1926

1926 is the year in which Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov approaches the anniversary of Helena Rostov’s death intending to die, then turns back toward life through an unexpected encounter with the taste of home. The date joins a carefully prepared farewell to a quiet reversal: after tasting honey that recalls Nizhny Novgorod, he returns his undertaker’s coin to its hiding place and goes back to the Boyarsky Restaurant.

An Anniversary and a Plan

On June 22, the tenth anniversary of Helena Rostov’s death, the Count plans to drink to his sister’s memory and then end his life. His intention gives the anniversary a double weight: it is both a commemoration of Helena and the date he has chosen for his own death.

The plan has a physical object attached to it. In the cellar, the Count searches systematically through the wine racks until he finds a particular bottle in the sixth row, on a shelf at knee height. Its glass bears the insignia of two crossed keys. He holds it with a wistful smile, as though the bottle belongs to a farewell already arranged.

A Return to the Past

The account then opens onto 1926 under the heading Adieu. The Count has entered Suite 317 with Nina Kulikova’s key and stands before its old windows. The return to this room frames the year not only as a crisis of intention but as a point at which he considers the need to choose a philosophy: a coherent way of making sense of momentous events and the small actions of daily life alike.

That search for a framework meets a more immediate, physical recognition in the taste of fresh honey. Abram cuts into a hive’s comb, spreads the honey on a spoon, and offers it to the Count. The Count expects the honey to carry the floral notes of central Moscow, perhaps lilacs from Alexander Gardens or cherry blossoms from the Garden Ring. Instead, he detects a grassy riverbank, a summer breeze, a pergola, and, most distinctly, a thousand apple trees in bloom. Abram identifies the flavor as Nizhny Novgorod.

The Reversal

The honey’s significance lies in the distance it crosses. Bees have traveled more than a hundred miles to reach their hives, and the taste they have gathered brings the Count’s attention away from Moscow and back toward a landscape associated with home. The scene does not erase the loss that has shaped his plan; it interrupts the certainty with which he had arranged to follow it.

Nearly two in the morning, the Count says goodnight to Abram and returns to his bedroom. He takes the gold coin from his pocket and puts it back on the stack hidden inside the leg of his godfather’s desk. The coin, set aside for the undertaker, remains untouched for another twenty-eight years. The action gives the reversal a concrete form: the plan for death is no longer being carried forward that night.

The Following Evening

The next evening at six, when the Boyarsky Restaurant opens, the Count is the first through its doors. He asks Andrey for a moment, resuming the ordinary routines and relationships of hotel life. Coming so soon after the return of the coin, this entrance marks a decisive change in the year’s direction: the man who expected to leave life on the anniversary instead reappears among the living, with the taste of Nizhny Novgorod still at the center of what has changed.