Light shines in through the dirty window, falling on the page, and I watch my hand tremble on the coarse paper. I have learned to turn uncertainty into flourishes. You have to let the ink flow, the hand run toward the next word and the next, never stopping to consider an error. Once doubt begins, it takes over: like the Vatican calligrapher who hesitated over whether to write Pope Clement VI or Clement VII, and then whether it was Clement at all, and finally distrusted every word and never wrote another in his life.
The shaking in my right hand isn’t simply a matter of age; it’s a symptom of Veck’s syndrome (named after Karl Veck, calligrapher to the Habsburgs). Those of us in the profession for decades find our hands acquire a certain independence, and often, when we want to write one word, something completely different comes out. They say that even in sleep, when Veck was handed a quill, he would quickly write a word or sometimes a whole phrase; the meaning was always obscure, and later, when awake, he would try in vain to interpret it.
Sometimes my hand writes an involuntary word; that’s why these pages are filled with corrections. I used to hate imperfection, but I’ve learned to recognize blots and rewrites as one of the many forms our signature takes. Nothing they taught me at Vidors’ School is true. The best calligrapher isn’t the one who never makes a mistake but the one who can draw some meaning and trace of beauty from the splotches.
An abundance of work forced me to interrupt this recollection, but I’ll leave this frozen room now, cross the ocean and time, and once again appear on that stage at Château Ferney. Around Voltaire, apart from the usual visiting sycophants, were two women-one older, one younger-who I guessed were mother and daughter. Voltaire was telling them how to portray the Calas drama with passion and rigor.
“It’s easy to move the people-they weep at anything-but it’s much more complicated to move a court. Don’t cry openly. Hold back your tears. Let them spill out against your will.”
The women meekly accepted Voltaire’s directions, and I was amazed there were still obedient actresses anywhere. Surely they must be Swiss. Taking advantage of the distraction I had created, they stepped aside to rest for a moment. I asked Voltaire what play they were rehearsing.
“The most difficult of all to perform: Jean Calas’ widow and daughter are preparing to visit the courts of Europe in search of support for their cause. I want them to say just the right words, without looking foolish or overacting.”
Hearing who they were, I was about to confess I had been in Toulouse when their father and husband was martyred and had been to their looted house. But something stopped me: I think they were comfortable playing that theatrical game, hiding behind their roles and didn’t want to be reminded they were themselves.
“It should be enough to tell the heartfelt truth,” I said quietly.
“The heart and the truth make unlikely bedfellows. Our enemies are staging grand performances, so we must perform as well. Drama is everywhere but in the theater these days; entire cities are the stage.”
I found myself searching for my place as calligrapher over the next few days. Whenever I found work or tried to organize the archives, Wagnière would reassign the task, promising that Voltaire had other plans for me. Where once I had been a part of castle life, I now felt there was no place for me. I became a ghost; no one would even turn to look at me when I came into a room. I sometimes heard my story as if it were another’s. Secretaries, cooks, servants, even the travelers who came to see the genius of Ferney were all commenting on my adventures. These stories were like legends, passed from person to person until distilled. They couldn’t believe that I, an insignificant calligrapher, was the protagonist of such events, and they would listen to me only if I spoke as though it had happened to someone else. I existed in third person.
I wrote the final account of my time in Paris and waited in vain to find Voltaire in his study. Business consumed his afternoons, requiring that he make hasty decisions regarding his clocks, his crops, and his foreign investments. I would slip my reports under his door, never knowing if he read them or burned them.
One morning Voltaire himself came to my room and led me to his study. He began by telling me of his aches and pains, but I wasn’t worried: his suffering had kept him in good health for years. Then he showed me the stack of pages I had sent. He had made notes in the margins, most of them question marks.
“I’ve read and reread your reports, written with incomparable incompetence. Despite all the errors, I was able to come to one conclusion: the Dominicans are preparing to take advantage of the void being left by the Jesuits. They’ve concealed the bishop’s death in order to hold on to power. As long as the comedy of the automaton lasts, their hold will remain firm. They are behind the plague of miracles that’s storming France; poor Jean Calas was just one more of their victims. That’s why I need you to go back to Paris.”
“I’d rather stay here. Your correspondence must be awfully behind…”
“My true correspondence consists of the two messages I’ll send with you. The first is for the printer Hesdin, to be published as soon as possible and without my signature. The second is for the bishop. There is a papal delegation coming, and the bishop will confirm the Dominicans’ power. You must convince Von Knepper to change the text.”
I pleaded not to be sent to Paris. I was afraid; all I wanted was a simple position at Ferney.
“You’ll travel under an alias. In any event, I don’t have anyone else to send. Wagnière is too old; I say a teary good-bye every time he goes to a distant wing of the castle, unsure whether he’ll make it back alive. I’m not asking you to do this for honor or to champion an idea you may not share. I only ask that you obey the universal sense of greed: from now on, you will be official calligrapher of Ferney and your pay will be commensurate.”
I placed money and danger on an imaginary scale that leaned toward precaution. But then I thought of Clarissa, whom I missed so dearly that distance actually brought her closer. I imposed one condition on going: a workshop in which to make inks and the right to sell them.
“That could be quite a profitable business,” Voltaire said. “If we sell clocks to the Turks, why not ink to the French?”
Given Voltaire’s advancing age, failing memory, and proximity to death, I drew up a contract. He signed it with a look of reproach, as if disappointed by my lack of faith in his word, his faculties, and his health. I was to leave for Paris in a week. In the interim, Voltaire would closet himself away to prepare the messages I was to deliver. While I refused to get up in the morning or think about my upcoming trip, he would rise early, leap out of bed, sometimes even do a little jig before sitting down to write, as if, from somewhere, he could hear music playing. It wasn’t the music of planets or the discovery of some hidden harmony in nature, but the sound of the world that made Voltaire dance.
My break ended and I went back to writing, not with quill and ink but with my footsteps and the dust of the road. As soon as I arrived in Paris, I went to find the printer Hesdin, who had worked for Voltaire on previous occasions. His address was on a piece of paper that had been soaked by the rain, and the street name was now nothing but a few faint blue lines. Thankfully, almost all of the printers lived in Les Cordeliers, and Hesdin was well known; I soon found his shop, not far from the Comédie-Française.
