Voltaire's Calligrapher Read online

I went to my uncle’s and began to prepare my inks, making sure the tops were secure so as not to stain my clothes or worse. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, I thought it must be maréchal Dalessius, invigorated by the news of my imminent departure. While arrivals make some people happy, my uncle liked only departures. Then I heard the sound of keys, like bells announcing a funeral, and grew uneasy.

  The giant figure of Signac filled the doorway. Even when he stood still, his keys continued to jangle, shaken by his breath or the beating of his heart. Behind him was another of the abbot’s men, as tall and thin as the dagger he was now drawing from its sheath.

  Neither one bothered to beat me or threaten me. All they did was ask who had sent me. I didn’t say a word: instinct says that if we can only stay quiet enough, we’ll be forgotten in a corner. But the dagger remembered and timidly approached my neck. I knew silence was much less dangerous than the truth: they would slit my throat the minute I opened my mouth. All they were waiting for was a word, a name, a signature at the bottom of the document spelled out by my actions.

  I coughed, pretending to try and find my voice, and signaled that I wanted a quill and ink. They understood my terrified gestures and were calmed, assuming that anyone willing to write would have to forego babbling and lies. I chose a purple bottle that smelled of mandrake. In his book on the power of plants, Paracelsus asserted that touching a word freshly written in this ink would kill you. According to him, some words were more susceptible to the venom than others. Instead of words, I chose punctuation: I plunged my quill into the liquid and full stop into the neck of my nearest foe.

  The pain was so fierce that as he brought his hands to the wound, he cut himself with his own dagger; the thirsty metal was finally satiated. Signac lunged at me, brandishing two sharp keys, but missed. The weight of his armor slowed him down, and by this time I was at the door.

  I was completely out of breath by the time I reached the Night Mail offices. Behind a dirty pane of glass, a lone man was writing names and dates and destinations in a book. I pounded on the window until he opened it. He must have noticed some resemblance to my uncle because he didn’t ask me to prove my identity, at least not right away. Glancing left and right, startling at anything that sounded like metal, I explained my emergency.

  As we walked toward the back of the former salting house, the old employee told me his name was Vidt and said he had known me when I was a boy. He asked, as if in passing, what ship my parents had died on. When I gave the right answer, he quickened his pace, convinced that I was telling the truth and that he needn’t fear a reprimand from my uncle.

  We crossed a warehouse filled with coffins and came to where the hearses were parked. One was just leaving, and he shouted for it to stop, ordering that another coffin be loaded.

  “Who’s it for?” the coachman asked with a touch of impatience, as if there were some event in his miserable life that simply could not be delayed.

  “Me,” I said.

  “You look healthy enough.”

  “Not for long if you don’t hurry.”

  I put a coin in his hand and let money answer any questions he might have.

  Vidt insisted I must look like a passenger and so powdered my face. It was a much thicker substance than the one favored by nobility and the bourgeois. I looked at my reflection in the hearse window: anyone who saw me would be certain that life had left me.

  We put the coffin in the back and, not without some difficulty, I crawled inside. The coachman was kind enough to put a blanket under my head. I settled in, shut my eyes, and the coffin lid was closed.

  The End of the Trip

  It was the worst trip of my life, in a life of nothing but I terrible trips. Every stone on the road was a punch to my back, every corner absolute torture. Whenever the carriage stopped because of an obstacle or a checkpoint, I wondered if the price on my head might be high enough for the coachman to turn me in. But as soon as Paris was far behind, my coffin was opened to the cold morning, and the driver handed me the reins so he could get some sleep.

  We came to an abandoned farm in the middle of a rainstorm. The coach was heading straight on, to the north; I was to continue to Ferney on foot. I walked beneath gray trees and crossed a stone bridge over a stream. With every step I grew weaker; I was exhausted and running a fever. The birdsong was dirgelike, making the trees and the sky even darker, pushing my destination farther away. By the time I reached the castle, I was unable to even say my own name.

