before Sofia’s journey? Because well he knew that when one is traveling abroad for the first time, one does not wish to look back on laborsome instructions, weighty advice, or tearful sentiments. Like the memory of the simple soup, when one is homesick what one will find most comforting to recall are those lighthearted little stories that have been told a thousand times before.
That said, when their plates were finally empty, the Count attempted to broach a new subject that had clearly weighed on his mind.
“I was thinking . . . ,” he began rather haltingly. “Or rather, it occurred to me, that you might like . . . Or at some point, perhaps . . .”
Amused to see her father so uncharacteristically flummoxed, Sofia laughed.
“What is it, Papa? What might I like?”
Reaching into his jacket, the Count sheepishly removed the photograph that Mishka had tucked into the pages of his project.
“I know how you treasure the photograph of your parents, so I thought . . . you might like a picture of me, as well.” Blushing for the first time in over forty years, he handed her the picture, adding: “It’s the only one I have.”
Genuinely moved, Sofia accepted the photograph with every intention of expressing her deepest gratitude; but getting a look at the picture, she clapped a hand over her mouth and began to laugh.
“Your moustaches!” she blurted.
“I know, I know,” he said. “Although, believe it or not, at one time, they were the envy of the Jockey Club. . . .”
Sofia laughed aloud again.
“All right,” said the Count, holding out his hand. “If you don’t want it, I understand.”
But she gripped the picture to her chest.
“I wouldn’t part with it for the world.” Smiling, she took another peek at his moustaches then looked up at her father in wonder. “Whatever happened to them?”
“What happened to them, indeed . . .”
Taking a considerable drink of his wine, the Count told Sofia of the afternoon in 1922 when one of his moustaches had been clipped so unceremoniously by a heavyset fellow in the hotel’s barbershop.
“What a brute.”
“Yes,” agreed the Count, “and a glimpse of things to come. But, in a way, I have that fellow to thank for my life with you.”
“How do you mean?”
The Count explained how a few days after the incident in the barbershop, her mother had popped up at his table in the Piazza to ask, in essence, the very same question that Sofia had just asked: Where did they go? And with that simple inquiry, their friendship had commenced.
Now it was Sofia who took a drink from her wine.
“Do you ever regret coming back to Russia?” she asked after a moment. “I mean after the Revolution.”
The Count studied his daughter. If when Sofia had stepped out of Anna’s room in her blue dress, the Count had felt she was crossing the threshold into adulthood, then here was a perfect confirmation. For in both tone and intent, when Sofia posed this question she did not do so as a child asks a parent, but as one adult asks another about the choices he has made. So the Count gave the question its due consideration. Then he told her the truth:
“Looking back, it seems to me that there are people who play an essential role at every turn. And I don’t just mean the Napoleons who influence the course of history; I mean men and women who routinely appear at critical junctures in the progress of art, or commerce, or the evolution of ideas—as if Life itself has summoned them once again to help fulfill its purpose. Well, since the day I was born, Sofia, there was only one time when Life needed me to be in a particular place at a particular time, and that was when your mother brought you to the lobby of the Metropol. And I would not accept the Tsarship of all the Russias in exchange for being in this hotel at that hour.”
Sofia rose from the table to give her father a kiss on the cheek. Then returning to her chair, she leaned back, squinted, and said: “Famous threesomes.”
“Ha-ha!” exclaimed the Count.
Thus, as the candles were consumed by their flames and the bottle of Margaux was drunk to its lees, reference was made to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; Purgatory, Heaven, and Hell; the three rings of Moscow; the three Magi; the three Fates; the Three Musketeers; the gray ladies from Macbeth; the riddle of the