A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles

I read Mr Towles' first novel, Rules of Civility, in 2012 and adored it. The book transported me to my previous incarnation as a 1930s flapper in a way that a film would struggle to do. It turns out that creating immersive, atmospheric fiction is what Towles does best.  This time he takes us to Moscow, 1922, in the  Metropole Hotel.  The hotel has become a formal, elegant penitentiary for Count Alexander Rostov, who is sentenced to house arrest there by the Bolsheviks.

Towles perfectly captures the sense of imprisonment—almost the entire book takes place within the hotel, but it's hardly a gulag. Although somewhat straitened by the Revolution, the hotel is still a village within one structure. Towles also conveys flawlessly the nostalgia for earlier times .

Next was the shop of Fatima Federova, the florist. A natural casualty of the times, Fatima’s shelves had been emptied and her windows papered over back in 1920, turning one of the hotel’s brightest spots into one of its most forlorn. But in its day, the shop had sold flowers by the acre. It had provided the towering arrangements for the lobby, the lilies for the rooms, the bouquets of roses that were tossed at the feet of the Bolshoi ballerinas, as well as the boutonnieres on the men who did the tossing. What’s more, Fatima was fluent in the floral codes that had governed polite society since the Age of Chivalry. Not only did she know the flower that should be sent as an apology, she knew which flower to send when one has been late; when one has spoken out of turn; and when, having taking notice of the young lady at the door, one has carelessly overtrumped one’s partner. In short, Fatima knew a flower’s fragrance, color, and purpose better than a bee.

The hotel's grand banquet rooms are sometimes given over to the organizations that are re-shaping Russia. The bureaucrats' bureaucrats.

...this Secretary suddenly rapped his gavel on the tabletop—calling to order the Second Meeting of the First Congress of the Moscow Branch of the All-Russian Union of Railway Workers. The doors were closed, seats were taken, Nina held her breath, and the Assembly was underway. In the first fifteen minutes, six different administrative matters were raised and dispensed with in quick succession—leading one to imagine that this particular Assembly might actually be concluded before one’s back gave out. But next on the docket was a subject that proved more contentious. It was a proposal to amend the Union’s charter—or more precisely, the seventh sentence of the second paragraph, which the Secretary now read in full. Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence—one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.

One very early morning, after a sodden tryst with an actress, Rostov leaves his attic suite and step out onto the hotel's roof, where he finds the maintenance man, who invites the Count to join him for some strong coffee, black bread, and honey. The rich flavor of the honey draws Rostov's admiration.

“How extraordinary,” the Count said with an appreciative shake of the head.
“It is and isn’t,” said the old man. “When the lilacs are in bloom, the bees’ll buzz to the Alexander Gardens and the honey’ll taste like the lilacs. But in a week or so, they’ll be buzzing to the Garden Ring, and then you’ll be tasting the cherry trees.”

As the regime eliminates rank based upon seniority and skill, Towles plunks a Bishop into the hotel's management, where his arrogance is ill-placed and utterly unfounded.  The Count and the original, classically trained staff connive to trip him up, and we feel Rostov's nostalgia for the days when one could expect competent service in a fine hotel.

The staffing trend that had begun with the appointment of the Bishop had continued unabated—such that any young man with more influence than experience could now don the white jacket, clear from the left, and pour wine into water glasses.

We come to love Count Rostov, to appreciate deeply and ache for what he has lost. Towles gives us glimpses into the shattered world of the Russian aristocracy at its gentlest, its most humane.

Or, like the Count and Anna, one may simply join the Confederacy of the Humbled. Like the Freemasons, the Confederacy of the Humbled is a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile.

Sentencing Rostov to house arrest in one of Moscow's grandest hotels is a brilliant stroke. Although it limits the action to within the hotel's walls, a steady stream of guests cross Rostov's path, often over a leisurely meal in the still elegant dining room.

The Count took a sip of his wine and returned the glass to the table. “You are almost certainly from eastern Georgia.”
The captain sat up with an expression of enthusiasm. “Extraordinary. Do I have an accent?”
“Not that’s distinguishable. But then armies, like universities, are where accents are most commonly shed.”
“Then why eastern Georgia?”
The Count gestured to the wine. “Only an eastern Georgian would start his meal with a bottle of Rkatsiteli.”
“Because he’s a hayseed?”
“Because he misses home.”
The colonel laughed again. “What a canny fellow you are.”

 Lest Rostov's detention sound too comfortable (and it was certainly a far cry from the later gulags), Towles occasionally introduces an ominous note.

