JACQUES
My advice? Let’s go . . . forward.
MASTER
Why, may I ask?
JACQUES
Because I really see no point in going back.
MASTER
Right. But why doesn’t one of us go one way and the other the other. I presume we’re able to choose?
JACQUES
Not if it’s written in the book above. Besides, we’re bound together, like a head to a body.
MASTER
Heads do sometimes come off bodies.
JACQUES
True. But one tries to avoid that if at all possible.
MASTER
Right. So which way’s forward.
JACQUES
Any way that’s not back. The best line is the shortest line. As the cabbage-planters say.
MASTER
Yes. Shall we go.
JACQUES
Yes. Let’s go.
‘They do not move,’ he adds. Then he finishes writing, folds the paper, and slips it inside Sterne’s battered old book. It’s one way of doing it, for the story that just won’t end.
So, then, a little something – an alternative ending, a second or fourth choice – to tease the spirit of fiction and confuse Posterity. And, speaking of Posterity, it’s time to go and visit Falconet again. For, despite that never-to-be-forgotten moment of rejection, when the city offered him its first and hardest hour, he has never given up on the sculptor. In fact, far too warm to stay unforgiving for ever, far too curious to neglect the drama of the great atelier, he’s lately taken to seeing a good deal of his old and ill-tempered friend. And, now the Empress has left the city, and he no longer needs to spend the morning writing a paper on the improved Russian police force or the Siberian economy, he’s begun wandering often to the atelier on the Millionaya, where furnaces grow red at the heart of the dusky city, and seeing how the Horseman proceeds.
It’s wonderfully warm here, in fact an inferno, as casting ovens flare, furnaces bubble, and foundries hiss. Molten metal bubbles, hot torches sear. In the middle of the huge atelier the Peter maquette sits waiting, brooding, still faceless, under its massive canvas. Our man sits, or at least attempts to, in a quiet corner. A scarf knotted cavalierly around his neck (for a sculptor must always look like a sculptor, as a general must look like a general), Étienne-Maurice sits on a stool to one side of him, looking him over. And on a stool to the other sits Marie-Anne Collot, staring hard at the Thinker’s other profile.
‘Two statues, it’s amazing,’ he says.
‘Be quiet,’ says E-M.
‘This way a little,’ says M-A.
From time to time a young man wanders in. It’s the Falconet boy, back from London, the cause of all the original troubles. Now, from his exaggerated gallantries, his liquidic stares, his hesitant touchings, his fumbling hands drifting uselessly here and there, it’s quite clear the upstairs bed has not been wasted. M-A and Falconet fils have clearly constructed an intimacy. Casting a quite fresh lumière on the sculptor’s first clumsy rudenesses, and that bitter territorial struggle for the guest-room bed.
Still, never mind. Now it’s slap-slap-slap on this side of him, chip-chip-chip on that. Étienne-M plasters away on the one hand, Marie-A carves away on the other. Tossing clay and modelling stone, they’re each one bringing to life a little eternal clone of the Thinker. A little Moi takes shape on the turning table, a small Lui is coming into being on the easel.
‘I suppose it would be far too much to ask our Great Thinker to sit quite still just for a moment?’ asks Étienne-M.
‘And please do try to turn your head a little more this way,’ says Marie-A. ‘And at least you could put down the book.’
‘I never put down the book,’ he says. ‘Besides, I’m trying to learn Russian.’
‘Quite impossible, at your age,’ says Étienne-M. ‘And surely to learn grammar you don’t need to bob your head up and down like that.’
‘You don’t know Russian.’
‘You’re quite wrong, I know it only too well.’
‘Do you mind if I get up and walk up and down for a bit? I want to look at the furnace.’
‘Of course we mind.’
‘It annoys you?’
‘Naturally it annoys me.’
‘I thought perhaps it might put a little bit more life in it. A statue isn’t the model of a corpse.’
‘I put the life in it, not you,’ says Falconet. ‘In any case most of my best sitters have been dead.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ our man says wearily. ‘You wear them out. And I do happen to be one of the best sitters in the world.’
