The City of Masks

Across the soot-choked avenues of a nameless American metropolis, a coterie of exiled aristocrats—countesses in darned silk gloves, barons with blistered palms—conduct a clandestine masquerade every seventh night. They slip from tenement stairwells, factory gates, and steam-laundry basements into a rented loft where crystal once again catches gaslight, where violins scraped by dockworkers resurrect Strauss, where the scent of rat-poison gives way to bergamot and beeswax. Their host, the disgraced Duke Adriano—now a riveter by day—presides in a moth-eaten domino, distributing paste jewels that flash like recovered memories. Into this charade tumbles Lili, a Prussian princess turned seamstress, clutching a letter revealing her late father’s hidden fortune locked in a Viennese trust; she barters her last pearl button for entry, seeking allies who still understand the grammar of entitlement. The cabal agrees to finance her Atlantic return, but only if she can smuggle a cache of forged stock certificates through Ellis Island inspectors hunting anarchist contraband. Over five moonlit gatherings, alliances calcify and fracture: the Marchesa di Rovigliano seduces a customs officer in the dark; the aging Count von Traun, lungs shredded from coal dust, barters his signet ring for morphine; and the once-feared duelist Kosloff choreographs a ballet of counterfeit passports beneath flickering klieg lights. On the final night, police thunder up the stairs; Lili, masked in silver lamé, steps onto the window ledge, trades her inheritance papers for a single ticket to Trieste, and vanishes into snowfall while the others are dragged away, still clutching dominos to their chests like tattered heraldic banners.