Absinthe

As the Count approached the Shalyapin at 12:15, what emanated from this onetime chapel of prayer and reflection was a sound that would have been unthinkable ten years before. It was a sound characterized by fits of laughter, a mélange of languages, the bleat of a trumpet, and the clinking of glasses—in other words, the sound of gay abandon.

What development could have brought about such a transformation? In the case of the Shalyapin, there were three. The first was the rather breathless return of the American musical form known as jazz. Having squelched the craze on the grounds of its intrinsic decadence, in the mid-1920s the Bolsheviks had begun to countenance it again. This was presumably so that they could study more closely how a single idea can sweep the globe. Whatever the cause, here it was zipping and zinging and rat-a-tat-tatting on its little stage at the back of the room.

The second development was the return of foreign correspondents. In the aftermath of the Revolution, the Bolsheviks had ushered them straight to the door (along with divinities, doubts, and all the other troublemakers). But correspondents are a wily bunch. Having stashed their typewriters, crossed the border, changed their clothes, and counted to ten, they began slipping back into the country one by one. So in 1928, the Foreign Press Office was opened anew on the top floor of a six-story walk-up conveniently located halfway between the Kremlin and the offices of the secret police—a spot that just happened to be across the street from the Metropol. Thus, on any given night you could now find fifteen members of the international press in the Shalyapin ready to bend your ear. And when there were no listeners to be found, they lined up at the bar like gulls on the rocks and squawked all at once.

And then there was that extraordinary development of 1929. In April of that year, the Shalyapin suddenly had not one, not two, but three hostesses—all young, beautiful, and wearing black dresses hemmed above the knee. With what charm and elegance they moved among the patrons of the bar, gracing the air with their slender silhouettes, delicate laughter, and hints of perfume. If the correspondents at the bar were inclined to talk more than they listened, in an instance of perfect symbiosis the hostesses were inclined to listen more than they talked. In part, of course, this was because their jobs depended upon it. For once a week, they were required to visit a little gray building on the corner of Dzerzhinsky Street where some little gray fellow behind a little gray desk would record whatever they had happened to hear word for word.*

Did this obligation of the hostesses cause the journalists to be more cautious or tight-lipped for fear that some careless remark would be passed along?

On the contrary. The foreign press corps had a standing wager of ten American dollars to any of their number who could get summoned to the Commissariat of Internal Affairs. To that end, they crafted outrageous provocations and wove them into their chatter. One American let slip that in the backyard of a certain dacha a disenchanted engineer was building a balloon from specifications he’d found in Jules Verne. . . . Another relayed that an unnamed biologist was crossing a peep of chickens with a flock of pigeons to breed a bird that could lay an egg in the morning and deliver a message at night. . . . In sum, they would say anything within earshot of the hostesses—that is, anything that might be underscored in a report and land with a thud on a desk in the Kremlin.

As the Count stood at the Shalyapin’s entrance, he could see that tonight there was even more cavorting than usual. The jazz ensemble in the corner, which was charged with setting the tempo, was scrambling to keep up with the eruptions of laughter and the slaps on the back. Working his way through the hubbub, the Count approached the more discreet end of the bar (where an alabaster pillar fell from the ceiling to the floor). A moment later, Audrius was leaning toward the Count with his forearm on the bar.

“Good evening, Count Rostov.”

“Good evening, Audrius. It seems like quite a celebration tonight.”

The bartender gestured with his head toward one of the Americans.

“Mr. Lyons was taken to the office of the OGPU today.”

“The OGPU! How so?”

“It seems that a letter written in his hand was found on the floor of Perlov’s Tea House—a letter that included descriptions of troop movements and artillery placements on the outskirts of Smolensk. But when the letter was laid on the desk and Mr. Lyons was asked to explain himself, he said that he’d simply been transcribing his favorite passage from War and Peace.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Count with a smile. “The Battle of Borodino.”

“For this accomplishment, he collected the kitty and now he’s buying everyone a round. But what can we do for you this evening?”

The Count tapped twice on the bar.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any absinthe, would you?”

Ever so slightly, Audrius raised an eyebrow.

How well this tender of bar knew the Count’s preferences. He knew that before dinner the Count enjoyed a glass of champagne or dry vermouth. He knew that after dinner he enjoyed a snifter of brandy until the average nightly temperature fell below 40˚, at which point he would switch to a glass of whiskey or port. But absinthe? In the decade that they had known each other, the Count had not asked for a single glass. In fact, he rarely indulged in any of the syrupy liqueurs—and certainly not those that were colored green and reported to cause madness.

But ever the professional, Audrius confined his surprise to the movement of his eyebrow.

