Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories

by Georges Rodenbach

  At most he had had a premonition of woman on the evening when Wilhelmine had come dressed for the ball, seeing her shoulders, her chest, the details… Now the memory had returned when he had been looked at by Ursula. Beneath her severe bodice he saw her half dressed as well, pink and white…

  The evil vision haunted him, especially when Ursula had magnetised him for some length of time with her calculated looks. Those eyes ever wandering, abolishing the space between her and him, settling on his face, tickling his hands, kissing his lips and appearing even to slip under his clothes, to gather nectar from his heart, to plunder, caress, burn, fondle and put their mark on his whole body.

  What was it she wanted from him? What was this strange woman who had arrived at their house one morning, who seemed so little suited to her position, truly too refined, as if she were simply using it as a pretext to approach him, to fill him with this uneasy feeling, the restlessness of a garden before a storm, when the wind sets the trees billowing. He started to sense the spell she cast, without being able to avoid it. It was in vain that he had resolved not to look at Ursula any more, to make sure to turn away from the snare of her face, he was still subject, through the air, to her insistent looks. All the time Ursula’s eyes were on him, he felt them sticking to his skin, alive, opening their caskets… Even away from her, when he was alone, locked away in his room, her two great eyes followed him. He was caught between them, as if between two implacable candles. What frightened him most was that they even followed him to church. When the priest, before mass, made the sign of the cross with a large monstrance, it was a huge blue eye instead of the pale host, Ursula’s eye appearing captive, behind glass.

  From this point on they haunted him daily, unceasingly. He saw them at night as well, her two beautiful eyes lying beside him, changing shape in every dream phantasm. All at once Hans feels her blond hair growing on the pillow, extending to the size of a field, immense, ripe and ready for harvest, with two single cornflowers in it, Ursula’s eyes, hidden, lost, but which he has to find at all cost before daybreak. Then an abrupt darkness—and Ursula’s eyes are signal discs at a railway station. From there they take flight, flit about… A peacock is displaying on some steps, its tail a fan of eyes, a hundred pupils like Ursula’s pupils… Then the eyes fly up higher, a face forms, they are kites, they are blue moons… Suddenly they tumble back down to earth, shrivelled, cold, tiny, unmoving turquoises which, a moment later melt, flow, liquidise and turn into the sea, a Mediterranean blue where Ursula’s head emerges from among the waves, attached to Wilhelmine’s naked breast, finishing up as a siren.

  It was with terror and aching all over that Hans emerged from these feverish nights full of visions. But by day it was even worse. How disturbing for an adolescent in whose house a young woman has come to live. Especially disturbing when the woman’s desire is prowling round, cajoling him.

  For Ursula had conceived a passion for Hans’s proud looks, his fine hair… She became more daring, aware of the hold she was gradually exerting over him. Not content with looking with eyes that spoke to him, that kissed him, she became bolder, more decisive, making furtive physical contact.

  When she had some object to give him, his post to bring, she tried to brush his hand, to feel his skin. Those first little touches of love in which two people meet, in which they already possess each other in a small way!

  In the evening Hans was in the habit of asking for a carafe of freshly drawn water for the night. Ursula waited until the very last moment, only taking it up after Hans had gone to his bedroom, which was on the second floor, above his mother’s; on the first floor he just had his study. Before he could close the door, Ursula, who was keeping watch, immediately came in, put down the carafe and gave Hans one of those long looks in which she seemed to come out of her eyes. Often the young man turned away, pretending to be occupied with something. Occasionally he didn’t manage to take cover in time and Ursula’s eyes hit him full in the face, like two flowers thrown at him. They would make him stagger. Ursula would linger, would go and turn up the lamp on the pretext that it was smoking… She would give Hans another look, a more passionate one. Now her eyes dilated—Hans’s bed was reflected in them, opening out in the blue of their alcove.

  Hans was trembling; his breath was taken away and his cheeks burned as a hot flush spread over them.

  Finally Ursula decided to leave. But her ‘Good night’ was so insinuating, so slow-drawn-out with regret and mute supplication…

  Alone at last, Hans would throw himself to his knees, beg the Virgin Mary to come to his aid and ask God’s forgiveness, judging himself already in a state of sin for his acquiescence in playing with danger. For now he was aware of temptation. And what a wretched love affair he was sliding into!

