A Visit From Voltaire

by Dinah Lee Küng

  Monsieur Voltaire slaps his knee and explodes, ‘Exactement!’

  Alexander has not understood his own father’s French. ‘Le frein?’

  ‘The brake, Alexander,’ Peter repeats, in English. ‘Did you or anyone else release the brake?’

  ‘Nobody touched anything that looked like a brake.’

  ‘So the wagon wasn’t secured when you started playing near it?’

  The Commune officials glance at each other sideways, shifting slightly in their seats. I suspect none of them speaks English.

  ‘I guess not. It just started to move.’

  Peter looks up at the village officials. ‘I see,’ he says simply and then switching into French, continued, ‘My son has just clarified what was worrying me a little; that neither he nor the other boys touched the wagon’s brake.’

  The council of six stares at us stonily. Voltaire makes a glaring face right back.

  Peter continues, ‘My American wife and I have recently moved here, as you might know. We aren’t familiar with local procedures, we admit, but are we to understand that the wagon was left unsecured on the platform during the hours of heaviest use by hundreds of schoolchildren?’

  There is a painful pause. The hunting dog stirs and then drops his chin on his paws. The council members glance at each other and then from under lowered brows, scrutinize me.

  ‘Touché,’ murmurs Voltaire.

  ‘You say you were not alone, mon cher?’ the little woman in the hair band asks Alexander.

  ‘No, Madame. I joined the other boys who were already there.’

  ‘Could you tell us the names of the other boys who started pushing the wagon?’

  Alexander watched too many movies on the American Movie Channel back in New York for this turn in the questioning. He straightens his back and announces, ‘I will name no names.’

  ‘Bravo!’ V. shouts. ‘To the Bastille with our heads high!’

  Peter and I try not to smile and even the counselors are squirming with embarrassment.

  ‘Well,’ says the slight woman, ‘we take playing around the trains very seriously in this village. Three years ago, a child was pushed off the platform by a careless schoolmate into the path of a train. That child is dead. A housepainter was killed recently by the train. I hope you understand our concern.’ She looks long and hard at Alexander.

  The jowly hunter barks from the end of the table. ‘We won’t revoke your train pass on one condition.’

  ‘Oui, Monsieur?’

  ‘You warn those boys—when you see them—that if anything like this happens again you will all be severely punished. And they are to tell their parents about this meeting we’ve had with you today.’

  Alexander senses that torch will not be laid to stake tonight. He wags his head with frantic compliance; ‘Oui, oui, Monsieur, but don’t blame me if Pierre-Edouard Gruyère doesn’t tell his parents. ‘

  Peter sinks his head in his hands as the officials adjourn in giggles. We all shake hands and file out into the cold night.

  ‘Peter, why was everybody staring at me when it was you who mentioned the brake?’

  ‘Because, my dear wife, it reminded them that you are American. I realized that although a Swiss would never dare contemplate charging the Swiss train authorities with negligence, everybody in that room would see you as a native of the Land of Crazy Lawsuits. Like most small-town bullies, the last thing that bunch wants us to do is to involve higher authorities.’

  He smiles and puts his arm around me, The Secret Weapon. ‘Oh, there was one other thing. This morning I found the hand brake of my car down. Strange, especially for me, to forget it. I never leave the handbrake down. But it got me thinking . . . ’

  That night, I find Monsieur Voltaire dressed for bed in a flouncy nightshirt and nightcap. He is completely entwined in his revision of his ‘hit,’ La Henriade.

  ‘Thanks for coming to the tribunal. At least Alexander didn’t lose his pass. Or go to the Bastille.’

  ‘Your husband’s interjection about the brakes was a deadly thrust. Admirable.’

  ‘But not as good as a duel?’

  He sighs, ‘I would have made a wonderful second, but once again, all my training goes to waste.’

  ‘Maybe not. Was it just an inspiring coincidence that Peter’s car had been fiddled with?’

  ‘Yes, that was very opportune,’ V. murmurs.

  ‘Next time the family honor is threatened, I promise you’ll be the second.’

