A Gentleman in Moscow An Appointment; An Acquaintanceship; & Anyway . . . Summary & Analysis

An Appointment; An Acquaintanceship; & Anyway . . .

Summary: An Appointment

The Count is struggling through Montaigne’s Essays with his eye on the clock, which was made to order for the Count’s father. At noon, the Count hurries down to the barbershop in the Metropol basement and, at the invitation of the barber, Yaroslav Yaroslavl, sits down in an unoccupied chair while Yaroslav finishes with his current customer. As the Count waits, his eye wanders over a large metal cabinet whose contents include a little black bottle that the barber winkingly refers to as the “Fountain of Youth.”

When Yaroslav turns to the Count and begins to trim his hair, a stocky man seated on a bench protests, “I was first.” When the Count explains that he has a standing appointment, the man snatches one of the barber’s scissors, snips off part of the Count’s right moustache, and leaves. The barber has never seen the man before. The Count, thinking that the man may be one of the party officials who have taken over half the second floor, says he should have invited the man to precede him. As for the vandalized moustache: the Count asks to be shaved clean.

Summary: An Acquaintanceship

As the days wear on, the Count gets restless. He always lunches in a lobby-floor dining room he calls the Piazza, because of its large central fountain. Back in his room, he always counts the minutes until he can go for a drink at the bar, which he has dubbed the Shalyapin, after an opera singer. Today at the Piazza, as an incompetent waiter with the solemn demeanor of a bishop attends him, the Count is being watched by a blonde he has often seen sitting in the lobby and knows to be nine years old. Suddenly, she leaves her governess to sit at his table, uninvited, and asks what happened to his moustache. Realizing that she is not going anywhere, he gives her a portion of his lunch. They talk about his being a count, and about princesses, and also duels. That night at the Shalyapin, the Count remarks to the bartender, Audrius, how popular pistol dueling was in eighteenth-century Russia.

Summary: Anyway . . .

Five days later, the girl, Nina Kulikova, invites the Count to tea. By now, the two are on a first-name basis. Saying “Anyway . . . ,” Nina turns to the business at hand: the rules of being a princess. She listens patiently to the Count’s tale about a princess who misses a ball to give an old woman a ride, without marrying the woman’s grandson afterward. Nina maintains that “thank you” is called for when one asks and receives, but not when one accepts something one did not request.

Analysis: An Appointment; An Acquaintanceship; & Anyway . . .

Adaptation, though difficult, allows the Count to make progress, even as he struggles to let go of his previous life and find purpose in the day-to-day monotony of his imprisonment. He attempts to read Michel de Montainge’s Essays to connect with his past, but they offer him no solace. He realizes that instead of fixating on what happened in his life before confinement, he must focus on his future. Then, during his weekly visit to the barber, the Count’s distinctive mustache, which is “spread like the wings of a gull” and symbolizes his freedom and identity, is clipped by an angry stranger. The Count observes himself in the mirror for the first time in years and sees not who he wants to be, but who he currently is. The Count demonstrates his ability to evolve by asking the barber to shave off his mustache entirely. In these sections, fate becomes an important influence on the story, and it begins to show its hand by drawing a young girl named Nina to the Count’s table to inquire about his missing mustache. This unexpected event expands the Count’s dull, tiny world. Nina asks the Count about princesses and duels, traditions that accompanied Russian nobility. To progress toward a future of equality, Russia may have to leave these traditions behind, just as the Count left behind his mustache.