A Visit From Voltaire

by Dinah Lee Küng

  I’m on my knees, sweeping up porcelain slivers before small bare feet reach the kitchen. My evening’s serenity lies shattered along with the butter dish.

  Voltaire looks deeply upset. ‘When I heard about the devastation in Lisbon, I wrote:

  Dangers and difficulties man surround,

  Doubts and perplexities his mind confound

  To nature we apply for truth in vain

  God should His will to human kind explain

  He can only illume the human soul,

  Instruct the wise man, and the weak console . . .

  That night, while Peter is reading a story to the boys and Eva-Marie is splashing in her bath, V. hauls his weightless frame off for one of his regular evening walks along the cow trails above the house.

  I take advantage of his absence to check my e-mail.

  Immediately I sense something amiss. I have a message from Judy, the widow of that brilliant journalist David who intoned ‘shame’ at the Foreign Office officials. Or rather, Judy, happily resettled in Africa with her second husband, seems to have sent me a message. Strangely, the title of the message is a reply to an e-mail I sent her more than six months ago.

  I realize it is from her husband who had hurriedly used a very old message of mine to instantly contact me by reply mail. I feel an icy and foreboding hand reaching for me as I read, ‘I must inform you we have been involved in a terrible car accident. Judy is alive but . . .’ he gives no more details, but asks us to wait for more news.

  The dizziness and fear that floods me has a sickening finality to it. I fumble at my computer, mis-sending, then losing the message, flailing at the wrong keys. I realize that my old friend and I have communicated so regularly bye-mail since her move to Africa, I have never had the telephone number of her new residence. A blank nausea washes over me.

  I reach someone at his office who is diplomatically reticent. ‘Here is the home number, but I’m afraid I am really not in a position to give you the details.’

  I suddenly flash on a memory of Judy in Hong Kong in 1992. She’s laughing as she carries serving dishes to the table at which are seated various of my girlfriends. She’s throwing a farewell dinner before my departure from Hong Kong for my new life in New York with Peter and the boys.

  I look at the time. I’ve lost half an hour in fumbling. I finally reach Judy’s husband.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ I hear him swallow his resignation to something so ghastly, he must gird himself to merely say the words. ‘We were driving outside town . . . a truck didn’t see us. It swerved and smashed into the side of the car where Judy was sitting. The car was completely destroyed—’

  My friend—?

  ‘And when I came to, there was my wife, bleeding all over. They wanted to give her a blood transfusion in the local clinic—’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I blurt out, thinking of H.I.V. contamination of blood supplies.

  ‘Well, I refused that, of course, and luckily we got a doctor in an ambulance to come out from Harare. . .’ Another memory of Judy sitting on a sunny terrace in August, gold earrings shining in the late evening light. We’re laughing and reminiscing, talking about mutual friends and loves and long ago in Hong Kong . . .

  ‘ . . . she was dying from loss of blood.’

  Judy takes my history with her. My laughs, my links to so much. I’m listening like a robot, taking notes by force of habit like a reporter. When you are unable to think, write it down.

  ‘The arm was very damaged, the left arm. They had to cut.’

  It takes me a full three seconds to take in what he’s said.

  They have cut off her left arm.

  ‘I see,’ I say, steadying myself, to listen to more? That wall of fear that had been teetering over me since the e-mail on my screen appeared crashes down. An arm or a leg or an eye. All the hints, the reticence lay there, like lentils down a terrible trail.

  A few more seconds of this. I ask, is he whole, unharmed? I put down the phone and run into the depths of my clothes closet where the kids can’t hear me. No, no, no, no, and already life is moving on, seconds are ticking by, and Judy is lying in a hospital bed with only one arm.

  One grieves and does the chores at the same time. With the simplest movement of hairbrush, broom, or saucepan, I ask myself, ‘How will she do this from here on?’ I hear her happy voice saying so recently, ‘I’m so happy to be driving again. I couldn’t really drive in South America, but now, I can just get in the car and go where I want. I feel so independent again.’

  Independent.

