The Bells of Bruges

by Georges Rodenbach

  Greenish glass filled the tall, ogival windows. They were like stretches of water that nothing can make ripple, tremble any more. The musty air had a smell of mildew. The outer walls were covered in large pink and green stains, poisonous tattoos, a polychrome decoration of decay and rain. In the past there had perhaps been a graveyard in the grass. Now it was the marbling of decomposition which lingered on, the chemistry of death which had passed into the stones.

  Hovering over all was the weariness of being alive.

  Borluut went into the church by now almost drowned in darkness.

  The same smell of mildew had taken a deep hold. Black-faced statues of the Virgin were wasting away on the altars. They looked as if they had lived and been embalmed in ancient times.

  That explained the smell of mummies in the naves.

  A few candles were burning, making the shadow bleed, here and there, in the chapels, which were closed off by barriers and cluttered up with tinselly decorations, statues, escutcheons and other props for the procession.

  Suddenly he saw, in one of the side aisles, the crosses for the penitents to carry. There were hundreds of them, propped against the walls in batches arranged according to size and weight. Some were made of rough wood, as if hewn with an axe, and painted in coarse ochre; others were smaller, black and smooth. The largest were as tall and heavy as a tree; Borluut tried in vain to lift them. Yet on the morrow penitents would come from all over Flanders who would think them less heavy than their sins and would be able to carry them along the streets, barefoot and sweating under their hoods. Each one would choose a cross that matched their sin.

  Borluut thought of Godelieve. He could already see her exhausting herself with a burden which was deliberately too heavy, a double burden, since she would intend to carry their sin, the sin of love which belongs to two people.

  Which of these crosses would she choose?

  Joris was trembling, daunted by all the stacks of crosses in the gloom, upright or lying flat. For them it was the evening rest, the vigil before the drama of the procession. It was as if a graveyard had been on the march – and ended up here. They were like all the different-sized crosses of a graveyard: having left the dead, who are the living of yesterday, to be for a while with the living who are the dead of tomorrow. For that evening alone they were free of the crowd and could rest.

  Overcome with this flood of funereal thoughts, Borluut fled, looking for noise, people, different images. He came to the Square, embellished with several fine pieces of architecture, almost a corner of Bruges, on a smaller scale and more modest, but picturesque nevertheless with the façade of an ancient lord’s castle and the Town Hall with its open-work peristyle and its slim colonnades. Opposite is the old bell-tower of a church, all the more moving for being unfinished. What beauty there is in interrupted towers, which continue in dream and which we all complete within ourselves!

  Unfortunately a fair had been set up in the middle, booths, painted sheets, merry-go-rounds covered in glass beads and glitter with the braying of organs and brass. An absurd anomaly, permitted by the authorities, to mix this funfair with the

  procession, the clown’s pranks with the sacred drama of the Passion. Should the penitents not appear in emptiness and silence? Here once more Borluut took offence at the lack of taste of the modern world, which has no sense of harmony. He told himself he would go to watch the procession elsewhere, in some distant, silent street, where a few tufts of grass growing between the cobbles would be kind to Godlieve’s bare feet.

  At four o’clock on Sunday afternoon the procession set off. The slow peals of the bells rang out from the belfries of the parish churches. A murmur of voices rose from the town, like the sound of a lock-gate opening somewhere.

  Borluut was waiting at an out-of-the-way crossroads. There were only a few people there, thinly scattered and quiet.

  He was filled with great agitation, a nervous apprehension which made it impossible for him to stay in one place, from time to time gripping his heart and making it stand still, like a mysterious beast captive inside him.

  The moment was coming which had to come. Everything comes so quickly, apart from happiness. He was going to see Godelieve again, but doubtless very much changed, very different with the cornet hiding her hair, another woman almost.

  Even supposing he managed to see her and that she saw that he was there, what could he do to take her back, to drag her away from the voluptuous pleasure of penitence, to disengage her from the cross, which also has its arms open?

