Thus a huge silver peacock made out of many separate pieces stands up on a stump amid an intricate forest of branches. Among the branches are concealed creatures of all sorts of different kinds and sizes: a cockerel, a squirrel inside a cage, an owl, a grasshopper, a lizard, a snail, and various mushrooms that conceal the dials that clock the time. When an hour strikes, a chime of bells begins to play. The owl moves, the squirrel spins in its cage, the cockerel crows, and various other actions are provoked. The peacock itself turns, bows, and spreads out its huge tail. By the time the clock was assembled again, the chimes had already rung for Elizabeth Chudleigh. She herself died back in her favourite Paris. But the clock itself remained in Russia, and it was duly acquired by the duchess’s admirer, Grigor Potemkin. He was the victorious hero of the Tauride, the Empress’s best general and her one-eyed lover. She gave him the greatest of gifts (the Tauride Palace, dinner services from Sèvres and Wedgwood, many thousands of dead souls). He longed to return the compliment. He acquired the Peacock Clock and presented it to her. And she placed it in the Small Hermitage.
That’s why, amid a press of what feels to be a hundred thousand jostling tourists, we Diderot Pilgrims are standing around it right now. Galina has brought us here, of course. Galina has decanted us from the mini-bus in the middle of Palace Square, right beside the Alexander Column, on an old site of history: the scene where tzars more than once sent out their cavalry to slaughter their people, and where, in 1917, the commissars sent in the people to slaughter the cavalry and the tzars. The Red Revolution, it seems, is far from forgotten: another red flag demonstration is taking place in a corner of the square, watched by armed policemen. Big banners wave and loudspeakers blurt; a band of marchers sets off toward the centre of the city, shouting passionately as they go. None of this impresses Galina.
‘Politics, take no notice!’ she cries. ‘Do not even look! Just follow me!’
And so, a small band of Enlightenment pilgrims, we surge across the square, between the menacing Intourist coaches, and storm the steps of the Winter Palace.
Except the gates today are not locked, and the doors are wide open. For something has happened to history these days. We may be at the scene of great and revolutionary events, ten days that shook the world, events that seemed so grandly historical and truly real they had to invent a new art to go with them, called proletarian realism. Naturally, since the real events were so much smaller than the events that reality required, painters, opera-makers, film-directors and the authors of works of history improved them. Even the photographs were inaccurate; it was necessary to brush out some and brush in others. This is a common problem with History, history the great power, inevitable, inescapable, progressive, written in the great Book of Destiny above. The reality frequently fails to concur with what has been destined, which makes it necessary to correct it, so that what happens is brought into perfect harmony with what is.
Odd, though, that the great inevitable machine called History should have gone on to produce what we witness here right now. For, where the people surged and the great gates tumbled, American backpackers knock back their cans of coke, Japanese tourists photograph each other standing next to something or other, and weary-looking Russian army conscripts smoke on the steps and eye up the endless supplies of young foreign girls. Inside, in the great buildings, vast tour parties sweep past each other, going in all directions, up and down the staircases, along the thirteen miles of stone corridors, into the twelve hundred rooms of paintings, objects, every kind of treasure, two million different items from all over the world. And from all over the world the people come to see them. They swarm through the Little Hermitage, the Big Hermitage, the Old Hermitage, the Hermitage Theatre, steered about in sheep-flocks by those bossy Russian guides who once used to promote socialism, comradeship, peace and world friendship and now promote Constructivist posters and Demoiselles d’Avignon T-shirts.
Today the world seems to be one museum after another. And of course everyone wants to see this one. Hermitage now means museum; museum now implies Hermitage. Tzar after tzar added to its boodle and multiplied its trophies. Collector after collector added their private contributions, general after general came home with more trophies. Loot from other museums came as spoils of war; while other wonderful things that were here once have been sold abroad, looted, ransacked away, shared out with other museums in Russia. But however much has been and gone, everything you can think of is somehow still here, and in the most amazing quantities. World-famous paintings hang in an unbelievable profusion. Every age and stage of art is depicted, from primitive to the highest baroque and the richest romanticism and so, in the great cycle of being, back down to primitive abstraction again. Every material, precious or semi-precious, has been mined, chipped, shaped, forged, fashioned. Every kind of human skill, craft and art has been used. Every nation and people seems to be represented. Every image and icon is kept in stock.
So history now has become a kind of noisy museum: a glittering, booming place of wonders, a scene of half-indifferent worship. Paintings and objects take the place of history and power. Tour companies take the place of popular revolutionaries, surging up and down the stairs. Indeed it can only seem as if history – for so long our aggressive and murderous master, sweeping us into ever more horror and atrocity – has suddenly become our servant and friend. No longer here to spill blood, no longer urging ideology or faith, no longer requiring death and sacrifice, no longer raging and purging, it instead deposits bright and well-lit scenes before us: glittering Fabergé and glinting Sèvres, brilliant Impressionist chiaroscuros and raw Cubist splashes, fleshly Rembrandt human puddings, strange vivid Constructivist collages.
