A Visit From Voltaire

by Dinah Lee Küng

  I am relieved this man speaks good English. I was dreading a country doctor who sounded like Inspector Clouseau.

  He darts to Theo’s bedside and gently places long, thin fingers on the boy’s forehead. Theo’s face is flushed red, but his sweat is cold.

  I shift into ‘competent mother mode.’ ‘Theo’s had bronchial variant asthma since he was eighteen months old, I may have given him too much Ventolin, but I haven’t got on top of the wheezing yet.’

  ‘His pulse is very high, Madame.’

  ‘Yes, well, I probably started the medicine too late. We were all distracted by the broken leg. He must’ve caught a chill on the slope while waiting for Eva-Marie to be rescued.’

  The man ignores my despairing noises. Moving Theo’s noisy nebulizer carefully out of his way, he reaches for a chair with a polite lifting of the eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, yes, please,’ I say. Only then does he sit down, so European.

  ‘The cold wind brought it on, non?’

  ‘Well, in New York, his triggers were cold air, fatigue, and over-exercise. No problem with dust mites or animals. They did allergy tests on him at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.’

  ‘Any bleeding?’

  ‘No,’ I recoil. ‘He’s never coughed up blood,’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Madame, It’s my poor English. It is so long I haven’t spoken English. I ask myself, have you bled him?’

  The room is softly lit. I hope my momentary confusion doesn’t show.

  ‘Nooo,’ I say, ‘but I do have a bottle of ephedrine, just for emergencies. I brought it from New York.’

  ‘It’s probably just as well. I was never terribly convinced by leeches or the dried toads of my father’s day. Such remedies supposedly cleanse the blood when combined with lots of liquids.’

  Peter warned me St-Cergue was rural, but leeches?

  ‘Have you tried lemonade?’ he goes on.

  ‘You did say lemonade, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oui, les citrons.’ He seems accustomed to a Doubting Thomas like me. ‘At the age of twenty-nine I caught smallpox during a house party at the Château des Maisons. The other guests fled in terror. Dr. Gervais rode out from Paris to attend me. I locked myself up and drank nothing, nothing you understand, but two hundred pints of lemonade and voilà, I was cured.’

  Those sharp brown eyes test my reaction. ‘Never underestimate lemonade.’

  ‘Lemonade.’

  ‘It can work miracles. If you’ll pardon the expression.’

  ‘Doctor, would you excuse me?’

  I leap over the broken planks and scattered nails to find Peter reading And To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street at Eva-Marie’s bedside.

  ‘Peter, please come upstairs and join us,’ I hiss. ‘I think you’ll find this Dr. Claude is a total quack. A careful quack, I’ll give him that. He’s ruled out leeches and dried toads, but he’s opting for the lemonade cure.’

  Peter glances up, uncomprehending.

  ‘I’ve had it, Peter. We camp for weeks eating off a grocery store hibachi, sleeping with bats, and blasted by Arab hip-hop. This morning we find out we’re broke, that our kitchen has to look like an army canteen, that the shippers sent the wrong boxes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘YES! And to round things off, two out of our three children are taken seriously ill. NOW we get a local doctor who prescribes lemonade for smallpox. Peter, I’m done! I’m cooked! Take me out of the oven! I want to go home!’

  A thickset man in sweater and dark pants emerges from our master bathroom, drying his hands with one of my brand new Bloomingdales towels,

  This stranger smiles politely, ‘Enchanté, Madame, Docteur Grégoire Claude, Je suis prêt pour Theodor. Or we speak the English, if you prefer it.’

  I shake Dr. Claude’s moist hand and mutter, ‘Peter, who’s the guy upstairs?’

  He shrugs, ‘The workers all left, ‘

  ‘Nobody, I guess.’

  I’ve lost my mind, that’s all. The Swiss are so sensible. We’ll deal with the small question of my sanity later.

  Chapter Two A REAL NOBODY

  The second Dr. Claude and I clamber up to the third floor.

  Theo’s rales—a sound like rolling pebbles rising from his small lungs—greet our ears before we even reach the landing. Dr. Claude runs me through the procedure: two vials of Ventolin administered via the nebulizer every three hours throughout the night, extended to an interval of four hours if the gravelly sound subsides. If Theo starts to suck hard at his stomach or the muscles of his small neck start to flutter, I should give him the first dose of ephedrine and drive him immediately to a hospital.