I didn’t go straight in; there were suspicious-looking people all around, and I wondered whether Abbot Mazy had already heard I was in Paris. But those men with faces obscured, lurking on corners and in doorways, weren’t interested in me. These were playwrights in a city so overrun with them that theaters had barred them from entrance; they already had enough plays to stage until the end of the century. The new tragedians would prowl around, waiting for any opportunity to slip into the theater. Once inside, they would hide until they could leap on the stage manager or director. Some would even threaten suicide if their work wasn’t read immediately. None of this seemed like a problem at the time, but now, looking back, I think it was the ferment for everything that happened later. The Revolution was led, primarily, by frustrated writers, and their literary jealousies and failure to make it onto the stage were what led to the Reign of Terror.
Inside the print shop, an assistant was turning the press. When I asked for Hesdin, I was taken into the back, where a white-haired man was painting gold letters on the cover of a book. Tottering stacks of books were all around.
“Where’ve you come from?” he asked. “It looks like you’re being followed by a cloud of dust.”
“I’ve come from Ferney, sir.”
“Then you’re not only being followed by dust but by problems as well.”
The only chair was covered in books, which Hesdin brushed to the floor. I knelt down to pick up a copy of Varieties of Calligraphy by Jacques Ventuil, with twelve illustrations by the young Moreau.
“Does that interest you?”
“I’m a calligrapher.”
“Then do me a favor and take it. I only sold thirty-seven copies. I’ve fonder memories of books that have been burned than those that were an absolute failure. At least a banned book doesn’t take up space. Look closely, that’s Baskerville, the print type vaguely reminiscent of human handwriting. Baskerville was a calligrapher before he became a printer and wanted to acknowledge his old profession.”
Hesdin stopped what he was doing to fetch a jug of wine, some bread and cheese. I told myself to eat slowly so as to interject a friendly comment every now and then, but I devoured the food without a word. In the meantime, Hesdin spoke.
“On page one hundred eight, there’s a story about a Chinese calligrapher who was to transcribe a long poem arguing that calligraphy was imperfect. The order came from the palace, and the calligrapher felt a great weight of responsibility. If he used all his skill to perform the task, the contrast between the subject of the poem and its transcription would be obvious, and he’d have sinned by calling attention to the art of calligraphy over poetry. However, if he decided to write with an unsteady hand and create artificial imperfections, he ran the risk of being fired as palace calligrapher. With the blank page in front of him, brush in hand, the calligrapher thought and thought until he came upon the solution. He wrote the most beautiful ideograms ever, but when he reached the complex character for calligraphy, he lightened his stroke, as if in reading the poem, he’d been convinced by the poet’s argument and had begun to doubt. And so he gained the emperor’s favor.”
Hesdin fell silent, waiting for me to finish chewing and explain why I was there. I reached into a bag I had hidden under my shirt and pulled out Voltaire’s manuscript. Hesdin sighed deeply.
“Under what name is it to be published?”
“No name.”
“A name can be an alias and we never know who the author is. The minute it’s anonymous, however, all doubt is erased: we immediately know who wrote it.”
Hesdin read the tale out loud, while I finished off the last of the bread and wine. The story had seemed innocent enough when I transcribed it from Voltaire’s illegible script, and I’d paid little attention: it was just another of his whims, a show of his excessive faith in the power of words. But the printer read it with an air of mystery, as if it were full of questions and secrets. The story was lost over time. Fearful, Hesdin printed only a few copies and not one survived, not even in Kehl’s seventy volumes. I only have a vague recollection of it, which I ineptly write below, for the sole purpose of helping you understand subsequent events.
THE BISHOP’S MESSAGE
Early in the sixteenth century, the priest Piero De Lucca found volume five of Mechanical Alchemy by Johannes Trassis in the library of his monastery. The other four volumes had been lost a century earlier. When he finished reading the text-which he knew was banned-De Lucca began to build a creature made of metal and wood in the cellar.
He worked for an entire year in absolute secrecy. He became known among the other priests as a loner. When finished, his creature learned to walk and to stammer a few words in pure Latin, in a monotonous, metallic voice. It could give simple answers, but whenever the question exceeded its ability, it would reply: “I cannot be certain of the answer in that regard.”
De Lucca was amazed by his work. For months he had thought of nothing but its construction; now that it was done, however, he began to consider his pride and wonder whether the creature might be an instrument of Evil. He decided to ask it, and as on so many other occasions, it replied: “I cannot be certain of the answer in that regard.”
The priest decided to consult a higher authority. He sent the creature to Milan, with a letter for the archbishop. In it, he asked his superior to carefully study the messenger and reply as to its nature.
Years went by without any word from the archbishop. The priest would sometimes think fondly of his creature and wonder where it might be: if it was living the life of a common man, was corroding at the bottom of the river, or had been burned as a heretic. He could have taught it so many things, but he needed to know whether he had done right or wrong. And so he was damned to wait for a reply.
Now old and infirm, Piero De Lucca told his confessor about his dilemma. He told De Lucca to travel to Milan immediately, so as not to risk dying in doubt and in sin.
The archbishop had by then been succeeded three times (once because of a poisoning), but De Lucca still hoped to find an answer in the underground city of the archives.
Piero De Lucca made the trip. At over eighty years of age, he was exhausted by the time he arrived. He was given a small room next to the cathedral. When the time came to meet with the new archbishop, De Lucca was so weak he was unable to get out of bed.
The thought of dying without an answer pained him. Seeing him so fragile and distraught, the other priests interceded with the archbishop, asking him to go to De Lucca.
Piero De Lucca lay dying when the archbishop came to see him. Full of interruptions, repetitions, and omissions, the priest told the story that had brought him to that dark little room. He begged for an answer to his original question. That answer came at the very moment of death, when he heard the archbishop say: “I cannot be certain of the answer in that regard.”
“I’d rather the action take place in some Oriental palace, with a caliph or a mandarin instead of an archbishop,” Hesdin said. “The Egyptians, Arabs, and Chinese never come to complain.”
“It’s fantasy. Automatons. Magic. Nothing real.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with it, either, but that means very little. In this profession, you get used to reading into things. It’s only when a book erupts in scandal and flames that we printers realize what we’ve published. In any event, leave the text with me. I’ll understand one day. After all, there’s no better way to read a book than by the light of a bonfire.”
I took a room at the Auberge du Poisson, under an alias, and slept for fifteen hours. When I awoke, I began to think about my future. It had been easy to devise plans and make decisions on the trip to Paris; from far away, cities are like toy towns, where everything is easy, close, and possible. It was only when I got to Paris that I remembered that cities are full of obstacles.
