“The future of Russian poetry is the haiku!” Mishka shouted in conclusion, then, with great satisfaction, he slammed the door on his way out. In fact, so satisfying was this gesture that he slammed every door that stood between him and the street below.
And what, to borrow a phrase, was the fallout of that?
Within a day, the gist of Mishka’s comments were shared with the authorities; within a week, they were set down word for word. In August, he was invited to the offices of the NKVD in Leningrad for questioning. In November, he was brought before one of the extrajudicial troikas of the era. And in March 1939, he was on a train bound for Siberia and the realm of second thoughts.
The Count was presumably right to be concerned for Nina, though we will never know for certain—for she did not return to the Metropol within the month, within the year, or ever again. In October, the Count made some efforts to discover her whereabouts, all of them fruitless. One assumes that Nina made her own efforts to communicate with the Count, but no word was forthcoming, and Nina Kulikova simply disappeared into the vastness of the Russian East.
The Count was also right to worry that Sofia’s residency would be noted. For not only was her presence remarked, within a fortnight of her arrival a letter was sent to an administrative office within the Kremlin stating that a Former Person living under house arrest on the top floor of the Metropol Hotel was caring for a five-year-old child of unknown parentage.
Upon its receipt, this letter was carefully read, stamped, and forwarded to a higher office—where it was counterstamped and directed up another two floors. There, it reached the sort of desk where with the swipe of a pen, matrons from the state orphanage could be dispersed.
It just so happened, however, that a cursory examination of this Former Person’s recent associates led to a certain willowy actress—who for years had been the reputed paramour of a round-faced Commisar recently appointed to the Politburo. Within the walls of a small, drab office in an especially bureaucratic branch of government, it is generally difficult to accurately imagine the world outside. But it is never hard to imagine what might occur to one’s career were one to seize the illegitimate daughter of a Politburo member and place her in a home. Such initiative would be rewarded with a blindfold and a cigarette.
As a result, only the most discreet inquiries were made. Indications were obtained that this actress had in all likelihood been in a relationship with the Politburo member for at least six years. In addition, an employee of the hotel confirmed that on the very day the young girl arrived at the hotel, the actress was also in residence. As such, all of the information that had been gathered in the course of the investigation was placed in a drawer under lock and key (on the off chance it might prove useful one day). While the pernicious little letter that had launched the inquiry in the first place was set on fire and dropped in the waste bin where it belonged.
So yes, the Count had every reason to be concerned about Mishka, Nina, and Sofia. But did he have cause to be anxious about the following morning?
As it turned out, once they had made their beds and nibbled their biscuits, Sofia did climb up into the desk chair; but rather than stare at the Count expectantly, she unfurled a litany of additional questions about Idlehour and his family, as if she had been composing them in her sleep.
And in the days that followed, a man who had long prided himself on his ability to tell a story in the most succinct manner with an emphasis on the most salient points, by necessity became a master of the digression, the parenthetical remark, the footnote, eventually even learning to anticipate Sofia’s relentless inquiries before she had the time to phrase them.
Popular wisdom tells us that when the reel of our concerns interferes with our ability to fall asleep, the best remedy is the counting of sheep in a meadow. But preferring to have his lamb encrusted with herbs and served with a red wine reduction, the Count chose a different methodology altogether. As he listened to Sofia breathing, he went back to the moment that he woke on the hardwood floor, and by systematically reconstructing his various visits to the lobby, the