  There was no point in having rejected the virginal charm of Wilhelmine for this lust for a servant of which he was ashamed. But Ursula was not a servant-girl. Does a servant have those exquisite features, those manicured hands, that refinement of her whole bearing and those knowing stratagems of the mind which were leading his virtue astray? No. She was an emissary of Hell, come to the house under a pretext and conspiring in his downfall…

  Hans was in a panic. He had to take precautions, deal with the situation, remove the temptation which might perhaps prove too strong for him. Yes, that would be best! He would ask his mother to dismiss Ursula. But under what pretext? On no account must his mother suspect what was behind it.

  Hans was at his wit’s end. And he already felt powerless to undertake any serious measures anyway. Get Ursula sacked? The poor girl was sure to cry. And the looks she would give him as she left! He couldn’t go on living feeling those parting eyes forever on him, those moist eyes, eyes that he had drowned…

  Ursula! Ursula! He fled her and he sought her. He asked God’s aid to resist her but, as in the picture Mevr. Cadzand remembered, even when he knelt before the crucifix, it was a woman he saw there, her body forming a cross, exposing the flowers of her eyes, the flowers of her breasts, the flower of her sex—like the Five Holy Wounds blossoming with Love.

  III

  Mevr. Cadzand was not unaware of the game Ursula was playing, of her strange eyes that always turned towards Hans; but it was above all her son who had revealed it to her by his inner turmoil, the change in his manner. True, he was as assiduous in his devotions as ever, accompanying her to mass every morning, praying frequently. But he prayed in a different manner, the way shipwrecked mariners must pray. There was expectation, anxiety, struggle in the way he addressed God. Confusion too. He would prostrate himself, his head in his hands, withdraw behind the grille of his outstretched fingers as if to ward off a call, an insistent face. Mevr. Cadzand had no difficulty working out the situation, all the more so since she had noticed that Ursula was in Hans’s bedroom for a short while in the evening. She slept directly underneath, on the floor below, and she could hear the sound of footsteps, the sound of voices very distinctly through the ceiling. Mevr. Cadzand was not particularly concerned about this. Hans was handsome and Ursula was young, it was quite natural she should respond. A mere flirtation, nothing more. In fact, without openly admitting it, Mevr. Cadzand was rather pleased by it. She saw Hans’s devoutness as a guarantee against any accident.

  But surely it was legitimate for her to hope some faint emotion would be aroused in him, something which would certainly not be passion but which would give him an awareness of women, a notion of what love was. Knowing himself looked at as he was looked at by her, it was impossible for him not to sense a thrill, the joy of feeling his blood flow more quickly, the desire to kiss… And that was enough to undermine his asceticism.

  Once he was aware of women, sensed the delights they could offer, his devotion to God, to his vocation, would cool. His mother started to hope once more.

  IV

  One evening, when Mevr. Cadzand had her habitual migraine, she went to bed earlier than usual. She was resting, her aching head flung back among the pillows, in a daze hal
f-way between waking and sleeping, that state in which you seem to be at the bottom of something transparent and extremely sensitive to impressions. It feels as if you are surrounded by water, as if you have fallen into a mirror, as if you have been banished to a greenhouse, where every sound is exaggerated on the glass.

  Your senses become incredibly acute. Even muffled steps, a voice close to silence, are enough for your hearing to be roused, for your attention to respond, to be aware.

  Mevr. Cadzand was dozing, but that did not stop her recognising Hans’s footsteps on the stairs as he went up to bed at his normal time. A moment later she heard Ursula go into the room above her, doubtless taking Hans his carafe of fresh water for the night as usual. But then she heard them speaking, in very low voices. This time Ursula did not leave after a short while, to return to her own room next to old Barbara’s. She was still there. Astonished, Mevr. Cadzand shook off some of her hazy sleep. She listened. The two voices were recognisable, alternating then interweaving. Hans and Ursula… yes, it was them. Speaking in faint whispers. Then one of the voices grew louder, the woman’s voice, sounding urgent, impassioned. What could be happening? Mevr. Cadzand had sat up, leaning back against the pillows. The sound of steps—someone running away, one would have said, across the room. The chandelier above her bed trembled a little, shaking its hail of crystals, as if in a draught.

