invention of vodka. Then, presumably to drive home his point, he emptied his glass.
“Come now,” said the Brit. “You can’t be serious.”
The German gave his younger neighbor the look of one who had no experience being anything but serious. “I will buy a glass of vodka,” he said, “for any man in this bar who can name three more.”
Now, vodka was not the Count’s preferred spirit. In point of fact, despite his love for his country, he rarely drank it. What’s more, he had already polished off a bottle of White and a snifter of brandy, and he still had his own rather pressing business to attend to. But when a man’s country is dismissed so offhandedly, he cannot hide behind his preferences or his appointments—especially when he has drunk a bottle of White and a snifter of brandy. So, having sketched a quick instruction for Audrius on the back of a napkin and tucked it under a one-ruble note, the Count cleared his throat.
“Excuse me, gentlemen. I couldn’t help but overhear your exchange. I have no doubt, mein Herr, that your remark regarding Russia’s contributions to the West was a form of inverted hyperbole—an exaggerated diminution of the facts for poetic effect. Nonetheless, I will take you at your word and happily accept your challenge.”
“I’ll be damned,” said the Brit.
“But I do have one condition,” added the Count.
“And what is that?” asked the German.
“That for each of the contributions I name, we three shall drink a glass of vodka together.”
The German, who was scowling, waved a hand in the air as if he were about to dismiss the Count, much as he had dismissed the country. But ever-attentive Audrius had already set three empty glasses on the bar and was filling them to the brim.
“Thank you, Audrius.”
“My pleasure, Your Excellency.”
“Number one,” said the Count, adding a pause for dramatic effect: “Chekhov and Tolstoy.”
The German let out a grunt.
“Yes, yes. I know what you’re going to say: that every nation has its poets in the pantheon. But with Chekhov and Tolstoy, we Russians have set the bronze bookends on the mantelpiece of narrative. Henceforth, writers of fictions from wheresoever they hail, will place themselves on the continuum that begins with the one and ends with the other. For who, I ask you, has exhibited better mastery of the shorter form than Chekhov in his flawless little stories? Precise and uncluttered, they invite us into some corner of a household at some discrete hour in which the entire human condition is suddenly within reach, if heartbreakingly so. While at the other extreme: Can you conceive of a work greater in scope than War and Peace? One that moves so deftly from the parlor to the battlefield and back again? That so fully investigates how the individual is shaped by history, and history by the individual? In the generations to come, I tell you there will be no new authors to supplant these two as the alpha and omega of narrative.”
“I daresay he has something there,” said the Brit. Then he raised his glass and emptied it. So the Count emptied his, and after a grumble, the German followed suit.
“Number two?” asked the Brit, as Audrius refilled the glasses.
“Act one, scene one of The Nutcracker.”
“Tchaikovsky!” the German guffawed.
“You laugh, mein Herr. And yet, I would wager a thousand crowns that you can picture it yourself. On Christmas Eve, having celebrated with family and friends in a room dressed with garlands, Clara sleeps soundly on the floor with her magnificent new toy. But at the stroke of midnight, with the one-eyed Drosselmeyer perched on the grandfather clock like an owl, the Christmas tree begins to grow. . . .”
As the Count raised his hands slowly over the bar to suggest the growth of the tree, the Brit began to whistle the famous march from the opening act.
“Yes, exactly,” said the Count to the Brit. “It is commonly said that the English know how to celebrate Advent best. But with all due respect, to witness the essence of winter cheer one must venture farther north than London. One must venture above the fiftieth parallel to where the course of the sun is its most elliptical and the force of the wind its most unforgiving. Dark, cold, and snowbound, Russia has the sort of climate in which the spirit of Christmas burns brightest. And that is why Tchaikovsky seems to have captured the sound of it better than anyone else. I tell you that not