  Joris had no great hopes. He told himself that he had come simply to convince himself that what was past was past.

  A joyous cry rent the air; the crowd stirred. The procession appeared.

  Heralds in mediaeval costume, doublet and hood, were blowing shrill trumpets. But immediately after them angels appeared, a soothing vision in gowns of pink and blue and iridescent wings; then girls in artless head-dresses carrying escutcheons, placards, emblems. Scenes from the Old Testament followed: Abraham offering up Isaac, Moses in the desert, the eight prophets, the three punishments of David – War, Plague, Famine –

  followed by his Repentance.

  The penitents who had undertaken these roles played them conscientiously and fervently. They were not professionals, but members of the Sodality, men of faith and zeal who, for the forgiveness of their sins and to glorify the Church, agreed to take part in the age-old procession. Their costumes were coarse and gaudy. False beards bristled on faces already fierce and fiery from the crude make-up.

  The great originality of the procession of Veurne lies in the fact that the characters do not just walk past, they speak. It is not merely a parade of people in costumes, of tableaux vivants , a silent mystery play, it is the authentic divine drama acted out, true-to-life rather than theatrical, with realistic gestures and vehement, sincere declamation. The prophets pass, genuinely foretelling the future; the angels have truly asexual voices which, singing or calling out, flutter and ripple like banderoles.

  The illusion was complete.

  When the shepherds and magi appeared they were all truly on their way to the manger. With conviction they conversed in loud voices, called out to each other, engaged in discussion, debate, following the age-old text, versified by some canon years ago, which they recite from memory.

  The air was filled with the hubbub of their voices, the hoarse dirge of Flemish alexandrines, all the more guttural for coming from the voices of ordinary folk.

  It was in the scene of Jesus with the doctors in the Temple that the declamation became sonorous and convincing. The twelve doctors, old men with grey beards and supercilious expressions, were carried away, gesticulating and shouting. Each one had a different, specific character. The third doctor seemed uneasy, conciliatory too. He declared:

  The prayers of Judah never will be answered, Until the coming of Him who is to come.

  The tenth doctor was the proud one: Who will see the things I cannot see?

  Who, apart from me, is there who seeks?

  Other opinions made themselves heard. The lines rolled out, clashed, voices mingled. It was the sound of a highly-charged debate which it would not take much to turn into an argument.

  They were all declaiming their lines with convulsive gestures and impassioned tones. All at once Jesus spoke, a gentle child dressed in a linen tunic, his hair as golden as the corn in Flanders:

  God gave you ears to hear and yet you hear not.

  What is the truth his prophet’s words impart?

  The praise of God will cure the sore at heart.

  And the clear voice continued to flow for a long time. The doctors replied, denied, argued, declared their knowledge innate

  and infallible. Jesus carried on. Even once he had passed, his clear voice could still be heard alongside the doctors’, a thin tributary to the river of their deep basses.

  At intervals between these groups, Stations of the Cross were carried past or pulled on carts, carved and painted wooden st
atues, by an unschooled hand, of the Stable or some other episode from the life of Christ. Crude works of art! They were daubed in garish colours, the red could have been real blood.

  They looked as if the crowd itself had fashioned them with a naive but miracle-working faith, as if they had been hewn from the tree of the Cross.

  Joris watched and listened to the strange procession. It created such an extraordinary regression it abolished all sense of the present and its modern identity, making it contemporary with the great centuries of faith.

  Moved and taken out of himself, he gave himself up to the voices and gestures, especially when the group appeared representing Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, a triumphal, diaphanous host, the daughters of Bethphage in muslin veils, caressing the air with their palm leaves, chanting hosannas. The branches rained down in that ethereal spring. Everything was green and white. It was like a garden on the move. The Apostles were in two lines, proclaiming Christ and thanking the crowd in ringing voices. Then he came, mounted on the legendary she-ass, amid the children and virgins.