  Then a sudden halt. One single step, slow and together, like a couple clasping each other and heading… Mevr. Cadzand got up in panic. Was she dreaming? Was Hans perhaps ill? Mevr. Cadzand was about to open the door, go out onto the landing, call out, when the two voices were heard once more. Yes, Ursula was still there. She spoke again and Hans replied— confused mumblings, murmurs of rapture, utterances starting from one set of lips and ending from the other’s. The sound of kisses scorched the silence…

  Mevr. Cadzand, dumbstruck, realised what was happening in the room above. How had it come about that Hans, so pure, so devout, had succumbed to temptation? But those glances Ursula had been giving him for days now! It was she who had seduced him, who at that very moment was teaching him, initiating him.

  A nocturnal scene, as disturbing and moving as a play or a crime. Mevr. Cadzand was the audience, so to speak, hearing the noises, the voices, following each stage. The scene was there for her in the way objects are there for the mirror, she had to suffer it despite herself, to live it out in reflections. Everything came back to her across the years. Mevr. Cadzand was trembling, horrified. And yet she felt that a sacred Act was being performed. The introduction to love is a kind of ordination. True, it was not the union acceptable in the eyes of God she had dreamt of for him in Wilhelmine’s arms. But the flesh has its own secrets. At first Mevr. Cadzand had been shocked, scandalised, but who knows, perhaps passion is right and all the things we call debasing, demeaning, a misalliance are nothing but prejudices imposed by class, education, ancestry? Nature creates couples without worrying about their backgrounds. It is not we who choose—it is destiny that brings us together, ties and unties the knot. Does not the wind mingle the reeds by the river banks and make them kiss each other at random? All creatures are the same in the nakedness of love as they are in the nakedness of death. Love, as well as death, makes all men equal.

  Thinking about it, Mevr. Cadzand felt that at least for Hans it was a young woman—and a beautiful one at that—who was revealing the great mystery to him. Ursula desired him, loved him, there was no question of money passing between them, as there was for so many other men. His first night of love would, after all, have something nuptial about it.

  Mevr. Cadzand listened, her emotions in ferment. She recalled other nights, the ones when Hans was conceived among similar kisses, her widow’s flesh burnt with the memory, the echo of long-ago sensual pleasure… Yes, Hans was a love child. How could it be that he had escaped the desire for the sacred spasm? Her head was on fire with a thousand thoughts jostling, overriding each other and one emerged, returned, revived her: perhaps this would be her salvation and happiness. How could Hans persist in his vocation after the revelation of what a woman had to offer? Would he dare to commit himself to the vow of chastity now that he had known sin and the delight of the flesh? Mevr. Cadzand was carried away by immense hope. No! She would not dismiss Ursula in the morning, she would close her eyes, for the moment. And she would not reproach her son, she would let him become accustomed to love, to sensual pleasure since it was the only way to stop him taking orders, to keep him for herself. Chance had seen to everything. She should not go against chance, it knew better than she did. For it had been naïve of her to imagine that Wilhelmine and the cool lily of her love would be enough. Ursula was the rose in full bloom, the flower of sensuality, the scent of which is intoxicating, as if one were dying a little of too much ecstasy! She will have given him a taste for life, a taste for life’s garden, now that he knows the rose in full bloom, the secret rose of the flesh!

  V

  When Mevr. Cadzand came down next morning she was greatly concerned. Ursula was busy tidying up in the dining room, calm and smiling, her cheeks just a little more pink than usual, her steps just a little more languid, as if weighed down with a weight of happiness. She exuded a sense of joy and her blond hair had a quiver of triumphant brass. Especially when Hans came down, pale as usual but with his turbulent locks creased in a way that was not usual. Mevr. Cadzand watched them closely. Surreptitiously Ursula sent him victorious glances, assailed him with her predator’s eyes. And Hans, sitting at the table for his breakfast, twisted and turned, appearing constrained, appearing to defend himself against something invisible that kept piercing his guard. It was Ursula’s eyes, whose mysterious power was already coursing along his nerves, both burning and caressing. Her eyes would go to his face then move away, just as spiders leave their web on a thread attached to it which they know will take them back again. And, truly, Ursula’s darting eyes were blue spiders on Hans’s skin, slipping everywhere, titillating him with a thousand invisible tiny feet, caressing, irritating, tickling him with a multitude of little, infinitesimal spasms, a thousand sparks reigniting in the cold ashes of pleasure. For he was still afire from the night, he could not stop thinking of the Act: disgust and delight! So that was the great mystery, the Eternal Love for which men exerted, exiled, ruined themselves, suffered and killed!

