XI
High above the world! The feeling returned as Borluut climbed the bell-tower again to play the carillon. He had had to endure further scenes with Barbara, brought on by trifles, sudden fits of anger, her every nerve instantly on the alert as her features contorted. Only her too-red lips remained, redder than ever in a face white with rage. And from them came harsh words, hasty, absurd, bombarding him like stones. Every time, Borluut held his breath, terrified at the outburst which at any moment, he sensed, could lead to the worst. And he came out of these alarms distraught, even physically exhausted, as if he had been struggling against the elements, against the wind in the dark.
Now, as he climbed the tower since it was one of the days appointed for the carillon, he felt as if he were gradually leaving behind him his troubles, his life in the world below. The events of the morning were already so far away! Space distances us from things in the same way as time does. Every step on the dark stairs was the same as a year in time. At each step a little more of his distress fell away from him, remaining fixed, like his house and similarly growing smaller as he moved farther away, already almost indistinguishable in the mass of the town.
High above the world . Yes, truly. What was the importance of his house now, so minuscule already, glimpsed through the trees on the bank of the Dijver, sending its pale reflection onto the canal, which could no longer be made out. Barbara, too, cast such a short shadow in the world down there. It was all petty, shallow. Little by little he shed his memories, all the human baggage which hampered his ascent.
Soon the air of the high place was blowing in through the gaps in the masonry, the open bays, where the wind flowed like water round the arches of a bridge. Borluut felt refreshed, fanned by this sea-breeze coming from the beaches of the sky. It seemed to be sweeping up dead leaves inside him. New paths, leading elsewhere, appeared in his soul; fresh clearings were revealed.
Finally he found himself.
Total oblivion as a prelude to taking possession of one’s self!
He was like the first man on the first day to whom nothing has yet happened. The delights of metamorphosis. He owed them to the tall tower, to the summit he had gained where the battlemented platform was ready for him, a refuge in the infinite.
From that height he could no longer see the world, he no longer understood it. Yes, each time he was seized with vertigo, with a desire to lose his footing, to throw himself off, but not towards the ground, into the abyss with its spirals of belfries and roofs over the depths of the town below. It was the abyss above of which he felt the pull.
He was more and more bewildered.
Everything was becoming blurred – before his eyes, inside his head – because of the fierce wind, the boundless space with nothing to hold on to, the clouds he had come too close to, which long continued to journey on inside him. The delights of sojourning among the summits have their price.
At once Borluut was vaguely aware of this. Bartholomeus’s remark, the day when he had made the mistake of confiding in him about Barbara, had already been disquieting, a warning about what was happening to him: ‘You don’t see things very clearly, do you?’
Now the painter’s words came back to mind, haunting him like an appeal, a regret. No, he had not seen things clearly, and that was why he felt eternally sad and unhappy. He never guessed anything, never suspected anyone, looked without seeing, was incapable of making an analysis, of gauging his words, of assessing people he came across. Borluut thought it was the tower that was to blame. Every time he came down again, back to the town, he was lost, could neither see nor think straight.
It was as if he had seen the world, and continued to see it, from the perspective of eternity. That was the source of all his woes.
Another man would have guessed, would have perceived Barbara’s dark temperament, her unhealthy state at the mercy of nerves to which her life was for ever bound. And even now another man would be able to deal with it, impose himself, find the right tone to adopt, the words that pacified, the looks that mastered or calmed her. A more level-headed man, who saw things more clearly, would have found a way through this maze of nerves.
He remained dismayed, alarmed and, what was worse, clumsy; all he could do was suffer in silence, bemoan his lot, drift along on his own. At least he had the tower; he never failed to go there in his distress. It was his immediate refuge, wiping his mind clear, and he would hurry up to the top to wash his bleeding heart in the clean air, like washing it in the sea.
Thus the tower was both disease and cure. It rendered him unfit for the world and it remedied the hurts inflicted by the world.
On that day too Borluut immediately felt once more at peace, recovered from his recent troubles. Solitude was balm to his soul
– the nearest clouds were teased out like lint.
Once he had reached the top, he looked down on the town at his feet. Such repose, such tranquility, what a lesson in calmness!
Seeing it, he was ashamed of his troubled existence. He renounced the love that brought him misery for the love of the town. It took hold of him again, suffusing his entire being as it had done during the first days of the Flemish Movement. How beautiful Bruges still was, seen from above, with its belfries, its pinnacles, its stepped gables like stairs to climb up to the land of dreams, to return to the great days of yesteryear. Among the roofs were canals fanned by the trees, quiet streets with a few women making their way in cloaks, swinging like silent bells.
Lethargic peace! The sweetness of renunciation! A queen in exile, the widow of History whose only desire, basically, was to carve her own tomb. Borluut had made his contribution. Remembering it, joy returned, and pride. Among the age-old agglomeration of the town he searched out, counted the ancient houses, the rare façades to which he had, so to speak, given back a face. Without him, the town would be in ruins – or repudiated in favour of a modern town.