‘Oh, is that what Houdon says? And Pigalle?’
‘Houdon has done me, more than once. I’m still waiting for Pigalle, or rather he’s still waiting for me. After all, isn’t the sculptor made by the quality of his sitter?’
‘Not in this case,’ says Falconet.
‘What does Levitski say?’ asks Marie-A.
A good question, for our man is also having his portrait done, for court or archival purposes, by a designated painter on the Empress’s orders. The young man is Dmitry Levitski, a Russian, one of some new breed in the making; it’s his task to make sure our man will survive for good, somewhere on the long walls of the Hermitage (and in time our man will acknowledge he has done a perfect job).
‘Levitski says I’m the most fluid, the most mobile, the most interesting sitter he’s ever had the pleasure to work on in his life.’
‘You’re not even a sitter, you’re a stander,’ says Étienne-M. ‘You’re a getter-upper and a walk-arounder. It’s all very well for Levitski. He uses paint, not stone or plaster.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘With paint he can wipe you down and rub you out.’
‘And why would you want to wipe me down and rub me out?’
‘Can’t you imagine?’
‘I do hope you’re making me look like Peter. Can’t we find me a horse?’
‘I have no intention of making you look like people. Surely you’d like to look like you?’
‘That’s quite impossible.’
‘Oh yes, why?’
‘Because the subject I call “I” in no way resembles the object you keep on calling “you”. You call me an angry man, I call me a charmer. You think I’m a chatterbox, I think I’m a sage.’
Falconet stops and wipes his hands on a rag. ‘In that case, maybe you’d better chisel your own damned bust.’
‘I should do a far better job of it than you, old friend. At least I think I know who I am.’
‘Go on, then, tell me. Who are you?’
‘A witty wise man. Certainly not that effeminate old flirt you’re turning me into over there. What will my grandchildren say when they see that? I’m sending them a quick message through the atmosphere to Posterity right now: don’t believe it, it isn’t me.’
‘Well, it will be,’ says the sculptor firmly, ‘just as what’s under canvas over there will be Peter, and what he sits on will be the universal horse. It’s not what you look like that counts, it’s what I make of it. And I’m sorry, but it’s my bust your grandchildren are going to believe in, not you. It’s not that stuff you inspect in your mirror every morning you’re going to have remembered. It’s what the sculptor, the painter, the genius has made of you that will count in the ages to come.’
‘But you don’t even believe in the ages to come. You don’t believe in Posterity.’
‘I don’t believe in trying to live our lives for it.’
‘But you do believe in busts and statues?’
‘They’re good business.’
‘Meaning I’m condemned for eternity to be that . . . parody of a philosopher? That smirking little clown? He isn’t the least bit like me.’
Marie-Anne laughs: ‘So what are you like then?’
‘He’s the most handsome man in the world,’ says Étienne-M angrily. ‘A cross between the Apollo Belvedere and Seneca
. But with a bigger conk.’
Our man ignores this. ‘You know what I’m like, my darling,’ he says to his dear M-A. ‘On any one day I assume a hundred different faces, depending on how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking.’
‘Wonderful, so you need a hundred different portaits then,’ cries the sculptor.
‘I’m putting to you the problem of representation, old fellow,’ says Our Thinker. ‘The paradox of the copy. But, yes, you should be really making a hundred different portraits, if you truly want to do me justice.’
‘You’re not asking for justice, you’re asking for mercy,’ says the sculptor. ‘Ignore this man whose prospects I created and whose entire life I made.’
‘Indeed you did. And what, I should be grateful?’
‘Ignore him, and let’s both think now, what am I really like?’ he says to Marie-Anne. ‘I suppose I’m serene and dreamy, yet at the same time tender and passionate. I have bright lively eyes. A broad forehead, a head just like a Roman orator’s.’
‘Seneca.’
‘I have, as you know, a very warm and instinctive nature, just like the simple spirits of the golden age.’
‘He’s a marble faun, then.’