There was only one way to make Von Knepper change the message: I had to take Clarissa. With my face obscured by a cloak and hat, I went to the house to spy on its inhabitants. There were signs of decay on the walls and windows, and the house seemed to age as I watched; a few more minutes and I would witness its collapse. My eyes were tired, and vitiated everything they saw. I waited anxiously for Von Knepper to go out, called by some urgent obligation. But now that his appointments with the bishop had ended, there was no reason to leave home. Everything he required was inside those walls.
While Von Knepper needed solitude and obsession in order to think, all I needed were long walks and momentary distractions. I found something of interest in every passing conversation; every notice in the street forced me to stop. There were words all around me, and I paid attention to each one, as if the city were an enormous book that could inspire my next steps. And so, in reading the words that came at me with no rhyme or reason, I discovered a poster for a book auction.
Tramont, whose appetite for books was as voracious as the Duke de la Vallière’s, was putting some up for sale. His collection was so enormous that from time to time Tramont was forced to part with duplicates or books that were no longer of interest, simply to clear a path through his house. At the bottom of the notice was a list of the most important volumes in the lot: number three was a copy of The Human Machine by Granville. This was an extremely rare book. Fabres, Von Knepper’s mentor, always swore there was absolutely no proof that Granville’s dissertation ever existed. I can assure you it did: I saw its pages and its engravings, and I saw how a copy sank in the waters of the Seine.
I tore the announcement off the wall and left it under Von Knepper’s door. Fate would take care of the rest.
It was five days until the auction. Von Knepper set out for Tramont’s house at the exact time it was about to start-as if he had only just decided to go. He walked straight past without seeing me: all that mattered to him was in the past or the future, and anything along the way belonged to the vulgar present. I waited a few minutes, in case he changed his mind, and then approached the house.
I had brought enough money to bribe the maid; as soon as she opened the door, I asked for Clarissa.
“You should know where she is,” the woman said.
“Why me?”
“Monsieur Laghi told me you took her. We haven’t seen her in six days now.”
I couldn’t believe Clarissa was gone, and I strode to the back of the house. The maid didn’t bother to stop me: there was no one for her to protect.
“How did she disappear? Was she taken by force?”
“It was the middle of the night. If you don’t have her, then she left on her own, tired of being overprotected. Monsieur Laghi hasn’t been able to sleep since. I hear him pace the room all night long, repeating the same words: I know everything about machines and nothing about people.”
The auction was running late and had just started by the time I arrived. Books were piled in great, tottering stacks. Since the nobility had acquired a passion for antique books, it was best if they looked truly old. Everyone knew that a month before an important auction, they were locked in a trunk with Amazonian spiders, to be enveloped in layers of cobwebs. The volumes were never cleaned because the accumulated filth confirmed antiquity. Publication dates simply weren’t enough: collectors liked to feel their treasure had been snatched from oblivion seconds before it came into their hands. Thus, every time the auctioneer presented a book, a cloud of dust would rise up, causing the first few rows to erupt in coughs and sneezes.
Gathered in the Tramont house were the most notable collectors from Paris, as well as dealers from Antwerp and Brussels who were trying to blend in. A few stood alone, but most were in groups of two or three. Though from the outside they may have looked like one big family, they were in fact eyeing one another suspiciously: each belonged to a rival religion and what one considered gospel was heresy to another. Those who chose books based on their bindings would laugh at those searching for Elzevirian or Roman type; experts in typography couldn’t understand what others saw in vignettes and bronze engravings; academics in search of Latin classics despised a love of a book’s material qualities, aspiring to more ethereal volumes instead.
The auctioneer had saved The Human Machine until the end. By this time, half of the buyers had already left. A bookseller from the Pont Neuf opened with a laughable bid. Von Knepper raised his hand, and this was echoed weakly by his competitor. The game continued for no more than three or four amounts, and the book was soon Von Knepper’s for no trouble and little cost. Having been rebound, it was of no antiquarian value. It was only of interest because it was so rare.
I sat down next to Von Knepper as he held the acquisition limply in his hands. All interest had evaporated now that it was his. The hate I expected to see in his eyes when he saw me was in fact something worse: hope. This was no longer a man to be feared but an old man begging forgiveness without knowing why. The last few days had filled his voice with pleading:
“Where’s my daughter?”
“I don’t know. You know very well I had to flee.”
“If it wasn’t you, then who?”
“The abbot’s people?”
“They have me firmly in their grasp; they don’t need my daughter. In any event, she left of her own free will. She could be anywhere in the city now. She doesn’t know a thing about life; she doesn’t know how to work. How will she survive?”
The auction had ended. All of the collectors were leaving, treasures in hand. I followed Von Knepper out.
“I’ll look for your daughter.”
“And what’s your price if you find her?”
“You’re worried about price? I thought all you’d care about now was Clarissa.”
“If the cost for finding my daughter is to give her to you, that’s too high a price. I don’t make those kinds of deals. At most, if you’re patient, I can make you a copy.”
“I’ll look for her first. Then we’ll talk price.”
We had come to the Seine. Von Knepper flipped through the book by the light of the moon, stopping at the engravings, studying the binding.
“At least I directed you to a good deal,” I said by way of goodbye.
“This book? I know it by heart. It doesn’t interest me in the least.”
“Then why did you buy it?”
“To destroy it. The last thing a maker of automatons needs is for this sort of information to get out. Secrets must be kept.”
He threw the book, as far as he could, and it splashed into the river.
I looked for Kolm at the courts by the usual method of leaving a message in a basket, which disappeared into one of the upper windows. A crumpled piece of paper was sent back down, telling me to meet him the next night in a classroom at L’école de Médecine.
No one stopped me at the iron gate or among the columns. I walked down a corridor that began in half-light and ended in absolute darkness. Kolm was waiting for me, partway down, at the bottom of some stairs. All around him were large portraits of famous doctors; despite the stains on his overcoat, it was as if posterity had rubbed off on Kolm as well.
He gestured for me to be quiet, and I followed him, up stairs and down halls, to a room with piles of murky jars, wax sculptures of sections of the brain, and skeletons enveloped in cobwebs.
Kolm sat down at a long table, covered in dozens of yellowing sheets containing the type of meticulous drawings we had become used to in the Encyclopédie. But these were old, the edges and folds ravaged by time. They were highly detailed designs for machines whose purpose became clear only after careful examination.