He had saved it with his skilful restorations. Thus brought to perfection, it would never disappear, it could make its way down the centuries. He was the one who had performed this miracle, which few people realised, even and above all Barbara who, being his wife, should have been proud of him instead of subjecting him at any moment to such harsh and scornful treatment.
He was, after all, a great artist in his own field. In Bruges he had carried out a work which was anonymous and brought no glory, but was seen as admirable once it had been understood. He was the embalmer of the town. Being dead, it would have decomposed, disintegrated. He had mummified it in the bandages of its inert waters, its regular columns of smoke, with the gilding and polychrome decoration on the façades like gold and unguents on nails and teeth; and the lily of Memling across the corpse, like the ancient lotus on the virgins of Egypt.
It was thanks to him that the town stood triumphant and beautiful in the adornment of death. In that garb it would be eternal, no less than the mummies themselves, eternally in funeral finery,
which has nothing sad about it, since it has transformed death into a work of art.
Borluut got carried away, rapt in his solitary dream. What were the disappointments of love, a woman’s tantrums, the woes which, only moments ago, still clung to him as he climbed the tower?
‘None of that,’ he said to himself, ‘is worth bothering with.’
He thought it better to ignore such fleeting trifles when one had undertaken an enterprise such as his, which was still to be completed, but of which future generations would speak.
Pride intoxicated him with its red wine. He saw himself as great, dominating the town as if the tower were his legitimate pedestal.
At that moment the hour fixed for the carillon sounded. Borluut sat down at the keyboard and set the bells ringing. Immediately the tower started to sing. It sang the joy, the pride of Borluut, who was master of his own self again. On a simple reed-pipe the first musician, the primordial shepherd, told of the intoxication of living, his happiness in love, his sorrow at being deceived, his griefs, his fear of the dar
k which his fingers, lifted off the holes, tempered a little by the light they let in. In the same way the carillonneur in the stone flute of the tall bell-tower played himself. A tremendous confession! His whole being rang out in the music; from the tune he was playing one could tell whether it was dark or light in his soul.
This time it was songs of renewal – a forest awakening, the quivering of leaves after rain, the horn with the hunt at daybreak. The bells hopped and skipped, running after each other, gathering together then scattering, a colourful, spirited pack.
Borluut, light at heart, kept their clamour under control, his hands trembling as if there were a scent of game on the wind. He dreamt of plunder, of conquering the future; he felt strong, triumphant and as his hands struck the keyboard it was with the feeling of a tamer of wild beasts forcing apart the teeth of a vanquished animal.
Borluut was heartened, virile, far removed from his suffering, from himself, so much changed already. He felt as if he were on a voyage, having left after some sorrow or disaster which was gradually fading, vanishing from within him. Little by little the memory returned, the thought that he would have to go back to the house where he had suffered. Oh, if only the voyage could last for ever, and forgetfulness with it. On such days the carillonneur stayed in the bell-tower for a long time, even after he had finished playing. That day, too, he lingered, pacing up and down the platforms, daydreaming in the glass chamber, which the landscape decorated with its distant tapestries, walking round the rooms, the dormitories of the bells. Good, faithful bells, obedient to his call. He stroked them, called them by their names. They were friends whose consolation he could rely
on. Others had doubtless confided greater sadness, greater disillusionment to them. Being acquainted with the world, they always had comfort to offer, good counsel. Oh, how good it was to spend his time there with them. Borluut had almost forgotten the present; he was of an age with the bells and the pain he had suffered had happened a long time, perhaps centuries, ago…
But one can never wholly escape one’s self. After the mirages produced by illusion and delusion, reality reappears and the least chance can restore it in its entirety. It is the sorrowful awakening, the greatest heartache to find, at dawn, – after the sleep during which one has seen the man who died the previous day still alive – the corpse dead beyond recall, the bed prepared, the consecrated boxwood bough dipped in water, the candles lit.
Borluut had repudiated all memory. He felt himself victorious, free, calm like the bells – and age-old like the bells too, one would have said – when, examining them and listening to them, he found himself facing the Bell of Lust, covered in sins, which had originally aroused him and led him to thoughts of carnal pleasure, provoking his interest in Barbara, his love for her.
The bell had tempted him, had contributed to the passion which had ended so badly. It was an immediate recall to the world, a reminder of humanity in the beyond to which he had escaped, been transfigured, was almost living a life eternal. Now the all-too-human bell had broken the spell of obliviousness. He felt the presence of Barbara once more. She belonged to his life as the bell to the tower. This bronze dress, hard and yet disturbing, was hers. All the sensuality, the intoxication of the flesh, spread over, wound round it in lubricious gestures, unsatisfied kisses. The metal of the bell contained endless women being possessed. In the same way Barbara embodied all women for him.
She assumed herself the multiplicity of postures they adopted in these lascivious bas-reliefs, perpetually filling his desire with wonder. Faced with the Bell of Lust, Borluut realised that his belief that he had freed himself was vain. The world claimed him even at the top of the tower. Barbara was there, present and already forgiven. He felt that he still desired her. It was the fault of the obscene bell. From the very beginning it had been Barbara’s accomplice. The first time he had seen the bell it was Barbara who had immediately come to mind. He had bent under the rim, looking inside, as if up a dress. He had started to imagine her flesh, the bare skin that could just be glimpsed.
