A Visit From Voltaire

by Dinah Lee Küng

  I launch myself into wrapping paper with Rosemary Clooney warbling on the CD player. V. has seized the morning to watch TV. Our video library fascinates him, but his choices are usually drowned out by the kids’ arguments over Groundhog Day versus The Pink Panther.

  An hour later, I hear his light step mounting the stairs to my office.

  ‘Lord, let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will, but as thou wilt, sayeth ET.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I stop ripping scotch tape and look up at him, leaning in the doorway, tapping his small leather notebook with a quill.

  ‘I refer, Madame, to the Agony in the Garden, St. Matthew 26. It has been revised by one Monsieur Spielberg. He cast a monk-like alien as Christ who goes in agony into the garden on the eve of his death in a plastic tunnel overseen by Philistines in microbe-proof space-suits who don’t recognize him as the Messiah.’

  V. takes a huge breath, before continuing, ‘Le ET then dies and miraculously rises from the dead, ascends into heaven, and no doubt is now seated at the right hand of the Father, a Greater Alien than Ourselves, forever and ever, Amen.’

  ‘ET? Jesus?’.

  ‘Madame,’ he sneers, ‘Is that light bulb of a little red heart beating away in his reptilian breast not an illusion to the pierced Sacred Heart of Jesus? Non?’

  ‘Possibly. What are you up to?’

  He refers to his notes. ‘Well, there is The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Of course, the lion Aslan is another Jesus, crucified on the stone table. His disciples Lucy and Susan—two soppy Magdalenes if ever I saw—weep as the noble Beast offers up his life in atonement for that nasty Edmund’s sins. Then, whoosh!’ V.’s quill flies through the air tickling my nose, ‘The Lion rises from the dead and vanquishes the White Witch.’

  He adds dryly, ‘Quelle surprise.’

  ‘Well that’s easy to explain. The Namia books were written by C.S. Lewis, a Christian theologian—’

  V. silences me with impatience, ‘And now, Star Wars —’

  ‘Star Wars?’

  ‘Clearly penned by Jesuits. There is the virgin birth of Arkadan, and then the Trinity of the Father and the Son who is named Luke Somebody—where is it?’ He checks his notes, ‘A nice reference to the Book of Luke. Anyway, there is the lost son, in whom godlike powers are dormant until manhood, when he discovers that The Force is With Him—excusez-moi—with us. Everybody goes around saying, ‘It is the will of the Force,’ just like ‘the will of God’ dribbled off the lips of priests. Actually, I think The Force is much better than the Holy Ghost, n’est-ce pas? After all, we wouldn’t want to insult ghosts, would we? Hmm?’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ I ask guardedly, leaning back from the rolls of green and red paper scattered around me.

  ‘Think?’ V. shouts, waving his hands in frustration. ‘I’m HORRIFIED, Madame! It was bad enough when the Jesuits thrust these impossible fables down the throats of children in my time. Now it’s an infamy. They’re indoctrinating your children with stories coded as astronomical animal adventures!’

  ‘And you’ve broken their insidious code?’

  ‘Madame, I know Christian theology when I see it! I had two hundred volumes on Christianity in my library and what’s worse, I read them all.’

  He mutters to himself at the memory, ‘It was like doing the rounds of a lunatic asylum.’

  ‘Now wait. You believe in God, You refer to him often. Mon Dieu this, mon Dieu that.’

  He waves an elegant hand in protest. ‘That’s not the issue, Madame. These works are ill-disguised reiterations of the Christ myth. A disgusting insinuation of organized religion into innocent minds. I find no Enlightenment in your playroom!’

  ‘Miracle on 34th Street? One of my favorites, I should warn you.’

  ‘Abominable! That poor little Sharon, battling unassisted for the powers of Deductive Reasoning, is defeated by a tidal wave of superstition and sentiment in the name of a mythical figure called Santa Claus-of whom I’ve never heard. Frankly, I prefer even Christ to that idiotic fat man.’

  ‘What else have you been watching?’

  ‘Urn, Heidi! Yes!’ He flips eagerly through his notes, ‘Another disgusting Jesus allegory, the way Heidi cures Clara in a wheelchair with nothing more than a wave of her hand, ‘Rise up and walk.’ Surely you recognize Jesus curing the Paralytic at Capernaum, St, Luke, chapter five!’

