best; and you certainly cannot put the half-bitten ones back in the box. . . .”
Nina eyed the Count with an expression of seasoned tolerance, and then presumably for his benefit, spoke a little more slowly.
“I understand that a princess should say please if she is asking for a cake, because she is trying to convince someone to give her the cake. And I suppose, if having asked for a cake, she is given a cake, then she has good reason to say thank you. But in the second part of your example, the princess in question didn’t ask for the cake; she was offered it. And I see no reason why she should have to say thank you when she is merely obliging someone by accepting what they’ve offered.”
To punctuate her point, Nina put a lemon tartlet in her mouth.
“I concede that there is some merit to your argument,” said the Count. “But I can only tell you from a life of experience that—”
Nina cut him off with a wave of a finger.
“But you have just said that you are quite young.”
“Indeed, I am.”
“Well then, it seems to me that your claim of ‘a life of experience’ may be premature.”
Yes, thought the Count, as this tea was making perfectly clear.
“I shall work upon my posture,” Nina said quite definitively, brushing the crumbs from her fingers. “And I will be sure to say please and thank you whenever I ask for things. But I have no intention of thanking people for things I never asked for in the first place.”
Around and About
On the twelfth of July at seven o’clock, as the Count was crossing the lobby on his way to the Boyarsky, Nina caught his eye from behind one of the potted palms and gave him the signal. It was the first time that she had hailed him for an excursion this late in the day.
“Quick,” she explained, when he had joined her behind the tree. “The gentleman has gone out to dine.”
The gentleman?
To avoid drawing attention to themselves, the two walked casually up the stairs. But as they turned onto the third floor, they ran smack into a guest who was patting his pockets for his key. On the landing directly across from the elevator, there was a stained-glass window of long-legged birds wading in shallows that the Count had passed a thousand times before. Nina began to study it with care.
“Yes, you were right,” she said. “It is some kind of crane.”
But as soon as the guest had let himself into his room, Nina forged ahead. Moving at a brisk pace along the carpet, they passed rooms 313, 314, and 315. They passed the little table with the statue of Hermes that stood outside the door of 316. Then with a certain dizziness, the Count realized that they were headed toward his old suite!
But wait.
We are ahead of ourselves. . . .
After the ill-fated night that ended on the second-floor steps, the Count had taken a break from his nightly aperitif, suspecting that the liquor had been an unhealthy influence on his mood. But this saintly abstinence did not prove a tonic to his soul. With so little to do and all the time in the world to do it, the Count’s peace of mind continued to be threatened by a sense of ennui—that dreaded mire of the human emotions.
And if this is how desultory one feels after three weeks, reflected the Count, then how desultory can one expect to feel after three years?
But for the virtuous who have lost their way, the Fates often provide a guide. On the island of Crete, Theseus had his Ariadne and her magical ball of thread to lead him safely from the lair of the Minotaur. Through those caverns where ghostly shadows dwell, Odysseus had his Tiresias just as Dante had his Virgil. And in the Metropol Hotel, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov had a nine-year-old girl by the name of Nina Kulikova.
For on the first Wednesday in July, as the Count sat in the lobby at a loss of what to do with himself, he happened to notice Nina zipping past with an unusually determined expression.
“Hello, my friend. Where are you headed?”
Turning about like one who’s been caught in the act, Nina composed herself, then answered with a wave of the hand: