Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories

by Georges Rodenbach

  On that day Hans, upset by his mother’s outburst, the violence of her dismay, did not pursue the matter. He prayed to heaven that she might come to understand, to accept the idea. Then he tried once more: he had to fulfil his vocation; nothing was more serious or important than to avoid a mistake about one’s vocation. And his was plain, he had clearly heard the voice of God, he knew that he had been called. Could he refuse to answer God?

  This time Mevr. Cadzand had thought it over. She didn’t respond with tears. He should be reasonable, she said, shouldn’t come to such a hasty, unconsidered decision. Of course she wouldn’t do anything to hinder his vocation, but first of all one had to be certain, wait a while, go out into the world and only withdraw from it if one really felt one didn’t belong.

  He was young, too young. There was just one thing she was asking of him, as she surely had the right: to put it off for one or two years, at most until he came of age. He could continue his life of piety, his devotional exercises. She would even join in. They would celebrate Mary’s month together again, with all its flowers. Was that not a sensible way of going about it, an excellent preparation for the religious life? If, after that, God was still calling him, then he should go, but until then she would not give her consent, and that was that.

  She spoke firmly, repressing her tears, keeping her voice steady.

  Hans was shaken. Honour thy father and thy mother. That too was one of God’s commandments. And how could he disobey his mother, who was so noble, so good and so sad.

  Oh yes, sad. Now Mevr. Cadzand was prostrate for whole days, overcome more than ever with her migraine, full of anxiety about a future in which the light of her hope was so faint.

  What almost non-existent chance was there of seeing this religious vocation come to nothing, a vocation which seemed so fixed and which, moreover, had been prepared for by all those years of fervour and mystical raptures?

  The widow reflected that she herself had contributed to the great misfortune that was facing her. Her own scheme had worked against her. She had rejoiced in Hans’s ardent faith, seeing in it a means of retaining her hold on him. She had heightened his piety with the extra prayers after those in the college. She had thought to save him from women and from sin by devoting him entirely to Mary, but now the Virgin would take more complete possession of him than all the other women would have.

  It was a love in which there would be no sharing. Mary was the one she must beware of above all. She had given a sign and her son was going to leave, to abandon her never to return, to live far away from her, as if with a wife who was even jealous of her husband’s mother.

  And to think that she had had no suspicion of it, not even an inkling—mothers were so blind, so sure of themselves!—during all the stages of the fervour which was taking him out of her life: his first communion, the retreats, the months of Mary, membership of the Sodality and the little flock of altar boys.

  True, she had had a sort of premonition when she shuddered, balking at the idea of seeing all his hair cut off so that he could have a shaven head, as the rule required.

  But this first mutilation was as nothing compared to the other that was looming. When he had spoken of his desire to take holy orders, what had immediately flashed into his mother’s mind—by some compression, concentration of ideas which can occur in the bewilderment of an emotional crisis—was just one thing that distressed her: the tonsure. Oh, to see now on that handsome, beloved head, whose covering of hair was already scant to allow him to serve at the altar, that wound, that permanent wound, as baleful as the single eye of God behind pale glass. Yes! That dead star, that empty clock face that only shows eternity, that one small patch bared to indicate the renunciation of all the rest of the flesh! The tonsure! That scar in the shape of the host!

  That was all Mevr. Cadzand could see, even though its appearance had been postponed, all she could think of during the long afternoons when, prostrate with migraine, she rested on her cushion of hair, foreseeing the day when she might perhaps have to open it to add the clippings that had fallen to the tonsure.

  But then the cushion would not be able to do anything for her migraine, it would be like a little death-bed pillow.

  Part Two

  I

  ‘Will you come with me, Hans?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To see Mevr. Daneele. She’s expecting us.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, but I’d prefer to stay here. I’m working.’

  Mevr. Cadzand didn’t insist. She closed the door and the sound of her slow steps receded as she went down the spiral staircase. This happened every time she suggested a walk or some other harmless diversion. He only went out with her in the morning, to attend mass in the Church of Our Lady. Although her faith had become lukewarm since the loss of her husband, which had almost made her doubt the existence of God, she had also adopted the habit of attending mass daily, but that was more so that she could go out with her son, could spend more time in his company, because as soon as they returned, he would shut himself away, often for the whole day, in the large first-floor room where they used to celebrate Mary’s month. The mantelpiece still had something of the look of an altar and the flowers before the statue of the Virgin, frequently changed, were always fresh, as on a new grave. Hans had made it his study, where he worked at a large table covered with books and papers.

  During the few months since leaving the college he had sought something to occupy him, a task that was both pious and scholarly. He was working on a study of the Beguine convents in Flanders. He had gone into their history from the distant time when they were set up by the legendary founder of the order, Saint Béga, sister of Pépin, but he concentrated above all on the Beguine convent of Bruges, which still existed. Hans visited it occasionally, the only times he went out, heading for the green district on the edge of the town where it shuts itself off from the world. He spent delightful moments daydreaming under the elms on the raised strips of grass, following a cornet as it passed behind the windows, like a white bird frozen in the field of a telescope, praying in the chapel, where the names of former Grand Mistresses were gradually wearing away, together with long-ago dates, the fifteenth or sixteenth century, on the grave slabs with which it is paved.