“I believe I may have one bottle left,” he said. Then opening a seamless door in the wall, he disappeared into the cabinet where he kept his more expensive and esoteric spirits.

On the platform in the opposite corner of the bar, the jazz ensemble was playing a perky little tune. Admittedly, when the Count had first encountered jazz, he hadn’t much of an affinity for it. He had been raised to appreciate music of sentiment and nuance, music that rewarded patience and attention with crescendos and diminuendos, allegros and adagios artfully arranged over four whole movements—not a fistful of notes crammed higgledy-piggledy into thirty measures.

And yet . . .

And yet, the art form had grown on him. Like the American correspondents, jazz seemed a naturally gregarious force—one that was a little unruly and prone to say the first thing that popped into its head, but generally of good humor and friendly intent. In addition, it seemed decidedly unconcerned with where it had been or where it was going—exhibiting somehow simultaneously the confidence of the master and the inexperience of the apprentice. Was there any wonder that such an art had failed to originate in Europe?

The Count’s reverie was broken by the sound of a bottle being placed on the bar.

“Absinthe Robette,” said Audrius, tilting the bottle so that the Count could read the label. “But I’m afraid there’s only an ounce or two left.”

“It will have to do.”

The bartender emptied the bottle into a cordial glass.

“Thank you, Audrius. Please add it to my account.”

“No need. It is on Mr. Lyons.”

As the Count turned to go, an American who had commandeered the piano began performing a jaunty little number that celebrated a lack of bananas, a lack of bananas today. A moment later, all the journalists were singing along. On another night, the Count might have lingered to observe the festivities, but he had his own celebration to attend to. So with his precious cargo in hand, he navigated through the crowd of elbows, being careful not to spill a drop.

Yes, thought the Count as he climbed the stairs to the second floor, this evening the Triumvirate has its own cause for celebration. . . .

The Plan had been hatched almost three years before, springing from a wistful comment of Andrey’s, which had been echoed by Emile.

“Sadly, it’s impossible,” the maître d’ had lamented.

“Yes,” the chef had conceded with a shake of the head.

But was it?

All told, there were fifteen ingredients. Six of them could be plucked from the pantry of the Boyarsky at any time of year. Another five were readily available in season. The nut of the problem was that, despite the overall improvement in the general availability of goods, the last four ingredients remained relatively rare.

From the outset, it was agreed that there would be no skimping—no shortcuts or substitutions. It was the symphony or silence. So the Triumvirate would have to be patient and watchful. They would have to be willing to beg, barter, collude, and if necessary, resort to chicanery. Three times the dream had been within their grasp, only to be snatched away at the last moment by unforeseen circumstances (once by mishap, once by mold, and once by mice).

But earlier that week, it seemed that the stars were wheeling into alignment once again. With nine elements already in Emile’s kitchen, four whole haddock and a basket of mussels meant for the National Hotel had been delivered to the Metropol by mistake. That was ten and eleven in a single stroke. The Triumvirate convened and conferred. A favor could be called in by Andrey, a swap negotiated by Emile, and Audrius approached by the Count. Thus, the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth ingredients. But the fifteenth? This would require access to a store with the rarest of luxuries—that is, one which served the highest members of the Party. A discreet inquiry was made by the Count of a certain actress with certain connections. And mirabile dictu, an unsigned envelope had been slipped under his door. With all fifteen ingredients now at hand, the Triumvirate’s patience was on the verge of being rewarded. Within the hour, they would once again experience that intricacy of flavors, that divine distillation, that impression as rich and elusive as—

“Good evening, comrade.”

The Count stopped in his tracks.

For a moment he hesitated. Then he slowly turned around—as from the shadows of an alcove the hotel’s assistant manager emerged.

Like his counterpart on the chessboard, the Bishop of the Metropol never moved along the rank or file. With him it was always on the bias: slipping diagonally from corner to corner, skirting past a potted plant, sliding through a crack in the door. One caught sight of him at the periphery of one’s vision, if one caught sight of him at all.

“Good evening,” replied the Count.

The two men took each other in from heel to hair—both practiced at confirming in a glance their worst suspicions of each other. Leaning a little to his right, the Bishop adopted an expression of idle curiosity.

“What do we have here . . . ?”

“What do we have where?”

“Why, there. Behind your back.”

“Behind my back?”

The Count slowly brought his hands in front of him and turned his palms upright to show that they were empty. The right upper corner of the Bishop’s smile twitched, turning it ever so briefly into a smirk. The Count reciprocated in kind and with a polite bow of the head turned to walk away.

“Headed to the Boyarsky . . . ?”

The Count stopped and turned back.

“Yes. That’s right. The Boyarsky.”

