A Gentleman in Moscow

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Afterword, Chapters 39-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Afterword, Chapter 39 Summary: “Afterwards”

Around midnight on June 21, 1954, Viktor Stepanovich, against the wishes of his wife, takes a bus to the old St. Petersburg Station. He ponders how he’s moved to do it not only for Sofia but also for the Count, and also “because it felt right to do so” (452). Acting on a conviction, he believes, is “a pleasure that had become increasingly rare” (452).

The Count, in a trench coat and fedora, meets Viktor in the café. A fight breaks out between fruit sellers; when it’s over, the accordion player resumes his song. The Count describes a scene in Casablanca in which policemen drag a thief out of a bar; the bar owner comforts the customers and asks the band to keep playing. The Count questions Osip’s belief that this act demonstrates “his indifference to the fates of other men” (453).

The next morning, KGB officers go to the Metropol to speak with the Count, who is nowhere to be found. At their daily meeting, Emile and Andrey discuss where the Count—and Manager Leplevsky—could be. A mailroom clerk brings them each an envelope containing a letter of thank you and as well as four gold coins. Emile wonders what will happen to him with the Count gone and the onset of Andrey’s palsy. Andrey says his “hands are as agile as they have ever been” (455) and juggles his four gold Catherine the Great coins.

That afternoon, a security administrator in the Kremlin—though he is not named, he has a “scar above his left ear where, by all appearances, someone had once attempted to cleave his skull” (456), just as Osip does—is approached by a lieutenant who tells him a student with the Moscow Conservatory went missing on their Paris tour and that the student happens to have been “raised by one Alexander Rostov, a Former Person under house arrest” (456), who is also missing. He informs him that comrade Leplevsky was found in a locked storage room and that he had been planning to alert the KGB of “the girl’s defection” (456) when the Count, at gunpoint, locked him in the room. They have connected the missing Finnish passport and the raincoat and hat to the Count: a man wearing the hat and coat was seen at the railway station boarding the train to Helsinki, and the hat and coat, along with a Finnish travel guide, were found in the bathroom of the Vyborg station, close to the Finnish border. Comrade Leplevsky reported that the Count had taken a Finnish guidebook. When the lieutenant asks Osip what to do, Osip says, “Round up the usual suspects” (458)—a line from Casablanca in which Captain Renault chooses not to pursue Rick, who has shot a Nazi official.

Viktor Stepanovich, in fact, had boarded the train to Helsinki with the coat, hat, and guidebook, left them in the bathroom in Vyborg and returned to Moscow. When he watches Casablanca a year later, he is interested in the scene the Count had mentioned and takes note of the bar owner’s setting “upright a cocktail glass that had been knocked over during the skirmish” (458). He considers how Casablanca, “a far-flung outpost” (458) at wartime, housed this café “where the beleaguered could assemble for the moment to gamble and drink and listen to music” (458). He believes that in righting the upturned glass, the bar owner “exhibit[s] an essential faith that by the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world” (459).

Afterword, Chapter 40 Summary: “And Anon”

Early summer in 1954, “a tall man in his sixties” (460) walks among the apple trees in Nizhny Novgorod. He has “[t]he beginnings of a beard on his chin” (460) and “dirt on his boots” (460), and with his rucksack, he appears to have been “hiking for several days, though he didn’t look weary for the effort” (460).

Smiling, the man is just about to begin walking down an overgrown road when two children, a brother and sister, emerge from the branches of a tree. They tell him they’re pirates and ask if he’s going to the mansion. He asks where it is, and they lead him to the remnants of the house. Only “two tilting chimneys at either end of a clearing” (461) remain, the house having been “burned to the ground decades before” (461).

Many travelers are wise not to return to their homes after long absences, for they will be disappointed either by the appearance or by their own lack of importance. This man, however, “was not overcome with shock, indignation, or despair” (461). He finds that “one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed” (461).

The traveler walks five miles to a local inn, where he tells the innkeeper he would like a room but first would like to eat. He walks toward a table in the back, where “a willowy woman waited” (462).

