To the Hermitage (22 page)

‘Reason, but within reason.’

‘Quite,’ says Melchior, rising, embracing him like a brother, putting on his tricorne.

In the door he stops suddenly, as if struck by a forgotten thought.

‘Something else?’ asks our man.

Melchior comes back, stands close. ‘As an old friend, perhaps I should warn you. Your afternoons could be interrupted by just a few distractions. Her Serenity thinks she may possibly have to go off and conquer Turkey. Maybe Poland too.’

‘I see.’

‘And she’s having trouble with the impostors.’

‘The impostors?’

‘It happens every few months or so. You know how tangled great dynasties can be. Especially when they mate outside the bedclothes and engage in constant assassination. There’s always someone coming out of nowhere and claiming to be true heir to the Romanovs. They usually disappear as quickly as they come.’

‘I think I know how.’

‘This time it’s more serious,’ Grimm warns. ‘A man with a black beard has appeared among the Don Cossacks claiming he’s Peter the Third.’

‘I thought he died from the haemorrhoids?’

‘He did, in prison. But this man, his real name’s Pugachov, says he escaped and took a remarkable medicine which changed his height, weight and appearance. It made him forget his first language, German . . .’

‘What a medicine!’

‘Now he’s turned up somewhere near Orenburg, and the Cossacks have started a bloody rebellion to restore him to the throne.’

‘Might they succeed?’

‘Not a bit of it. It’s all being put down with great brutality. We’ll soon hear he’s been mutilated and hanged, and your Enlightenment is safe. I doubt if it will interfere with you at all. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. My dear friend, enjoy your philosophical afternoons.’

Worrying, really. And there’s more. No sooner has Melchior doffed and left him than there’s another dreadful fuss in the doorway. The French ambassador’s arrived, coughing, hawking, stifling a cold with a scented handkerchief, shouting at servants. His name’s Count Durand de Distroff, a foppish, ambling, rambling sort of fellow, just posted here from the grand court at Vienna, where all his sharp-edged manners were made.

‘Russia,’ he says, presenting his gilded card, sitting down, ‘it’s cold.’

‘Indeed, Your Excellency. How observant. And how kind of you to come to call.’

‘His most Christian Majesty at Versailles asked me to attend you. He wished me to say how pleased he is to hear you’re in Petersburg.’

‘His Majesty is gracious.’

‘Not exactly,’ says the ambassador. ‘He says the longer you stay the better. However, should you intend to return to Paris, there are a few small matters to which His Brilliance would have me bring to your attention. A few things he’d liked you to keep in mind as you debate metaphysics with the Imperial Mother.’

‘Such as?’

‘Who has this, who has that? Who has Poland, who has Turkey? You must know that the Empress, being born German, entertains a vulgar prejudice against the French.’

‘I hadn’t noticed. Every single person I’ve met at her court speaks the language. Half of them have just stepped right off the rue Royale. Nearly all our generals, our milliners and our chefs are here, cooking up a fortune. No wonder in France these days you can’t win a military victory or get decent boeuf bourguignon.’

‘It’s one thing to value the treasures of our advanced civilization, another to respect our political necessities. I’m not talking millinery, sir, I’m talking the lofty realms of diplomacy. Balances of power, the future of Europe, grand alliances, and so forth and so on. We wouldn’t want the Russians to turn into Prussians, would we? It’s the eternal danger here. You know her Majesty’s late husband was deluded into believing he was really a Prussian? He goose-stepped round the palace, he bought the guard new German uniforms and armaments. Consider, what’s the point of this new marriage? – negotiated by your friend the fat German, of course. To ally this court again with King Frederick of Prussia. Probably the most dangerous man in the whole of Europe.’

‘I’m no admirer of his flute-playing majesty. But I hardly think so.’

‘I assure you. Frederick once slept with the Empress’s mother.’

‘Surely not, Your Excellency? Now her father I can believe.’

‘I advise you, those two monarchs put together could outflank us completely. They’ll divide Poland, take all of Asia, master the entire Mediterranean. Think what that would do to your French culture and your fine gastronomy.’

‘I’m sorry, Your Excellency, I’m a thinker. I can hardly comprehend such vast affairs of state.’

‘Exactly, like all you modern sages. You gladly profess political ignorance, yet you always presume to advise monarchs on the perfect society whenever it suits you.’

