stopping here and there to read the passages his father had underlined. As he was lingering over a particular section in “Of the Education of Children,” the twice-tolling clock began to signal the hour of noon.

One hundred and seventy-three chimings to go, thought the Count.

Then issuing a sigh, he shook his head, crossed himself twice, and with Boris’s razor began removing the text from two hundred pages of the masterpiece.

 Arrivederci

   One evening in early May, as the Count sat in the high-back chair between the potted palms, over the top of his newspaper he spied the young Italian couple exiting the elevator. She was a long, dark beauty in a long, dark dress, and he a shorter man in slacks and jacket. The Count wasn’t certain what had brought the couple to Moscow, but they reliably left the hotel every evening at seven o’clock, presumably to avail themselves of the city’s nightlife. Case in point, when they stepped off the elevator at 6:55 they walked straight to the concierge’s desk, where Vasily was ready with two tickets for Boris Godunov and a reservation for a late supper. Then the couple swung by the front desk in order to drop off their key, which Arkady stowed in the twenty-eighth slot of the fourth row.

Laying his newspaper on the table, the Count rose, yawned, and stretched. He strolled toward the revolving door as one who wishes to gauge the weather. Outside on the steps, Rodion exchanged greetings with the young couple, signaled a taxi, and held the back door open for them. When they drove off, the Count spun on his heels and crossed the lobby to the stairs. Taking the steps one at a time (as had been his habit since 1952), he ascended to the fourth floor, traversed the hallway, and stopped before the twenty-eighth door. Easing two fingers into the ticket pocket of his vest, he extracted Nina’s key. Then with a look left and a look right, he let himself inside.

The Count had not been in room 428 since the early 1930s—when Anna was attempting to revive her career—but he wasted no time in assessing how the décor of the little sitting room had changed. Rather, he went straight into the bedroom and opened the left closet door. It was filled with dresses exactly like the one the dark beauty had been wearing tonight: knee length, short sleeved, monochromatic. (It was a look that suited her well, after all.) Closing her side of the closet, the Count opened the companion door. Inside were slacks and jackets on hangers, and the flat cap of a newsboy on a hook. Selecting a pair of tan pants, he closed the door. In the second drawer of the bureau, he found a white oxford. Removing a folded pillowcase from his pocket, he stuffed the clothes inside. He returned to the sitting room, opened the door a crack, confirmed the hallway was empty, and slipped out.

Only with the click of the latch did it occur to the Count that he should have taken the cap. But even as he poked his fingers back into his vest pocket, he heard the unmistakable sound of squeaking wheels. Taking three strides down the hallway, the Count disappeared into the belfry—just as Oleg from room service turned the corner, pushing his cart before him.

 

At eleven o’clock that night, the Count was in the Shalyapin reviewing his checklist over a snifter of brandy. The Catherines, the Baedeker, the Fountain of Youth, the slacks and shirt, a heavy-duty needle and thread from Marina were all in hand. There were still a few things to accomplish, but only one significant loose end: the matter of notice. From the beginning, the Count had known that this would prove the most difficult element of the plan to achieve. After all, one could not simply send a telegram. But it wasn’t absolutely essential. If left no alternative, the Count was prepared to proceed without it.

The Count emptied his glass with the intention of heading upstairs, but before he rose from his stool Audrius was there with the bottle.

“A splash on the house?”

Ever since turning sixty, the Count had generally refrained from alcohol after eleven, having found that late-night drinks, like unsettled children, were likely to wake you at three or four in the morning. But it would have been rude for the Count to refuse the bartender’s offer, especially after he had gone to the trouble of uncorking the bottle. So, accepting the splash with an appropriate expression of gratitude, the Count made himself comfortable and turned his attention to the small group of Americans laughing at the other end of the bar.

Once again, the source of good humor was the hapless salesman from Montclair, New Jersey. Having initially struggled to get anyone of influence on the phone, in April the American began securing face-to-face meetings with senior bureaucrats in every conceivable branch of government. He had met personally with officials at the People’s Commissariats of Food, Finance, Labor, Education, and even Foreign Affairs. Knowing that a vending machine had as much chance of selling in the Kremlin as a portrait of George Washington, the journalists had watched this turn of events in amazement. That is, until they learned that to better illustrate the function of his machines, Webster had asked his father to send him fifty cases of American cigarettes and chocolate bars. Thus, the salesman who had not been able to secure an appointment was suddenly welcomed into a hundred offices with open arms—and ushered out empty-handed.

“I really thought I had one on the line today,” he was saying.

As the American launched into the particulars of his near success, the Count was inevitably reminded of Richard, who was almost as wide-eyed as Webster, equally gregarious, and just as ready to tell a humorous tale at his own expense.

The Count set his glass down on the bar.

I wonder, he thought. Could it be possible?

But before the Count could answer his own question, the pudgy American waved a friendly hand at someone in the lobby—and who should return the wave but a certain eminent professor. . . .

 

Shortly after midnight, the American settled his bill at the bar, patted his companions on the shoulder, and wound up the stairs whistling an approximation of “The Internationale.” In the hallway on the fourth floor, he fumbled with his keys. But once the door to his room was closed, his posture became a little more straight, his expression a little more sober.

That’s when the Count switched on the lamp.

