Some years later, the Count would come to understand that he had been looking at the matter upside down. The pace of evolution was not something to be frightened by. For while nature doesn’t have a stake in whether the wings of a peppered moth are black or white, it genuinely hopes that the peppered moth will persist. And that is why nature designed the forces of evolution to play out over generations rather than eons—to ensure that moths and men have a chance to adapt.
Like Viktor Stepanovich, the Count reflected. A husband and father of two, he must make ends meet. So he waves his baton in the Piazza, ostensibly putting the classical repertoire behind him. Then one afternoon, when he happens to stumble upon a young pianist with promise, in what little time he has to spare, he teaches her the nocturnes of Chopin on a borrowed piano. Just so, Mishka has his “project”; and this young architect, unable to build buildings, takes pride and pleasure from the careful drafting of hotel interiors in his sketchbook.
For a moment, the Count considered going over to the young man, but he seemed to be applying his skills with such satisfaction that it would be a crime to interrupt him. So, instead, the Count emptied his glass, tapped the bar twice, and headed upstairs for bed.
Of course, the Count was perfectly right. For when life makes it impossible for a man to pursue his dreams, he will connive to pursue them anyway. Thus, even as the Count was brushing his teeth, Viktor Stepanovich was setting aside an arrangement that he had been working on for his orchestra in order to sort through the Goldberg Variations—in search of one that might be just right for Sofia. While in the village of Yavas, in a rented room not much larger than the Count’s, by the light of a candle, Mikhail Mindich was sitting hunched over a table, sewing another signature of sixteen pages. And down in the Shalyapin? The young architect continued to take pride and pleasure in his work. But contrary to the Count’s supposition, he was not adding a rendering of the bar to his collection of hotel interiors. In fact, he was working in a different sketchbook altogether.
On the first of this book’s many pages was the design for a skyscraper two hundred stories tall—with a diving board on the roof from which the tenants could parachute to a grassy park below. On another page was a cathedral to atheism with fifty different cupolas, several of which could be launched like rockets to the moon. And on another was a giant museum of architecture showcasing life-size replicas of all the grand old buildings that had been razed in the city of Moscow to make way for the new.
But at this particular moment, what the architect was working on was a detailed drawing of a crowded restaurant that looked very much like the Piazza. Only, under the floor of this restaurant was an elaborate mechanics of axles, cogs, and gears; and jutting from an outside wall was a giant crank, at the turn of which, each of the restaurant’s chairs would pirouette like a ballerina on a music box, then spin around the space until they came to a stop at an entirely different table. And towering over this tableau, peering down through the glass ceiling, was a gentleman of sixty with his hand on the crank, preparing to set the diners in motion.
1952
America
On a Wednesday evening in late June, the Count and Sofia walked arm in arm into the Boyarsky, where it was their custom to dine on the Count’s night off.
“Good evening, Andrey.”
“Bonsoir, mon ami. Bonsoir, mademoiselle. Your table awaits.”
As Andrey ushered them into the dining room with a gesture of his hand, the Count could see it was another busy night. On the way to table ten, they passed the wives of two commissars seated at table four. Dining alone at table six was an eminent professor of literature—who they say had single-handedly wrestled the works of Dostoevsky to the ground. And at table seven was none other than the beguiling Anna Urbanova in the company of the beguiled.
Having successfully returned to the silver screen in the 1930s, in 1948 Anna had been lured back to the stage by the director of the Maly Theatre. This was a stroke of good fortune for the fifty-year-old actress, for while the silver screen showed a