The Watchers

by Jon Steele

  He felt the cold gaze of the saints and prophets carved in stone either side of the great wood doors, all staring down on him with grumpy faces. Monsieur Moses the most grumpy-faced of all. Ready to smash the stone tablets in his hands on the ground. Rochat waved him away.

  ‘Oh, please, it’s the same silliness with you every night. Thou shalt not this, thou shalt not that. That’s all you have to say. And where would you be without your silly stone tablets? Looking very silly with nothing to complain about, that’s what I think.’

  Rochat leaned back and saw the gargoyles peeking from the upper façade. He watched rain drip from their mouths and fall to the empty stone jamb between the doors.

  He remembered a story he learned in school.

  Once there was a gold statue of Mother Mary standing on the jamb. And lots of people climbed the steps of Escaliers du marché on their knees to pray before her and there were miracles. The blind could see, the lame could walk. Till some grumpy men from Berne came and tore Mary from the jamb and melted her into coins. The teacher said they were called Reformationmen. Rochat rapped Monsieur Moses on his stone toes.

  ‘Friends of yours, I’m very sure.’

  He watched a small pool of rain gather at the lip of the jamb, tiny drops falling to the ground.

  ‘But perhaps there’s one more miracle left for Rochat.’

  He ducked under the jamb and let a few drops of rain fall in his mouth. He looked at his foot. Still stuck to the end of a crooked leg, still twisted to the side.

  ‘No miracles left for Rochat then.’

  Tin-throated bells rang up from Place de la Palud, tinktink, tinktink, tinktink. The bells lived down the hill in the Hôtel de Ville near Café du Grütli. And every night they liked to remind Rochat to hurry along.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, fifteen minutes. Don’t worry, Rochat won’t be late. Rochat is never late.’

  He pulled at the iron handles of the doors. Locked as always but it was his duty to check. He shuffled to the doors of the old bishop’s house and the cathedral museum. Locked as well.

  ‘Tinny bells and grumpy statues and checking all the doors. So many duties, Rochat. No time for miracles, not for Rochat.’

  He shuffled along the façade and around the belfry tower to a red door almost hidden by a high wood fence running the length of the cathedral. He pulled a ring of skeleton keys from his overcoat and slid the largest key into the lock. He turned the key, pressed his shoulder to the door and pushed. Old wood screeched and scraped over dusty stone. He stepped in, closed the door with a loud bang. Rochat listened to the sound echo down a hundred dark passageways.

  ‘Bonsoir, it’s only me.’

  … it’s only me, only me, only me …

  He didn’t bother with the light, he knew his way in the dark. An alcove of three doors: skinny red door to the outside, big door to the nave, bigger wood door to the belfry tower. He sorted through the keys; finding the small one with jagged edges to open the tower door, he crossed through and locked up behind him. He shuffled down a corridor to a stone arch opening to a spiral staircase. Stone steps wound up to a narrow wood bridge that crossed above the women’s choir loft. He tiptoed but his lightest step creaked in the dark. He passed through another stone arch and made his way up another set of winding steps to another narrow wood bridge crossing higher above the women’s choir loft, but in the opposite direction from below.

  ‘Back and forth and forth and back. A very strange way to climb a tower. Then again, it’s the only way to climb this tower so there.’

  … so there, so there, so there …

  He stopped, waited for his voice to fade.

  ‘I really must stop talking to myself.’

  … to myself, to myself, to myself …

  Floodlamps on the esplanade seeped through a window of leaded glass. The light dissolving into teasing shadows on the stone walls.

  ‘And good evening to you, mesdemoiselles. Keeping the bad shadows away, I trust?’

  He heard the flimsy door at the end of the walkway swing on its hinges. Rochat was very sure the teasing shadows had something to do with the mystery of the always swinging door. He shuffled along the walkway and crossed through the doorway. He gave it a solid push till it snapped shut.

  ‘And please remember to close the door after yourselves, mesdemoiselles! I’m very busy with my duties and don’t have time for your games.’