  Fleeting ecstasy, a shuddering, writhing as if, for a moment, a bolt of lightning were passing through us which would inoculate us with heaven; and then also a fainting, sinking, as if, for a moment, we were being engulfed in a sea of wines and perfumes! Hans recalled it, analysed it, but, what was curious, in thinking about the Act, he hardly thought of the woman at all. Ursula herself had seemed to remain so alien to him… They had not been truly joined except in that. Doubtless it had been because all she had done had been to carry out the implacable destiny, the secret mission of the Fiend. Now, looking at it honestly, in the clear light of day, he saw that clearly. She had come the previous evening, taking advantage of the darkness, that poor counsellor, to give him the fruit of sin. The eternal Eve! Perhaps she wasn’t even to blame, perhaps she had been tempted and lured herself. Hans bore her no grudge. It was the Fiend made flesh in her, talking with her lips, putting a fire into her kisses which could only be that of Hell.

  How could he have yielded, he, the chosen one of God, rich in grace, he who had been called, as he used to say with pride, thinking of his vocation?

  Hans was overcome with remorse. At mass, which he attended with his mother, he did not dare turn towards the altar, nor towards the host at the moment of the Elevation. It seemed to him that if he looked at it he would see the face of Jesus, covered in tears and blood because of his betrayal. He prayed; he asked forgiveness; but at every moment Ursula interposed herself between God and him. Her eyes were always there, fluttering round him, magnetised; then they landed on his skin, merged with his flesh.

  At lunch Ursula, who was serving at table, brushed against him, caressed him with her dress. Back
up in his first-floor room, where he worked, his obsession increased. At moments an after-shudder went through his bones, the silent exhalation which still tinges the sky with sulphur, even though the storm is past. More sinful curiosity mingled with it. He had seen Wilhelmine’s shoulders, her throat displayed, that suggestion of bold, pink nudity… He thought of Ursula, still veiled for him… as evening approached temptation returned like a fever approaching its crisis…

  And thus it continued for several days. Hans relapsed into sin. He came to know the whole mystery. Ursula, who now stayed in his room until late into the night, alluring and obliging, revealed the intimate parts of her flesh, the warm valley, the pair nestling there, everything he could hardly make out in Wilhelmine’s tulle bodice. The marvel of breasts! The frenzy of young hands fingering them as if they were about to gather them, those bunches of white grapes crowned with a blue grape, to press from them an elixir of joy against all sorrow. The beauty of breasts! Their rhythm, their ebb and flow like that of the sea… And above all their softness, a pillow of oblivion, the fullness of down, the scent of lavender, a place to sleep, perhaps even to die! How can one free oneself from them, renounce them, whose mere absence leaves our hands impoverished, as if bereft?

  However, amid these sensual images assailing him, Hans maintained the faithful presence of the Virgin Mary inside himself and called on her for help. Does one not often see in the ancient towns of Flanders, even in the run-down quarters of debauchery, a Madonna in a glass cabinet, a stone niche? And flowers filling the air with fragrance, candles burning…

  Hans had not betrayed his former devotion, nor despaired. As the end of the week approached he even seemed to pull himself together. His revulsion at his sin took on clearer contours: yes, he was in a state of mortal sin and, if he were to die suddenly, as can happen, he was bound to be damned. His fear of Hell returned, all the imaginings, the terrifying pictures of the college sermons. He was also overcome with sincere sorrow; he had caused God distress; he had made the Five Wounds and the Sacred Heart of Jesus bleed again. At the moment he was unworthy and despicable, he had strayed from the path of his vocation.