  I was given a bed and dry clothing, but my request to see Voltaire was ignored. That section of the castle was undergoing renovations, so I was moved, bed and all, from one place to another all night long. I went to the kitchens, the foul-smelling cellars, the halls where the clocks were tested (and where there was no way to tell the time because each one was different). Sometimes I was left with other servants who were recuperating from an illness. There was no way to obtain any information: the sick speak an incomprehensible language that no one has any interest in answering. The domestic staff who moved me were terribly somber-I wondered if it was because they didn’t know how to treat me (a little less than a gentleman, a little more than a servant) or because they knew my prognosis was uncertain-and carried my bed with funereal solemnity.

  The trip wore on, the trip never ended, all through a night that stretched out through rooms and parlors, up and down stairs. Nothing stays still while a fever lasts. My travels ended at the entrance to Ferney theater, whether on orders from my employer, by chance, or by mistake I never knew. Unsteady on my feet, pale but no longer feverish, I crossed a dark room, like a sleepwalker, amid Sicilian and Japanese puppets, stuffed crows, and the copper frame for a Chinese dragon.

  I pulled back the curtain and appeared on stage, like an actor who had arrived late to a performance and forgotten his lines. There was Voltaire-although at first I thought it was an actor portraying him: his decrepitude was so pronounced it suggested theatrical trickery. Others were there as well, spectators and performers, who looked at me in surprise. Once the astonishment had passed, I heard Voltaire say: “It’s my calligrapher, back from his mission.” He said it as if those words brought a long comedy to an end. I heard the applause and felt I was back, at last.

  PART III. The Master Calligrapher

  The Wait

  Light shines in through the dirty window, falling on the page, and I watch my hand tremble on the coarse paper. I have learned to turn uncertainty into flourishes. You have to let the ink flow, the hand run toward the next word and the next, never stopping to consider an error. Once doubt begins, it takes over: like the Vatican calligrapher who hesitated over whether to write Pope Clement VI or Clement VII, and then whether it was Clement at all, and finally distrusted every word and never wrote another in his life.

  The shaking in my right hand isn’t simply a matter of age; it’s a symptom of Veck’s syndrome (named after Karl Veck, calligrapher to the Habsburgs). Those of us in the profession for decades find our hands acquire a certain independence, and often, when we want to write one word, something completely different comes out. They say that even in sleep, when Veck was handed a quill, he would quickly write a word or sometimes a whole phrase; the meaning was always obscure, and later, when awake, he would try in vain to interpret it.

  Sometimes my hand writes an involuntary word; that’s why these pages are filled with corrections. I used to hate imperfection, but I’ve learned to recognize blots and rewrites as one of the many forms our signature takes. Nothing they taught me at Vidors’ School is true. The best calligrapher isn’t the one who never makes a mistake but the one who can draw some meaning and trace of beauty from the splotches.

  An abundance of work forced me to interrupt this recollection, but I’ll leave this frozen room now, cross the ocean and time, and once again appear on that stage at Château Ferney. Around Voltaire, apart from the usual visiting sycophants, were two women-one older, one younger-who I guessed were mother and daughter. Voltaire was telling them how to
portray the Calas drama with passion and rigor.

  “It’s easy to move the people-they weep at anything-but it’s much more complicated to move a court. Don’t cry openly. Hold back your tears. Let them spill out against your will.”

  The women meekly accepted Voltaire’s directions, and I was amazed there were still obedient actresses anywhere. Surely they must be Swiss. Taking advantage of the distraction I had created, they stepped aside to rest for a moment. I asked Voltaire what play they were rehearsing.

  “The most difficult of all to perform: Jean Calas’ widow and daughter are preparing to visit the courts of Europe in search of support for their cause. I want them to say just the right words, without looking foolish or overacting.”