‘I think, Your Excellency. That’s what I do, all I do. I don’t conspire.’

‘Thought is a conspiracy, the worst there is,’ says Durand. ‘But in any case you have ears, do you not? And I notice you have eyes.’

‘I can’t believe you’re asking me to spy?’

Durand taps his cane crossly: ‘According to my own understanding of rational philosophy, everything depends on accumulating the evidence of the five senses.’

‘In my philosophy I’ve always said we need more than the material evidence of the senses. We need an honest spirit and a good conscience, for one thing.’

Distroff coughs, holds up the handkerchief to his sniffing nose. ‘I won’t dispute with a philosopher about the proper means of grasping knowledge. All I ask is that you grasp some and take it back home with you to Paris. If it would help concentrate that tender mind of yours, I’ve drawn up a paper memorandum detailing His Majesty’s concerns.’

‘Give it to me, I’ll read it and say what I think.’

‘No, you will not. It’s from one emperor to another. What you are expected to do is, once you have won Her Imperial Highness’s total attention, slip it under her pillow.’

‘Her pillow? I’ve no intention of getting anywhere near her pillow.’

‘We know how much she admires you already. My dear fellow, remember you’re a Frenchman. You come from the land of Cyrano and Casanova.’

‘I understood Casanova was a Venetian.’

‘Yes, but he behaved like a Frenchman.’

‘So did Don Juan. And he turned out to be one more trickster from Seville. You’re not asking me to behave like those people? Jump into her bed and smother her nakedness with messages of state?’

‘Others have done it before for the honour of France,’ says Durand. ‘Remember the Chevalier d’Eon, who called himself Genevieve, and got himself appointed maid-in-waiting to the previous Empress?’

‘D’Eon’s a raddled transvestite. I met him chez Beaumarchais, all dressed up in his pretty skirts.’

‘Exactly, but he did his duty. Then when the right time came, he displayed his sweet little male secret in the Empress’s bedroom. She thanked him in her usual frank way, and the fellow fashioned a brand new rapprochement between Petersburg and Versailles.’

‘Extraordinary. But it can’t happen twice.’

‘It did. He went to London and did much the same with Queen Sophie-Charlotte.’

‘I see. So now you’re expecting a queer little Frenchman to become George the Fourth?’

‘I’m merely explaining your patriotic duty.’

‘I fear I can’t, Your Excellency,’ our man says. ‘All I live for is to be an honest man.’

‘Really? Very well, may I put it like this?’ says Durand, rising and calling for his hat. ‘You’ve already told me you intend to return to Paris. Well, His Majesty asks me to tell you he’s already pre-booked a small suite in the Bastille, just in case you come home empty-handed. Leave it, that’s all, and under her pillow, remember. What a vile country this is! I really can’t wait to get recalled.’

‘It could happen sooner than you think,’ says our man, rapidly consulting the great Book of Destiny above. The ambling, rambling fop sneezes again, puts on his tricorne, goes out. Clearly it’s no easy or delicate thing to be a travelling philosopher, even if this is an enlightened day and age . . .

And all that’s just his prologue, the prelude to the action. But now the time’s arriving for his play . . .

O
DD
. H
OW VERY ODD
. I’m waking again; it’s another autumnal morning. But this time the room I’m in is rocking heavily. Beyond its large portholed windows I see the fast-moving white-caps of a frantic, angry Baltic sea. Noise grates from everywhere: those ceaseless bangings, creakings, groanings and grindings that form the unique soundtrack of a big ship under way. The massive silk-sheeted bed I’m in is empty: empty, that is, except for my own soft naked self. Empty too the whole grand stateroom – which is surely not the cabin I was assigned to when I boarded the vessel yesterday. In truth I can’t imagine how I happen to be lying here; though a large silk nightdress and three large empty champagne bottles in a flooded ice-bucket offer a very faint clue.

Excuse me while I rise in my naked splendour and take a quick look around. Ah. Over here, it seems, I’ve acquired a large and steamy bathroom. With your permission I’ll disappear for the next few minutes and take a hasty shower. There: that’s much better, isn’t it? Now let’s go and find me some clothes. The ones I came in have somehow disappeared: utter mystification. My suitcase lies tossed into the corner of the cabin, but that’s totally empty, I see. Why don’t we check these fitted wardrobes? My word, just look at that! Amazing sequinned dresses! All these flamboyant hats! These wigs, in every shade! Beautiful soft silk nightgowns! The bangles, the bras, the bustiers, the huge spare eyelashes and false fingernails! Oh, there, look, my shirts. And I notice we have our own big Russian TV set, there in the corner. Shall we switch on and find out what the world’s been up to in our absence?

