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An Announcement; Anecdotes; An Association; & Antagonists at Arms (And an Absolution)

Summary: An Announcement

At the meeting in the Bishop’s office, on the day of the big dinner for the two committees, Andrey displays the strange hand tremor he developed overnight. The Kremlin liaison, Andrey says, has already been informed and is relieved to know that the Count will be able to step in.

That evening, the Count observes how people seat themselves, according to the pecking order of the moment. He overhears conversations. He sees that Khrushchev is the one who directs everyone’s attention to a spectacle about to unfold outside: the switchover of a large part of Moscow’s electric power to the new nuclear plant at Obninsk. Much of the city briefly goes dark, including the Metropol and the Maly Theater, where Anna is in the middle of a performance. Then the lights come back. After hearty applause from the assembled officials, the dinner resumes.

Summary: Anecdotes

Yesterday, the Count explained his plan to Sofia for the first time. When she objected, he asked her to trust him—a request she could never refuse. Tonight, after Sofia reports a change of venue in Paris, he prepares a fresh map. In the study, the two sit down to a dinner created by Emile and delivered by Andrey. The Count tells the story behind the main dish, Goose à la Sofia. More stories follow. The Count gives Sofia the photo of him and Mishka, in which the Count wears the moustache whose disappearance drew Nina to his table in 1922. He is glad he came back to Moscow, for his one appointment with destiny: becoming Sofia’s father. After a last game of Zut, Sofia and the Count descend to the lobby. She bids her friends on the staff a fond farewell, gives her father a final embrace, and then walks out the Metropol’s revolving doors, to her taxi.

In his quarters, alone again for the first time in over a decade, the Count writes five letters on hotel stationery and then goes to bed.

Summary: An Association

The Count’s meetings with Osip, now a high KGB official, petered out some time ago, but the two crossed paths a week ago. Tonight, at the Count’s suggestion, they watch Casablanca together. Osip has always dismissed the film, but this time he gives in to enthusiasm. As the film’s action (which involves a woman escaping the Nazi during World War II) unfolds, the Count thinks of another young woman, also escaping to freedom. In two days, Sofia will take the stage in Paris.

Summary: Antagonists at Arms (And an Absolution)

After midnight, the Count steals a passport from a travel-weary Finnish couple as they sleep. When he returns to his room, the Bishop is there, holding the outdated Paris map, which the Count neglected to destroy. After the Count’s horrified expression confirms the Bishop’s guess as to the map’s purpose, the Bishop leaves and takes the stairs down to his office.

The Count, however, dashes ahead of the Bishop by an alternate route—as Sofia used to dash ahead of the Count—lets himself into the Bishop’s office with Nina’s key, retrieves two dueling pistols from the box in the hidden wall cabinet, loads them, and is waiting for the Bishop when he enters. At gunpoint, the Count marches the Bishop into the basement with all the incriminating files he collected on hotel staff and guests over the years. He makes the Bishop feed the files into the boiler-room furnace, forces him to hand the Count a tourist’s guide to Finland from the discarded-items room, and locks the Bishop in the room with the banquet silver.

On his way back up to his room, the Count passes the one-eyed cat, who registers no disapproval of his actions whatsoever.

Analysis: An Announcement; Anecdotes; An Association; & Antagonists at Arms (And an Absolution)

Despite its claims of equality, the Party has outstripped the nobility in its appreciation of hierarchy, and an understanding of the nuances of the dynamics of groups of important men is useful to the Count. The hierarchy is so strong that it outdoes the nobility because even the nobility needed a seating arrangement to understand where each person stood in rank. Again, the hypocrisy of the Party is on full display. However, with the Count’s understanding of social graces and relationships, he is able to learn useful information about the future of the Russian government. Even as Stalin has always insisted upon the idea of equality for all people in Russia, the past is inescapable. The state has adopted the stature of the nobility they claimed to despise, and it continues to repeat the mistakes it claimed it would solve. The Count’s ability to straddle social lines and use his experiences as knowledge enable him to take advantage of a situation in a way many on either side of the class line could not.

While Fate can be seen at work in the Count’s life, the Count cannot rely on it alone to accomplish his mission, and he uses the lessons he’s learned at the Metropol to make his escape. His talent for adaptation is on full display, for it takes action to continually turn the cogs in the clock. He must use the lessons he has learned in his long life, including Sofia’s game and the pistols, to turn Fate into Fortune. The Bishop reveals his true feelings of the nobility, which is that while he has erased nearly every tradition from their time, it is he that is still stuck in the past with his hatred of them. The Count waits until the hour that he and the Bishop can move “like ghosts” through the hotel as he did after his first meeting with Anna. They visit the places Nina took him on their first adventures, in the boiler room where the furnace was once described as a place to burn letters. Now, by burning his friend’s files, the Count is finally able to let go of his past and reckon with the future that he is making for himself. The Count actualizes the Bishop's inability to escape his hatred of the past by locking him in the silver room, forcing him to sit alone, stuck with all the pomp and grandeur of the nobility he has never been able to overcome, even in the new world he helped create.

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