“First stop,” the Count said, pulling open the heavy steel door that led into the boiler room. The Bishop hesitated, so the Count poked him with the barrel of the gun. “Over there.” Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, the Count opened the small door in the furnace. “In they go,” he said.
Without a word, the Bishop fed the flames with his files. Perhaps it was his proximity to the furnace, or the exertion of carrying the stack of dossiers down two flights of stairs, but the Bishop had begun to sweat in a manner that was distinctly out of character.
“Come on,” said the Count. “Next stop.”
Once outside the boiler room, the Count prodded the Bishop down the hall to the cabinet of curiosities.
“There. On the lower shelf. Get that small red book.”
The Bishop did as he was told and handed the Count the Baedeker for Finland.
The Count nodded his head to indicate they were headed farther into the basement. The Bishop now looked quite pale, and after a few steps it seemed his knees might buckle beneath him.
“Just a little farther,” coaxed the Count. And a moment later they were at the bright blue door.
Taking Nina’s key from his pocket, the Count opened it. “In you go,” he said.
The Bishop stepped in and turned. “What are you going to do with me?”
“I’m not going to do anything with you.”
“Then when are you coming back?”
“I am never coming back.”
“You can’t leave me here,” said the Bishop. “It could be weeks before someone finds me!”
“You attend the daily meeting of the Boyarsky, comrade Leplevsky. If you were listening at the last one, you’d recall that there is a banquet on Tuesday night in the ballroom. I have no doubt that someone will find you then.”
At which point, the Count closed the door and locked the Bishop into that room where pomp bides its time.
They should get along just famously, thought the Count.
It was three in the morning when the Count entered the belfry on the lobby floor. As he climbed, he felt the relief of the narrow escape. Reaching in his pocket, he removed the stolen passport and the Finnish marks and tucked them in the Baedeker. But when he turned the corner on the fourth floor, a shiver ran down his spine. For on the landing just above him was the ghost of the one-eyed cat. From his elevated position, the cat looked down upon this Former Person—who was standing there in his stocking feet with pistols in his belt and stolen goods in his hand.
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.
Though this story was a favorite of the Grand Duke’s and often retold to the young Count as an example of courageous perseverance in the face of impossible odds, the Count had always suspected it was a little apocryphal. After all, in the midst of armed conflicts, facts are bound to be just as susceptible to injury as ships and men, if not more so. But at the onset of the summer solstice of 1954, the one-eyed cat of the Metropol turned his blind eye upon the Count’s ill-gotten gains, and without the slightest expression of disappointment, disappeared down the stairs.
Apotheoses
Despite having gone to bed at four in the morning, on the twenty-first of June the Count rose at his usual hour. He did five squats, five stretches, and took five deep breaths. He breakfasted on coffee, a biscuit, and his daily fruit (today an assortment of berries), after which he went downstairs to read the papers and chat with Vasily. He lunched in the Piazza. In the afternoon, he paid a visit to Marina in the stitching room. As it was his day off, at seven o’clock he had an aperitif at the Shalyapin, where he marveled at the arrival of summer with the ever-attentive Audrius. And at eight, he dined at table ten in the Boyarsky. Which is to say, he treated the day much as he treated any other. Except that when he left the restaurant at ten, having told Nadja that the manager wished to see her, he slipped inside the empty coatroom in order to borrow the raincoat and fedora of the American journalist, Salisbury.
Back on the sixth floor, the Count dug to the bottom of his old trunk in order to retrieve the rucksack that he had used in 1918 on his trek from Paris to Idlehour. As on that journey, this time he would travel only with the bare necessities. That is, three changes of clothing, a toothbrush and toothpaste, Anna Karenina, Mishka’s project, and, finally, the bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape that he intended to drink on the fourteenth of June 1963—ten years to the day after his old friend’s death.
Gathering up his things, the Count paid one last visit to his study. So many years before, he had bid adieu to a whole household. Then a few years later he had bid adieu to a suite. Now, he was to bid adieu to a room that was one hundred feet square. It was, without question, the smallest room that he had occupied in his life; yet somehow, within those four walls the world had come and gone. With that thought, the Count tipped his hat to Helena’s portrait and switched out the light.
At the same time that the Count was descending to the lobby, Sofia was concluding her performance on the stage of the Salle Pleyel in Paris. Rising from the piano, she turned to the audience almost in a state of wonder—for whenever Sofia performed, she so fully immersed herself in her playing, that she tended to forget there was anyone listening. But having been brought back to her senses by the sound of applause, she did not forget to gesture graciously toward the orchestra and her conductor before taking one final bow.
Immediately offstage, Sofia received a formal congratulations from the cultural attaché and a heartfelt embrace from Director Vavilov. It was her finest performance yet, he said. But then the two men turned their attention back to the stage, where the violin prodigy was taking his place before the conductor. The hall grew so quiet that all assembled could hear the tap of the conductor’s baton. Then after that universal moment of suspension, the musicians began to play and Sofia made her way to the dressing room.
The Conservatory’s orchestra performed Dvorak’s concerto in just over thirty minutes. Sofia would allow herself fifteen to reach the exit.
Taking up her knapsack, she went straight to one of the bathrooms reserved for the musicians. Locking the door behind her, she kicked off her shoes and shed the beautiful blue dress that Marina had made. She took off the necklace that Anna had given her and dropped it on the dress. She donned the slacks and oxford shirt that her father had purloined from the Italian gentleman. Then looking into the small mirror above the sink, she took out the scissors that her father had given her and began to cut her hair.
This little implement in the shape of an egret, which had been so prized by her father’s sister, had clearly been designed for snipping, not shearing. The rings cut into the knuckles of Sofia’s thumb and forefinger as she tried and failed to cut through lengths of her hair. Beginning to shed tears of frustration, Sofia closed her eyes and took a breath. There is no time for that, she told herself. Wiping the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, she began again—cutting smaller amounts of hair, working systematically around her head.