The Bells of Bruges

by Georges Rodenbach

  To tell the truth, the committee could not understand them at all. In addition they were hostile, stirred up by the alderman, who was the one who had chaired the ‘monster meeting’, and, because of the caricature ascribed to the painter, they were trying to strike a blow against him and, indirectly, Borluut.

  The latter boldly accepted the challenge. Faced with the committee’s reservations, their mindless criticisms, he declared his admiration.

  ‘These are masterpieces! People will realise that later on. It is the fate of all new art to be disconcerting, even disliked.

  Bruges now has one more treasure and a great painter whose name will live on.’

  The alderman and the councillors protested at being treated to a lesson like schoolboys. They had their own opinion, which was just as valid and perhaps more accurate.

  ‘M. Bartholomeus is your friend. We are impartial,’ one of them said in angry tones.

  The meeting was threatening to turn into an argument. The alderman, more wily and prudent, broke off, declaring that he and his colleagues would report to the Council, at which they all withdrew.

  Some days later Bartholomeus received an official letter notifying him that the town, on the recommendation of the committee, would only be able to accept the decorative paintings for the Town Hall if certain modifications and changes were made, a detailed note of which would be forwarded to him at a later date.

  It was the expected, cowardly blow. Bartholomeus replied immediately that he would not touch his paintings, which had matured over a long period and were in their definitive state. He added that no conditions had been attached to the commission, which he considered binding.

  The worst thing was that payment had not yet been made. Borluut, indignant, denounced the malicious and ignorant machination in one of the newspapers. He threatened the Council with a court case which the artist was bound to win. Bartholomeus, for his part, was above all concerned about the fate of his pictures. He would willingly have foregone payment, but he insisted it was essential they remain in the Gothic Chamber of the Town Hall, bound as they were to that famous building, incorporated in it, so to speak, like images in a brain. Was it not the dream of Bruges itself that he had painted and should that dream not be perpetuated in the communal hall?

  He was thinking above all of his fame, of the future. Would people come to see his work in the succeeding centuries, just as they went through the gardens with their box hedges and along the white corridors of the Hospital to contemplate the Memlings? Oh, the pride he felt at the thought of lasting, of conquering death and oblivion, of being the bread and wine of art that the elite of the future would receive in communion! That was the aspiration of Bartholomeus, the priest of an art-religion.

  During that time Borluut published a moving portrait of his friend: an unselfish, noble figure who ought to be the honour and glory, the throne and sceptre, the living beacon of the town.

  But these threats and these eulogies only served to fan the flames. Borluut’s support did more harm than good, because of the animosity he had aroused in opposing the Seaport project. The paintings were on the point of being officially removed but the Council intervened, made uneasy by all the commotion the affair had aroused and not daring to take responsibility for the case.

  They conferred with the artist, looking for some way of reconciling the differences.

  Wearying of the conflict, the two sides agreed to accept the arbitration of a commission composed exclusively of painters, of which each would choose half. In order to ensure complete impartiality, they also agreed to have it chaired by a well-known French artist who exhibited frequently in Flanders.

  This is what happened: when the painters gathered to view Bartholomeus’s pictures there was a unanimous outburst of enthusiasm, an exclamation of surprise and admiration for a work of such perfect unity and clear symbolism which attested to a skill and confidence in his handling of his art, a sense of line and a feeling for the harmony of tone which were truly breathtaking. They were, they felt, in the presence of a master who was an honour to Flemish art and to the town of Bruges.

  A report to that effect was drawn up and submitted.

  Borluut was exultant and trumpeted his jubilation. The campaign had been successful after all! The truth had prevailed. He heaped irony on those who had not seen it, exposed their ignorance as well as their baseness. Borluut took keen pleasure in these struggles. He enjoyed being involved in action. He felt he was living in the fire and smoke of battle.

  Though victorious, the fight for Bartholomeus had been nothing more than a skirmish, after the other fight, the one of the meeting, which had been a disaster, which seemed like a defeat to an invisible enemy, through the night and rain. The war would continue, the war against the Seaport of Bruges, the war for art and the ideal, for the beauty of the town. This beauty of Bruges, still incomplete, was his work, his own large-scale picture in stone, which he had to defend, as Bartholomeus had his – and against the same enemies.

  Action! Action! The intoxication of being alone and victorious!

  Perhaps he could still triumph. But how many obstacles there were, how many attacks! Borluut realised this and reflected, not without a touch of melancholy, that great men only impose their authority despite everyone else.

  IV

  Action had fired Borluut to a heroic fervour. He was soon condemned to silence, to a life of stagnation, to the mournful meditations of defeat.

  Impetuous and disorganised as he was, it had not occurred to him that he was dependent on the town and the councillors against whom he had campaigned to oppose the Seaport project and, later, to defend his friend Bartholomeus.

  He was made to pay for his double audacity. Not long afterwards he received a letter from the Council informing him that, following his hostile attitude towards the authority by whom he was employed, he was dismissed from his post as town architect.

