which the particulars were unfolding: a husband, a daughter, an arrest, the Lubyanka, corrective labor . . .
Interpreting the Count’s expression as one of hesitation, Nina—that most self-reliant of souls—gripped the Count by the arm.
“I have no one else to turn to, Alexander.” Then after a pause she added: “Please.”
Together, the Count and Nina crossed the lobby to this child of five or six with black hair, white skin, and dark blue eyes. Had the Count been introduced to Sofia under different circumstances, he might have observed with quiet amusement the signs of Nina’s rugged practicality on display: that Sofia wore simple clothes; that her hair was almost as short as a boy’s; and that the linen doll she hugged by the neck didn’t even have a dress.
Nina knelt so that she could see her daughter eye to eye. She put a hand on Sofia’s knee and began to speak in a tenor the Count had never heard her speak in before. It was the tenor of tenderness.
“Sonya, this is your Uncle Sasha whom I have told you so much about.”
“The one who gave you the pretty binoculars?”
“Yes,” said Nina with a smile. “The very same.”
“Hello, Sofia,” said the Count.
Nina then explained that while Mama went to prepare their new home, Sofia would be staying for a few weeks in this lovely hotel. Nina told her that until Mama returned, she must be strong and respectful and listen to her uncle.
“And then we will take the long train to Papa,” the girl said.
“That’s right, my sweet. Then we will take the long train to Papa.”
Sofia was doing her best to match her mother’s fortitude; but she did not yet have her mother’s command over her own emotions. So while she did not question, or plead, or act dismayed, when she nodded to show that she understood, tears fell down her cheeks.
Nina used her thumb to wipe the tears away from one side of her daughter’s face as Sofia used the back of her hand to wipe them away from the other. Nina looked Sofia in the eye until she was sure the tears had stopped. Then nodding once, she gave her daughter a kiss on the forehead and led the Count a few yards away.
“Here,” she said, handing him a canvas pack with shoulder straps, the sort that might have been worn on the back of a soldier. “These are her things. And you should probably take this too.” Nina handed him a small photograph without a frame. “It may be better to keep it to yourself. I don’t know. You will have to decide.”
Nina gripped the Count on the arm again; then she walked across the lobby at the pace of one who hopes to leave herself no room for second thoughts.
The Count watched her exit the hotel and head across Theatre Square, just as he had eight years before. When she was gone, he looked down at the photograph in his hand. It was a picture of Nina and her husband, Sofia’s father. From Nina’s face, the Count could tell that the picture had been taken some years before. He could also tell that he had only been half right. For while he had seen her husband all those years ago in the lobby of the Metropol, Nina had not married the handsome captain—she had married the hapless young fellow with the sailor’s cap who had so eagerly retrieved her coat.
This entire exchange—from Nina’s saying the Count’s name to her passing through the hotel’s doors—had taken less than fifteen minutes. So, the Count had little more than a moment to consider the nature of the commitment he was being asked to make.
Granted it was only for a month or two. He would not be responsible for the girl’s education, her moral instruction, or her religious upbringing. But her health and comfort? He would be responsible for those even were he to care for her for one night. What was she to eat? Where was she to sleep? And, while it was his night off tonight, what was he to do with her the following evening, when he had to don the white jacket of the Boyarsky?
But let us imagine that before committing himself, the Count had had the time to see the problem in its full scope, to consider every challenge and obstacle, to acknowledge his own lack of experience, to concede that in all likelihood he was the least fitting, least well-equipped, and most poorly situated man