  I crazily review the one-armed people in my catalogue of experience, but try as I might to connect the dots, none of this relates to my friend.

  Sympathy is of no concrete use. Through her haze of pain and medications, I hear, Judy has learned the worst.

  For once, V. stays discreetly in the background. ‘Courage is of some use. It flatters self-love and it lessens misfortune,’ he says gently. ‘I can’t conceive that what is, ought to be. In this each doctor knows as much as me.’

  Judy needs more help, more examination. There are other injuries—to the face and the ear. She will be flown up in an emergency medical plane to Geneva. The hours for me become manageable as a countdown until the moment I can see her. We talk on the phone. She’s determined and brave. After a few days, I can send a worried mutual friend a message:

  I wasn’t allowed to see Judy until today. Her indomitable spirits were (finally?) slumping a little . . . She says she’s mostly worried about the recovery of facial movement, ‘I can manage over the arm, but if I can’t get my face back to normal, well, I just can’t function . . . ’ I think the first visit from the prosthetics man was discouraging, and she understands that anything she has won’t be as useful as it is cosmetic, ‘to at least give me a little balance.’ Only a few days ago, she was expecting to have something that worked, goddammit.

  ‘Judy’s private room is on the ninth floor, sun-filled and clean. Seeing her in her cotton hospital gown, standing up bravely to greet me with that shocking empty sleeve, like a frail bird with a broken wing, broke my heart. She really held up, so God knows, I had no choice but to do the same . . .

  The next Thursday, I dress up and drive to Geneva again. V. stays at home—respectful, silent. Messages of sympathy and encouragement pour into my computer to deliver to Judy at the hospital. I am thankful for something to do.

  On this second visit, I find her shaky and self-conscious. She sets herself on the edge of a chair by the window, but on a slant, literally putting her best face forward. We chat of whatever we can, bouncing from the doctors’ opinions, to gossip about friends and then back to whatever adjustments she’s come to contemplate about being one-handed. She is less determined than a few days before. She’s skipped her morning shower and all its exertions, letting the nurses wash and care for her.

  And why the hell not, I say to myself.

  We talk daily and sometimes the phone conversations are easier than face-to-face ones. These conversations with my friend are a privilege, like looking through a window into her soul. Her speech is slightly slurred, but her thoughts are crystal clear.

  ‘Gosh,’ she says in her slightly breathless Australian accent, ‘You think life is going to be a smooth path, unexciting, then, wham, you get a new challenge like this. Well, this is just the way its going to be from now on.’

  After a successful five-hour operation, the doctors tell her it will take up to a year to recover the lost facial movement. Being Judy, she’s convinced things are already better. Her husband and she check into a hotel to sit out a week of healing. I drive down again, through a miserable foggy cloud encircling the lake, to meet them at the reception desk.

  My friend takes my breath away as she emerges from the elevator. She is extraordinary. Is it possible the accident was only two weeks ago? She crosses the lobby, empty sleeve swinging from under an elegant cashmere wrap. A hospital plastic eye-patch has been replaced with a more flatteri
ng one. She greets me ebulliently. We embrace. These are the first steps of yet another chapter in my friend’s life. I hesitate to take her remaining arm. Will she feel pinned down?

  We set off for a place to have a coffee and chat, weaving clumsily between parked cars. I want her to lean on me, and at the same time, I feel her struggling for her balance, searching for a new equilibrium and determined to keep her independence.

  Seated at the table, she ruminates. ‘My twenties were fun. Then the thirties were all right, but David had his breakdowns and that was difficult. The forties were interesting, but David’s death was so hard. Now the fifties and this,’ she nods towards the space below her shoulder.

  We gossip about the dismissal of an acerbic and well-connected China-watcher from the South China Morning Post. We cluck over the less-than-credible disavowals of the Post’s editor-in-chief as he defends the decision to put a Communist Party hack in charge of China coverage.

  Our time together is so short. And with that, the truth slams into me—life is so short, a sequence of swift scenes. Some of us get one act, some last for three and Voltaire insisted on no fewer than five full acts plus encores. Sooner or later, the curtain drops on us all.