Leaning over, studying the diagrams intently, Kolm was so different he seemed like an impostor.
“Why are we meeting here and not in the square? What are you doing at the school of medicine, with these old illustrations?”
“We’re in danger apart, but together we’re dead. Here, in this room, we can talk without fear, without anyone seeing us, away from the machinations of Abbot Mazy. Look at everything around us: old, forgotten things. If a person hides among them, he’ll be forgotten, too.”
“I’m surprised they let you be here. You’re not a doctor or a student.”
“One of the professors has a job only I can do. He wants to put an end to executions that become torture because of incompetent executioners. He’s searching for a machine as perfect as the best executioner, who takes life without evoking tears or screams.”
I looked at the plans more closely and began to understand. A sword, made heavier by an oversized hilt, slid down two vertical rails…
“… until it severs the medulla,” Kolm explained in a pedantic tone I’d never heard him use. “It was invented by a Hungarian engineer, who tried it on his wife. He said it was an accident, but no one believed him, and they executed him with it. It was never used again.”
Kolm rummaged for a sheet that was underneath the others.
“Look at this one. The offender is dressed in metal armor. He looks like a warrior ready for combat-only his enemy is the sky: an electric current travels down from a kite flown through a lightning storm. Death is certain and quick, but the weather isn’t.”
In another illustration was a huge ax that hung like a pendulum over the victim, in this case a woman whose black hair seemed to have a life of its own. A second drawing showed her headless.
“A Spanish invention used by the Inquisition in the sixteenth century. No matter how heavy the ax is, because it cuts on a diagonal, it rarely detaches the head completely. Now I’ll show you my favorite.”
This wasn’t a plan but an old engraving; it showed a simple structure, just two rails that a blade traveled down.
“The Halifax gibbet, used in England in the sixteenth century, apparently with excellent results. I’ve almost decided on this model. It won’t be hard to build: all you need is wood and a blade, and enough lead to make sure it drops fast and hard. If it works, there’ll be no need for executioners; anyone will be able to kill. It’s a shame: us old executioners, with our knowledge and our customs, will disappear forever, replaced by clerks who simply have to pull a rope. We’ll be forgotten, like calligraphers.”
Kolm was already reaching for more diagrams to show me; I had to interrupt his explanations.
“I didn’t come looking for deadly inventions but, rather, advice. Clarissa Von Knepper has disappeared. I told her father I’d find her.”
“And why did you promise him that?”
“There’s something I have to do, and he’s the only one who can help me.”
“Not the bishop again? I hope you don’t find her then.”
Kolm looked behind a statue of Hippocrates, in among anatomical specimens, for a bottle of liquor that he set down in front of me. It was sweet but strong.
“Drink and forget. The work you do is unsavory, and I need an assistant. I promised the doctor he’d have his machine in a few days.”
“How will you test it?”
“There’s never any shortage of volunteers here.”
“I can’t help you, Kolm. I’ve come a long way to finish a job.”
“A job that will finish you. Well, if that’s what you want… But bear in mind, this doctor pays well, and he doesn’t have any significant enemies, yet. Your employer, this Voltaire, on the other hand…”
With a look of disappointment, Kolm turned back to his plans and pulled out a map.
“That’s not a machine; it’s Paris,” I said.
The city was so vast, so full of streets and names, it seemed I’d never find something as small as a woman in it.
“A brotherhood of heretics with ties to smuggling-they called themselves the Syracusans-would use the city in their executions. Whenever they suspected a brother was going to leave the sect, he was sentenced to death, but they believed the city always had the last word. One of them would take the role of executioner and wait in a room until midnight. The offender, who didn’t know his fate, was told to cross the city and get to the appointed room. If there were no problems along the way, he’d arrive thinking he’d completed his task and would be pardoned, when, in fact, the moment he opened the door he’d be executed with a Norman sword. However, if traffic or other obstacles stopped the offender, forcing him to detour and delaying him, he’d be saved.”
Palaces, bridges, churches, cemeteries. It took my finger just as long to trace a quiet street as another where I’d have been killed for merely setting foot.
“Where in this city could a young woman hide?”
“So you’re really going to look for her? You’ve already had to escape once. Maybe, like the Syracusans’ victims, an executioner is waiting for you in a darkened room.”
The liquor seemed to boost my spirits after a while. It simplified the city map, erasing entire streets and neighborhoods. All I had to do was turn a corner to find Clarissa, to save her and myself.
“Check the convents,” Kolm suggested.
“I know she wouldn’t go there. She’s had enough of being cloistered.”
“What does Von Knepper’s daughter know how to do?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” I thought for a moment and corrected myself. “She knows how to do one thing: stay still.”
With the nearly empty bottle in his hand, Kolm pointed to Hippocrates:
“Then ask the statues. They know the secret.”
Every Tuesday morning models would gather in the basement of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in search of work. Three big iron stoves tried in vain to heat the room, where the cold seemed to come not from outside but from the statues forgotten in the dark. Those sculptures, once proud exhibits and then inconvenient obstacles, were pushed by the whims of art down into the underground world. Every now and then an expedition would arrive: critics or sculptors would decide to bring back a former style or a forgotten artist, and archangels, Madonnas, or Greek gods would rise up to the surface again.
The youngest women came from the countryside or abroad; rather than showing any conviction in their new line of work, they seemed to curl their bodies into question marks as they undressed near the glow of the great stoves. There was a Chinese folding screen, red lacquer with silk panels, but no one bothered to use it; the drawings made it seem much more indecent than nudity itself.
I had managed to blend in with those who came to the basement in search of models. The young women displayed their figures, some opulent and others angular, while the artists would judge and perhaps propose a deal. If the day’s wages were acceptable, the girls would leave with the painters.
There was something odd about the way almost everyone dressed that made them look foreign-except the foreigners, who tried to look Parisian. Everyone came down the stairs silent and alone but soon began animated conversations with one another and occasionally with the models. They boasted of their latest assignments: a cameo barely whispered, a virgin for a chapel exclaimed, the portrait of a certain countess bellowed. Those with money would soon come to an arrangement and leave with the chosen model; the others, outdone, would quietly criticize the women who were now beginning to dress.
“I need a model who’s not too imposing. She needs to be more of an outline; she should lack a little definition,” said one who looked extremely young, almost a boy, dressed in every piece of clothing he could find.