Though presumably startled to find a stranger sitting in one of his chairs, the American didn’t jump back or shout.

“Excuse me,” he said with the smile of the inebriated. “I must be in the wrong room.”

“No,” said the Count. “You are in the right room.”

“Well, if I am in the right room, then it must be you who are in the wrong room. . . .”

“Perhaps,” said the Count. “But I don’t think so.”

The American took a step forward and studied his uninvited guest with a little more care.

“Aren’t you the waiter in the Boyarsky?”

“Yes,” said the Count. “I am the waiter.”

The American nodded slowly.

“I see. Mr. . . . ?”

“Rostov. Alexander Rostov.”

“Well, Mr. Rostov, I’d offer you a drink, but the hour is late and I have a rather early appointment. Is there something else I can do for you?”

“Yes, Mr. Webster, I suspect that there is. You see, I have a letter that I need delivered to a friend in Paris, whom I think that you might know. . . .”

 

Despite the late hour and early appointment, Pudgy Webster ended up offering the Count a glass of whiskey, after all.

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 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—when the orchestra had stopped playing, the barstools had emptied, and the revelers had stumbled off into the night. That was the hour when, with the saloon doors closed, the lights turned low, and a bottle of whiskey on the table, Men of Intent could speak without the distractions of love and laughter.

“Yes, thank you,” said the Count to Mr. Webster. “A glass of whiskey might just hit the spot.”

And as it turned out, the Count’s instincts had been perfectly right, for the glass of whiskey hit the spot. As did the second.

So when he finally bid Mr. Webster goodnight (with a package of American cigarettes for Anna in one pocket and a chocolate bar for Sofia in the other), the Count headed homeward in an elevated frame of mind.

The fourth-floor hallway was empty and still. Behind the line of closed doors slept the practical and predictable, the cautious and comfortable. Tucked under their covers, they dreamt of breakfast, leaving the hallways of night to be walked by the likes of Samuel Spadsky and Philip Marlov and Alexander Ilyich Rostov. . . .

“Yes,” said the Count as he weaved down the hall: “I am the waiter.”

Then with the finely attuned senses of his brotherhood, the Count noticed something suggestive out of the corner of his eye. It was the door to room 428.

Boris Godunov was a production of three and a half hours. A post-theater supper would last an hour and a half. So, in all likelihood, the Italians would not return to the hotel for another thirty minutes. The Count knocked and waited; he knocked again to be sure; then retrieving the key from his vest, he unlocked the door and crossed the threshold clear-eyed, quick, and without compunction.

In a glance, he could see that the night service had already visited the suite, for everything was in its proper place: the chairs, the magazines, the carafe of water and glasses. In the bedroom, he found the corners of the bed turned down at an angle of forty-five degrees.

Opening the right closet door, he was about to take the newsboy’s cap off its hook when he noticed something he’d missed before. On the shelf above the clothes was a bundle wrapped in paper and tied with twine—a bundle about the size of a small statuette. . . .

Putting the newsboy’s cap on his head, the Count took the bundle off the shelf and laid it on the bed. He untied the string and carefully peeled back the paper—only to find a set of Russian nesting dolls. Painted in a simple if traditional style, available in a hundred Moscow shops, the matryoshka was just that sort of whimsical toy that two parents would bring home to their child from a trip to Russia.

And in which they could easily hide something . . .

Sitting on the bed, the Count opened the largest of the nesting dolls. Then he opened the second largest of the nesting dolls. Then he opened the third largest of the nesting dolls. And he was about to open the fourth, when he heard a key in the lock.

For a moment, the Man of Intent was a Man Who Didn’t Know What to Do. But at the sound of the hallway door opening and the two Italian voices, the Count swept up the halves of the dolls, slipped into the closet, and quietly closed the door.

The shelf that ran above the hanging bar must have been less than six feet off the ground, because in order to fit in the closet, the Count had to bend his head like a penitent. (Point taken.)

It took only a few moments for the couple to shed their coats and come into the bedroom. If they went into the bathroom to perform their nightly toilette together, thought the Count, he would have the perfect opportunity to escape. But room 428 had only a small bath, and rather than crowd each other at the sink, the husband and wife chose to take turns.

Listening closely, the Count could hear the brushing of respective teeth, the opening of drawers, and the donning of pajamas. He could hear the bedsheets being pulled back. He could hear some quiet conversation, the lifting of books, and the turning of pages. After fifteen minutes, or an eternity, there was an exchange of endearments, a delicate kiss, and the lights went out. By the grace of God, this fine-looking couple opted for rest over intimacy. . . .

But how long, the Count wondered, would it take for them to fall asleep? Being careful not to move a muscle, he listened to their breathing. He heard a cough; a sniff; a sigh. Then someone rolling on their side. He might have worried about falling asleep himself, if it weren’t for the crippling pain in his neck and the creeping realization that he would soon need a toilette of his own.

Well, there you have it, thought the Count: one more reason not to drink after midnight . . .

 

“Che cos ’era questo?! Tesoro, svegliati!”

“Cos’è?”

“C’è qualcuno nella stanza!”

. . .

[Bump]

“Chi è la?”

“Scusa.”

“Claudio! Accendi la luce!”

[Bam]

“Scusa.”

[Crash]

“Arrivederci!”