Wild thoughts besiege Polina’s mind. What would Swedenborg, with his obsession with visions of heaven, say about all of this? If only the professor from Nantes, her very own Jean-Louis Trintignant, had been her companion for longer!
Listen up, ladies! Once there was a mystic . . . Polina begins, because she wants to put the world back on track, and the best way to do that is by talking. The possibility that by opening her eyes and shouting she has prevented something important, perhaps even essential from happening, didn’t even cross her mind. Swedenborg now leads Polina like a ram on a rope, and she spares not a thought for the possibility that her act might have slowed some sort of progression.
Polina didn’t allow questions of this kind into her mind. As perspicacious as she was, she succeeded surprisingly often in avoiding what was most essential; in losing track of the crux of what she had been on the cusp of discovering, of what could have begun leading her to the light. She circled her prey, peeling the onion layer by layer, but then something would happen in the heat of the moment and she would get lost, straying into detours she took for shortcuts.
Alcohol could have played a role. Polina, if anyone, should have known that in the final analysis, truth is a very simple thing. She wouldn’t have needed to search for it in all those hundreds of books if she had had the patience to take a moment to focus, for example, on her cat, if she had abandoned herself with all her heart to playing with it for a while. Then she would have learned indispensable things. But Begemot was left to purr his deep secrets alone. His mistress certainly cooed at him but was probably speaking more to herself than her cat. When she stroked her pet, she was really stroking and nurturing herself. Begemot was terribly dear to Polina, as warm as cognac, as homey as liqueur, as irresistible as a medium-dry Shampanskoye. He was a sweet fellow, but he could have been so much more: a four-legged lesson on the Essential Things of Life. If Polina had stopped to listen occasionally to what Begemot had to tell her, she could have poured her drink down the drain and remained in the book of the living a little longer.
“Listen up! Once upon a time there was a mystic who was also sometimes called a philosopher,” Polina says in her squeaky voice after clearing her throat. “He described the afterlife in a way that slightly resembles where we are now. Yes, well. Ehem.” Polina pauses, confused. She has thrown out the hook, and the bait dangles on said hook, this, their so-called situation. The women sharpen up, becoming more alert, just as she had anticipated. Well, they aren’t quite licking their lips with excitement, but a feeling of expectation is palpable. With a cough, Polina opens her throat and lets the words flow.
“Emanuel Swedenborg, a wise, mad penitent, lived a respectably long life for his age, in total eighty-four years. He was, depending on one’s perspective, a mystic, a philosopher, or an occultist; an eccentric, an epileptic, or an erotomaniac; a hypochondriac, hysterical, or schizophrenic; the Great Dreamer, a flatulist, or, in Balzac’s words, the Buddha of the North—a beloved child has many names. This baroque, rambling character was born in 1688 in Stockholm and died in London in March of 1772. As an amusing detail let it be mentioned that Swedenborg’s skull, like the skull of Descartes before him, was lost for a short time subsequent to his death. The skull was found, don’t ask me where, and the earthly remains of the mystic were moved in 1908, with much ceremony, to his final resting place in Uppsala Cathedral.
“Before we move on to the actual subject, i.e. Swedenborg’s visions of heaven, which are the main topic of our lesson, we ought to review a few facts. The reputation of Emanuel Swedenborg is, undeniably, dubious. Following his death, the poor man was left to the mercy of many stripes of lunatic: somnambulists, mesmerists, illuminati; practitioners of animal magnetism, Rosicrucians, alchemists, and kabbalists . . . And let us not forget the Freemasons. Even though he was a scientist. Who, in truth, it must be admitted, didn’t care much for the empirical and preferred to socialize with angels. That was more or less how he described his own field in the preface to one of his latter works, Arcana Caelestia . . . ”
It is important to know one thing about Polina that has remained hidden until now, namely that she had a photographic memory. When her mind was sharp, she could recall a very detailed picture of any page of a book she had read if the book had touched her in the slightest, and most books she read did. The citrus bitterness of Cointreau, l’eau-de-vie V.S.O.P. aged in oak barrels, or a sweet muscat helped impress the pages on her mind. Begemot had listened to many lectures delivered from memory in his mistress’s lap. Unlike human beings, the cat clearly enjoyed the voice she used to tell him things. Polina’s voice was individual; indeed, her whole self was very individual. Begemot’s poor mistress didn’t know how to approach most situations other than by carrying on, by taking up space in a style that was far too original given most people’s limited tolerance. When Polina