  As for our girl, I must bring her to the clinic for a check-up in three days. Her facial bandages will be changed, but no one can judge the damage to the nose until the swelling subsides in about ten days. He can recommend an ear, nose and throat man, and a plastic surgeon later.

  My husband accompanies Dr. Claude to the kitchen for coffee. I march back up to the attic. The pine chair next to Theo’s bed is empty. I nervously look around me, but see only packing cartons covered in a childish scrawl, ‘Theos Toy.’

  ‘People always underestimate lemonade.’

  I jump in shock. The voice came from under the low eaves at the back of the room. I wheel around and there, leaning easily against the beams in the shadow, is that lemonade guy. There is no way this weirdo is touching my child again. I move protectively in front of Theo who lies, eyes closed, breathing noisily.

  ‘What’d you say?’

  ‘Calm yourself, Madame. Sometimes it is only the puniest who survives. For example, take me, born on this very day, November 21st, the runt of five children. ‘He won’t last an hour,’ my nurse wept! She called the priest to baptize me still wet from my mother’s loins. Then a week passed, then a month and—oh, I was always sick, but here I am.’

  ‘Are you?’

  I’m playing for time. He’s probably the village idiot, somebody who’s used to this old house standing empty. If he came in through the upper back door that connects the second floor to the rising slope behind the house, he could have snuck up to the attic bedrooms unobserved. It’s just that he looks rather insubstantial in the dark. And where did he learn English?

  ‘Oui. Here to reassure you, I survived tuberculosis contracted from my own mother, then—oh, let me see—’ he ticks off diseases on his fingers with ghoulish delight, ‘dysentery, smallpox, la grippe, fever, colic, erysipelas, gout, apoplexy, inflammation of the lungs, scurvy, herpes, rheumatism, and strangury!’

  ‘That all sounds,’ I hesitate for fear of offending a loony, ‘awfully uncomfortable.’

  ‘Oui, oui. I finished off with deafness, indigestion, dropsy, falling teeth, loss of voice, neuritis, blindness and paralysis.’

  ‘Um, you seem better now. Where do you live? In the village? I’ll just go catch Dr. Claude to give you a lift home.’

  ‘Oh, he can’t see me,’ the visitor says, as if this is a small thing hardly worth mentioning.

  I fight off rising panic.

  ‘Theo?’ I nudge my son gently,

  ‘Hmm?’ He opens his eyes over his mask.

  ‘Is there anybody over there, at the end of the room?’

  Theo glances down the length of scattered boxes and toys.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Maybe the light is bad. Wait a minute.’ I shine his toy flashlight into the deeper recesses of the room. I play the beam across the wall. The visitor casts no shadow.

  ‘I’m tired,’ Theo sighs, and closes his eyes.

  ‘You demand of yourself, am I a creature of the imagination?’ the Frenchman asks blithely. ‘No. Cogito ergo sum, as they say.’ He chuckles, ‘Although I once changed that to, ‘I have a body and I think; I know no more.’

  He glances at me, ‘You catch the difference, I hope?’

  ‘More like Cogito, ergo non es, I would say—I can think straight, therefore you don’t exist, Monsieur. Am I having a nervous breakdown?’


  ‘Au contraire! I am the real me! I apologize for being somewhat materially diminished by circumstances beyond my control, although I think I could still lift something, if I just concentrate . . . ’

  The visitor grimaces almost comically with the effort of focusing on one of Theo’s Playmobil cannibals. His fingers reach out and miss entirely. With an enormous grunt, the Frenchman manages to coalesce his digits into something more solid and the second time, he succeeds in grasping the little plastic figure and lifting it an inch or two in the air.

  ‘Erh! Voilà!’

  The cannibal drops back on the table. He looks at it for a second and mutters, ‘Zut. It’s a question of monads, I think. Leibniz would know. I’ll have to practice more if I want to get anything done.’

  He has such a frustrated expression on his face that I giggle despite myself.

  ‘I trust you didn’t appear in my son’s room just to perform party tricks. Why are you here?’

  ‘Well, it’s my birthday,’ he suggests, brightening. ‘Are you giving me a fête?’

