instruction to “draw the curtains”? And when he closed the door behind him with a click, did he not assume the aspect of a ghost before drifting forlornly to the roof? And now, as she slips beneath the bedcovers, this once haughty figure offers a smile suggestive of patience, tenderness, even gratitude—traits that are mirrored almost exactly in the smile of her former adversary as he hangs the white jacket of the Boyarsky on the back of a chair and begins to unbutton his shirt!
What possibly could have happened to reunite these contrary souls? What twisting path could have led them to suite 311 and back into each other’s arms?
Well, it was not the path of the Count that twisted. For Alexander Rostov had spent the intervening years traveling up and down the Metropol’s staircase from his bedroom to the Boyarsky and back again. No, the path that twisted, turned, veered, and doubled back was not the Count’s; it was Anna’s.
When we first encountered Miss Urbanova in the Metropol’s lobby in 1923, the haughtiness the Count noted in her bearing was not without foundation, for it was a by-product of her unambiguous celebrity. Discovered in a regional theater on the outskirts of Odessa in 1919 by Ivan Rosotsky, Anna was cast as leading lady in his next two films. Both of these were historical romances that celebrated the moral purity of those who toiled, while disparaging the corruption of those who did not. In the first, Anna played an eighteenth-century kitchen maid for whom a young nobleman abandons the trappings of court. In the second, she was a nineteenth-century heiress who turns her back on her legacy to wed a blacksmith’s apprentice. Setting his fables in the palaces of yesteryear, Rosotsky lit them in the hazy aura of dreams, shot them in the soft focus of memories, and capped the first, second, and third acts with close-ups of his starlet: Anna aspiring; Anna distraught; Anna at long last in love. Both of the films were popular with the public, both found favor with the Politburo (which was eager to give the People some respite from the war years through suitably themed diversions), and our young starlet reaped the effortless rewards of fame.
In 1921, Anna was given membership in the All-Russian Film Union and access to its dedicated stores; in 1922 she was given use of a dacha near Peterhof; and in 1923 she was given the mansion of a former fur merchant furnished with gilded chairs, painted armoires, and a Louis Quatorze dresser—all of which could easily have been props in one of Rosotsky’s films. It was at her soirées in this house that Anna mastered the ancient art of descending a staircase. With one hand on the banister and the train of a long silk dress behind her, she descended step by step while painters, authors, actors, and senior members of the Party waited at the foot of the stair.*
But art is the most unnatural minion of the state. Not only is it created by fanciful people who tire of repetition even more quickly than they tire of being told what to do, it is also vexingly ambiguous. Just when a carefully crafted bit of dialogue is about to deliver a crystal-clear message, a hint of sarcasm or the raising of an eyebrow can spoil the entire effect. In fact, it can give credence to a notion that is the exact opposite of that which was intended. So, perhaps it is understandable that governing authorities are bound to reconsider their artistic preferences every now and then, if for no other reason than to keep themselves fit.
Sure enough, at the Moscow premiere of Rosotsky’s fourth film with Anna as leading lady (in which, playing the part of a princess mistaken for an orphan, she falls in love with an orphan mistaken for a prince), it was noted by the savvy in the orchestra section that General Secretary Stalin, who was known so endearingly in his youth as Soso, was not smiling as wholeheartedly at the screen as he had in the past. Instinctively, they restrained their own enthusiasm, which tempered the enthusiasm of those in the mezzanine, which in turn tempered those in the balcony—until everyone in the house could sense that something was afoot.
Two days after the premiere, an open letter was written to Pravda by an up-and-coming apparatchik (who had been sitting just a few seats behind Soso). The film was entertaining in its way, he conceded, but