a waiter took an order, he would write it on a pad designed for this purpose. Leaving the table, he would bring the order to the bookkeeper, who, having made an entry in his ledger, would issue a cooking slip for the kitchen. In the kitchen, a corresponding entry would be made in the cooking log, at which point the cooking could commence. When the food was ready for consumption, a confirmation slip would be issued by the kitchen to the bookkeeper, who in turn would provide a stamped receipt to the waiter authorizing the retrieval of the food. Thus, a few minutes later, the waiter would be able to make the appropriate notation on his notepad confirming that that dish which had been ordered, logged, cooked, and retrieved was finally on the table. . . .
Now, in all of Russia, there was no greater admirer of the written word than Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov. In his time, he had seen a couplet of Pushkin’s sway a hesitant heart. He had watched as a single passage from Dostoevsky roused one man to action and another to indifference—in the very same hour. He certainly viewed it as providential that when Socrates held forth in the agora and Jesus on the Mount, someone in the audience had the presence of mind to set their words down for posterity. So let us agree that the Count’s concerns with this new regimen were not grounded in some distaste for pencils and paper.
Rather, it was a matter of context. For if one has chosen to dine at the Piazza, one should expect to have one’s waiter leaning over the table and scratching away on his little pad. But ever since the Count had become headwaiter of the Boyarsky, its customers could expect their server to look them in the eye, answer their questions, offer recommendations, and flawlessly record their preferences—without ever taking his hands from behind his back.
Sure enough, when the new regimen was put into practice that evening, the Boyarsky’s customers were shocked to find a clerk sitting at a little desk behind the maître d’s podium. They were bemused to watch pieces of paper flitting about the room as if it were the floor of a stock exchange. But they were beside themselves to find their cutlets of veal and asparagus spears arriving at their table as cold as aspic.
Naturally, this would not do.
As luck would have it, in the middle of the second seating the Count noticed the Bishop stopping momentarily at the Boyarsky’s door. So, having been raised on the principle that civilized men should share their concerns and proceed in the spirit of collegial common sense, the Count crossed the dining room and followed the Bishop into the hall.
“Manager Leplevsky!”
“Headwaiter Rostov,” said the Bishop, showing a hint of surprise at being hailed by the Count. “What can I do for you . . . ?”
“It’s really such a small matter that I hardly wish to trouble you with it.”
“If the matter concerns the hotel, then it concerns me.”
“Just so,” agreed the Count. “Now, I assure you, Manager Leplevsky, that in all of Russia there is no greater admirer of the written word . . .” And having thus broached the subject, the Count went on to applaud the couplets of Pushkin, the paragraphs of Dostoevsky, and the transcriptions of Socrates and Jesus. Then he explained the threat that pencils and pads posed to the Boyarsky’s tradition of romantic elegance.
“Can you imagine,” concluded the Count with a glint in his eye, “if when you sought your wife’s hand, you had to issue your proposal with the stamp of a presiding agency, and were then required to take down her response on a little pad of paper in triplicate—so that you could give one copy to her, one to her father, and one to the family priest?”
But even as the Count was delivering this quip, he was reminded by the expression on the Bishop’s face that one should generally avoid quips in which a man’s marriage played a part. . . .
“I don’t see that my wife has anything to do with this,” said the Bishop.
“No,” agreed the Count. “That was poorly put. What I am trying to say is that Andrey, Emile, and I—”
“So you are bringing this grievance on behalf of Maître d’ Duras and Chef Zhukovsky?”
“Well, no. I have hailed you of my own accord. And it is not a grievance per se. But the three of us are