A Visit From Voltaire

by Dinah Lee Küng

  Pomp and Ceremony are giving way to the battling forces of Death and Rebirth. The formidable mass of funeral attendants gives the impression that every soul in St-Cergue has turned out to send off the old woodcutter. The carpenter who ‘works to live,’ and the painter who lost his lover last autumn, the teacher who scolded us for speaking English, the mothers who let the Lunch Club down, the crossing-guards, the walrus-moustachioed postman, the Reymonds, the dry-cleaning lady, the Commune official with his hunting dog on a tight leash, the cowherd couple with the flame-embossed jeep—all are marching toward us, along with hundreds I’ve never seen before.

  My entire first year in St-Cergue is parading past me, a lineup of Fellini casting rejects.

  As the space separating the two flocks narrows, it’s becoming dear to worried onlookers that the priest, with his substantial belly leading Rome’s little faithful, is not about to lead his twenty-odd lambs off the only curb at this junction into the dangers of the Sunday tourist traffic rounding the bend from France.

  Nor can the short, bearded Protestant cleric—his neat dark jacket md collar pinching in the spring heat—control or reduce his hundreds spilling over the sidewalk. I’ve given up hope of videotaping Alexander from where we stand.

  ‘I can’t watch. Tell me when it’s over,’ I tell Peter.

  ‘I love this,’ Voltaire giggles.

  The spirit of Ecumenism compels our two village shepherds to acknowledge each other’s flock with a slight bow, dance from left to right for a few seconds, the heavy crosses on their chests swaying in time, and then, ruthlessly signal the charge.

  Before our eyes, the two processions merge into a roiling sea of rather sodden adults with funereal faces red from tears and alcohol, being jostled and poked by the happy, determined Catholic kids in their baggy robes.

  Amidst flashes of white linen, the heavy Crucifix teeters and tips in the air over the heads of the mob, threatening to kybosh a very old, hunched woman sobbing heavily into a handkerchief.

  People are dodging and twisting sideways, pushing in both directions, fighting for their place on the sidewalk, yelling a little too loudly for a solemn occasion, ‘Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur. Excusez-moi, Madame, Attention, mon gars! Après-vous, ma belle.’

  Alexander is utterly lost from sight. Someone yells at the kids, ‘Show some respect!’ and followed by, ‘OW! Who did that?’

  I train my eyes on the clearing below the hillock leading up to the chapel, the first possible space to spot Alexander again. It’s like some old-fashioned science film showing the division of cells in slow motion. The amoeba of the religious appears to be moving, blob-like, into a re-establishment of their competing forces. Two ends bulge and bob before, with a sudden pull, the pushing, shoving procession-with-two-heads becomes two separate columns, two separate faiths, once again.

  The sobbing old lady has survived the scrum, but is now heading in the wrong direction, inadvertently swept up in the column of First Communion kids.

  V. and I watch this distraught woman, her face blinded by tears, jostled by the kids towards the wrong church.

  ‘Oh, my God. That is the Widow Berner. Now she’s headed to the wrong church. She’ll miss her own husband’s burial.’

  ‘She’ll see a more cheering show,’ V, suggests.

  ‘Last autumn’s Descent of the Cows Festival was more organized than this,’ I comment dryly to Peter as we finally reach the door of the chapel. We are so far at the back of the crowd we can barely make out the altar at the head of the nave. As he is indifferent to the ceremony on principle, no number of silencing glares from me can stop V.’s chatty reminiscences.

  ‘Nothing like my triumphant return to Paris in the spring of 1778! I’d been away, now let’s see, twenty-eight years. And what if the clergy should attack me in their pulpits? Who cared? What if the new King wanted to send me to the Bastille? Paris had become the capital of the Enlightenment, thanks to me.’

  ‘You had a few helpers,’ I whisper.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he chuckles, ‘There I was at long last, arrived at the gates of Paris. The customs men demanded, ‘Is there any contraband to declare?’’

  ‘By my faith, gentlemen,’ I chirped, ‘I believe there is nothing here contraband but myself!’’

