To the Hermitage
Page 8
‘Welcome to Stockholm,’ says Alma. ‘Now shall we try to enjoy ourselves?’
Meanwhile Bo takes out an asthmatic nasal spray and refreshes his nostrils before interrogating me on various academic matters, mostly to do with the recent divorces or the sudden gay outings of a number of common professorial friends. He seems oddly preoccupied; but then, as Alma explains, he should not really be wasting his time here in a café at all. October is the Nobel Prize season. Bo should really be reading a stack of foreign books, or feeding highly misleading disinformation to the world press.
Suddenly a waiter drifts lethargically over toward us, bringing a much-thumbed, leather-bound menu with a picture of an agonized Strindberg on the front for us to study if we care to. By way of peaceful Nordic revenge, the Lunebergs in turn steadfastly ignore him. For a moment I entertain the immoral thought that I might ask the man for an ash-tray, but in this country the risks of massive liberal opprobrium always seem far too great, as in California. Brushing dandruff off Bo’s lapels, Alma leans over and asks me whether I am enjoying Stockholm. My opportunity has come at last. So the following conversation ensues:
ME
Actually I’ve spent rather a philosophical day—
SHE
You went to see the Vasa, of course—
ME
I did, of course. But I seem to be caught on the horns of a Cartesian dilemma—
HE
May I tell you you are looking pretty tolerably well for a man of, what is it, sixty plus?
ME (lying)
Well, not quite—
SHE
I know your age. It is printed right in the front of your book.
HE
We must not always believe what we read in books.
ME
Especially my books.
SHE
I only like proper books I can believe in.
HE
However, let us go to business. First let me recommend the excellent herring.
SHE
Believe me, if you have it, the taste will stay with you for as long as you live.
ME
But I already had herring at lunchtime. No, I think I’ll try the pasta. And may I have a bottle of beer?
A beat. Shocked faces.
SHE
A bottle of . . . beer?
HE
Nej, nej. We are alkoholfri here. Drink is a very big problem in Sweden.
ME
What, getting hold of it, you mean?
SHE
This is not Finland. We are a Viking people, not stable. Drink is very bad for us. It is the same with strong coffee. If you have a wild temperament, it is not a good thing. Bo, really, you have dandruff on your jacket again.
ME
Water then, please.
SHE
And herring, you say?
ME
I thought I asked for pasta.
SHE
Water is an excellent choice. But I really think if you come to Sweden you must absolutely try the herring—
HE
A Cartesian dilemma, you say? The mind-body problem, I suppose you mean—
ME
Yes. Only the problem is my mind and his body. I’ve looked round everywhere and I can’t find it.
SHE
Your mind?
ME
His body. I always thought Descartes was buried here.
SHE
Jo, jo, you are perfectly right.
HE
Well, half of him is perfectly right.
SHE
How can only half of him be right?
HE
Of course. Half can be right and half can be wrong. As you know, Descartes died here, and Queen Christina ordered he should be buried in the Royal Cathedral. So I hope you went and looked in the Cathedral?
ME
I did. And he’s not there.
HE
Nej, nej. That is a Lutheran Catheral. He was a Catholic. Also he had many enemies in Sweden. They would never have allowed it for a moment.
SHE
You should have gone to the Catholic church, of course.
HE
I did. He’s not there either, is he?
HE
Nej, because the Catholics thought he was a freethinker. The Vatican banned his works. Finally they had to bury him in an unconsecrated graveyard with the suicides.
ME
I can imagine in Sweden that’s quite a crowded place.
SHE
Well, our weather does not suit us. Really we were born for bright skies and sun, only we don’t have them here. In summer we try hard to be happy. Only in the winter do we remember how very terrible life really is.
HE
It’s the same graveyard where Olaf Palme was buried.You must go there.
ME
And then I’ll find Descartes’ tomb?
HE
Nej, nej. They dug him up again. He was taken off to Copenhagen. In a brass coffin two and a half feet long.
ME
He was quite a lot bigger than that, surely?