  Rochat pressed his ear to the door and listened. He heard the teasing shadows giggling. What silly things teasing shadows can be, he thought.

  He was in a dark chamber at the bottom of a stone staircase that curled up like a corkscrew. A slender window, big enough for an archer’s bow, was cut through the chamber wall. Rochat looked out and saw the rain still coming down, saw the lights of Lausanne shimmering in the fog rising from Lac Léman.

  ‘Rain or fog, you can’t hide from Marc Rochat. I see you.’

  He hurried up the tower, round and round between close-in walls. He touched the newel pillar running up the centre of the tower. His fingers tracing over the smooth finger marks made by all the men who’d climbed these same steps, touching the same place in stone every night for eight hundred years. Round and round, higher and higher. He felt cold air coming down the tower. He heard wind sounds in the open sky. He smelled the lake and pine trees and ice and snow from far away.

  He circled once more and jumped over the last step and landed on the south balcony of the belfry as if jumping into the sky. His open arms like perfect wings and for a moment he was flying. High above Lausanne, high above Lac Léman and the Alps on the far shore, higher than the whole world. He settled back on his heels and opened his eyes.

  ‘Bonsoir, Lausanne. Rochat is here to watch over you.’

  He shuffled along the narrow balcony to the northwest turret. High stone pillars and arches opening to the night sky to one side, fat supporting pillars and arches opening to the centre of the belfry. Inside was the massive criss-cross carpentry, six storeys high and fitted together like some giant’s puzzle. Rochat reached into the timbers, touched the iron spikes and wood pegs holding the timbers together.

  ‘En garde, mes amis. I know you’re very old, but we must stand very straight tonight. It’s our duty.’

  He shuffled along the north balcony, checking that all was well in the old city. He ducked through the northeast turret to the east balcony. The lantern tower at the far end of the cathedral was steady in the wind and the weathercock atop the tower told Rochat he was right. Winds from Mont Blanc, winter was on the attack.

  He felt a matronly gaze at his back. He turned slowly to the carpentry and the seven-ton bell hanging alone in a timbered cage. Rochat pulled off his hat and bowed graciously.

  ‘Bonsoir, Madame Madeleine, ça va?’

  The bell didn’t respond.

  ‘Oh, I see. Madame is fussy tonight.’

  Rochat jumped into the carpentry, checking the heavy iron hammer outside the edge of the bell’s bronze skirt. Pulling at the steel cables connecting to the winch motor, making sure everything was primed and ready.

  ‘Or perhaps madame is sleeping, hmm?’

  He tapped his knuckles against her and leaned close. He heard a deep tone swirl through cold bronze.

  ‘What’s that? Madame never sleeps, madame is only resting? Yes of course. How could I be so rude as to think otherwise?’

  He refitted his hat and shuffled back to the south balcony, stopping at the skinny wood door set between two stone pillars. He pulled a chain at the side of the door, a small lamp flickered awake. Pigeons fled from the upper carpentry, wings fluttering like runaway feet.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, you blasted pooping things, but it’s my duty.’

  He opened the door, stepped into the loge, a small room of wood walls built between the criss-cross timbers, one and a half metres wide by 6 metres long. And he would have to stand on his own shoulders twice before touching the lowest point of the slanted wood ceiling. A small table jutted from the w
est wall and the two steps at the north end of the room rose to a narrow bed. Rochat lit seven candles and set them about the loge. He opened a cabinet, carefully removing an old brass lantern. A stunted, half-melted candle sat inside. He calculated how long it might last.

  ‘A little while longer, I think.’ He took a fresh candle from a drawer and slipped it in the pocket of his coat. ‘En garde, after all.’

  He opened a small square window in the west wall, just above the table. He poked out his head to see another solitary bell hanging in the timbers.

  ‘Bonsoir, Madame Clémence! Any heretics burned at the stake today? No? Too bad. Yes, yes, I know, not like the good old days. How sad for you.’