‘Yes, I’m a marble faun. Nature’s body, reason’s mind. The flesh is splendid, but art also has to speak of the real treasure, the splendour of the mind within.’
‘Of course,’ says É-M, ‘the one thing we can’t possibly see.’
‘Exactly. Which is why as a philosopher I have a mask that must deceive any but the very greatest artist. Since my mental actions operate so quickly, my expression can never stay the same for more than one second. To be quite honest I always have the feeling I haven’t even begun to exist yet, that everything is yet to come. One of these days I shall think something so splendid I shall become truly immortal.’
‘When?’
‘How do I know? Tomorrow, perhaps? Who knows what I’m capable of. I’m sixty and I haven’t even used up a quarter of my powers yet.’
‘Would you like us to portray what you’re going to look like ten years in the future?’
‘Why not? I mean, just look at what you’ve done, Falconet. You’ve made me look like some fat ambassador. Some big-eared general. I don’t look like a philosopher at all. Maybe I should have two fingers to my ear.’
‘Maybe you should,’ says Falconet, wiping the dust off his hands furiously. ‘Sir, you are completely impossible.’
‘Impossible?’
‘You always were impossible. In Paris you were impossible. In the womb you were impossible. Now you’re even more impossible. You don’t begin to understand art.’
‘And you, sir, don’t begin to understand the mystery we are now examining, the ineffable mystery of the human face.’
‘No?’
‘No. Art isn’t simply an artificial construction.’
‘How would you know? You who’ve never tried to construct it?’
‘Because I am a philosophical observer of it.’
‘A critic.’
‘Yes. Art’s conscience, art’s consciousness, that’s what I am.’
‘Oh, you go to all the Paris salons and write about them, yes. You post your arrogant little opinions all over Europe. You make painters beholden to you, so they flatter and praise you. But you don’t understand one thing about the paintings you write about. You stand in front of them, you doff your hat, you raise your glass of wine to them, and invite them to understand you.’
Our man looks decidedly hurt. ‘Yes, I’m a critic, that’s what I am. And you may recall that in the course of those opinions I posted all over Europe I praised you to the skies. Without my essays you might never have come to Russia at all.’
Falconet laughs. ‘Now you tell me. And don’t you know, it was the worst mistake of my life? Maybe you meant well, maybe you didn’t. But now I stew at the heart of Barbary, and you take the credit. Everywhere you go, it’s always the same. You’ve got to be the little maître. Always some advice, some instruction to give to everyone. You always know how to do everything so much better. Just because you wrote an Encyclopedia.’
‘Naturally. A builder may have a skill. A painter may have a talent. But I am a philosopher. What I have is an understanding.’
‘Soufflot’s dome in Paris, for instance,’ says Falconet, mockingly. ‘I’m told the latest thing is you’re telling him how to build that.’
‘Of course.’
‘And who will get the blame if it falls down, you or Soufflot?’
‘Ah, but who will create the dream, if it stays up?’
‘I thought so. That’s quite enough. Very well, good day.’
And for some strange reason Falconet is on his feet and marching furiously out of the atelier.
Our man stares after him, an innocent surprise plastered over that strange, impenetrable and ever-moving face of his.
‘Did I say something?’ he asks ingenuously, turning to Marie-Anne.
‘Yes, maître, of course you said something. Now, sit down, put that book away, turn your head to that wall, and don’t say anything whatever. If you really do want me to do your portrait bust.’
‘But he can’t go like that,’ says our man. ‘Étienne-Maurice, now wait!’
In the doorway, lit by the furnace, the sculptor turns. ‘Monsieur?’ he says.
‘My dear fellow, now I know why it is the Tzarina keeps telling me you’re impossible to do business with. But I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know our good friend Grimm has made you the most splendid offer.’
Falconet looks at him: ‘Yes, what’s that?’
‘He’s been amazingly generous. He’s offered to buy one or the other of these two busts you’re each doing of me.’
‘Which?’
‘Why, whichever I decide is the better, of course.’