  V. laughs at his little jest and the subsequent irony of the Parisian officials scouring their old records for warrants for the old philosophe’s arrest and, after so many years, finding nothing. Decades of Voltaire’s exile hung on the old King’s word, nothing more.

  ‘Shhuush, I think the kids are about to come in.’

  ‘Oh, that was a procession!’ V. giggles, whispering to me behind that plumed hat. ‘Would you believe three hundred people filed into my rooms at the Rue de Beaune on only the first day! Benjamin Franklin brought his grandson for me to bless. Cheering throngs held up my carriage on my way to the house for a special meeting of the Academie Française. I had finally got in as a member, you see.’

  I whisper, ‘Tell me later.’

  Everyone inside the Chapel rises to their feet.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ his old man’s memories are unstoppable. ‘Just like the standing ovation when I arrived at the Théâtre Français to see my play Irène, an ovation that lasted twenty minutes!’ He sighs.

  ‘Look, I think I see the kids now over in the door of the sacristy,’ Peter says.

  The organ is revving up with a bouncy ecclesiastical tune.

  ‘They were yelling, ‘Hail Voltaire! Honor to the philosopher who teaches us to think! Glory to the defender of Calas!’’ V. strains to look over the heads of the strangers in front of us and pokes me in the shoulder. ‘Hey, we could rouse them with a few shouts, don’t you think? What would that grinning buffoon of a priest do if you yelled from back here, ‘Hail Voltaire! Death to l’infâme!’’’

  ‘Shush! I’m trying to follow the ceremony, despite your nostalgic driveling.’

  Peter pulls me through the crowded foyer and squeezes us into a space at the back of the church. The congregation stays on its feet as the children prepare to enter the chapel in a giggling jumble.

  V. shrugs, happy to entertain himself ‘Even the Queen rose to greet me. And then, the performance of Irène, after which one of the actors came to me, and put a laurel wreath on my head. Can you imagine? I had to drink twenty-five cups of coffee a day to keep up with the excitement. They rechristened the Quai des Théatins, the Quai Voltaire.’

  He sighs with pleasure.

  ‘Can you get that feather out of my nose? I can’t see anything from here. I told Peter we should have gotten here earlier.’

  ‘Old Dr. Tronchin, you know what he said to me in Paris? He warned me, ‘You’re living on your capital, Monsieur Voltaire, not your interest!’’ V.’s wheedling breath is like a faint spring breeze at my ear. ‘It was worth it, to see d’Argental, my old schoolmate from Louis-le-Grand! What an old man he looked! Hee, hee!’

  ‘Let us pray,’ intones the priest, stretching his two enormous arms out to embrace the congregation in spirit.

  I finally make out Alexander’s round face, smiling out at the whole congregation, unable to spot us.’

  ‘Then I spoke at the Academie Française, proposed we revise the dictionary, adding hundreds of new words and new ideas! Each of us would take a letter. I would take the letter A. And the Marquis de Chastellux thanked me in the name of ‘letters.’ Not bad, eh? I went incognito to see a performance of Alzire, but of course, someone recognized me—forty-five minutes of applause!’

  He is grinning a toothless old man’s smirk. His bony joints press through his worn finery. His silk stockings are unrolling down his knees and his plume has broken in the struggle to squeeze himself between Eva-Marie and me.

  He starts coughing and brings one of his lace-edged handkerchiefs to his mouth. I am shocked to see bloodstains.

  ‘You’re not well! Go sit in the car.’

  ‘Non, non, non. I bled like this in Paris and they called in a priest. Oh ho! That was the
night I made a sort of confession! Let’s see, what did I say to that abbé?’ His frail form hunches over as he retreats into his memories.

  Up at the altar, the children begin reciting the Act of Contrition, ‘‘Je confesse à Dieu tout-puissant que j’ai péché en pensée, en parole, par action . . . I confess to God Almighty that I have sinned in thought, word, and deed . . . I ask the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the saints, to pray to the Lord . . .’ Our first-born speaks in French the familiar phrases I can follow only in English.

  V.’s rasping breath breaks in, ‘Confession! Hah! I confessed to that old hypocrite exactly as much as I thought would win me a warm, decent grave; that if God disposes of me, I die in the Catholic religion in which I was born, hoping in the Divine Mercy that will pardon all my faults; and that if I had ever scandalized the Church, I ask pardon of God and her.’

