‘It’s serious?’ our man asks.
‘Verra,’ observes Rogerson, for whom everything is always serious.
‘The Don cossacks always revolt whenever we go to war with the Turks,’ Dashkova explains.
‘Do they? I’ve seen so little of Russia.’
‘Nothing at all,’ says Dashkova, ‘or you wouldn’t believe what people tell you, when they say Russia is just like Paris. Orenburg’s a long way from here, in a region of total barbarians. It’s peopled by kaftaned fools and roaring ne’er-do-wells we’ve been trying to get rid of for at least half a century.’
‘Meantime retaining all their lands and possessions, of course,’ murmurs Rogerson. ‘Now there’s terrible bloodshed, the most shameless atrocities.’
‘Is it Pugachov, the imperial impostor?’ our man enquires.
‘Yes, of course. He goes everywhere with his raging cossacks, slicing and slaughtering whom he pleases. His followers are drunk, and some of them are mad.’
‘Happily it’s a good long way away,’ says Rogerson.
‘And every day getting nearer,’ says Dashkova. ‘You can understand why she fears for her throne.’
‘She’s coming,’ says Rogerson.
‘I’m going,’ says Dashkova.
And there she comes, in a general’s surcoat, two whippets at her heels. She nods first to the left, then to the right, then straight in front, in the Russian court fashion.
‘Come in, Mr Librarian,’ she says. ‘Perhaps you know we have some problems.’
‘Not a time for philosophy?’ he murmurs.
‘Oh, I hope so, I hope so,’ she says . . .
DAY FORTY-FIVE
SHE sits down, surrounded by her English whippets. HE crosses solicitously to her side. In the different corners of the courtroom the various cliques are gathering again.
HE
How was your visit to Tzarskoye Selo?
SHE
Wonderful. Very peaceful. I tobogganed every day. I only wish you had come. Have you spent these last days well?
HE
As well as permitted, by the Neva colic. How can it be that what’s so agreeable when it enters us at one end grows so discomforting when it departs at the other?
SHE
But apart from that, what else did you do?
HE
I had my bust done, twice. Had my portrait painted. I’m learning Russian. And I wrote, Your Majesty, quite prodigiously. A refutation of Helvétius. An amusing tale about a servant and a master—
SHE
And who is wiser, the master or the servant? Let me guess. The servant. I’m sure you’re a pupil of Beaumarchais.
HE
It’s exactly the reverse, Your Majesty.
SHE looks at him gravely.
SHE
Do you know, while I was at Tsarskoye Selo, two little Germans came from Prussia to see me? They told me all about you. They say all your work is plagiarized from wiser men. That none of your ideas is complete. That you wrote a most indecent novel you are now heartily ashamed of, about a woman who could speak from her most private and improper place—
HE
Not ashamed at all, Your Majesty. I should be quite happy for the Empress to read it.
SHE
They said you were a dreadful bore, a foolish pedant, a philosopher who knows no mathematics and cannot make a proof of anything. They say you don’t know if God exists or not and therefore confuse everyone—
HE
God in particular, I should think.
SHE
They say you are a natural tyrant who pretends to love liberty, and a man who prefers delusion to evidence. Anyone who listened to your ideas, they said, would surely rot in hell—
HE
These two Germans. Did they say if they were friends of mine?
SHE
They certainly seemed to know you very well.
HE
You know who they were, of course. Agents of King Frederick of Prussia.
SHE
Evidently my German cousin doesn’t like you.
HE
He spreads calumnies about me everywhere I go. My offence being simple. Instead of going to his court, I came to yours. Instead of expressing my adoration to him, I chose to proclaim it to you. So he has decided to hate me, and I repay the sentiment in kind.
SHE
Don’t you know it’s a capital offence to hate a monarch?
HE
Well, most subject peoples in the world are apt to commit it.
SHE
And then what happens? They fall under the sway of monsters like this man Pugachov, who is now killing my subjects by the thousand.
HE
An irrational impostor.
