To the Hermitage (18 page)

While Tatyana goes round refilling our glasses, I can see Sven looking at Bo as if confused. ‘This is why we are here? On this boat?’

‘
Jo, jo
, Sven.’

‘Why we are going to Russia?’

‘Just trying to make the universe human again,’ says Alma encouragingly.

‘I see,’ says Verso. ‘You aim to bring back the Age of Reason and hoped we’d help in some way?’

‘
Jo, jo.
’

‘But I am only a simple craftsman,’ says Sven. ‘I make tables.’

‘Don’t think for a moment that is simple, Sven,’ says Bo. ‘Diderot never thought that. He believed in tables.’

‘I work with my hands,’ says Sven.

‘And I with my voice,’ says Birgitta.

‘We’re bringing all human knowledge together?’ asks Manders. ‘In how many days?’

‘Six,’ says Alma. ‘Three going and three coming back. Remember, God made the universe in seven.’

‘But he must have planned it out pretty carefully beforehand,’ says Lars Person.

‘How do we do it?’ asks Sven.

‘We talk together, we share our crafts and our professions and philosophies, just like the
Encyclopedia
. We give papers,’ explains Bo.

‘Papers!’ cries the Swedish nightingale.

‘Then the papers will make a book, and the government will print the book, and give us a grant for it,’ says Alma.

‘Oh, those beautiful words,’ says Verso. ‘A government grant!’

‘I understood we were visiting the Hermitage to see the Voltaire library,’ says Anders Manders.

‘I thought we were making a visit to the Maryinsky Opera,’ says Birgitta Lindhorst.

‘I thought we were going to collective farms to meet workers’ representatives,’ says Agnes Falkman.

‘I was told our trip was something to do with furniture, we were going to Russia to look at tables,’ says Sven Sonnenberg.

‘And all in good time,’ says Bo. ‘But first we give papers. That is why we have this very nice conference room to ourselves.’

Lars Person is looking at me with his amused and diabolical expression. ‘Only really boring professors give papers,’ he says. ‘Don’t you agree, professor?’

‘
Moi?
’ I ask.

‘Yes. I know you’re sometimes a boring professor, but you also write novels and plays, I think. So which do you prefer? Giving papers or telling stories?’

‘If I tell the truth, I much prefer telling stories.’

‘I don’t see why,’ says Agnes. ‘Papers are useful and stories tell lies.’

‘But lies that help us find our way to truth.’

‘I love it,’ says Birgitta Lindhorst. ‘Why don’t we all do it?’

‘Tell lies?’

‘
Nej, nej
, Sven, tell each other stories,’ says the Swedish nightingale.

‘
Nej, nej, nej
, we are here to do something useful, Birgitta,’ says Agnes. ‘As Diderot once observed, “To know how to bake, we must first put our hands in the dough.”’

‘In the dough?’

‘Didn’t he also observe, “We present things as if they were facts to show there are things we think we know. But we also present them as stories to show how it is we find out.”’

‘What, Diderot said this?’ asks Alma.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Where?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I am sure we all agree we want papers,’ says Agnes. ‘I think there is a consensus.’

‘I don’t think you are right, Agnes,’ says Lars Person.

‘Of course there is a consensus,’ says Alma.

‘No, because some of us want papers and some of us would rather have stories . . .’

‘In that case we must take a vote,’ says Agnes.

‘
Nej, nej
, it is not necessary,’ says Alma, ‘I am sure we have a consensus. Do we have a consensus?’

‘
Jo, jo
,’ says Agnes.

‘
Nej, nej
,’ says Lars Person.

‘Then I think we must have a meeting to find out how to find a consensus,’ says Bo . . .

Jack-Paul Verso turns quietly to me as the argument rages. ‘Great, I think that’s quite enough Swedish democracy for one evening, don’t you?’ he murmurs. ‘What say to a Jim Beam in the Muscovy Bar? Is it a consensus?’

‘
Jo, jo
,’ I say.