  It seems only minutes, not days, before her bright and breathless voice over the phone announces, ‘Well, we’re going back to Africa! We’ve reserved the seats. I must say, I’m a bit stunned. The plane leaves in a few hours.’

  I am flabbergasted, although I struggle to understand her eagerness to leave. ‘You must be anxious to get home,’ I stammer.

  ‘Well, I must say I’m looking forward to, well, digesting all that’s happened. I saw the doctor this afternoon and he said my ear is going to be all right.’

  -Well, I know it isn’t much of a consolation, but when the alternative is not being here at all—that’s what I remind myself all day. Just to hear your voice makes me feel better.’

  ‘I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done—’

  ‘Oh, Judy—’

  ‘I’ll e-mail you when I get back, and thanks again, lots of love and big hug to Peter and the kids.’

  I’m feeling so bereft. I put the phone down as tears rush to my eyes. The Flying Doctors got her here two weeks ago, but already she is setting off to resume ‘normal’ life. I think of her as she boards the commercial flight at Cointrin Airport amid the curious stares of strangers. She’s a trouper, opening her next act with unmatchable aplomb.

  Within thirty-six hours, there is an e-mail from Africa.

  It’s so good to be home, to be with the dogs, to enjoy the garden and warm weather, and to sleep in one’s own bed!! Our maid cried for over an hour upon seeing me; I was very touched but it didn’t do a lot for my morale. I’m feeling fine but exhausted—but as you see, I’m managing to type to you!!

  Outside the bedroom window, spring’s thin daylight is fading I abandon my ironing and sit on the end of the bed and sob out all my pent-up anger.

  Nothing that has happened to Judy makes any sense or can be arguably for any purpose. No one can persuade me that this hideous accident fits into any larger picture of goodness or rightness. I will always be angry at God for this. And in the silent solitude, I fight off the selfish loneliness that her unexpected arrival—with all our shared laughter and rueful sighs—temporarily interrupted.

  There is a polite cough from V. in the bedroom doorway.

  ‘A cup of tea?’ he offers.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘Only moi.’ he shrugs. ‘You’re not alone, remember,’

  ‘But you’re DEAD!’ I burst out resentfully. ‘I haven’t met one person like Judy since I got here. You’re not real. You talk to me with clever quotations and epitaphs and aphorisms, and parables and—and—anecdotes and essays and biographies. You have absolutely no sentimental feelings whatsoever!’

  ‘Even the dead had feelings once,’ he says. ‘And not always with such good reason. My best friend Thieriot acted as my literary agent, all the time betrayed me, stole from me, lived off my reputation, He never once thanked me. But he was my friend. I loved him from our schoolboy days at Louis-le-Grand until the end, That never changed, Believe it or not, I still miss that rogue.’

  He holds out an exquisite square of cambric edged in hand-crocheted lace, too fragile to stand up to earthly grief.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll stick with Kleenex. You wouldn’t want to see that thing in shreds, would you?’

  ‘This piece of frippery?’ He flips it into a breast pocket and sits gently at my side. After a few moments, he sighs, ‘You’re luckier in your friends than I was. What was that Chinese saying Jane said while visiting us?’

  I sputter out the Chinese tones, ‘Ren sheng, lao, si. Tian di wu qing,’

  ‘Yes, yes, I overheard her recite it. ‘Man is born, ages and dies, the gods in heaven don’t care.’

  ‘Nothing is as it should be,’ I despair.

  V. whispers to himself, ‘Thirty churches filled with the faithful attending All Saints’ Day Mass. . . Forty thousand innocents buried or burned, crying to God for mercy as they died. I wrote:

  Mysteries like these, no man can penetrate,

  Hid from his view remains the book of fate,

  Man his own nature never yet could sound,

  He knows not whence he is, nor whither bound.’

  I spend the rest of the afternoon starching the hell out of pillowcases. It’s all I’m good for. My fury over what has happened surges and subsides in heaves. This stream of anguish cannot be stopped up, but will have to dry up, as all streams do, when the season changes.