  ‘Now how did I miss that? Thomas the Tank Engine?’

  He breathes a sigh of relief ‘Ah, now, I like Thomas. A faithful representation of the natural social order. Sir Topham Hat represents the nobility, the engines are the bourgeoisie, and the disruptive wagon cars the illiterate laborers in the field. It would be hopeless to try to educate the canaille—it only spoils them for the plow—and the engines do a good job of managing them. No argument there.’

  ‘It was written by a clergyman.’

  His eyebrows fly upwards in alarm. ‘A Catholic?’

  ‘No, an English Protestant.’

  I hate that smug smile.

  ‘Well, do you believe in God?’

  ‘But certainly, Madame. Can you examine the workings of a clock and not believe that there was a watchmaker responsible? The existence of the universe proves there is a God. But everything that goes beyond the adoration of a Supreme Being and submitting one’s heart to his eternal order is sheer superstition. Still this Christmas!’ He waves a disgusted arm over my glittery mess. ‘By now, I would have expected to find a worthy successor to Christianity, a secular faith, if you will.’

  ‘You’re visiting the post-Christian era. We’ve replaced Mass with crystals, astrology, numerology, and aromatherapy. We use candles and incense to worship in our bubble bath, instead of at the altar.’

  He looks confused, but hopeful. ‘Astronomy has become the new religion? The study of the stars?’

  ‘You misheard me. I said astrology. Tea leaves for airheads.’

  ‘Ah, you mean superstition. That must be attacked. Madame du Châtelet wrote six volumes exposing the contradictions, improbabilities and injustices described in the Bible. Surely you’ve heard of her Examination of Genesis?’

  ‘ ‘Fraid not.’

  ‘Tssk, tssk. How delinquent your modern printing houses are! Religion is something for one’s housemaid. Mass is for the masses. I insisted that d’ Alembert and Condorcet wait until my servants left the dining room before we conversed openly about the proofs of God’s existence or otherwise.’

  ‘Very wise, I’m sure.’ I’m trying hard to keep a straight face.

  ‘But Faith, now you might ask what is Faith?’ V. muses to himself

  ‘I’ll bite, What’s Faith?’

  ‘Is it to believe that which is evident? No, It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme and intelligent Being. I need no Faith for that.’

  I rest back on my haunches, Dentist Barbie in one hand.

  ‘Monsieur Voltaire, does all this mean you’re coming to Christmas Mass with us, or not?’

  He heaves a weary sigh,

  ‘In Paris, Midnight Mass was just one big social event, While I was burying myself in Cirey, restoring Madame du Châtelet’s derelict dump of a house, she was gallivanting all over Paris entreating that mathematician Maupertuis to go to Mass with her.’

  He sounds as green as his emerald ring.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I have evidence! Listen to what I found hidden amongst all the jewelry I gave her—’

  He unfolds a faded pastel sheet of paper from his vest pocket. A beautiful scent of heliotrope, musk, and roses hits my nostrils—the lingering traces of Émilie’s perfume. He assumes what must have been the typical posture of a Versailles coquette. With one hand, he fans himself with his little notebook, as if it were a lacy delicacy rimmed with feathers,

  His voice jumps an octave and he reads the note, simpering, ‘‘Paris, Friday, Christmas night, 1734, I would rather still be in Cirey and know that you were still in Basle, than to
see as little of you as I do, I want to celebrate Elohim’s birthday with you’ and by Elohim she means Jesus, of course, ‘See that you come tonight and drink his health with me and Clairaut. I shall expect you between eight and nine and then we shall go together to Midnight Mass and listen to the Christmas psalms’—’

  ‘Hardly incriminating.’

  ‘Wait, wait, listen, there’s more. “—accompanied by organ music; from there I shall take you home. I am counting on this”,’ Voltaire’s brown eyes glint red. ‘Take you home?’

  ‘Well, maybe now I know why you really dislike Christmas,’ I say under my breath watching him flounce down the office stairs in a huff.