“Isn’t it closed . . . ?”

“It is. But I think I may have left my pen in Emile’s office.”

“Ah. The man of letters has lost his pen. Where is it now . . . , hmm? If not in the kitchen, perhaps you should look in the blue pagoda of your fine Chinoiserie.” And turning with his smirk, the Bishop slipped diagonally down the hall.

The Count waited until he was out of sight, then hurried in the opposite direction, muttering as he went:

“Where is it now . . . ? Perhaps in your blue pagoda. . . . Very witty, I’m sure. Coming from a man who couldn’t rhyme cow with plow. And what’s with all that dot-dot-dotting?”

Ever since the Bishop had been promoted, he had taken to adding an ellipsis at the end of every question. But what was one to infer from it . . . ? That this particular punctuation mark should be fended off . . . ? That an interrogative sentence should never end . . . ? That even though he is asking a question, he has no need of an answer because he has already formed an opinion . . . ?

Of course.

Coming through the Boyarsky’s doors, which Andrey had left unbolted, the Count crossed the empty dining room and passed through the swinging door into the kitchen. There he found the chef at his counter slicing a bulb of fennel, as four stalks of celery lying in an orderly row waited like Spartans to meet their fate. To the side were the filets of haddock and the basket of mussels, while on the stove sat a great copper pot from which small clouds of steam graced the air with other intimations of the sea.

Looking up from the fennel, Emile met the eye of the Count and smiled. In an instant the Count could see that the chef was in rosy form. Having sensed at two that all might not be lost, at half past midnight the chef hadn’t the slightest doubt that the sun would shine tomorrow, that most people were generous at heart, and that, when all was said and done, things tended to work out for the best.

The chef wasted no time on salutations. Instead, without pausing his chopper, he tilted his head toward the little table, which had been moved from his office into the kitchen and which had been waiting patiently to be set.

But first things first.

Carefully, the Count removed the little cordial glass from his back pocket and placed it on the counter.

“Ah,” said the chef, wiping his hands on his apron.

“Is it enough?”

“It is only meant to be a hint. An aside. An innuendo. If it is the real thing, it should be plenty.”

Emile dipped his pinkie in the absinthe and gave it a lick.

“Perfect,” he said.

Selecting an appropriate tablecloth from the linen closet, the Count unfurled it with a snap and let it billow to the table. As he set the places, the chef began to whistle a tune and the Count smiled to realize it was the very same song that he had heard in the Shalyapin regarding the absence of bananas. As if on cue, the door to the back stair opened and in rushed Andrey with a pile of oranges about to tumble from his arms. Reaching Emile’s side, he bowed at the waist and spilled them onto the counter.

With the instincts of convicts who discover the gates of their prison open, the individual oranges rolled in every direction to maximize their chances of escape. In a flash, Andrey had extended his arms in a grand circumference to fence them in. But one of the oranges dodged the maître d’s reach and shot across the counter—headed straight for the absinthe! Dropping his chopper, Emile lunged and plucked the glass from the counter in the nick of time. The orange, which was gaining in confidence, dashed behind the fennel, jumped from the counter, thudded to the floor, and made a break for the exit. But at the last moment, that door that separated Emile’s kitchen from the rest of the world swung inward, sending the orange spinning back across the floor in the opposite direction—while in the doorway stood the Bishop.

The three members of the Triumvirate froze.

Advancing two paces north by northwest, the Bishop took in the scene.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said in his friendliest tone. “What brings you all to the kitchen at this hour . . . ?”

Andrey, who’d had the presence of mind to step in front of the simmering pot, gestured with a hand toward the food on the counter.

“We are taking inventory.”

“Inventory . . . ?”

“Yes. Our quarterly inventory.”

“Of course,” the Bishop replied with his ecclesiastical smile. “And at whose request are you taking a quarterly inventory . . . ?”

As this exchange between the Bishop and the maître d’ unfolded, the Count noticed that Emile, who had grown pale at the inward swinging of the door, was regaining his color second by second. It had begun with a slight pinkness of the cheeks when the Bishop had crossed the threshold. It turned to rose when the Bishop asked What brings you all to the kitchen . . . ? But when he asked At whose request . . . ? the chef’s cheeks, neck, and ears took on a purple of such moral indignation, it made one wonder if the presence of a question mark in his kitchen was itself a capital crime.

“At whose request?” the chef asked.

The Bishop turned his gaze from Andrey to Emile and was clearly struck by the chef’s transformation. He seemed to waver.

“At whose request?” the chef repeated.

Without taking his eyes off the Bishop, Emile suddenly reached for his chopper.

“At whose request!”