Strange how the life of ships can alter so suddenly, how many different little worlds one single vessel can contain. Up aloft we’ve left the gallant band of Swedish pilgrims, discussing reason and trying to resolve the difficult problems of a liberal democracy. Two decks down in the Muscovy Bar minds are turned to other matters entirely. The
Vladimir Ilich
is well on its way now, its engines thumping and surging noisily as, driven by some wild homesick appetite, it drives on through the archipelago toward the wider Baltic and home. The noise onboard is just as vigorous, as the ship’s returning Russians take charge of the bar. Balalaika music twings merrily from the loudspeakers; bottles and glasses smash their way along the bar. Chatter, shouting, singing, laughter surge from every table. Small gaming machines have somehow appeared, and goods and chattels are passing quickly every which way and that: Barbie dolls, Western CDs, mobile organizers, mobile phones, whole hams, entire cheeses, silk scarves, old socks, strangely shaped brown-paper parcels, sinister black plastic sacks, passports, stamped documents and, for all I know, lists of dead souls are trafficking from hand to hand.

To make sure the mood of Slav euphoria never for an instant diminishes, big-necked waiters in their Russian ruffles are shuttling at speed between the tables and the bar, bearing life-giving doses of shampanski or vodka. The rest of us travellers watch bemused. In the further corner the Japanese tour-groups all sit huddled together, wearing their little backpacks, looking at the spectacle buddhistically and aiding their contemplations with glasses of iced Suntory scotch. Huge and Hanseatic, the German businessmen are exchanging thrilling tales of massage and sauna and soaking down vital cognac. The Swedish businessmen, discussing welfare reform, are drinking small glasses of Ukrainian sauterne. Hats still on backwards in the most senseless of all human gestures, the American backpackers are working their way through the educational pages of the
Rough Guide to Novi Zembla
as they tip back can after can of Bud, crushing the containers flat in their huge mitts when they’ve done. As for the American widows, they look happier than they must have been in the rest of their entire lives, as they flirt unashamedly with these same big Russian waiters.

As for me, how crazy I was to spend all that time in Stockholm trying to traffick rates of exchange with that nice blonde teller in that nice blonde bank. Because here we’re right in the world of funny money. What was I thinking of? This is a Russian ship, after all. The waiters, rushing round the tables, are happy to pocket anything that vaguely resembles currency, valuta, at all. Russian roubles, Ukrainian hryvnia, Hungarian forints, Swedish kronor, German Deutschmarks, it’s all the same to them. Chinese rinimbi, Thai bahts, Slakan vloskan, Cambodian wong; if it clinks or crackles, it pours straight into their wallets.

‘
Skal!
’ says Verso, raising the huge glass of Jim Beam on the rocks his dollar has bought. ‘You know, there’s just one thing that worries me about you, professor.’

‘Oh, what’s that, professor?’

‘This Diderot quote of yours just now. Papers and stories. I haven’t read every single word the guy wrote in a far too productive lifetime, I have to admit. But I don’t remember him saying that.’

‘All right,’ I admit, ‘maybe he never did actually say it. But it’s the kind of thing he would have said. I mean, surely?’

Verso eyes me appreciatively. ‘Okay, my friend, now I understand you. You’re able to quote our man perfectly, even down to the things he never said at all.’

‘That’s it. I’m a writer. I compose falsehoods. How about you? You’re a truth-teller? A philosopher? An expert on Diderot?’

‘No, not quite. I’m a modern philosopher. Or maybe a postmodern philosopher, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. I can lie better than you. And I’m an expert in refuting Diderot.’

‘I see.’

‘I deconstruct, you see. That’s how I keep my cat in pet food. And I especially deconstruct the Grand Narratives of the great Age of Reason project.’

I take a glance at my
confrère
, stuffing down a bowl of cashews. He looks pleasant enough, in his designer T-shirt and his Gucci loafers, but I know him for what he is. Somewhere in there I sense the Paglia Syndrome, a big show-off’s desire for celebrity thinking and intellectual trouble.

‘You’re an enemy of reason, is that right?’

‘Sure I am,’ says Verso, tapping his
I LOVE DECONSTRUCTION
cap. ‘Just like any reasonable person. Aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not. I’m afraid I’m just another old liberal humanist.’

‘Tough,’ says Verso, ‘but let me convince you, if I may.’

‘If you must.’

‘I never lose the chance to deconstruct a little as I go along on my happy little way. So let’s just see how we hammered all the nails into the Enlightenment coffin, shall we? First of all, reason turned out not to be reasonable, right? In fact it led straight into the French Revolution, the first encounter with the historical bloodbath and the great wasteland we call modernity. So we get Vico and his dispute with the idea of rational progress, Kant and the critique of pure reason, showing we never know anything with pure objectivity, Schopenhauer proving it’s not mind but will we think with. Then comes Kierkegaard and the leap in the dark – no way of knowing being from nothingness, or the either from the or. Followed by Nietzsche and the complete triumph of the irrational. Worried yet?’