“You want a model who’s a little blurry, like when you’re drunk? Well, that’s easy enough to achieve, my young Arsit!” said his friend, a tall man with enormous hands who was surreptitiously sketching as he talked. He was using the girls without having to pay a cent, but his hands were so big it was impossible not to notice. “Look at that one, with the red hair; she’s perfect for a Gorgon.”
“They were better fed last year, Gravelot.”
“You weren’t even born last year.”
Arsit ignored him and tried to deepen his voice:
“They don’t know how to be still. Do you see them moving, Gravelot? What would Mattioli say if he were here.”
I asked who Mattioli was.
“Guido Mattioli, the sculptor. You haven’t heard of him? Where are you from?” the boy asked in disbelief. “You should read his book The Life of Statues instead of freezing to death here. Until you have, you won’t understand a thing about models. Mattioli is extremely demanding when it comes to choosing his muses: he won’t tolerate the slightest movement.”
“To test them, he smears their breasts in honey and releases a swarm of bees: a real model must be able to remain indifferent,” Gravelot said, still drawing. The women who were left had now recognized his strategy and were hurriedly dressing.
“Before working on a sculpture, the model herself must be a statue,” Arsit explained. “In his book, Mattioli says: you must wrest the statue that’s in the woman to then wrest the woman hiding inside the marble.”
“Where can I find Mattioli?” I asked.
“Do you want him to teach you? He doesn’t take students.”
The boy painter smiled arrogantly. He liked knowing what others didn’t.
“I’d be happy just to watch him work.”
“I’ve never seen him, but they say he lives in a house at the end of rue des Cendres. Every now and then an outing is organized: the artists all file out of here on foot, watch him work through a window-never daring to knock on his door-and then they all leave. How many times have you gone to see him, Gravelot?”
“Three. The first time, Mattioli threw water at us; the second, rocks; and the third, a dead rat.”
“And you, Arsit? Haven’t you ever wanted to see him with your own eyes?”
“Let me offer you a piece of advice,” the boy painter replied gravely. “Keep your ideals where they are, just out of reach.”
We were the last ones there. Gravelot, with his enormous hands and feet, clomped up the stairs. Arsit stayed behind.
“What about you? Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
He didn’t reply, just turned his head and disappeared between a lion and a virgin with outstretched hands.
Gravelot took me by the arm.
“Leave him be. Arsit lives here. He was abandoned as a child and grew up among these statues. He rarely comes to the surface. Sometimes I bring him a plate of food and leave it on the stairs, as if he were a stray cat. Every Tuesday I shake as I come into the basement, worried I’ll find him as frozen as everything around him. He’s never painted or sculpted a thing, but he lives for art.”
Outside that world of statues, Paris was still very much alive. The streets were full of passersby who constantly changed direction, as if suddenly remembering something they had to do; the trees rustled even though there was no wind; not even the houses were still but shook with the passing of cars. And yet, as I approached rue des Cendres (so named because of a brick factory that used to blanket the street in ash), there were fewer people, and everything turned gray, still, and empty. I passed a dead beggar and a sleeping horse. Mattioli’s house, at the end of the street, was like something from a dream, the kind of house you only ever see from the outside because the moment you knock, you startle awake.
I found a window at street level and stretched out on the cobblestones. Through the dirty glass, I could see into Mattioli’s studio. His tools were on the floor; there was a folding screen at the back. Sketches of the model multiplied her figure countless times. The sculptor was working on a block of marble he had already transformed into the shadow of a woman.
Clarissa was off to one side: naked, white, perfect-more perfect even than the distant copy her father had made. She was gripping a gold helmet and a lance that rested on the floor beside her. She sat so still that, in contrast, the other Clarissa, the one born out of marble, seemed to be alive.
Von Knepper was leaning over a delicate mechanism that resembled a musical instrument: glass pegs tightened very fine strings that would make a sound at the slightest touch.
“We need to find another way to make automatons talk. The human vocal system is extremely difficult to control. The slightest imperfection and the melody of the inanimate starts to play. One day I’ll resort to magic. I once read that Hermes Trismegistus could make a statue so perfect that life was inevitable.”
“A statue that comes to life must also then die.”
“Maybe the Egyptian sorcerers watched theirs weaken and expire and abandoned the method forever. Who knows, maybe their creatures reverted to statues, only this time they were abominable, or maybe they shattered into piles of marble shards.”
I picked up a hand that was on the table and tested it. The bones were made of black wood and the joints of gold.
“I found Clarissa,” I said nonchalantly.
Von Knepper’s hands leaped to my neck and he repeated his daughter’s name, as if it were a threat. He squeezed my throat with professional rigor. I fought in vain for the air that would allow me to speak. In the midst of our struggle, we fell on the table. The tiny harp-future throat-fell to the floor, making a strange sound, like an animal cry. Heeding this plea, Von Knepper released me. I backed into a corner of the room.
“I don’t have her, but I know where she is. I saw her myself. I’ll take her somewhere safe today.”
“And do you think I’m going to just wait here, doing nothing, while you…?”
“You won’t be doing nothing. I have a job for you.”
I pulled a ball of paper from my pocket. The documents that change a country’s history, the secrets that send some to the throne and others to the gallows, aren’t safely tucked in folders and covered in wax seals. They’re wrinkled sheets of paper, dampened by the rain, that some insignificant person carries deep in his pocket, with coins, a penknife, and a bit of bread.
“This is the text the bishop is to write. Three envoys from Rome will be meeting with him the day after tomorrow.”
“Yes, I know about that meeting. I was told to make the final adjustments.”
“Those adjustments are written here.”
He read the page.
“You’re crazy. If the bishop writes this, his skull will become an inkwell and my blood the ink.”
“I understand the danger, but there’s no other way for you to see your daughter again.”
Disheartened, Von Knepper read the message over and over. It may not have been the thought of Clarissa that changed his mind but the message itself: after all, it was the truth.
“Once the new text has been written, you won’t able to come back here. At least not while Mazy remains in power.”
“I have somewhere to hide. I’ve spent my life living under aliases, in houses rented for three months at a time. What about my daughter?”
I handed him a blank page.
“She’s here.”
He turned the sheet over and, seeing that it was blank as well, threw it in my face. I handed it back.
“It’s invisible ink. The message will appear in a little more than forty hours without you doing anything. Forget about using sulfur, alcohol, saltpeter, or any other thing you might think of; all you’ll find then is an illegible smudge. Keep your promise and the secret will be revealed.”
