The centuries were carrying out their dreary work of dilapidation, the posies withered, the faces eaten away by erosion, as if by leprosy. Blocked-up windows were sightless eyes. A ruinous gable, shored up, looked as if it were hobbling towards eternity on crutches. A bas-relief was already decomposing like a corpse. They needed to take action, make haste, embalm the dead town, dress the wounds of the sculptures, heal the sick windows, give succour to the ageing walls. From the very beginning Borluut had felt this vocation, had felt drawn to architecture, but not as a profession, not with the idea of building, of making a success of it, a fortune. As soon as he entered the Academy, in the initial fervour of his studies, there was but one thought on his mind: to employ them for the town, and solely for the town, not for himself. What would be the use of aiming at glory for himself, of dreaming of a great monument he would build and that would bear his name for centuries?
Contemporary architecture was of necessity mediocre. Borluut often thought of the disrepute, the decadence into which his art had fallen, deluding itself with archaism and reproduction.
And his conclusion was always the same: it is not the individual who is to blame, it is the crowd. It is the crowd that constructs monuments. A man himself can only build private houses, which are therefore a product of the individual imagination, the expression of a personal dream. Cathedrals, belfries, palaces, on the other hand, have been built by the crowd. They are in its image and in its likeness. But for that the crowd must have a collective soul, must vibrate in unison. It is what happened with the Parthenon, which is the work of a people at one in art, and with the churches, which are the work of a people at one in their faith.
Then the monument is born of the land itself; it is in fact the people that has created, conceived, fertilised it in the belly of the land and all the architects do is act as midwives to the soil. Today the crowd as such no longer exists. It is no longer united, so that it cannot engender a monument. A stock exchange, maybe, because there it would be unanimous in its base instinct for gold. But what kind of architecture – or any other art –
would it be that built against the ideal.
From this reasoning Borluut immediately concluded that there was nothing to desire, nothing to realise for himself. But what a noble aim it would be to devote himself to the town and, not being able to endow it with an impossible masterpiece, to restore the excellent architectural monuments of the past in which it abounded. It was urgently needed. Elsewhere people had waited too long, had allowed weary stones, old houses, noble palaces to waste away, hastening to turn into ruins, which represent for them the calm of the tomb.
It was a delicate task, too, for the danger was twofold: on the one hand not to restore would mean losing precious vestiges which are a town’s armorial bearings, the past ennobling the present; on the other hand there was the danger of restoring too much, rejuvenating, replacing stone with stone to the point where the
house or the monument had lost everything of its survival through the centuries, was nothing but a sham, a deceiving copy, the wax mask of a mummy, substituted instead of its authentic face moulded by the centuries.
Borluut’s concern above all was to preserve as much as possible.
In was in this manner that he had restored, as his first commission, the façade of van Hulle’s house, retaining the fine patina time had spread over the walls and leaving the eroded sculptures as they were, as if they had retreated into the stone.
Another would have had them carved afresh. Borluut did not touch them. It gave them the charm of unfinished work. He also took care not to scrape or polish anything, retaining the old appearance, the faded colours, the rust, the original locks and tiles.
At once the restoration of van Hulle’s house determined his future. Everyone went to see and admire the miracle of rejuvenation which still retained the essential oldness, and they all wanted to save their houses from death.
Soon Borluut had all the old façades to restore.
There were incomparable ones scattered round the streets. Some, in Korte Ridderstraat for example, had retained to the present the old fashion of wooden gables, authentic models of the ones you can see painted along the quay of a frozen harbour in the portraits of Pieter Pourbus which are in the Museum. Others had survived from times that were more recent but no less picturesque, with a similar gable making a nun’s cornet above these ancient dames with their air of Beguines kneeling by the side of the canals. Ornamentation, festoons, carvings, cartouches, bas-reliefs, countless surprises among the sculptures
– and the tones of the façades weathered by time and rain, the pinks of fading twilight, smoky blues, misty greys, a richness of mildew, brickwork ripened by the years, the hues of a ruddy or anaemic complexion.