  ‘A birthday party?’

  ‘Obviously, you summoned me,’ he says, slightly offended.

  ‘Sorry, I did not.’

  ‘Pardonnez-moi.’

  He turns impatient. ‘Perhaps . . .perhaps you needed someone to remind you of the fragility and resilience of childhood, the eternal and often unwarranted fears of parents throughout the centuries? So, look whom you got! Death always stood at my elbow,’ he laughs, but there is a creepy echo that dies a second too late.

  ‘Now you plan to stand at mine?’

  ‘Well, I thought I might stay right here,’ he suggests. ‘I’m no longer alive, so I won’t take up much space or food. Although I was never able to give up coffee. Do I smell some brewing downstairs?’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘It might be entertaining to linger for a while, keep you company, help you settle in. I take it your life has changed greatly without warning?’

  I’m mesmerized. This invisible lunatic is reading my mind and I answer him carefully, racing to understand this new madness.

  ‘Well, last year I was a correspondent with twenty years of reporting in China behind me, wife of the International Red Cross delegate to the United Nations in New York’

  Wait a minute. Why am I confiding in this guy? I should be screaming for help.

  ‘And now?’ He lightly brushes some cobwebs caught in his luxurious curls. I’m beginning to suspect this character of wearing some kind of hairpiece.

  ‘Now, we’re camping in a near-derelict house in the middle of a ski station in economic decline. The wiring won’t be finished ‘til Christmas.’

  ‘Ah, bien, I see workers haven’t changed in two centuries.’

  The stranger’s sympathy is frighteningly soothing to my nerves. I can’t help continuing, ‘What’s worse, my husband loves it. He’s finally back in Switzerland, ‘the best of all possible worlds’.’

  ‘Aaaah,’ that expressive mouth breaks into a broad, knowing smile. ‘I can imagine a woman who has traveled and experienced life as you describe could not imagine being very happy in this petit village, ‘the best of all possible worlds’.’

  ‘I hold out little hope . . . ’

  ‘I made a flourishing life in exile, so to speak, dragged from the excitement of Paris, the social whirl of the Court—’

  ‘Court? There isn’t even a bookstore here.’

  ‘Madame, life is always either ennui or whipped cream. I expect today you’ve seen more whipping than cream, that’s all. You just need a friend. Reading nurtures the soul, but an enlightened friend brings it solace.’

  ‘Yes. Yes! Solace, solace! Good word! I could use some of that.’

  My burst of despair surprises even me.

  ‘Sadly, my name is not Solace, Madame. I have yet to introduce myself properly.’

  Where’s my sense of humor? Remember the Woody Allen story when he ends up playing poker with the Devil? I could unpack the chess set . . . ’You can skip the formalities. Let’s cut to the chase. Just reverse the events of today, starting with the contractor’s little announcement, in exchange for my soul. I’m ready to cut a deal. Let’s say my people call your people.’

  The visitor laughs, but it sounds kindly, not satanic. ‘Oh, chère Madame, I’m not the DEVIL—although the Jesuits do call me the Anti-Christ.’

  He stands up and puts one hand behind his back and thrusts a toe in front of him. He bows very slightly, a minimal gesture that bespeaks merely basic courtesy.

  ‘François-Marie Arouet, Seigneur de Tournay et Ferney, at your service,’ he says. He sits back down, a quicksilver motion of his slight frame. ‘You know, I overheard you downstairs just now, when you referred to me as ‘Nobody.’ I hope you now stand corrected. You may apologize.’

  ‘Well, Mr Arouet, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I should think so,’ he sniffs. ‘I’m the greatest playwright, philosopher and essayist ever.’

  ‘Ever? When exactly were you born?’

  His eyes widen. ‘Surely you’ve heard of me? Born in 1694, I came of age between the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Oh, what a period of political mayhem and social dissolution! It is I who broke the shackles of the Catholic Church over Western thinking!’

  Now I know he can’t be my own hallucination. I was a Chinese Studies major who slept through European history class. I’ll have to look him up in Wikipedia.

  ‘You gape at me, Madame? Everywhere I go, I defy that royal terror, the Keeper of the Seals. I’ve mastered the scientific theories of Newton, have won my place at last in the Académie Française and, I might add,’ his bright eyes glitter, ‘have had my luck with the ladies.’