SHE
Believe me, they are not a bit rare. Now another one has appeared. At Livorno in Italy.
HE
And does he also think he’s Peter the Third?
SHE
No, she thinks she’s the daughter of the Tzarina Elizabeth, my predecessor, and so the rightful heir to the throne.
HE
Is it true?
SHE
She calls herself the Princess Tarakanova, also the Countesss Pimberg. She says she carries her mother’s will everywhere with her in a box. Proving that she has title to the Russian crown, and I’m the impostor. You’ve seen inside these royal bedrooms. You know anything is possible. Imagine what little Didros might be waiting somewhere in the wings?
HE
Indeed, Your Majesty.
SHE
But no, it isn’t true. Her story’s absurd. She says she was smuggled out of Russia and brought up by the Shah of Persia, who has never heard of her. Sometimes it was by Mustapha, or the Kublai Khan.
HE
A clever little mystification.
SHE
The girl’s an adventuress, a cute little crookerina. Now she’s dangerous, because the Poles are supporting her. And she’s made things worse by claiming Pugachov is her brother, and he really is Peter the Third—
HE
One usurper supports the claims of another? It hardly seems logical.
SHE
Realpolitik. If it’s logic you’re seeking, I suggest you avoid royal courts in the future.
HE
What has happened to her?
SHE
I took a leaf from your own book, Monsieur Didro.
HE
From mine?
SHE
Indeed. I arranged a . . . what did you call it? . . . a clever little mystification. With the aid of my old friend Alexei Orlov.
HE
Who also settled the affairs of Tzar Peter, I think?
SHE
That’s not a matter on which I recommend you to think. Call him a very loyal subject who has been my true friend and now commands my fleet in the Mediterranean. He found the lady quite easily. She’d been sleeping with Sir William Hamilton, as who does not.
HE
The mystification?
SHE
Count Alexei paid his own court to her and asked her to come and visit him at his palazzo in Pisa. He’d rented one, of course. Soon their heads were lying together on the same pillow, and they agreed theirs was the perfect relationship. She had divine right to the throne of Russia, he had the navy. He told her he despised me for not rewarding him properly after my accession, and preferring his brother Grigor as my lover.
HE
A perfect couple, I quite agree. But they would have to get you out of the way—
SHE
Exactly. He assured her the army and navy would be behind him. She asked for proof. He offered to arrange the perfect nuptial ceremony. They would marry on the deck of his flagship, as the Russian fleet engaged in a mock naval battle. The events took place, and the sailors rallied round her, shouting ‘Long live Elizabeth, Empress of Russia.’
HE
And?
SHE
And then she descended to the admira
l’s cabin, to begin the honeymoon, and was at once arrested. The ship sailed at once for Kronstadt, and there we are—
HE
Where is she now?
SHE
Chained in a dungeon in the Peter and Paul over there. The governor – he’s brother to your old friend Dmitry Golitsyn, by the way – is interrogating her fiercely at this very minute. It appears she’s even more of an impostor than we imagined. She can’t speak a word of Russian. It seems she was born in Baghdad and grew up on marvellous stories.
HE
It’s true the Arabians are good at stories.
SHE
Alas, she has told one too many. So what do you think of my little mystification?
HE looks at her.
HE
She’s an innocent, surely. You couldn’t harm her.
SHE
Of course not, if it were left to me. But if I did everything myself, there’d be little point in keeping a Secret Office to search out my enemies. She’ll be held in a dark cell, interrogated further, and I’ve no doubt she’ll confess to everything, if not more. Then she’ll write me wild letters, beg me for mercy—
HE
Which in the name of reason I hope you will accept.
SHE
Which in the name of realism I shall certainly refuse. In my life in this world, I have always been as kind as I can be. But, my dear friend, believe me, I have learned my lesson. I rule in a country of legends and fantasies. In Russia any lie is believed, and any act of reason is seen as folly.
HE
How old is she?
SHE
Twenty-three. But I doubt if she’ll see twenty-four.