Borluut restored them, treating them with care, accentuating the fine fragments, filling in the ruined parts, healing over the abrasions.
This renewal of the ancient dames, the old Beguines, brightened up the streets. It was Borluut who had freed them from their approaching death, preserved them for what might be a long future. His reputation grew with every day, especially after the magistrates, following his triumph in the contest of carillonneurs and in recognition of what the town owed him already, named him municipal architect. Thus he was involved in official works, since the movement for restoration which he had set off had become general, had spread to the public monuments.
After the Town Hall and the Records Office, where polychrome decoration and new gold tints had, as it were, clothed the nudity of the brickwork in shimmering fabrics and jewels, they had decided to renovate the Gruuthuse Palace. Borluut set to work, restoring the brick façade with its open-work balustrade, its dormer windows with their flowery ornaments and finials, its fifteenth-century gables with the coat of arms of the master of the house who had given refuge to the king of England there, when he had been driven out by the party of the Red Rose. The old palace was reborn, saved from the clutches of death; it suddenly seemed to live, to smile in that remarkable district of Bruges where it would alleviate the sharp thrusts, right beside it, of the Church of Our Lady, which leaps up, block by block, to assault the air, setting out its piers, its platforms, its naves, its flying buttresses as drawbridges to the sky. An infinite accumulation of masonry, piled up, interlocking, from which the tower suddenly bursts forth like a cry.
At least the Gruuthuse Palace beside it, with its more ornate and pleasing antiquity, would, when its restoration was completed, do something to relieve the fierceness of this edifice. Now that the town had developed a passion for its improvements, the people were waiting impatiently for the work on it to be finished. They had come to realise it was their duty to preserve the town from falling into ruin, to consolidate its sagging beauty. A feeling for art descended, suddenly, like a Pentecostal fire illuminating every mind. The town authorities had their monuments restored, private individuals their homes, the clergy their churches. Thus fate sometimes sends us a reminder, a magic sign everyone obeys unconsciously, unwittingly. In Bruges the impulse was unanimous.
Everyone collaborated in the creation of beauty, contributed to the town which thus, as a whole, became a work of art.
In this enthusiasm, which soon became general, Borluut, who had set it off, was the only one whose ardour had cooled a little. It was since the time when he had been appointed town carillonneur, since he had started going up the bell-tower. His pleasure in the restorations he had undertaken, in his researches among the plans and archives, was diminished. He was more interested in playing the carillon than in his drawings and designs. And, moreover, he was finding his work more difficult. When he came down from the belfry, he needed time to recover, to empty his hearing of the roar of the wind up there, which persisted in his ear like the sound of the sea in shells. His whole being was in turmoil. He could not hear properly, had to search for words, was astonished at the sound of his own voice, stumbled on the paving stones. The people in the streets got in his way. He was still flying with the
clouds.
Even when he had himself once more under control, there was still something inside him which affected him, modified his ideas and views. Things which had previously filled him with enthusiasm now left him unmoved, almost indifferent. For a while he was no longer himself.
Whenever he descended from the bell-tower, it was as if he had been there to forget, a little, how to live.
VI
When he climbed the tower, Borluut did not spend just the minimum time there, the hour prescribed for the carillon. He liked to linger, taking a gentle stroll around, during which he discovered new bells, the biggest ones that he had not examined during the first times he had been up there. Above all, the great bell, which was hung at the top of the belfry, an immense urn, venerable with age, founded in 1680 by Melchior de Haze and signed with his name. Looking inside it was like looking into an abyss. It gave one the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff falling away sheer into the sea. It seemed as if a whole flock of sheep could have drowned in it. It was impossible to see to the bottom.
He discovered another bell, huge as well, but not plain and bare.
Its metal sides were covered in scenes, bas-reliefs spreading their greenish lace over the bronze dress. Its casting mould must have been as complicated as the plate for an etching. From a distance Borluut could make out figures, hazy scenes, but the bell was too high above to make out precisely what they represented. Seized with curiosity, he found a pair of stepladders and climbed up until he was close to them. The bronze was a wild orgy, a drunken, obscene carnival; naked satyrs and women were swirling round the bell, its curve giving movement to their saraband.
