COURTIERS snigger.
SHE
And if I’m happy to accept that fate?
HE
Then you’ll suffer from your passions and be bored by your pleasures. You’ll act by instinct, not by sense. You’ll be gross and despotic, not wise and serene . . .
The COURTIERS stare.
SHE
Really, sir?
HE
Knowledge is a long journey. Some get a little way, some go a good deal further, a small few progress very near to the end.
SHE
I think you would like to turn the whole world into an encyclopedia. And all its citizens into Diderot.
HE
Why not? It could do no harm.
SHE
It’s enough. I’ve a delegation of Turkish suleimans now. I don’t want them to find me talking to a philosopher.
HE
No, marm, not bellicose enough.
HE rises, kisses her hand, turns to go.
SHE
But you will return, at the same time tomorrow, and we will start in earnest, Mr Thinker?
HE
I will. Yes. Good day. Your most Serene and Imperial—
HE disappears through the door.
END OF DAY ONE
THIRTEEN (NOW)
I DON’T BELIEVE THIS. I’ve done it all over again. The disaster’s clear, my error’s apparent, the moment I finish delivering my . . . whatever it was I gave them. I look around the table: Bo is sitting silent in the grimmest of professorial poses, Alma has become ever more the frozen Snow Queen, her expression made of ice. Agnes Falkman offers me a glance of sharp political protest; Sven Sonnenberg is now a man as close to sleep as a man can be without actually toppling from his chair. Anders Manders looks at me with diplomatic quizzicality, Jack-Paul Verso simply keeps his head down, scuffling through his own notes as he prepares to follow on. Only the Swedish diva and Lars Person show any sign of having enjoyed my . . . whatever . . . at all.
Tapping on the table, Bo finally delivers the verdict. ‘Nej, nej,’ he says, ‘I am sorry. But this is not at all what we mean in Sweden by a useful conference presentation.’
‘Oh really? No?’
‘I am afraid it is all too British. Too playful.’
‘No theory,’ adds Alma.
‘Not really grounded in any fundamental concepts.’
‘In Sweden we are not tellers of tales or makers of anecdotes,’ confirms Alma.
‘In any case our grants demand monographic papers that we can publish in the proper journals,’ says Agnes Falkman.
‘But I loved it,’ says Birgitta warmly, ‘I thought it would make a rather good opera.’
‘But we did not come on this journey to make a rather good opera, Madame Lindhorst,’ says Alma. ‘The problem here is that already it is ten o’clock in the morning and we do not have anything at all to discuss and attack. This does not permit a true dialogue, a proper critique. This is . . . nothing more than a story.’
There’s a tap on the door, and Tatyana comes in. Today, in another quick and vivid change of costume, she’s back in her white chambermaid’s uniform, a little white scarf wrapped round her hair. Her cheeks are bright red; she beams, and bears a tray with a coffee pot and cups. As she walks around the table, putting out the cups, I notice her throw a significant glance at Jack-Paul Verso, who looks up and gives her a smile. Then it occurs to me that Agnes Falkman is glancing quite romantically at Sven Sonnenberg, who has been roused from his somnolence by the offer of coffee. I glance at Birgitta, hoping that she’ll glance at me; but am I right in thinking that now she’s glancing curiously at the deep-bearded Lars Person? At any rate the mysterious chemistry of conferences has already begun, as it always does, sooner or later.
But, whatever the chemical reactions taking place, Bo Luneberg means just now to have none of them. He taps firmly on the table with his pencil. ‘Our programme is all exact, we must all keep to it,’ he says firmly. ‘Professor Verso, I have no doubt you will now be able to lead us along the correct academic path? Of course you have a paper?’
‘Sure I do,’ says Verso easily. ‘I sat up the whole of the night writing it.’ As he says this, it seems to me he casts a little wink at Tatyana.
‘That is excellent,’ says Bo.
‘Here it is,’ says Verso, reaching in his briefbag, and taking out sheets. ‘If you’d just pass them around, Bo, and make sure everyone here has a photocopy . . .’
