Squads of thick-coated soldiers march, green-coated horse-guards ceremonially ride. The place resembles a huge military and naval barracks to which, in careless profusion, palaces, churches, academies have been wildly added. Noblemen’s carriages clop through grand unfinished squares, or roll down wide new prospekts that run for miles in straight lines to some distant nowhere. Merchants and foreign seafarers sit talking and trading in coffee houses; paupers and beggars huddle under buildings; decorated vermilion-cheeked tarts strut through new arcades. The place booms like a workshop. Crafts, trades and manufactures prosper, as our man, son of a provincial cutler, can see with half an eye. Shoemakers tap, blacksmith forge, ropemakers weave. Huge sleds heaped with produce or vast blocks of ice are manhandled through the streets. Sheep and goats are herded along embankments; ambassador’s carriages with frog-coated footmen stand outside grand buildings. Strange flaring lamp-posts, burning some kind of rank hempseed that scents the whole city.
Banners wave everywhere. To Narishkin’s bouncy and braying pleasure, they have managed to arrive precisely on time. The imperial wedding will take place tomorrow, Saturday, when the Archduke Paul – the bitter neglected son of the Tzarina – will unite with his princess, one of three bright German sisters he has been granted his choice of in the usual way. Our Philosopher can take personal pleasure in the matter. This angry little bridegroom is the royal pupil his friend d’Alembert had once been summoned north to tutor, till his fear of the haemorrhoids put him off. As for the timely union of dynasties Prussian and Russian, well, every detail – the presentation of charming portraits of the three young princesses (‘I’ll take that one – I think,’ the Grand-Duke has said, ‘no, the other . . .’), the terms of the contract, the collecting up of the chosen bride-to-be from the court at Sans Souci, the delivery of her person to Sankt Peterburg all intacta – has all been managed through the matchmaking and couriering abilities of his old gossip of a friend: dear squat-faced, court-loving Melchior Grimm. Meaning that, wonderful to say, he must already be somewhere in town, taking one arm of the journey while our man has taken the other, and now waiting to meet and greet, embrace and toast him with his familiar frog-like joy.
So, as he rides on through the city, there’s no way our philosopher can resist a sentimental tear or two. It’s all so strange, so surprising, so fantastic; yet so exactly what he expected, a mystery of a city, polyglot, multi-cultured, a city that seems to express every fancy yet has acquired no firm shape. Having lured its citizens, its styles, its tradecraft from everywhere, planted them down in this frozen Utopia, it has allowed them to be the best or worst of whatever they are. But if this banging, clanging place is a fantastic invention, a reverie, a dream, who’s the dreamer? First a tzar, of course, then a great tzarina. But others can claim some credit. Didn’t he – along with d’Alembert, the thinking man’s mathematician, and grand old Voltaire of Ferney – raise altars of homage here, pursuing their conviction that power and light, the electricity of reason, the bright brush of reform, would spread enlightenment downward, from the north to the south? Hasn’t much of this dream been dreamt in clever critical Paris, smarting under its divine disappointing kings, witty corrupt courtiers, lawyers, priests, tax-farmers, its elderly unphilosophical God? In fact (and fair’s fair) hasn’t much of it been dreamt by him, sitting in his old dressing gown at a writing desk in the rue Taranne – the place he wishes, as colic stabs once more, he was sitting at right now?
So, if they’re expanding Rastrelli’s fine Winter Palace (it shines pinkly and wonderfully in sight now, further along the Neva bank), tying vast baroque wings together with huge display galleries and strange hanging gardens, isn’t that because he, on paper, thought up much of the scheme? If these galleries are a-building because thousands of crate-loads of art, tapestries, collectables, general world-finery can’t wait to be displayed, hasn’t he filled hundreds of the crates? If buildings need the best architects, sculptors, carpenters, hasn’t he personally interviewed and recommended most of them, not to say the mathematicians, musicians, generals, comedians and tragedians who fill their rooms each night? If the city is creating new arcades, streets, squares, didn’t he sketch them? And if the whole grand plan is to be capped and crowned with a vast new statue, to be raised up high in Saint Isaac’s Square . . . well, isn’t that an invention sprung from his own mind too, devised amid the dusty books of his Paris study – with dear Étienne-Maurice at his side?