At intervals couples had tumbled to the ground, piling up, body against body, mouth to mouth, flesh mingling in the fury of desire. The bronze picked out, emphasised the details … The vine of sin with its feverish fancies, clinging, thrusting up, falling back down the sides – and the breasts plundered like bunches of grapes!
Here and there, away from the rest, on a curve of the bell far from the stampede of the dance, were lovers silently enjoying their love like a fruit. They looked as if they were each, through the other, discovering their naked flesh, which was not yet ripe for sensual pleasure. These idyllic retreats apart, Sex was everywhere triumphant, howling, cynical. What a surprise to find this bell here, the Vase of Lust among all the others, its sisters who were silent, without memories and without bad dreams.
Borluut’s astonishment intensified when he found a Latin inscription round the inside, saying: Ill mus ac R mus D. F. de Baillencourt Episc. Antw. me Dei Genitricis Omine et Nomine consecravit Anno 1629 . It was the bell he had been told about, an Antwerp bell that used to belong to the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin and had been presented to the town of Bruges. The bell that was full of sin bore the name of the Virgin, it had hung in a church, sounded the holy offices and been consecrated by a bishop! Typical of Antwerp and its school of art…
The animal enjoyment of the flesh. You could call it the ideal of Rubens, the ideal of Jordaens cast in bronze, capturing those vile moments of the race: the explosion of instinct, the fury of the orgy, the season of love, which in Flanders appears in fits, rare and torrid like the sun. But this vision belonged more to Antwerp than to Flanders. Borluut thought of the virginal imaginings of the artists of Bruges with their mysticism…
This bell, then, was the Foreigner. Despite that, it attracted him, haunted him with carnal visions. There were women in the bronze sprawled out in provocative postures, bending their bodies, ecstasy highlighted on their faces. Some were proffering mouths wide open like a wine glass, others held out their hair like a trap. Everywhere the mute appeal of debauchery, temptation, all the more disturbing for being indistinct, embraces as if glimpsed in the dark and filled out, made worse by the imagination. Everything that was on the bell immediately engraved itself on Borluut’s mind which, in its turn, pictured lascivious revels. He started conjuring up women he had seen in those postures, he recalled former lovers, variations of rapture.
Then, without knowing why, he started to think of van Hulle’s daughters, or at least of Barbara. Godelieve seemed too chaste, she was one of the bells from another chamber in the tower, the bell with the black robe of a Beguine who has taken her vows.
Barbara, on the other hand, was the Bell of Lust, her dress covered in all the sins and, underneath, he saw her naked body.
He imagined the gleaming skin she must have, she a kind of foreigner as well with her Spanish heritage…
The obscene bell had drawn him into some dubious daydreams! Was it certain that he was going to fall in love with Barbara? What was certain was that he felt a violent desire for her. And when he returned to the glass chamber he searched, in the town spread out before him, for the tiny spot where she lived and moved, where she was perhaps even thinking of him. He took his bearings, his eye followed the line of the canals until it reached Zwarte-Leertouwersstraat, so narrow, imperceptible, like a thin strand of seaweed among the haphazard waves of the roofs. Without doubt she would be there. Haunted by her image, the carillonneur went back down into the world.
VII
Borluut no longer seemed to know what was going on inside him.
Every time he came back down from the bell-tower he felt disturbed, and the feeling persisted, his mind was in turmoil, his willpower paralysed. He needed to find himself. He felt he was adrift. His head was teeming with clouds. The carillon continued to ring in his mind, immersing him in a shower of sound before which all the other noises of the world faded. It was above all in matters of the heart that his confusion increased.
