Voltaire's Calligrapher

“I’ve beheaded criminals in Paris, hanged poor wretches in Marseille, and pushed offenders off the top of a tower in Italy. They would land on marble below, and a painter would capture their final pose. But the real art is the ax: not many can cut off a head with a single blow. The rope, on the other hand, is the simplest yet least reliable of all the methods.”

“Why? Did someone survive?”

“Only one man lived to say ‘I was executed by Kolm.’ He paid my assistant to fray the rope so it would break when he dropped. A man can’t be hanged twice for the same crime in Marseille, so he was set free. But let’s talk about happier things.”

Kolm worked for the courts in Toulouse, where he washed bodies in tubs of bleach water, sutured wounds, and sometimes determined cause of death. He was hired because of his experience as an executioner.

“Do you miss your old profession?”

“No. I got tired of being needed but despised. Take a look at this walking stick.”

He held up a long cane made of dark wood. On the bottom was a small but perfect replica of a hand, operated by a mechanism on the silver handle.

“I was never allowed to touch any food when I went to the market. No one would speak to me. Then I had an artisan from Nuremberg make this walking stick. At first no one had a problem greeting the silver hand, letting it pick up apples or fish. But then it started to malfunction, and now it crushes everything it touches.”

The hand opened and closed. Kolm invited me to try it. I lifted the walking stick and, as I looked up, saw a woman standing in a window. It was the passenger we had delivered to the toy manufacturer on rue des Aveugles.

I heard the sound of the window as it closed.

I had no intention of saying anything but suddenly heard my voice, as if it were another’s:

“A dead woman just closed a window.”

“I know the dead and I know they never come back; I’d have been visited by now if they did.” Kolm looked over at the house. It was the only one that still had any lights on. A bronze bell hung out front. “There are seventeen women who work there. They might disappear during the day, but they come back to life at night.”

His words did nothing to reassure me, and I hurried away down the deserted street. I don’t know why, but Kolm followed me, and the moon followed him.

The Performance

I went to see Kolm two days later, as he had promised to ask whether there were any openings at the court for a calligrapher. Kolm lived in a rooming house reserved for the brotherhood of executioners; they owned a building in every city to avoid the usual problems of lodging. Never having executed anyone, I wasn’t allowed in, but Kolm told me the rooms were decorated with axes, hoods, and belts that had belonged to legendary executioners. These made him nostalgic. I asked why he had left such a profitable profession.

“Five years ago I helped to suppress an uprising against M. Ressing. I had cut off about ten heads when it seemed a pair of familiar eyes were staring up at me. I reached into the bloody basket and found my father’s head. We hadn’t seen one another in a long time, and I had executed him without even noticing. I know he recognized me, and yet he didn’t say a word: he wouldn’t interrupt my work. I haven’t executed anyone since. I was only able to recover my father’s head, which I put in a glass case and took to the town where he was born. There I gave him the funeral he deserved. For his epitaph I wrote: Theodor Kolm lies here. And elsewhere as well.”

It was Sunday and Kolm’s day off. We walked until we saw a crowd beside the market: a theater company was performing The Calas Murderers.

The actors had erected a stage in a derelict square, amid statues of sleeping horses. The Church had never been kind to actors, refusing for centuries to bury them in hallowed ground, but this company had chosen a topic of such popular interest that the White Penitents had even agreed to pay for the production. That night I wrote an account of the play and sent it to Ferney:

The Calas family is sitting at the table. A friend arrives from far away. He begins to talk about his city. After a while, he realizes they aren’t paying attention; no one is responding to his comments. The father, Jean Calas, finally interrupts him: he says they have a decision to make.

Marc-Antoine is preparing to convert to Catholicism, the father explains. He has been shut away in his room, reading the Bible, for the past seventeen days. We’ve hidden spiders and snakes between the pages, but nothing distracts him.

At night, the mother says, we give him candles with most of the wick removed, so they won’t last long. But he keeps reading, using mirrors to capture the moonlight. Then, on nights when there is no moon, in absolute darkness, he repeats the sacred words – words that aren’t sacred to us.

Is there no way to convince him? the friend asks. Women? A trip?

We’ve tried everything, the father says. Now we must sacrifice the lamb.

But he’s our lamb, the mother says. If we wait just a little longer…

The father says: Tomorrow he’ll sign his conversion at Saint Stephen’s, and he can finally work as a lawyer. He may take action against us, to prove his sincerity. There is no faith more dangerous than the faith of the converted.

Where will we do it? the friend asks.

There’s a nail upstairs, above the door, the father says. We never found any use for it, but it was too big to pull out.

Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow, the mother says.

The rope is impatient, the father says.

In silence, they head upstairs. Jean Calas leads the group, rope in hand.

Marc-Antoine is reading in bed when they interrupt him.

We’ve come to talk to you.

With a rope? That’s a strange conversation.

Let’s talk about the decision you’re going to make.

It’s too late. They’re expecting me. I renounce the Calvinist faith.

Then there’s no other option, the father says.

When will you do it, the son asks. I’d like to finish this paragraph about martyrdom first.

The father tears out the page and shoves the ball of paper into his son’s mouth.

There’s no need to read about martyrs: you’ll soon know from experience.

The mother and the friend hold him. The father slides the noose over his head. The three of them lift him up and hang him.

The show was so successful that indignant spectators threw rocks at the performers, mistaking them for the people they were playing.

The head of the company, who was in the role of Jean Calas, had to shout to be heard.

“Don’t vent your rage on us; we’re only actors. But we so believe in this play that our Marc-Antoine is a real hanged man. A mistake sent him to the gallows in Marseille, and a miracle saved him.”

From the dais, Marc-Antoine let the public see the scars on his neck.

“I was that man’s executioner,” Kolm whispered in my ear. “He’s the living image of my failure.”

“What does it matter? You’re no longer in the profession.”

We left the crowd and the shouting behind.

“Once an executioner, always an executioner.”

The Exam