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 Chateau 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