  Peter and I have decided the children are still too young for Midnight Mass, which is a shame because our priest is a Congolese missionary. Facing a dearth of homegrown priests in millennial Switzerland, Holy Mother the Church has assigned this blackest of shepherds to minister to us lost white sheep of St-Cergue. This is somewhat like the village’s namesake, the Irish monk St. Cyr who crossed the Jura range a thousand years ago carrying the written word back to illiterate Europe. He reached our crossroads, and as the legend goes, stopped at a hut where the Les Cytises now serves pizzas, for a drink. The bar service was no doubt even slower in those days, so the good saint moved on.

  It’s time to start some new traditions. I’ve settled on reading A Christmas Carol out loud every night, although Dickens’s vocabulary is a little difficult for Eva-Marie. The children are wide-eyed under Eva-Marie’s lumpy duvet as they await the arrival of the third and most frightening of Dickens’s ghosts, the withering child-specter of Christmas Future.

  What strikes me rereading Dickens’s passages is not the cheery Victorian Christmas ‘future’ of plum pudding and jigs, but the Christmas ‘past’—the industrial bleakness of polluted fog seeping through frozen keyholes, rapacious rag dealers, whisky-sodden revelers, thin scarves, and second-hand ribbons. And after hearing V.’s relentless attacks on the domination of the Church, I’ve noticed for the first time that Dickens’s characters are celebrating a Christmas almost as secular as any in twenty-first-century New York.

  Finally, Scrooge falls on his knees, screeching, ‘Spirit, hear me! I am not the man I was,’ and ends up spraying his money and good cheer all over town. Tiny Tim did NOT die after all.

  ‘God bless us, everyone,’ I cheer in my best crippled-little-English-boy voice.

  I close the book. Not a sound, I look up and see that both Theo and Eva-Marie are sound asleep.

  ‘That was pretty good, Mama,’ Alexander says.

  ‘Get upstairs before Santa Claus finds you here in the hallway,’ I whisper.

  He looks at me with those huge eyes for a long minute. I realize he is about to tell me something I’m not ready to hear. Somewhere between last Christmas and this, between 80th Street and our farmhouse, my eldest son who half-believes in Voldemort has stopped believing altogether in Santa Claus. Reading my dismayed expression, he checks his impulse.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. As he drags his sluggish brother up to the third floor, I hear Theo mumbling, ‘Did I miss the fourth ghost?’

  ‘You must love Dickens,’ I say to V, ‘I don’t think Jesus was mentioned even once.’

  ‘Oh, I appreciate religion, Madame, a noble lie, damned stuff for the mob, but a consoling myth. Imagine the risks of atheism to social peace, One needs a mythology to keep the majority in check, In short, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Monsieur Scrooge.’

  With obvious affection, he wishes me, ‘Joyeux Noel, ma très chère Madame,’ and with an elegant bow and the slightest of kisses blown from his fingers, he retires.

  Chapter Thirteen MISSION IMPLAUSIBLE

  Hong Kong’s fascination included meeting all varieties of people and learning how they’d ended up in the Crown Colony.

  Usually something had driven them from home—the dreariness of a farmhouse in Topeka, say, or the poverty of a paddy field in Guangdong, the banality of a sun-bleached, Sydney suburb, or the depression of a grim industrial town in northern England.

  Sharing these origins around the Foreign Correspondents’ Club bar, or better yet, watching someone hide them, was intriguing. Storytelling. This was how I grew up in LA, a teenager in orthodontic braces and a scoliosis body cast, listening to my parent’s friends tell stories over a Sunday brunch.

  Their guests were often actors or movie production people who had come from all over the country to take their chance on ‘the industry.’ These meals might break up as late as six in the evening, leaving my impressionable ears full of wonderful anecdotes or sadder tales of broken dreams. One Italian-American actor, Michael had just finished a film where he played an Apache next to cowboys Fonda, Stewart, Widmark and other stars. Gulping his Bloody Mary, Michael told my parents ruefully, ‘When the cast met on set for the first day’s shooting, I was the only guy there I didn’t know . . .’

