A Gentleman in Moscow

It is June 21, 1923, the one-year anniversary of the Count’s captivity. As he chooses the jacket he will wear for his dinner with Mishka, he contemplates that “men in the most trying of circumstances” (109) celebrate anniversaries because anniversaries “stand as proof of their indomitability” (110).

In the lobby, he sees a beautiful, “willowy” woman (110) at the desk. When her two hunting dogs are baited by the hotel cat, they escape her grasp and cause mayhem as they race across the lobby. The Count whistles to the dogs, who immediately go to him. He and the woman exchange curt conversation.

Later, at the Shalyapin, the Count sees the woman again; she is with “a round-faced fellow with a receding hairline” (113). Mishka arrives, uncharacteristically dressed up, and says he can’t stay for dinner. The two discuss the RAPP. Mishka has made friends with poet Katerina Litvinova; the Count instantly senses that the two are engaged in a romance. While he is happy for his friend, he thinks back to a time when he, not Mishka, was the man about town. As he prepares to go to dinner alone, Audrius, the bartender, gives him a note: the woman, actress