Falconet turns, and walks back across the red glowing atelier. He comes back to his work-table. He takes up his sculpting hammer; he raises it high. It hovers above the philosopher’s head for a moment; then it smashes down. Our man – the plaster version, his other little self – shatters into a cloud of whirling pieces. The hairpiece, a version of the expensive new wig he bought on Nevsky Prospekt, pulverizes. Dust flies. Large lumps of thinker drop onto the floor . . .
‘Good God,’ says Melchior Grimm, when, a couple of days later, our man tells him the story, ‘what had you done?’
‘I’d done nothing.’
‘I really think you must have annoyed him in some way.’
‘Not at all. The truth is, it was a truly brave and amazing thing Étienne Falconet did. Choosing to smash his imperfect work, right there in front of his fellow student and his old master.’
‘You must have goaded him into it, surely.’
‘I didn’t goad him into it. His guilty artistic conscience goaded him into it. It was no loss, believe me.’
‘It wasn’t a good statue?’
‘A very bad one, I assure you. He has a problem with faces. Pottery would suit him better. But I still don’t know how a man of his talents could possibly miss some of the most remarkable features of his sitter.’
‘Perhaps he saw some remarkable features you didn’t know about.’
‘It’s possible. But I can’t tell you how glad I was to be rid of it. Even if it did mean I had to stand there and witness the pulverization of my own head.’
‘There’s nothing left of it?’
‘Well, yes, there is. The ears. They must have survived because he sculpted the wig separately and then stuck it on the top. That’s what bore the brunt – the absurd Russian peruke you had me go out and buy on Nevsky Prospekt.’
Grimm looks excited. ‘The ears of Doctor Diderot? Did you happen to keep them?’
‘They’re here, in my pocket,’ our man says, and takes them out.
Two splendid stone ears, preserved whole and still joined together by a strip of stone skull, sit on the table. Grimm picks them up, and twists them in his hands. They’re two little
white birds. Two intricate and twisted orifices, two strange passages of ingress spiralling inward into the deepest chambers of the mind, the reason, the senses.
‘I shall buy them from him,’ Grimm says.
‘What, my ears? I thought you’d buy Marie-Anne’s bust.’
‘A good bust, is it?’
‘Excellent. The girl, you see, has no illusions, no pretensions, no false pride. She listens to her masters. Her bust is just as good as his was bad. The charmer truly understands me.’
‘You mean she flatters you?’
‘No, I mean she understands me exactly as I would wish to be understood.’
‘Very well,’ says Grimm benignly, ‘I may very well buy that too. And perhaps even present it to the Empress. Oh, by the way, old fellow, your days of peace are over. She and the court are returning to the Hermitage tomorrow—’
And it’s quite true. Next day the streets that for two weeks have been so empty have grown full, and they are all back again. Horses are trotting, guardsmen are drilling. The countesses and the governesses are back again on Nevsky Prospekt. Outside the Winter Palace, court servants and coachmen are unloading the same massive burdens they so dutifully loaded up only a couple of weeks ago. Purveyors of silks and shippers of wine, the makers of snuff boxes and clocks, are back in the Hermitage corridors. The butchers and poulterers are once more doing thriving business in the palace kitchens. Gilded invitations to evening receptions, large and small, pass round the city, promoting the usual bursts of envy and weeping. Women in their best dresses reappear in the sledge-carriages. Garlands and icons fill the streets and deck the palaces, for now the Empress has returned Christmas and New Year are coming after all. The churches and cathedrals are full again. The bells ring hourly, the monks intone. It’s time to return to the palace . . .
Only to find that things have changed. When he enters the small stateroom, it is the Princess Dashkova who stands there. With her is Doctor Rogerson, cracking his fingers.
‘She’s not exactly herself,’ says Dashkova.
‘My belief is it’s this Orenburg rebellion that’s upsetting her so much,’ murmurs Rogerson.
It seems that with the Empress away or in flights of philosophical speculation trouble has chosen to break out in the provinces.
To the Hermitage Page 39