The Bells of Bruges

by Georges Rodenbach

  The music swelled, blurred because he was too close. However, it was still as joyous as the dawn. The sound swept over all the octaves, like the light over all the fields. A little bell trilled like a lark and others responded with the awakening of all the birds. A bass bell was the deep lowing of the cattle.

  Borluut listened, part of this rural wakening, already familiar with this pastoral music, as if it were that of his own beasts in his own fields. What bliss to be alive! With Nature everlasting!

  But the idyll had scarcely been sung than the great bell sounded, absorbing the festive airs of the carillon: solemn, tolling the death of the hour, eleven strokes, immense, slow, each distant from the next, as if to show that one feels alone when one is dying…

  Eleven o’clock. It was the moment for Borluut to begin his official function. He went back to the cabin with the keyboard and sat down at it. However, being new and having taken up the position by chance, he had not had time to prepare other tunes, so had decided to play once more the old Christmas carols he had used in the contest. He played them with fine nuances, the tips of his fingers tingling with emotion, with a slightly feverish joy, entirely absorbed in his playing now that there were no comings and going round him, as there had been on the evening of the contest. Immense silence. He heard his little carols wending their way through the air, tripping over the church spires, walking along the roofs, going into the houses. Were people already welcoming them? What a difference from the other day when the whole crowd had taken them to their hearts as they descended.

  That that should have happened was like an incredible dream. It would never happen again. Was he – at least at that moment –

  causing someone to raise their eyes to the heavens as he played?

  Was he sending consolation to some soul in torment, melancholy to some too happy heart betrayed by its rapture?

  To play like this, above the crowd, was to produce a work of art.

  What point was there in wanting to know if it moved people, carried them away, delighted them or made them comfortable? To set it blossoming should be sufficient. It will always spread, go elsewhere, fulfil a destiny of which we know almost nothing. Our glory is always outside us and is accomplished so far from us.

  This was the reflection that went through Borluut’s mind. He accepted it. It was not for others that he was playing. The sole reason he had, on the spur of the moment, taken part in the contest for the position of carillonneur was to create beauty, because at that point he believed he was the only one capable of giving the town a carillon in accord with it, with the same antique charm and melancholy. Thus Bruges retained its perfect harmony. And since he was contributing to it, he was truly creating beauty. But he had not conquered the tower solely to create beauty, it was also, and above all, for himself, to isolate himself, to spend his time in a worthy occupation, to leave men and to live high above the world .

  His reward was therefore immediate.

  Borluut felt he was happy, thrilled at the last swing of the bells which were his own dreams, the whispering urns into which all his soul poured.

  IV

  Dead towns are the Cathedrals of Silence. They, too, have their gargoyles, singular figures, exaggerated, dubious, set in high profile. They stand out from the mass of grey, which takes all it has in the way of character, its twitchings of stagnant life from them. Some have been distorted by solitude, others grimace with a directionless fervour; here there are masks of cherished lust, there faces ceaselessly sculpted and furrowed by mysticism. Human gargoyles, the only figures of interest in this monotonous population.

  The old antiques dealer, van Hulle, was one of these strange types, living a retired life in his ancient house in Zwarte-Leertouwersstraat with his two daughters, Barbara and Godelieve.

  At first he had been enthusiastic about the Flemish Movement, had brought together all the militant patriots, Bartholomeus, Borluut, Farazyn, who came to his house every Monday to get worked up over their hopes for the town. Memorable evenings when they conspired together, but to preserve the beauty of Bruges!

  Since then van Hulle had cooled down. He still invited his friends, listened to them talk as before, full of ambitious projects, but without joining in himself. He had been seized by

  another obsession: he had started to collect clocks. It had come about in a most unexpected way.

  His occupation of antiques dealer predisposed him to it. He had spent his whole life searching for rare curios, old pieces of furniture, Flemish relics, but having grown old and tired – and rich into the bargain – he started to neglect his business, only selling occasional pieces to some rich stranger who happened to be passing through the town.

  Then he fell ill. It was a long illness followed by an equally long convalescence: time passing slowly, days never ending, divided into so many minutes he had to count and thus, so to speak, measure out one by one! He felt alone, prey to the tedium, the dreariness of time, especially at the approach of twilight which, during those late-autumn days, came in through the windows, settling on the furniture with a leaden pallor, sending the mirrors into mourning at light’s farewell…

  Sometimes van Hulle would ask, ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Five o’clock.’

  And he thought of the time stretching out before him that he would have to live through before the night, when he could drift along in a deep sleep which shortens the stages.

  Five o’clock! And suddenly he heard the hour strike from the belfry, among the last notes of the little bells of the carillon, in the solemn tones of an officiating priest calming his choirboys. And he compared the hour struck from the bell-tower with that shown on the face of his clock, a little Empire clock on the mantelpiece with four tiny columns of white marble supporting a low pediment with sinuous, swan-necked ornamentation of gilded bronze. In the enforced inactivity of illness, empty of life and thought, he gradually got into the habit of concerning himself with the time. He worried about his clock as if it were another person. He regarded it as a friend. It was the clock that taught him patience, that provided a distraction with the interplay of its hands, the noise of its mechanism. It told him of the approach of the better moments, when he had his light meals. The clock face obsessed him. Other people, when they are ill, unconsciously count with their eyes the posies on the wallpaper, the flowers on the curtains. He did calculations on the clock. He searched it for the day of his return to full health, which was there already, but indistinct among so many other days. He looked to see what time it was, he checked the time, because often there was a discrepancy between his clock and the clock in the tower.

