Rostov family grandfather clock

The Rostov family grandfather clock carries the family’s domestic past into a suite that has stood still in more than one sense. After Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov returns to his old rooms for the first time in over twenty-five years, he finds the clock near the door, its hands stopped at 4:22. Later, he opens its cabinet, winds it, sets the time, and nudges the pendulum. For a few hours, the clock is again more than part of the décor: it keeps time.

A Household Timekeeper

The clock’s remembered life is measured through ordinary family occasions. It had stood loyally in the grandmother’s drawing room, sounding the hour for tea, supper, and bed. Its work belonged to a rhythm of shared domestic life, with time marked not only by appointments but by recurring meals and the end of the day.

Christmas Eve gives the clock a particularly intimate place in that routine. Its chime signaled the moment when Rostov and his sister could slide apart the seamless doors. The clock thus accompanies a childhood ritual: its sound is the cue for an action the children shared, joining the passage of time to family memory.

The Clock in the Old Suite

When Rostov enters his former suite after more than twenty-five years away—not since the night in 1926 when he stood at the parapet—he finds a room still styled as a nineteenth-century French salon, but visibly worn. Only one of its two gilded mirrors remains; the dark red curtains have faded, and the matching couch and chairs need reupholstering. The family clock still stands near the door, but its hands are fixed at 4:22.

Its arrested face records a change in function as well as a change in the room. The clock has become an aspect of the décor instead of an instrument for keeping engagements. A waltz now comes from an electric radio on the dining-room mantel; where the clock no longer makes time audible, another device supplies the room with music. The old suite retains its elegance, but its objects no longer perform all the roles they once did.

Winding It Again

After an hour of conversation, Rostov turns toward the door to let himself out. Passing the clock, he hesitates at the memory of its service in his grandmother’s drawing room. He opens the narrow glass door in the cabinet and finds the little key still hanging on its hook. He inserts it into the keyhole, winds the clock to its limit, sets the time, and gives the pendulum a nudge.

Rostov’s thought as he does so is, "Let the old man keep time for a few hours more." The gesture does not restore the suite to its former condition or erase the years of stillness; it gives the clock a short return to its task. The key’s survival and the clock’s capacity to run again make this a small, deliberate act of renewal, bounded by the few hours he imagines it will last.

Time, Memory, and Use

The clock links timekeeping to lived routine rather than to abstract measurement. Its remembered chimes once organized meals, bedtime, and a Christmas Eve moment shared by Rostov and his sister. In the altered suite, its stopped hands expose the distance between that remembered household and the worn rooms he now revisits. Winding it briefly restores motion to an object that had been reduced to decoration, allowing the family past to sound again, however temporarily.