Straining under the weight of East Coast fashions, Alexander lugs their bags back out to the car and twenty minutes later, I’ve seen off their flight with regret.
‘Did you enjoy the Babes?’ I ask Peter as he sweeps up the empty bottles of our final evening.
‘Very much, except that I’m totally jetlagged. They managed to move our sleep schedule on to New York time instead of the reverse.’
‘I had a great time listening to their stories,’ Voltaire chirps up. ‘Do you think we could visit Wu Ming and Jane in Beijing?’
I glance at his ridiculous Genghis pants.
‘Of course, I’ll get myself a more up-to-date set of silks.’
Chapter Nineteen THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS
I thrust my head through the open car window at V. who is glued to the back seat, clutching a wool blanket around his shoulders.
‘Don’t you want to wave him off?’
Theo’s departure for a week of ski camp with his class is such a victory of spirit over corporal frailty that I can’t help insisting that V’ bear witness. For two weeks, our boy has determinedly fought off first a flu bug and then a runny nose, religiously inhaled his medications, and sat through two appointments with his pediatrician, all so that he could board the school bus headed to the resort area, Les Diablerets.
‘I want to be normal,’ Theo said the night before his departure, his fist clenched on his pillow. ‘I want to go with my gang.’
‘I didn’t know you had a gang.’
So on this snow-tossed Monday morning in late winter, certain that Theo doesn’t have bronchitis, pneumonia, or tuberculosis, nothing will stop me putting my towhead into that goddamned bus full of screaming kids.
‘Bougez your butt,’ I bark at V. ‘You could learn a lesson from that child!’
‘Madame, it’s a tempest out there! I prefer to remain warm here in the car.’
‘You prefer to listen to the radio,’ I say dryly.
‘A discussion of French theater.’
Radio Suisse Romande has launched another interminable discussion in cultivated voices about preserving the integrity of French drama against the onslaught of Tom Cruise and Spike Jonze.
‘News to snooze by,’ I retort.
V. has hurt my feelings. This is a big day for our family.
Alexander has already returned from a week of cross-country skiing with his class. I hardly recognized him the night he came back, his rake-thin form toned and looking two inches taller, his round cheeks reddened by the Alpine altitudes. Monsieur Martignier, the camp director, took my bookish, neurasthenic first-born and drove him thirty kilometers a day on skis. Alexander returned looking like a poster boy for the Swiss Cheese Association.
We can’t hope that Theo will be transformed that dramatically, but maybe he can have something approaching a good time. Peter finishes briefing Martignier on emergency measures in case Theo falls short of breath.
‘This Martignier looks responsible enough, but would you believe I had to explain to him what an inhaler is?’ Peter warns me, his face creased with worry.
‘Oh, oh, Toto, something tells me we’re not in Kansas,’ I joke.
‘You mean Manhattan,’ Peter corrects me with a straight face. Marriage to a Swiss brings its tiny trials.
Clusters of chatting parents, sucking on cigarettes, clutching umbrellas in the snow flurry, clog the asphalt around the luggage hold. I carry the skis and poles and Peter follows me, lugging Theo’s heavy backpack, and a second bag containing his nebulizer.
The bus engine grinds into action and anxious parents are shooed out of the way. Theo gives me a thumbs-up sign out of the back window. I say a little prayer to his guardian angel as they pull out of the parking lot. I kiss Peter off to work and struggle back through pelting ice flakes to my own car.
‘What did I miss?’ I ask V.
‘A revival of Molière next month in Paris,’ V. mutters. He sees I’m too distracted by Theo’s drama to get his point. ‘Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière, born 1622, died 1673.’
He turns his anguished face to me and moans, ‘1673! One hundred and five years before me!’
His silence as we continue down the hill to do the weekly grocery shopping in Nyon worries me. Until today, no excursion has been complete without some fun story of dirty sheets at Versailles, theatrical performances at Cirey, or letters from Fred the Great in Potsdam.
‘Nothing survives,’ he murmurs.
‘I beg your pardon?’ I’m concentrating on the curves in the road.
‘Nothing of mine has survived. Not the Dictionnaire Philosophique, Micromégas, Zadig, L’Orphelin de La Chine, Cataline, Oreste, rien, rien, rien! After La Henriade was published, all of Paris called it better than the Iliad! I wrote to my best friend Thieriot, ‘Epic poetry is my forte, or I am much deceived.’ ‘
‘Well,’ he concludes in despair, ‘I was much deceived!’