  Van Hulle retained this preoccupation with the exact time after he had recovered. Whenever he went out he regulated his watch, which he had not wound up at all during his illness, by the clock on the bell-tower, almost feeling annoyed if he found it was

  slightly fast or the tiniest bit slow. The fixed points in his life – meals, going to bed, getting up, always at set times – had to fit in with these minute details.

  ‘Oh look,’ he would say, vexed, ‘I’m five minutes behind time.’

  Henceforward he made sure that his watch and the clocks in his home always agreed, not only the little Empire clock with the swan-necked bronze ornamentation, but also the kitchen clock, with red tulips painted on the face, which his old servant Pharaïlde used when going about her household tasks.

  On one of his convalescent strolls – it was a Friday, market day

  – he was dawdling among the stalls on the Market Square when by chance he saw a slightly odd Flemish clock which attracted his attention. It was half hidden, almost buried beneath the mishmash of bric-a-brac littering the cobbles.

  They sell everything in that market: linen, cotton goods, iron objects, agricultural implements, toys, antiques. A gaudy jumble, like a clear-out of the centuries. The goods are piled up, strewn haphazardly over the ground, still covered in accumulated dust, as if part of the inventory of the house, long closed, of someon
e who has gone away. Everything is old, oxidised, rusted, faded; it would be ugly were it not for the intermittent northern sun abruptly igniting shafts of light amid the shade, the russet golds of Rembrandt. It was among these ruins, this graveyard of things, that van Hulle discovered an unexpected piece of jetsam, the Flemish clock which he immediately desired. It consisted of a long oak cupboard with carved panels which the years had given a warm patina, a shimmering glaze, and of a marvellous metal face: pewter and copper imaginatively, delicately engraved: first of all the date – 1700 – and, all around, a wild cosmography with the sun shining, a crescent moon tapering like a gondola, stars with little lambs’ heads grazing, moving towards the numbers of the hours, looking as if they wanted to nibble them.

  It was this ancient clock that had initiated van Hulle’s obsession. Other clocks, large and small, followed.

  He had bought them at sales, from antiques dealers and goldsmiths. Without intending, he had started a genuine collection and he concerned himself with it more and more until it was his sole preoccupation.

  The only man who is truly happy is a man who has an idée fixe .

  It takes up his every minute, fills any empty spaces in his thought, sneaks unexpected pleasures into his boredom, gives direction to his idle hours, again and again enlivens the stagnant waters of existence with a surging current. Van Hulle had found a means of giving passion to his life, more than the secret meetings of the past, the merely formal conspiracies, all the vain enthusiasm for the restitution of Flanders, so poorly defined and so far off.

  Now he enjoyed immediate gratification, a pleasure that was personal and continuous. In the middle of this sombre town, living the uneventful life of a widower in which every day was the same colour, as grey as the air of Bruges, what a sudden change this new life was, always on the alert, on the lookout for some find! And then the strokes of good fortune a collector enjoys! The unexpected discovery that will increase his hoard!

  van Hulle already had some specialist knowledge. He had studied, sought, compared. At first glance he would assess the period the clocks came from. He diagnosed their age, sifted the authentic ones from the reproductions, judged the beauty of style, was familiar with certain signatures, elucidating them like works of art. He soon had a whole series of different clocks, put together little by little.

  He travelled to the neighbouring towns to increase his stock, he followed the house-clearance sales where, sometimes, after a person had died, one could find rare, strange examples which had been in old families since time immemorial. His collection became important. He had specimens of all types: Louis XV and Louis XVI clocks with fretwork rosewood panels covered in marquetry, inlaid galant scenes making the panelling as dainty as a fan; mythological, idyllic, warlike clocks; clocks of biscuit-ware, of costly and fragile china, Sèvres or Dresden, where time laughed among the flowers; Moorish, Norman and Flemish clocks with oak or mahogany cases and chimes that whistled like a blackbird or creaked like the chain of a well. Then some curiosities: marine water-clocks in which drops of water are seconds. Finally a whole assortment of little bracket clocks, of silver display watches as delicate and detailed as jewels.

  Whenever he had made a new purchase, he hurried to set it up in the vast room on the first floor where he kept his collection.

  And the new arrival immediately added its buzz, as of a metal bee, to that of its fellows in that room, mysterious as the hive of Time.

  Van Hulle was happy. He still dreamt of other types of clock which he did not have.

  Is this not the collector’s exquisite pleasure, that his desire should know no bounds, should reach out into the infinite, should never know full possession which disappoints by its very completeness. O what joy to be able to postpone the fulfilment of desire to infinity! Van Hulle spent whole days in his clock museum. His great anxiety was that someone might enter, while he was out, on some pretext or other, and disturb the weights, brush against the chains, break one of his rarest acquisitions.