  Hearing who they were, I was about to confess I had been in Toulouse when their father and husband was martyred and had been to their looted house. But something stopped me: I think they were comfortable playing that theatrical game, hiding behind their roles and didn’t want to be reminded they were themselves.

  “It should be enough to tell the heartfelt truth,” I said quietly.

  “The heart and the truth make unlikely bedfellows. Our enemies are staging grand performances, so we must perform as well. Drama is everywhere but in the theater these days; entire cities are the stage.”

  I found myself searching for my place as calligrapher over the next few days. Whenever I found work or tried to organize the archives, Wagnière would reassign the task, promising that Voltaire had other plans for me. Where once I had been a part of castle life, I now felt there was no place for me. I became a ghost; no one would even turn to look at me when I came into a room. I sometimes heard my story as if it were another’s. Secretaries, cooks, servants, even the travelers who came to see the genius of Ferney were all commenting on my adventures. These stories were like legends, passed from person to person until distilled. They couldn’t believe that I, an insignificant calligrapher, was the protagonist of such events, and they would listen to me only if I spoke as though it had happened to someone else. I existed in third person.

  I wrote the final account of my time in Paris and waited in vain to find Voltaire in his study. Business consumed his afternoons, requiring that he make hasty decisions regarding his clocks, his crops, and his foreign investments. I would slip my reports under his door, never knowing if he read them or burned them.

  One morning Voltaire himself came to my room and led me to his study. He began by telling me of his aches and pains, but I wasn’t worried: his suffering had kept him in good health for years. Then he showed me the stack of pages I had sent. He had made notes in the margins, most of them question marks.

  “I’ve read and reread your reports, written with incomparable incompetence. Despite all the errors, I was able to come to one conclusion: the Dominicans are preparing to take advantage of the void being left by the Jesuits. They’ve concealed the bishop’s death in order to hold on to power. As long as the comedy of the automaton lasts, their hold will remain firm. They are behind the plague of miracles that’s storming France; poor Jean Calas was just one more of their victims. That’s why I need you to go back to Paris.”

  “I’d rather stay here. Your correspondence must be awfully behind…”

  “My true correspondence consists of the two messages I’ll send with you. The first is for the printer Hesdin, to be published as soon as possible and without my signature. The second is for the bishop. There is a papal delegation coming, and the bishop will confirm the Dominicans’ power. You must convince Von Knepper to change the text.”

  I pleaded not to be sent to Paris. I was afraid; all I wanted was a simple position at Ferney.

  “You’ll travel under an alias. In any event, I don’t have anyone else to send. Wagnière is too old; I say a teary good-bye every time he goes to a distant wing of the castle, unsure whether he’ll make it back alive. I’m not asking you to do this for honor or to champion an idea you may not share. I only ask that you obey the universal sense of greed: from now on, you will be official calligrapher of Ferney and your pay will be commensurate.”

  I placed money and danger on an imaginary scale that leaned toward precaution. But then I thought of Clarissa, whom I missed so dearly that distance actually brought her closer. I imposed one condition on going: a workshop in which to make inks and the right to sell them.

  “That could be quite a profitable business,” Voltaire said. “If we sell clocks to the Turks, why not ink to the French?”

  Given Voltaire’s advancing age, failing memory, and proximity to death, I drew up a contract. He signed it with a look of reproach, as if disappointed by my lack of faith in his word, his faculties, and his health. I was to leave for Paris in a week. In the interim, Voltaire would closet himself away to prepare the messages I was to deliver. While I refused to get up in the morning or think about my upcoming trip, he would rise early, leap out of bed, sometimes even do a little jig before sitting down to write, as if, from somewhere, he could hear music playing. It wasn’t the music of planets or the discovery of some hidden harmony in nature, but the sound of the world that made Voltaire dance.

