He saw her, after a long time in prayer, take off her gloves. He watched, puzzled. What was she going to do? Next she brought a jewellery case out of her pocket and from it took two solid gold rings, two wedding rings. Reverently she placed one on her finger and, drawing Joris’s hand towards her, slipped the other onto his. Then, keeping his hand in hers, in a chaste grip, as if a priest had enfolded it in his stole, she asked him, in a voice full of assured affection:
‘You will always love me, won’t you?’
Their rings touched, kissed, two links from a mystical chain that God had just blessed and which united them for ever in a love that was indissoluble – and lawful.
With all the actions and emotions of this exchange of rings, she had forgotten about her gloves, which she had just taken off. She looked for them as they were leaving. They had fallen on the floor. As Joris bent down to pick them up he noticed that their chairs had been standing on one of the funerary slabs with which St Saviour’s is paved in many places. In that chapel there is a whole series of flat tombs in stone or brass, some with blackened effigies, the lord and his lady portrayed in the unmoving folds of their shrouds, with bunches of grapes and Christian symbols all round them.
Godelieve had seen it too. Beneath their feet was a gravestone.
On it the date of a long-ago death could be seen and, spaced out, incomplete, the letters of a name which was perishing in its turn on the slab, decomposing, returning to the void. Funereal emblems! How could she not have noticed when she had chosen those seats. Their love had been born above death.
The disturbing impression faded, however. Their happiness was such that even death could not cast a shadow over it, like the happiness of lovers who, during the village fairs on summer evenings, leave the dancing and go and lean against the graveyard wall to take each others’ hands and lips, to make love.
The affinity of love and death! It only made Joris and Godelieve’s passion all the more solemn.
And that evening, in the moment of union, each felt they died a little in the other.
VII
How love immediately distances us from the world! Two of us together, as if on an island, an enchanted island, where nothing from the mainland concerns us any longer; we have each other and need no one else. We return to a primitive existence: no more ambition, no more art, no more interests, but a triumphant idleness in which our soul, emptied of everything else, can finally listen to itself.
Godelieve felt exquisitely happy. No remorse had yet emerged. She felt that being in love was like being in a state of grace; and the joy abounding within her recalled the time of her first communion when, on all the mornings that followed, she continued to feel a living God inside her. Now it was like her first communion of love.
Joris, for his part, felt full of the pleasurable freshness, sweetness of convalescence. His former life – the black days, Barbara’s fits of anger, his bitterness at his failure to find happiness – had disappeared entirely, was no more than a hazy memory. It was as if that had all happened to another man, or in another life. He was amazed at his passion, in his former life, for ambitions that now seemed empty. What was the love he had harboured for the town but a cold, artificial passion which he used to veil his solitude. It was love for a tomb. And how dangerous to love death when life was there, simple and very beautiful. The only thing worth having was love. For a long time Joris had been unaware of that. He had found himself another reason for living and had spent years lost in a dream, that is in a lie. Now he realised that his dream of the beauty of Bruges was an illusion, and an unsatisfying one at that. Even if it were realised, it would not give him any real happiness and would leave him feeling he had wasted years, sacrificed his life. We must enjoy the moment, create immediate joys for ourselves, take our being of flesh and blood out into the sunshine, the wind, the flowers and not always set up a god inside ourselves.
Joris’s days were idle and happy. His love was all he needed.
Godelieve alone occupied his time. He abandoned the work that was already under way. Façades languished, half restored, having to wait on his pleasure to have their scaffolding removed, to throw off the sheets in which they were swathed and swaddled, and re-emerge, cured of the malady of being old. His projects for the future were neglected, even the restoration of the ancient building of the Academy, for which he had started on the plans, contemplating making it into a large-scale reconstruction with severe lines which would have been a new claim to fame for him.
Fame? That chimaera that dupes us. How can one shun life just for its posthumous promises?
Joris was happy just to let the days go by. And they did, swiftly and in enchantment. New lovers have much to occupy them. They have a very active inner life. And they create relations between themselves that are complex, subtle, delicate. They want to know everything about each other, to ask about each other every minute, to tell each other the essence of every thought which opens up inside them, the shadow of every cloud that passes. Each is living in two souls at once.
And they have so much to tell each other. All their life history, the history of their days and their nights going back to earliest childhood, what they have seen, felt, desired, dreamt, wept, loved – and also their daydreams and their nightmares, everything, without restriction, in detail, with every nuance, for they are jealous of even the most distant past and the tiniest secret. The blessed nakedness of love! The soul too removes its veils and reveals itself completely.
All that Joris found in Godelieve was gentleness after gentleness. An adorable creature, always yielding, agreeing, accompanying him, and with what clear intelligence!
Joris asked Godelieve, ‘So you loved me from the very beginning?’
‘Yes, straight away, from the first time you came to my father’s house.’
‘Why did you not say?’
‘Why did you not see?’