“If I may be so bold, Osip Ivanovich: What is it exactly that you do as an officer of the Party?”
“Let’s just say that I am charged with keeping track of certain men of interest.”
“Ah. Well, I imagine that becomes rather easy to achieve when you place them under house arrest.” “Actually,” corrected Glebnikov, “it is easier to achieve when you place them in the ground. . . .”
The Count conceded the point.

I now forget the context in the novel in which this passage appeared, but it struck me so deeply that I felt Towles must have intended it for me personally.

Adult children of perfectionist parents have usually taken one of two paths. They’ve either driven themselves relentlessly to win parental love and approval, or they’ve rebelled to the point where they develop a fear of success. There are those who behave as if someone is always keeping score. The house can never be clean enough. They can never experience pleasure in an accomplishment because they’re convinced that they could have done it better. They feel genuine panic if they make the slightest mistake.

Towles continues bringing the Party loyal, Osip Ivanovich, to the hotel, where he and Rostov form an impromptu film club, which the former intends to prove to the latter the utter corruption of the capitalist West. Hollywood in particular.

Osip Ivanovich had actually mastered the English language right down to the past perfect progressive as early as 1939. But American movies still deserved their careful consideration, he argued, not simply as windows into Western culture, but as unprecedented mechanisms of class repression. For with cinema, the Yanks had apparently discovered how to placate the entire working class at the cost of a nickel a week. “Just look at their Depression,” he said. “From beginning to end it lasted ten years. An entire decade in which the Proletariat was left to fend for itself, scrounging in alleys and begging at chapel doors. If ever there had been a time for the American worker to cast off the yoke, surely that was it. But did they join their brothers-in-arms? Did they shoulder their axes and splinter the doors of the mansions? Not even for an afternoon. Instead, they shuffled to the nearest movie house, where the latest fantasy was dangled before them like a pocket watch at the end of a chain. Yes, Alexander, it behooves us to study this phenomenon with the utmost diligence and care.” 

So study it they did. And the Count could confirm that Osip approached the task with the utmost diligence and care, for when a movie was playing he could hardly sit still. During the westerns, when a fight broke out in a saloon, he would clench his fists, fend off a blow, give a left to the gut, and an uppercut to the jaw. When Fyodor Astaire danced with Gingyr Rogers, his fingers would open wide and flutter about his waist while his feet shuffled back and forth on the carpet. And when Bela Lugosi emerged from the shadows, Osip leapt from his seat and nearly fell to the floor. Then, as the credits rolled, he would shake his head with an expression of moral disappointment. “Shameful,” he would say. “Scandalous.” “Insidious!”

An American captain turns up at the hotel and of course makes Rostov's acquaintance. Their conversation turns to the radical difference between their cultures... Politically? No, alcoholically.

“Are you Russian?”
“To the core.”
“Well then, let me say at the outset that I am positively enamored with your country. I love your funny alphabet and those little pastries stuffed with meat. But your nation’s notion of a cocktail is rather unnerving. . . .”
“How so?”
The captain pointed discreetly down the bar to where a bushy-eyebrowed apparatchik was chatting with a young brunette. Both of them were holding drinks in a striking shade of magenta. “I gather from Audrius that that concoction contains ten different ingredients. In addition to vodka, rum, brandy, and grenadine, it boasts an extraction of rose, a dash of bitters, and a melted lollipop. But a cocktail is not meant to be a mélange. It is not a potpourri or an Easter parade. At its best, a cocktail should be crisp, elegant, sincere—and limited to two ingredients.”
“Just two?”
“Yes. But they must be two ingredients that complement each other; that laugh at each other’s jokes and make allowances for each other’s faults; and that never shout over each other in conversation. Like gin and tonic,” he said, pointing to his drink. “Or bourbon and water . . . Or whiskey and soda . . .” Shaking his head, he raised his glass and drank from it. “Excuse me for expounding.”

A young Russian comes in with a sketchpad to illustrate the Metropole. This passage so perfectly captures that sense that a grand hotel was much grander in the past than it is at present, no matter where, no matter when.

...the young man elaborated: “For the time being, there are a lot of buildings being built in Moscow, but little need for architects. So I have taken a job with Intourist. They’re putting together a brochure of the city’s finer hotels and I’m drawing the interiors.”
“Ah,” said the Count. “Because a photograph cannot capture the feeling of a place!”
“Actually,” replied the architect, “because a photograph too readily captures the condition of a place.”

Mr. Towles has an unerring sense of elegance, refinement, and nostalgia, but also a keen clarity. Rostov is not moping in his palatial prison, but we feel his loss. This story captures so astutely and vividly the transition between two eras.