For quite some time now Borluut had been aware that he did not continue his assiduous attendance at van Hulle’s Monday evenings simply for the pleasure of seeing van Hulle himself and
Bartholomeus and Farazyn and the other supporters of the Flemish Movement, of getting carried away with them in the great hopes they had for their land. The love of the town was not the only element in that pleasure any more. Another love had wormed its way in. Van Hulle’s two daughters were there at the soirées, different, but both attractive in their way. Their presence radiated a feeling of gentleness slipped in between the harsh, bellicose utterances, like a sachet of herbs between the sheets.
No one took any notice of them. Bartholomeus and the others appeared to be confirmed bachelors anyway. Still, their charm had an effect…
Now Borluut tried to work out how this had happened to him.
Passion flows like a river and it is very difficult to go back to its source. It began imperceptibly. He felt happier every Monday and looked forward to the evening. Once at van Hulle’s, he took to speaking above all for the young women, trying to be eloquent in order to please them, expressing the opinions he assumed they shared. He looked for signs of approval in their faces. Soon, as he walked home at dead of night, through the empty streets, he felt they were there beside him, and his obsession remained as he fell asleep, continuing even in his dreams. At other times, after having accompanied his friends to their homes, he would return to van Hulle’s house, waiting at some window that was still lit, to see the black silhouette, already half undressed, of Godelieve or Barbara. Nocturnal fever! A shadow in breathless poise, trying to become one with the shadow, with the darkened façade opposite, in order to catch some glimpse, to anticipate in some small way the intimate closeness of the wedding night. Borluut watched, went away, came back. Especially on certain evenings when he felt there had been a response to his inner turmoil, a shared agitation. It was above all Godelieve that he dreamt of seeing on the screen of the blind, Godelieve who seemed the more tightly enclosed in her dresses.
She was so impenetrable! True, she would smile a little when he turned towards her, when he spoke. But it was an indefinable smile, he couldn’t say whether it was happy or sad, at a memory or some secret joy, perhaps simply a crease that had become fixed, an inherited expression, the echo of some happiness one of her forebears had felt.
Her whole bei
ng gave the impression of a gentle maiden from the past. She was the original Flanders type, still intact. Fair-haired puberty like the Virgins we see in the paintings of van Eyck and Memling. Honey-coloured hair undulating, unfastened, in calm ripples; the forehead rising to a pointed arch, a church wall, the masonry smooth and bare, with the two monochrome stained-glass windows of the eyes.
At first Joris had felt attracted to her … Now, without knowing how it had come about, Barbara was the object of his daydreams.
He was haunted by her tragic beauty. She had a strange complexion, with a sulphurous flush, as if from some inner storm.
At times her too-red lips made Godelieve’s pink lips seem insipid. But he had liked Godelieve, still liked her. She was a pretty little virgin – and very Flemish, in harmony with his ideal of Bruges and his exclusive pride in their race. Barbara appeared as a foreigner, true, but the aroma she exuded, the promise of sensual delights! That was why he had turned away from Godelieve. He no longer knew what he really felt. It was the belfry that was to blame. It had happened since he had seen the Bell of Lust, instantly, as he faced all that sin in high relief, the couplings as if embroidered on the bell, the breasts like bunches of grapes, the wine-harvest of Hell! He had started to conjure up the image of Barbara in his mind. He had looked up into the bell as if he were looking up her dress. He had been overwhelmed with carnal desire. And that desire, born high up in the bell-tower, had remained with him when he came back down to the ground. Whilst his initial emotion reasserted itself when he saw the two sisters, reawakened by the graceful arch of Godelieve’s countenance, his belfry desire would immediately rear up again, tumultuous, demanding. An inextricable conflict of emotions! It seemed as if the house and the bell-tower were pulling him in opposite directions. In van Hulle’s home he loved only Godelieve, she matched the old objects so well, was like an old portrait herself; and he thought of the calm she would bring to his life, if he were to marry her, with the mystery of her eternal smile, which seemed to remain fixed so as not to disturb the silence at all. In the belfry, on the other hand, he loved only Barbara, tormented by desire, by a curiosity to know her, to know her love, doubtless because of the obscene bell, the dark bedchamber into which he plunged with her, possessed her, enjoying all the sins represented in the bronze…
The Bells of Bruges Page 5