They both felt it was their destiny not to come together immediately. Joris thought of the belfry, of the Bell of Lust that had tempted him to desire Barbara, of the whole mysterious conspiracy of the tower, from which he always came back down disoriented, stumbling and not seeing clearly among men.
As if speaking to himself he said, in melancholy tones, ‘I have so often been blind in my life.’
Then he asked Godelieve, ‘Why did you fall in love with me?’
‘Because you seemed sad.’
Then she told him a story from her schooldays at boarding school, a childish love which had also come to her through pity. She had attended the Ursulines’ convent school. There was a priest who took religious instruction. He was no longer young and not handsome, with his big nose and the bristly black beard on his cheeks. But there was a sadness about his eyes; he seemed to be carrying his heart within him, like a great tomb. The girls thought he was ugly and made fun of him. Godelieve, seeing him disliked by everyone, took his side in her soul, said prayers for
him and, to compensate him, behaved in exemplary fashion during his lessons.
He was her father confessor and she often went to confession. He would pronounce absolution with tender words, sweet names: ‘My dear friend, my dear little sister.’ Days when she did not see him seemed empty and long. When he came into the classroom, she felt herself blush, then go pale. In the dormitory on winter evenings she would still be thinking of him and write his name on the icy windows so that it seemed to be emerging from lace.
Was that not already love?
During that time the annual retreat was held, with terrifying sermons on sin and hell. She had no doubt that she was the one God was concerned about, the one for whom He had sent the preacher with his images of fire and brimstone. For she was in a state of mortal sin, having slipped into the sacrilege of loving a priest.
Joris listened to the strange story, as innocent as a story from a saint’s life. He saw Godelieve as a child, her honey-coloured hair in a plait down her back, with the air of a little victim, deluded by her own sweetness and need to console p
eople. How had it all turned out?
‘I was terrified,’ she went on, ‘and the very next day I went to kneel in the confessional of the man I was still in love with –
for I loved him despite the anathemas of the retreat, despite God, even in that final minute when I had to accuse myself.
‘“Father, I have a great sin on my conscience which I do not dare tell you.”
‘“Why?” he said. “You can confess everything to me.”
‘“No. It is you above all I would not dare to reveal it to.”
‘“Tell me. You must,” he said. “Surely you do not want to make God sad at heart? Nor to make me sad?”
‘At that I couldn’t hold back any longer. There was such melancholy in his voice, as if a distillation of old sorrows had come back to him. Blushing violently, I spoke quickly as I admitted, “Father, I love too much.”
‘“But God has not forbidden us to love. Whom do you love too much? And how do you know that you love too much?”
‘I didn’t say anything. I didn’t dare.
‘Then he insisted, very cleverly, scolded me, became distressed himself; it was solely his sadness that made me weaken and start to change my mind. Abruptly, as if I were lifting a great weight from my heart which I no longer had the strength to bear, I
whispered quickly, in a low voice, “You are the one I love too much.”
‘The priest did not smile, he remained silent for a moment. Then, as I watched him, full of apprehension, I saw his rough features soften in an expression of infinite woe. There was a distant look in his eyes, doubtless he was thinking of the past when he had known love and my childish naivety had summoned up its ghost. You try to forget, then a child’s voice brings it all back…
‘He quickly dismissed me, telling me to come to confession less often.
‘You see,’ Godelieve said in conclusion, ‘there’s nothing to be jealous of. That was my first love before you. And I fell in love with you because you seemed sad as well. But you are handsome and you will be a great man.’
Joris smiled, moved by the little story and by Godelieve’s precocious vocation for consoling others. As far as he was concerned, she did more than console him, she took away all his sorrow, all his bitter memories, all his disillusionment. She gave him back his love of life, of the world. Now he hardly even regretted the misunderstanding of their hearts, which had sought each other for so long and suffered from being alone. They had found each other and the future stretched out before them. The past had disappeared completely. In their initial intoxication they had even forgotten that Barbara’s absence would be brief, that she would return, come between them, casting over them a chill shadow, like that of a tall tower. Their happiness reached into infinity, it was as if they were living in eternity, an eternity where there would only be the two of them together.
This even led them to act imprudently in that provincial town where everything is noted, to take walks in isolated spots or late in the evening, which quickly gave rise to comment.
They suspected nothing.
In the evenings they liked to go to the Minnewater, that pleasant lake slumbering in the green outskirts, next to the Beguinage, the ‘lake of love’ whose waters are popularly believed to make people mad with love, a love that lasts until death. However, no sorceress had ever emptied her potions into it, its calm banks did not exude the infection of madness. When Joris and Godelieve got there, as night was falling, there was hardly a breeze blowing, just enough to make the poplars beside it stammer, but in laments without words. The only sounds to reach it were the echoes of prayers, the murmur of bells rebounding off gables and roofs.
Why should these waters make people mad with love? Make people love with an unchanging passion? Especially since all that is mirrored in them are the fickle reflections of the northern
clouds, always on the move. Joris was so overcome with joy that he stumbled along. Godelieve smiled at the pinpoint stars, at the waters, at the lilies that grew abundantly there and that she would have liked to take home with her.
