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Ascending, Alighting; Addendum; 1946; Antics; Antitheses; an Accident; & Addendum

Summary: Ascending, Alighting

The rest of the Count’s day is very busy.

2:00. The Count introduces Sofia to Marina, who agrees to watch Sofia for an hour. However, she shuts down the Count’s suggestion that what Sofia really needs is a mother.

A few minutes after 2:15. The daily meeting of the Triumvirate. The Count is briefed on a formal dinner in the Red Room that evening and is reminded of his monthly meeting with Glebnikov.

3:15. As the Count finishes setting up the Red Room, he discovers in his pocket the envelope delivered earlier. He rushes to Anna’s suite, apologizes for being unavailable today, and for the second time in their relationship asks her a favor. Using the two traveling cases she lends him, he carries bedding from the basement laundry and tomato cans from the Boyarsky pantry upstairs to construct a bunk for Sofia, above his bed.

Well after 4:00. The Count picks Sofia up, receives Marina’s forgiveness for his presumptuous earlier suggestion, asks her help one more time later that evening, and agrees to hire one of the chambermaids as a sitter starting tomorrow. Back on the sixth floor, Sofia is duly awed by the study behind the closet. She and the Count take turns at hide-the-thimble. Sofia wins.

Around 6:00. The Count drops Sofia off with Marina and hurries to the Boyarsky to supervise after the doors open for dinner.

7:30. Oversight in the Red Room.

10:00. Tutoring Osip Glebnikov. The reading is Tocqueville, whose observations about Americans mention their lack of interest in philosophy and their obsession with material comforts. Osip is incensed to discover that the Count did not do the reading, but then amused to learn that the reason is a young lady . . . aged five or six.

Nearly 11:00. Hurrying to pick Sofia up from Marina’s, the Count runs into Mishka, who has been working for years on a collection of Chekov’s letters and now is distraught over being asked by his editor to remove a few sentences complementing the food in Berlin, especially the bread. The Count urges Mishka to keep the matter in perspective and get some sleep.

11:40. Sofia has stayed up waiting for the Count. As she leaves, she thanks Marina for dinner.

12:00. Sofia insists on watching the clock strike midnight, then immediately falls asleep in her new bed. The Count lies awake, worrying about Mishka and Nina, and how he will manage with Sofia. His worries are legitimate. Mishka will storm into his editor’s office the next day and denounce the ordered Chekov edit, and as a result will be sent to Siberia early next year. Nina will disappear into Russia’s vast Eastern spaces and will never be heard from again. Sofia’s presence will be noticed and reported, but the matter will be ignored on the grounds that Sofia is probably the illegitimate daughter of Anna and her balding fan on the Politburo.

Eventually, the Count falls asleep.

Summary: Addendum

Sofia wakes the Count up to say she left her dolly in Marina’s room.

Summary: 1946

On June twenty-first, a man wearing a ragged coat and dragging a stiffened right leg limps onto Red Square and then into the alley behind the Metropol.

Exactly five years ago, Germany launched an invasion of Russia that by late October threatened Moscow. People remember Stalin’s bravado and the November military parade, but what really turned the Germans back was reinforcements and the bitter December cold.

Summary: Antics, Antitheses, an Accident

At 1:30, the Bishop, who by now has replaced Halecki as the hotel manager, interrogates the Count about an earlier hallway commotion involving an Italian tenor, a Catholic prelate, an American general, and three live geese. The Count denies knowing where the geese came from and ignores the insinuation that Sofia was responsible, but during the Triumvirate meeting, Andrey asks the Count to have the feathers cleaned out of the dumbwaiter. Just then, the ragged man appears outside the kitchen, asking for the Count. It is Mishka.

Emile serves Mishka a meal that begins with bread and salt, traditional symbols of hospitality. Mishka tells the Count his story. He has finished his time of forced labor but is still barred from visiting Russia’s major cities, and now lives a kind of shadow-life in Yavas. He has snuck into Moscow to see the Count but must leave again that night. As the two old friends talk, Mishka speaks gloomily and prophetically of Russia’s willingness to destroy its art, its cities, and its children for the sake of principle. He ends, however, on a note of optimism: he is working on something that the Count will be the first to see when it is ready. Then Mishka is on his way.

At the monthly tutoring sessions with Osip, the study of American culture has shifted from books to films. As the Count and Osip watch The Maltese Falcon, the Count repeats the substance of what Mishka said about Russia. Osip responds that the Americans, too, are willing to destroy their own inheritance to create a new one. But Russia is doing so for the common good, not the individual.

Leaving Osip, the Count heads to the Shalyapin. There, the American general’s aide, Captain Richard Vanderwhile, is regaling an audience with a recap of the incident with the geese. Afterward, as Richard and the Count sit at the bar and chat, the Count shares the subject of his conversations with Mishka and Osip. The American suspects that what matters endures, but we cannot predict in advance what it will be.

Crossing the lobby after eleven, the Count is surprised to see his daughter—for that is what Sofia has become—still up and reading a book. He acts nonchalant but then begins running up the stairs. He and she have a game in which, when she knows where he is headed, she tries to arrive ahead of him. Her ability to do this is astonishing. This time, however, the Count’s room is empty. Moments later, a housemaid bursts in to report that Sofia has fallen in the service stair. Bolting down several flights of stairs, the Count finds Sofia unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. Distraught, the Count carries her out the main entrance (his first time outdoors in over two decades) and orders a cab driver to drive to St. Cyprian's Hospital. St. Cyprians’s, unfortunately, has become a clinic for the indigent, with a staff of doubtful competence. However, as the Count questions the sleepy-looking surgeon about to treat Sofia, another doctor sweeps in, from First Municipal Hospital. He takes charge of Sofia’s case, examines and treats her, and in the end is able to assure the Count that although she had a concussion and requires a hospital stay, she will soon be her old self again. Osip enters, bringing with him a bewildered Marina. It was Osip who arranged for Sofia’s care, he has brought Marina to stay with Sofia, and he now gently orders the Count to leave by the rear exit, where a vehicle waits to take him back to the Metropol.