Falconet, Falconet! His dear, his companionable, his ever amusing, his sweet-hearted old friend! No sooner does he think of him than a fresh tear springs to his eye. He just can’t wait to see him; he’ll hug him, embrace him, kiss his cheeks, weep in his arms. And when they come together once more – kind master, fond pupil – he doesn’t mean to ask for much: just a fabulous welcome, some herb tea, a syringe to help the colic, an ordinary bed for the night – and then all the other nights he’ll be in the city till his philosophical services are done. Well, why not? Didn’t he, in a sense, invent Falconet too? When that angry young man was no more than an indigent maker of small busts and sculptures for the art-salons of Paris, he chose him out, wrote him up constantly in articles, praised his works to the skies. When Catherine needed a fast-track Michelangelo, he promoted his talents – though, true enough, it helped that he offered himself cheap. And when the scale of her scheme for a grand new statue for her grand new city grew evident, it was master and pupil who sat down in his apartment and dreamt it together – the ideal triumphal figure, classical and allegorical, Big Peter the Horseman, rearing up high and mighty over the streets and waters of his fantastic city, just as he had in life.
Which reminds him. He can’t wait to see the statue either; the whole vast and terrible thing must surely be nearly finished by now. The truth is, our man dearly loves statues. He seeks them out, plans them, imagines them. Didn’t Plato say each human body is both a sign and a tomb? In a godless world, statues are our one ideal Posterity – what we should be aiming for, an apotheosis, a final and complete granite selfhood, created by art from the fast-shifting fluidity of our material being. They’re the figure for what, in our best moments, we aspire to be: the perfect epitaph, the last tableau. Art at its highest, motion in stasis, life held in marble, biography done in bronze. To please the great Tzarina, Voltaire wrote a thousand pages of the history of Peter the Great. With our man’s instinct for art’s pregnant moment, Falconet’s gift for knowing the limits of tensile bronze and stone, they can do the whole thing in one shot.
So, day after day, they’ve together planned the ideal statue, the ultimate heroic hieroglyph. He still remembers every fine detail of the splendid plan they drew. Peter on his horse, high-rearing and betoga-ed. Around him fur-clad figures of Barbarism pay fealty to civilization and greatness. Popular Love there too, making obeisance, naked and freely extending her arms and her charms. Beneath him, the female form of the Nation, outstretched and adoring, supine in yielding gratitude. How long ago was it? Could it be nine years? Nine years since he last saw the sculptor, and argued so wittily that the sole goal of life was Posterity (Falconet disagreeing with him as usual)? Nine years since the young man set off north in the diligence, accompanied by twenty-five articles of luggage and a pleasant, clever seventeen-year old pupil called Marie-Anne Collot, also carefully selected by him by our sage? And here they are already. Falconet’s house and big wooden atelier have not been hard to find. The Tzarina has housed him within sight of her own pink Hermitage, right on grand Millionaya, Millionaire’s Row. The Berliner stops, he gets out, another spasm jabbing his inside. He claps the knocker. The door swings open . . .
. . . only to reveal that something’s badly wrong. Nothing is as he’s been expecting. Falconet stands there all right, stiffly holding the door. But why no grand welcome in the entrance? Why no laughter to greet him? Why no loving embrace to enfold him as he walks inside? Why no shout of filial joy from Falconet, no fond kiss-kiss-kiss from Marie-Anne? Even the long-expected, the so-much-desired b
ed seems not to be on offer. Falconet, standing there rigid, is grotesquely explaining that his young son has just arrived from London, where he’s studying (what? Art, of course, naturally . . .), and has bagged the spare room already. It strikes our Philosopher something in his manner – an unease? a dismay? an embarrassment? a distance? – suggests the pupil is no longer delighted to see his wise master, the creation no longer feels at one with his creator. He’s reminded Falconet never really was a warm man. He’s temperamental, tempestuous, jealous, a man who appreciates nothing that’s done for him and is quite easy to cross. Oddity. Disappointment. Rejection. Total and utter mystification.