  He smiles. ‘Any time, Madame, any time. In the end, there was no need to worry.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Non. Had the boy been condemned to the Bastille, I would have gone, too—to guarantee treatment worthy of your standing, of course.’

  He licks two fingers and pinches out the flame of his ghostly tallow.

  Of course.

  Chapter Six THIS YOUNG HOUSE

  In our cramped Manhattan apartment, I devoured ‘shelter porn’ like Elle Decor and Architectural Digest.

  The glossies whet my appetite for home ownership; now I’ve got restoration indigestion, the life of House and Nightmare. This behemoth of bat-poop is unlike any of my rented apartments from Hong Kong to London to New York.

  The Commune of St-Cergue archives date it from I789, a two-story stone farmhouse with a wooden balcony running along the face of the second floor outside the main bedroom. We rip out a rickety outdoor stairway to discover a stone plaque dated I894 thanking one Emile V. I. Berger for donating the house to the Commune.

  A stable and granary were attached at one side. The granary door still bears someone’s penciled notes: ‘1898 décembre 31, neige,’ ‘novembre 23, I900, première neige . . . ’ A farmer shellacked yellowed pages of his almanac to its planks. The water level in the reservoir next to the house is tabulated in a crooked column of figures. Voltaire instructs me on how to get Peter to get a local roofer to repair the gutters. Soon fresh snowmelt is filling the stone tank back up to eighteenth-century levels.

  ‘Now you can shut off your water supply from town,’ V. crows. The Commune passes us a yellowed photograph circa 1920 showing a self-satisfied gentleman-farmer and family in front of the house. An enormous tree is pictured in front of the kitchen door. The tree is now gone, but one day we realize that our terrace table was sliced out of this giant.

  The house lured others, not all of them so contented. The records include a bitter correspondence between the Commune and its tenant over the appropriateness of installing indoor plumbing.

  ‘Heureusement, the tenant won. I can’t tolerate the smell of chamber pots,’ V. comments.

  With the passing decades, the goat-house became a loft. The two-foot-wide stone walls were plastered over. The hay 10ft converted to bedrooms. In the late 1960s, the last farmer’s son turned hippie and opened the house to the public as an EastWest art gallery.

  One morning I’m sweeping up toys. The marbles keep escaping the broom toward the southeastern corner. Playmobil cannons, ping-pong balls—everything rolls away. I giggle, despite my frustration; the playroom floor hugs the contours of the slope underneath. I’m suspended in childlike delight at a house so organic that it lies on the hill like a heavy cat fitting the contours of an old sofa. This house was born during the reign of the Emperor Ch’ien Lung over China, Louis XVI over France, Catherine the Great over Russia, and the presidency of George Washington over the infant USA. This wayward floor was measured out the same year the Bounty was trolling the Tahitian islands for breadfruit. In 1789 builders rolled stones for these walls while French royalty rolled over cobbled Parisian streets to the guillotine.

  ‘We were crazy to take this on,’ Peter mutters, standing on his toes in the dank basement, a pocket mirror in hand, to peer over our new red heater. The contractor positioned the digital read-out scarcely an inch from the ceiling and cheerily left us with a manual in seven languages—none of them English.

  ‘Well, I’m glad we did, despite everything. Can you read it?’

&nb
sp; ‘Upside down.’

  I realize I am going to love this house almost as much as I love the man who gave it to me.

  Monsieur Voltaire despises it, starting with the heating.

  ‘Your husband was cheated. I’m never warm. This climate is horrible. It’s so difficult to work. Right now I would care for nothing but the sun.’ He wears half a dozen layers of clothes at all times, though all our Swiss neighbors comment that our expensive system overheats, implying immoral wastage.

  ‘I’m sorry, Monsieur. Peter got up at four this morning to see why the heating stopped. Now’s he trying a new program setting.’

  ‘Well,’ he rolls his eyes impatiently, ‘Evidemment, it doesn’t work. In Cirey, I had up to forty fires burning at one time. My guests were always comfortable.’

  Second, he doesn’t like the landscaping. Apparently he’s an expert on that, too.