  Anonymous Libel

  My break ended and I went back to writing, not with quill and ink but with my footsteps and the dust of the road. As soon as I arrived in Paris, I went to find the printer Hesdin, who had worked for Voltaire on previous occasions. His address was on a piece of paper that had been soaked by the rain, and the street name was now nothing but a few faint blue lines. Thankfully, almost all of the printers lived in Les Cordeliers, and Hesdin was well known; I soon found his shop, not far from the Comédie-Française.

  I didn’t go straight in; there were suspicious-looking people all around, and I wondered whether Abbot Mazy had already heard I was in Paris. But those men with faces obscured, lurking on corners and in doorways, weren’t interested in me. These were playwrights in a city so overrun with them that theaters had barred them from entrance; they already had enough plays to stage until the end of the century. The new tragedians would prowl around, waiting for any opportunity to slip into the theater. Once inside, they would hide until they could leap on the stage manager or director. Some would even threaten suicide if their work wasn’t read immediately. None of this seemed like a problem at the time, but now, looking back, I think it was the ferment for everything that happened later. The Revolution was led, primarily, by frustrated writers, and their literary jealousies and failure to make it onto the stage were what led to the Reign of Terror.

  Inside the print shop, an assistant was turning the press. When I asked for Hesdin, I was taken into the back, where a white-haired man was painting gold letters on the cover of a book. Tottering stacks of books were all around.

  “Where’ve you come from?” he asked. “It looks like you’re being followed by a cloud of dust.”

  “I’ve come from Ferney, sir.”

  “Then you’re not only being followed by dust but by problems as well.”

  The only chair was covered in books, which Hesdin brushed to the floor. I knelt down to pick up a copy of Varieties of Calligraphy by Jacques Ventuil, with twelve illustrations by the young Moreau.

  “Does that interest you?”

  “I’m a calligrapher.”

  “Then do me a favor and take it. I only sold thirty-seven copies. I’ve fonder memories of books that have been burned than those that were an absolute failure. At least a banned book doesn’t take up space. Look closely, that’s Baskerville, the print type vaguely reminiscent of human handwriting. Baskerville was a calligrapher before he became a printer and wanted to acknowledge his old profession.”

  Hesdin stopped what he was doing to fetch a jug of wine, some bread and cheese. I told myself to eat slowly so as to interject a friendly comment every now and then, but I devoured the food without a word. In the meantime, Hesdin spoke.

  “On page one hundred eight, there’s a story about a Chinese calligrapher who was to transcribe a long poem arguing that callig
raphy was imperfect. The order came from the palace, and the calligrapher felt a great weight of responsibility. If he used all his skill to perform the task, the contrast between the subject of the poem and its transcription would be obvious, and he’d have sinned by calling attention to the art of calligraphy over poetry. However, if he decided to write with an unsteady hand and create artificial imperfections, he ran the risk of being fired as palace calligrapher. With the blank page in front of him, brush in hand, the calligrapher thought and thought until he came upon the solution. He wrote the most beautiful ideograms ever, but when he reached the complex character for calligraphy, he lightened his stroke, as if in reading the poem, he’d been convinced by the poet’s argument and had begun to doubt. And so he gained the emperor’s favor.”

  Hesdin fell silent, waiting for me to finish chewing and explain why I was there. I reached into a bag I had hidden under my shirt and pulled out Voltaire’s manuscript. Hesdin sighed deeply.

  “Under what name is it to be published?”

  “No name.”

  “A name can be an alias and we never know who the author is. The minute it’s anonymous, however, all doubt is erased: we immediately know who wrote it.”

  Hesdin read the tale out loud, while I finished off the last of the bread and wine. The story had seemed innocent enough when I transcribed it from Voltaire’s illegible script, and I’d paid little attention: it was just another of his whims, a show of his excessive faith in the power of words. But the printer read it with an air of mystery, as if it were full of questions and secrets. The story was lost over time. Fearful, Hesdin printed only a few copies and not one survived, not even in Kehl’s seventy volumes. I only have a vague recollection of it, which I ineptly write below, for the sole purpose of helping you understand subsequent events.