“We need to practice ‘Social Distancing,’” the medical authorities say. And almost at the same time, a friend urged, “You need to read this book.” Those two directives have created such synergy, and a harmonic convergence so nearly perfect, that they can’t possibly be randomly coincidental. Barring a sneak attack by an airborne bit of COVID-19 that has resisted the so-called “flattening of the curve” our governors are attempting, Kiki and I are probably ready for the approaching onset of the pandemic.

I don’t think this is bravado. There’s nowhere else we can go to get away from the virus if it does spread as predicted, and fear is only debilitating. It seems ironic that here in the Home of the Brave so many citizens are panic-buying guns, hand cleaner, and toilet paper. Price Chopper’s shelves were utterly innocent of tissue this morning. I must admit that yesterday, probably with hand-cleansing in my sub-conscious, I ordered a few bars of Lava soap. It made no sense, but it’s been a long time since I’ve washed my hair with pumice and smelled like a miner home from the pit, and I’ve kind of missed it. As for toilet paper – my wife left me a bidet. So I have no qualms about channeling the second President Bush – though with a bit of Vermont reserve and caution: Bring it on!

As for social distancing - how difficult can that be for an elderly widower who lives alone, except for a small dog who they tell me cannot harbor the virus? I suppose that once upon a time, before FM radio, television, and the Internet, such isolation might have been more difficult to bear. Now, however, we’re hardly ever out of touch. As for gatherings: The three I had scheduled have been canceled, along with church. Kiki’s been booted from the coffee shop, so we won’t be going there till the tables and chairs are back out on the sidewalk. Our daily walks in the park, at this worst time of the year because of of mud and hard, gray ice – are hardly social events. So, without meaning to be reclusive, it happens that is what we are.

But I mentioned a book. I’m still in a lively rebellion against an authoritarian upbringing. Thus I’ve never been able to read, listen to, or watch what anybody has recommended to me. So when, a week or so ago, I was leaving a lovely supper with friends, the hostess pressed a book on me with the usual injunction, I groaned inwardly. The book sat on the side table by my recliner while I plowed through the last two years of the Civil War with General Grant. But, “She’s going to ask me how I liked it,” I thought. “I’d better at least see what it’s all about.”

A Gentleman in Moscow, it’s called, by Amor Towles, a writer I’d never heard of. Its plot is about as unprepossessing as a plot can be: the necessarily small adventures of a Russian count, stripped of almost everything by the Bolsheviks, but allowed to live because he once wrote some poetry in praise of the 1905 Revolution. He’s sentenced to life under house arrest in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow; if he steps outside, he’ll be shot. Forced to forfeit one amenity after another, he adapts creatively – as, it’s implied, a gentleman should. It’s social distancing enforced at the point of a gun. But ever urbane, courteous, and curious, he lives contentedly within the confines – the very posh and refined confines – of Moscow’s finest hotel, while post-Revolutionary Russia seethes around him. It’s an entrancing book; thus I’ve been reading it as slowly as I can, often going back a few paragraphs to savor some especially beautiful turn of phrase. I can almost physically feel the Count’s distress when the Bolsheviks, in a fit of anti-elitist pique, strip all the labels from the thousands of bottles of wine in the hotel cellar.

We’re trying to keep our heads down and our hands clean, Kiki and I, while absorbing what passes for accurate information from all available sources. Regrettably, many our wells have been so poisoned by governmental chaos and the cynical accusation of “fake news,” it’s difficult to know whom to believe, what to avoid, and what to look for. I’m apparently in a class of citizens considered high-risk – not compromised medically, myself, but old. One government worthy announced, “We’re especially concerned for old people, who are at greatest risk from the virus. Everyone over sixty.” Uh-oh.

“D’you hear that?” I asked my furry little pal. “What if we’re in our mid-80s? Does our risk rise exponentially? Or is our age proof of natural resistance to disease? Maybe we’re among those old folks they’re saying ought to be ‘culled’ by the virus, anyway. Or, having lived a very full and satisfying life already, perhaps it’s time to relax, lie low, and just try not to infect others. What do you think?” Utterly devoid of any medical opinion, she jumped up onto my desk to tell me it was past time for our walk.