When Emile took a step forward while raising his chopping arm high above his head, the Bishop grew as white as the haddock. Then the kitchen door was swinging on its hinge and the Bishop was nowhere to be seen.

Andrey and the Count turned their gaze from the door to Emile. Then in wide-eyed amazement, Andrey pointed a delicate finger at Emile’s raised hand. For in the heat of outrage, the chef had grabbed not his chopper but a celery stalk, whose little green fronds now trembled in the air. And to a man, the Triumvirate burst into laughter.

At one in the morning, the conspirators took their seats. On the table before them were a single candle, a loaf of bread, a bottle of rosé, and three bowls of bouillabaisse.

After exchanging a glance, the three men dipped their spoons into the stew in unison, but for Emile, the gesture was a sleight of hand. For when Andrey and the Count raised their spoons to their mouths, Emile let his hover above his bowl—intent upon studying his friends’ expressions at the very first taste.

Fully aware that he was being watched, the Count closed his eyes to attend more closely to his impressions.

How to describe it?

One first tastes the broth—that simmered distillation of fish bones, fennel, and tomatoes, with their hearty suggestions of Provence. One then savors the tender flakes of haddock and the briny resilience of the mussels, which have been purchased on the docks from the fisherman. One marvels at the boldness of the oranges arriving from Spain and the absinthe poured in the taverns. And all of these various impressions are somehow collected, composed, and brightened by the saffron—that essence of summer sun which, having been harvested in the hills of Greece and packed by mule to Athens, has been sailed across the Mediterranean in a felucca. In other words, with the very first spoonful one finds oneself transported to the port of Marseille—where the streets teem with sailors, thieves, and madonnas, with sunlight and summer, with languages and life.

The Count opened his eyes.

“Magnifique,” he said.

Andrey, who had put down his spoon, brought his elegant hands together in a respectful show of silent applause.

Beaming, the chef bowed to his friends and then joined them in their long-awaited meal.

Over the next two hours, the three members of the Triumvirate each ate three bowls of the bouillabaisse, each drank a bottle of wine, and each spoke openly in turn.

And what did these old friends talk about? What did they not talk about! They talked of their childhoods in St. Petersburg, Minsk, and Lyon. Of their first and second loves. Of Andrey’s four-year-old son and Emile’s four-year-old lumbago. They spoke of the once and the was, of the wishful and the wonderful.

Rarely awake at this hour, Emile was in an unprecedented state of euphoria. As youthful stories were told, he laughed so heartily that his head rolled on his shoulders, and the corner of his napkin was raised to his eyes twice as often as it was raised to his lips.

And the pièce de résistance? At three in the morning, Andrey referred briefly, offhandedly, almost parenthetically to his days under the big top.

“Eh? What’s that? Under what?”

“Did you say ‘the big top’?”

Yes. In point of fact: the circus.

Raised by a widowed father who was prone to drunken violence, at the age of sixteen Andrey had run away to join a traveling circus. It was with this troupe that he had come to Moscow in 1913 where, having fallen in love with a bookseller in the Arbat, he had bid the circus adieu. Two months later, he was hired as a waiter at the Boyarsky, and he had been there ever since.

“What did you do in the circus?” asked the Count.

“An acrobat?” suggested Emile. “A clown?”

“A lion tamer?”

“I juggled.”

“No,” said Emile.

In lieu of a response, the maître d’ rose from the table and gathered three of the unused oranges from the countertop. With the fruit in his hands, he stood perfectly erect. Or rather, he stood at a slight tilt induced by the wine, a sort of 12:02. Then after a brief pause, he set the spheres in motion.

In all honesty, the Count and Emile had been skeptical of their old friend’s claim; but as soon as he began, they could only wonder that they had not guessed at it before. For Andrey’s hands had been crafted by God to juggle. So deft was his touch that the oranges seemed to move of their own accord. Or better yet, they moved like planets governed by a force of gravity that simultaneously propelled them forward and kept them from flinging off into space; while Andrey, who was standing before these planets, seemed to be simply plucking them from their orbits and releasing them a moment later to pursue their natural course.

So gentle and rhythmic was the motion of Andrey’s hands that one was at constant risk of falling under hypnosis. And, in fact, without Emile or the Count noticing, another orange had suddenly joined the solar system. And then with a courtly flourish, Andrey caught all four spheres and bowed at the waist.

Now it was the Count and Emile’s turn to applaud.

“But surely, you didn’t juggle oranges,” said Emile.

“No,” Andrey admitted, as he carefully returned the oranges to the counter. “I juggled knives.”

