A Gentleman in Moscow: Book 3, Ascending, Alighting Summary & Analysis

At two o’clock, the Count and Sofia pay a visit to Marina, who is surprised to see him with a little girl in tow. Marina leads Sofia around her office and instructs an assistant to show Sofia their collection of fabrics and buttons. The Count explains the events of the day before and asks if Marina can watch Sofia for an hour while he is at the Boyarsky’s daily meeting, which she agrees to do. Seeing how good Marina is with Sofia, he starts to hint that Sofia needs someone with a mother’s touch. Marina stops him and tells him not to ask her to take on that responsibility, but instead to take it on himself.

The Count rushes off to the Boyarsky meeting, trying to think up a long-term solution regarding who can watch Sofia while he is at work. For tonight, he simply plans to request the evening off. When he arrives at the meeting, however, Andrey reminds him that he has his usual appointment with Osip that night, and that there is a dinner for the country’s leading car manufacturer at seven in the Red Room. The Count assures Andrey that he will see to the event personally.

The Count prepares the seating for the dinner. When he finishes, he realizes that it is already 3:15 and that he is late for Anna’s requested rendezvous. He dashes up the stairs to Anna’s room and apologizes that he will not be able to see her today. He instead asks if he can borrow her two suitcases.

The Count then takes the suitcases to the laundry room, packing sheets, a bedcover, a towel, and two pillows. He brings the suitcases back up to his room and unpacks. Next, he pulls a mattress from an adjacent room, but realizes that it will take up the remaining space on the floor. Remembering his enjoyment of sleeping in train cars as a child, he takes food cans from the Boyarsky and stacks them on top of his mattress to make a second bunk for Sofia.

The Count returns to Marina’s office, discovering that Sofia and Marina have spent the time sewing a new dress for her doll. Marina then offers to watch Sofia for the evening—but she says that the Count must find another person after that. She suggests one of the unmarried chambermaids who works in the hotel. Marina then assures the Count that he is up for the challenge of taking care of Sofia. Giving him a thimble as a gesture, she tells him that children take pleasure in the smallest things.

The Count takes Sofia back to the attic, showing her the secret room for the first time. He suggests that they play a game: she will go into the other room and count to one hundred twice (she cannot count to two hundred), while the Count hides the thimble somewhere in the room. She agrees, and the Count hides it in a relatively easy place on his bookcase. She finds it almost immediately. The Count hides the thimble a second time, trying to provide more of a challenge. He places it on the other side of the room from the bookcase, under his leather case. It takes her twenty seconds to find.

Sofia tells the Count that it is her turn to hide the thimble. As he goes out of the room, Sofia tugs on his sleeve and makes him promise not to peek. As he counts, he hears the room shuffling. He returns and gives a quick survey of the room, but he does not see the thimble. He looks more earnestly, pondering the problem from Sofia’s point of view, but still cannot find it. He looks wildly around the room, but eventually gives up. She gets up and takes the thimble out of his jacket pocket. The Count protests, but Sofia argues that his pocket was in the room when she hid the thimble and while the Count searched. He bows to her cleverness.

At six o’clock, the Count returns to the Boyarsky. He oversees the dinner in the Red Room and then heads down to the Yellow room at ten o’clock for his appointment with Osip. They have been dining once a month since 1930. At first, they dedicated their studies to the French, then to the British. But more recently, they have shifted their attention to the United States.

For this meeting, the Count had told Osip to read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But as Osip starts to discuss the book, it becomes clear to him that the Count has not, in fact, read it. Osip angrily throws the book into a painting. The Count apologizes, saying that he had planned to read much of the book that day, but he was interrupted by Sofia’s arrival. Osip understands, and the two agree to discuss de Tocqueville at their next meeting.

At eleven o’clock the Count starts to run back to Marina’s office to pick up Sofia. At the top of the stairs, however, he is surprised to find his friend Mishka. The Count sees that something is troubling his friend, and so he takes him back to his study. Mishka explains that he has nearly completed editing volumes of Anton Chekhov’s collected letters, a project he has been working on for four years.

That morning, Mishka’s editor, Shalamov, had asked him to come to his office. Shalamov pointed to a passage in which Chekhov praises the bread in Berlin, and said that Russians who hadn’t traveled didn’t know how good bread could be. Shalamov then asked that that sentence be edited out. Mishka had been shocked by this proposal of censorship, but he struck the passage and walked out of the room without a word.

The Count tells Mishka that he is in the right to do what he did—that it is only one sentence out of thousands. He counsels Mishka to go back to his hotel and get some rest, and they could see each other the next night and toast to the completion of the work. He then moves Mishka gently towards the door so that he can pick Sofia up.

The Count picks Sofia up at 11:40. Despite the late hour, Sofia had insisted on staying up. It is clear that she is tired, however, as she practically drags him back to the room. She quickly changes and prepares for bed. Before turning in, she watches as the clock’s minute hand catches up with its hour hand, and hears the twice-tolling clock chime midnight. She promptly goes to bed.

The Count then prepares for bed as quickly as Sofia had, exhausted from the long day. But as the Count sinks into bed, a series of worries keeps him awake. He is worried about Mishka’s battle with the editor, about Nina and her journey east, and about Sofia. He is concerned that some bureaucrat will become aware of Sofia’s residency and forbid it. He also worries about how he will entertain her the next morning.

The narrator tells the reader that the Count had good reason to be worried about Mishka. The next morning, Mishka passes a statue of writer Maxim Gorky, who had established Socialist Realism as the sole artistic style of the Russian people. As a result, other writers that Mishka had looked up to had not written in years.

Mishka returns to Shalamov’s office, and angrily asks if he plans to cut The Brothers Karamazov in half today. Shalamov sees that he is upset and asks to meet with him later. Mishka cries out that he is sure Shalamov has other important business to attend to, like moving statues and erasing lines of poetry. He concludes by screaming that the future of Russian poetry is the haiku and storms out. Within a week, Mishka will be invited to the offices of the secret police for questioning. The following March, he is sent on a train to Siberia.

The narrator states that the Count is also probably right to worry about Nina, for she will never return to the Metropol. The Count will try to contact her to no avail. She also disappears into Siberia.

The Count is also right to worry about Sofia’s presence being noted. The narrator reveals that within two weeks, a report will be sent to the Kremlin. However, it will be noted that the Count has a relationship with Anna, who is also reportedly having an affair with a certain round-faced Commissar. Thus, it will be suspected that this young girl—who appeared on the same day the actress was in residence at the hotel—is the illegitimate child of the Commissar. And so the report will be stuffed in a drawer under lock and key.

But, the narrator reassures the reader that the Count does not have to worry about entertaining Sofia in the morning, as she continues to ask questions about his life at Idlehour. The narrator returns to the present night. Instead of counting sheep, the Count calculates the flights of stairs he climbed throughout the day, discovering the total to be fifty-nine before he slips into a well-deserved sleep.