‘Stop whining. They named a boutique in Paris, ‘Voltaire and Zadig.’ I just saw it advertised in Elle.’
‘A ladies’ shop? Bah!’
‘And there’s a Voltaire County in North Dakota. Oh, did you know that Napoleon tried to get through exile in Elba by rewriting one of your tragedies?’
‘How dare he? . . .Which one?’
‘Sorry, I don’t know.’
He favors me with a curl of his thin upper lip.
‘I’m just trying to cheer you up.’
We continue driving in silence.
Suddenly, a torrent of resentment pours out of my friend.
‘I checked Amazon.com without you. Entered my name in the little ‘search’ box. I know the facts, Madame. Now I know why you did not fall back in joy at my arrival. All my plays are out of print. A few anthologies are available on ‘special’ order.’
‘Why not try the French web sites? Anyway, a lot of respectable people are only read by special order. Even my murder mystery is available only by print-on-demand from some entity named Replica Books. Sounds like something out of Blade Runner, doesn’t it?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea of what you speak. Even if my oeuvre is for sale, it’s not read, not debated.’
He bursts out, ‘Do you know what my Amazon ranking is? 5,457,000! Do you know the sales figure of Hamlet?’ Now he turns really bitchy. ‘Well, that depends on which edition you choose, doesn’t it? The name of Voltaire lingers on no one’s lips. I am not the gossip of the salons. My first drafts are not smuggled eagerly across borders. I am discussed nowhere except some moldy classrooms presided over by mediocre professeurs de collège!’
He sinks deep into an exhausted heap of hand-stitched velvet, out of my view.
‘Oh, gimme a break. Okay, you’re no longer a household name, but you’ve got a quai named after you in Paris, and a street in Geneva. As has-been legends go, you’ve got it made. Historians say the eighteenth-century practically belonged to you. You want the twenty-first too? Aren’t you being a leetle beet greedy?’
He shakes his head, his voice dripping with disdain. ‘I am nothing more than required reading. I’m dead—deader than Aristotle or Euripides, deader than Molière, mon Dieu, I am deader even than that Shakespeare! I read of a movie about him, and I taste gall. Is anybody accepting Oscars for Voltaire in Love? And I was in love many, many times!’
‘Stop pounding the window! You’re not being fair to yourself Was there anyone to compare with Shakespeare?’
His eyes are burning. This would have mortally wounded him, if he weren’t already deceased. ‘I wrote some fifty tragedies for the stage, Madame. Fifty, from L’Œdipe to Irène. It was I who introduced to the French nation a few pearls which I found in Shakespeare’s enormous dung-heap of verse! I admit he was natural, but had not le bon gout, not so much as a single spark of good taste, or knew one rule of the drama.’
I’m shocked by V.’s amazing egotism.
He backs off a little. ‘Well, all right, he had some good passages. ‘Demeure, il faut choisir et passer à l�
��instant, De la vie à la mort ou de l’Être au néant, Dieux cruels.’’’
‘Cruel Gods? Where did they come from? Was that your version? That’s nothing like ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’. You’ve lost Hamlet’s rhythm entirely!’
V, starts with indignation, ‘Certainly, you don’t imagine that I translated Shakespeare in a slavish way? There was always room for improvement. ‘Qui suis-je? Qui m’arrête! Et qu’est-ce que c’est la Mort?’’
‘No, no, listen, this is how it goes, ‘To die, to sleep no more, and by a sleep to say we end the heartache,’ and, let me see, ‘For who would bear the whips and scorns of time—’
V, translates, ‘ ‘Qui pourrait sans Toi supporter cette vie de nos Prêtres menteurs benir l’hypocrisie’’—’
‘Hamlet never said anything about lying, hypocritical priests!’
‘Well, he does in my version. I hated priests then, I hate them now, and I shall hate them till Doomsday! It adds to the spirit.’
This sounds almost apologetic. Luckily I’m driving and have to keep a straight face, He is inconsolable, determined to wallow in artistic self-pity,
‘Name one of my plays that breathes on stage today.’
