crowded with refugees and deserters who were sleeping in makeshift encampments and cooking looted food over open fires. With the relocation of the seat of government to Kuybyshev underway, the sixteen bridges of the city were mined so that they could be demolished on a moment’s notice. Columns of smoke rose above the Kremlin walls from the bonfires of classified files, while in the streets municipal and factory workers, who had not been paid in months, watched with seasoned foreboding as the eternally lit windows of the old fortress began to go dark one by one.
But on the afternoon of the thirtieth of October, an observer—standing in the very spot where our ragged itinerant now stood—would have witnessed a bewildering sight. A small cadre of laborers under the direction of the secret police were carrying chairs out of the Bolshoi on their way to the Mayakovsky Metro Station.
Later that night, the full membership of the Politburo assembled on the platform, one hundred feet below the surface of the city. Safe from the reach of German artillery, they took their seats at nine o’clock at a long table lined with food and wine. Shortly thereafter, a single train pulled into the station, its doors opened, and out stepped Stalin in full military dress. Assuming his rightful position at the head of the table, Marshal Soso said that his purpose in convening the Party leadership was twofold. First, it was to declare that while those assembled were welcome to make their way to Kuybyshev, he, for one, had no intention of going anywhere. He would remain in Moscow until the last drop of Russian blood had been spilled. Second, he announced that on the seventh of November the annual commemoration of the Revolution would be celebrated on Red Square as usual.
Many Muscovites would come to remember that parade as something of a turning point. To hear the heart-swelling sound of “The Internationale” to the accompaniment of fifty thousand boots while their leader stood defiant on the rostrum bolstered their confidence and hardened their resolve. On that day, they would recall, the tide decidedly turned.
Others, however, would point to the seven hundred thousand soldiers whom Soso had held in reserve in the Far East and who, even as the celebration was taking place, were being spirited across the country to Moscow’s aid. Still others would note that it snowed on twenty-eight of the thirty-one days that December, effectively grounding the Luftwaffe. It certainly didn’t hurt that the average temperature fell to minus 20˚—a climate as alien to the Wehrmacht as it had been to the forces of Napoleon. Whatever the cause, although it took Hitler’s troops just five months to march from the Russian frontier to the outskirts of Moscow, they would never pass through the city’s gates. Having taken over one million prisoners and one million lives, they would begin their retreat in January 1942, leaving the city surprisingly intact.
Stepping from the curb, our lone figure gave way to a young officer driving a motorcycle with a girl in a bright orange dress in his sidecar; he passed between the two captured German fighter planes on display in the defoliated square; then skirting the Metropol’s main entrance, he wound around the corner and disappeared down the alley at the back of the hotel.
Antics, Antitheses, an Accident
At 1:30, in the manager’s office of the Metropol Hotel, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov took the chair across the desk from the man with the narrow head and superior demeanor.
When the Count had received the Bishop’s summons in the Piazza, he had assumed the matter must be urgent because the messenger had waited for him to finish his demitasse and then led him promptly to the executive suite. But once the Count had been ushered through the manager’s door, the Bishop barely glanced up from the papers he was signing. Rather, he waved his pen toward the empty chair in the manner of one who wishes to indicate that he will be with you in a moment.
“Thank you,” said the Count, accepting this perfunctory offer of a chair with a perfunctory bow of the head.
Not one to sit idly about, the Count made use of the empty minutes by surveying the office, which had undergone something of a transformation since Jozef Halecki had occupied it. While the desk of the former manager remained, it was no longer impressively bare. Along with six piles of paper, it now boasted a stapler, a penholder, and two telephones (presumably so