Trains

Hotel Metropol

I am reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I'm not quite sure what to make of it but I'm only a quarter of the way through. It is not an action packed thriller that is hurtling pell-mell through the story, it's more like a pleasant drive in the country, or stroll in the garden. Nothing of much import happens, but the author carefully relates all the trivial incidents of Count Rostov's daily life in the hotel Metropol. It is around the year 1920, the hotel is in Moscow, and he has been confined there on the orders of the Party. A gilded cage, though he has been removed from his suite to what used to be servant's quarters on the fifth (top) floor.

He has made friends with ten-year old Nina, who is likewise confined to the hotel, though on orders from her grandmother or nanny. So they go exploring all the little nooks and crannies that a large hotel has, and this one has them in abundance. They spy on a large gathering of people and then we get this exchange on page 70:

    But by a stroke of luck, he didn't get the chance. For when Nina asked what he thought of the Assembly, unable to wait even a moment for his impressions, she barreled ahead with her own.

    "Wasn't that fascinating? Wasn't it fantastic? Have you ever been on a train?"

    "The train is my preferred means of travel," said the Count, some-what startled.

    She nodded enthusiastically.

    "Mine as well. And when you have traveled by train, have you watched the landscape rolling past the windows, and listened to the conversations of your fellow passengers, and drifted off to the clacking of the wheels?"

    "I have done all of those things."

    "Exactly. But have you ever, for even one moment, considered how the coal finds its way into the locomotive's engine? Have you considered in the middle of a forest or on a rocky slope how the tracks came to be there in the first place?"

    The Count paused. Considered. Imagined. Admitted.

    "Never."

    She gave him a knowing look.

    "Isn't it astounding."

    And when seen in that light, who could disagree?

Is the Count an idiot, or is he just typical of most people who don't concern themselves with anything outside their immediate surroundings? Me thinks the count is not an idiot, but his life has been in the rarefied stratosphere where mere material things are taken as a matter of course. So I think his acquaintance with Nina, along with his confinement, should expand his horizons.