  He takes off his woolen scarf. ‘Which reminds me, are you married or widowed?’

  ‘Married,’ I mumble.

  ‘That never made any difference before. I can always fit in. I’m a tutor to kings and empresses, a millionaire financier, a benevolent landlord, and a gentleman-farmer.’

  ‘Is that all? You can’t be the Devil. Even the Devil would’ve been more modest.’

  He ignores my sarcasm.

  ‘Non. They call me the true king of my time, La Lumière, the light. But that’s enough for now. I can see you are énervée.’

  ‘I’ve lost my mind,’ I mumble. ‘I am bantering with a transparent person.’

  ‘I leave you now to tend to your child. Bonne nuit, chère Madame.’

  With a sweeping bow, this Lord of Light goes out by Theo’s door. At least he’s got the good taste not to fade through walls.

  I sit, waiting for the next ghost to appear. The Headless Horseman? My Great Aunt Nell? Why this particular vision? I have nothing in common with this guy except, perhaps, that I graduated from UC Berkeley in the seventies, a period of mayhem and dissolution, for sure. Is this house haunted? And after a day like today, do I really deserve a ghost with a major attitude?

  Chapter Three THE PRICE OF IMAGINATION

  I bolt upright in bed.

  Harry Lime was right about Switzerland. It’s quiet out there. Too quiet. My New Yorker’s subconscious can’t stand this tranquility. I miss the comforting clatter of the garbage truck on 80th Street.

  I hear sniffles next door. Eva-Marie is crying through her bandages in the dark. Stupidly I assume that what upsets me—the broken leg, the facial wounds and the painful, inconvenient months to come—are the cause of her sleeplessness.

  As usual with my third child, I’ve got it all wrong.

  ‘I don’t want to grow old,’ she sobs. ‘Next February, I’ll be seven, and that’s so old. That’s the limit. Six is best. After six, it’s, it’s . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Over. Seven is the last time you have imagination.’

  I embrace her tightly, the edge of her plastered hip cutting into my side. I croon into her ear, ‘No, no, look at me, I’m forty-nine and I still have imagination.’

  She closes her eyes, wrinkling th
e bandages around her temples. ‘You’re different.’

  I haven’t forgotten Saturday night’s departure from lucidity, but everything was back to normal on Sunday—no apparitions in knee breeches—just hours of tedious unpacking. Having an imaginary friend at age four or even six is right on schedule. Having one at forty-nine is worrying. I fish around for more reassuring examples.

  ‘Well, then, take Theo. He’s eight and—’

  ‘Right! And he doesn’t believe in anything anymore—not even unicorns!’

  This diagnosis of Theo’s senility strikes me as a tad premature. He spent most of the weekend before the asthma attack playing I, Claudius, his beloved ‘blankie’ draped over one hairless, pudgy shoulder. I hold to one hard and fast rule: they must not watch the episode where Caligula disembowels his sister pregnant with his love child. The boys might find this too inspiring.

  ‘Playing I, Claudius takes imagination, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No, Mama. That’s acting. Roman senators were real. I mean imagining real magic things.’

  I sigh, recalling when a five-year-old Singaporean visited Alexander in Manhattan for a play-date. He marched into my bedroom at 3:58 pm, announcing it was time to watch Batman.

  ‘We don’t watch TV during play-dates,’ I told the visitor firmly. ‘In this house, we play with our imagination.’

  The child shook his head. ‘My mother hasn’t bought me one of those yet.’

  Peter and I immediately disconnected the kids’ TV from the cable feed and bought Broadway musicals, old-fashioned swashbucklers, the old Robin Hood black-and-white series—anything with more acting and imagination than special effects. I’ll have to order more. Can videos keep them speaking decent English for the next decade? Or will they start slipping into French with a backwoods Vaudois dialect? Given a few more years on this Swiss mountain, where will they fit in? Where will I?

  ‘My leg hurts,’ says Eva-Marie.

  I give her a painkiller and soon she falls asleep, stringy hair pasted to her cheeks. The garish pink cast is propped up on a doll’s bed at the foot of her mattress. I ache at the sight of those tiny toes, painted blue with washable marker. She won’t be able to touch them until after Christmas.