Rostov's Rooftop Suicide Attempt brings Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov to the brink of death on the roof of The Metropol, then turns him back through an encounter with Abram and the bees. The scene begins as a carefully prepared farewell: Rostov has chosen the anniversary of Helena Rostov's death, carried wine to the roof, and brought himself to the parapet. It ends not with a leap but with honey whose flavor returns him, in a sudden and particular way, to home.

The anniversary and the intended ending

The attempt has been planned around June 22, 1926, the tenth anniversary of Helena's death. Earlier, in the cellar, Rostov searched systematically through the wine racks until he found a bottle marked with two crossed keys. He chose it for the day on which he expected to drink to his sister's memory and then die. The anniversary gives the attempt its private calendar: death is not an impulse with no history, but an ending he has attached to a precise date and a particular loss.

On the roof, shortly before midnight, the plan is still active. Rostov has capped a snifter of brandy with six glasses of vodka, and his steps weave across the roof as the wind makes the building seem to shift beneath him. He steadies himself at a chimney, then picks his way toward the northwest corner. The physical instability of the roof and his intoxication make the danger immediate, while the scene's measured progress shows that he is nevertheless moving toward a deliberate act.

The attempt is also bound to guilt over events he understands as a chain. Rostov recalls the gambling incident at the Novobaczkys', when he tore up a man's marker, and the consequences that followed: the man pursued Helena, humiliated her, and was shot by Rostov. Rostov connects that shooting to the man's possible death in Masuria, and then to his own absence when Helena finally died. His explanation makes the rooftop crisis inseparable from the belief that earlier actions helped place him away from his sister at the moment he most wanted to be beside her.

The farewell on the roof

At the northwest corner, Rostov looks over a city that is both his and not his. From the distribution of street lamps he can pick out the Boulevard and Garden Rings, with the Kremlin at their center and Russia beyond. The view makes his position legible: he is still physically in Moscow, but his reflections describe the estrangement of a man exiled inside his own country. The city remains visible and beloved precisely as something he cannot freely possess.

He retrieves a Bordeaux glass from The Ambassador and sets it on a chimney. The wine is the unlabeled Châteauneuf-du-Pape he took from The Metropol's cellar in 1924; as he pours, he judges it an excellent vintage, perhaps from 1900 or 1921. He raises it toward Idlehour Estate and drinks to Helena Rostov, recalling her as the flower of Nizhny Novgorod, a lover of Pushkin, a defender of Alexander, and an embroiderer of pillowcases. The toast gives her memory concrete particulars before reducing the farewell to the brevity of her life and the kindness of her heart.

Rostov does not pour a second glass or throw the first one away. He sets it carefully on the chimney top and approaches the parapet, standing at full height before the illuminated city. With his right foot on the edge, he says, "Good-bye, my country." Mishka's tower beacon blinks in reply. The gesture and the signal leave the farewell suspended between a solitary decision and the continuing presence of the people and places connected to him.

The narration then dwells on the mechanics of the leap. Rostov imagines the fall from six stories as a brief journey, comparing its speed with the fall of ordinary objects, and frames it as a return to oblivion. This precise, almost measured account slows the instant before the act: the leap is made to seem simple, yet its description holds the reader at the threshold long enough for interruption to remain possible.

Abram, the bees, and the taste of home

Abram calls from behind him: "Your Excellency!" The old handyman is so excited that he shows no surprise at finding Rostov poised at the roof's edge. He insists that Rostov must come with him and hurries toward his rooftop encampment without waiting for an answer. Rostov begins to explain, but Abram's urgency overtakes the farewell. With a sigh, Rostov tells the city he will be back in a moment and follows.

Abram points toward the northeast corner, where tiny shadows dart against the bright backdrop of the Bolshoi Theatre. The bees have returned. Their appearance is already a startling interruption, but Abram has brought Rostov to the hives to show him something more. At the makeshift table, he places a tray from one of the hives, cuts into the honeycomb, spreads honey on a spoon, and offers it to Rostov. The ordinary actions of serving and tasting replace the prepared ritual of wine and farewell.

Rostov expects the honey's first sweetness to give way to the scents of Moscow's flowering trees: lilacs from the Alexander Gardens or cherry blossoms from the Garden Ring. Instead, he detects a grassy riverbank, a summer breeze, and a pergola, above all the essence of a thousand apple trees in bloom. Abram identifies the flavor as Nizhny Novgorod. The taste makes home present through the bees' labor, not as an abstract idea but as a specific landscape that Rostov recognizes in his mouth. The men watch the bees wheel above the hives, and Abram whispers that they must have been listening to them all these years.

The return and its significance

The encounter changes the course of the night without erasing what brought Rostov to the roof. He has not solved his grief over Helena or disproved his account of the chain of events that led to his absence. Instead, the immediate act is interrupted by Abram's appeal and by a sensory recognition neither man could have produced by argument. The movement from the edge to the honeycomb is a movement back into company, attention, and the living world of the hotel.

Nearly two in the morning, Rostov bids Abram goodnight and returns to his bedroom. He takes the gold coin from his pocket and places it back on the stack hidden inside the leg of his godfather's desk. The coin, set aside for death, remains untouched for another twenty-eight years. The next evening at six, he is the first person through the doors of the Boyarsky Restaurant and asks Andrey for a moment. The return is therefore marked not only by his survival but by his re-entry into the hotel's daily life: after the roof's imagined finality, there is a room, a hidden coin, a familiar restaurant, and a request to speak.

The scene's reversal depends on scale. Rostov approaches the city, country, and oblivion through expansive reflections, but the event that stops him is modest: Abram's excited summons, a spoon, and a taste. The bees do not undo the past; they carry a trace of Nizhny Novgorod into the present. By making that trace physically recognizable, the episode turns the roof from an ending into a place from which Rostov can still return.