  ‘You have no allées, no corridors, no front wings, no arches, Madame. You must allow me to assist you in the redesign of your estate. When we arrived at the Châtelet château, it was a derelict tenth-century ruin with no comforts, no refinements. Now, a little fountain or birdbath over there—’

  ‘—would freeze up at these heights.’ I give him a chilly look.

  V. pouts off to the office to rework some theatrical lemon entitled Artémire. Apparently, the audience booed it off the stage the first time round, but nothing can discourage his appetite for rewriting.

  A shutter suddenly slams against the window; the old bronze latch shaped like an angel has slipped a wing sideways. A snowstorm is moving towards us in flurries of cotton batting lumps. This will be the third storm of the season, possibly the biggest yet. Snow starts tumbling down on the paving stones.

  ‘Are you up to shoveling?’ I shout at V. through a scarf wrapped tightly around my hat. My fashionable fur toque looked wonderful entering the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for a United Nations General Assembly reception. Worn with a borrowed red ski suit at 1100 meters’ altitude, it looks ridiculous.

  Sheltering his aquiline features with a pale hand, V. peers at me from the kitchen door through the whirling snow.

  ‘Madame, I do not shovel. This unhappy machine doesn’t allow heavy labor of that sort. I am a playwright and versifier. Not to mention dead. All the concentration of energy in the world couldn’t lift that.’

  ‘You know, you’re not the only intellectual around here!’ I shout over howling winds. ‘I’d rather be writing than doing this, don’t kid yourself! If you don’t ‘do shovel,’ what can you do?’

  ‘Hunt venison?’ he whimpers through swirling ice confetti. I’m not convinced that this is even something he did very often back in Champagne.

  ‘Never fear, Madame! I know how to make myself useful.’ He dives back into the house, probably to study the coffee machine instructions. After an hour of arctic misery, I shuffle back into the kitchen to shed my soggy boots.

  ‘You should drink something to warm you,’ he scolds me.

  ‘Thanks loads. Good God!’ In my surprise, I trip over my half-discarded leggings.

  ‘What is it?’ He jumps too.

  ‘Your hair!’

  I can’t help but gawk. His abundant curls are gone. Instead, lank brown hair lies flat against his skull, ending in fine tendrils at the nape of the neck. He reaches instinctively to the back of his head.

  ‘My hairs? What is wrong with my hairs?’

  ‘Oh, I guess that’s it. It’s your own hair. It’s not a wig.’

  He sighs. ‘Mais oui, Madame. But it’s hardly in good taste to comment on such things. I never mention your tooths.’

  ‘My tooths? What about my teeth?’

  ‘Well, just as my wigs are false, obviously your teeth are, shall we say a little too white, too straight? Hmm? I promise I won’t jump to the ceiling on the day I see you take them out.’

  ‘How dare you! These are my own teeth!’

  ‘You take me for a fool? A woman of nearly fifty with all her own teeth? Unheard of!’ He laughs.

  ‘I insist, Monsieur. These are all MY teeth.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Impossible.’

  I bare my gums at him. He leans forward, peering at the upper and lower sets of molars, shaking his head and muttering slowly, ‘Ex—tra—ord—i—naire. I have grasped the principles of the telephone and the flushing pierced chair, but this I cannot believe.’

  ‘Now that we’ve got the question of my teeth straightened out, please tell me how you’ve made yourself useful.’ He leads me upstairs to my office, where I find my novel-in-progress scattered over the desk.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been reviewing your papers. I might be able to help.’

  I’ve only published one small novel so far, so maybe he can be useful. After all, he’s offering to let me pick the brains of the most successful French author of the eighteenth century.

  ‘I gather it was one bestseller after another for you. What do you advise?’

  ‘First, I think the subject of your novel is beneath you.’

  ‘Beneath me? It’s a murder mystery set in Himalayan Tibet. I’d say that’s pretty elevated.’

  ‘Very humorous, Madame. Le Thibet may be an interesting place for all I know. What I meant was, your writing is too vulgar, too commonplace, too literal. You should never, never, never write about real people or everyday things.’

  ‘Never? You just eliminated half the canon of twentieth-century literature.’