  He snapped shut the window and, with barely enough room to do so, he turned around and opened a small window in the east wall. Marie-Madeleine was just outside. Rochat thought he might give her a tap with a broomstick to check if she was truly awake. But just then all the carpentry groaned like a very old lady yawning and stretching in a very old bed.

  ‘Oui, madame is awake.’

  He heard the winch strain at steel cables, the steel hammer cocking back and …

  GONG! GONG! GONG!

  Vibrations pulsed through the timbers and shook the room. He struck a match, lit the lantern.

  GONG! GONG! GONG!

  He shuffled out of the door, hurried through the turret to the east balcony. He stood at the iron railings just in front of Marie-Madeleine.

  GONG! GONG! GONG!

  He stood very still, waiting for Marie-Madeleine’s voice to almost fade. Then he raised the lantern into the dark.

  ‘C’est le guet! Il a sonné l’heure! Il a sonné l’heure!’

  two

  There it was again.

  She could see it through the rain.

  A light moving around the bell tower.

  She first noticed it after moving into the flat last summer, doing the same thing as now. Sitting at her dressing table, running a brush through her hair, getting ready for a night out. She remembered swallows darting by her windows and drawing her eyes outside. Lausanne Cathedral stood against the last flush of an evening sky.

  Pretty, she thought, in an Addams Family sort of way. That’s when she saw the light in the tower, waving in her direction. It drifted out of sight, and then reappeared facing the lake. It waved once more then, poof, it was gone.

  Nightwatchman with a flashlight, she thought.

  But after a few more sightings she realized the nightwatchman only appeared when the cathedral bells rang the hour. Always beginning at nine in the evening, always moving counter-clockwise around the tower. East, north, west, south. Then she realized it wasn’t a flashlight in his hands, it was a lantern. And it looked as if he was shouting something from the balconies.

  One night, just before nine, she stepped on to her terrace and waited. The bells rang nine times and presto, there he was. And damn if he wasn’t shouting something. But his voice was lost in the din of traffic rising from Pont Bessières. She grabbed her cellphone, texted her sister in Los Angeles.

  anny u won’t believe it. they gotta lunatic locked in a bell tower over here. he’s got a lantern and screams at night. looking at him right now!

  better watch out, kat. frankenstein was from switzerland

  i thought he was german

  that was hitler

  tres weird. love to all

  come home and give it urself. parental units still way po’d abt evrthng. kids crying, gotta go

  She’d forgotten about the light in the bell tower, till tonight.

  Nine o’clock bells and cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.

  She finished brushing her hair, looked at her face in the mirror. Twenty-six years old and not a wrinkle in sight. Little eye shadow, eye-liner, a hint of mascara. Nothing else needed. Her hazel-coloured eyes did the rest. It was the flaw in her left eye, a silver squiggle in the iris. Men looked at it, then they stared, then they were hooked.

  Tonight’s lucky fish, some Brit with a double-barrelled name. Senior partner in London’s biggest law firm. He requested she wear her hair down on her shoulders, the way she looked in the pictures. All her clients liked her to look the way she looked in the pictures. Playboy, Girls of UCLA issue.

  Barely legal Katherine Taylor was the star with the cover shot. ‘Jean Seberg’s cool in the body of an angel’, read the photo caption. Inside, she was stretched naked on her back atop a pile of cash in a bank vault, highlighting her major in International Economics, which it wasn’t but who the fuck cared? Another shot straddling a bentwood chair wearing nothing but a French beret, to highlight her minor in French, which it was but who cared again? It was a goof, something she did on a dare. But after a week of test shots she made the cut. Suddenly it was a goof paying fifty thousand bucks. Playboy called it a scholarship. What a hoot, she thought. A million guys beating their meat and dreaming it was her fucking them, not their own grubby paws … and they call it a scholarship. She laughed all the way to the bank, wondering how goofy it could get.

  The answer came a year later in the Marquis Hotel off Sunset.