HE
But most of him was missing. He had become a kind of secular saint. People had been stealing his bones.
ME
So I need to go to Copenhagen?
SHE
Yes, of course you must, it’s a beautiful place. Only he is not there, of course.
ME
Quite. Of course.
SHE
The French were afraid the British would steal him, to create a political embarrassment. So they had him dug up again and put him in a coffin to take him to France. But when it arrived the customs wouldn’t admit it.
ME
Drugs?
HE
No, books. Atheistical books. Coffins were often used to smuggle in contraband. But finally they let him through and he went to the Abbaye de Saint Victoire. The freethinkers tried to hold the new burial, but the church prevented it.
ME
And that’s where he is, the Abbaye de what?
HE
No. Not at all.
(He raises his glass, of water.)
May I propose a toast to welcome you to Sweden. Skal!
SHE
Jo, jo, skal!
ME
Yes, indeed, skal! So – where is he now?
HE
He was dug up in the Revolution, when the abbey was destroyed. The revolutionaries wanted to put him in the Pantheon. Soufflot had just completed it as a state tomb for the old regime. Now the Jacobins decided to fill it with their heroes of reason. Mirabeau, Rousseau, Voltaire.
SHE
Maybe you remember the great procession when they moved the corpse of Voltaire? The coffin was two storeys high. They performed all his plays in the streets. It took over seven hours for the cortège to pass through the heart of Paris.
HE
It was meant to display the triumph of reason. Do you know in the Revolution even Notre Dame was turned into a Temple of Work and Reason?
SHE
Lenin did the same thing with the great cathedrals of Petersburg. You will be seeing them very soon, don’t you know? When we make our wonderful trip to the far end of the Baltic.
ME
Good. But are you really sure Descartes is in the Pantheon? I don’t remember that at all.
HE
Nej, nej. Voltaire was, yes. The ashes of Rousseau. But when Descartes got there he was rejected. Some of the Jacobins were also anti-Newtonians. They refused to let him in.
SHE
A bit like Lundkvist. One of Bo’s colleagues on the Nobel Prize committee. He always refused to admit Graham Greene.
HE
Not because he was not a Newtonian, Alma.
SHE
Nej, nej. Because of all those immoral fornications.
ME
Right, so we’ve got Descartes being turned down for the Pantheon. What did they do with him next?
HE
They left his coffin out in
the Garden of the Museum of Monuments.
SHE
Oh, see! There is also a very good pickled saltfish, if you prefer something entirely different from the herring.
ME
No, thanks. And that’s where I can find him now?
HE
Nej, nej. The museum was closed down after Napoleon. So they moved him again and buried him in the Latin Quarter. The church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres.
ME
Which is where I can find him?
HE
Well, whatever is left of him. Only one or two bones. Most of him had disappeared by now. You see, each time there was a new coffin, new pompes funèbres, new elegies, new coats of arms. Each time they opened him up he got a little bit less. People took his bones away. After he was dug up in the Revolution, his skull was cut into tiny pieces. To put into rings and give to philosophers.
SHE
Wouldn’t you love one? A piece of the famous cogito?
HE
Except be careful. They are probably not genuine. You see, there were actually two skulls of Descartes. The other was discovered right here in Stockholm, some time later.
ME
So which one was genuine?
SHE
The Stockholm one. We know it was his, because it had his name on it.
ME
Good. Then presumably I can go and see it.
SHE
Nej, nej. We sold it, for a very good profit. To the French, of course.
ME
Of course. So where is it now?
HE
In the Museum of Man in Paris. You will find Saint-Simon on one side of him, and on the other the bandit Cartouche.
SHE
So you see, even though it is very hard to be alive, it is sometimes even harder to be dead.
HE
However we should not be talking of this at all. It is completely the wrong story. I didn’t ask you to come here for Descartes at all. I invited you here at our expense to be part of the Diderot Project.
ME
Yes, but I don’t understand what you’re intending with this Diderot project. And to tell the truth I’m beginning to like the Descartes story even better.
