The crowd listened. Some thought the contest had already started, but it was only the carillon operated mechanically by a copper cylinder lifting the hammers, working in the same way as a music box. The carillon can also be played by a keyboard and that was what the people would hear when the musicians joined battle.
While they were waiting, the mechanism of the carillon played the usual prelude to the striking of the hour: aerial embroidery, farewell garlands of sound thrown to departing time. Is that not the real purpose of the carillon? To create a little joy to offset the melancholy of an hour that is about to pass away?
Four strokes had just hammered the horizon, broad, deep-voiced strokes with distance between them, irrevocable, seeming to nail a cross in the air. Four o’clock! It was the hour set for the contest. Little swirls of impatience ran through the crowd…
Suddenly, at the balcony window of the Draper’s Hall, just below the console sculpted with foliage and rams’ heads on which the statue of the Virgin dreams, the very balcony from which the laws, ordinances, peace treaties and regulations of the commune were proclaimed, there appeared a herald clothed in purple who cried out through a megaphone and declared open the contest of carillonneurs in the town of Bruges, looking as if he were foretelling the future.
The crowd fell silent, furled its murmurings.
Only a few were aware of the precise details: that the municipal carillonneurs of Mechelen, Oudenaarde and Herenthals had entered, as well as others who might withdraw, not to mention unexpected participants, since it was possible to enter up to the last minute.
After the announcement from the balcony, the great bell rang out three times, like three strokes of the angelus, to announce the entry of one of the contestants into the lists.
Immediately the carillon started to play, a little confusedly at first. It was not the mechanical playing they had just heard, but free and full of caprice, they could sense a man’s hand awakening the bells one by one, hustling them along, chiding, patting them, driving them on in front of him like a flock. They set off in reasonably good order, but a stampede followed, one bell seeming to fall, others running off or digging their heels in.
A second piece was better in its execution, but the choice was unfortunate. It was a hotchpotch of ordinary tunes cobbled together, a patchwork, music which seemed to be performing on a trapeze at the top of the tower.
The folk gathered below could not understand it at all and remained cool. When it stopped, isolated applause broke out for a minute, sounding like washerwomen beating clothes by the edge of the water.
After a short interval the three angelus strokes rang out again from the great bell. The second contestant was heard. He seemed to be better at handling the instrument, but he soon had the bells out of breath by trying to make them produce the roaring of
the Marseillaise or the archaic dirge of God Save the Queen . The result was again mediocre and the crowd, disappointed, were starting to think they would never replace old Baron de Vos who, over so many years, had made the carillon sound as it ought to.
The next test piece was even more painful to listen to. The contestant had had the ill-advised idea of playing tunes from operetta and music hall in a sharp, staccato tempo. The bells skipped, screamed and stumbled, laughing as if they had been tickled and seeming slightly drunk and mad. It was as if they were lifting up their bronze skirts and lurching into an obscene cancan. At first the crowd was surprised, then angry at what their beloved ancient bells were being made to do. They felt it was a sacrilege. Cries of disapproval gusted up towards the bell-tower.
Two other contestants who were still to play were seized with fear and withdrew. The contest looked like being a failure. Would the appointment of the new carillonneur have to be postponed?
Before they took that step, the herald was sent out again to ask if there was anyone else who wanted to compete.
As soon as the announcement was made, a shout was heard as there was a stir in the front rows of the crowd gathered outside the Draper’s Hall. A moment later the old door creaked on its hinges.
A man went in.
Uncertain, the crowd trembled, passing on vague rumours. No one knew anything. What was going to happen next? Was the contest finished? They weren’t going to appoint any of the contestants who had already been heard, that much was certain. Might another appear? Everyone was asking questions, standing on tiptoe, jostling the people next to them, looking up at the balcony, at the belfry platforms, where they couldn’t be sure whether it was human silhouettes that were moving or crows.
Soon the great bell was sounding out its three angelus strokes again, a warning, a traditional salute announcing a new carillonneur.
The crowd listened all the more closely for having waited and despaired, especially since this time the bells, ringing softly, demanded a deeper hush. The prelude was muted, a blend in which one could no longer distinguish bells alternating then coming together, it was a concert of bronze united, as if far off and very old. Music in a dream! It did not come from the tower, but from much farther away, from the depths of the sky, from the depths of time. This carillonneur had had the idea of playing some old Christmas carols, Flemish carols born of the race, mirrors in which it recognises itself. Like everything that has passed through the centuries, it was very solemn and a little sad. It was very old, and yet the children could understand it.
It was very remote, very vague, as if happening on the borders of silence, and yet it was received by everyone, descended into
everyone. Many eyes clouded over, without the people knowing whether it was from their own tears or from those fine, grey drops of sound falling into them…
The whole crowd of townsfolk was aquiver. By nature taciturn and pensive, it had sensed the obscure tissue of its dream unfolding in the air and appreciated its remaining unformulated.