They walked on, their arms almost round each other, enraptured by the peace of the scene and the night, without thinking that some passer-by might see them, suspect all and reveal their guilty love. They had no thought for Barbara, as if they were masters of themselves and their own destiny.
Was that the Minnewater working its spell, making them mad to the point of needless imprudence, so obsessed with their love they laughed at the whole world?
VIII
Joris had a dream of taking Godelieve up into the tower. All lovers like to show each other the places where they live. They need to know everything about each other. And the cherished presence will sanctify the surroundings.
Godelieve agreed to the plan joyfully, though not so much for the pleasure of seeing the mysterious belfry, nor even of hearing the carillon from closer to, of watching Joris sit down at the keys and bring into bloom the nostalgic flowers of sound which she had so far only known from the petals falling upon her and the town.
It was above all because in that way she would enter a little more fully into Joris’s life, would see the glass chamber, of which he so often spoke, which he called the most intimate chamber of his life and where he must have spent so much time thinking, regretting, hoping and, doubtless, suffering. Up there, in the enclosed air, there would be something of him which she did not yet know.
However, one anxiety tormented her: ‘What if someone should see me?’
Joris persuaded her that it would be easy to enter the tower without being seen. Anyway, he argued, there would be nothing odd about her having the idea that she would like to see the bell-tower and accompanying him…
They climbed the tower together. Immediately Godelieve was filled with dread at the impenetrable darkness, the crypt-like chill.
She had the feeling they were setting off to die together. At first, because of the tight turns of the spiral staircase, she bumped against the wall and almost stumbled. Joris placed her hand on the rope, a rough, thick cable serving as a banister, which she used to guide her. She pulled on it as if it were an anchor, hoping to find herself on terra firma soon, at the top, in the light.
The ascent took a long time. They crossed wide landings with empty rooms opening off them, the granaries of silence. Then they had to set off again on a further climb through the gloom.
Godelieve did not dare look, being afraid of falling, of the bats brushing against her – she could hear the muffled sound of their wings as they flew back and forth. She felt as if she were in a nightmare in which the colours curdle, the shapes and sounds match and distort. Joris talked to her, tried to reassure her, joked to keep her spirits up. Godelieve replied and went on like a sleepwalker. What frightened her most of all was that she could no longer see Joris, who merged into the shadows, and that she was no longer aware of herself, as if she had lost herself.
All that was left was their voices groping for each other in the dark.
Godelieve saw mysterious doors go by, as if lit by the flashes of a nocturnal thunderstorm, beams inspiring the fear and terror of a gibbet, overhanging bells, above all the Bell of Victory, alone in its large dormitory, a bronze gown almost touching the floor, the black habit of a damned monk.
They kept on climbing, captives of the stairs and the tower. It was like an uphill exercise yard, a vertical prison. Godelieve had never felt such fear, an attack of panic, of physical terror she could not keep down. When would deliverance come? Soon brightness appeared up above; there was more light around Joris’s voice, ahead of Godelieve. Then she felt a great dawn break over her head. At the same time a strong wind blew, sweeping the dark away from her face.
They had reached the platform and were in the glass chamber, the windows of which opened onto a circular view of the town, the immense green landscape of Flanders, the North Sea gleaming in the distance. In one corner was the clavier of the carillon, the yellowing ivory of a keyboard waiting.
Immediately God
elieve was filled with amazement, with wonder.
‘This is where you play?’
‘Yes. You’ll hear it soon.’
‘I’m glad I came now,’ she went on. ‘That endless staircase is terrible, but it’s beautiful up here, it’s good to be here.’
She wanted to look at the horizon all round, but Joris drew her to him, kissed her.
‘I’m so happy to see you here. Though in a way,’ he added,
‘you’ve already been here. You remember what you said at the beginning: “If only it had been God’s will,” those few words that decided everything? The next day was a day for the carillon.
Climbing the tower I felt as if your words were coming up with me, climbing the stairs in front of me, running on ahead, coming
back. After that I was never alone. The words, which were your voice, were up here, close to me.’
‘Oh my darling!’ Godelieve cried, flinging her arms round his neck.
Then she added, ‘And it was here that you suffered as well?’
‘Suffered so much. If you only knew,’ Joris replied. ‘My life was like the black ascent we’ve just made. But it always ended in the light. It’s the tower that saved me.’
Then he told her how he had comforted himself, repeating, ‘High above the world,’ over and over to himself until he was carried away, as if he were escaping, leaving his sorrows behind, looking down on them from such a height that they were no longer visible and therefore no longer existed.
‘See how small everything is down there.’
And he showed Godelieve the world spread out below, the town remote, the beautiful countryside forming tapestries. He pointed out the Minnewater, so dear to them from their evening walks. How narrow it looked, how straight! The lake was like a poor woman’s mirror, a humble side-altar with its water lilies as votive offerings. What? That was it? So little space for love?
The Bells of Bruges Page 15
