topol

Parallels~

This is the exact living room on the ground floor - the one.

A dressing room is hidden behind the right door from the fireplace, but more on that later.

Skorin's room. Here's a fun detail: there's a small window in it, so he could be watched at any time. The room itself is tiny and, ironically, used to be a servant's quarters. And of course, it's in the servants' wing - the all-male part of the house.

A not entirely clear room with a map:

I never managed to track that room down (my guess is it's the ground-floor study). It looks like they changed it a lot for the series, but I did find a location tied to it:

Here you can see them coming out of it into a dressing room (the double wooden door is the entrance to the living room, but there are two rooms before it, and one of them is the study). Schlosser picks up his gloves and heads forward, towards the exit:

You can tell from here that it's a section of the study. Here's how it looks now:

Admit it - it looks way bigger than that tiny room from the series, right? I suspect they split it with a fake wall built snug against the window, just so they could hang that map where Skorin tracks the Stalingrad situation. The wall only covers half the room, though: if you follow the fireplace wall, it's completely open.

It seems that Skorin lives on the second floor…

BUT THAT'S NOT HOW IT IS! He goes back through the door and, to get to his room, goes down the servants' stairs.

I never found the room Lota was staying in. But since the mansion was officially split in two, and Nosov's study matches the servants' section, while Schlosser - when he goes to see Lota - walks away from those rooms, my guess is she was put in a room belonging to either Nosov's sister or his daughter.

Perhaps she lives in the room of Augusta Nosova.

"Alexander, you outrank me, but I will take the liberty of addressing you by your first name and making a suggestion: let us not address each other by ranks and titles. I am against overfamiliarity, but with people I find congenial, I am for simplicity."

Schlosser is asking to simplify the conversation, signalling friendly intentions. But here's what matters: he keeps using Вы (the formal "you") with him. 

"На этом построена вся операция. Зверев придет в большевистскую контрразведку, расскажет о школах, о вас, фрегатен-капитан. Я специально только что назвал ему вашу должность." "The entire operation is built on this. Zverev will come to the Bolshevik counterintelligence, tell them about the schools, about you, Fregattenkapitän. I purposely just mentioned your rank to him."

Вы is the polite form of addressing one specific person, used to express particular respect - in personal letters, official documents, and formal speech. It's akin to the royal "We", where a monarch speaks of himself in the plural ("We have decreed" instead of "I"). In Russian, due to this linguistic feature, when speaking to a stranger or maintaining polite communication, it's customary to address a person as if they were many - for example, Вы это делали? ("Did You do it?" - with the plural "You"). The plural form creates a sense of distance, indirectness, and respect.

I'm freaking tired…

"When they met, the Baron's refined elegance didn't sit well with the girl at first: he seemed too exquisite, too preening about his looks, not strong enough… Lotta found herself disliking Schlosser more and more — but this was exactly how a real spy ought to appear: outwardly nonchalant, even frivolous."

"The Baron is handsome. Sleek as a cat."

"In the photograph, he has a pleasant, intelligent face."

This description hardly fits the magnificent Igor Vasiliev, but you can almost glimpse someone else… HMM, WHO COULD IT HAVE BEEN? No, there are no ideas.

"Like Admiral Canaris, I am not indifferent to the fair sex." "You are not telling the truth, baron." "Oh?" Schlosser looked at his companion with interest. "Perhaps. But let's get down to business."

That's what his mom called him😭

Никогда раньше Саша Белов не испытывал такого трепетного волнения, такой жажды утвердить свое дарование художника, как в эти часы."

"And now, sitting in the sun, Johann was working patiently and diligently. Yes, working. On thin sheets of paper, with a well-sharpened pencil, he was drawing portraits of these people. He wanted to depict each of them twice — full face and in profile. He drew with the meticulousness of a miniaturist.

Never before had Sasha Belov felt such tremulous excitement, such a thirst to assert his gift as an artist, as in these hours."

Alexander Belov🤝 Sergei Skorin

can draw

And that's not the only thing they share. They both have a thing for hereditary German aristocrats, apparently.

The whole thing hits differently when it dawns on you: Heinrich's name is spelled Heinrich (Хайнрих) — so it's not just "Genrikh" (Генрих). And Johann? Written Johann — and it doesn't sound like "Iogann" (Иоганн)? "Johann" (Йохан)? AND MORE

Sasha's surname is Belov (from the Russian word "белый" — "white"), which perfectly mirrors his alias Weisse, while Heinrich gets the ironic Schwarzkopf — literally "black head". God, they were made for each other. The funny thing, though? It's Johann who's got the black head, and Heinrich is the blonde one.