When the series of old Christmas carols finished, the people remained silent for a moment, as if, in their thoughts, they had accompanied the bells back to eternity, those kindly grandams who had come to sing them stories of the past and tangled tales which everyone can complete in their own way…
Then there was a discharge of cries, a release of emotion, joy branching out, surging up to the higher tiers, climbing the tower like black ivy to bombard the new carillonneur.
He had become a contestant on the spur of the moment, by chance, at the last minute. Unhappy with the mediocre offerings of the contestants, he abruptly climbed the belfry to the glass chamber where he sometimes used to go to see his friend, old Baron de Vos. Was he the one who was going to replace him?
What now? He had to perform a second piece. The Christmas carols had been the little old ladies of the paths of history, Beguines kneeling beside the air. With them the people waiting below, far down below, had gone back to the times of their glory, to the graveyard of their past … Now they were ready for heroics.
The man wiped his forehead and sat down again at the keyboard, as intimidating as a church organ, with pedals for the big bells, while the little ones are activated by iron shafts rising from the keys – playing them is a craft, like weaving music!
The carillon rang out again. They heard the Lion of Flanders , an old folk song everyone knew, anonymous, like the tower itself, like everything that epitomises a race of people. The ancient bells were young again, proclaiming the valour and immortality of Flanders. It was truly the call of a lion from which, like the one in the Scriptures, there came forth sweetness. In the old days a stone heraldic lion used to top the belfry. With this song from the same age, it seemed about to return and emerge from the belfry as if coming out of its den. On the Market Square, in the last, fevered rays of the setting sun, the gold lion on Bouchoute House appeared to sparkle, to be alive, while the stone lions on the Governor’s Palace opposite extended their shadow over the crowd. Flanders of the lion! It was the glorious cry of the guilds and corporations in their days of glory. They thought they had it firmly tucked away in the ironbound coffers wh
ere they kept the charters and privileges from the old princes in one of the rooms of the tower … And now the anthem had arisen once more: Flanders of the lion! A rhythmic song, like a people on the
march, chanted, both warlike and human at the same time, like a face in a suit of armour.
The crowd listened, breathless. They could no longer say whether it was the carillon sounding, nor by what miracle the forty-nine bells in the tower had become as one: the song of a people in accord in which the silvery small bells, the swaying heavy bells and the ancient great bells truly seemed to be children, women in cloaks and heroic soldiers all returning to the town that had been thought dead. The crowd was not wrong about that and, as if they wanted to precede this procession of the past that the song embodied, they took up the noble anthem in their turn. It spread across the whole of the Market Square. Every mouth was singing.
The song of the people rose up into the air to meet the song of the bells, and the soul of Flanders soared, like the sun between the sky and the sea.
For a moment, a sublime intoxication had lifted up this crowd of taciturn people who, accustomed to silence, resigned to the town’s decline, the stagnant canals, the grey streets, had for a long time now found a taste for the melancholy sweetness of resignation. Yet an ancient heroism still slumbered within the race, sparks resided in the inertia of the stones. Suddenly the blood in every vein had started to flow more quickly. As soon as the music stopped, enthusiasm burst out, instant and universal, frenzied and wild. Shouts, cries, hands raised in a rolling sea of gestures above their heads, calls, uproar … The wonderful carillonneur! He was like a heaven-sent hero from a tale of chivalry, arriving last, unidentifiable in his armour, and winning the tournament. Who was he, this man who had emerged at the last minute, when they were already thinking the contest would end without a winner after the mediocre performance of the first carillonneurs? There were only a few, those closest to the bell-tower, who had been able to see him as he plunged into the doorway. No one had recognised him, no one had passed on his name.
Then the herald in his purple gown reappeared at the balcony window and cried, sonorous through his megaphone, ‘Joris Borluut!’ It was the name of the victor.
Joris Borluut … The name fell, came tumbling down from the tower onto the front rows of the audience, then ricocheted, flew, took wing, propelled from one to the next, from wave to wave, like a seagull over the sea.
A few minutes later the door to the Draper’s Hall opened wide. It was the red herald preceding the man whose name at that moment was forming on everyone’s lips. The herald parted the crowd, clearing a path for the victorious carillonneur to the steps of the Palace where the town authorities, who would invest him with his office, were standing.
Everyone drew back, as if in the presence of someone greater than them, as they do before the Bishop when he carries the relic of the Holy Blood in the procession.
Joris Borluut! And the name continued to soar round the Market Square, rebounding, knocking against the façades, thrown up to the windows, even up to the gables, thrown back endlessly, already familiar to everyone, as if it had written itself on the blank air.
Meanwhile the victor had reached the top of the Gothic steps, where he was congratulated by the Governor and the aldermen, who endorsed the people’s unanimous choice by signing the document appointing him town carillonneur. Then they handed him, as the prize for his victory and the sign of his office, a key decorated with ironwork and brass ornamentation, a ceremonial key, like a bishop’s crozier. It was the key to the bell-tower which, from now on, he would have the privilege of entering at will, as if he lived there or were master of it.
But the victor, as he received this picturesque gift, suddenly fell prey to the melancholy that follows any celebration. He felt alone and troubled by something indefinable. It was as if he had just accepted the key to his tomb.
