Explore "A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
One evening in late December, as he was walking the hallway to the Piazza, the Count distinctly felt a gust of frozen air, despite being fifty yards from the nearest exit to the street. It brushed past him with all the freshness and clarity of a starlit winter's night. After pausing and searching about, he realized that the draft was coming... from the coatroom. Which Tanya, the attendant, had left unattended. So, with a look to his left and a look to his right, the Count stepped within.
In the preceding minutes, there must have been such a rush of parties arriving for dinner that the winter air had yet to dissipate from the fabric of their coats. Here was the greatcoat of a soldier with a dusting of snow on its shoulders; here the woolen jacket of a bureaucrat still damp; and here was a black mink coat with a collar of ermine (or was it sable? ) that was in all probability worn by the mistress of a commissar.