"But imagining what might happen if one's circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness."
It was a shock, a rude awakening, to find that the world was plodding along quite normally as I finished this book. Reading the last sentence, I found myself turning the page, expecting to find more, but there was nothing - I'd reached the end. I felt like I'd been pulled from a trance, like reality snatched me back from the world of this book and I felt disoriented for a few moments. I just continued sitting in my chair, gripping the closed book and readjusting to reality. That was it, the end, fin. I felt tears gathering in my eyes, bittersweet salt water that betrayed my confounded feelings of both joy and devastation. What was I supposed to do now? Well, go on...
The titular gentleman of the novel is the Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, a man of many titles, vast riches and, according to the new regime, an all in all "unrepentant aristocrat". His social status makes him a target and an enemy to the people in the post-monarchist Russia and he is resigned to death. On June 21, 1922, aged 30, he is brought before the judges of the newly-formed communist government who, after mentioning a pro-revolutionary poem attributed to him, decide not to shoot him but to have him go back to the Metropol Hotel, where he's been living for the past four years, and never come out of it again as he'd be shot on sight if he steps out of its doors.
And so he is handed a lifetime sentence in prison, albeit a luxurious one. In the beginning Rostov is determined to make the best of his new situation, though it was hard for him to get used to living in such reduced circumstances. The suite 317 in which he'd been living was taken away and he was to spend the rest of his days in a cramped room in the attic, once meant for the hotel staff. In the move he has to say goodbye to many of his family's heirlooms that he'd brought from his home of Idlehour as there is no space to accommodate them in his cramped new quarters.
He sees himself as "an Anglican washed ashore", a Robinson Crusoe type, so he decides to deal with the practicalities. Selling a golden coin stashed away in the leg of his old writing desk, he purchases essentials like linens or soaps. He busies himself with his barber's appointment, going to lunch and dinner, and by attempting to read his father's Montaigne essays. These are all the things he'd been doing before, yet now it all feels different because he's trapped there against his will and knows that if he ever wanted to get out, he is not allowed to do so.
At this crucial junction in his life is when he meets Nina Kulikova, a 9-year-old daughter of a Ukranian bureaucrat who lives in the hotel while her father is in Moscow on business. The girl is very forward and inquisitive, and though Rostov is taken aback at first he soon comes to appreciate her attitude. The two meet for tea, share meals, play games. Being confined to Metropol as well, Nina took it upon herself to investigate its every nook and cranny using a universal key that opened its every door. She soon starts taking the Count on her little excursions and the two discover rooms with hidden treasures, discarded possessions, spy on various meetings, go into all the suites and compare views from their respective windows... The girl leads Rostov through his hell and he begins viewing her as a Virgil to his Dante.
The Count often ruminated on change, on things outliving their usefulness... He is a relic of a bygone era, a man with titles that dare not me uttered anymore as everyone is a comrade now. All people are equal on the surface, but he notes that pomp always finds its way to the people in power and so soon all the highest officials live in elegant houses with expensive furnishing stolen from the murdered or exiled aristocrats - though the plaque at the bottom of every piece declaring it the property of the People alleviates their conscience. They wear plain and rugged suits in public, but in private they live just like the people they killed for living that same way.
What pulled me in and kept my attention was just how much meaning and purpose Rostov found in his isolation. Though a Count at first, a highly esteemed guest at the Metopol Hotel and a man the staff addressed as "Your Exellency", he over time befriends these people and they become a surrogate family for him. Marina the seamstress, Andrey the maidre d' with a profound knowledge of the hotel's inner workings, Emile the grouchy cook, Vasily the concierge, Audrius the bartender: all these people become trusted companions and friends with whom he shares a profound bond. After a desperate night in the early years of his captivity where he attempts suicide, Rostov decides that it is time for him to master his circumstances, as his father taught him, so he starts working as a waiter in the hotel's restaurant, The Boyarsky, which brings him into greater contact with the staff, and allows him to meet many people, some of whom will be instrumental in the events to come years down the line.
He is also visited by his old friend Mishka, a restless fellow who always paced around the room as he talked. A professor at a University in St. Petersburg (later Leningrad) he is tasked with being a part of a group of poets and writers and editors who are to make a new poetry, a new writing style for the new age of Russia. Rostov is envious at first because his friend seems to have it all - freedom, a career, a woman by his side; all the while he is trapped in his gilded cage. Alas, not all is as it appears and Mishka's fate is not a happy one, though I will refrain from spoiling things. May of the horrible things that happened in those tumultuous years are not personally experienced by then Count (this is how his exile becomes a blessing, for he is spared many atrocities) but through the other characters: the Gulag, the famine, the poverty, the Second World War...