  A pure countenance in a halo of light! Where had they found him, this visionary summoned to the role who, for himself, had become Jesus, as he had for everyone around? Was it a man of the people who had this delicate beauty, pensive and emaciated?

  It was as if a light burned within him, like a night-light. He had two fingers raised in the gesture of blessing and did not change his posture during the whole of the procession, which lasted two hours. The people around Joris, who knew him well, said that it was a vow he had made. He was a pious man from the town whose face, because of his holiness, always had that otherworldly radiance.

  The other events of the passion – the Last Supper and the Garden of Gethsemane – were represented by stations carved in wood which came at intervals, accompanied by a ceaseless throng of penitents, angels and clerics, all declaiming, prophesying, blowing horns, announcing the next scene…

  Women passed, their arms bare, their dresses low-cut, like courtesans, each holding huge jewels in their hands. An inscription held up by one of the penitents, said, ‘Women carrying the jewels of Mary Magdalene.’

  Joris was much affected by the disturbing concept, which had something of a lament and of a popular print. Indeed, all the symbols and emblems there were powerful, suggestive ways of

  putting things in a nutshell, allegories attesting to the Flemish sense of understanding the life of objects.

  Christ bearing the Cross, which was the essential scene of the procession, was also preceded by emblems announcing it: angels and penitents passed carrying the lamp, Pilate’s basin of water, St Veronica’s handkerchief, a sponge, a water-clock, the torn veil of the temple, a hammer, three nails, a crown of thorns. It was, in advance, all the trappings of the Passion, the instruments of torture, the symbols, all the more deeply moving for appearing on their own, as if they signified merely the ornament of a destiny, what determines it and what remains of it.

  Soon a violent tumult erupted. The trumpets rang out louder, mingled with cries of impatience and anger. Roman soldiers in scarlet cloaks came prancing along on horseback. There was a flash of lightning which was Longinus’s spear. Jews followed, with pikes and other weapons; then the executioners with ladders and torches. The tumultuous procession became congested, furious curses were heard. The whole throng started to speak. Anger suffused the text, sparking off debates and savage onomatopoeia, a pandemonium of voices and instruments. Christ passed by, bent under the weight of his heavy cross. He fell. The cries of rage increased, the actors in the grip of a fury that seemed real.

  Some rushed up and jostled Christ, forcing him to take up his cross again, aided by Simon of Cyrene, and continue on his way to Calvary. The Man-God was pale, truly sweating in mortal fear.

  The one who was playing Christ bearing the cross was not the same as the one who had taken the role of Christ entering Jerusalem, but he resembled him, though slightly less thin and not as young.

  It was another moving feature to see this Christ with, basically, the same face, but changed and grown old in such a short time. He was weakening, starting to stumble for his third fall. The uproar started again, completely uncontrolled this time. The Roman soldiers and the Jews were seized with a wild fury. It was as if the storm itself were blowing the trumpets. Wooden rattles joined in, grating as if they were crushing bones. The hunting horns were in full cry. Megaphones blared out mournful appeals. Vinegar to wet the sponge dripped out of the trumpets.

  At that moment the executioners intervened, treating Jesus harshly.

  Women of the people lining the pavement started to cry.

  Joris, too, had been moved by the raw violence, the honesty of the performance. It had almost made him forget Godelieve, forget that he had only made the pilgrimage there in order to see her again, if only for a moment, in the procession where the penitents following Christ were also carrying crosses.

  Now they came, spectres in mourning, humbling themselves, ghosts, their eyes the only points of brightness. It was harrowing: a

  long cortège of shadows. This time silence had come flooding in.

  Not a sound, not a cry. A silence all the more sinister for being black. There is the white silence of the Beguines’ workrooms; it is sweet. Here was a black silence that strikes terror to the heart, slipping past like water, as full of pitfalls as the night. At first all that could be made out was a tangle of crosses, all the raised arms of the crosses of a graveyard. All with their dead.

