A Gentleman in Moscow Read Online Free PDF Page B

Count’s table, he looked him up and down as one might measure an opponent before challenging him to a duel.
    â€œ
Bravo, monsieur
,” he said in a tone of indignation. “
Bravo!
”
    Then he turned on his heels and disappeared back into his kitchen.
    Andrey, a little breathless, bowed to express both apologies and congratulations.
    â€œNettle it was, Your Excellency. Your palate remains unsurpassed.”
    Though the Count was not a man to gloat, he could not repress a smile of satisfaction.
    Knowing that the Count had a sweet tooth, Andrey gestured toward the dessert cart.
    â€œMay I bring you a slice of plum tart with our compliments . . . ?”
    â€œThank you for the thought, Andrey. Normally, I would leap at the chance. But tonight, I am otherwise committed.”

    Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them, the Count thought it worth consideringhow one was most likely to achieve this aim when one had been sentenced to a life of confinement.
    For Edmond Dantès in the Château d’If, it was thoughts of revenge that kept him clear minded. Unjustly imprisoned, he sustained himself by plotting the systematic undoing of his personal agents of villainy. For Cervantes, enslaved by pirates in Algiers, it was the promise of pages as yet unwritten that spurred him on. While for Napoleon on Elba, strolling among chickens, fending off flies, and sidestepping puddles of mud, it was visions of a triumphal return to Paris that galvanized his will to persevere.
    But the Count hadn’t the temperament for revenge; he hadn’t the imagination for epics; and he certainly hadn’t the fanciful ego to dream of empires restored. No. His model for mastering his circumstances would be a different sort of captive altogether: an Anglican washed ashore. Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair, the Count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of
practicalities
. Having dispensed with dreams of quick discovery, the world’s Crusoes seek shelter and a source of fresh water; they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island’s topography, its climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand.
    It was to this end that the Count had given the old Greek three notes to deliver. Within a matter of hours, the Count had been visited by two messengers: a young lad from Muir & Mirrielees bearing fine linens and a suitable pillow; and another from Petrovsky Passage with four bars of the Count’s favorite soap.
    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.

An Appointment
    N ever had the chime of twelve been so welcome. Not in Russia. Not in Europe. Not in all the world. Had Romeo been told by Juliet that she would appear at her window at noon, the young Veronan’s rapture at the appointed hour could not have matched the Count’s. Had Dr. Stahlbaum’s children—Fritz and Clara—been told on Christmas morning that the drawing-room doors would be opened at midday, their elation could not have rivaled the Count’s upon the sounding of the first toll.
    For having successfully fended off thoughts of Tverskaya Street (and chance encounters with young ladies of fashion), having bathed, dressed, and finished his coffee and fruit (today a fig), shortly after ten the Count had eagerly taken up Montaigne’s masterpiece only to discover that at every fifteenth line, his gaze was drifting toward the clock . . .
    Admittedly, the Count had felt a touch of concern when he’d first lifted the book from the desk the day before. For as a single volume, it had the density of a dictionary or Bible—those books that one expects to consult, or possibly peruse, but never
read
. But it was the