“But, of course we are. We have known each other for years.”
“Well, that’s just perfect,” said the Count in a huff. “Why don’t you invite her to dinner. In fact, if I am such a button in a box, perhaps you, Marina, and Miss Urbanova should all have dinner on your own.”
“Why, that’s exactly what Andrey suggested!”
“How is everything tonight?”
“Speak of the devil!” shouted the Count as he dumped his napkin on his plate.
Taken aback, Andrey looked from the Count to Sofia with concern.
“Is something wrong?”
“The food at the Boyarsky is superior,” replied the Count, “and the service is excellent. But the gossip? It is truly unsurpassed.”
The Count stood.
“I think you have some piano practice to see to, young lady,” he said to Sofia. “Now if you’ll both excuse me, I am expected upstairs.”
As the Count marched down the hallway, he could not help but observe to himself that there was a time, not long before, when a gentleman could expect a measure of privacy in his personal affairs. With reasonable confidence, he could place his correspondence in a desk drawer and leave his diary on a bedside table.
Although, on the other hand, since the beginning of time men in pursuit of wisdom had routinely retreated to mountaintops, caves, and cabins in the woods. So, perhaps that is where one must eventually head, if one has any hopes of achieving enlightenment without the interference of meddlers. Case in point: As the Count headed for the stairwell, who did he happen to bump into waiting for an elevator? None other than that renowned expert on human behavior, Anna Urbanova.
“Good evening, Your Excellency . . .” she said to the Count with a suggestive smile. But then her eyebrows rose in inquiry when she noted the expression on his face. “Is everything all right?”
“I can’t believe that you have been having clandestine conversations with Sofia,” the Count said in a hushed voice, though no one else was about.
“They weren’t clandestine,” Anna whispered back. “They just happened to be while you were at work.”
“And you think that is somehow appropriate? To foster a friendship with my daughter in my absence?”
“Well, you do like your buttons in their boxes, Sasha. . . .”
“So I gather!”
The Count turned to go, but then came back.
“And if, perchance, I do like my buttons in their boxes, is there anything wrong with that?”
“Certainly not.”
“Would the world be a better place if we kept all the buttons in a big glass jar? In such a world, whenever you tried to reach in for a button of a particular color, the tips of your fingers would inevitably push it down below the other buttons until you couldn’t see it. Eventually, in a state of exasperation, you would end up pouring all of the buttons on the floor—and then spend an hour and a half having to pick them back up.”
“Are we talking about actual buttons now?” asked Anna with genuine interest. “Or is this still an allegory?”
“What is not an allegory,” said the Count, “is my appointment with an eminent professor. Which, by the way, will necessitate the cancellation of any further appointments for the evening!”
Ten minutes later, the Count was knocking on that door which he had answered a thousand times, but upon which he had never knocked.
“Ah, here you are,” said the professor. “Please come in.”
The Count had not been in his old suite in over twenty-five years—not since that night in 1926 when he had stood at the parapet.
Still styled in the manner of a nineteenth-century French salon, the rooms remained elegant, if a little worse for wear. Only one of the two gilded mirrors now hung on the wall; the dark red curtains had faded; the matching couch and chairs needed to be reupholstered; and while his family’s clock still stood guard near the door, its hands were stopped at 4:22—having become an aspect of the room’s décor, rather than an essential instrument for the keeping of engagements. But if one no longer heard the gentle sound of time advancing in the suite, in its place were the strains of a waltz emanating from an electric radio on the dining room mantel.
Following the professor into the sitting room, the Count habitually glanced at the northwest corner with its privileged view of the Bolshoi—and there, framed by the window, was the silhouette of a man gazing out into the night. Tall, thin, with an aristocratic bearing, it could have been a shadow of the Count from