Fortunately Narishkin’s carriage waits still. Chastened if not hurt, our man makes some quick cold farewells, gathers his spirits and his cloak together, gets back in. By slippery squares and glassy embankments he trots back to Prince Narishkin’s grand palace. It’s nothing to be sneezed at, not even with this bad cough, in this tightening cold. More than a just reward for all the duties Narishkin has played as court clown, chamberlain, playmate, pandar, it stands in grand decorated classical nobility on the corner of the square opposite Saint Isaac’s Church, only a step away from orthodox worship, just a muffled assignation away from the Hermitage, and right opposite the spot where, as it happens, the Bronze Horseman is meant to stand. Good Narishkin is, as ever, his clownish hospitable self. He offers a bedroom, in fact a choice of several tens of them, some once used by the Tzarina herself, for purposes not clear. There’s a helpful bevy of servants. A comfortable much-needed commode. A hot Dutch-tiled stove, a cold thermometer, proudly announcing a temperature well below freezing. Family portraits, of boyars with unbelievable hats and no less impossible beards. All a good man might need for the rest of his stay, however short or long it might prove to be. He’s here at last, in the chilly city. He’s comfortable. He’s cosy. He’s tired. He’s hurting. He’s hurt. Yes, it’s definitely time for sleep . . .
. . . to wake next day to the world’s noisiest morning ever. The horns of the city watchmen are sounding, the bells of the church in the square exploding with sound. Within minutes cannons are blasting, bells ringing over the city of strange invention. Below the window, trumpets flare, kettledrums snarl, lines of imperial horse-guards trot with a clumping of hooves. He rises at once and goes to the balcony, still in his nightcap and shirt. Lines of soldiers march, the fountains are spurting wine. Parades of big-bearded priests strut past, and black-robed monks are swinging on the bell-clappers of all the onion-topped monasteries and churches. Beyond is the Neva, where galleys, yachts and merchantmen are flying their bunting and firing their pieces. From all directions, kings, queens, ambassadors and princelings from every state, duchy and margravate throughout Europe trot in their caparisoned carriages in the direction of the Cathedral to celebrate the great and sonorous nuptials.
Alas, despite that frantic rush and rattle of their journey, it seems neither he nor Narishkin will be attending the great and world-shaking ceremony after all. Narishkin has severe toothache, not to say the everlasting trots. As for our man, he simply lacks the clothes for it. His trunks, explain the servants, have been impounded for further inspection by the intrusive officers from the Custom House. In any case, he is utterly wigless. All that remains is to watch the ceremony with his host from his fine balcony, right over Saint Isaac’s square. And why not? Nothing could be better placed. The city is all there, spread out in view. Wedding bells ring, fireworks rattle, cannons explode, crowds cheer and wave. In due time the processions return, heading for the Hermitage. And here, surrounded by a battalion of the troops from the loyal Preobrazhensky guard, are the happy couple, riding in a carriage like a little castle . . .
Inside the coach sits the grim, prim young Archduke Paul Petrovitch, all pug-nosed and skull faced. This is the bitter neglected heir who will – when this fine ceremonial day turns into another, when state wedding becomes state funeral – confront the corpse of his imperial mother with the exhumed body of his murdered father (if, that is, his father really is his father, which most people including his mother would deny). Then in his turn he will be hailed as the new Tzar, crowned and fêted in the two Russian capitals. Then, four years further on still, he will be carefully strangled by his own courtiers, outraged by his excesses; many of them are riding beside him now. Next to him in the coach sits his German bride, radiant. She will take only a few years more to die in childbirth, as she seeks to deliver an infant that is most unlikely to be his. Then she will be replaced by one of her own sisters, rejected this time round.