  He also spent several hours praying at home, reading his breviary every day as punctiliously as a monk. The study he was engaged on was simply a means of passing the time, to give meaning to his hours of leisure, which he saw as a transitional period.

  Mevr. Cadzand was well aware of this and that he had not changed his mind. He had put off his plan, out of filial piety and love for his mother, but only for a few years at most until he came of age, as she had insisted. Even now he was living almost like a monk—morning mass, strict fasting, breviary and vespers, frequent confession and communion. He didn’t mix with anyone at all.

  Despite that, Mevr. Cadzand still lived in hope. Time was an ally whose mysterious power could wear away any plan. It subjects even our most vivid, our most firmly fixed ideas to a slow process of decoloration in which our minds reabsorb them, divest themselves of them, just as the flowers patterning a piece of cloth fade. Every single hour takes away something from us, brings something to us. Soon we only appear to be the same person. After a few years all the molecules that make up our flesh have been replaced. Is it not the same with the brain and the ideas which attach themselves to it?

  And then, was Hans’s religious vocation truly deep-seated, truly irreversible? Perhaps it was nothing more than youthful exuberance? Piety is a form of extreme sensitivity, a channel to release the excess of emotion. Religion is marvellous for that. It offers love without danger, pleasure without remorse. Infinity expresses itself in it. And what refreshment in the holy water of the stoup for fingers, brows and souls afire with adolescence! A passion for something so far off it is as if it didn’t exist. No matter, it is enough to allow us to desire, to speak words containing something of love, as do all prayers. But let another ideal appear and
the transposition will take effect. God has been humanised, now His created being will be deified, it is she who will be placed on the altar to be adored, prayed to, coaxed with flowers, embroidered with tears.

  Mevr. Cadzand was confident. What Hans had said came back to mind: ‘I love the Virgin above all, because she’s a woman.’ Unknowingly he had allowed his instinct to give away his secret. Should a woman come and touch his heart, immediately she would be the one who would be the Virgin, the one he would love above all others. But would she come, and from where?

  His mother thought about it, but did not need to think for long. Little Wilhelmine, the only daughter of one of her oldest friends, Mevr. Daneele, had just returned home after finishing her education at the Convent of the Visitation. The days were long past when Mevr. Cadzand would jealously envisage spending the rest of her life with her son, who would not get married but would devote himself entirely to her, would be the constant companion of her old age. It was a selfish dream, for which she had been punished. Now he was thinking of abandoning her entirely, of leaving her for the monastic life. But at least there was a compromise solution. It had come to the point where she was not only prepared to accept it but desired it fervently as a satisfactory, even happy outcome. Yes, let him get married! She would keep some hold on him, she would retain him, even while sharing him. God, on the other hand, would have taken him wholly for Himself. That would be the worst, for him to be living for others and dead for her alone.

  Now Wilhelmine, who had just turned seventeen, was beautiful, with that dark-haired beauty that is sometimes found in Flanders. It is a remnant of the Spanish influence in the blood, for the basic racial type is fair-haired. Are those with fair hair not born during the day? And those with black hair during the night? Certainly Spain brought night to Flanders.

  Mevr. Daneele’s daughter was an attractive girl, with a gentle appearance despite her black hair and matching eyes, eyes of dark velvet. She had a languid, pensive look, a charming shyness which at any minute could bring a blush to her matt complexion, the hue of the sky when dawn is about to become day.

  Mevr. Cadzand liked the girl very much. She was also fond of her mother, one of the few friends she had in the solitary existence in which she had shut herself away since becoming a widow. And it had occurred to her that it would remedy the situation, would divert Hans from his monastic plans, if Wilhelmine should offer him her love. The ideal couple! Their marriage would put an end to all her anxiety.

  That was why she had once again urged her son to go with her to her friend’s. He had refused. But he had been there before. And he would go again. Mevr. Daneele, for her part, often came with Wilhelmine to spend the afternoon at the old house in Blinde-Ezelstraat. She had to pin her hopes on the charms of youth, the sweetness of eyes and hair, the mysterious power of the senses, the artless promise of lips, that red fruit which is like that of the Tree in the Garden of Eden.

  When the two mothers were together, the same thought was in their mind, though unspoken.

  II

  Hans had recently been unwell, doubtless because of his sedentary way of life. He had lost weight and had changed a little, especially because he had let his hair grow while he had been ill. Once more it was a turbulent mass, whorls of fair hair with swirling lights.

  The doctor having prescribed fresh air, exercise and diversion, he had decided to go out a little more often. His mother took him on long walks. She was sad to see him so pensive, his thoughts, as she was well aware, elsewhere, on his grand design. At most he would abandon them when she went with him in the direction of the Beguinage, crossing the bridge draped in greenery over the Minnewater, the Lake of Love, and entering the calm enclosure, where soft sounds emphasised the silence: leaves lamenting, a distant bell, a sparrow chirping—a sharp cry recalling a knife grating on a stone.

