To the Hermitage (35 page)

Today, at the dockside, it’s the free market that appears to rule – or maybe rather it’s the old world of the souk. At any rate no sooner are we walking out of the terminal than we’re swept up by a turmoil of trade, a frenzy of solicitation. Everything is for sale: all the things you can think of, and then a good few you can’t. Youths stand in lines in front of ancient suitcases, which are packed with military medals and lemon peelers; tank-drivers’ fur caps and old postage stamps; peasant carvings and old cameras. Old women standing on squares of cardboard hold up worn dresses and old suits. There are glorious CDs of Prokofiev, and the great Gregorian liturgies. There are bronze busts of Lenin at knockdown prices, and others of the slaughtered Tzar Nicholas II. Weapons are everywhere – from small pistols and rusting hand-grenades to an entire armoured car, loaded gun-turret and all – on offer at a price marked in dollars and apparently ready to roll.

Verso and I stop together to inspect the coloured dolls, the
matrioshki
, which are supposed always to carry the latest political news. Well, for the moment at least, it’s still a wooden Yeltsin that firmly encases a wooden Gorbachev and a wooden Brezhnev, and no one is yet encasing Yeltsin. On the other side of the world, Clinton too seems to be all right for the moment, holding inside himself the images of Bush, Reagan, Carter, Nixon. Helmut Kohl contains Schmidt and Adenauer. Quiet John Major boxes in Thatcher and Heath. ‘Buy now before everything changes,’ says Verso, taking out his wallet and virtually disappearing beneath the scrum. Following my own tastes, I look around and find exactly what I’m after. Joseph Brodsky holds Anna Akhmatova, who in turn embraces Mandelshtam, who incorporates Dostoyevsky, who digests Gogol, who has assimilated Pushkin. Pushkin opens up too, and inside him is the very tiniest and most indecipherable something. Who? Could it possibly be Diderot? Never mind. I’m here and, as they told me at the Kafé Kosmos, it’s a writers’ city, a set of telescoped images, illusory and ever-shifting, and yet presumably very real and just waiting for us over the other side of this vast dockyard wall.

‘
Ah!! Mes amis!! Mes braves pèlerins!! Voici!! Ici, s’il vous plaît!! Bienvenue!
’ The cry comes once more. And there beyond all the scramble of commerce she stands again, waving gaily, furiously at us. Behind her stands a very battered mini-bus, containing a bored and miserable driver.

‘Ah, there you are, Galina!’ cries Bo Luneberg, hurrying over.

‘
C’est vous, Madame Solange!
’ cries Alma.

The lady in Poiret, arms outstretched, rushes toward both of them.

‘
Ah, mon brave savant!
’ she cries. ‘
Mon cher cher, Bo-Bo! Et toi aussi, Alma, ma soeur!
’

All of them fall into such an operatic embrace that even our opera singer is put out:

‘I thought one Kirov was enough,’ murmurs Birgitta Lindhorst.

‘
Et voici les pèlerins!
’ cries the lady in silks, turning towards us all.

‘Yes, these are our pilgrims,’ says Bo. ‘Now, this lady is our dear old friend, Madame Galina Solange-Stavaronova.’

‘A lady we have known so many years we do not care to tell you!’ says Alma.

‘Hello, my darlings,’ says the lady, smiling at us. ‘Please speak to me in anything, I have them all, French, German, English, Swedish. But truly I love best French. French is the language of reason,
n’est-ce pas
, and reason is the language of Petersburg.’

‘Really?’ asks Verso.

‘
C’est vrai
,’ says the lady. ‘During the worst of times, when we had Stalin and his stupid nasties, I spoke only French. How else could an honest person stay sane?’

‘Galina, perhaps I should explain to them just who you are?’ says Bo. ‘Galina is a fellow scholar and I have been in touch with her these many months, from the very moment we thought of the Diderot Project.’

‘
Bien sûr!
’ cries Galina gaily.

‘She has helped us very much and been kind enough to make our arrangements in Petersburg.’

‘Your tickets for the Hermitage, your tickets for the Maryinsky,’ says Alma. ‘But of course you can go your own way if you wish.’

‘
Pour vous, c’est mon plaisir!
’ cries Galina.

‘Now in her kindness she has arranged to take us all on a first tour around Petersburg and show us the Diderot Trail. I think I can assure you there’s no one in the world who knows more about the culture of this very great city.’

