A Gentleman in Moscow: Book 1, An Anglican Ashore Summary & Analysis

The next morning, before the Count truly wakes up, he thinks about the day to come. Normally, he would buy the newspaper, stop in his favorite bakery for a pastry, and perhaps visit an art gallery or a concert hall before meeting his bankers and joining his friends for lunch at the Jockey Club. He wakes up, remembers his house arrest, and sighs as he acknowledges that he will be doing none of those things.

A young hotel worker delivers the Count’s breakfast. As the boy leaves, the Count asks him to deliver a letter to a man named Konstantin Konstantinovich. The Count then begins his breakfast, which he notes with satisfaction is just as hot as his breakfast had been when he lived three floors lower. As he eats, he notices the hotel’s one-eyed cat has come to examine his new quarters. As the Count looks around himself, he realizes he probably could have done without half of the furniture he kept.

The Count surveys the other rooms on the attic level, most of which are blocked from the inside by broken furniture and debris. In the last room on the floor, there is some space into which he can clear his furniture. Dragging most of his possessions into the second room, he reduces the furniture in his own room to the essentials: a desk and chair, a bed and table, and a high-back chair for guests.

The Count keeps a single book in his room: the essays of Michel de Montaigne, which he had been meaning to read for a decade. He begins to read the first essay: “By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End.” The Count tilts back his chair as he reads.

The narrator explains that reading in a tilted chair had long been a habit of the Count’s; in his youth, he and Helena would spend many days together in which he would read aloud as she embroidered. In the present, the Count looks up from Montaigne at his sister’s portrait. He thinks about how kind she had been at that age—fourteen—and how much grace she might have had at age twenty-five.

There is another knock at the door. The man to whom the Count had penned the letter earlier, Konstantin Konstantinovich, enters. The Count reintroduces himself to Konstantinovich and gestures to his room as a way of showing the man how his financial circumstances have changed. Konstantinovich asks if the Count needs to borrow money. The Count instead shows Konstantinovich one of his gold coins.

The Count and Konstantinovich strike up an arrangement, and Konstantinovich agrees to deliver three notes for the Count. As the man leaves, he asks whether the Count will be writing any more poetry. The Count says that his days of poetry are behind him.

The narrator shifts to the Boyarsky, which is described as “the finest restaurant in Moscow” and is located on the hotel’s second floor. Before 1920, the restaurant would attract crowds every night and the service had been flawless. But after 1920, the Bolsheviks had prohibited the use of rubles in fine restaurants (accepting only foreign currencies), thereby closing them to nearly the entire Russian population.

The narrator goes on to describe the restaurant’s chef, Emile Zhukovsky, who had been the most celebrated chef in Russia when he took up the post in 1912. But his real test came during times of war, when food was scarce. That, the narrator states, is when a chef’s ingenuity is truly tested, because he must craft delicious meals with replacement ingredients. The Count takes great joy in guessing those replacement ingredients. As he eats dinner, the Count asks Andrey if the secret ingredient in his dish is nettle.

As Andrey goes to ask Emile about the nettle, the Count reflects how the Boyarsky could not run without Andrey. Andrey seems to be always a step ahead of his guests: pulling back the chairs of all the women at a table at once, or producing a cigarette lighter at a moment’s notice.

Andrey and Emile return, and Emile sarcastically congratulates the Count on correctly guessing that there is nettle in the dish. The Count smiles in satisfaction and returns to his room.

The Count thinks about how to master his circumstances while living a life of confinement. He finds inspiration in Robinson Crusoe, who was stranded on an island and needed to seek shelter and find water, make fire, study the flora and fauna of the island, and keep an eye out for sails on the horizon. The Count views this as a life committed to being practical, which is why the Count had sent the three notes with Konstantin Konstantinovich that morning. He had then received three practicalities in  return: fine linens and a nice pillow, four bars of his favorite soap, and his favorite pastry from the bakery down the street.