After a ride in the back of a bread van, the Count returns to his room to see, sitting on his desk, a record player, some records, and a note from Richard Vanderwhile. Grateful to be alive and to have Sofia in good hands, the Count puts on a recording Richard recommended. It is a performance by Vladimir Horowitz, the famous Russian pianist who defected to the West.

Summary: Addendum

Andrey visits Sofia at First Municipal, bringing her a book that used to belong to Andrey’s son, Ilya, who died fighting in Berlin. Andrey returns to an empty apartment; his wife is shopping at the repurposed church where one can still discreetly pray at a chapel in back. One day, Andre knows, the government will require that Ilya’s old bedroom be made available for a new occupant.

Analysis: Ascending, Alighting; Addendum; 1946; Antics; Antitheses; an Accident; & Addendum

Now that the Count has Sofia to take care of, his priorities shift from whimsical, sometimes careless indulgences to cautious and purposeful action. The Count must maintain a delicate balance in his alliance with Glebnikov, as Glebnikov’s outburst paints him as more childish than Sofia, yet he wields far more power. The stakes are higher now in their meetings because if the Count makes a wrong move, he is not the only one who will face the consequences. Similarly, Mishka’s alliance with Shalamov reveals that his work is being exploited for censorship. The Count, however, with his new appreciation for caution, advises Mishka to tread lightly. In a time where relations are so delicate, particularly for the Count as a “Former Person,” there is some comfort that Sofia is not in danger due to the powerful relationships the Count has cultivated. Like a new parent, the Count is overwhelmed in caring for Sofia, has trouble falling asleep due to his worry, and is woken by her in the night as though she is a new baby. His life has become like a game of chess in which he must delicately plot every move and execute it within a time constraint, but, however exhausting, his love for Sofia gives him newfound purpose.

In Russian culture, bread is a symbol for hospitality, and in the novel, it takes on the symbol for tradition. The lines Shalamov demands to be stricken from Mishka’s writing are about bread, and censoring this line about a most basic food is symbolic of the famine the state keeps hidden to protect their image as a prosperous state. This censorship also represents the traditions they eliminate. Mishka realizes that not all traditions should be abolished, and when he bursts into Shalamov’s meeting, he comes face-to-face with the hypocrisy that while people starve for lack of bread, Party officials feast on it. In the time jump to 1946, it becomes evident that the more Russia changes, the more it stays the same. Bread appears again as a symbol of both tradition and the disingenuous Soviet idea of equity. Working people are starved of bread and yet it is plentiful on the tables of the upper class as with so many indulgences eliminated in the name of equality. Party officials see fit to indulge themselves, but censor the mention of bread in Chekov’s letter and ration bread among its citizens. The hypocrisy of the nobility remains, and only the titles have changed. The poor are still poor, but now under the guise of equality. 

In contrast to the scene outside, the Metropol is once again seen as an oasis because appearances are of the utmost importance to the Bolshevik reputation. Therefore, while the people outside starve and stand in line for eight hours for bread, the hotel serves bread at every table. Even in the chaos of the fourth-floor corridor, problems are reduced to three geese preposterously roaming the halls while people with real problems are just outside the hotel door. Mishka arrives as a reminder of just how fortunate the Count has been in his confinement. Mishka smiles sarcastically when they are offered bread and salt, old Russian traditions. The salt harkens back to Anna’s tale of the sea and the idea that riches come in unexpected places. Mishka had no idea how much he would miss the Russia of old as he watches his country destroy itself. Meanwhile, Glebnikov still consumes all that is unattainable and forbidden to the people under the guise of “research” after all these years. By watching the same movies over and over, it is made clear that his way of life is no longer research, but rather indulgence under a regime that has stripped away art. To counter Mishka who has lost everything to the Bolsheviks, Glebnikov has gained everything because of them and has a starkly different perspective. Behind the curtains of both the hotel and the government, everything is chaotic, despite the façade.
 
Vanderwhile’s comments are aptly timed as Fate plays out in front of the Count’s eyes. Vanderwhile gives the wisest perspective on Russia as a third party. Although Socrates committed suicide (thus destroying himself), he has endured despite his attempted erasure. Therefore, Russia can never truly destroy itself because history, through Fate, has a way of remembering. Had all of these small occurrences failed to happen exactly as they did from the start of his time at the hotel, the Count would not have become so well acquainted with Glebnikov. Glebnikov’s kindness shows that he is not an unflinching soldier for the cause as so many officials are, and perhaps that is due to his indulgence in tradition and the West. In the face of losing someone he loves once again, the Count does not give a second thought to risking his own life to save Sofia’s. 

The characters’ ongoing conflict is that of clinging to the past versus letting go, symbolizing a survival of tradition versus a survival of self. Riding in the back of the bread van, the Count stops looking out the window for the familiar because the past does not matter to him like it did before. Now, all that matters is Sofia’s future, and the most important traditions are those created with family. Meanwhile, with the salvation of one child’s life, there is the mourning of another’s loss. With the erasure of the past, the past can only exist in secret or in memories now. If someone or something is forgotten, it is almost as if it never existed. Andrey keeps the secret of his son’s passing because not only would they be forced into smaller accommodations, but he would lose this memory of his son forever. In these homages, memories of the past endure, whether of family, faith, or tradition. They must be kept secret, or they will be erased. Andrey and his wife put their own survival at great risk by keeping these secrets, which shows the immense importance they hold in their lives.

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