“Afterwards”-“And Anon” Analysis

The great importance of small details, a prevalent theme in A Gentleman in Moscow, is reaffirmed by Viktor Stepanovich’s thoughts upon viewing Casablanca. Viktor is especially intrigued by a minute detail of a scene, in which saloonkeeper Rick “sets upright a cocktail glass that had been knocked over during the skirmish” (458). Osip, the Count had said, believed Rick’s casualness is “evidence of his indifference to the fates of other men” (453). Viktor, however, interprets Rick’s seemingly insignificant act as a sign of “essential faith that by the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world” (459). Not coincidentally, Viktor himself, though a minor character in the novel, has performed a similar role in the life of the Count, and in the life of Sofia—as have a multitude of characters, whether they have been aware of their impact or not.

A Gentleman in Moscow is full of examples of small actions changing the course of someone’s life: the man’s cutting off the Count’s mustache leads to Nina’s approaching his table, the return of Abram’s bees prevents the Count from leaping from the Metropol’s roof, and Anna’s round-faced paramour unwittingly prevents Sofia’s being taken from the Count. The Count’s belief that the change of a few degrees in temperature led to his killing of the Hussar soldier and ultimately to his not being present at his sister Helena’s death illustrates the significance of the smallest of details. All his life, the Count has regarded details with seriousness: he can distinguish between wines, he can set a table with perfection, and he is keenly attuned to the needs of his conversation partners. The ultimate importance of Viktor, a seemingly minor character, in the Count’s life reinforces how even the smallest deed can effect change. It also suggests a sense of unity between people, and an interconnectedness in all our lives.

Another important theme of A Gentleman in Moscow is the past—how it influences the present, whether we should hold it close or let it go, and how new regimes inevitably return to it regardless of their commitment to progress. In “Antics, Antitheses, an Accident,” Osip muses that Russia and America will “lead the rest of this century because we are the only nations who have learned to brush the past aside instead of bowing before it” (297-98). However, in “And Anon,” the Count, in looking at the burnt remnants of the home he’d so loved, determines that “one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed” (461). For over three decades, the Count has learned to adapt to new times, which have affected every aspect of his life, from his living circumstances to his relationships with his dearest friends. The vanishing of the past in the hands of the Bolsheviks has at times made him feel invisible and anonymous, inspiring him to nearly take his own life. In this final chapter, the past and the present are reconciled as the Count understands one can continue to appreciate the past, as long as one moves into the future.

Osip’s judgment of Rick the saloonkeeper’s motives, as well as his blithe rejection of the past, contrast with the more optimistic visions of Viktor and the Count. The Count’s disagreement with Osip demonstrates that people of different backgrounds and beliefs can still be cherished friends. The Count makes many friends over the years, with people of many nationalities; despite his position and formality, he’s shown himself to be open-minded and flexible in his stances. The mutual respect he shares with Osip, despite their philosophical differences, is itself an example of unity. Osip’s breaking from the rules to allow the Count to escape without chase shows that he is similarly open-minded, and it offers a hopeful message about the power of friendship.

The Count makes the greatest sacrifice of his life by leading Sofia to Richard, so Richard can help her escape to America. He had expressed shock when Richard asked him whether he would spy on his countrymen, and he had scoffed at Anna’s claim that America is desirable for its “conveniences” (351). However, for years he has witnessed his people’s oppression. He is troubled by Mishka’s comment that Russia destroys what it creates and by Osip’s retort that progress is worth “the greatest cost” (297). He has witnessed the death and disappearance of Mishka and Nina. During his time at the Metropol, the Count engages in conversations with people who offer different views of Russia and America, and he begins to wonder if the “glittering musicals and slapstick comedies” (299) of America are indicative of the nation’s “native spirit” (299). Though the Count himself belongs in Russia—for over three decades, he has yearned to recapture his past, and his return to Novgorod Nizhny shows his deeply-rooted love for his Country—he does, ultimately, spy on his countrymen as a payment, of sorts, to Richard, and he does give credence to America’s conveniences—not for himself but for his daughter. In this way, too, his experiences at the Metropol have prepared him to take the most important action of his life, for he uses the perspectives of his friends to determine America is where his daughter needs to be. When his daughter is free, he has nothing to do but return home—though in his relaxed appearance, he shows how he has changed.