HE
You have no choice. As Diderot’s Fatalist would say, it is already written in the Book of Providence above. You are in this story, not that one. It is already decided for you. So here are your tickets for the ferry, and your visa to enter Russia. The ferry is called the Anna Karenina, by the way.
ME
Good. I love a literary ferry. What will we do in Russia?
SHE
We follow the Enlightenment Trail. You remember how Denis went as a philosopher to Catherine’s court?
HE
There will be eight of us altogether, by the way. Some excellent people have agreed to take part. We meet tomorrow at two o’clock, in the Stadsgardeskajan Terminal. Just pick up a taxi from your hotel—
SHE
Oh, and don’t pay too much. Swedish people are very honest, but they like to take away your money. I simply hope it is able to sail, and there isn’t a very bad problem.
ME
Yes, so do I. These ferries really are safe, are they?
SHE
Of course, they are unsinkable. Nothing ever goes wrong in the Baltic.
HE
You’ve written a paper, I hope? We are expecting the most excellent papers.
ME
I don’t think you even mentioned that when you invited me to come—
HE
You must write one. We hope to publish them in a book afterwards. I booked a conference room on the ship. You realize the Baltic is the perfect place for a seminar?
ME
Oh yes? I was hoping to see it, actually. I’ve always longed to sail through the great archipelago. It’s beautiful, yes?
SHE
Of course, it is very beautiful. That is where is born our savage Nordic souls. I expect you will see it, through the portholes, while we are listening to the papers. In any case you are a seasoned traveller, it says so in your book. Perhaps you will sign it for me. We have all the signatures. Nabokov, Bellow, Brodsky, Morrison. You see, you are truly in Nobel company.
ME (signing)
I feel very honoured. Shall I put your names?
SHE
Please don’t write anything else. Just your name. It will be more valuable like that when we want to sell it.
ME
There then. So what did you mean when you said you hoped we’d be able to sail?
HE
Oh, don’t you consult your daily journal, or watch the excellent CNN? There’s an extremely serious crisis in Russia right now—
SHE
Yeltsin dismissed the Duma. Now they are shut up in the White House and there are tanks outside. Maybe there will be a bloody Communist coup. Bo, you have dandruff on your jacket again. I do hope you are not losing your beautiful hair.
ME
Oh. What do you think might happen?
HE
Maybe they will shut the border. Just as they did before, in 1917.
ME
You mean we could be shut out of Russia?
HE
Or in it, of course. That would be very much better. Then we would have plenty of time for our project.
ME
Our project?
HE
The Diderot Project. To track down what has happened to all our friend’s books and papers after they went to the Hermitage. You know that story, of course.
ME
The Empress bought his library, yes?
HE
Absolutely. And they still keep finding new material. Maybe we will discover a whole new novel or something.
SHE
Or a fresh work of philosophy. Some of his love letters to his mistress—
ME
Fine. Or maybe they’ll just put us in jail.
HE
It’s possible. Tell me, do you care for opera?
ME
Very much.
HE
They have it there, you know. Kirov and so on.
ME
I heard.
SHE
It will be such an adventure. Maybe you will even be able to write a book about it. I believe you said the herring?
I have the herring, of course.
SIX (THEN)
BUT IF IN RIGA the weather has been brisk and stormy, by the time they approach the Northern Palmyra – the chill capital, the heartland city so strangely stuck out here like a painted nail on the end of a whore’s frozen finger – it’s colder than the very deepest hell. They’ve spent unending days clattering over broken, sledge-battered roads by the Baltic that seem to lead only to the polar ice-cap of the world. The speed of travel has hastened each single day. The imperial wedding is fast approaching (Archduke Paul will take Princess Wilhelmina of Hesse-Darmstadt for his lawful wedded archduchess); Narishkin, the good chamberlain, has a court reputation to maintain. By the time the splattered battered carriage rattles up to the black gates of Sankt Peterburg, tugged by shaggy Russian stage-horses, our man’s feeling more dead than alive. He’s iller with colic than he cares to admit, blear-eyed with sleepless nights of journey, worried about wolves and bears. His backside hurts like fury; heaven knows what’s happened to his night-shirt. As for his wig, that went missing some hundred leagues back – somewhere in Europe, sunlight and the past.
