usual, the members of the Triumvirate walked from the principal’s office to the stairwell in silence. But at the landing, when Emile began climbing the stairs to the second floor, the Count took Andrey by the sleeve.
“Andrey, my friend,” he said under his breath. “Can you spare a moment . . . ?”
An Announcement
At 6:45 on the eleventh of June, Count Alexander Rostov stood in suite 417 dressed in the white jacket of the Boyarsky, ensuring that the place settings were properly arranged and his men properly attired before opening the doors for the 1954 combined dinner of the Presidium and the Council of Ministers.
Eleven days earlier, as we know, the Count had been excused from this duty rather unceremoniously. But early on the afternoon of the tenth of June, Maître d’ Duras arrived at the Boyarsky’s daily meeting with distressing news. For some time, he said, he had been experiencing a tremor of the hands consistent with the onset of palsy. After a troubled night’s sleep, he had awakened to discover that the condition had grown considerably worse. By way of illustration, he held his right hand over the table where it trembled like a leaf.
Emile looked on with an expression of shock. What sort of Divinity, he seemed to be thinking, would devise a world in which an aging man’s malady afflicts the very attribute that has set him apart from his fellow men and elevated him in the eyes of all?
What sort of Divinity, Emile? The very same who rendered Beethoven deaf and Monet blind. For what the Lord giveth, is precisely what he cometh later to taketh away.
But if Emile’s face expressed an almost sacrilegious indignation at his friend’s condition, the Bishop’s expressed the grimace of the inconvenienced.
Noting the manager’s annoyance, Andrey sought to set his mind at ease.
“You needn’t worry, Manager Leplevsky. I have already contacted comrade Propp at the Kremlin and assured him that while I cannot oversee tomorrow night’s event, Headwaiter Rostov will be assuming my responsibilities. Needless to say,” the maître d’ added, “comrade Propp was greatly relieved by the news.”
“Of course,” said the Bishop.
In reporting that comrade Propp was greatly relieved to have Headwaiter Rostov at the helm of this dinner of state, Andrey was not exaggerating. Born ten years after the Revolution, comrade Propp didn’t know that Headwaiter Rostov was under house arrest at the Metropol; he didn’t even know that Headwaiter Rostov was a Former Person. What he did know—and from personal experience—was that Headwaiter Rostov could be counted upon to attend to every detail on the table and respond immediately to the slightest hint of a customer’s dissatisfaction. And though comrade Propp was still relatively inexperienced in the ways of the Kremlin, he was experienced enough to know that any shortcomings in the evening would be laid at his door as surely as if he had set the table, cooked the meal, and poured the wine himself.
Comrade Propp personally communicated his relief to the Count during a brief meeting on the morning of the event. At a table for two in the Boyarsky, the young liaison reviewed with the Count, quite unnecessarily, all the details of the evening: the timing (the doors were to be opened promptly at 9:00); the layout of the tables (a long U with twenty seats on either side and six at the head); the menu (Chef Zhukovsky’s interpretation of a traditional Russian feast); the wine (a Ukrainian white); and the necessity of dousing the candles at exactly 10:59. Then, perhaps to emphasize the evening’s importance, comrade Propp gave the Count a glimpse of the guest list.
While it’s true that the Count generally hadn’t concerned himself with the inner workings of the Kremlin, that is not to suggest that he was unfamiliar with the names on that piece of paper—for he had served them all. Certainly, he had served them at formal functions in the Red and Yellow Rooms, but he had also served them at the more intimate and less guarded tables of the Boyarsky when they had dined with wives or mistresses, friends or enemies, patrons or protégés. He knew the boorish from the abrupt and the bitter from the boastful. He had seen all of them sober and most of them drunk.
“All will be seen to,” said the Count as the young apparatchik stood to go. “But, comrade Propp . . .”
Comrade Propp paused.
“Yes, Headwaiter Rostov? Have I forgotten something?”