study, and when he reached 175, he heard a chair being pushed across the floor. Well aware of the difference between a gentleman and a cad, the Count counted until the room fell silent—that is, all the way to 222.
“Ready or not,” he called.
When he came into the room, Sofia was sitting in one of the high-back chairs.
With a bit of theatricality, the Count put his hands behind his back and circled the room while saying hmmm. But after two circuits, the little silver thimble had yet to reveal itself. So he began to search a bit more in earnest. Taking a page from Sofia’s book, he divided the room into quadrants and reviewed them systematically, but to no avail.
Recalling that he had heard one of the chairs being moved, and accounting for Sofia’s height and arm extension, the Count estimated that she could have reached a spot at least five feet off the ground. So, he looked behind the frame of his sister’s portrait; he looked under the mechanics of the little window; he even looked above the doorframe.
Still no thimble.
Occasionally, he would look back at Sofia in the hopes that she would give herself away by glancing at her hiding place. But she maintained an infuriatingly disinterested expression, as if she hadn’t the slightest awareness of the hunt that was underway. And all the while, swinging her little feet back and forth.
As a student of psychology, the Count decided he must attempt to solve the problem from his opponent’s point of view. Just as he had wanted to take advantage of her limited height, perhaps she had taken advantage of his stature. Of course, he thought. The sound of moving furniture didn’t have to mean that she was climbing up on a chair; it could have been her pulling something aside in order to hide something beneath it. The Count dropped to the floor and crawled like a lizard from the bookcase to the Ambassador and back again.
And still she sat there swinging her little feet.
The Count stood to his full height, banging his head against the slope of the ceiling. What’s more, his kneecaps hurt from the hardwood floor, and his jacket was covered in dust. Suddenly, as he looked a little wildly around the room, he became aware of a quietly encroaching eventuality. It was slinking slowly toward him like a cat across the lawn; and the name of this cat was Defeat.
Could it be?
Was he, a Rostov, preparing to surrender?
Well, in a word: Yes.
There were no two ways about it. He had been bested and he knew it. Naturally, there would have to be a word or two of self-recrimination, but first he cursed Marina and the alleged pleasures of simple games. He breathed deeply and exhaled. Then he presented himself to Sofia as General Mack had presented himself to Napoleon, having let the Russian army slip through his grasp.
“Well done, Sofia,” he said.
Sofia looked directly at the Count for the first time since he’d come into the room.
“Are you giving up?”
“I am conceding,” said the Count.
“Is that the same as giving up?”
. . .
“Yes, it is the same as giving up.”
“Then you should say so.”
Naturally. His humiliation must be brought to its full realization.
“I give up,” he said.
Without a hint of gloating, Sofia accepted his surrender. Then she jumped off her chair and walked toward him. He stepped a little out of her way, assuming that she must have hid the thimble somewhere in the bookcase. But she didn’t approach the bookcase. Instead, she stopped in front of him, reached into his jacket pocket, and withdrew the thimble.
The Count was aghast.
In fact, he actually sputtered.
“But, but, but, Sofia—that’s not fair!”
Sofia studied the Count with curiosity.
“Why is it not fair?”
Always with that damnable Why.
“Because it’s not,” replied the Count.
“But you said we could hide it anywhere in the room.”
“That’s just it, Sofia. My pocket wasn’t in the room.”
“Your pocket was in the room when I hid the thimble; and it was in the room when you hunted. . . .”
And as the Count gazed into her innocent little face, it all became clear. He, a master of nuance and sleight of hand, had been played at every turn. When she had called him back to insist he not peek and had so sweetly tugged at his sleeve, that was a ploy to mask the slipping of the thimble into his pocket. And the moving of the furniture as the two-hundredth second approached? Pure theater. A