When I left Von Knepper’s, I walked to the Seine and quietly asked at a bookstore for The Bishop’s Message.
“Sold out,” the bookseller said. It was hard to know if he was telling the truth or was afraid I was an inspector.
Voltaire’s first message was already in print and was being passed from hand to hand all over the city. His second would soon be engraved on an iron plate and fill the bishop’s memory with forty-two words.
There were two statues in Mattioli’s studio. One had Clarissa’s features; the other was covered by a gray cloth. The sculptor had collapsed into a chair, and his threadbare shirt only exaggerated the defeat in his posture. Kolm was holding the hammer and chisel at shoulder height on the statue and tapping. Shards and dust were falling from the marble.
“Where is she?”
“I hired her, but she left without a word.”
Kolm tapped again, only harder this time. He had started at the edge of the block but was now moving toward the already well-defined face.
“I’ve never carved a head like this one. The girl’s gone, and all I have of her is what you see there.”
Kolm seemed to have forgotten his purpose was to threaten, and had become enamored of the tools. He frightened me a little, so I decided to take advantage of that:
“They say every block of marble has a particular spot on which the life of the stone depends. Once you hit it, the marble will crack. How long until my friend finds that spot?”
Kolm aimed the next blow at the statue’s invisible heart. I jumped, sure the execution would be final this time. Mattioli didn’t bat an eyelid. He spoke with the wisdom of someone who has won or lost everything:
“I’ve had dozens of models, but none of them was still enough. Those hands that would rise up to brush away a fly; those eyes that would seek who knows what outside the window. Boredom, nerves, exhaustion. They thought they were being still, but I saw the silent dance: first the foot, then the elbow, and, when their own nakedness bothered them, the rapid breath or syncopated heartbeat. But then I found her, down in the basement, among the others at the Académie. My colleagues-those good for nothings-didn’t even see her because they don’t know how to look. I’ve been searching for her for years; I even wrote a book exalting her absence. And then suddenly there she was.”
We had searched for Clarissa as well, all through the house, even the basement and the attic. Getting around was no easy task; the hallways were blocked, not only by unfinished sculptures and paintings but also by the instruments Mattioli had used to pursue his ideal of stillness. As the search wore on, the artist began to explain the nature of his collection with a certain amount of pride. There were music boxes that caused momentary immobility, a seat fitted with metal brackets and belts, and bottles of narcotic drugs (which almost forced us to abandon the hunt because of the toxic cloud that filled the attic). In a corner we found a suit of armor made of iron bands that left sections of the victim bare. Bronze spikes in the most painful places ensured that the model would sit still.
There was only one place left to look. I walked toward the second statue and pulled off the gray cloth. Kolm had glanced there earlier but had mistaken her for a real statue. Clarissa was posed as before, only minus the lance and gold helmet. I kissed her icy lips and, in doing so, grew angry that her naked body was in full view. Behind the folding screen, in among easels and rolled-up canvases, was some clothing that might have been hers. I dressed her in silence. Clarissa didn’t seem to know where she was when she awoke, and I waited for her memory to make sense of the room.
She walked over to the work in progress and ran her fingers over the statue’s face.
“Did I do all right, Mattioli?”
“No one has ever done better. But now it will never be finished.”
“Then it will be just like me. I’m not finished, either.”
Not finding any warm clothes, I put my cloak around Clarissa and we left Mattioli’s house. At some point, Kolm disappeared without a word. He might have tried to say good-bye, but I only had eyes for Clarissa. A coach took us to the Académie des Beaux-Artes, but we didn’t go in right away in case Mattioli had decided to follow us.
I knocked repeatedly until the door was finally opened. The boy painter had been asleep and stared at me blankly.
“Arsit, this is the friend I told you about. You need to look after her until her father, M. Laghi, comes to get her.”
I handed him the amount we had agreed on that afternoon. It would have been easy to cheat Arsit; he seemed completely unaware of the value of money, but I felt sorry for the boy painter.
“I’ll use this opportunity to talk to her about art. I’ll tell her the story behind every statue, and I won’t even charge for it.”
Clarissa was awake now.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“You need to stay here until your father arrives. The abbot’s men will be looking for you both.”
“Why? What has my father done?”
“Nothing yet, but it won’t be long.”
“At one time I thought you’d rescue me from my father and help me escape. Instead, here you are turning me over to him. You call that love?”
Around us the crowd of statues seemed to grow larger and cast a disapproving murmur in my direction. Fingers and swords pointed at me. Arsit furrowed his brow in silence, as if he had to show a certain amount of indignation toward me and yet didn’t want to get too involved-as annoyed as any child by incomprehensible adult problems.
Clarissa disappeared among the statues, without a word, as if she knew her way, as if she were returning to her birthplace.
Arsit looked at me with wide eyes, slightly overwhelmed by the sense of responsibility. He counted the money-or pretended to count it-and then, as if accepting his position as king of that underground world, ordered me to leave with a wave of his hand.
The one hundred copies Hesdin had printed were soon sold out among the Pont Neuf booksellers, where a whole community of obsessive readers went in search of forbidden words. Most of them were spies, paid by the Church or the police to obtain texts and study them. Even innocent readers wanted to join their ranks, as this assured them unrestricted access to books and the money to buy them. In exchange, they simply had to add a title to the Index every now and then. There was no higher prestige than the sparkle of the flames; they only increased the mystery surrounding a book-and its price.
Ever since the Encyclopédie appeared, the number of these undercover agents had grown. They were the first to leap on every new release and vie for the copies. One informant didn’t know another: each believed he was the only spy in a world of innocents. There were readers trained in Athanasius Kircher’s cryptography who could decipher any code; others interpreted the pages in terms of political allegory; and the most keenly intelligent, prepared to arrive at innocence through the complexities of intellect, were charged with the literal meaning. Through one method or another, every interpreter found a hidden truth.
The Jesuits had come to dominate the literal interpretation, which was actually the most difficult. Believing that an attack on the Dominicans might improve their position, they disseminated their own version of The Bishop’s Message. At the time, I had no idea of the journey that story had taken and believed it had been swallowed up, like so many other books printed in Paris every day. Often they would shine while a conversation or a dinner lasted and then disappear without any need for bonfires.