II
At around nine o’clock on the evening of the contest Borluut went, as he did every Monday, to visit his friend, the old antiques dealer van Hulle. His house, in the Zwarte-Leertouwersstraat, was an ancient building with a double gable whose brick façade was embellished with a bas-relief above the door representing a ship, its sails billowing out like breasts.
Once it had been the seat of the Corporation of Boatmen and the date of 1578 in a cartouche testified to its noble antiquity. The door, the locks, the leaded windows, everything had been knowledgeably restored in the old styles, while the brickwork had been uncovered and repointed with, here and there, the patina of the ages left intact on the stones. It was Borluut who had carried out this invaluable restoration for his friend when he was making his début, so to speak, hardly out of the academy where he had studied architecture. It was a public lesson, a lesson in beauty given to all those who possessed old homes and were letting them crumble away irreparably or were demolishing them to build ordinary modern houses.
Van Hulle, for his part, was proud of his home with its face from bygone days. It was exactly what was needed to go with his old furniture, his antique curios, he being less of an antiques dealer than a collector, only selling items if he was offered a good price and if it suited him. He did things as his fancy took him and had every right to do so, since he was well-to-do. He lived in the house with his two daughters, having been a widower for a long time. It was only by chance that he had gradually
became an antiques dealer. It started with his love of the old things from the local area which he accumulated; earthenware jugs in deep indigo which were used for beer; glass-fronted display cupboards holding a Madonna in painted wood, dressed in silk and Brussels lace; jewels, necklaces, feather archery targets of the guilds from the fifteenth century; chests with curved sides of the Flemish Renaissance – all the flotsam, unblemished or scarred, of the past few centuries, anything that bore witness to the former wealth of his homeland. But he had bought things less to sell them on again in the way of business than out of love for Flanders and of old Flemish way of life.
Kindred souls recognise each other quickly in the middle of a crowd and come together. In any one age there is never a soul which is one of a kind, however exceptional the person may be.
Every ideal must be realised, every thought formulated, which is why Fate makes sure it has several that are in accord, so that at least one will be realised. There are always a number of souls sown at the same time, so that the indispensable lily shall flower in one at least.
The old antiques dealer was a Fleming passionately attached to his Flanders. As was Borluut, who, through his craft of architecture had come to study and to love this unique city of Bruges, which in its entirety seemed a poem in stone, an illuminated reliquary. Borluut had dedicated himself to it, embellishing it, restoring it to all its purity of style; from the very beginning he had seen that as his vocation, his mission.
It was not surprising, therefore, that he should meet van Hulle and strike up a friendship with him. Others soon joined them: Farazyn, a lawyer who would be the spokesman for the Movement, and Bartholomeus, a painter and devotee of Flemish art. Thus it was the single ideal that gave rise to their weekly meetings, which now took place every Monday evening, at van Hulle’s house.
They came together to talk about Flanders, as if something had changed for the land, or were impending; they recounted their memories, enthusiasms, projects. Thinking the same way made them feel they shared a secret. It filled them with joy and excitement, as if they were in a conspiracy. Solitary men with time on their hands letting themselves get carried away, giving themselves the illusion of action, of playing a role in this grey life. Deluding themselves with words and fantasies. Yet their patriotism, for all that it was naive, was ardent; each in his own way dreamt of giving Flanders, of giving Bruges, a new beauty.
That evening there was rejoicing at van Hulle’s because of Borluut’s triumph. It had been an afternoon of art and glory when the town seemed reborn. It was the old Bruges, with the townsfolk gathered in the public square, at th
e foot of the bell-tower, the shadow of which was huge enough to contain them entirely. When Borluut arrived at the antiques dealer’s house, his friends clasped his hands and embraced him in a silent show of emotion.
He had done well for Flanders. For they had all understood the reason for his unexpected intervention…
‘Yes,’ Borluut said, ‘when I heard them playing their modern tunes and their oompah-oompahs on the carillon, I was extremely unhappy. I trembled at the very thought that one of them might be appointed, that he would be officially allowed to pour his vile music down from the belfry, soiling our canals with it, our churches, our faces. I immediately had the idea of taking part in order to keep the others out. I was familiar with the carillon, having played it occasionally, when I went to see old Baron de Vos. And then, when you know how to play the organ … I really don’t know how I did it. I was mad, inspired, carried away…
‘The best part,’ said Bartholomeus, ‘was playing our old Christmas carols. It brought tears to my eyes, it was so sweet, so sweet, so far away, so far away … Sometimes men should hear their nursemaid’s songs again like that.’
Farazyn said, ‘All the people were moved because, as you say, it was the voice of their past. Oh, the good people of Flanders, what energy is still hidden inside them! It will burst forth the moment they reawaken. Our land will rise again the more its old language is restored.’
Then Farazyn began to get carried away and elaborated a vast plan of renewal and autonomy: ‘Flemish must be the language spoken in Flanders, not only among the people, but in parliament, in court; all deeds, all official documents, street names, coins, stamps, everything should be in Flemish because we are in Flanders, because French is the language of France and their domination is over.’
The Bells of Bruges Page 2