  Fortunately his daughter Godelieve kept a close watch. She alone was charged with the task of watching over them and removing the dust, of putting them back with fingers rendered calm by prudence, light as a wing as she aired and dusted. Barbara, her elder sister with the Spanish complexion, the lips red as a

  chilli, could be moody and irascible. The merest trifle and she could lose her temper, sulk, fly into a rage. Van Hulle recognised in her all the temperament of her mother, who had died young from a nervous disorder. Nevertheless he loved her, for her moods were followed by moments of tenderness, tokens of affection lavished abruptly, without transition, a storm wind suddenly slackening, humming, caressing the flowers.

  The younger sister Godelieve, on the other hand, enfolded him in an unvarying affection delightful in its monotony. It represented the security of something unchanging, something fixed. He found her as obliging as a mirror. He saw himself in her because she resembled him. It was his own face, the same eyes the colour of the canals, those water-laden northern eyes, and also the same slightly aquiline nose, the same immense, flat forehead, a smooth façade, a temple wall letting nothing appear, apart from a little light, of the calm celebrations of her mind. But above all it was her soul, the same gentle, mystic nature, absorbed in musings, reclusive and taciturn, as if given to unravelling skeins of thoughts, swirling mists. They often spent hours in the same room without talking, happy to be together, enjoying the silence. They did not have the sense of being distinct from each other.

  She was truly his flesh . You could say that she continued him, that she was an extension of him outside himself. As soon as he wanted something, she did it straight away, just as he would have done it himself. He felt her to be the hands and feet of his own will. And truly, literally, he saw with her eyes .

  Living in unison! The daily miracle of being two, yet being as one. And so the old antiques dealer trembled at the thought that Godelieve might one day marry, might leave him! It would truly be like losing a limb, something of himself would go far away.

  Afterwards he would feel as if he were maimed.

  He thought about it frequently, already jealously guarding against it. His initial fear was that one of the firebrand patriots he welcomed into his home on Monday evenings might fall in love with Godelieve. Was it not imprudent to entertain them there? Was that not to invite his own misfortune? Joris Borluut was still young, Farazyn too. But they appeared to be confirmed bachelors, like Bartholomeus who, as if the better to secure himself against marriage, had gone to live within the Beguinage, where he had set up his studio in one of the abandoned convent houses. He was, so to speak, wedded to his art. And the others, were they not married to the Town, devoted to making it beautiful, to adorning it like a woman? They had no room for a new passion. And when they visited him in the evening they were too carried away with furthering the Movement, with setting the flags flying within themselves, too full of plans and hopes to pay any attention to the little silent maiden beside them that was Godelieve. The sound of her lace-making pillow, like the murmur of prayers, was hardly calculated to satisfy those turbulent souls who hoped to hear the lion of Flanders roar anew.

  Thus van Hulle set his mind at rest. Godelieve was safe. As for Barbara, with the fierceness of her beauty, the colour of her lips promising a ripe fruit, she might well arouse some man one day. Oh, if only she, Barbara, could get married! With what joy he would give his consent! It would mean an end to the perpetual alarms: capricious moods, sudden tantrums because of trifles, protests, outbursts and fits of despair during which the whole house seemed to be foundering.

  It was a hope at the thought of which van Hulle trembled: to live with Godelieve alone! Only with her, for ever, until the end. A life that was uniformly quiet, at peace, calm, a life in which she would make no other sound in the silence than the monotonous tick-tock of her heart, in which she would be just one more clock in his museum of clocks, a little human clock, the tranquil face of Time.

  V

&nbs
p; It could be said that Borluut was in love with the town.

  But we only have one heart for all our loves, consequently his love was somewhat like the affection one feels for a woman, the devotion one entertains for a work of art, for a religion. He loved Bruges for its beauty and, like a lover, he would have loved it the more, the more beautiful it was. His passion had nothing to do with the local patriotism which unites those living in a town through habits, shared tastes, alliances, parochial pride. On the contrary, Borluut was almost solitary, kept himself apart, mingled little with the slow-witted inhabitants. Even out in the streets he scarcely saw the passers-by. As a solitary wanderer, he began to favour the canals, the weeping trees, the tunnel bridges, the bells he could sense in the air, the old walls of the old districts. Instead of living beings, his interest focused on things. The town took on a personality, became almost human. He loved it, wished to embellish it, to adorn its beauty, a beauty mysterious in its sadness. And, above all, so unostentatious. Other towns are showy, amassing palaces, terraced gardens, fine geometrical monuments. Here everything was muted, nuanced. Storiated architecture, façades like reliquaries, stepped gables, trefoil doors and windows, ridges crowned with finials, mouldings, gargoyles, bas-reliefs – incessant surprises making the town into a kind of complex landscape of stone.

  It was a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance, that sinuous transition which suddenly draws out forms that are too rigid and too bare in supple, flowing lines. It was if an unexpected spring had sprouted on the walls, as if they had been transubstantiated by a dream – all at once there were faces and bunches of flowers on them.

  This blossoming on the façades had lasted until the present, blackened by the ravages of time, abiding but already blurred.