Voltaire's Calligrapher by Pablo De Santis Read Free Book Online Page A

courts.”
    “Don’t sell your pen so cheaply. Did you know we have our own calligraphy school? Silas Darel is our master, but he speaks to no one: he has kept a vow of silence for the last twelve years. All he does is write, shut away in an office. Have you heard of him? He designed our script.”
    We had been taught the Dominican style—too rigid for mytaste—at Vidors’ School. Easily distinguished by its aversion to curves and constant pressure on the paper to achieve a sense of depth, the calligraphy wasn’t seen to flow along a page but was more like a laceration. Every dissertation on calligraphy noted how Darel’s first profession, as a headstone engraver, had influenced his art.
    Legend had it that, on his deathbed, a master calligrapher (whose name no one remembered) asked Darel to carve his tombstone. When he saw Darel’s skill, the master initiated him in the mysteries of calligraphy, which dated back to the Egyptian scribes. Such knowledge had been passed from master to disciple for centuries, but only when death was near. The teachers at Vidors’ School would laugh whenever older students told this story to impress the novices.
    “We sometimes take our seminarians to see Darel,” Mazy said. “After watching him for a few hours, there are those who run scared and leave the profession altogether, while others discover their destiny.”
    “If you have your own calligraphers, how could someone like me be of use to you?”
    “We have no shortage of calligraphers, that’s true, but they are men of God. I need someone who can do impious work.”
    He took the stopper off a Rillon inkwell shaped like a snail, picked up a long quill—more flamboyant than practical—and plunged it into the black ink.
    “Where does Darel work?” I asked.
    “There’s an office at the end of the calligraphy hall, down a few stairs. The entire palace could be his, but he rarely leaves that room.”
    “Would I be able to watch him work?”
    “When the time is right. Every calligrapher must confront Darel to see whether he made the right choice.”
    Abbot Mazy passed me the quill and opened his hand.
    “Write your name.”
    It was a moment before I understood his instructions. I took his hand, whiter than paper, and slowly, fearfully, wrote
Dalessius
. It looked like someone else’s name there. No ink was absorbed by the abbot’s skin, and the nib was so full that rivulets seeped out from the letters to fill the lines in his hand. As my name grew into something that resembled a drawing in a fortune-teller’s tract, I could feel the abbot’s hand tremble, as if the touch of the pen transmitted pain, pleasure, or cold. He pulled his fingers into a fist and said:
    “Now I’ve got you in the palm of my hand.”

A Friend of V.
    T he abbot told me I had passed his test but didn’t explain what my job would be.
    “Come see me in a week. I’ll have a letter of recommendation for you to start at Siccard House.”
    Life at my uncle’s was increasingly unbearable. He was always at work, so I could never speak to him, but his presence was made manifest through instructions given solely to inconvenience me: every night there would be new objects in my room, blocking the way, crowding the bed up against the wall. Toys I had given up for lost years ago would come crashing down; a wooden horse knocked me on the head.
    One night I found a message signed
A friend of V
. on my pillow, asking me to come to Les Cordeliers. I had no idea how it got there, and my apprehension only grew as I walked to the Pension d’Espagne. The door was open, but the rooming house appeared to be empty; I went from room to room, afraid I’d be mistaken for a thief, until I found a man in bed, empty beds all around him, with blankets pulled up to his nose. My obvious unease identified me as his guest, and he beckoned me in.
    I sat a prudent distance away, afraid he might be hiding his face because of some illness. With the covers still over his mouth,