HE
In the name of friendship, I ask you to spare her. She’s killed no one. She’s just made up a few fantastic stories.
SHE
She tried her game, and she lost it. Now she stays where she is until she’s entirely forgotten.
HE
Please. I beg you to let her go. Your Most Serene and Imperial Majesty—
A sudden silence runs right through the court.
SHE
Sir. Whatever you write, whatever has happened between us, a servant is still a servant.
HE
I merely ask you to show mercy.
SHE looks at him. The COURTIERS wait.
SHE
Of course, my dear Didro. You shall see my mercy. It’s Advent now. Till the new year comes, there’s no need for you to write me any more papers—
SHE goes.
END OF DAY FORTY-FIVE
TWENTY-NINE (NOW)
EVERYWHERE I LOOK AROUND ME there are books. They surround me on all sides, racked and stacked in extended rows of makeshift wooden shelves, scattered randomly over the ancient desks and reading tables, heaped up high on the floor, and piled in wild disorder beside the walls. The books are old, and seem to be more or less of one age. They’re library-bound, in hard brown leather, white calf, red morocco, their titles stamped out in gilt or heavy type. They are there in all the classic sizes: octavos, folios, quartos, duodecimos. Some have survived a couple of centuries of existence in fine shape, but a good many show the damage of time or other kinds of rough treatment, cracking out of their bindings and stitchings and reverting to printed loose leaf. The place I’m standing in is a back area tucked away among the reading rooms and stack-rooms of the enormous vaulted public library. It smells of print, paper, sweating rags. Though it’s ill-lit and dusty, it also manages to be damp. The floors are wet with the heavily imprinted footsteps of the many people who have recently been walking in and out of here, seemingly without any real purpose or reason. Water drips from cracks in the ceiling, and falls slowly onto a stack of books in the corner which is gradually changing from brown to black in colour.
‘I think I can leave you here for a few minutes? I’ll just go and bring us back some hot tea from the samovar,’ Galina has said to me a few minutes back, after first bringing me into the great library, showing me into this quiet, odd, deeply untidy back room, sitting me down.
‘But what is this, Galina, where are we?’ I’ve asked her.
‘What do you think?’
‘Surely this can’t be the library, the Voltaire and Diderot library?’
‘What is a library, do you know? A pile of books? A big room? A great building? I won’t be a moment, mon ami. Have a look round and tell me what it is you think you can see.’
Left, I’m now walking slowly round the room, wandering from shelf to shelf, desk to desk, and pile to pile. The room has one dusty window, with a large desk placed in front of it. On the desk are more of the books, these left open, as if someone has been reading or processing them. On it too is a plaster statue, a flighty spritely head, which is placed so that it seems to look out of the window at the busy public square outside. The head is surely Diderot’s – the one done, I rather think, by Marie-Anne Collot, though I have no means of being sure. To one end of the square outside lies the busy Nevsky Prospekt, filled with its rushing traffic and its whirring trolley buses; to the other is a grand classical façade, the front of the Pushkin Drama Theatre; everything in this city is named after one writer or another. In the central garden is another statue, seemingly the chief focus of our bust’s attention. High, coroneted, upright, imperial, it’s Mikeshin’s pompous late-nineteenth-century grand view of Catherine Veliki, otherwise Catherine the Great.
But my own interest is really with the books on the shelves. They mostly run in sets, special editions, sequences, collecteds. In fact they have the look of being someone’s private library, back in the days when cultivated men and women kept a genuine storehouse, a sequence of grand leatherbound monuments to their own true seriousness. Here are many of the great works they would have needed: the speculations of Descartes and Leibniz, Hume and Shaftesbury, Montucla and Beccarria. The bound pages of the great dramatists – Racine and Molière, Shakespeare and Marivaux. The verses of the noted poets, from La Fontaine to Colly Cibber. The essays of the great thinkers, from Montaigne to Montesquieu. Works of political economy, medicine and science: Haller and his physiology, Newton and his mathematics. Alphabets and hymnals, sermons and speculations. Prayerbooks and opuscules, lexicons and encyclopedias. Many works of travels: Bougainville’s voyages, Voltaire’s letters from the English. Works that seem like travels: Swift’s Gulliver, Galland’s version of the Thousand and One Nights. And those yet stranger books that came from an age of travel and invention, the fictions called novels: the adventures of Don Quixote and his servant, of Gargantua and Pantagruel, of Roderick Random, Clarissa, Tristram Shandy.
