The Bells

by Richard Harvell

  In bad weather I would risk one of the paths frequented by other monks. My preference was for a tunnel in the medieval foundation of the stables, carved by centuries of stable boys too lazy to walk around to the gate. But when the ground was dry of rain and snow, and the wind did not blow fiercely, I scrambled up the roof. At first I took short, terrified steps along the rounded tiles at the peak; later I bounded. At the end of the wing, I crept down the roof and dropped to the top of the medieval tower, which was all that remained of the old, imperfect abbey. There I passed below windows of the abbatial apartments, in which a lamp gleamed from dusk till dawn. Thank God the abbot never came to his window to ponder the imperfect world.

  I darted along the wall that separated the abbey from the Protestant town. Houses were built flush against it, so I slid down their uneven roofs and leapt to the ground below.

  Then I was free.

  Free only to hide, of course, but in any shadow I desired. I stole a cuculla and kept the hood pulled over my brow, so no one would see my pale face shining from its depths. I directed my ears to approaching footsteps, to the turn of a key, to a sleepless sigh emitted from an open window. The tolling of the church’s bells was my compass, and each hour I would scrutinize their volume and tone to decipher my position. Without them, I would have been lost among the convoluted streets, deprived as I was by the daytime sounds such as those that had guided Remus and me to Haus Duft.

  Landscapes of sound, like paintings, are composed of layers. The wind forms the foundation, which is not a sound, technically, but creates sound as it plays the city: it clangs a loose shutter, hums in a keyhole, makes a whistle of the tin knife coat of arms that hangs above the butcher’s shop. With the wind come those other sounds of weather: The rain patters on the cobblestones, it drips off eaves, it rushes in gutters. Sleet hisses. Snow dampens other sounds with its blanket. The earth shifts. Houses creak.

  On top of these are the sounds that feed upon the silence of dying and decay: the jaws of rats, dogs, and maggots; the bubbling streams of wash water and urine steaming in gutters; the piles of rotting scraps of food that cackle for the patient listener; the heaps of warm manure that sizzle their putrescence; the flit of falling leaves; the dirt settling on a fresh grave. In the twilight, winged beasts feast on the dead and dying: the flutter of the bat, the graceless clap of the alighting pigeon’s wings, the mosquito’s tenor, the fat fly’s ecstatic hum as he hops from shit to urine. No sound was ugly. I laid my ear to graves. I crouched at piles of manure. I followed the streams of urine along the gutters.

  “In an opera, Moses, there are two kinds of songs,” Nicolai had instructed me one night years before, pacing back and forth in his cell, a glass of wine waving in his hand, spilling crimson drops on the creamy, priceless rug. “Pay attention, Moses, you will need this in your future. Recitatives, the first, move the story forward. Sometimes, in recitatives, the music starts and flows like speech. We hear information that some composer thinks we need.” He held up a finger. “In recitatives, sometimes I fall asleep. But that’s alright. Nothing to be ashamed of. Because no one goes to opera to hear these songs, my friend. They go to opera for the arias. Arias wrench my eyes wide open. Pure passion, pure music—no other consideration.”

  I had stored this teaching away, never thinking I would need it, much less outside of any theater. But on my nightly outings I soon realized that I could divide the human sounds of night into Nicolai’s two categories of opera songs. On the stage of life, you can hear recitatives from the street on a warm night, and in winter you need no more than climb through a window or pick a lock and enter a front hallway. They, like their cousins in the world of opera, are the sounds that propel our life. They are the snore, the steady breath, the rasp, the rolling over groan, the dream babble. They are the hissing above a chamber pot, the trumpet of a congested nose. They are the chop of wood and the stoking of the fire in the winter, the kneading of dough in the dark hours of the morning. The recitatives of our nights are the turning of the page by a sleepless hand, the pacing of the sleepless foot. They are disgusting. They are dull. They are repetitive, ignored, unheard. They are necessary.

  For many weeks I heard these sounds. I sat on vacant staircases, ate scraps of food in empty kitchens while the occupants slept above. I slipped into children’s rooms, leaned over cribs and drifted on their soft, calming breaths. The more I listened to these sounds the smaller I became; the world became large—and what a comfort this was to me. I became a ghost. It was not hands and faces and naked flesh that interested me. I wanted only sound. I slid through windows or crept down hallways, and I felt as guiltless as the angels who look in on our dreams.

  It was several weeks before I recognized another level: the aria of the night. To hear this you must be lucky, or else very bold. For people hide these sounds as they hide the most private patches of their flesh. To hear aria on a hot night, pull yourself up to an open window. Or, when it is colder, find an unlocked door—or learn to pick the lock by the sounds it makes when prodded with pins. Do not stop in the front hallway, but climb the stairs, crawl along the floor until you can place your ear against a door. Or, better yet, if you find occupants still busy washing, hide beneath their bed or in their wardrobe. If not that, then climb onto a roof and pry up the tiles until you find a hole through which you may mine the sounds below. Only ghosts, angels, and thieves have a right to aria.

  Crying has a thousand forms: the baby’s needful whine, the sickly moan, the lonesome sob. Some cry into the mute of a pillow or press a fist against their teeth so they snort their sadness. Some sadnesses are floods of tears and snot spat out. Some are dry, raspy creatures that desiccate a heart. Sadness can sound like giving birth to an unwanted child. These species are impartial; the stoic, wrinkled man may drool and beat his forehead, while his frail granddaughter’s sorrow may merely make her shudder.

