Many Russian peasants are resistant to this idea, and as a result, most of them are exiled and unskilled labor is hired to run the farms. Nina, now a young woman, travels to the provinces to aid in farm collectivization.
He befriends the maître d’ of the restaurant, Andrey, and the head chef, Emile.Īs the 1930s progress, hardship hits Russia. Though he has never held a job before, he finds that some of the manners and etiquette he learned as a part of his upbringing are helpful in preparing him for the role, and he rises quickly through the ranks to Headwaiter.
The taste of the honey has a hint of apples and reminds the Count of his home province, which is known for its orchards.Īfter this experience on the roof, the Count decides to take more control of his life and gets a job in the Boyarsky as a waiter. Fortunately, he is stopped by one of the hotel’s handymen, Abram, who is also an amateur beekeeper and who shares honey with the Count. In despair, the Count attempts to kill himself in 1926, on the tenth anniversary of his sister Helena’s death, by throwing himself off of the hotel roof. When the Bishop-who feels that wines encourage snobbery and individuality-files a complaint to have all of the wine labels on the hotel’s bottles removed, the Count sees this as an attack on his own values because he had prided himself on knowing exactly which wine to pair with a meal. He is frustrated to see a man whom he sarcastically calls the Bishop rise through the ranks of the hotel’s restaurants and management, because he feels that the Bishop has no tact or experience when it comes to good service. The Count also sees that his way of life is being forgotten, since the aristocracy is no longer valued. Though he enjoys being with her, he begins to feel even more invisible, and as if he is losing control of his life’s path. The night they meet, she invites him back to her suite and seduces him.
That same day, the Count meets Anna Urbanova, a famous film actress who arrives at the hotel. He is excited to see how Communism will allow a new form of poetry to take shape. One year into the Count’s imprisonment, he receives a visit from his old friend Mishka, a poet who is eager for the changes occurring in Russian society. She then gifts him the key as a Christmas present. Nina has acquired a passkey for all of the hotel’s doors, and she shows the Count its various rooms and passageways. Her single father is temporarily posted to Moscow on state business, but as he did not enroll her in school, she spends most of her time exploring the hotel. His boredom is alleviated a little when he befriends a young girl named Nina, who is precocious, stubborn, and most importantly, adventurous. He feels restless and purposeless as he spends his days reading, visiting the barber, dining in the Metropol’s two restaurants (the Boyarsky and the Piazza), and drinking in the hotel bar, the Shalyapin. In the first few weeks and months, the Count has a difficult time coping with his new life. He is a member of the Russian nobility, which is quickly being dissolved in favor of a Communist government structure, and so when he returns to the hotel following his hearing, most of his possessions are confiscated, and he is moved from his luxurious suite on the third floor to a single room on the sixth floor. The sentence is handed down by a Bolshevik tribunal because the Count had written a poem in 1913 with revolutionary undertones. On June 21, 1922, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is sentenced to a life of house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel. Book 5, Antagonists at Arms (And an Absolution).Book 3, Antics, Antitheses, an Accident.Book 2, 1923, An Actress, an Apparition, an Apiary.