Silas Darel

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…