  After eighty years of ferocious attacks on Mother Church, did they buy it?’

  ‘No.’ V. shrugs.

  The sun is shining through stained-glass windows along the side of the chapel on to the white robes of the children, delighting them with the rainbow colors glancing across their lips and hands, turning their hair bright purple or blue.

  Soon it is time for the Credo. The childish chorus chants, ‘Je crois en Dieu, le Père tout-puissant, Createur du ciel et de la terre . . . I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and Earth . . . And Christ shall come again, to judge the living and the dead, to sit at the right of the Father . . . ’

  V. mutters, ‘Rubbish!’

  He shouts out over the heads of all the proud parents, ‘And what’s holding Him up from descending in a cloud to establish this Kingdom of God? What’s the delay? Thick fog over Mont Blanc?’

  Not a head turns, of course, to burst his gleeful bubble. The old man leans back with a mischievous grin.

  The children file into the pews at the front of the church. The priest descends from the altar to stand right in front of the first pew.

  ‘What does God intend by giving us the sacrament of Communion?’ he asks, smiling over them.

  There are nervous titters. Finally a little redheaded girl pipes up, ‘To communicate?’

  ‘Oui, to be one with Him. And what do we feel when we take Communion with our Lord?’

  ‘We feel joyful,’ says another dutiful little girl.

  ‘Bien, bien,’ he says. ‘And why are we on earth?’ he barks out at the children.

  There is a long silence. The children fidget nervously. This is a theological curve ball, not anticipated by the volunteer mothers on Tuesday afternoons.’

  ‘Why did God make us?’ The priest raises an eyebrow and leans threateningly over the row of ten-year-olds, who cover their mouths with their hands to suppress their giggles.

  The priest, clearly amused at wrong-footing the candidates, turns his gaze to the teachers themselves. They shift nervously at the ends of the pews, poking their charges to answer.

  ‘WHY DID GOD PUT US HERE ON EARTH?’ the African booms up at the gallery. The organist’s elbow accidentally hits the keyboard, and a single amplified note shocks the entire congregation out of its composure. More titters.

  One arm finally goes up. It is thin and white and the heavy robe falls away to reveal my inadequate job of ironing the Oxford Boy’s Shirt (size ten) mail-ordered from Land’s End.

  ‘Yes?’ The gigantic priest lowers his arms and beams greedily over his victim. A weedy but determined voice with an American accent reaches even our ears at the back.

  ‘TO KNOW, LOVE, AND SERVE GOD IN THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT!’

  The priest raises his eyebrows, leans back, and looks Alexander up and down. There seems to be a finality to this exchange which flummoxes any further interrogation. The priest gazes at Alexander one instant longer, nods, and mounts the altar to finish the Mass.

  I am not so surprised, because I know exactly who has infiltrated his Deist prejudices in my unsuspecting son’s unconscious, God only knows by what telepathy.

  ‘It’s the best answer,’ V. sputters as we move slowly out of the church. ‘Deism is an ordered consensus among reasonable people tempered by mythology to keep the majority in check. At least Alexander stopped up all that Trinity and Communication nonsense.’

  We’re pressed in on all sides by cooing parents and grandparents. Nobody notices a bouquet of daffodils tangled in V.’s hat, and when he finally extracts himself from the crowd, one flower is comically twisted around his broken plume.

  Once home, the First Communicant, still flush with ‘Grace,’ offers to help set the table. We’re going to have his favorite Chinese chicken in orange sauce. He had to return the robe, but he wears his crucifix all day. I think wistfully of the big family lunch we might have had for him, were we still in the US. It’s at times like these that I’m the loneliest, knowing all the while that romantic visions of huge family banquets peopled by happy generations around a big ham are best left to Norman Rockwell paintings.

  ‘I wish he’d take off that cross,’ Peter grumbles. ‘The boy’s acting a little too illuminated for my taste.’

  ‘It won’t last more than a few hours,’ I reassure him.

  And for better or worse, while still wearing the crucifix, Alexander fights with Theo over some Lego piece before the evening is out.

