And then here they are: the new black walls and great new toll-gates that mark the ever extending borders of the modern Paris. For they’re building here too: a great new Place down by the river, a finely restored Palais Royal, a splendid new Pont de Neuilly. In Montparnasse Soufflot’s new church, his Roman Pantheon, rises high; in fact they are just beginning to work on the raising of its glorious and millennial dome. It’s eighteen months since he last saw Paris, and almost exactly twelve since he entered the gates of Sankt Peterburg. Now it’s October once again, and here in the finest of all great cities the weather is autumnally mild. Leaves hanging yellow on the plane trees, light evening shawls for all the gaily painted ladies strolling through the shameless new Palais Royal to the Opera. At last he unloads himself out of the carriage, right there outside the apartment in the rue Taranne. Frankly he’s now a far older, a far greyer, a far stranger man than he was when he started. The postilions put down all his luggage, heavy with books and papers, and look around.
The Great Particularist, mob-cap over her dense grey hair, is there, standing waiting with her arms folded in the doorway of the building.
‘Monsieur,’ she says.
‘All right,’ he says, ‘go on then, look in my luggage. Please. Count my handkerchiefs, check my socks. See if I’ve lost a single one of them.’
‘I certainly will,’ she says. ‘So, you’ve come home.’
Yes, he’s come home. While a stew boils on the stove, he goes up the stairs and unpacks it all: the great jewelled Russian Bible the Metropolitan has given him, worth a fortune; the Siberian minerals, the bearskin coat, the imperial cup and saucer her lips have smacked on. And the sixty-six fat notebooks where he has written down everything: the plan of the perfect Russia. When he goes to the Ministry, nobody there seems in the least interested in the secret plans of Caucasian fortresses he’s carried right across Europe at such risk.
Soon winter arrives: yes, I promise you, even here in Paris. Back in his familiar study, amid the rich leathery friendship of his rare and wonderful books, gladly wearing his dirty old dressing gown, he waits. But nothing, or nothing of what he’s expecting, comes down the way from imperial Petersburg. People are saying he seems much older now. They think the journey has tired him, destroyed him, made him feeble, made him vain. He wonders about these things himself, writing a letter to Grimm:
As for me, I’m already sending my weightiest luggage off in advance. My teeth wiggle, my eyes fail after nightfall, my legs get very lazy and beg for the aid of two sticks. I still can’t tell the time, and constantly confuse hours, days, weeks, months and years. I still talk all the time, still maintain my innocent faith in the external world. And though my legs stagger, my eyes blur, and my back makes me look like a turtle, my wizard’s wand still rises. My dear friend, all is well.
THIRTY-FIVE (NOW)
HERE THEY COME, sailing grandly through the islands of the archipelago: the great white or blue ferries, the huge steel-jawed and car-consuming monsters, the squared-off office blocks, the floating coffins are sweeping down the inland seaway once more, heading out to the Baltic. There they are, riding athwart us, their loud sirens blasting out imperiously over the little hump-backed granite islands: the Sibelius and the Kalevala, the Baltic Clipper and the great Estonia. They pass us close, so that we can easily see that their saloon bars are already open and active, their duty-free shops getting busy, their passengers now emerging blinking on to the stern and the green-swarded sun-decks and looking out curiously over the vast shoal of islands. We, of course, are running the other way, inland from the Baltic, not leaving port but coming into it, navigating the difficult awkward passages of the archipelago, where some of these rocks lie so close they almost clip our sides, and bearing toward the inland city of Stockholm, on its web of islands; its tall smoke plume lies faintly on the horizon way up ahead.
The red sun’s sliding. And here on the Vladimir Ilich they’re already shutting everything down. Up on the bridge deck, sailors are stacking up the cushions from the deckchairs and swilling down the boards. Below our last drinkers are drinking their final drinks, our last fixers are making their final fix, our last gamblers having a last encounter with chance in the casino. The last mud-packs are coming off in the beauty salon. The last purchases are being made in the duty-free shop, where poor Tatyana from Novgorod works without any attention at all from her funky professor, whose face was once so visible to all the crew till it dissolved into the sand on the edge of the waves. As for our Enlightenment conference room, that was long ago closed and locked. As far as the Diderot Project is concerned, reason has run its entire course. There were a few last papers: Manders considering Diderot’s Baltic cultural policy, Agnes examining his likely opinions on union recognition, Bo on Diderot and artificial intelligence and, the final speaker, Lars Person, who tried to explain to us the Diderot Paradox. Hard solid stuff it all was too, not a story to be heard. Yes, the book will be fine. The grant will be paid. Everyone will be happy. We’ve made the farewell speeches, had the farewell dinner, drunk the farewell toasts. For this year if not eternity, the Diderot Project is over and done.
And everyone is happy. Up here on the bridge deck with me is Agnes Falkman. To tell the entire and honest truth, as I know you always like me to do, we two have become pretty good friends on these past few days of our Baltic adventure: in fact ever since we left Petersburg and our Swedish nightingale summoned Sven Sonnenberg to her splendid suite of a cabin, evidently preferring silence to noise. Not a sound or murmur has been heard from either of them for three days, apart from a few staff instructions about food they would like to have taken to the cabin. So Agnes and I have had the chance to spend a few days together, talking, reflecting, even considering the few strange pages of manuscript that someone has tucked into my little leatherbound volume of Tristram Shandy, which I look at every day. What is it? The end, perhaps, of Diderot’s novel? Some other novel, or play, some tale for the future? The end, perhaps, of a story that has been written somewhere, but so far only up in the Great Book of Destiny above? At any rate, these unpublished sheets seem to me like the seed of many new stories. I hide them back in my case.
Now, standing side by side under the untiring gaze of Lenin, Agnes and I have emerged to look out for the first glimpses of her home city, splendid bourgeois Stockholm, where all is not confusion, crime and anarchy but civic sweetness and light. Even in the couple of weeks it has taken to make our Baltic journey, the entire season has changed. The close of summer has turned into the gloom of autumn and is beginning to become the sharpness of winter. The yachts and cruisers moored to the piers at the cottages of the archipelago are now out of the water or moored in their sheds. The summer cottages are blocked off with their winter shutters. Cold winds flap the flagpoles at the end of the piers, where the flags themselves have been struck. The landscape gets busier: more houses and church spires, more roads and roaring cars. And ahead a fine urban skyline emerges. There in profile is the modernist brick block of the City Hall, where they award the Nobel Prizes, the green copper roofings of the parliament and the great Royal Palace, looking just as cold today as it must have done when poor Descartes stumbled into it every morning, the plain straight Protestant spire of the Storkyran Cathedral.
‘Stockholm, my lovely city,’ says Agnes, pulling her scarf tight round her neck. ‘Really, you ought to try and stay here for a few more days.’
‘That’s very hospitable, Agnes. But I can’t, not really. The diary’s full. All kinds of things I have to do.’
‘Of course it’s too cold for sailing. But we could still take the ferries and go round the islands.’
‘If only . . .’
‘Soon our people will be getting ready for winter. In Sweden we so very much love the winter. We are really winter people. The winter makes us very happy. You would love it. Try to stay.’
‘I thought people in Sweden got depressed in the winter.’
‘No, please don’t believe it. It is not fair.
This is our Swedish problem, everyone has the wrong image. In Sweden we’re not the least bit as gloomy as you think.’
‘No, I’m sure.’
‘The problem is really yours. You are simply not serious. There is not enough gravity.’
‘I’m afraid that’s perfectly true.’
‘If you stayed a few days I could help you.’
‘Really?’
‘I have a degree in counselling, another in bereavement therapy.’
‘I thought you were a workers’ union organizer?’
‘Yes, of course. But remember, in Sweden we are all workers. Those in bereavement and counselling are workers too.’
‘Ah, the bourgeois proletariat?’
‘Exactly. After all, we are mostly women.’
‘The new victors, then.’
‘Nej, nej, the eternal victims, you know that. Anyway, if you really can’t stay here, we had better say goodbye.’
‘You’ve really been very kind, Agnes, and it’s been wonderful to meet you.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But nothing. Except I’m a writer and I have to go home and write something.’
‘Your paper for our project, I really hope.’
‘Well, no, I doubt it.’
‘But we will need it for our book.’
‘What is this book?’
‘Very important, a book about new knowledge-based systems.’
‘I don’t see how a paper by me could help anyone with that. In any case that’s the last sort of thing I’m going to write.’
‘As long as it is not another story that isn’t a story.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it is very annoying.’
‘Well, I’m not sure at all what kind of thing it is yet. Just something.’
‘Maybe you’ll let me see it some time.’
‘I might. I should have to come back to Sweden.’
‘Of course you will come back. I can get you a grant for it. Oh, look, there is the Vasa Museum, did you go there? What did you think?’
‘Rather chilling, I thought.’
‘The tomb of a ship, the tomb of an empire,’ says Agnes. ‘All too old, all too colonialist. These things are gone. Sweden does not need a history, it is quite different now. Now we are in the modern age, when all people should feel equal to each other and everyone should be happy.’
‘How very true.’
I look out on Central Stockholm, lying in front of us, on its hillsides over the water. Great public buildings, high urban motorways, pleasant cafés, comfortable parks. A civilized city, a civic city, a city where things are not all defunct or defective, where tomorrow is not sliding away into a grim and suffering yesterday, where social attention is paid and money is well spent. On board we’re going into docking mode: chains are running, hawsers swinging, gangplanks hanging loose over the side. From the tannoys the whole ship is booming with Russian instructions. The fur-hatted boyar stewards, the red-cheeked cabin maids, are busy carrying luggage up from below. I can see my own battered suitcase, heavy with books, papers, notebooks, lying next to the fine Vuitton splendours of our great diva. Pushing crowds of passengers are filling the public rooms, shoving their way toward disembarkation: the Tartar Norwegians, the Albanian Scots, the Siberian Japanese.
And there in the lobby Bo and Alma have once more raised their now tattered banner to reason. DIDEROT PROJECT, it says for the very last time. But now it’s a matter of the final farewells. The pilgrims gather round; then, in a sudden flurry of fond emotion, they have all begun hugging, embracing, squeezing hands. And who’s with whom? Birgitta Lindhorst has reappeared in all her grandeur, but the person who is carrying her coat today is Anders Manders. Sven Sonnenberg is somewhere over there in duty-free, having a very serious conversation with Irini from Omsk; he’s holding a table. Agnes Falkman, evidently disappointed in our farewells, has gone over to Lars Person and they seem to be talking of sharing a taxi home.
So: where are they going? Well . . . how does anyone ever really know where they’re going? Where have they come from? Simply the last place over the sea. What are they all saying? I just can’t be sure what they’re saying, since the end of a trip is always so noisy and confusing, no one remembers what ought to be said to anyone else, and everything – ideas, values, relationships – that has been important to so many for so many days dissolves like a face drawn in the sand as the tide comes in. In fact at the moment of departure it’s somehow as if everyone begins to shrink, and all common experiences immediately start to shrivel, become history, or memory, which is our own personal form of history and which, memory being so imperfect an instrument, is also the beginning of forgetting.
Then Alma the great Snow Queen comes over and seizes me hard by the arm.
‘What now?’ she says.
‘What now? I’m going home.’
‘No, don’t leave us, don’t go.’
‘I have to.’
‘Stay in Stockholm tonight. Now I know you a bit better I can take you somewhere really bohemian. Not that awful place we went the first night. And you still didn’t try our crayfish—’
‘I’d really love to, Alma. But I’ve already confirmed my plane flight and called home.’
‘If you must. But remember, when you take your taxi out to Arlanda, don’t let them charge you too much money. In Sweden our taxi drivers are very honest, but they often go round by the long way.’
In his fine Burberry sports jacket Bo comes over. He wipes his glasses and shakes my hand earnestly.
‘My dear fellow, what a really excellent paper it was you gave us,’ he says.
‘Was it? I thought you really didn’t like it.’
‘Of course I liked it. I gave you that impression? How did I do that?’
‘You said you didn’t like it.’
‘Nej, nej, your paper was perfect. If you just leave me the text I will publish it in the proceedings.’
‘No, the whole point was it never had a text. I didn’t write it down.’
‘But I know you. You will.’
‘If I can remember it.’
‘How could you forget it? It was one of your stories. Don’t fail us, please. It was so much in the spirit of Diderot.’
‘The perfect spirit of Diderot,’ says Alma, looking me in the eye. There’s something about her look that makes me think I just might have been wrong, and this lady isn’t quite such a Snow Queen after all. Meantime Bo is writing something on a slip of paper, which he then slides into my jacket pocket.
‘Your invitation to next year’s conference,’ he says warmly.
‘You’ve planned next year already?’
‘Of course, one must always think ahead. It’s on the top of a mountain in Norway. Very beautiful.’
‘Exceedingly beautiful,’ says Alma meaningfully.
‘So why discuss Diderot on top of a mountain?’
‘Nej, nej,’ says Bo. ‘Next year the conference is on Ludwig Wittgenstein.’
‘The Wittgenstein Project?’
‘Jo, jo,’ says Bo.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know too much about Wittgenstein,’ I say. ‘Except he had a nephew.’
‘All in the aid of reason,’ says Bo.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ I say.
‘Oh, tell us you will come!’ cries Alma. ‘How can we possibly have a conference without you?’
‘But I really don’t think I could manage a paper on the subject of Wittgenstein,’ I murmur.
‘Good, do you hear that, he is saying yes,’ says Bo. ‘Whenever he says no he always really means yes. Isn’t it true?’
‘Of course.’
And Alma grabs me and gives me an extremely splendid kiss. No, I’ve been wrong about the lady. She’s not a Snow Queen after all.
So, as the critical bronze gaze of Vladimir Ilich surveys me to the last, I walk down the gangplank, and into the drab wooden customs hall on Strandsgardeskajan. A neatly dressed customs officer eyes me thoughtfull
y, and begins a polite but efficient search through my luggage. From beneath my shirts he draws an old leatherbound book.
‘It’s valuable?’ he asks.
‘Not really,’ I say cunningly. ‘It’s not usually the books that are valuable, it’s the words that are written inside them. And we can hardly charge a duty on those.’
Faced with this stirringly liberal thought, he gives me another glance and begins to scour through the pages. Finally he comes across the wad of ancient paper stuck into the end-papers. He looks at the faded handwritten sheets, the words in French that seem to tell some tale or other about a servant and a master.
‘Papers?’ he says.
‘Yes, but they’re not important. Just someone’s notes on the story.’
‘No, your papers,’ he says.
I show him.
‘Tack, tack,’ he says.
‘No duty?’
‘Nej, nej,’ he says, smiling at me.
All is well: I have papers, therefore I exist. I repack my shirts and strap up my case.
Feeling richer by the instant, as travellers sometimes (but not often) do, I walk out to the terminal exit. I stop a moment, turn and look back. Behind me, in the long rows that are still waiting for passport control, I can see them all – my fellow Enlightenment Pilgrims, standing in the dark but waiting to get into the light. There’s red-haired Birgitta the nightingale, and dapper Anders Manders; there’s saturnine Lars and bright folkish Agnes, serious Bo and unfrozen Alma. Except somehow, subtly, they seem to have changed around. For isn’t that Bo with Birgitta, Agnes with Lars, Alma with Lars Person? Never mind. Such are the mysteries of conferences. I walk outside and into the light. Over there is the taxi rank. A long line of Volvos stands waiting; I head for the first, and the big blonde driver helps me to put my luggage inside.
‘Arlanda,’ I say.
‘Tack, tack,’ says the driver, full of gratitude, and switches on his most enormous meter. Slowly, considerately, with the greatest respect toward all pedestrians, we drive away from the great white vessel and the Man of History, away through the container port, out into the pleasant, decent civic streets of Stockholm . . .
To the Hermitage Page 47