‘And that is my sweet little Bo,’ says Galina. ‘Always so kind, so civilized. It is true, of course. Now, I welcome you all to Petersburg. Sankt Peterburg, that is its name. I cannot tell you how I cried when they gave it back to us again. By the way, before we get on our little bus here, I tell you one thing. Most of the lady guides here – and you know we have many, they are a Petersburg speciality, every lady who is not a whore is a professional guide – will tell you the name comes from Peter the Great.
C’est absurde!
Not a bit of it! It was named for the first saint in heaven, the one who opens the door with his golden key. Now allow me to open the gate of heaven for you also. Follow me on to the bus.’

The bus is tiny and has unpadded seats, just about enough of them to take all our little pilgrim party.

‘Maybe you have heard we have a political situation,’ says Galina as we climb aboard. ‘Once more Russia heaves, and nothing is born. My only advice: don’t go all in different directions, and don’t walk the streets alone very late at night. Then you will have very good luck.’

The bus sets off through the dockyard, past the various floating hotels, and passes out into the streets of the city. The view is not utopian. We’re bouncing violently up and down over crane-tracks, potholes, tramlines, the wear and tear of a hard winter. None of this deters Galina who, in her soft clinging Poiret, stands at the front, addressing us all as the driver stares up at her dubiously. ‘I will tell you a story of very good luck. Maybe you know, Petersburg is not always a lucky city. It has suffered everything. Flood, fire, earthquake, whirlwind, plague, all kinds of diseases. It has had repressions, rebellions, purges, revolutions. Everyone has tried to attack us, the Swedes, the Danes, the French, the Germans. We still remember the 900-day siege, when the Germans were on every side of the city, bombing us every night, and children dragged the bodies of their children through the streets to the cemeteries. How can I say luck?’

‘Tell us,’ says Bo.

‘It was only this,’ says Galina. ‘The city, you know, was named again after Lenin, but he hated it, and the capital was moved back to Moscow. And that is why you don’t see those dreadful pointed ministries, the silly towers, the great Marxist steeples. And even when it was bombed and we rebuilt it, we rebuilt it as it was, a French city in the north. That is our luck, and soon you will see it through the window.’

‘Where are we now, Galina?’ asks Verso.

‘Oh, this is Grand Avenue, also called Bolshoi Prospekt.’ To tell the truth, the prospekt is not impressive. We’re bouncing down the dullest of avenues. People walk everywhere doing nothing very much. Children play between the tramlines, babushkas carry wrapped bundles along rough sidewalks. The aroma of dead smoke and wet oil does not fade. The apartment blocks have that battered and peeling look, the air of eternal neglect, that is the truest note of East European gloom.

‘And does this mean you’re going to be our guide for the whole visit, Madame Stavaronova?’ asks Jack-Paul Verso. ‘Because some of us may want to make different arrangements.’

‘Everything is possible,’ explains Bo. ‘Within reason. May I explain, Galina is not our guide. She is one of us.’

‘
Ah, oui, d’accord!
’ says Galina. ‘
Je suis un pèlerin de Didro!
’

‘We just have to remember Galina’s warning. It’s an awkward time here, so let us not do anything foolish. But for those who have questions about Diderot in Russia, Galina can tell you everything.’

‘
Oui
, you see, for the last forty years I have been a state librarian,’ explains Galina. ‘I work with the French books at the Saltykov-Shcherdin. Perhaps you know it, this is the Petersburg Public Library. Here Lenin read the works of Voltaire. But please don’t think that is why it is famous. But now, don’t stare at my beauty any more. Look out the window. What do you see?’

While we’ve talked, our bus has switched streets, moved over a block. The scene has changed, our views have completely altered. Now we ride along a splendid waterside embankment, looking across the width of a river at another splendid waterside embankment. Near us, on the edge of fast-flowing waters, two huge and top-hatted Egyptian sphinxes sit gazing enigmatically at each other, while at the same time framing up our own view of the scene. Beyond runs the wide Neva, where white tourboats probably already filled with our own Japanese tourists are shuttling back and forth. On the further embankment rise up large towers, bulbous onion domes, fine golden flèches.

‘Now you ride on University Embankment,’ says Galina. ‘Here on Vasilyevsky Island Peter built all his academies. Here is the Petersburg University, which I hope you will visit. Gogol went to teach world history there, you remember. His problem was only he didn’t know any. There is the Kunstkammer, over here is the great Academical Clock. Now look across the river over there. Do you notice a green square? In it, something like a missile pointing at the sky? Do you know it?’