  It was a terrible blow for Borluut, a punishment without appeal, without release. How brief it had been, the intoxicating thrill of Action! It hadn’t taken them long to cut him down; now he was dead. They had hit him where he was most vulnerable. He should have foreseen it and held back. But could one stand aside and let one’s dream be destroyed? He had only let himself become involved in Action because in this case it coincided with the Dream. More than himself, it was his Dream that had been vanquished, the dream of the beauty of Bruges. He had been its faithful guardian, its indefatigable artisan. How many projects were suspended. And so many others still to be undertaken which, at a stroke, were jeopardised, sacrificed, lost. Indeed, he had only just submitted his plan for the restoration of the Academy, which would have formed a worthy companion piece to the Gruuthuse Palace. There were many façades still waiting for him to have time for them, waiting for him to come with his meticulous hands, the hands of a physician, an obstetrician, to examine them and deliver them of the sculpture of an angel, a gargoyle, a child’s face. No one else had – nor would have now – his cautious art of restoring without renewing, of contenting himself with shoring up, repointing, exposing intact details, finding the original bark of the stones underneath all the parasitic growths.

  Now all his work would be destroyed. They would name some mason as his replacement.

  That was what distressed him, not the financial loss, since he had a private income, nor the honour it brought. He had always viewed the world from a higher perspective and his only regret in his loss of favour was the imminent ruin of all he had worked for, the encroachment of bad taste, of a fake archaism which would have nothing better to do than to destroy the harmony of greys and pinks which he had created throughout the town.

  The beauty of Bruges was a work to which he had devoted himself exclusively, subordinating everything to it, sacrificing his time, his thoughts, his affections, his desire to leave, to flee when his life at home had become intolerable. It was his creation, which he had hoped to harmonise and complete and crown with the final sculpted garlands which remained to
be brought into bloom – and now they had decided to take it away from him.

  There was nothing he could do about it. But it was as distressing as the abduction of a little girl, carried off at the moment when one was about to deck her out in her most beautiful dress.

  Barbara was extremely vexed at Joris’s dismissal, heaping bitter reproaches on him, harping on again about his usual thoughtlessness and blindness. A new and constant grievance. She even claimed it was a dishonour and that she was tainted by it as well. She would have to put up with ironic remarks, wounding allusions to it. Distressed by the affair, she went through a period in which she was in a permanent state of excitation: she did not calm down at all but went on and on at Joris, determined to provoke a scene. She poured abuse on him, interminable reproaches. At the same time she brought up the business of Godelieve again, the cowardly betrayal. Along with all this, her health deteriorated: she had nervous fits, falling flat on the floor, her face lifeless, her lips taut, closed and resembling a scar, while her legs were kicking up and down, her arms flapping.

  She looked as if she were fighting against someone who was trying to crucify her on a horizontal cross.

  The fits would finish with mournful cries and strangled appeals, which filled the house until she eventually dissolved in floods of tears and laments. She called on death, a recitative declaring her tiredness of life.

  She was back at her worst: suddenly running over to a window, frantically opening it and threatening to throw herself out; or rushing out of the house, striding up and down the street s , along the canals, looking at herself in the water from up on the bridges, as if attracted by the image of herself she saw, cured and calm, showing her what she could be, what she was going to be…

  Joris, suspecting she was tempted to commit suicide, would hurry after her. He was trembling, initially out of fear of the scandal because of his old Flemish name, a heritage which weighed on him and which would have suffered, as if from a stain of its own, from the blood that was spilt on him; then out of fear of the sharp pangs of remorse which he foresaw would haunt him daily if Barbara killed herself. He had a heart which lived backwards . It was true that she had caused him much suffering, but he knew that if he lost her, he would go back, to mourn her, to the distant past, to the days when he had loved her, to the days of the too-red lips.

  He refused to allow himself to think, even for a moment, that it would be a relief for him. Each time the thought came, he dismissed it in horror, as if it were the idea for a crime, as if he were thinking of pushing Barbara out of the window or into the water himself.

  Anyway, what would he do if he were suddenly free? He would only be even more alone. Life had been good with Godelieve’s love, but she too had abandoned him.

  ‘If only it had been God’s will!’ The old words started going though his mind again, coming back from the farthest bounds of

  his memory, soaring, weeping. Where was Godelieve at that moment?

  What was she doing? What was she thinking? Why had she left him?

  Now that he had been dismissed by the town he could have gone away with her, left everything and started a new life elsewhere.

  He had only put up with Barbara’s fits of anger, a house that was either dreary or in tumult, an existence of anguish and grief, because of his love for his work, because he was bound to it, would not have been able to live anywhere else, would have sensed, in another town, its towers reaching out to him; because he felt incapable of leaving Bruges. Now it was Bruges that was leaving him.

  Alas, now that they would have been released, free to part, Godelieve was no longer there.

  ‘If only it had been God’s will!’ Joris felt his sorrow at the loss of Godelieve return. He went to the bell-tower to seek the elegiac words which, in those days now gone, had climbed the stairs ahead of him and come back down to meet him, out of breath from having run up the stairs and from being in love.

  Fortunately he had not been dismissed from his post as municipal carillonneur as well. The reason was not some remaining scrap of goodwill or recognition of services rendered but because the public competition and his choice by the people, more than his investiture by the councillors, seemed to make that function a position from which he could not be removed.