Tired travellers look at it all, in a kind of worried desperation. Painting after painting passes across the retina, signals to the brain-cells, passes into confusion, excess, redundancy. The tourists pause a while, hunt round for the tea rooms, the chairs and the couches (and why are there never enough?). They put down their cameras, they take off their shoes. Girls chitter and chatter in front of the huge Rembrandts. Boys chase them through the endless rooms of the building, from gallery to gallery.
‘And all this is simply for myself and the mice to admire,’ the great Empress is supposed to have said once, in quiet satisfaction, after the great boatloads sent north by Golitsyn and Diderot arrived, were uncrated, hung on new walls that had to be built to display them. Now the collections collect the tourists in their millions, coming from every part of the globe.
‘Tourists, dreadful people, please ignore them,’ says Galina imperiously, ushering us all through the rooms. ‘Guides, they’re all terrible, don’t listen to them!’
But why should we? We have our own guide, Galina, and she is clearly beyond compare. She knows everything and for some reason is permitted to go everywhere, just like some insuperable force.
‘Bonjour, mon brave!’ she cries to the guards in gallery after gallery. ‘Félicitations, mon ami!’
She opens doors in walls and we find ourselves in small offices, where curators smoke secretly and restorers paint.
‘Parfait!’ she tells them. ‘Voilà mes pèlerins! N’oublie pas ton français.’
‘Pardon! Attention!’ she shouts as she cuts a swathe through huge and well-armed tour-parties, who open up and scatter as she makes her attack.
‘Excusez-MOI!’
And now she gathers us around Elizabeth Chudleigh’s great silver peacock, indicating to other parties it is now time to depart. As if at her express instruction, the clock now starts to chime. Its mechanical motions begin, this intricacy locking itself into that. The owl moves, and the squirrel cages turn about, tinkling quietly. Then the cockerel crows, the peacock turns toward us, bowing its head low and spreading out its tail. In her silk Poiret dress, Galina stands there, crowing at us, clapping her hands loudly. The tourists who come and go, talking of Rembrandt or Malevich, listening to their imperious guides or auditing the chattering headsets, stare at us curiously, as if
we are different from the rest. Indeed we are. Let them have their usual gallery narrative; we’re being treated to something rather different. I think we ought to call it ‘Galina’s Tale’.
TWENTY-FOUR (THEN)
DAY TWELVE
It’s snowing beyond the Hermitage windows. Wind is heard whistling down the corridors. HE sits opposite SHE. A rather large low table is set between them. Even so, their knees appear to be touching. HE holds a large sheaf of papers and is going through them with her.
HE
I need to know the total production of timber, grain, linen and birdseed. Imports of oil and horses. Exports of furs, metals, pottery and caviar.
SHE
Whatever for?
HE
You said you’d like me to produce a Russian encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is a book of everything.
SHE
Surely you can have far too much of everything.
HE
In life perhaps. Not in an encyclopedia. Now then. What is the landmass of your empire?
SHE
Unknown.
HE
Total income? Total state debt?
SHE
Don’t ask me. Go and bother the members of the Academy of Sciences. That’s why I have them.
HE
I’ve tried. Every time I go there they simply hand me gold medals and huge citations. But they won’t actually tell me anything at all.
SHE
They’re jealous of you. They think I like you far too much. Or maybe you’re asking them questions they are not supposed to answer. How can I know?
HE looks at her.
HE
Questions they are not supposed to answer? What’s the point of having an academy, then?
SHE
I should have thought the point was obvious. All great countries have them. In any case I want the whole world to understand my love of science and my love for learning and philosophy. Anyway, if they refuse to answer your questions, why should I?
HE sighs.
HE
All right, my dear lady, let’s try a very easy one. What’s the total population of Russia?
SHE
Don’t you know?
HE
Some tell me 18 million, some say 20.
SHE
I can give you a list of who pays taxes. Nine million men. Women are excluded, also certain nobles.
HE
Good. The population of Moscow?
SHE
Changes all the time. Up and down. Now for instance there’s a plague. So you’re very well away from it.
HE
More than Petersburg? Less than Petersburg?
SHE
Just put down a lot.
HE
Thank you, Your Highness. The population of Moscow is . . . a lot. And this I have on the very highest authority. From the very top. Number of Jews in Russia?
SHE
We never try to count them. But monks and nuns I can tell you exactly. We have seven thousand monks and five thousand nuns.
HE
Then I suggest you should have two thousand less monks or two thousand more nuns. Then if they ever pair off—
SHE
Why would they ever pair off? The whole point of making them monks and nuns is to stop them pairing off.
HE
It’s often tried, but it’s never succeeded. Sexual passions can always break down convent walls.
SHE
How would you know?