Before the Count and Emile could express their disbelief, Andrey had taken three blades from a drawer and set them in motion. These were no planets. They spun through the air like the parts of some infernal machine, an effect that was heightened by the flashes of light from whenever the candle’s flame was reflected on the surface of the blades. And then, just as suddenly as the knives had been set in motion, their hilts were fixed in Andrey’s hands.

“Ah, but can you do four of those?” teased the Count.

Without a word, Andrey moved back toward the knife drawer; but before he could reach inside, Emile had risen to his feet. With the expression of a boy enthralled by a street magician, he shyly stepped from the crowd and held out his chopper—that blade which had not been touched by another human hand in almost fifteen years. With an appropriate sense of ceremony, Andrey bowed from the waist to accept it. And when he set the four knives in motion, Emile leaned back in his chair and with a tear in his eye watched as his trusted blade tumbled effortlessly through space, feeling that this moment, this hour, this universe could not be improved upon.

At half past three in the morning, the Count swayed up the stairs, veered to his room, lurched through his closet, emptied his pockets onto the bookcase, poured himself a brandy, and with a sigh of satisfaction dropped into his chair. While from her place on the wall, Helena took him in with a tender, knowing smile.

“Yes, yes,” he admitted. “It is a little late, and I am a little drunk. But in my defense, it has been an eventful day.”

As if to make his point, the Count suddenly rose from his chair and tugged at one of the folds of his jacket.

“Do you see this button? I’ll have you know that I sewed it on myself.” Then dropping back in his chair, the Count picked up his brandy, took a sip, and reflected. “She was perfectly right, you know. Marina, I mean. Absolutely, positively, perfectly right.” The Count sighed again. Then he shared with his sister a notion.

Since the beginning of storytelling, he explained, Death has called on the unwitting. In one tale or another, it arrives quietly in town and takes a room at an inn, or lurks in an alleyway, or lingers in the marketplace, surreptitiously. Then just when the hero has a moment of respite from his daily affairs, Death pays him a visit.

This is all well and good, allowed the Count. But what is rarely related is the fact that Life is every bit as devious as Death. It too can wear a hooded coat. It too can slip into town, lurk in an alley, or wait in the back of a tavern.

Hadn’t it paid such a visit to Mishka? Hadn’t it found him hiding behind his books, lured him out of the library, and taken his hand on a secluded spot overlooking the Neva?

Hadn’t it found Andrey in Lyon and beckoned him to the big top?

Emptying his glass, the Count rose from his chair and stumbled into the bookcase as he reached for the brandy.

“Excusez-moi, monsieur.”

The Count poured himself a tad, just a drop, no more than a sip, and fell back into his seat. Then waving a finger gently in the air, he continued:

“The collectivization of collectives, Helena, and the dekulaking of kulaks—in all probability, these are quite probable. They’re even likely to be likely. But inevitable?”

With a knowing smile, the Count shook his head at the very sound of the word.

“Allow me to tell you what is inevitable. What is inevitable is that Life will pay Nina a visit too. She may be as sober as St. Augustine, but she is too alert and too vibrant for Life to let her shake a hand and walk off alone. Life will follow her in a taxi. It will bump into her by chance. It will work its way into her affections. And to do so, it will beg, barter, collude, and if necessary, resort to chicanery.

“What a world,” the Count sighed at last, before falling asleep in his chair.

On the following morning, with his eyes a little blurry and his head a little sore, the Count poured a second cup of coffee, settled himself in his chair, and leaned to his side in order to retrieve Mishka’s letter from his jacket.

But it wasn’t there.

The Count distinctly remembered tucking the letter in the inside pocket when he was leaving the lobby the day before; and it had definitely been there when he had repaired the button in Marina’s office. . . .

It must have fallen out, he thought, when he draped the jacket over the back of Anna’s chair. So, after finishing his coffee, the Count went down to suite 311—only to find the door open, the closets empty, and the bottom of the dustbins bare.

But Mishka’s half-read letter had not fallen from the Count’s jacket in Anna’s room. Having emptied his pockets at half past three, when the Count had stumbled reaching for the brandy, he had knocked the letter into the gap between the bookcase and the wall, where it was destined to remain.

Though perhaps this was just as well.

For while the Count had been so moved by Mishka’s bittersweet walk along Nevsky Prospekt and his romantic lines of verse, the lines of verse were not written by Mishka at all. They were from the poem that Mayakovsky had delivered while standing on his chair back in 1923. And what had prompted Mishka to quote them had nothing to do with the day that Katerina had first taken his hand. What had prompted the citation, and the writing of the letter, for that matter, was the fact that on the fourteenth of April, Vladimir Mayakovsky, the poet laureate of the Revolution, had shot himself through the heart with a prop revolver.