  Hundreds of penitents were walking in the procession, all barefoot on the hard cobbles, the only reminder of their humanity beneath their homespun robes which rendered them all similar and anonymous. Yet their eyes shone, burned in the holes of their hoods. They were the will-o’-the-wisps of this morass of sin.

  Only a few faces were exposed to public gaze, those of penitents belonging to religious orders, because it was impossible to put on the robe and hood over their monk’s habit or nun’s cornet, which they must never take off. Moreover their penitence would be all the more edifying and expiatory for being public.

  Fervently Joris searched, scrutinised, scoured the confused and, because of the robes and the crosses, almost uniform throng. Like bees gathering pollen, his eyes flew, fluttered over all the faces that were not concealed. He did not have enough eyes and it seemed then as if his eyes had given birth, multiplied, becoming the innumerable eyes of a crowd in order to be able to see everything at once and to find Godelieve. Was there no longer a current flowing between them that would enable them to recognise, sense each other at a distance, attract each other?

  All at once Joris started to tremble. Yes! Godelieve was there.

  But how changed, very pale, no longer herself. She was walking in the last rows, a little behind the others because of a penitent who required a large empty space round his ostentatious pilgrimage, bearing an enormous cross beneath which he was faltering, dragging it along like the sails of a windmill.

  Godelieve was following him, as exhausted as he was under the cross she had chosen, smaller but still too heavy for her. Was that the punishment for the double sin, the weight her sin would have had if it had borne fruit?

  Seeing her again, Joris was reminded of her vow, of the motive for her vow. Godelieve was walking, barefoot like the rest, resolute though bowed, as if she intended to continue walking like that until she came to her tomb, for which she was already carrying the cross. How she was changed! Was it the Beguine’s habit, the severe coif tight round her hair, which could not be seen? Joris felt the tears come to his eyes when he remembered those honey-coloured tresses. Was it the melancholy of a life into which she had thrown herself in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe, perhaps without vocation?

  Hope sprang up inside him. He moved forward, craned his neck. A few steps more and he would hold out his arms, risk everything, push through the rows, enter the cortège of ghosts to take her back, to drag her by force from the cross on which she was crucifying herself. />
  Godelieve saw him. Immediately she turned away. It was as if she had seen the devil himself. Her face fell, her eyes closed. She remained like that, her eyelids down, like a corpse. She was already past. Her pale face had gleamed for a moment, like the moon on the sea, then a wave of humanity had swept on, blotting it out; others followed. Joris continued to look for her beyond the backwash. He clung on to his hope. She had recognised him.

  Now she would be thinking, remembering perhaps, prey to renewed temptation, feeling in her flesh their old embraces, their smouldering kisses, their unforgettable love. It could all begin again. He would go away with her, somewhere, anywhere, to the ends of the earth.

  He called out to her, ‘Godelieve! Godelieve!’ as if to exorcise her, release her from her possession by God, cast the spell of his own love over her, as if her name were a sacramental word, an all-powerful magic formula.

  Trembling, he rushed off to find her again, at another point in the town, for the procession had a long itinerary, extending the ambulant play over two hours, declaiming the same text, repeating the same scenes. He caught up with the procession. Everything passed once more: the Prophets, Abraham, the idyll of the manger, the painted Stations of the Cross, appearing to come to life with the jolts of the men carrying them, the Disputation with the Doctors, the Entry into Jerusalem, Christ Bearing the Cross. A confused vision, a nightmare of shouts and smoke. Joris could not see any details. He waited for Godelieve.

  She appeared, more weary and more pale, her eyes still closed, afraid of seeing him again, not wanting to see him again. Now she was holding her cross in front of her, clasping it to her. She had barricaded her body behind it.

  At the same moment an angel preceding the banner of the Sodality started to chant, in a voice worthy of the Last Judgment: Too long, o man, your sinful ways have lasted.

  Time flies, alas, your time on earth below.