I walked past the Auberge du Poisson, afraid to go in until I was sure no one was waiting for me. If Von Knepper had kept his word, the other message, that brief confession, would already be engraved on a metal plate and would have taken over the automaton’s memory. I took a stroll and soon discovered one of the abbot’s guards. Tired of the wait, he was pretending to be blind, stretching his long, yellow fingers out to passersby who were trying to avoid him. He had begun to take his disguise so seriously that he was whispering who knows what threats into the ears of pedestrians, reaching out for them with his cane, its sharpened tip encouraging charity. He was a failure as a spy but a success as a beggar, and the hours of waiting had filled his pockets. I walked away with my eyes closed, like a child hoping not to be seen. I wandered the city for the rest of the day, not knowing where to spend the night that was coming, the night that had arrived, the night that was ending.
Very early the next morning, almost unintentionally, my footsteps led me to L’école de Médecine. Perhaps Kolm would still be there, testing his machine. The iron gate was open. When I reached the long, empty corridor, I could hear the sound of keys in the distance. I was so afraid of that noise, I had to convince myself the sense of danger was only in my imagination.
The room where Kolm was searching for the perfect machine was locked, but there would be no shortage of keys to unlock it. Signac, accompanied by the blind pretender, was suddenly beside me. The keeper of the keys held a lamp over my head, while his colleague brought the sharpened tip of his cane to my throat.
“All our lives, we open and close doors without realizing the consequences,” Signac said. “It’s like in the fairy tales: one door leads to the treasure and the other to the dragon’s den.”
Signac handed me a key. I knew something terrible was going to happen the moment I opened the door. I recalled the story of the Syracusans: perhaps I had come to the room where an executioner was waiting for me.
The key turned easily in the lock. It took some effort to push the door open, however, as the end of a rope was lodged between it and the frame. The door finally gave way and the rope was released.
I heard the whisper of the blade and then the impact. I don’t know whether Kolm had ever managed to test his machine on a cadaver, but it worked perfectly that time. The blade slid down the greased rails and cut cleanly. The head fell on the wooden floor and rolled to my feet. Kolm’s eyes were still open.
Signac lifted the lamp, and I could see that the machine looked exactly like the illustration of the Halifax gibbet. Kolm’s body was tied to a long table. His hair and the collar of his shirt had been cut to facilitate the blade’s work. I was still holding the key that had made me the executioner’s executioner.
“Do you know what Kolm said when I explained my plan?” Signac asked with a push, forcing me to walk down the corridor. “Now anyone can be an executioner.”
I heaved a sigh of relief at leaving that bloodstained room. The blind pretender walked ahead. The keeper of the keys came behind, locking doors as he passed.
We crossed the central patio with its thorny plants and blue leaves used for calligraphic pursuits. In the middle of the courtyard were two deep ponds made of black marble. There were sturgeon, squid, and a fish that glowed in the deep: all of them were used to make ink. In no hurry, the keeper of the keys and the blind pretender led me across patios and up stairs.
We finally came to the calligraphy hall. Tomes as big as coffins stood on the bookcase. An astonishing collection of quills and inks filled cabinets and shelves. The smell of the inks mingled with the stuffy air. In among bottles stacked in the shape of a tower, a star, a cross, I saw a human skull that was used as an inkwell and quills so enormous it was hard to imagine what bird they had been plucked from. The two guards who had brought me moved away, leaving me apparently free. Such implements could only have belonged to Silas Darel. I began to look all around me, in search of the great calligrapher, when I saw a small office. It was down a few stairs; I had to duck my head to enter.
Darel was working and didn’t look up. His hands were so white and fine it was as if a sudden movement might break them; his long nails looked like slivers of marble. He was concentrating on every stroke, writing slowly and forcefully, giving the words a definitive quality. This contrasted with the faint shadow of his hand on the paper and was itself another form of writing that seemed to say: for every word that remains, countless others disappear.
The calligrapher’s silence was like a glass wall around him. I’ve heard that focus is a form of prayer; if that’s the case, this man was most certainly praying. The light coming in through a small window fell across a Venetian inkwell filled with blood.
I was trying to see what Darel was writing, looking for my name among the red words, when the answer came from behind me.
“He’s writing our history,” said the abbot, who had come in quietly. “But he’s not bound by the usual rule of waiting until things have happened. He’s finished with the past and is now busy with the future. Our enemies have the Encyclopédie and the will to clarify all things; we have calligraphy and a duty to mystify the world.”
The sound of pealing bells seemed to reach us from far away. The abbot unrolled a piece of paper before me.
“I want you to write your confession. Who sent you and why. Every word must be true. Our master calligrapher doesn’t hear but only sees, and he can recognize the hesitation of a lie in handwriting. If that happens, he will plunge his quill into your neck before you know it. I’m sorry I won’t be here to watch the exam, but the envoys from Rome are waiting.”
A small inkwell was set in front of me and a quill placed in my hand. The abbot hurried to the door, accompanied by the keeper of the keys. The other guard had disappeared. Darel opened a drawer and pulled out a sharpened quill, the tip so pointed it would tear the paper at the slightest touch.
I slowly wrote the truth, wondering whose blood was now my ink. I tried to delay putting the name Voltaire on paper. Darel, who didn’t read the words but only the handwriting, must have noticed something because he attacked me with his quill, wounding me on the face. The pain forced me to stop. I pulled out a handkerchief, and when I brought it to my cheek, a strange symbol was imprinted on it.
I didn’t want him to hurt me again. What was so absolutely true that Darel would refrain from attacking me? I recalled how we used to repeat his name, in secret, in the cloisters at Vidors’ School. I had finally seen the legend, and the legend was going to kill me. Slowly, as slowly as the automaton, I wrote the text the bishop was writing at the very same time before the eyes of Rome:
DO NOT LOOK FOR THE BISHOP IN THESE HANDS…
The envoys from Rome had read the Jesuit interpretation of The Bishop’s Message and came prepared to understand: they arrived at the palace with an escort of twenty-five men. When the signal came, when Von Knepper’s creature wrote the forty-two words dreamed up in Ferney, there was no need to ask for an explanation:
I heard a commotion in the distance and, through the window, saw monks fleeing from the Roman soldiers. Doors that were being ripped open and slammed shut in the distance called out to Signac, the keeper of the keys. My guard understood his duty lay elsewhere, and he was faithful to the end.
Darel paid no attention to what was going on outside but focused solely on the task he had been given. I admired his infinite concentration: not once did he turn his head to look out the window. He was indifferent to it all-and simply wrote.