Bo hands round copies of his lecture, which is titled ‘All You’ll Ever Need to Know: How the Modern Mind Works’. I can’t help noticing that a tiny piece of print in the top corner from a photocopying machine says, curiously, Toronto, 3 May 1990.
‘And now, Professor Verso, if you wouldn’t mind taking over the speaker’s chair?’ says Bo Luneberg, looking gratified.
Verso comes over and changes places with me (and isn’t that a rather curious grin he gives me?). Tatyana puts the coffee pot on the table, and departs with a lovely smile. Verso taps the table, and begins to offer our pilgrims what, if I had spent the night in the correct fashion, I should really have offered myself: the first proper paper of the Diderot Project.
FOURTEEN (THEN)
DAY TWO
HE comes from the ante-room, wearing his black philosopher’s suit. It still seems to cause amusement among the beardless BOYARS, pantalooned CHAMBERLAINS, tousled CHAMBERMAIDS, bewigged HUSSARS and black-cowled MONKS who keep wandering freely in and out. His armchair awaits him. SHE, wearing a military sash, is standing looking out of the window.
HE
Your Most Munificent and Glorious . . .
SHE
No, no, Doctor Didro. How’s your backside today?
HE
Better for your concern, Your Serene Highness.
SHE
I see there are ice-floes today on the Neva. Soon it will freeze over. First the Neva, then all the Baltic waters. Then we shall all be marooned here together for the winter.
HE joins her at the window.
HE
I really don’t think so. The sea temperature isn’t low enough. And there’s no moisture in the atmosphere—
SHE turns and looks at him.
SHE
You’re a meteorologist then? And a prophet too? Evidently there’s no end to your accomplishments.
HE
It’s true, I’m both those things. But then I’ve tried to be almost everything. I’ve studied and written on many matters. Weather, watermills. Beauty, ecstasy, perfection. Bees, sexual pleasure—
SHE
For or against?
HE
For, madame. God—
SHE
Against, no doubt. Humility?
HE
Yes, I wrote on that too once – and I’m very proud to admit it. I produced an encyclopedia, Your Royal Highness, a big book of universal knowledge—
SHE
I’m well aware of that, Mr Librarian. You may recall I offered to publish it for you here in Riga. When you had got yourself into so much trouble at home with your popes and priests and publishers—
HE
Priests, of course. One quarrels with them all the time. I have to. As I told you, I was a little priest myself once. Popes I don’t know, and shouldn’t care to. Publishers are amongst the boldest, the wisest, most generous of all humankind, risking their fortunes for our opinions. That is, so long as they don’t keep too much company with princes, priests, or popes. Or bankers or the lowest tastes of the people.
SHE
You wrote on sovereigns. What’s your view of them?
HE
Ah. Well, in my view a truly enlightened sovereign would be the most finest and most beautiful thing in the entire story of the world.
SHE
Better than a water-mill?
HE
Of far greater utility, Your Imperial Majesty . . .
SHE goes and sits down on her sofa, and looks at him.
SHE
Tell me, sir, have you read my ‘Great Instruction’?
HE
The ‘Grand Nakaz’? Of course. The state censor banned it in Paris. I read it immediately.
SHE
And your opinion?
HE
I thought it was a . . . really great instruction. I admired it profoundly. A model for all civilized societies. Such a pity the Great Instruction’s only a Faint Suggestion.
SHE
I’m sorry?
HE
I understand you’ve yet to put it into practice.
SHE
That will happen, when the time comes. Mr Philosopher, my country is my greatest experiment. I mean to be careful to see it is a good one.
HE
Then you make an ageing thinker very happy. I’ve always known the time would come when Enlightenment would sweep down from north to south. Already you’re turning the rest of Europe into a wilderness of pagans and savages.
SHE
You think so?
HE
Good men will deify you in your own lifetime. Sages will prostrate themselves before you in delight. I myself long to the toes of my boots to be of service.
SHE looks at him.
