To the Hermitage (47 page)

‘But you don’t even believe in the ages to come. You don’t believe in Posterity.’

‘I don’t believe in trying to live our lives for it.’

‘But you do believe in busts and statues?’

‘They’re good business.’

‘Meaning I’m condemned for eternity to be that . . . parody of a philosopher? That smirking little clown? He isn’t the least bit like me.’

Marie-Anne laughs: ‘So what are you like then?’

‘He’s the most handsome man in the world,’ says Étienne-M angrily. ‘A cross between the Apollo Belvedere and Seneca. But with a bigger conk.’

Our man ignores this. ‘You know what I’m like, my darling,’ he says to his dear M-A. ‘On any one day I assume a hundred different faces, depending on how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking.’

‘Wonderful, so you need a hundred different portaits then,’ cries the sculptor.

‘I’m putting to you the problem of representation, old fellow,’ says Our Thinker. ‘The paradox of the copy. But, yes, you should be really making a hundred different portraits, if you truly want to do me justice.’

‘You’re not asking for justice, you’re asking for mercy,’ says the sculptor. ‘Ignore this man whose prospects I created and whose entire life I made.’

‘Indeed you did. And what, I should be grateful?’

‘Ignore him, and let’s both think now, what am I really like?’ he says to Marie-Anne. ‘I suppose I’m serene and dreamy, yet at the same time tender and passionate. I have bright lively eyes. A broad forehead, a head just like a Roman orator’s.’

‘Seneca.’

‘I have, as you know, a very warm and instinctive nature, just like the simple spirits of the golden age.’

‘He’s a marble faun, then.’

‘Yes, I’m a marble faun. Nature’s body, reason’s mind. The flesh is splendid, but art also has to speak of the real treasure, the splendour of the mind within.’

‘Of course,’ says É-M, ‘the one thing we can’t possibly see.’

‘Exactly. Which is why as a philosopher I have a mask that must deceive any but the very greatest artist. Since my mental actions operate so quickly, my expression can never stay the same for more than one second. To be quite honest I always have the feeling I haven’t even begun to exist yet, that everything is yet to come. One of these days I shall think something so splendid I shall become truly immortal.’

‘When?’

‘How do I know? Tomorrow, perhaps? Who knows what I’m capable of. I’m sixty and I haven’t even used up a quarter of my powers yet.’

‘Would you like us to portray what you’re going to look like ten years in the future?’

‘Why not? I mean, just look at what you’ve done, Falconet. You’ve made me look like some fat ambassador. Some big-eared general. I don’t look like a philosopher at all. Maybe I should have two fingers to my ear.’

‘Maybe you should,’ says Falconet, wiping the dust off his hands furiously. ‘Sir, you are completely impossible.’

‘Impossible?’

‘You always were impossible. In Paris you were impossible. In the womb you were impossible. Now you’re even more impossible. You don’t begin to understand art.’

‘And you, sir, don’t begin to understand the mystery we are now examining, the ineffable mystery of the human face.’

‘No?’

‘No. Art isn’t simply an artificial construction.’

‘How would you know? You who’ve never tried to construct it?’

‘Because I am a philosophical observer of it.’

‘A critic.’

‘Yes. Art’s conscience, art’s consciousness, that’s what I am.’

‘Oh, you go to all the Paris salons and write about them, yes. You post your arrogant little opinions all over Europe. You make painters beholden to you, so they flatter and praise you. But you don’t understand one thing about the paintings you write about. You stand in front of them, you doff your hat, you raise your glass of wine to them, and invite them to understand you.’

Our man looks decidedly hurt. ‘Yes, I’m a critic, that’s what I am. And you may recall that in the course of those opinions I posted all over Europe I praised you to the skies. Without my essays you might never have come to Russia at all.’

Falconet laughs. ‘Now you tell me. And don’t you know, it was the worst mistake of my life? Maybe you meant well, maybe you didn’t. But now I stew at the heart of Barbary, and you take the credit. Everywhere you go, it’s always the same. You’ve got to be the little
maître.
Always some advice, some instruction to give to everyone. You always know how to do everything so much better. Just because you wrote an Encyclopedia.’

‘Naturally. A builder may have a skill. A painter may have a talent. But I am a philosopher. What I have is an understanding.’

‘Soufflot’s dome in Paris, for instance,’ says Falconet, mockingly. ‘I’m told the latest thing is you’re telling him how to build that.’

‘Of course.’

‘And who will get the blame if it falls down, you or Soufflot?’

‘Ah, but who will create the dream, if it stays up?’

‘I thought so. That’s quite enough. Very well, good day.’

And for some strange reason Falconet is on his feet and marching furiously out of the atelier.

Our man stares after him, an innocent surprise plastered over that strange, impenetrable and ever-moving face of his.