I can think of no production of any Voltaire play ever advertised anywhere in my entire lifetime. This is bad.
He derives masochistic delight from my silence, ‘You see! How Jean-Baptiste Rousseau must be laughing at me! It was he who wrote Ode to Posterity, it was I who quipped so cruelly, ‘I fear, Monsieur, your work will never reach its address!’’
‘That’s quite a put-down.’
‘Now it is I who lies prostrate, down put by Posterity.’
We trudge the aisles piled with tuna fish cans and instant fondue. I’ve never known someone who can sulk so aggressively. His vanity is ridiculous, yet I pity him with his powdered wig tied nearly at the nape of his neck, his stockings clean, his shoes polished, his shirt ruffles nicely ironed, his long coat brushed. All that for a four-story shopping mall. He deserves better.
Later that afternoon, I prepare the terrain. ‘Are you so sure you missed the twentieth century?’
He’s brooding in my office, fiddling with the geometry compass he’s filched from Alexander’s backpack. He pretends to be matching his calculations to a solar system illustration in a kid’s science book.
‘I think this is incorrect, the distance between the sun and this Pluto, whoever that is,’ he says. ‘Pluto’s orbit interchanges position with Neptune’s on a regular basis, so you’re probably both right. Put that down and follow me. I want to show you something.’
We go downstairs to the bookshelves by the piano. I reach up for the photo of Leonard Bernstein unpacked so many &antic months ago. ‘Do you recognize this man?’
V. stands back, one foot posed behind the other, hands stretched out in a rectangle, as if he were Watteau composing a royal portrait sitting. He considers, he measures, he estimates. He moves closer and takes a magnifying lens out of his breast pocket to examine Lenny’s black and white pores.
‘Non.’ He shakes his head. ‘I would have remembered the pistol.’ He glances at the handwriting on the back of the picture while I continue, ‘He was one of the greatest composers and theatrical geniuses of the twentieth century.’
He refers to the signature on the back. ‘Monsieur Arthur Elgort?’
‘No, Monsieur Bernstein. Elgort’s the photographer. Read what Bernstein is saying, here, written down near the edge of the frame.’
V. reads to himself under his breath, ‘The critics will kill me.’
He hands the photo back to me. ‘Well, if Monsieur Bernstein was an enemy of the critics, then I’m sure he was a genius. Critics are nothing more than gnats who lay their eggs up the backsides of racehorses. It’s the only way they get to run the race.’
I laugh. ‘They say, those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.’
‘Those who can’t even teach are appointed to the Royal Court as critics.’
Still despondent despite this sally, he heads back to the staircase, no doubt planning a whole afternoon of pondering his vacant eternity of unfame after a brilliant life of combating L’infâme?
I don’t give up that easily.
‘Are you sure you didn’t haunt Leonard Bernstein around 1955 or ‘56?’ I call up the stairs.
‘Why are you so insistent, Madame?’ he retorts over the banister. ‘You cannot change what is. Or in my case, what isn’t. My plays and histories are forgotten. I am nul.’
‘But one of your stories, your contes, survived as a play, musical play. Candide!’
He shouts back in rebuke. ‘That silly fable about Westphalia and the Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh? You attribute to me that pack of nonsense? I have, thank God, better occupations.’
‘Nice try! You might’ve been able to deny authorship in your own day, but you can’t deny it now. Everybody knows you wrote it. It’s your most famous work. Set to music by this man, Leonard Bernstein.’
The wigged head pops back over the top of the banister. A wave of relief passes through me. He descends the stairs with a little lilt in his step. He hesitates, then dances some kind of a tuneless minuet back and forth, barely able to disguise his delight.
‘Candide? Really? That little trifle? Who would’ve thought it?’
‘A huge hit in New York.’
‘Five acts? Full orchestration?’
‘Three acts. Don’t pretend you’re not thrilled. I can order the recording.’
‘If you like,’ he says, shrugging. ‘S’il vous plaît, I mean to say, if it pleases you, Madame.’ He bows slightly and skips upstairs to resume his astronomical calculations. Worried his point hasn’t sunk in, he yells down the staircase. ‘We can listen to it any time, Madame.’
***
I carry the telephone in my pocket, hoping it never rings with news of an asthma attack. It rings the very next morning.
‘Hello, Mama?’ says Theo’s voice, so small.