SHE
I think you already have been, Mr Librarian. You have only to look around you.
HE looks gratified.
HE
True. I can’t tell you the joy I feel when I raise my eyes to your Rembrandts and your Rubens, and think the taste they first delighted and ravished was mine. The pleasure when I look and see the drawings in my notebooks turned into real buildings and palaces.
SHE
It pleases you.
HE
It’s exactly like waking from some disgusting and deliciously erotic dream, only to find the whole thing is quite real after all.
SHE
Have you quite done?
HE
Not at all. The dream has hardly begun yet. I can assure you there’s plenty more where that came from . . .
SHE
What do you mean?
HE reaches into his bag and his pockets. Notebooks and papers tumble everywhere.
HE
See. My plans for Russia. Sixty notebooks of them. I’ve been writing them down ever since I left Paris.
SHE
No wonder you took so long to arrive.
HE
Plans for a university. The organization of a police force. A scheme for a city, rules for a guild of crafts. A class in sexual anatomy for the improvement of young girls. Plans for education, toleration, emancipation, legislation. A law on divorce. I’m for it. A law on gambling. I’m against it.
The COURTIERS are laughing.
SHE
You have been busy.
HE
A scheme for creating a Russian bourgeoisie, done by importing Swiss. A plan for preventing a revolt of the serfs . . .
SHE
Ah! How would you do that?
HE
Abolish serfdom. Within minutes you’d have no further problems with serfs.
SHE stares at the ever-growing pile of notebooks.
SHE
Such a pity we have only a few short afternoons. I am an empress. I have other things to think of than you.
HE
Perhaps, to make sure neither of us waste precious time, I might write you a memorandum every day. Then, if you were to rise a little earlier than usual—
SHE
Mr Philosopher. Each morning I rise before five. I do four hours of papers and red boxes before I take black coffee, which is my only breakfast. Then I see my generals and counsellors. I settle petitions, resolve church affairs, since I happen to be the grand Metropolitan. I issue laws. I check the safety and borders of my nation. I see ambassadors, deal with foreign monarchs, threaten the Turks. I eat lunch.
HE
I understand, Your Highness.
SHE
Affairs of state are onerous, but I usually manage a reading hour. When noontime dinner is done, and half this court is sleeping, playing games, or enjoying sexual adventures, I choose to relax a little with a few dear friends, or perhaps improve my health, mind or spirit. I mean these hours now, Mr Librarian, which you may consider yours. I trust you mean to employ them wisely and well—
HE
So do I, Your Imperial Highness. I have considered it.
SHE
Well, away you go now. Send me your paper tomorrow. And I will read it and tell you exactly what I think.
HE
I can ask no more, Your Grand and Imperial Mightiness—
HE rises to go to the door. She calls after him.
SHE
Oh, and you are completely wrong about the Neva, Mr Philosopher. I have discovered experience always outdoes theory. And I’ve lived here now for twenty years. When the sun goes red like that, the Neva is always going to freeze—
END OF DAY TWO
FIFTEEN (NOW)
ALL YOU’LL EVER NEED TO KNOW
Jack-Paul Verso
Dept. of Contemporary Thinking, Cornell University
Hi there! Good morning, my friends. As you can see from the printout I’ve just put in front of you, the paper I’ve written is called ‘All You’ll Ever Need to Know’. Maybe before I start out you’d like a brief personal explanation of why I chose that particular title. I picked it because I happen to be an Encyclopedia Kid. What’s an Encyclopedia Kid? You’d know the answer to that right away if, like me, you’d been a poor kid in the Bronx, growing up in a high-rise apartment on an old urban block. It was a neighbourhood of tough kids, and we kids all looked the same. We attended the same public school, we ate the same hot dogs, went to the same ball-games. We looked the same – but we weren’t. Because in any good ghetto, there are the street dudes, the ones who know all the action, the ones who by age six are already stealing autos and dealing crack. And then there are the four-eyes, kids with big spectacles and little muscles, who get up at four to deliver the papers, and sit reading books when they go to the beach. There are the little Capotes and the little Einsteins, the ones whose parents want them to be musicians, lawyers, brain surgeons. These are the encyclopedia kids.