  Punctuated by these slight sounds, the silence assumed an immensity like that of the sea around ships. For Hans, entering the tranquillity of this mystical sanctuary was like entering a painting, walking in spirit through the landscape of one of the Primitives. No sound from the world outside could be heard. And yet there were living beings behind those windows, free from passion, from worldly affairs, from the clutches of vanity and extravagance. Sometimes a Beguine would pass, so calm, with so little of the human about her, moving like a black and white swan, making her way towards the chapel, where canticles were unfolding. Hans envied her, it brought him back to his idée fixe.

  ‘There’s happiness here,’ he said to his mother.

  ‘That’s how it seems to us, Hans, because we’re just passing through. It’s the things that are happy here, but these women, cloistered in their little houses, do you know what they think?’

  ‘They have happiness,’ Hans replied with fervour. It felt as if he was thinking of himself, was pleading his cause.

  ‘Yes, a cold happiness, like that enjoyed by the dead.’

  Mother and son were silent. In that moment God stood between them.

  III

  Often these walks, necessary for Hans’s health, also took them along the quais, the streets beside the merry waters. Mevr. Cadzand preferred these strolls round the town. When they went out into the country and the houses were left behind, all that remained was the bell-towers of Bruges rising on the horizon. It felt as if their presence were not purely physical, as if at the same time they cast their shadow over Hans’s thoughts, reasserting their grip on them.

  In the town, on the other hand, in the maze of twisting streets, the bell-towers were not visible everywhere, often blocked out by roofs and other buildings. And there Hans seemed to take hold of himself again, to be freer, to liberate himself from them, from the reminder of his vocation. That was why Mevr. Cadzand, heedful of the slightest hint, of anything that might help release her son from his obsession with God and go some way towards giving him back to her, preferred to head into the town—all the more so because she often concluded her afternoon walks by dropping in on her friend, Mevr. Daneele. As if by chance, and with the collusion of the quais and streets of Bruges, which entwine, twist, turn and run back into each other like wool on the skein, they always found themselves, after many a detour, heading towards Spiegelrei, where the Daneeles lived.

  It was a touching ruse on the part of Mevr. Cadzand as she pursued her plan. She had quickly noticed that Wilhelmine felt some agitation when Hans was there. He was so handsome, her Hans, especially since he’d been ill and had let his hair grow… waves of fire crowning his pale brow!

  Oh yes, emotion was stirring in little Wilhelmine’s breast! They were half-way there. She was taking a step forward; it only remained for Hans to do the same and there would be nothing between them but their future.

  Every time she arrived with her son at the Daneeles’, as daylight was fading, Mevr. Cadzand would resort to the same ploy. They would be shown into the two vast, communicating drawing rooms on the ground floor and Hans’s mother would quickly find some pretext to take her friend into the rear room, leaving the two young people alone together in the other. The lighting of the lamps was put off until later, prolonging the sweet sadness of the thickening dusk, anticipating the promptings of night… Moments of unease in which the soul feels solitary and needs another to confide in. Wilhelmine was of a timid nature, she blushed easily; for some time now she had been blushing every time she spoke to the young man. In this half light she would doubtless become bolder, no longer blushing, since we only blush when we feel we are being observed.

  During those twilight visits Wilhelmine would chat to Hans about a thousand charming trifles—the boarding school, a fellow pupil who’d written to her, a book she’d read, somewhere she’d like to travel.

  ‘What about you, Hans, wouldn’t you like to travel?’

  She addressed him familiarly, by his first name. They’d known each other for so long.

  They’d been children together!

  However, Wilhelmine sensed that something had changed. The first time sh
e’d seen Hans again after she came home from boarding school, grown up, transformed, with a downy moustache above his lips, he’d seemed to her a stranger who happened to resemble the friend of her childhood days.

  How handsome he was, this Hans! When she looked at him now, she blushed. She had no idea why. It was absurd, but still she blushed. When he wasn’t there, she wanted to see him, she felt she had so much to say to him. And when they were together, it was all gone, and all her courage too. He had such learning, he’d won all the prizes at college. And now he was going to become a scholar, like his father, he was working on a book.

  ‘Is it true that you’re going to write a book, Hans?’

  Hans said yes, and no more. He spoke little, the way one would treat a younger sister who prattled on, listening to her while thinking of other things…

  Wilhelmine chatted on, chatted as if emboldened by the gathering dusk. She wasn’t afraid any more. She didn’t blush any more. And in this chatter without lamplight the dark seemed to suffuse her words as well. Her voice deepened. Darkness can have a strange influence. It has something religious about it and makes one speak in a low voice, as if in a church.

  Without saying anything intimate or confidential, since as yet she had nothing to confess, no love growing within her, Wilhelmine gradually started to lower her voice. And when people speak in low voices, it sounds as if they are sharing a secret—that is why all those who are in love speak in a low voice.

  Thus it was that on that evening Mevr. Cadzand, who, from the other room, had followed the conversation of the two young people as it grew more and more muted, muffled, until the abrupt interruption of the lighting of the lamps, did not doubt that her plan would come to fruition. When she left, Mevr. Daneele, kissing her in the wide corridor, was surprised to realise that her veil was damp, her cheeks wet…