Down there, in the geometric garden, the keeper of the keys, in bloodied clothes, obliterated all symmetry. Staggering, he battled four men whose daggers had already wounded him. He mortally injured one but lost his weapon in the thrust and very nearly his hand. Just when it seemed he had lost, he pulled out two colossal keys, destined for who knows what unimaginable doors. True to their purpose, they opened two skulls. The only foe left standing leaped on the giant, who tripped over one of the wounded and fell into the black pond.
Signac tried to remove the weight that was pulling him down, but the keys never ended: once he had undipped the keys to the main doors, there were still those to the cellar, not to mention the great doors to the garden, the chapel, the secret chambers, the museum, the catacombs, the calligraphy hall, Darel’s office. It may have been a gust of wind that blew from one end of the palace to the other, but the moment Signac hit bottom I heard distant doors slam in what sounded like a funereal salute. A school of disconcerted sturgeon swam in circles above the fallen giant.
Darel was prepared to discover my lie but, inspired as it was by the truth, never saw the final stroke coming: my quill leaped from the page and plunged into his neck. I stood prepared for his response, but he never even looked at me. Darel knew how to recognize the stroke of a pen; he knew this was the last word. He covered his wound with a white hand that was soon red and walked to his desk. With a tremor that would surely have mortified him, he drew the same symbol he had earlier drawn with a steady hand on my face.
In the years that followed, every time I looked in a mirror, I envied the hand that had written that symbol. At the time it seemed to have no meaning. Whenever I suffered from insomnia, I would copy it over and over until I was sure I was about to solve the mystery, but then I would fall asleep.
Only years later, here in this new land, did I discover its meaning in an old newspaper, when the truth about Egyptian hieroglyphics came to light: it was the hieroglyph for the god Thoth, who invented writing. But how could Darel have known that? It was then I remembered the story I’d heard at Vidors’ School: the story of an ancient tradition of scribes that had continued uninterrupted across continents and through catastrophes.
Sometimes, when I look at my face by the light of the moon in a small, broken mirror that hangs on my wall, I tell myself that Darel marked me so I would know something grand and secret ended with me.
On a corner of my desk is all the work I have to do: write up agreements for immediate signature, detail expenses from the last two months, prepare a clean copy of two court rulings. Any documents that put the security of the state at risk are entrusted to someone else. If they see me as being so different and, therefore, suspicious, it’s not because they’re thinking of France but of that enormous and exotic realm: the past.
After the events at Arnim Palace, I returned to Ferney, where I worked as calligrapher for seventeen years. I never did set up my workshop with quills and inks, having chosen a safer and more idle life instead. In the mornings I attended to Voltaire’s correspondence and sometimes his books; in the afternoons I dealt with his commercial paperwork and drafted documents. It was a peaceful job, and I would have liked it to last forever.
Many years later, when Voltaire announced he was going to Paris, I felt there was nothing left for me at Ferney. Everyone else agreed; they all carried out every act-cleaning a vase, preparing a meal, pruning the yellow rosebushes-with the care and indifference particular to those who know they are doing it for the very last time.
Those of us who accompanied Voltaire’s carriage as it left did so in silence. We were supposed to be celebrating, but it felt more like a funeral cortège. The mood turned out to be appropriate: Paris awaited Voltaire to shower him with every imaginable honor, to subject him to a stream of visitors at Mme. Villette’s hotel, to exhaust him to death, and then to deny him burial.
Voltaire’s heart arrived at Château Ferney two months after his death. The only grave they found for him was on the outskirts of the city, in Sellières, where his nephew was abbot. Before his body was buried, the doctor removed his heart. He acted as if it were an impromptu operation, but it was obvious to those in attendance that the decision had been made much earlier: on a night when urgency and chaos reigned, he had brought several jars of salt and a blue liquid that irritated the eyes. I don’t know who might have fought over the heart or who sent it to Ferney; it was delivered by a Polish messenger who spoke not a word of French and stayed no more than a minute.
In the confusion that now governed the house, the heart was put in the study with all the eccentricities that distinguished travelers had brought from distant lands over the years. No one had gone in there since Voltaire’s death, and the pieces were now covered in cobwebs and dust. The master of the house was gone, and the house itself seemed to sicken and die. The heart lay forgotten among rocks that shone in the dark, sea creatures, and unicorn bones.
I was assigned to take inventory. As soon as I noted things down, they would disappear, and before long almost none of the eccentricities were left. It was common to see the servants’ children out in the garden playing with a whale jawbone, a polar bear hide, or a martyr’s mummified hand.
At first, I tried to maintain a certain sense of order, but in the end I joined the looters and hid the heart among my things. So no one would notice its absence, I put the embalmed heart of a sixteenth-century Venetian countess in its place-a gift from Voltaire’s friend, the marquis d’Argenson.
I finished the inventory one day before leaving. My handwriting was no longer what it was when I started: it was now serene and simple and made no attempt to dazzle. It was the writing of someone who knows that the words on the page hide both what’s there and what’s lost.
Catherine the Great inherited the archives, and the secretaries and file clerks who were bound to those pages for life went with them. I didn’t want that fate and returned to Paris, with Voltaire’s heart among my belongings.
I worked in the mornings as a calligraphy expert at Siccard House (the second-floor activities had been shut down) and spent my afternoons looking for Clarissa. There was no trace of her or her father anywhere in the city. To a certain extent, I’ve never abandoned the search: even here in this faraway port, whenever newcomers have passed through France, I find them to see if they’ve heard the name Von Knepper.
I only ever came across one witness, and that witness I lost. The night before I left, I was walking along the Seine when a bearded man in rags stepped out in front of me. I had seen him from afar on other occasions: he would stop passersby, show them something he carried in a bag, and let them go. But this time he startled me: for a moment I thought he was going to kill me, so I drew my only weapon, the quill I had used to kill Silas Darel. Despite the beard and the darkness, I recognized Mattioli, but he didn’t seem to know who I was. Showing me the contents of a bag he could barely lift, he asked:
“Have you seen this woman?”
“No,” I replied, in barely a whisper.
“It’s all over then,” the sculptor said, as if his last hope had died with me and there was no one left in the entire city to ask.
He climbed up onto the railing with a familiarity that obviated any sense of danger. Before securing the knot that tied the bag around his neck, he looked at the marble head one last time. I ran to stop him: I too wanted to kiss those icy lips. He didn’t give me a chance. Mattioli embraced the head and jumped into the dark waters. The last image of Clarissa drowned with him.