  In St-Cergue, everyone knows everyone. Two days after Christmas, I see our lanky, erstwhile carpenter and spouse, looking like Jack Sprat and his heavyset wife, clearing snow around the stone cottage behind Eva-Marie’s two-room schoolhouse. They themselves live in a wooden chalet not far from our farmhouse. A couple of explanations occur to me: that bereft of carpentry work, they’re shoveling to meet the bills or else (and more charitably), that a disabled neighbor needs assistance. The truth does not occur to me, not even once, and that just shows how little I’ve grasped the social underpinnings of this hamlet.

  The house belongs to his own mother.

  This never crossed my mind: that this village is peopled with many generations of the same family, that it’s normal for a European village to be full of the people that we emigrant Americans left behind. For hundreds of years, my St-Cergue neighbors have been distilled by farewell party after farewell party down to the people who want absolutely no change.

  Any day now, DNA experts may map the ‘we never moved’ gene. They should name it after St-Cergue. Peter jokes he WILL run for mayor and, no doubt, win on the success of his campaign slogan, PAS DE CHANGEMENT! NO CHANGES! I try to organize the local mothers into a roster for a ‘Lunch Club,’ so that we could take turns babysitting the kids at the school gym. The system is based on a patrol calendar that St. Boniface parents devised to rid the streets around East Side private schools of drug-pushers. I propose as follows: one lunch hour of surveillance per month is required of each mother, and in exchange, she can send her kid with a brownbag lunch as often as she likes the rest of the month.

  Three dozen mothers sign up, thrilled at help with lunchtime babysitting. All but two are outsiders like me.

  ‘It’s obvious why you can think up something like that,’ says the plumber admiringly as he replaces the toilet seat he himself broke four months ago during the first installation job. ‘You’re a foreigner.’

  ‘You’ll never get the locals up there to change their ways. Those women love preparing a hot lunch every day. It’s their raison d’être,’ smugly warns school director M. Villar when we solicit his written support.

  Sadly, M. Villar is right. The ‘Lunch Club’ gets off the ground, but never flies higher than the treetops. A hostile curiosity pervades the schoolyard at École Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the local women watch the kids of ‘outsiders’ troop off to ‘Lunch Club.’ They lean against their gas-guzzling jeeps and murmur through their anorak collars. If we foreign mothers don’t cook a decent hot lunch for our kids, and we’re not doing the nine-to-five down in Geneva, what are we doing with our stolen time? Who the hell do we think we are?

  Peter is short-tempered these days with my inability to see the positive side of village life. When I complain that life is boring here, his curt response is, ‘Of course there is intrigue in a village. Lots of it. Nothing but intrigue.’ He sips his morning coffee quickly.

  ‘Yeah, right, the raging passions of the lady who runs the tourist kiosk. I’m talking about big-time intrigue
—diplomatic secrets, arms dealing.’

  ‘Arms dealing? Everyday life as a foreign correspondent, I suppose . . . ’

  ‘Well, not every single day, but people, events, were unpredictable. They told great stories. They lived great stories. It wasn’t such a bad life.’

  ‘The life I dragged you away from to give you a six-bedroom house in a ski resort, three children, and the freedom to write your mysteries.’ Peter frowns, discouraged. ‘I thought you wanted a different life.’ He’s getting that testy sound in his voice.

  ‘I never said that. I liked my life as a foreign correspondent. It just wasn’t compatible with raising three kids without leaving them in the care of some hired person, which I don’t want to do. But that doesn’t mean I signed up for life in purdah. At least in New York, I could have lunch with old colleagues from Business Week . . . ’

  V. raises an eyebrow with disapproval as he eavesdrops on this marital tiff. He hisses urgently, ‘Madame, curb your discontent! When a man has left his youth behind he needs a woman of easy temper. The burden of affairs makes such consolation all the more necessary.’

  He then indulges in one of his least appealing habits—sticking small bundles of snuff up his nose.

  Peter looks at the coffee machine. ‘Is that machine hissing?’

  ‘You’re going to be late,’ I answer glumly.

  Angered that he’s made to feel guilty for escaping to the office during Christmas week, Peter reacts defensively. With just enough of a displeased clink of his C-SPAN mug on the counter, he exits for work.

  My husband has a point. I was hardly addicted to the adrenaline of the battlefront, but he’s figured that out anyway. My beat was business and politics—China’s boom and bust economic cycles, the Taiwan issue, the Hong Kong property market, the end of the Colony itself. . .