Dinner at Voltaire’s

Dinner at Voltaire’s, Rousseau pulls out a chair — for me? The sun slants over the terrace, seeping sunset bleeding into our meal, golden flakes spiked across the glistery food. I am struck by the image of Midas, and his wife, the wide-eyed maiden, struck silent. Voltaire scrapes his knife across his plate, a screechy gull’s cry echoing off the cavern of Rousseau’ grin, hand outstretched towards Voltaire’s goblet in a thin swipe. I let the wine swirl down my throat, mouth filled with velvet in a ragingly empty storm. Voltaire grimaces at Rousseau, who speaks incessantly, voice overlapping upon itself as he tangles his mind into a thousand theories, soup spinning and spinning and spinning around in his bowl, bread softening on my lips. Diderot offers me a light smile, skimming the tension like a whip cracked in cloudy meringue. He touches Rousseau lightly on the elbow when he stills for a second, lapsing into his own thoughts, the cracking cannon fire quieting as he reloads. Voltaire coughs, not impolitely, and talks, slowly, windingly, a calm lap of the sea as it rolls over the sand, softening the Earth. Voltaire, too, does not eat, fork abandoned in his plate with his fingers knotted beneath his face, gaze pierced through me as he vocally mulls through Rousseau’s thoughts, winding through his jungle placing flowers all abound. Rousseau stills too, spoon clanging lightly on Diderot’s plate as he leans forward, too, listening, enraptured. Émilie sighs, then spoons me some courgette with a smile, eyes twinkling as the two men lapse into poetry, voices overlapping softly, lightly, breaths passing over each other like boats rolling by the Thames. She, kindly, speaks to me; a elegant gloves hand taking in mine, delicately explaining each dish on the table: coq au vin, endives, smoked trout rillettes, cucumber soup, bread, it goes on. Rousseau states something candidly, hand waving in the air, stabbed across Diderot’s vision and Voltaire — Voltaire, oh, he laughs. Rolls of laughter seems to tumble and bubble out of him as he tries to keep his calm, hand smoothing over his features as he shakes like a schoolboy, hair twisting out of it’s tiny knots to lay over his back. Rousseau, pleased, smiles, drinks a shy spoon of soup and waits for Voltaire to finish before launching into another tirade. Diderot sips his Chardonnay, lips pursed in thought as Voltaire reaches a tentative hand towards Émilie’s bread, and Diderot slings his arm over Rousseau’s shoulder, an intensely casual and friendly act, dripping with smoothness and charisma that none other at that table could replicate. Bar Émilie, perhaps. Voltaire seizes, ever so slightly, eyes widening as his fingers tear the brioche into crushed dry crumbs, drowned in a swirl of sea. Rousseau, unnoticed, speaks on, voice speeding across the shivering leaves, growing and falling, snaking through sunlight, lost in the maze of his own mind, a vomit of ideas he would curate later. Voltaire glances at Diderot, lightly, before interrupting Rousseau with a cough, then speaks, in that windingly romantic way his voice glides over the sunset sky, but pierced, faster, like the sea rushing to shore, a hurry for the tide to crash to the sand, to drag the moon across the heavens. Émilie casts me a knowing smile, before tapping the table, interrupting the trio, speaking some light quick thanks into existence. Diderot raises a thin glass to her, lips pursed in a contemplative grin, leaned back like an open book. Rousseau raises an eye-brow, but tips his head all the same, gaze finally dragging across the table from his mind. Voltaire, well, Voltaire, he acts as he does — as in, he doesn’t, all but elegantly draining his glass and casting his sight outside to the yawning sun, dipping over the horizon into a fig tree. Later, we would stroll through the city, Paris hugging our huddled figures in it’s cold romantic way. Émilie will have her arm linked into the crook of Voltaire’s, whereas Rousseau will have his crossed tightly over his figure. Diderot will laugh, ever so often, a crack of light ricocheting off the cobblestone and into my memory, where it will stay, for all of eternity.