‘Very.’

‘Great. And you’ve still seen nothing yet. Soon comes Heidegger and the collapse of all metaphysics. Then Wittgenstein and the whereof we cannot speak let us be silent. Which leads by way of existential absurdity and futility to where we’ve managed to reach right now.’

‘Which is where?’

‘With Michel Foucault and the total loss of the subject. Remember what he wrote in the last paragraph of
The Order of Things
?’

‘No, I don’t think I do.’

‘Well, this is not quite word for word, but with your approach to quotation you won’t mind that. Something like: “Ideas of reason disappeared from the world as fast as they appeared. Today the figure of thinking man is just a face drawn in the sand on the very edge of the waves. Next moment the tide will surge in and everything will be erased.”’

‘Diderot’s vast and tragic solitude?’

‘Right. Our man spoke wiser than he knew.’

‘And you’re for it, are you?’

‘Naturally I’m for it,’ says Verso. ‘Reason’s gone the same way as religion. We’re way beyond the end of the Cartesian project. We no longer believe in a single continuous self. We no longer believe in thought as the way the brain works, any more than we think we live in a cosmos made by a magnificent watchmaker. All we know is the cosmos is chaos, moving sideways at fantastic speed toward an explosive and senseless destination no one can understand. When it gets there it blows up or gets turned into some anti-matter. Doesn’t it give you pause? It should do. It gave Einstein pause.’

‘Okay, it gives me pause too. But if the thinking subject has disappeared, the mind is finished, why do we need philosophers?’

‘Ah. We don’t.’

‘How come you are one then?’

‘I just preferred it to football.’

‘And you still find a job to do?’

‘Sure. We still need philosophers. Look at France. They really respect those Death of the Subject guys there. You know they let them ride free on the trains?’

‘They do?’

‘Sure. Beaudrillard gets to ride free on all the railroads. Lyotard was presented with his own personal box at the opera. Have another Jim Beam, my son.’

‘Yes, I will,’ I say. ‘I suppose what I don’t understand, then, is if you’re so anti-reason why did you come on this Diderot Project?’

‘The same reason we all came on the Diderot Project. Free airticket, free food and drink, free visit to Russia. What’s the first rule of academic scholarship? Never, never look a gift grant in the mouth.’

‘I came to sail on a ship called the
Anna Karenina
.’

‘And you didn’t. That’s what comes of high intentions.’

‘And I came to visit the Hermitage and look at the Diderot papers.’

‘You could have done that on any package tour.’

‘And to find out more about Diderot.’

‘And why do you think Diderot himself went to Russia in the first place?’

‘To perform the task of the philosopher. Enlighten the despot, spread the rule of reason.’

‘And did he? No, he came for just the same reason we do. Free ticket, free trip to Russia, free food and drink.’

‘I don’t think so. I think he was looking for the one great patron who’d understand him.’

‘Catherine, you mean? She understood him fine. She knew he’d flatter her and prostrate himself before the spectacle of power.’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘He did. The lady bought philosophers just like she bought shoes and paintings. He was one more possession to add to her glory. And he went along with that.
Skal!
’

Verso raises a fresh glass of bourbon to me.

‘So you think. It’s not how I understood it,’ I say.

‘It’s true. Or as true as any truth is true, which it isn’t, of course. No, the main reason I’m here is I needed to be out of the States a while. I happen to be between marriages.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need. They weren’t my marriages I was between. Besides, every philosopher has to go to Russia. Remember Isaiah Berlin?’

‘Yes. I know he was in the British Embassy in Moscow after the war.’

‘And he came to Petersburg, Leningrad in those days, to meet Anna Akhmatova.’

‘And they took to each other.’

‘That’s right. They spent a whole night together in her apartment off the Fontanka. They found they spoke the same language.’

‘Amazing. I didn’t think anyone spoke Isaiah’s language. Except Isaiah.’

‘Anyway he talked ceaselessly.’

‘He always did.’

‘The next morning a friend asked Akhmatova if they’d reached the great fulfilment. “I didn’t,” she said, “but I think he probably did.”’