And not only here on the
Vladimir Ilich
has the night been taken up with mysterious and confusing events. The commentary seems to have switched from Swedish to Finno-Ugrian, not a language I’ve mastered, but the gist stays clear. Following the principles Vladimir Ilich historically set down for the proper conduct of a revolutionary
coup d’état
(arrest the government in power, take the post and telegraph office, the national bank, and the railway station to stop the trains) the Moscow crowds have gone on the streets, heading for their modern equivalents: the mayor’s office, police headquarters, the TV building, the airport.
Cut to:
a tracked hi-jacked personnel carrier smashing through the doorway of the state TV station, reinforced by a large angry mob who are trying to battle their way inside, and a firefight begins.
Cut to:
machine-gun fire spraying across wide boulevards and fleeing crowds.
Cut to:
Tzar Yeltsin, descending at the Kremlin by helicopter. Now become Action Man incarnate, he’s striding round his office and asking his generals to react.
Cut to:
Disconsolate newscaster looks at camera, says, ‘The conflict in Russia has at last come to the brink’, and
Wipe to black.
The station’s gone off air . . .

Finland, not far away from here over the Baltic, takes over with its own live footage. A big squat newscaster in a decent suit talks to camera. There are agency pictures, a general sense of confusion. But it’s early morning outside the White House. Tanks are rolling across the river and ranging up in a row outside the building, their barrels raised. Deputies at the windows, shouting down to the soldiers below. Yeltsin in the Kremlin, talking furiously, dashing to the Defence Ministry where the nuclear codes are. It seems he has called out the army, no doubt a high-risk gamble, since he can hardly know now which side his own generals and troops are likely to support. Rifles are firing, a soldier goes down, a tank shell flies and hits the White House high up, windows blowing out and . . . Just a moment, what’s the time? Oh my god, it’s White Rabbit time: hurry hurry hurry. I’ve a paper to give, and the Diderot Project starts its business in the conference room in exactly ten minutes. My paper, where is it? I’m a sound and responsible academic type, so surely I must have written it. I always write it. When I say yes to something, I do it. Just a minute, I really ought to eat something, except I’ve left it far too late for breakfast . . .

Off we go then, breakfast-less, paper-less, through the clanging banging ship. Stewardesses hoover away in the wood-panelled passages. Below, in the bars and lounges, noisy shouting crowds of Russians are gathered, watching the next live newscast. In the conference section, things are quieter, more studious. I find the glass-walled chamber assigned to the Diderot Project, and stare through the glass walls. Yet even here things have changed overnight; Bo and Alma must have been busy. The room’s been rearranged into a large square of tables, covered in green baize. On the tables are places laid with neat new notepads, pencils, bottles of Russian fizz, large cardboard wallets stuffed with maps and restaurant tickets and marked ‘Diderot Project’. And round the tables, showered, changed and doubtless breakfasted, are the Diderot pilgrims, awaiting the first speaker of the morning. Bo sits in the chairman’s seat. He looks up, sees me, impatiently waves me inside. The other pilgrims look at me strangely. Only the red-haired diva, clad in black today, gives me a quick glance of complicity.

The event is in train. Bo is already speaking. Difficult events surround us, he’s announcing, waving his glasses. But when the world is in chaos, all the more reason for all the more reason. When things are in confusion, there must always be those who follow the bright torch of truth. When times darken, the world needs those who can deal in clarity and wisdom, can unify anarchy and order, real and ideal, arts and science. As Bo goes on speaking, in his reassuring fashion, as if it is perfectly normal for us to read theoretical papers to one another while sailing into a revolution, I try to draw thought and idea together from the darkness of stupor. Very well, it’s conference time in the Baltic; must do my best. Suddenly Bo stops, says my name by way of introduction, turns interrogatively to me. I get up and take the speaker’s place. I look round at the row of stony early-morning faces ranged all round the green-baized table. I begin to speak. And this – or more or less – is what I find I have to say: