Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories

by Georges Rodenbach

  Wilhelmine was walking with the lithe steps of an Amazon, emboldened by the frost that clings to the body, sheathing it in armour, inspiring heroism. She felt like a different woman. Was it really because of the weather, which has such an influence on us, making us lethargic in the heat, fortified in the cold, depressed in the rain? Perhaps it was also because of Hans and the pleasant things he’d said, so unexpected, which had suddenly given her a strength, a zest which made her feel ready to take on the whole world.

  However, the ice on the canal being cold to the feet, Hans decided to go back up onto the path. He helped Wilhelmine climb the embankment, where the grass was slippery with frost, pulling her up by the hand while the two mothers smiled to see their graceful ascent.

  Wilhelmine had trembled to feel her hand grasped by Hans’s hand, a firm hand, truly, proving that his health was only poor because of the kind of life he chose to lead.

  Oh that grip, which for him was purely mechanical, with nothing of his soul going down into his fingers, how disturbing it was to Wilhelmine, an exquisite contact which spread through her whole being, as if he’d crushed a fragrant fruit in her palm, emptied a phial, and the juice, the aroma, had flowed into every one of her members, entirely permeating her blood.

  She would have liked to stay like that, her hand in his, for the rest of the walk, for the rest of her life.

  But Hans had only taken hold of it to help her back up the slope. Now they had rejoined their mothers and were once more in a group, walking towards Damme, whose huge tower was already looming up ahead, etched black against the pale screen of the sky.

  Wilhelmine fell silent and pensive. She felt that something new had happened between her and Hans, that something decisive was about to happen. She had never loved him so much as she did that day and never until that day had she hoped he might love her as well. She had a kind of premonition, the feeling the hour was going to strike with a different ring. Suddenly she remembered—why at that precise moment?—what her mother had said on the day she’d found her in tears: ‘Men mostly fall in love when they know a woman loves them.’

  But then and later she had not dared to tell Hans she loved him. Now she felt she would have no difficulty confessing it to him, and that straight away. The moment that must come, always comes. Events come to pass of their own accord. In matters of love above all. The white rose-tree of first love—the flower is about to fall and we think we are gathering it when it is the rose itself that is shedding its petals.

  Thus it was that Wilhelmine could be both very calm and very disturbed, quite focused at the centre of complete confusion. What was calm and focused was her immutable destiny, which was about to unfold inside her and without her.

  Everything would happen according to the logic of the mystery; if not, why was she looking for a chance to be alone with Hans to confess her love to him?

  Before this she had thought that she could have told everyone about it, apart from Hans himself. Now she felt that she could only speak about it to him, and to him alone—not even to her mother who, after all, knew about it and had advised her what to do. The time of fulfilment had come and the procedure was no longer governed by her own volition, but by destiny.

  So Wilhelmine knew she was going to speak to Hans and that her future life depended on it. She was ready. She was waiting.

  All at once they saw a sleigh approaching on the frozen canal. It was coming from Holland, pulled by a horse that was trotting along the ice as if on a road. It was slim and swift, outstripping the wind, spattering the silence with the metallic jingling of its little bells.

  Mevr. Cadzand and Mevr. Daneele, Hans and Wilhelmine had stopped to watch the picturesque equipage. Sitting on the bench seat was a young woman, pretty, her pink face wrapped up in one of those bonnets with wings they wear in the border villages, the starched cloth and the lace attached with jewellery and gold discs and spirals. Behind her, standing up holding the long reins, was a countryman of stately bearing, clean-shaven and weather-beaten. He bent over her neck, warming it with the burning embers of his lips. A handsome couple, newly-weds perhaps, who looked as if they were going on their honeymoon in the sleigh gaily painted like a boat.

  Their mothers had walked on, but Hans and Wilhelmine stopped to watch the smart, swift equipage disappearing along the ice a while longer.

  Thus the two young people were alone.

  Wilhelmine said, ‘They must be newly-weds.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because they look so happy.’

  Hans made no reply. There was silence. But Wilhelmine was resolved, as if a voice within were commanding her to speak and that the moment that must come had come.

  She went on, ‘I’d like to be in their place, going away with someone…’

  Then, with an effort, ‘With you, yes, going far, far away with you Hans, where there’d just be the two of us…’

  Hans looked at her, surprised, uncomprehending.

  ‘Oh yes, Hans! Haven’t you guessed… all this time? I’ve been in love with you all this time. And you?’

  Hans was completely taken aback. He stammered, ‘But … that’s impossible!’

  That struck fear into Wilhelmine’s heart. Had he really persisted in his vocation, stuck to his resolution to take holy orders? If that were so, why the lure of an apparent change, those kinder words, that softening just now that had given her the courage to…?

  She wanted to know, to clear the matter up straight away. ‘Impossible? But why? Don’t you realise that even our mothers would be delighted?’

  ‘They know about it?’

  Immediately Hans understood the long and touching scheme. Oh, this was the greatest temptation, the hardest sacrifice God was demanding of him. But he would not hesitate, he would not waver in his vocation, which was clear and irrevocable. He had given himself to God and he would not go back on it. But these poor souls he was going to make sad! He understood now why his mother had made so much of her friendship with Mevr. Daneele, the frequent meetings, the walks. And poor Wilhelmine was in love with him, so pretty and so sad now at his silence. Hans could think of nothing to say. They faced each other in mute incomprehension, as if there were a dead body stretched out between them.

  Hans, however, was thinking, with the rapidity of thought one has at such moments, that for him she represented a serious temptation, the tender trap of Eve, who is ever the devil’s ally, colluding in the attempt to divert him from his chosen path. Was that not what she had been already when she had come to their house, on the evening of her first ball, in that gown which had so offended him? Suddenly he saw again her bare shoulders, the curve of her back, her arms and, above all, the sinful fruits of her breasts, the forbidden fruit pressing against the tulle.

  So he steeled himself and spoke, trying to soften the blow of what he had to say with a very sad, very gentle voice. But above all without equivocating out of concern for her feelings. No, he would never marry. He was going to be a monk and had only put it off for a while out of consideration for his poor mother. Wilhelmine must forget him. She was the sister of his childhood, she would remain his sister in the Holy Mother Church…

  Wilhelmine was crying. When the two mothers suddenly turned round, waiting for them, she made a great effort and held back her tears.

  They joined up again. It was already starting to get dark, sooner than they would have thought. The black bell-tower of Damme, that had seemed close because of the great clarity of the air, withdrew into the land. It was too late to think of continuing, so they turned round and retraced their steps, walking together now, and in silence, the two women a little weary from the keen wind and the walk, Wilhelmine because of the irrevocable fate that had befallen her heart, where she seemed to be cradling a stillborn child. Hans, his eyes on the darkening plain, was silently praying.

  Within them and around them was the melancholy of things that are drawing to a close—the end of hope and the end of the day. Seeing Hans and Wilhelmine�
�s air of constraint, Mevr. Cadzand suspected something sad had occurred. With a sense of foreboding and a heavy heart, she watched the sunshine die away in their eyes, for the mist was thickening, ascending, rising up from the countryside around to veil the sun, which faded behind drifts of diaphanous tulle, pallid muslin.

  By the time they reached the town, twilight had fallen. The windmills along the embankments, motionless, half submerged, appeared as geometrical shapes, like crosses on graves.

  The sun had disappeared, gone to who knows what winter quarters in the deepest recesses of the sky. Wilhelmine, now that it was dark, no longer attempted to hold back her tears. And Hans was still praying, thanking God for having stood by him in his trial and for sending the sign which he had seen in the final appearance of that day’s sun in the mist—very pale, a paten, a host, a tonsure—as if to remind him of his vocation.

  VIII

  Often with very young women self-esteem is stronger than love. Wilhelmine suffered because her beautiful dream had come to an end, because she realised Hans didn’t love her, never could love her. She had dreamt up a future full of such affection, she had worshipped him with such passion. Who will ever know what she said when she talked to the image of him she had inside her? With what burning looks she devoured him, without anyone noticing, every time they were together! But how was it that he had not felt those looks, which should have pierced him to the heart, leaving it scorched? And how many times did she dream of him at night! What beautiful dreams! She saw herself, alone with him, in unknown lands. She was wearing the white gown of her first ball; he kissed her and she kissed him. A divine feeling, and so strong it woke her up, astonished and sad to find herself alone in her bedroom, in the dark. The moon was shining through the tulle curtains… perhaps that was why she’d dreamt she was wearing a white gown. Oh, those sweet months when that love had taken over her entire being! Never again would she know a love like that. She certainly grieved for the end of her love; but she suffered just as much for having been scorned.

  She no longer saw Hans’s radiant face, which she tried to remember precisely every night in order to carry it with her into the depths of her sleep. Now, instead, she saw his cold features, calm, somewhat hard, indifferent, from that last day when she had ventured to confess her feelings. He had not shown any emotion, not even for a single moment! Had an over-rigid faith dried up his heart? Let him become a priest, then, it was best for both of them. She would have been unhappy with him.

  Wilhelmine had told her mother everything, adding that from now on she didn’t want to see Hans again. She resented him for having spurned her and also she would feel too embarrassed in his presence. Mevr. Daneele only visited her friend now and then, and she went alone.

  The house in Blinde-Ezelstraat fell more and more silent. Hans became more stay-at-home than ever, more devout as well. He went to mass every morning, as always, but he often went back to the church in the afternoon to follow the Stations of the Cross or to light a candle. He went to confession and communion every week.

  The rest of the time he remained shut up in his large room on the first floor. He had abandoned his work, the study he had started on the Bruges Beguinage; he thought it too profane. He spent all his time on his vocation, preparing for his life in religious orders. One day Mevr. Cadzand found among his papers some correspondence from the monastery of the Dominicans in Ghent, the one he had decided to enter, following the retreat where a father from that order had been the preacher. And now the Superior had sent a letter in reply to one Hans must have sent asking for information. It contained all the details relating to entry into the community, the noviciate, occupations, observances, the spiritual rule, which was the true handrail onto which the monks hold in order to climb the staircase of the Hours without falling. Looking at Hans’s habits, Mevr. Cadzand realised he was already following it almost completely, living in her house the life he would live in the monastery later on. He was already half a monk—and half dead to her.

  But still she was determined to persist, she would fight on to the very end. What would become of her if Hans were to leave? She would spend her life going from room to room, looking for him. She would walk round the empty house as if she were walking round a ruin. Hans! Hans! Was it for this that she had brought him into the world, pampered, cosseted, kissed him, watched over him, tucked him up in swaddling clothes which her fingers alone had sewn. Now he wanted to go away, leaving her all alone. To be alone! Is that not what people who are dying are afraid of, is that not what makes us fear the tomb?

  Seeing the new, stricter way of life Hans had adopted, since he had received the information from the Superior of the Dominicans, she realised that any hope she was left with was very faint. Even the charms of her sweet accomplice, the adorable Wilhelmine, had failed. Hans’s heart had not responded, would never respond.

  Already he was colder, more detached in the way he behaved towards her. He still accompanied her to mass every morning, but after that she didn’t see him at all for the rest of the day, apart from mealtimes. He shut himself away in his meditations, his pious books, above all the sermons of Lacordaire and other Dominicans. In that way he was preparing himself for preaching, which is the occupation and glory of that order. He wrote speeches, homilies, sometimes speaking out loud in his room, which frightened Mevr. Cadzand at first, when she went in one day and saw him standing up and gesticulating, casting words through the open window. Like St Francis of Assisi preaching the gospel to the birds and the fish, Hans was preaching to the swans on the distant canals, to the trees on the quais, to the smoke, the bells, to everything that passed, imprinted itself on the mist, occupied the silence.

  Part Three

  I

  Hans’s heart had not yielded. Now it was the turn of Hell to launch an attack on his flesh.

  Mevr. Cadzand recalled having seen, some time in the past, an extraordinary picture, a Temptation of St Anthony, but not with several women offering themselves, as in those of Breughel and Teniers; in this picture it was a single woman who, completely naked, had replaced Christ on the cross, exposing her flesh on the very wood, her body forming another cross and crowned with roses. A temptation that was all the more redoubtable because it was entirely focused. In the others the hermit had the time to stop himself, to escape, because he had to choose. In this one the danger was increased because it was unified.

  And one day Mevr. Cadzand realised that a similar temptation had reared its head in the solitude where Hans passed his days. He was shielded from the general danger posed by women. But the Fiend is wily, he took up residence in one woman, choosing the one that suited his purposes, the shimmering features of the eternal Eve with her insidious tongue. He came to tempt him at home, in his own house, with a constant presence he had no reason to regard with suspicion.

  This Ursula was pretty and had such an innocent air, all the better to seduce him, without putting him on his guard. One morning she came to work for Mevr. Cadzand, whose chambermaid had left to get married. As a replacement? Oh, no, not really. Barbara, the old cook, was very capable and could manage the household almost on her own. At most she was taken on under the pretext of doing a little sewing, looking after the linen. In reality, however, she had come from the depths of eternity to bring Hans’s misfortune. Our destiny will be fulfilled and often it employs the first messenger it finds, any accomplice to achieve its ends. In this case, however, the choice turned out to be well made. Ursula was attractive. Mevr. Cadzand herself was glad she had taken her into service. The house was transformed. Do new faces rejuvenate old houses? she asked herself. In actual fact it was Ursula’s beauty, her artless smile, which brightened everything up; it was her eyes that lit up the rooms, as if two extra windows had been made.

  Oh, her eyes! Truly eyes of innocence, spacious and blue, eyes like a month of Mary, like wells full of sky! But there was more than their colour to make one respond to their charm. Their shape as well, their movement, for these eyes seemed to be living
a life of their own, had the air of only just having settled in her face. When Ursula looked at something, her eyes seemed to leave her lids, to approach, to come to rest, to give the warmth of a touch. Eyes that enticed, like lips. Eyes that gave kisses which landed everywhere, burning, maddening. That is what she did to Hans, the very first time she saw him, immediately stirred, captivated by his pale, handsome face, his turbulent hair.

  Hans felt these big eyes fix on him over all of his skin, felt the strange, brushing caress, the tingling the inert canals must feel at night, when the star-studded sky is reflected in them. What were these eyes, burning like stars, which had lighted on him, multiplied? When he got back to his room after the meal when he had first encountered her, he felt quite strange, as if something unusual had happened, as if he had spent too long studying the examination of conscience for the sixth and the ninth commandments in his prayer book. An indefinable but disturbing sensation. Without knowing why, the name of the young woman came back to him: Ursula, the name of Memling’s virgin, while he was called Hans, like the painter. But do things not attract each other? And what we call chance, is it not simply a sign, a warning from fate?

  Beneath the appearance of a Gothic virgin—the charm of the fair, blue eyes, honey-coloured hair—Ursula was of a sensual nature. At twenty, in the big cities, she had quickly slipped into love affairs. Now, in the monastic celibacy of Bruges, she was roused, tempted by Hans’s youthfulness. She started to prowl round him, letting her rustling skirt shiver across his door while he was working, waiting in the corridors, on the stairs to meet him, to brush against him. Hans, without analysing things, started to feel he was under siege.

  II

  Until then Hans had not even looked at women. He was a complete innocent, a virgin with a double virginity, not simply of the body but of the mind as well, never having known nor wanted to penetrate the mystery of the sexes, which remained obscure to him. A mind that had not yet lost its bloom. Flesh intact, consecrated, like the virgin wax of church tapers.