‘Did I say something?’ he asks ingenuously, turning to Marie-Anne.

‘Yes,
maître
, of course you said something. Now, sit down, put that book away, turn your head to that wall, and don’t say anything whatever. If you really do want me to do your portrait bust.’

‘But he can’t go like that,’ says our man. ‘Étienne-Maurice, now wait!’

In the doorway, lit by the furnace, the sculptor turns.
‘Monsieur?’
he says.

‘My dear fellow, now I know why it is the Tzarina keeps telling me you’re impossible to do business with. But I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know our good friend Grimm has made you the most splendid offer.’

Falconet looks at him: ‘Yes, what’s that?’

‘He’s been amazingly generous. He’s offered to buy one or the other of these two busts you’re each doing of me.’

‘Which?’

‘Why, whichever I decide is the better, of course.’

Falconet turns, and walks back across the red glowing atelier. He comes back to his work-table. He takes up his sculpting hammer; he raises it high. It hovers above the philosopher’s head for a moment; then it smashes down. Our man – the plaster version, his other little self – shatters into a cloud of whirling pieces. The hairpiece, a version of the expensive new wig he bought on Nevsky Prospekt, pulverizes. Dust flies. Large lumps of thinker drop onto the floor . . .

‘Good God,’ says Melchior Grimm, when, a couple of days later, our man tells him the story, ‘what had you done?’

‘I’d done nothing.’

‘I really think you must have annoyed him in some way.’

‘Not at all. The truth is, it was a truly brave and amazing thing Étienne Falconet did. Choosing to smash his imperfect work, right there in front of his fellow student and his old master.’

‘You must have goaded him into it, surely.’

‘I didn’t goad him into it. His guilty artistic conscience goaded him into it. It was no loss, believe me.’

‘It wasn’t a good statue?’

‘A very bad one, I assure you. He has a problem with faces. Pottery would suit him better. But I still don’t know how a man of his talents could possibly miss some of the most remarkable features of his sitter.’

‘Perhaps he saw some remarkable features you didn’t know about.’

‘It’s possible. But I can’t tell you how glad I was to be rid of it. Even if it did mean I had to stand there and witness the pulverization of my own head.’

‘There’s nothing left of it?’

‘Well, yes, there is. The ears. They must have survived because he sculpted the wig separately and then stuck it on the top. That’s what bore the brunt – the absurd Russian peruke you had me go out and buy on Nevsky Prospekt.’

Grimm looks excited. ‘The ears of Doctor Diderot? Did you happen to keep them?’

‘They’re here, in my pocket,’ our man says, and takes them out.

Two splendid stone ears, preserved whole and still joined together by a strip of stone skull, sit on the table. Grimm picks them up, and twists them in his hands. They’re two little white birds. Two intricate and twisted orifices, two strange passages of ingress spiralling inward into the deepest chambers of the mind, the reason, the senses.

‘I shall buy them from him,’ Grimm says.

‘What, my ears? I thought you’d buy Marie-Anne’s bust.’

‘A good bust, is it?’

‘Excellent. The girl, you see, has no illusions, no pretensions, no false pride. She listens to her masters. Her bust is just as good as his was bad. The charmer truly understands me.’

‘You mean she flatters you?’

‘No, I mean she understands me exactly as I would wish to be understood.’

‘Very well,’ says Grimm benignly, ‘I may very well buy that too. And perhaps even present it to the Empress. Oh, by the way, old fellow, your days of peace are over. She and the court are returning to the Hermitage tomorrow—’

And it’s quite true. Next day the streets that for two weeks have been so empty have grown full, and they are all back again. Horses are trotting, guardsmen are drilling. The countesses and the governesses are back again on Nevsky Prospekt. Outside the Winter Palace, court servants and coachmen are unloading the same massive burdens they so dutifully loaded up only a couple of weeks ago. Purveyors of silks and shippers of wine, the makers of snuff boxes and clocks, are back in the Hermitage corridors. The butchers and poulterers are once more doing thriving business in the palace kitchens. Gilded invitations to evening receptions, large and small, pass round the city, promoting the usual bursts of envy and weeping. Women in their best dresses reappear in the sledge-carriages. Garlands and icons fill the streets and deck the palaces, for now the Empress has returned Christmas and New Year are coming after all. The churches and cathedrals are full again. The bells ring hourly, the monks intone. It’s time to return to the palace . . .

Only to find that things have changed. When he enters the small stateroom, it is the Princess Dashkova who stands there. With her is Doctor Rogerson, cracking his fingers.

‘She’s not exactly herself,’ says Dashkova.

‘My belief is it’s this Orenburg rebellion that’s upsetting her so much,’ murmurs Rogerson.

It seems that with the Empress away or in flights of philosophical speculation trouble has chosen to break out in the provinces.

‘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 . . .