Voltaire's Calligrapher

maid was gone before I lit a candle, all the while afraid the glare would bounce from mirror to mirror until it found and woke marechal Dalessius.

Surrounding me were things that had belonged to my dead parents, lost in the sinking of the Retz when I was a boy. The ship had earned a place in navigation history: only four days had passed from the time it was launched until it sank. Those objects, slightly damp and mostly broken, looked like wreckage from a ship. But they were the only proof-other than me-that my parents had ever existed. Looking out from a picture in a splintered frame, they were serious and distant, as if they knew what awaited them in the port and the fog.

There was barely enough space for the bed. The room was so disorganized it seemed to hide an agenda: my uncle hoped I would come face-to-face with that sad museum, shed a few easy tears, and run away never to return.

I went looking for him the next morning, afraid I might actually find him. The cook told me he had left early, long before dawn, as was his custom; now he merely watched my every move from an enormous portrait. As I devoured everything the cook set on the table-very little indeed-I studied the message for the bishop. I was tempted to open it but didn’t dare: there were so many wax seals it would have taken days to re-create them.

The bishop had retired to Arnim Palace (a Dominican abbey for the last twenty years) when he first fell ill. Certain orders were vehemently opposed to this decision: they did not want a bishop cut off from the city by high perimeter walls. The Dominicans, however, had known how to negotiate with Rome and became the protective guardians of a bishop ever more saintly and closer to death.

The estate in Arnim was also home to another famous guest: Silas Darel. Although few had seen him, and authorities within the order refused to confirm or deny his presence, it was commonly held that he lived and worked there. Pages written by his hand were highly prized rarities on the manuscript market and often fetched a higher price than works from the Venetian school of calligraphy. Rumors were rife among my colleagues: Darel was no longer able to hold a quill; he worked with transparent ink; he only wrote in blood. No one knew anything concrete about him. The Dominicans kept him closeted away, like a prisoner, in some secret room in the palace.

I presented my credentials at the door and made it clear I was no ordinary messenger; I was a court calligrapher and was to personally deliver the message to someone in a position of authority. A monk led me up stairs and down corridors to the library.

I had heard of Abbot Mazy; he had recently been involved in a controversy regarding the veracity behind the lives of saints. Mazy held that the only proof of true martyrdom was that the lesson be clear. There was no point in searching for historical truths in far-off times if the message was of no contemporary value. The story was to accurately depict events, through what the proponent of the theory called the moral consistency of the story. His opponent, a Franciscan, proposed that all martyrology be reviewed to discard any cases in which there were doubts. Mazy responded that faith should always represent an effort; there was no merit whatsoever in believing what is reasonable.

The abbot was pale and his skin so white he seemed to glow in the dark. At fifty years of age, he was at once a boy and an old man. He had lost his right hand when young, and questions about the accident only infuriated him. He was sitting at a table in the library, a long, sharp penknife, several quills, and pieces of paper in front of him. He gestured to indicate that I should open the message. I used his knife and clumsily cut my index finger.

“There’s a postscript. I always start there. People write what’s least important in the body of the letter, what’s more important they hurriedly note in the postscript, and what’s truly essential they never write at all. I see it mentions your skill as a calligrapher. Do you have work?”

“I thought I would apply at the courts.”

“Don’t sell your pen so cheaply. Did you know we have our own calligraphy school? Silas Darel is our master, but he speaks to no one: he has kept a vow of silence for the last twelve years. All he does is write, shut away in an office. Have you heard of him? He designed our script.”

We had been taught the Dominican style-too rigid for my taste-at Vidors’ School. Easily distinguished by its aversion to curves and constant pressure on the paper to achieve a sense of depth, the calligraphy wasn’t seen to flow along a page but was more like a laceration. Every dissertation on calligraphy noted how Darel’s first profession, as a headstone engraver, had influenced his art.

Legend had it that, on his deathbed, a master calligrapher (whose name no one remembered) asked Darel to carve his tombstone. When he saw Darel’s skill, the master initiated him in the mysteries of calligraphy, which dated back to the Egyptian scribes. Such knowledge had been passed from master to disciple for centuries, but only when death was near. The teachers at Vidors’ School would laugh whenever older students told this story to impress the novices.

“We sometimes take our seminarians to see Darel,” Mazy said. “After watching him for a few hours, there are those who run scared and leave the profession altogether, while others discover their destiny.”

“If you have your own calligraphers, how could someone like me be of use to you?”

“We have no shortage of calligraphers, that’s true, but they are men of God. I need someone who can do impious work.”

He took the stopper off a Rillon inkwell shaped like a snail, picked up a long quill-more flamboyant than practical-and plunged it into the black ink.

“Where does Darel work?” I asked.

“There’s an office at the end of the calligraphy hall, down a few stairs. The entire palace could be his, but he rarely leaves that room.”

“Would I be able to watch him work?”

“When the time is right. Every calligrapher must confront Darel to see whether he made the right choice.”

Abbot Mazy passed me the quill and opened his hand.

“Write your name.”

It was a moment before I understood his instructions. I took his hand, whiter than paper, and slowly, fearfully, wrote Dalessius. It looked like someone else’s name there. No ink was absorbed by the abbot’s skin, and the nib was so full that rivulets seeped out from the letters to fill the lines in his hand. As my name grew into something that resembled a drawing in a fortune-teller’s tract, I could feel the abbot’s hand tremble, as if the touch of the pen transmitted pain, pleasure, or cold. He pulled his fingers into a fist and said:

“Now I’ve got you in the palm of my hand.”

A Friend of V.

The abbot told me I had passed his test but didn’t explain what my job would be.

“Come see me in a week. I’ll have a letter of recommendation for you to start at Siccard House.”

Life at my uncle’s was increasingly unbearable. He was always at work, so I could never speak to him, but his presence was made manifest through instructions given solely to inconvenience me: every night there would be new objects in my room, blocking the way, crowding the bed up against the wall. Toys I had given up for lost years ago would come crashing down; a wooden horse knocked me on the head.

One night I found a message signed A friend of V. on my pillow, asking me to come to Les Cordeliers. I had no idea how it got there, and my apprehension only grew as I walked to the Pension d’Espagne. The door was open, but the rooming house appeared to be empty; I went from room to room, afraid I’d be mistaken for a thief, until I found a man in bed, empty beds all around him, with blankets pulled up to his nose. My obvious unease identified me as his guest, and he beckoned me in.

I sat a prudent distance away, afraid he might be hiding his face because of some illness. With the covers still over his mouth, he told me his name: Beccaria. He pronounced it decisively, as if that one word were enough to erase all fear. I had once seen a portrait of Beccaria, but I distrusted painters, so generous with the distribution of balance and beauty. In any event, the man’s face was still obscured, and I was afraid he could be an impostor. Voltaire had written a brief essay praising Beccaria’s book-Of Crimes and Punishments- but no one believed it was his. That same curse had always plagued Voltaire: his authorship was questioned whenever he signed his work, while every unsigned satire was immediately attributed to him.

“Mutual friends asked me to contact you. They’re waiting for news at the castle.”