“Quite so! Well, every time one of the Kutumoff generals leads the people of the Mutt to a victory, the various tradesmen of the Mutt come here and do some more work on the house. It’s the tradition, you see. And since there have been so many victories over the centuries, well, the house has grown. Two hundred and seventeen rooms, I believe we’re up to now.”
I felt I was on delicate ground, so I tread lightly.
“Ah, I notice, ah, however, ah, that the General himself doesn’t seem to spend much time in the house.”
“Oh, certainly not! That would be most improper! A modest man of the people, he is, just like all the generals have been. So he mostly lives in the shack. That’s also part of the tradition, you see?”
The expression on my face caused Madame Kutumoff to laugh.
“Oh, Benvenuti! The people of the Mutt are passionately attached to their traditions. The world’s greatest general has to be a plain and simple fellow, scorning luxury and ostentatious display. But in order to do that, he has to have a luxurious and ostentatious mansion he can scorn. Don’t you see? It all makes perfect sense!”
We toured for over an hour and yet I did not see all of it. Indeed, during the days I spent at the Kutumoff residence, I got lost any number of times in the multitude of stairways, turrets, galleries, hallways, passages, loggias, rooms and rotundas.
The lower floor consisted of the most commonly used rooms: the music salon, the breakfast room, the morning room, the dining room, the great dining room, the feasting hall, the drawing room, the office—each with its attendant cloakrooms, antechambers, closets and alcoves. Belowstairs was a virtual warren of storerooms, pantries, a buttery, a bakery, the small kitchen, the morning kitchen, the big kitchen, the really big kitchen—not to mention a beer and wine cellar of truly legendary proportions.
The upper floors were divided into the family wing with divers bedrooms, nurseries and suites, and the guest wing, again with many spacious rooms. There was even a padded cell, built especially for Wolfgang on those occasions when he escaped from the asylum. In addition, there were two ballrooms, a conservatory, a library, a smoking room, and a whole shoal of rooms and salons devoted to the special passions and interests of Kutumoffs past and present. There was also a trophy room, which, I was surprised to notice, was empty. Madame Kutumoff explained that the Kutumoff generals were really only interested in bagging whole armies, and that the ancient practice of mounting the heads of defeated field marshals had been discontinued several generations earlier.
“Modern times, you know. Nowadays it’s considered uncouth.”
There was even a large and well-equipped art studio, which I eyed hungrily.
Several of the rooms came equipped with their own stories and traditions. One of the rooms, of course, was haunted. And several closets were full of skeletons. Another room was locked and barred—the “locked room,” Madame Kutumoff explained, where all were forbidden to enter lest the secret therein be revealed.
“What’s the secret?” I asked.
“Who knows?” replied Madame Kutumoff. “You’d have to ask the workmen who built the room. They felt a proper mansion should have a locked and barred room holding a dark secret. But they’re all dead now, I imagine—that was four generations of Kutumoffs ago.”
At last, Madame Kutumoff and I returned to the music salon, where nobody seemed to have noticed our absence. Later that evening at dinner, however, everyone asked me about my tour, and it soon became clear that each one had his or her own favorite room or part of the house. I discovered that there was hardly a single inhabitant of the Mutt who didn’t know every nook and cranny of the mansion, and didn’t have a favorite room where they had spent many happy hours. I caught a glimpse, then, of the reason the Mutt had broken every army sent against it over the centuries.
* * *
The next several days passed quickly. Peaceful days, at first. But by the third day, I could feel Gwendolyn’s increasing agitation. Soon she was spending most of her time with the General, discussing the prospects for future struggle. I came along, the first time, but their conversation really meant very little to me.