‘Isn’t it the Bronze Horseman?’ asks Lars Person.

‘
Oui, mon petit
, the statue of Falconet. Even this was by a Frenchman, you see. And now,
mes amis
, I will say nothing at all, even though you understand this is very difficult for me. But in one moment you will understand why.’

Eight Enlightenment Pilgrims, we look around, staring from bank to bank. Only one or two of us have been to the city before, and yet everything we see is more than half-familiar, spoken of by old repute. The Kunstkammer: that was where Peter kept all his waxworks and his odd curiosities, even down to the teeth he pulled. The flèche on this side is surely the Peter and Paul Fortress, where an ancestor of Vladimir Nabokov was the governor who imprisoned Dostoyevsky. There are other flèches, other domes: the high one on the further bank, beyond the English Embankment, must surely be Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. The fine façades on each of the two banks look out at each other, just like the two solemn sphinxes, shaping and enclosing a distinctive space.

At the heart of this space is the water, into which all the buildings and both embankments seem to stare. The afternoon air is feeling cold now, and the sky seems to have purified itself to a clear lucid blue. The red afternoon sun is just beginning to dip. Ahead of us a stone bridge spans the Neva, joining the facing embankments to each other. Beyond, where several rivers seem to meet together, something strange seems to have happened to the light. In the clear bright air, the river itself seems to dissolve here: turn into luminous matter, become an encrimsoned shimmer, sky, sunlight and river all disintegrating into each other. Above this floating mirror or luminescent lake stands a row of splendid buildings, linked together, and suspended there as if by the forces of a mirage. The buildings, painted in green and white, are in the classical style, simple at heart and yet highly embellished, their walls caked with baroque pilasters and elaborate window frames. The roofs are verdigrised copper, and the façades run on and on, a Turneresque battery of Venetian palaces overlooking the waterless water.

‘Notice, I say nothing at all,’ says Galina. ‘But I think you know what it is.’ Indeed we do, Galina. Though most of us haven’t seen these façades before, we’ve also known them for ever. They’re the Winter Palace. They’re the Hermitage . . .

‘L
IKES YOU
? My good dear fellow, of course she likes you,’ says squat big-nosed Melchior Grimm, sitting filing his nails in the grand drawing room of the Narishkin Palace, which looks out over wintry Senate Square.

‘Are you quite sure?’ asks Our Philosopher.

‘I know it. It’s obvious, my friend. She’s absolutely crazy for you. I’ve heard her telling everyone she meets you’re a quite remarkable man. Extraordinary, unique, beyond compare.’

‘When did you hear her say so?’

‘I’ve already told you that. In the same way you see her most afternoons, I see her nearly every single evening. We really love each other. We just chatter away all the time like two blind magpies. She calls me her little
gobe-mouche
. Her dear fly-catcher, her favourite slave.’

‘I can see she compliments you wonderfully. But precisely what was it she said about me?’

Grimm glances at him archly. ‘I’m not entirely sure you really want to hear.’

‘Don’t be so prim, Grimm,’ says our man, impatient as usual. ‘I’ve known you since you were an ambitious nothing, a fat boy from Germany living in that stinking bordello in Saint-Roch. That was when you were still a good friend of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and took him round the whores.’

Grimm looks up. ‘There are some old times that are best forgotten,’ he says. ‘Especially to do with Rousseau.’

‘I forget nothing,’ says our man, ‘and nor does Rousseau, the vainest man in the world. I advised him to become a philosopher. I wrote most of his first essay for him and got it published. But you realize what a capital crime that is: to help someone. Rousseau’s never forgiven me.’

‘You always were too kind.’

‘Now they say he’s writing down his most intimate confessions to publish them everywhere. And then you’ll suffer and sting, my dear Grimm.’

‘I don’t worry,’ says Grimm. ‘And remember, so will you.’

‘Oh, come on, please, tell me what she said, Grimm.’

‘Very well,’ says Grimm, teasingly, ‘she told everyone that after she’s spent one of her sessions with you, her thighs turn all black and blue.’

‘Her thighs? It’s not true!’

‘Of course it’s true,’ says Grimm. ‘She says you keep slapping her legs all the time while you’re talking. You may not realize it, but all your good friends will agree with her. I have awful bruises myself, just from listening to you.’