  A girlfriend was late for a night on the town. Katherine waited at the bar. The bartender presented a drink from someone in the room, she pushed it aside. Few minutes later a well-dressed guy stood next to her, asking if she’d care to be presented to his boss. The guy’s accent was Arabic.

  ‘Presented … to your boss. Let me ask you something, bud, do I look like a birthday cake to you?’

  ‘Please, miss, I mean no offence. My boss is sitting over there.’

  Katherine saw a neat gentleman in an expensive tailored suit, alone in the corner. Espresso and glass of water keeping him company.

  ‘So, who’s the boss?’

  ‘He is a prince of our royal family in Saudi Arabia. He wishes me to tell you he admired your photographs very much and would like you to join him, please.’

  ‘A prince. And you call him “boss”. Wouldn’t “master” be more like it?’

  ‘They are the same, miss.’

  Katherine shrugged.

  ‘Yeah, well, tell him I already have plans.’

  The guy appeared perplexed as he walked across the room to deliver the bad news. The gentleman with the espresso smiled in Katherine’s direction. A few hushed words later, the guy was back at the bar.

  ‘My boss understands your scheduling conflict, but is anxious to spend the evening with you. He asks if you might reconsider.’

  The guy laid a thin red box on the bar. Katherine opened it; saw a gold necklace with a respectable-sized pearl hanging from it. She snapped it shut and shoved it aside.

  ‘Tell your boss he’s not my type.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Tell him I like girls.’

  The guy left the red box on the bar, made the same trip across the room to deliver the even worse news. Another smile, more hushed words, he was back. This time looking fit to faint.

  ‘His Royal Highness asks me to enquire if twenty-five thousand would change your mind regarding his … type.’

  ‘Twenty-five thousand, as in thousands of dollars?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  Katherine gave the gentleman in the corner a second glance. Neatly trimmed moustache, pampered complexion, scent of sandalwood.

  ‘Let me get this straight. We’re talking twenty-five thousand dollars, cash, for one evening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Katherine picked up the red box and opened it for another look.

  ‘This trinket, it’s a bonus, of course?’

  ‘Of course. It would be a token of appreciation. You will be interested to know my prince can be most generous in his appreciations.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Indeed, miss. May I present His Royal Highness with the happy news?’

  She snapped shut the box, handed it back.

  ‘First, take this back to Prince Boss and ask him what else he’s got.’

  That was the end of UCLA and the beg
inning of graduate studies in cultivated men of immeasurable means. Elegant men who came recommended to her by ‘a mutual friend’. Probably the last guy she’d balled for cash, she thought, but so what? They came bearing gifts. Four years later she had a beachfront condo in Santa Monica, a convertible Lexus in the garage, a room full of designer clothes and a closet full of to-die-for shoes. And a little over four hundred thousand in undeclared cash to hide from the Internal Revenue Service. Then came the letter from the IRS asking about all that undeclared cash in account number 2087956-2 of First Union Bank of California.

  Lipstick. Understated red. Hint of gloss.

  That very night, she met a Swiss gentleman for dinner at Ivy on the Shore. A private banker on business in Los Angeles, looking for discreet company. He was charming, he offered advice. Protecting one’s cash assets was difficult in the post 9/11 world, he said, especially for Americans. The American security apparatus now tracing every dollar in circulation around the world. And Americans, as everyone knew, somewhat prurient towards ladies of her particular profession, especially those ladies who did well for themselves. However, if mademoiselle might consider relocating to Lausanne things could be arranged. Say, liquidating your property in America, converting your dollars into Swiss francs to be laundered through an offshore account in Cyprus and deposited in the Lausanne branch of a reputable bank. Of course, with your financial assets, Swiss residency wouldn’t be a problem. And most importantly, meeting someone with the right connections to handle your business affairs. He happened to know just the person. A Frenchwoman of excellent reputation now living in Geneva, operating a discreet and exclusive agency. The Two Hundred Club, catering to the rich and powerful of Europe.

  Pearls tonight. Matching earrings.