Whose books? Most afford no clue at all to their owners, but some do. A number have been printed on their owner’s private press, and more are stamped with the coat-of-arms of their prince-like owner: the great Monsieur Voltaire. Others bear a familiar signature in a spikey, jagged hand: Diderot. Voltaire’s books have the finer bindings, Diderot’s show evidence of the more impassioned use. In the fashion of the times, the books have been used by both to make more books. Voltaire has filled his own with underlinings, great emphases, judgements, annotations, some of these written in the end-papers in a miniature version of his round wide hand. Denis has used the rag pages even more freely, and filled up every spare page with instant reactions, fresh speculations and stories, and written not just round the text and down the margins but across the printed type itself. His reactions are clear. The sentimentally feminized stories of Samuel Richardson – tales of the hunted maidens Pamela and Clarissa – have driven him to passion, and possibly something more: maybe here are the first glimpses of his own literary jewels of indiscretion. The writings of Helvétius have annoyed him. Those of Sterne seem to have provoked him to something resembling mania.
So books breed books, writing breeds writing. The writer starts out as reader in order to become the new writer. In this fashion one book can actually become the author of a new one. And the new books, the books these two authors have then written in suc
h numbers, lie in this odd room as well. Voltaire’s huge narrative of the struggles of Charles of Sweden and Peter the Great (eleven years in the writing); his history of the Reign of Louis XIV, which so troubled the reigns of his two successors; all those secret books he wrote that everyone knew about, the books that, printed under mysterious pseudonym or perhaps under no name at all, still managed to get themselves celebrated or burned right the way across Europe. Here’s the philosophical encyclopedia he wrote to provide his critical supplement to the greater Encyclopedia; the poems and squibs and flatterings; the plays. Here are the bitter little texts that ruined entire reputations and were known to be by Voltaire simply because he’d already gone to such trouble to deny authorship before the books were even published. Here’s the incomplete Thérése; the tale of the wise Zadig; the even greater tale of his innocent optimist, Candide.
As Voltaire, so Diderot. Here’s the famous and shameless tale of the indiscreet talking jewels, Diderot’s vagina monologues, which solemnly sits on the shelf next to his reflections on the mysterious worlds of deafness and dumbness. Here’s the libidinous romp through the nunneries, next to his thoughts on embryology. His books are many, but what shouts them down or crowds them out is the famous Encyclopedia: that amazing book of books that brought the first philosophes together, adding Voltaire to Rousseau, d’Alembert to d’Holbach; then took them through danger, turned strangers into friends and friends into the most implacable enemies, made their fame and shaped their influence, that defined their futures and posterities, spread light and learning, confusion and infection; that started out with dangerous intellectual adventure and ended in commercial competition, moved from being outrage to commonplace, from danger to safety, had all the publishers fighting each other and the readers competing, and in the end made learning some of the biggest business in the world.
It was, I’m now starting to remember, a very strange book indeed. For one thing its most explosive criticisms of the church and the state were oddly hidden away amongst the 70,000 articles, cross-referenced away in the weirdest of subjects, meaning that you had to explore the most innocent of topics in order to discover the most dangerous of thoughts. Then the volumes were surrounded by every kind of deception and concealment, passed on from publisher to publisher and printer to printer, in France and elsewhere. Going through edition after deceptive edition, it became the great bestseller, the big book of the age. Publishers fought to have the rights to it, pirates multiplied. Texts and formats kept changing, the printing was rushed from place to place.
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