The procession rolls on toward the Neva. Riding in the coach behind the happy nuptial couple, our man sees the one person who is so efficiently capable of making such past, present and future fortunes and misfortunes happen. This is none other than his own dear and powder-cheeked friend, the fastidious matchmaker Melchior Grimm. Considering all these things, Our Philosopher reflects they’re all no more than a wise man might expect. For, as he understands it, the life, pomp and motion of our passing days is just a form of stasis, one manifestation in some much larger and longer fatality which is probably already inscribed in some code or text or other. Maybe they are in the rituals of history, maybe they’re deep in the dynastic spirals of genes and tissue, maybe in the laws of chaos, chance and randomness, most likely in the great Book of Destiny, which is already written or in the process of being written somewhere up there in heaven above.
Which at once reminds our man; it must be writing time. As noise explodes, the celebrations grow, bells boom, noble crowds swarm toward the pink Hermitage, he finds a desk in a quiet corner, discovers a working quill and well. Not since he left the elegant if bombarded (Frederick of Prussia again) streets of Dresden has he had the time to write his postcards home. He scribbles away in pleasure, first to his spiky wife and dancing daughter, whose baby is expected soon. C’est moi, he announces proudly, I have arrived. Believe it or not, I’m in the right city. Throat so far uncut, but feeling more dead than alive. Most of my things are with me, apart from a nightshirt and my favourite wig. He reports in detail on his bowels, he admits his hacking cough. He offers them a promise: tempted as he might be to travel onward to the Great Wall of China, he’ll return as soon as he can by the quickest route he can, the moment his philosophical duty (creating a new Russia) is through. Thoughtfully, he adds some advice to his wife on the management of her extremely uncertain temper (‘Shift everything round at home, then unshift it, and shift it again, and everything will come out fine’). And then he recounts the bitter tale of the ingrate Falconet – whose welcome has been so icy, whose gratitude so hard to find. What could have happened to the fellow? What’s wrong? Thanks to him, I could by now be a ragged beggar, freezing to death in a Scythian snowdrift.
Utterly delighted he’ll have created a gossiping frenzy of indignation and gossip all over Paris, he picks up a second sheet. And so he sets down another letter, more reflective, intelligent, rebuking, mercurial, for this one’s to his charming, his philosophical, his not always enthusiastic mistress Sophie. He tells his adventures, reflecting as philosophers have to on the dying of passions and the weariness of age. He tells of his hopes, his dreams. He signs off lovingly, to her, her sisters, her interfering mother. Much later, as the music and human noise of a grand mêlée resounds from the nearby Hermitage, he eats a beetroot dinner at Narishkin’s fine table. There is a great crackle and blast of evening fireworks as he goes upstairs to his bedroom. Cannons from the warships anchored in the Neva volley out over the city as he lies down in his cold and comfortable Russian bed.
SEVEN (NOW)
NORDIC GLOOM. Middle-of-the-night, end-of-the-boat-pier, screaming-in-your-face, pure state-of-the-art Nordic gloom.
. . . I suppose it really begins to begin in that art nouveau bohemian café near Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre, as Bo, his bright Snow Queen and I reach the close of our fishy and totally teetotal meal. By now the time’s nearly eight-thirty, and beyond the café windows the great Nordic c
apital is already falling silent. The dour black-suited waiters who’ve been seriously shunning us all evening have suddenly grown full of energy. They wipe down the nearest tables in a frenzy, lean heavily across us to close and bolt the shutters. Then, over coffee, coffee-less coffee of course (‘We are careful never to take strong things in the evenings . . .’), as Bo begins to unbutton his little leather purse and carefully count his way through the copper and paper contents (‘No, do let me . . .,’ ‘Nej, nej, of course we will treat you, you are a most honoured guest from afar . . .’ ‘What lovely herring . . .’), I learn that these two cunning Lunebergs have all the time been squirrelling away a secret from me. In some fit of Nordic communion they’ve silently concluded that all’s not yet concluded, that this cold autumn night has but scarcely begun. Quite appreciating (Alma leans over the table to tell me) how intensely my life has been dedicated to new and dangerous art, how committed I am to the most illicit transgressions of the postmodern imagination, they wish to make a bold suggestion. Would I care for them to take me into . . . the danger zone?
To the Hermitage Page 9