‘Are you all right?’ I’m ready to jump in the car to save him.
‘I’m blowing my nose a lot. I forgot my goggles. Can you send them?’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yeah. I skied yesterday afternoon. It’s boring. My monitor is Hélène. Everybody says Gregory is better.’
‘Are you feeling all right? No short breathing?’
‘Yeah. ‘
‘Oh.’
‘I’ll give you the address to send the goggles, okay?’
V. lingers in the mornings by the mailbox, pretending he’s measuring the snow-patched front lawn for a vineyard. Maybe they can grow grapes in Lebanon or Sicily at 1100 meters’ altitude, but our latitude rules out any viniculture, no matter how many more centuries of global warming V. sits out. He watches the postwoman buzzing back and forth between the chalets in her black and yellow van, like a mail-crazed bee.
This goes on as the week progresses—the excitement before the van arrives, the little sigh once we’ve thrown out the junk mail, sorted the medical and tax bills, put aside the magazines, and tussled over the newspaper. He fills the time assembling a clipping pile of horrors—slavery in Sudan, prostitution in Thailand, debt bondage in South Asia—and filing it all in a ring binder labeled L’infâme.’
The morning before Theo returns, I find V. in the kitchen trying to open a large brown package with the food processor blade. He has discarded my Chinese chopper and my best paring knife.
‘Nothing is sharp enough,’ he complains. ‘I use all my concentration and I can’t cut through this—’
‘Let me. These boxes weren’t designed with the eighteenth-century ghost in mind.’
I wonder how he’ll handle his disappointment. This box is big enough for a dozen CDs. The packaging disgorges a thick edition of the latest Writer’s Market (8000 Editors Who Buy What You Write!).
‘Que! horreur!’ V. mutters, shrinking back, pulling back his ruffled cuffs in self-defense. ‘What is that?’
‘O
ne thousand, one hundred and twelve pages of raised hopes and a mailbag of rejections. But I ordered it to motivate me. You’ve been nagging me for weeks to get back into the tray. I figure if I just keep sending out my manuscripts, one of these eight thousand people will buy another novel of mine.’ ‘Regardez, le CD!’ he exclaims with hope, spying into the discarded bubble-pack.
‘Online access to the Writer’s Digest Data Bank,’ I read. His face falls.
‘Not my musical play?’
‘ ‘Fraid not.’
At last, Candide arrives. V. rips it open with Peter’s Swiss Army knife.
‘Book by Lillian Hellman, lyrics by John Latouche and Dorothy Parker.’ I open the notes. ‘ ‘‘A rich blend of various elements’,’ I continue. ‘Sounds promising, doesn’t it?’
V. strains to read ahead of me. ‘ ‘‘An impending disaster,’’ ’ he intones.
‘Wait, I’m not there yet. ‘Bernstein’s strong admiration for Voltaire’ . . . see, here?’
‘ ‘‘An insurmountable task’ ’. . . he scans.
‘C’mon. You’re reading only the negative stuff.’
‘I can’t help it,’ he protests. ‘That’s the way I am. I’ve never taken criticism well.’
‘You sure know how to hand it out. Listen to this, ‘ ‘A brilliant show’!’ Feel better now?’
‘ ‘‘Nonsensical plot?’’ ’ His voice cracks at that sentence.
‘ ‘‘One of Bernstein’s strongest scores’—’
‘ ‘Only rarely strikes the right note’’—’
‘ ‘‘THROWS LIGHT ON ALL THE DARK PLACES’—’ I read in his face.
‘ ‘AN UNWORKABLE BOOK?’—unworkable? My story unworkable?’
‘Oh, I’m giving up on you!’ I cry. ‘Listen! It says right here that this show was, ‘A le-gen-dar-y and u-nique clas-sic’!’
He leans over, stabbing one of his long fingers at the CD’s flyer unwinding across my lap. ‘And it says here, ‘Pretentious!’ Pretentieux!’ ’
‘ ‘Broadway craftsmanship at its most magical!’ ’
He snatches the little white booklet and practically screams at me, quoting, ‘A MESS!’ and throws the paper tangle on the floor at my feet, running to the bathroom, mumbling over his shoulder, ‘I’m going to be sick.’
A Visit From Voltaire Page 23