  ‘Mais non! A literary work must be lofty, relying on classical references, allegory, metaphor, and structure. You’re writing about mountains? Then of course, situez your story on Mount Olympus. And all these silly chapters. Try to divide the action into five acts.’

  ‘Five acts.’

  ‘And of course, it must rhyme.’

  I smell trouble. Maybe hit literary formats don’t endure over centuries as well as farmhouse foundations. But I don’t want to offend Voltaire, of all people.

  ‘Well, times have changed. Styles change. And remember, this is a novel, not a play.’

  ‘Oui, bien sur, but surely the rules of literature—of good taste and of structure remain strict. Five acts is the rule.’

  ‘Structure and pace are important, of course. I’m just not so sure anybody wants to read a rhyming five-act murder mystery set on Mount Olympus.’

  ‘It worked for me,’ he insists. ‘Now, to improve the dialogue, you should read your stories out loud. Better yet, ask your neighbors to read the parts.’

  ‘I’ll read out loud. My neighbors? Forget it.’

  ‘When I ran out of neighbors, I used marionettes.’

  I look him square in the face. ‘You’re sure this’ll help get me published again?’

  ‘What does your printer say?’

  ‘Printer? You’re sitting on it. Nowadays we go through agents and editors. My ex-agent sold my first mystery, divorced his second wife, and disappeared to Prague with his third.’

  ‘Editors! Reviewers! Insects that can only get themselves noticed by stinging! And literary agents? Even worse! I could show you all society poisoned by this class of person who can’t find any honest occupation, be it manual labor or service. Unluckily knowing how to read and write, they become the brokers of literature, live on our works, steal our manuscripts, falsify them, and sell them.’

  ‘You must’ve spent time in New York.’

  He brushes off this dubious compliment and sits down in my rocking chair, his fingers toying with an ornate silver letter opener.

  ‘No, no, I’m just an old hand at publishing. My best childhood friend Thieriot acted as my agent. The rascal drove me mad! He spent all my earnings from La Henriade and told me that they were stolen from his house while he was attending Mass! We both know the man never prayed in his life!’

  ‘Never!’ I concur.

  ‘And that so-called friend Maupertuis put out a pirate edition of one of my works. To prevent any more piracy, I split my story Zadig into two separate releases. Oh, then
there were censors, lawsuits—nothing changes in the literary world! And one last thing . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Could you write a bit lighter? A bit wittier?’

  ‘Well, that’s easy for you to say. Where’s the Wit? I mean, like, ‘Be Funny.’ You can’t do it on command, can you?’

  He looks surprised. ‘Why not? It’s easy. Of course, good writers are only witty in the right place, they never strive after smartness, they think sensibly, and express themselves clearly.’

  ‘Just like that, huh?’

  He leans back and smiles from the sheer memory of his craft. ‘You just think of a startling comparison, or a delicate allusion, or a play on words. You might use a word one way when your listener will first hear it the other way. Or a sly way of juxtaposing ideas not usually associated with each other—’

  Voltaire rises from the rocking chair and rests his chin on one laced cuff, gazing over the windowsill at the distant lake, lost in memory of wittier days. ‘It is the art of finding a link between two dissimilars—or a difference between two similars, the art, Madame, of saying half of what you mean and leaving the rest to the imagination—’

  V. breaks off his reverie and turns back to me, laughing at himself, ‘ . . . and I would tell you much more about wit, if I had more of it myself.’

  ‘Aren’t we modest? You never had any problems with writing, did you?’

  ‘Mais non. I had failures all the time. I never stopped working long enough to worry. I was always revising, juggling my works in progress. I always had a new scene waiting in the wings, a book at the printers, a pamphlet in the bonfires.’

  ‘Keeping your name in play, so to speak.’

  ‘Oui. I read some of my chapters or verses at salons, just to get people gossiping and tittering, ‘Oh! That will put him in the Bastille for sure!’ People were always copying out what they heard, publishing it without my permission and leaving me to take the blame for some foul writing in the extreme. It is far better to be silent than to increase the number of bad books, you know.’

  ‘Maybe . . . ’ I say, trying to imagine reading my mystery to the electrician and carpenter over lunch at the pizza house down the road, ‘ . . . any other suggestions?’