  I shiver as I clean up the kitchen that night. It’s close to eight o’clock and Peter has already gone upstairs to take a bath. Although we had a warm day, spring departs from the mountains rather reluctantly. Friends tell me that New York temperatures have hit the upper seventies. Down in Nyon, roses are smothering stone walls hiding old villas. Up here, the humid chill of thousands of pine trees wraps its evening cool around the house.

  V. is trembling, sitting over the heater under the dining room window, wrapped in a plaid blanket. He says he wants to watch the last sunrays fall over Mont Blanc while he sips his hot chocolate.

  ‘Well, perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea. I can no longer see so well.’ For a moment, he closes his eyes and sways a little. I run to his side and he opens his eyes and looks at me a little dizzily.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ he smiles. Just one of those little moments I’ve been having lately. ‘Just one of those little I call them God’s petits avertissements. I’ll be all right.’

  He coughs slightly.

  ‘I haven’t long to go,’ he mumbles.

  ‘Stop it! Every time you say that, I find out you’ve got decades to go. You don’t look a day over seventy,’ I joke. ‘You’re just the same old humbug who turned up here uninvited last November. You do look a little tired. Go up to bed. ‘

  ‘Non, non,’ he says. He drops his precious Chinese cup with a dangerous clink, splashing a drop. ‘Mon Dieu, what I would give for a good cup of coffee, but I can’t drink it anymore. If I have to go to the bathroom one more time for no reason, it’ll kill me.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve been taking too many baths,’ I suggest, as cheerfully as I can muster. ‘You’ve always been the cleanest guy of your century, or for that matter, of any century.’

  V. allows himself a little laughing retort, ‘Regimen is superior medicine,’ but I notice his hand is trembling as he straightens his floppy knitted cap. How slight he’s become!

  ‘If only a doctor could see you. Come to think of it, that’s how all of this started. Remember? I mistook you for the doctor! ‘

  He sighs, ‘As far as doctors go, I only trusted Tronchin in Geneva. He was six foot tall, wise as Aesculapius and as handsome as Apollo. His charity, his disinterestedness, his affection and care for his wife, all of him inspired me with boundless respect and regard—’

  ‘How lovely- ‘

  ‘Yes, especially as his wife was the sulkiest, most unendurable woman in existence!’

  He cackles at his own joke, but starts coughing blood again.

  ‘No.’ He twists Émilie’s ring around and around his middle finger. He is deep in thought, avoiding my affec
tionate gaze. ‘It has been a pleasure staying with you but, chère Madame, I think it is time for me to go.’

  ‘You’re tired. You’ll feel ready for action after a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Yes, I’m just fatigued. Nothing gives me more life than the work I see ahead. But I’ve been worried since that death threat came that it might be you or the family who get burned down, not my little ghostly office upstairs.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Now, go to bed. You worry about all these causes, these infamies so much, it’s wearing you out.’

  Waving a sort of apology, he struggles up the office stairs, leaning heavily on his ornate cane. It hasn’t occurred to me until now, having had this fancy stick thrust in my face during our little rows, that the cane is more than just a cherished prop of his theater days.

  He stops to catch his breath. ‘Funny, I’ve often been sick in my day, but rarely so feeble. It reminds me of that last night in Paris.’

  ‘Last night? What last night?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, my old ami Richelieu heard I’d been coughing up blood for weeks. He sent me a vial of opium. I don’t like to discuss such private matters, but the coughing wasn’t the only malady. My urination was becoming painful, almost impossible.’

  ‘You love to talk about your maladies, you old hypochondriac,’ I chide. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve heard about your pissing problems. I never knew a man so fascinated by his own bladder.’

  ‘Then, if you know me so well, Madame, you can imagine I was anxious to get better! I was only eighty-four, for God’s sake! I had lived this long with a very weak constitution and only care saved me, but now, I’d been so busy during those weeks of my homecoming to Paris . . . ’

  He labors up a few more steps, then looks down at me with an expression of indignation and frustration. ‘I even bought a house and was intending to stay in Paris, never to return to Ferney! Paris was so much fun!’