  Chapter Twenty-five CASANOVA’S ADVICE

  Presents, letters and various requests fill up our mailbox for the outspoken Frank Arouet who has flooded L’infâme.org and the editorial columns with his acid wit.

  The volume of correspondence keeps on growing, even as the man himself shrinks before my eyes. I can believe that his writings fill ninety volumes; he’s running a second epistolary marathon right under my nose.

  We tackle his correspondence together each morning. He works in a whirlwind of paper scattered all over a desktop suspended on ropes over his bed. It’s his own invention, hauled up out of sight only when he collapses into sleep.

  Not everyone is thrilled at the resuscitation of the spirit of Voltaire. He actually gets a death threat from a fanatic Christian evangelist in Alabama, threatening to ‘burn down his house.’ Even fans are hard to please, like the man who demands that Mr Arouet urgently tell him, by registered return mail no less, whether there is a God, and whether man has an immortal soul.

  ‘I thought we settled that one two centuries ago,’ he says to me, tossing it on a towering pile one Monday morning. More gratifying, a female minister for humanitarian affairs sends him flowers, which has perhaps prompted his outburst this fine spring Saturday morning. ‘Madame, you must cultivate your garden!’

  ‘Isn’t that a quote? From Candide? Something about how work fends off boredom, vice and, um, and—’

  ‘—need. Yes, well, you must excuse me for repeating myself A man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair, and ideas. There comes a time when he necessarily loses all his teeth, his hair, and repeats his ideas.’

  I put aside the morning paper and squint down at V. from my comfortable seat on the shady balcony.

  He’s certainly lost all his teeth somewhere along the line. What’s left of the hair is covered by an immense wig topped with a bonnet of black velvet. There’s just enough flesh to cover his bones.

  He must be getting old to start repeating one of his most famous lines. Even I’ve heard this one before, something about making the most of the day, not trying to remake the world, or seek fame and wealth in vain. One should just build as much of a paradise in one’s own yard as possible.

  Isn’t that what Candide was singing by the end of Bernstein’s show? Isn’t that exactly what I’m doing now? Enjoying my paradise?

  And I deserve a rest more than ever. Last wee
k, I caught my Swiss neighbors looking askance at my barefaced house and took their cue. Now I fully intend to bask in self-satisfaction at having installed window boxes the length of the balcony rail. Send the Geranium Inspectors. This Swiss housewife is ready.

  Now isn’t it just like the Un-idle Idol to pick on me during a few languid moments? This morning will pass fast enough without his nagging. The last light fixture was installed three weeks ago, only nine months behind schedule. The long winter of repairing, restoring, economizing, and worry may be coming to an end.

  ‘I’ve done the best I can, Monsieur! I suppose you want me to go into that office again. It’s not my fault the Tibet novel hasn’t sold.’ I won’t tell him that my erstwhile agent recently sent her biannual e-mail to remind me, with all the sincerity of a Weather Channel girl, of my shortcomings in the editorial marketplace.

  ‘No, no, no,’ V. shouts at me, hitting his walking stick imperiously along the worn stone path down to the potager. ‘I meant, you must start weeding your damned vegetable garden! Come down here, now!’

  The Swiss cultivate each square of workable soil with the passion of any over-crowded people. Flowerbeds are shifted from tulip gardens to geranium dormitories with the regularity of Buckingham Palace guards. A day’s descent to the warmer suburbs reveals a dazzling epidemic of spring gardening.

  I drive once a week to the shopping center in Nyon and compare these self-satisfied little com and sunflower fields, cossetted apple trees in netting hats, fenced and be-rosed vegetable plots with plantings I’ve seen around the world. I recall the splendid formal gardens of the Chelsea flower show in England, soggy rice terraces carved out of the Balinese hillsides, the greedy squares of wheat sprawling across northern China, the shaved green lawns of California, the desperate plastic tunnels and parched irrigation ditches on the Himalayan plateau outside Lhasa.