that you could be there in the audience to hear me.”
The Count smiled.
“I assure you, my dear, were you to play the piano on the moon, I would hear every chord.”
Achilles Agonistes
Greetings, Arkady.”
“Greetings to you, Count Rostov. Is there something I can do for you this morning?”
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you spare a bit of stationery?”
“Certainly.”
Standing at the front desk, the Count penned a one-sentence note under the hotel’s moniker and addressed the envelope in an appropriately slanted script; he waited until the bell captain was otherwise occupied, casually crossed the lobby, slipped the note onto the bell captain’s desk, and then headed downstairs for his weekly visit to the barber.
It had been many years since Yaroslav Yaroslavl had worked his magic in the barbershop of the Metropol, and in the interim any number of successors had attempted to fill his shoes. The most recent fellow—Boris Something-or-other-ovich—was perfectly qualified to shorten a man’s hair; but he was neither the artist nor the conversationalist that Yaroslav had been. In fact, he went about his business with such mute efficiency, one suspected he was part machine.
“Trim?” he asked the Count, wasting no time with subjects, verbs, or the other superfluities of language.
Given the Count’s thinning hair and the barber’s predisposition to efficiency, a trim might take all of ten minutes.
“Yes, a trim,” said the Count. “But perhaps a shave as well. . . .”
The barber furrowed his brow. The man in him, no doubt, was inclined to point out that the Count had obviously shaved a few hours before; but the machinery in him was so finely tuned, it was already putting down the scissors and reaching for the shaving brush.
Having whipped a sufficient lather, Boris dabbed it on those areas of the Count’s face where whiskers would have been had the Count been in need of a shave. He sharpened one of his razors on his strop, leaned over the chair, and with an unflinching hand shaved the Count’s right upper cheek in a single pass. Wiping the blade on the towel at his waist, he then leaned over the Count’s left upper cheek, and shaved it with equal alacrity.
At this rate, fretted the Count, he’ll be done in a minute and a half.
Using a bent knuckle, the barber now raised the Count’s chin. The Count could feel the metal of the razor make contact with his throat. And that’s when one of the new bellhops appeared in the door.
“Excuse me, sir.”
“Yes?” said the barber with his blade held fast at the Count’s jugular.
“I have a note for you.”
“On the bench.”
“But it is urgent,” said the young man with some anxiety.
“Urgent?”
“Yes, sir. From the manager.”
The barber looked back at the bellhop for the first time.
“The manager?”
“Yes, sir.”
After an extended exhalation, the barber removed the blade from the Count’s throat, accepted the missive, and—as the bellhop disappeared down the hall—slit the envelope open with his razor.
Unfolding the note, the barber stared at it for a full minute. In those sixty seconds, he must have read it ten times over because it was composed of only four words: Come see me immediately!
The barber exhaled again then looked at the wall.
“I can’t imagine,” he said to no one. Then having thought it over for another minute, he turned to the Count: “I must see to something.”
“By all means. Do what you must. I am in no hurry.”
To underscore his point, the Count leaned back his head and closed his eyes as if to nap; but when the barber’s footsteps had receded down the hall, the Count leapt from the chair like a cat.
When the Count was a young man, he prided himself on the fact that he was unmoved by the ticking of the clock. In the early years of the twentieth century, there were those of his acquaintance who brought a new sense of urgency to their slightest endeavor. They timed the consumption of their breakfast, the walk to their office, and the hanging of their hat on its hook with as much precision as if they were preparing for a military campaign. They answered the phone on the first ring, scanned the headlines, limited their conversations to whatever was most germane, and generally spent their days in pursuit of the second hand. God bless them.
For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour—disdaining even to wear a watch—he took the greatest satisfaction