at Levin; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered off, sparkling in the sun amidst the air trembling with snowdust, while the smell of baked BREAD wafted from the window as the rolls appeared in it. All this together was so extraordinarily good that Levin laughed and wept from joy.
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
(1877)
Do you see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into BREAD and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient. . . . But you did not want to deprive man of freedom and rejected the offer, for what sort of freedom is it, you reasoned, if obedience is bought with loaves of BREAD?
From “The Grand Inquisitor”
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1880)
As the Count turned the pages, he smiled in recognition of the characteristic feistiness that Mishka’s project expressed. But following the quote from “The Grand Inquisitor,” there was a second citation from The Brothers Karamazov from a scene the Count had all but forgotten. It related to the little boy, Ilyushechka—the one who was hounded by his schoolmates until falling dangerously ill. When the boy finally dies, his heartstricken father tells the saintly Alyosha Karamazov that his son had made one final request:
Papa, when they put the dirt on my grave, crumble a crust of BREAD on it so the sparrows will come, and I’ll hear that they’ve come and be glad that I’m not lying alone.
Upon reading this, Alexander Rostov finally broke down and wept. Certainly, he wept for his friend, that generous yet temperamental soul who only briefly found his moment in time—and who, like this forlorn child, was disinclined to condemn the world for all its injustices.
But, of course, the Count also wept for himself. For despite his friendships with Marina and Andrey and Emile, despite his love for Anna, despite Sofia—that extraordinary blessing that had struck him from the blue—when Mikhail Fyodorovich Mindich died, there went the last of those who had known him as a younger man. Though, as Katerina had so rightfully observed, at least he remained to remember.
Taking a deep breath, the Count attempted to restore his composure, determined to read through the final pages of his old friend’s final discourse. The progression of citations, which had spanned over two thousand years, did not continue much further. For rather than extending into the present, the survey ended in June 1904, with the sentences that Mishka had cut from Chekhov’s letter all those years ago:
Here in Berlin, we’ve taken a comfortable room in the best hotel. I am very much enjoying the life here and haven’t eaten so well and with such an appetite in a long time. The BREAD here is amazing, I’ve been stuffing myself with it, the coffee is excellent, and the dinners are beyond words. People who have never been abroad don’t know how good BREAD can be. . . .
Given the hardships of the 1930s, the Count supposed he could understand why Shalamov (or his superiors) had insisted upon this little bit of censorship—having presumed that Chekhov’s observation could only lead to feelings of discontent or ill will. But the irony, of course, was that Chekhov’s observation was no longer even accurate. For surely, by now, the Russian people knew better than anyone in Europe how good a piece of bread could be.
When the Count closed Mishka’s book, he did not head straight downstairs to join the others. Instead, he remained in his study, lost in thought.
Given the circumstances, an observer might understandably have drawn the conclusion that as the Count sat there he was dwelling on memories of his old friend. But, in fact, he was no longer thinking about Mishka. He was thinking about Katerina. In particular, he was thinking—with a sense of foreboding—that in the course of twenty years this firefly, this pinwheel, this wonder of the world had become a woman who, when asked where she was going, could answer without the slightest hesitation: Does it matter?
BOOK FIVE
1954
Applause and Acclaim
Paris . . . ?”
Or so asked Andrey in the manner of one who cannot quite believe what he has heard.
“Yes,” said Emile.
“Paris . . . France?”
Emile furrowed his brow. “Are you drunk? Have you been knocked on the head?”
“But how?” asked the maître d’.
Emile sat back in his chair and nodded. For here was a question that was worthy of a man of intelligence.
It is a well-known fact that of all the species on earth Homo sapiens is among the most adaptable. Settle a tribe of them in a desert