The day on the true calendar is Friday, 8 October Gregorian. Here they call it something quite different. Somewhere in the lost days between two calendars his sixtieth birthday has spiralled into the void. Or perhaps the whole thing’s the other way round, and he’s going to be sixty twice, giving his miserable ageing a double birth. No doubt now in charming Paris it’s still autumnly mild; leaves hanging yellow on the plane trees, light evening shawls for the painted ladies strolling through the Palais Royal to the opera. Not like that in Catherine’s strange capital. The first win
ter snows are already starting to fall, the temperature is slipping, the day is so drearily downlit it looks remarkably like night. Freezing and shivering, hacking and coughing, the Philosopher stares through the icy mud-splattered screens of Narishkin’s bouncing Berliner as it trundles down the new-built granite English quay.
Trade flourishes to great effect offshore (he notes this in his notebook). High-rigged ships of the line, lumbering merchant tubs, fat barges lie roped at their moorings between the marshy islands. Rows of masts flutter their pennants at the Exchange Wharf on the far shore, Vasilyevsky Island, where European manufacture is being off-loaded on to Russian mud. Dirty loggers’ barges, drifting ferries swirl about in the muddy floody Neva. This is just a wide shallow flow crossed by one rough bridge of floating pontoons – though, as stakes in the water show, other bridges are a-building. Over the water the thin spike of the Peter and Paul Fortress, where past imperial corpses lie, rises gold and glittering from the brown reeds of a wind-blown marsh.
Then, on this side, the city. A city that’s been built from nothing, over the course of, out of the stuff of, his own lifetime. A new European capital, that just appeared like a mirage when no one was expecting it at all. Our Philosopher gazes: this place! He’s already dreamt it, sketched it, mapped it, rebuilt it over and over. What’s strangest of all is the real thing does look imaginary: everything fragile, fleeting, shifting, just like a dream. It’s been planted on nowhere, except under-salinated Baltic water and Finnish fen, autumn fog and winter ice. It’s shaded by chill Northern light. Everything here – idea or reality – was imported from somewhere quite different, probably devised for somewhere quite different. Its polyglot people – Scythians and Slavs, people from the fur-clad choruses of Rameau’s operas, exotic foreigners of every kind – have come here from everywhere too, imported by fiat, threat, servitude, patronage, favour or inducement. Its building materials have all been carried in, log by log, stone by single stone. True, they’re rebuilding Paris now, altering London, changing, they say, the face of Vienna. But this is different. This northern Palmyra has been forged from all the different fashions, torn from all the tastes: Italian, German, Dutch, French, English; romanesque, classical, oriental, baroque. Everything’s mixed together, turned into opera, stage-set, travesty, pastiche. The result is nothing short of novelty. At the age of sixty, he’s ended up in the world of Baltic Baroque.
They trundle on, into the heart of the new capital. Everywhere huge palaces, shining yellow, pink, blue through flaky veils of snow. Some are cracking already; some stand in Venetian fashion with their ground floors rotting to decay in swirling water; some are already sliding back into the universal mud. Many are illusions. Baronial façades are stuck on hovels, classical pediments deck the fronts of wooden sheds. Rag-wrapped workmen swarm over unfinished stucco, scramble up rocking scaffolds with half-trimmed stones. All this is rising – when it’s not falling – over rough-hewn canals being edged with granite, whose water, gelid with cold, looks like damaged marble. And while this goes up, that, thanks to the divine impatience of the Tzarina, is already coming down. There has been fire and flood through the city already, and some buildings are blackened ruins. Roads are being carved, shops and warehouses rising everywhere. They’re turning old wood into fresh stone, taking down huts to put up palaces, half-dismantling the not long-built Church of Saint Isaac to turn it into something other. New architects replace old, Italy remodels what Germany started, high classicism contests with fussy baroque.