HE
I’ve often tried to climb them. Monasticism’s an amazing stimulant to human depravity. No woman trembles more with passion than an unhappy nun. And since nunneries were chiefly devised to calm the anxieties of worried fathers, there’s a plentiful supply of those.
SHE
Not in Russia. What else do you want to know?
HE checks his list.
HE
What else does Russia produce? Timber, furs, precious stones, minerals?
SHE
Yes, of course.
HE
Hemp? Mulberry trees?
SHE
Yes. And yes again. Just put it produces everything.
HE
Wine? Rhubarb?
SHE
Yes. Yes. Oh, do write down about my Devil’s Grass.
HE
What’s that?
SHE
That’s what they called it when I introduced the potato.
HE
You introduced your people to the potato? Was that kind?
SHE
Yes. Now they grow everywhere. I require my people to eat them, too.
HE
What else did they propose to do with them?
SHE
What they do with everything. Make vodka. Surely those questions are quite enough—
SHE looks bored.
HE
My dear lady, you know I ask you these questions for a reason. I long to see Russia progress. But a nation can only progress if it uses all its resources. We cannot have true science unless we also have good manufacture. We cannot have innovation and discovery unless we cultivate crafts and skills. We cannot have good society unless people have dreams and aspirations—
SHE
Yes, I agree.
HE
What is better, a society where there is no energy or hope, where people live short lives in poverty, where all is struggle, where everyone robs each other or sells their bodies and their souls to each other, or a society of goods and talents, professions and arts. A society where people decorate their houses, cultivate their gardens, attend theatres and museums, acquire good manners and fine graces, spend and consume—
SHE
That is better. Of course.
HE
But then you must also pay the price. You will have to change your towns and cities. Create more streets and neighbourhoods. Devise more workshops, encourage more tradesmen, more craftsmen and inventions, more shopkeepers, more learned scholars, more solid citizens. Then the citizens will become burghers, and insist on governing themselves. They’ll ask for guilds and parliaments. They’ll demand laws that they agree with. They’ll require reform, and in the end they may think they may not need a monarch at all—
SHE
Write down about our wonderful stud farms. Do you know King Frederick of Prussia buys all his stallions from us?
HE
And I’m told that in return you acquire all your best breeding mares from him.
SHE looks at him. The COURTIERS are sniggering.
SHE
Didro. Today you’re being impertinent beyond belief.
HE looks extremely contrite.
HE
I’m very sorry. Sometimes my tongue seems to break loose from my brain. My thoughts come out before I’ve even thought about them.
SHE
Just as your hand does from your pocket. It’s resting on my right thigh yet again.
HE
I regret it. I do indeed.
SHE
Now you’re squeezing. Are you trying to flirt with me, sir?
HE
Not at all, my dear lady. I’m trying to think with you.
SHE
And how does this help?
HE
My dear lady, with me philosophy has never been a form of contemplation. It’s an active current, an unending and torrential flowing of the mind. I don’t think thoughts, I electrify them. Sometimes they pass through me with so much power I hurl my wig across the room. Sometimes, I’ll confess it, they’ve made me squeeze a breast or slap a thigh. Still, to the best of my knowledge, which as far as knowledge goes is among the best there is, no harm has ever come of it. No one has suffered. No one has been hurt. Yet my most sincere and abject apologies, Your Imperial Highness, all the same—
SHE laughs.
SHE
No need to be humble with me, Mr Librarian. I do believe we’re two of a kind.
HE
&nbs
p; Are we?
SHE
You have a hot head, and I have one too. We interrupt each other, we don’t listen to what the other is saying. We’re wild and rude, frank and open. We both say stupid things—
HE
But with one difference, let us admit. When I am rude to Your Majesty, I commit an unpardonable offence.
SHE
Only between two honest and open philosophers there can never be any offence. Don’t you think that’s true?
HE
Now you say it, I do believe I do.
SHE
You know, they tell me when His Christian Majesty put you away in the prison at Vincennes, you told the authorities your thoughts all slipped out without you knowing it. In which case you simply couldn’t see how you could possibly be blamed for them—
HE
I told them my thoughts seemed absurd even to me, so I was not surprised they startled them. I said if they desired I was happy to deny them, since to be capable of changing an opinion was the first mark of an honest man. They resisted, of course.
SHE
Why of course?
HE
Because they realized they needed my thoughts exactly as much as they needed to put me in jail for them. That showed me what a waste of time it was trying to avoid being outrageous. And the same must be true for here and now, surely, my dear lady. What would be the point of carting a poor tired Denis a thousand leagues across Europe, simply for him to be flattering or dull or meek?
SHE rises, walks across the room, looks at him over her shoulder.
SHE
You’re certainly not that. You know, I’ve already decided to tolerate you. For just as long as you remain tolerable. But please remember this, sir. You can even try the patience of a saint. And though I may be sublime, I’m certainly not a saint—
To the Hermitage Page 31
