Voltaire’s Calligrapher

‘A dead woman just closed a window.’

‘I know the dead and I know they never come back; I’d have been visited by now if they did.’ Kolm looked over at the house. It was the only one that still had any lights on. A bronze bell hung out front. ‘There are seventeen women who work there. They might disappear during the day, but they come back to life at night.’

His words did nothing to reassure me, and I hurried away down the deserted street. I don’t know why, but Kolm followed me, and the moon followed him.

The Performance (#ulink_5ea78cfa-0eff-52c3-8a59-197701128619)

I went to see Kolm two days later, as he had promised to ask whether there were any openings at the court for a calligrapher. Kolm lived in a rooming house reserved for the brotherhood of executioners; they owned a building in every city to avoid the usual problems of lodging. Never having executed anyone, I wasn’t allowed in, but Kolm told me the rooms were decorated with axes, hoods, and belts that had belonged to legendary executioners. These made him nostalgic. I asked why he had left such a profitable profession.

‘Five years ago I helped to suppress an uprising against M. Ressing. I had cut off about ten heads when it seemed a pair of familiar eyes was staring up at me. I reached into the bloody basket and found my father’s head. We hadn’t seen one another in a long time, and I had executed him without even noticing. I know he recognized me, and yet he didn’t say a word: he wouldn’t interrupt my work. I haven’t executed anyone since. I was only able to recover my father’s head, which I put in a glass case and took to the town where he was born. There I gave him the funeral he deserved. For his epitaph I wrote: Theodor Kolm lies here. And elsewhere as well. ‘

It was Sunday and Kolm’s day off. We walked until we saw a crowd beside the market: a theatre company was performing The Calas Murderers.

The actors had erected a stage in a derelict square, amid statues of sleeping horses. The church had never been kind to actors, refusing for centuries to bury them in hallowed ground, but this company had chosen a topic of such popular interest that the White Penitents had even agreed to pay for the production. That night I wrote an account of the play and sent it to Ferney:

The Calas family is sitting at the table. A friend arrives from far away. He begins to talk about his city. After a while, he realizes they aren’t paying attention; no one is responding to his comments. The father, Jean Calas, finally interrupts him: he says they have a decision to make.

Marc-Antoine is preparing to convert to Catholicism, the father explains. He has been shut away in his room, reading the Bible, for the past seventeen days. We’ve hidden spiders and snakes between the pages, but nothing distracts him.

At night, the mother says, we give him candles with most of the wick removed, so they won’t last long. But he keeps reading, using mirrors to capture the moonlight. Then, on nights when there is no moon, in absolute darkness, he repeats the sacred words - words that aren’t sacred to us.

Is there no way to convince him, the friend asks. Women? A trip?

We’ve tried everything, the father says. Now we must sacrifice the lamb.

But he’s our lamb, the mother says. If we wait just a little longer…

The father says: Tomorrow he’ll sign his conversion at St. Stephen’s, and he can finally work as a lawyer. He may take action against us, to prove his sincerity. There is no faith more dangerous than the faith of the converted.