Why encyclopedia kids? Right, take me. My parents were third-generation Jewish immigrants who’d come from Lithuania, somewhere right out over the Baltic there. They were observant, they were ambitious, they prayed in the synagogue for only one little favour: give us a Mozart in the family. They bought me a junior cello. They taught me chess. They put science journals under my pillow. In those days the salesman used to wander round the apartments looking for parents like mine with kids like me. They were selling encyclopedias, and we were the perfect market. They brought The Book of Knowledge, amazing stuff, all about how to build a submarine or make the perfect brownie. But the great one was the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was in thirty-two bound buckram volumes, came with its own bookcase, and cost over a thousand dollars. But, as the salesmen said, it was all worth it, because the Britannica didn’t just contain knowledge. It contained All You’ll Ever Need to Know.
So I was a natural encyclopedia kid. The odd thing was I didn’t have an encyclopedia. Every week I could hear my poppa at the door, arguing with the salesmen. ‘You think I’m dumb?’ he’d say. ‘Some Britannico. I know where you fellows make these things. They make ’em in the stockyards of Chicago, aren’t I right?’ And right he was, because by the time I grew up the Britannica was an all-American project, printed and published by the University of Chicago. Which was fine by me, but not by my pop. ‘Jackie,’ he’d say, ‘you hang right in there. Homework isn’t all. One day I’ll buy you a hundred per cent echt Britannico, the kind they made back over there in Britain, not some lowdown fake they fix up on Michigan Drive.’ Then one day he came home with it. I have no idea how did it, how many dollars he paid. He must have trawled every used bookstore in Manhattan. But there it was, twenty-eight volumes in their own wooden bookcase, not the American 13th but
the grand old, imperial British 11th. ‘Now you learn what there really is to learn,’ he said.
He was right, because that set made me special. Okay, all the other four-eyes on the block knew all there is to know. But I soon knew more than that. I knew all there was to know once: when the Great War still hadn’t happened, when women didn’t even exist yet, when you were being educated to rule an empire that stretched over a quarter of the globe. TV may not have been invented. Nobody had figured out E equals MC squared. You went around without a Freudian unconscious, but, when push came to shove, you knew things that could astound. For example, I can advise our last speaker there’s no mystery about where Shelley’s heart is buried. It’s in Bournemouth. But did he also know that heart-burial is a cardinal sin, anathematized by Pope Boniface VIIIth in the thirteenth century? And if you want to know the first man in England to carry an umbrella regularly, I can tell you. Mr John Hanway acquired the habit on his Grand Tour, when he realized what protected you against the sun could also protect you against the rain. And, Bo, if you think this is a little irrelevant, let me tell you John Hanway was an almost exact contemporary of Denis Diderot, meaning he could have carried a rain umbrella too.
But this wasn’t all. From the encyclopedia I learned all about encyclopedias. As you’ll all know they began spreading across the European nations in the seventeenth century as a result of the explosion of knowledge. The first alphabetical English encyclopedia was by Ephraim Chambers, started in Edinburgh in 1728. When the French decided they should have one, they simply took Chambers’ and started to translate it. But the project ran into difficulties, the first French editor broke his leg falling down a hole, and so the project was handed on to two young philosophical hacks and wannabes, called d’Alembert and Diderot. They at once saw the problem. Start an encyclopedia and it’s hard to stop, because knowledge keeps expanding to fit: new science, new mechanics, new philosophies, new political viewpoints, new discoveries. So they devised a fresh, très grand projet, as advertised in 1750. They’d provide a total system of modern knowledge, framed around the three branches of the great tree of learning: Memory, Science and Imagination, otherwise history, philosophy, poetry. They’d include invention, science, medicine, the crafts and the technologies. And they’d augment it with constant supplements that would tell you, in continuous supply, All You’ll Ever Need to Know – Then, Now, In the Future.
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