disappear.
The calligrapher’s silence was like a glass wall around him. I’ve heard that focus is a form of prayer; if that’s the case, this man was most certainly praying. The light coming in through a small window fell across a Venetian inkwell filled with blood.
I was trying to see what Darel was writing, looking for my name among the red words, when the answer came from behind me.
“He’s writing our history,” said the abbot, who had come in quietly. “But he’s not bound by the usual rule of waiting until things have happened. He’s finished with the past and is now busy with the future. Our enemies have the
The sound of pealing bells seemed to reach us from far away. The abbot unrolled a piece of paper before me.
“I want you to write your confession. Who sent you and why. Every word must be true. Our master calligrapher doesn’t hear but only sees, and he can recognize the hesitation of a lie in handwriting. If that happens, he will plunge his quill into your neck before you know it. I’m sorry I won’t be here to watch the exam, but the envoys from Rome are waiting.”
A small inkwell was set in front of me and a quill placed in my hand. The abbot hurried to the door, accompanied by the keeper of the keys. The other guard had disappeared. Darel opened a drawer and pulled out a sharpened quill, the tip so pointed it would tear the paper at the slightest touch.
I slowly wrote the truth, wondering whose blood was now my ink. I tried to delay putting the name Voltaire on paper. Darel, who didn’t read the words but only the handwriting, must have noticed something because he attacked me with his quill, wounding me on the face. The pain forced me to stop. I pulled out a handkerchief, and when I brought it to my cheek, a strange symbol was imprinted on it.
I didn’t want him to hurt me again. What was so absolutely true that Darel would refrain from attacking me? I recalled how we used to repeat his name, in secret, in the cloisters at Vidors’ School. I had finally seen the legend, and the legend was going to kill me. Slowly, as slowly as the automaton, I wrote the text the bishop was writing at the very same time before the eyes of Rome:
DO NOT LOOK FOR THE BISHOP IN THESE HANDS…
Hieroglyphic
The envoys from Rome had read the Jesuit interpretation of
I heard a commotion in the distance and, through the window, saw monks fleeing from the Roman soldiers. Doors that were being ripped open and slammed shut in the distance called out to Signac, the keeper of the keys. My guard understood his duty lay elsewhere, and he was faithful to the end.
Darel paid no attention to what was going on outside but focused solely on the task he had been given. I admired his infinite concentration: not once did he turn his head to look out the window. He was indifferent to it all-and simply wrote.
Down there, in the geometric garden, the keeper of the keys, in bloodied clothes, obliterated all symmetry. Staggering, he battled four men whose daggers had already wounded him. He mortally injured one but lost his weapon in the thrust and very nearly his hand. Just when it seemed he had lost, he pulled out two colossal keys, destined for who knows what unimaginable doors. True to their purpose, they opened two skulls. The only foe left standing leaped on the giant, who tripped over one of the wounded and fell into the black pond.
Signac tried to remove the weight that was pulling him down, but the keys never ended: once he had undipped the keys to the main doors, there were still those to the cellar, not to mention the great doors to the garden, the chapel, the secret chambers, the museum, the catacombs, the calligraphy hall, Darel’s office. It may have been a gust of wind that blew from one end of the palace to the other, but the moment Signac hit bottom I heard distant doors slam in what sounded like a funereal salute. A school of disconcerted sturgeon swam in circles above the fallen giant.
Darel was prepared to discover my lie but, inspired as it was by the truth, never saw the final stroke coming: my quill leaped from the page and plunged into his neck. I stood prepared for his response, but he never even looked at me. Darel knew how to recognize the stroke of a pen; he knew this was the last word. He covered his wound with a white hand that was soon red and walked to his desk. With a tremor that would surely have mortified him, he drew the same symbol he had earlier drawn with a steady hand on my face.
In the years that followed, every time I looked in a mirror, I envied the hand that had written that symbol. At the time it seemed to have no meaning. Whenever I suffered from insomnia, I would copy it over and over until I was sure I was about to solve the mystery, but then I would fall asleep.
Only years later, here in this new land, did I discover its meaning in an old newspaper, when the truth about Egyptian hieroglyphics came to light: it was the hieroglyph for the god Thoth, who invented writing. But how could Darel have known that? It was then I remembered the story I’d heard at Vidors’ School: the story of an ancient tradition of scribes that had continued uninterrupted across continents and through catastrophes.
Sometimes, when I look at my face by the light of the moon in a small, broken mirror that hangs on my wall, I tell myself that Darel marked me so I would know something grand and secret ended with me.
Inventory
On a corner of my desk is all the work I have to do: write up agreements for immediate signature, detail expenses from the last two months, prepare a clean copy of two court rulings. Any documents that put the security of the state at risk are entrusted to someone else. If they see me as being so different and, therefore, suspicious, it’s not because they’re thinking of France but of that enormous and exotic realm: the past.
After the events at Arnim Palace, I returned to Ferney, where I worked as calligrapher for seventeen years. I never did set up my workshop with quills and inks, having chosen a safer and more idle life instead. In the mornings I attended to Voltaire’s correspondence and sometimes his books; in the afternoons I dealt with his commercial paperwork and drafted documents. It was a peaceful job, and I would have liked it to last forever.
Many years later, when Voltaire announced he was going to Paris, I felt there was nothing left for me at