  So Borluut had kept his refuge. No longer did he climb up to it as if climbing into his dream, into the tower of his pride. Once more the belfry was his place of departure, of escape from himself, of ascent, of a journey into the past and his memories.

  He no longer had the courage to look down from the glassed-in bays onto the town, now in the grip of others. He isolated himself, plunged into intimate memories, relived the time when Godelieve had been there … This was where she had sat down; she had laughed, had run her fingers over the keyboard. There he had embraced her – a moment of heaven, an altar, which still seemed fragrant with the smell of her fair skin.

  O Godelieve! She was the only light in his sombre life, the bright little bell in which he had represented her then and which rose above the dark flood of the other bells. Once more, now that his days were darkening for good, the little bell alone rose above and brightened, for a while, the great waters of his sadness. He knew it well, knew which key he had to touch to make it ring out.

  It was Godelieve’s soul returning. Joris became obsessed with his loss of her, with a new desire to see her again, to win her back, perhaps. He had no idea how he had come to start thinking of her again, imagining her, speaking her name without knowing why, that

  sweet name of litanies, the name of which God was the root and in which it seemed that the name of God was beautified.

  He thought he had almost forgotten her.

  Once more she haunted him, even appearing in his dreams. There are these mysterious returns, feelings reawakened, the heart’s anniversaries. Perhaps some instinct had alerted him? What if Godelieve were unhappy, poorly adjusted to the Beguinage, and were thinking of leaving the order? In that case she would be coming back and the thought had only occurred to him because she was already on her way.

  V

  Joris had not forgotten the vow Godelieve had made to go on pilgrimage to the Procession of the Penitents in Veurne if her great fear of a possible pregnancy should turn out to be unfounded. Since her prayer had been granted, it was almost certain she would go. Joris could bear it no longer, he wanted to leave, to see her again, even if only from a distance, even if she were dead for him in her Beguine’s veil and dress. No matter!

  To see her, to be seen! The past could be reawakened, their eyes meet again, their lives be restored to them and take wing together in a flight without end.

  The religious procession takes place every year on the last Sunday in July, as it has done since the beginning, since 1650

  when the Capuchins instituted it. Together with one of his comrades, a soldier from Lorraine called Mannaert, who was garrisoned at Veurne, stole a consecrated host. He then burnt it in the hope of using the ashes to help him open all sorts of locks and to make him invulnerable in battle. But there was no protection against the blows from God. He was arrested and burnt alive with his accomplice as a punishment for his sacrilege, which was compounded by his mysterious operations, which the judges saw as works of satanism and magic.

  In expiation the Capuchins established this Procession of Penitence. A sodality was set up to organise it and it has been held every year since then.

  Nothing has changed over the years. There is the same ceremonial, the same composition of scenes and groups, the same hoods with the same holes framing the eyes of successive generations, the same text, a poem in harsh, throaty Flemish verses, declaimed in the streets and filling people’s mouths from century to century.

  Borluut had never seen this extraordinary procession in which the ancient ways of Flanders attest their continued vigour.

  It was the evening before the Procession that he went to the little dead town on the western edge of the land. He had come above all because of Godelieve, as
if he were staking his life,

  his future, on one last chance, but the town captured his attention, distracted him from himself for a while.

  Everything was unified in a harmony of melancholy. Even the sign of the hotel where he was staying was ‘The Noble Rose’, a royal sign looking back nostalgically to inns of the past. His open window framed a centuries-old townscape: the nave, without a bell-tower but rising high with flying buttresses, of Saint Walburga’s, and the belfry, octagonal but tapering to a slim campanile. Between the two buildings innumerable crows were wheeling, a dense flock, close to each other, almost touching.

  They kept flying from the belfry to the church and from the church to the belfry, alighting for a moment, then flying off again, a quivering mass, like leaves in the wind. It was a ceaseless ebb and flow, a black wave in the gold of the evening, constantly changing shape, curving in a scroll, sculpting itself in darkness. There was something inexorable, something fateful about this comingand-going, like a flock of unworthy thoughts surrounding the church and the bell-tower, trying to enter but never being allowed in.

  Joris fell into a daydream, seeing himself in the allegory and what he ought to have been.

  In his belfry in Bruges he had opened the window to the black swarm, to evil desires, to voluptuous thoughts. All the crows which, here, were flying round the towers, he bore within him: a commotion of wings, hoarse cries of remorse, the eternal to-and-fro of uncertainty. What a lesson was falling to him, at that moment, from the church and from the belfry, where the cawing of the crows was all outside.

  Joris went out, wandered round the town and came to Saint Walburga’s by a little esplanade, a sort of quincunx planted with a few old trees, as silent and melancholy as a Beguines’

  enclosure. The area was grey, with the dampness of a perpetual autumn, as if it were always November there. The leaves seemed scarcely able to cling on to the branches, ready to fall, pale from the shade the high church cast on them. The dilapidated bulk of the church rose up before him: there were blocked doors, blind passages, brickwork entrances sealed with barbarous padlocks which had not been opened for centuries and which led to who knows what crypt or oubliettes.