And in the end, the most important character that steps into the Count's life - Sofia. The 5-year-old is unceremoniously given to Rostov one June 21 by none other than Nina Kulikova who is to go follow her husband, sentenced to five years of forced labor in a gulag camp. She does not want to take her child there right away and says she will come for her in a few weeks when she's settled down. And yet, as she gives her old friend, the only person she can trust with her daughter, a photograph of herself and her husband "just in case", it feels like a foregone conclusion that this is the last the Count, and we, will see of the intrepid Nina. And so it was...
"For the times do, in fact, change. They change relentlessly. Inevitably. Inventively. And as they change, they set into bright relief not only outmoded honorifics and hunting horns, but silver summoners and mother-of-pearl opera glasses and all manner of carefully crafter things that have outlived their usefulness."
Being a father is what gives Rostov a new lease on life. He is forced to re-examine his priorities, to make space for a human that needs him, to dispense with habits that have formed over time and too accept responsibility for someone other than himself. Sofia makes him a better person, wakes a tender and caring side of him and much later, as he reminisces on those fifteen minutes in the hotel lobby where he'd first met her, he comes to the conclusion that all the events in his life had led him there, so that he could one day be Sofia's father. And he wouldn't change a thing.
And I also had to mention Anna Urbanova whom the Count meets in the lobby of the hotel in the beginning of his captivity. She is haughty and prideful, a beautiful and famous actress used to things going her way. The two exchange some unpleasant words but he is invited into her suite that night. After their fun is over she instructs him to close the curtains before he leaves - and he is humbled for he was never sent away thus. And yet, these two come together time and again, as her fortunes change and she swings in and out of the people's favor. She remains a constant, a love in his life that he needs to learn to integrate into the rest of his existence at the Metropol.
The hotel is very much a character on its own as well. "These hotels were built for the likes of Richard Vanderwhile and Alexander Rostov, so that when they traveled to a foreign city, they would find themselves very much at home and in the company of kin." That is how Towles describes the essence of Metropol. It is a luxury hotel that, like our protagonist, had no place in the new productive, pragmatic, practical age. And yet, still it stood, though somewhat worse for wear, and people from all over the world and from all walks of life still gathered there to exchange stories and to make themselves a part of a bygone era. We see the passage of time and the changes in the social establishment through the changes in staff, the slow wearing of the furniture, the changes in the clientele - all noted by the observant Rostov. The hotel is his world and, despite being intended as a way to exclude him from the society, it is still his ever present link to it.
Despite the premise being very grim, this is by no means a depressing novel. The Count is an unforgettable protagonist that sweeps you along as he would sweep you on a dancefloor. He is educated, a great conversationalist, he knows exactly what to say and what to withhold, his every expression seems natural. Nothing in this ever comes across as contrived, I felt as if I was reading a true story, a biography of a man who makes the best of life no matter what it throws at him. He is a larger than life figure, breathing vitality onto every page, making everything in the hotel come to life. His rebellion is subtle but present in every facet of his life - for by remaining true to himself, not losing any of the qualities of a gentleman he was brought up with, by enjoying the simple things in life as if they were the most exquisite luxuries - this was how he was standing up to the system that sought to squash him.
The book is intellectual, there are musings on class, politics, morals, friendship, parenthood, life itself, destiny; and yet it never bores the reader because it is also so much fun. A real page-turner, this books pulls you to read more, wanting to find out what happens to our characters next, what will Rostov make of this, how will that impact his life. I got so used to Rostov's voice in my head that it pained me that I will remain in the dark about the rest of his life, as he is still at large by the novel's end. I was also enjoying Towels' asides - the footnotes that broke the fourth wall and gave historical insight into certain events or characters. Due to his circumstances the Count remained unaware of many things going on in the world and this was a welcome window outside the hotel, giving clarifications and context.
"For when life makes it impossible for a man to pursue his dreams, he will connive to pursue them anyway."
A tender, tragic story that carries with it so much heart and hope, this novel will stay with me for a long time. It made me appreciate the simpler things, made me question, made me wonder about what my reaction to such circumstances would be. Would I be able to make so much of such confinement, to make a world and a life out of a prison? Or would I wallow in self pity, let myself and everything go? Would jump off that ledge from the Metropol's roof? I don't have answers of my own to those questions, but I do have Rostov's - master your circumstances. I feel like this can be applied to what is going on in the world right now as well, for aren't we all isolated and imprisoned due to things out of our control. But what we can control is our reactions. I can only hope that mine might one day resemble the graciousness of the Count's.
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