Now the Bell of Lust once more took hold of him. It was Barbara herself in a bronze dress who had climbed the tower, slipping in beside him, tempting him, so quick to forget and not in the least repenting the recent scenes she had made, which had wounded him to the core of his being.
No matter! The images she wore on her dress brought back the memory of better evenings, evoking the ecstatic couple they had been, which was copied on the bronze…
Borluut sensed that he was once more in thrall to her. In vain he had believed he was high above the world . In vain he had considered himself liberated, finally free and alone. Barbara had followed him, spied on him and at that very moment was tempting him, vanquishing him once again. Barbara was in the tower, dressed in the bell. Borluut could not forget her, could not consign the world to oblivion.
Dejected and troubled, he made his way back down the dark stairs, the echo of his footsteps creating the illusion of other footsteps, close by and softer, as if the bell were accompanying him, as if Barbara had come to claim him and were taking him back to cheerless reality.
XII
The Monday gatherings at van Hulle’s continued, but as an old habit, already mechanical. The years had chilled their initial enthusiasm. Gone the time of passionate declarations, seditious plans. They dreamt of a Flanders that was more or less autonomous, with a local count, with charters and privileges, as in the days of old. If pushed, they would have agreed that they were separatists. That was why they had the air of conspirators, as if every meeting were the prelude to a call to arms, brandishing words as if they were swords. Their first effort had been to impose the Flemish language everywhere in Flanders, at council meetings, in the courts, the schools and for all documents, deeds, state papers, public records, that is to make it the official language, replacing French, which had finally been banned, expelled from the town, as it had been during the often-quoted Matins of Bruges when all those who pronounced the difficult watchword Schild en vriend with a foreign accent had had their throats cut on their doorsteps.
It was van Hulle who had been the initiator of this restoration of their ancestral language to its former glory as a means of reawakening national consciousness. He had called conferences and incited a vast number of people to petition the authorities. He was truly the first apostle of the Movement, to which people like Borluut, Farazyn and Bartholomeus had rallied. Now the drive was slackening. None of their hopes had been realised, apart from the use of the Flemish language. And now that point had been conceded, they saw that it had not produced any important changes for Bruges. At most it was as if a dead body had been put in a different coffin.
They all felt they had been taken in by a beautiful but illusory dream. Often in the grey towns of the North you can see, through the screen of the windowpanes, a few people grouped round the sparse flame of a spirit stove with the teapot simmering on it.
Thus they gathered, on the Monday evenings, around their project which, too, was now no more than a guttering flame.
Each had followed his own path. Van Hulle, grown old and disillusioned, had no more thought for the Flemish nation. Turned in on himself, he lived for his clock museum alone. Bartholomeus confined himself to his mystical cult of art, not unlike the Beguines among whom he worked, especially now that he was entirely taken up with the vast decorative painting which would cover one entire chamber of the Town Hall and which might make his name.
Only Borluut and Farazyn had remained faithful to their old ideal. But for Borluut that ideal was above all an expression of his sense of beauty. He had continued to adorn the town, saving the old stones, the rare façades, the rich relics. The restoration of the Gruuthuse Palace, which he hoped would be his chef d’oeuvre, was proceeding. It would be a treasure-house of stone, a unique jewel-case.
As for Farazyn, he still pursued his dream of a renaissance for Bruges, but by bringing it back to life, through action. One Monday evening he presented a new idea.
; Before his arrival the conversation had flagged, dragging itself from one mouth to the next, falling on the way into great holes of silence where all that could be heard was the sound of Godelieve’s lace bobbins. She was always there to refill their stoneware mugs with beer. Farazyn arrived, keyed up and full of his project:
‘Yes, we’re going to found an association. A fantastic project!
It’ll bring Bruges back to life, it’ll be a gold mine! And we’ve found a name for it which says everything, a real clarion call:
“The Seaport of Bruges”.’
Then Farazyn elaborated his plan. Why hadn’t they thought of it before? Bruges had been powerful when it was connected to the sea. The Zwijn silted up, the sea withdrew. It was the ruin, the death of the town. But what hadn’t occurred to them was that even now the sea was no more than ten miles away. Modern engineers could perform miracles; renewing the link would be child’s play for them. They would dig a ship canal and huge docks – even in the fifteenth century the sea had not reached Bruges, but only Damme, later only Sluis. There had always been a canal. If they were to rebuild it, the town would become a port again and therefore alive, busy, rich.
The others listened, looking indifferent, slightly disbelieving.
As if waking from a dream, van Hulle objected, ‘A seaport? All the towns have the same idea nowadays.’
‘That’s as may be,’ said Farazyn, ‘but at least Bruges is still close to the sea and once was a port.’
Borluut broke in, a slight impatience discernible in his tone.
‘Do you think you can start up a port again, that you can start
The Bells of Bruges Page 8