  The sounds of hatred—part of any night—are, in their most spectacular form, the shouts and clanging swords the Neapolitan stage mimics so well. The angry slap and drunken fist count, too, and they are far more common. Insult and reproach are as common to a bedroom as the bed. I heard bones cracked, blood dripped upon the floor, clothing ripped. Though I could listen to sobbing for hours—I was always in awe of the depths of sorrow in this world—when slaps and insults flew, I bit my fist to endure them.

  Or course, it is for love that opera lives, for which its temples are built in every city. And soon I was like those mobs of Italian men who go without supper for a week so they can afford a single ticket. I strained for the most sublime of all: the arias of love. I crept into bedrooms, hid in closets (and crept out only when sleep had come for good). The shy giggle. The urging murmur. The whisper of a hand on bare skin. The matching of the breaths. The warming of the exhalations until they seemed to whisper Hot! Hot! Hot! The kiss whose pitch deepened as it moved from lip to neck to breast.

  I should stop here. Close the curtain. Love is allowed on the stages of Europe only because the most indecent sounds have been translated into Italian. Although the pope rewards the castrato’s aching love song with gold, the woman who puts her hand between her legs and moans in the presence of the Holy See will find herself in prison. But I must tell you of these illicit sounds, for listening to love helped me finally piece together what I was—and what I lacked. When kisses turned to gropes, and the breath was joined by other steady rhythms (the drum of the headboard, the sibilance of the sheets, the synchronized sighs), I did not excuse myself. My ears pursued the sounds of those bodies like one of Herr Duft’s microscopes focusing on the eye of a flea. I heard the crack of clenched toes, hands that kneaded breast and buttocks with a sound like the tightening of a leathern belt. Chest against chest was the slip of dry skin and the slide of sweat, the slap of breasts, the grind of rib against rib.

  Lovemaking is like singing. At the first breath—the first thrust—the body is asleep to sound. Sighs and moans die in the throat. But as the tempo quickens, pleasure radiates, an
d the body tunes to its reception. Soon the sighs enter the chest, and though they may be no louder, the sighs are fuller; the moaner moans to her fingertips.

  I could not know then that in lovemaking one feels a magic touch—I could have as easily understood the undulations of a hawk’s wings in soaring flight—so I thought at first that it was this song the lovers sought. They moved together, moaned together, gasped together. They whispered Yes! Yes! in each other’s ears, and shuddered from head to toe in their united song. I heard that when they came to rest—silent but for their racing breaths and hearts—their ecstasy was the same as mine in song, a body unified for a single purpose, ringing with its beauty.

  It was in the sounds of the lovers’ arias that I finally understood what Nicolai had told me so many years before, sitting with him on his horse: the union of two halves in love. I understood this when I heard the ecstatic cries of union in those houses, but also because I heard my own soul call out, Please! Please! I, too, wish to be loved! I wish to be complete! But, so, too, did I understand my tragedy: that because of my imperfection, love for me was impossible. All at once, the musico’s exchange made sense. We had given up this song of union for a song that we must sing alone.

  VIII.

  During my nocturnal ramblings there was one house I often passed, longed to explore, but never entered: Haus Duft. Even from the outside I heard echoes of those beguiling sounds and knew I would be lost in its labyrinthine halls, or worse, tricked into thinking a room was empty, only to find evil Aunt Karoline lurking behind the door.

  But sometimes I hovered in the shadows and observed a lighted window for a time, hoping for a glimpse of Amalia’s form. And what if she had appeared? What if she had gazed out at the night? Only this: I would have retreated even more deeply into the darkness that concealed me.

  It was outside Haus Duft one night that I discovered I was not this city’s only ghost.

  I was in the shadows watching a lighted window, hoping to discern the hint of long, hay-colored hair, or of a limping shadow. My ears flitted from a skittering rat to scattering leaves to a chicken that had escaped her coop and wandered dumbly through the streets.

  Suddenly, in the corner of my eye, I saw a figure dart into a doorway. What seemed impossible was that this figure made no sound. I retreated into my shadow and waited. I heard nothing. Assuming I had imagined the vision, I moved farther down the street, ready to retreat to the abbey. Just before I turned a corner, I looked back. A dark form was moving noiselessly among the darkened houses. It made no sounds at all that I could hear. It was as terrifying to me as if I had seen a man step through a solid wall.

  I fled.

  I rushed down an alley, then turned again and again, until I was sure I had lost the soundless apparition. It was autumn, and the shuttered windows blocked the city’s sleeping breaths. I heard only those sounds of decay, muted by the cold, and the whistling, sighing wind. Farther along the alley from whence I had come, a window was lit. It would expose anything that should approach me. I had seen only a vagrant, I told myself. The wind had stolen his sounds. I was the city’s only ghost.

  Then I heard the rough tap of wood against stone from beyond the window. I listened for footsteps or a breath. I heard nothing but tapping. It was repeated with perfect regularity, like the clicking of the clock’s cogs in Staudach’s northern tower.

  I saw the silhouette of a man. He hunched to one side and limped quickly down the alley. He wore a long black robe. A hood hid his face. From the way he tapped the street with his stick, I saw that he was blind. Then he stopped. He stood before the lighted window. He straightened and turned his head back and forth, listening.

  There was something familiar in this gesture; I knew this man. It was indeed a ghost.

  I ran. I turned down narrow alleys without knowing where they led. I did not care if I was seen or heard. Each time I stopped, I heard the tapping behind me; it seemed to tap into my very skull. I ran like a startled foal, crashing into walls, tripping over the uneven street, skinning my hands on the cobblestones.

  I ended in a blind alley. I pawed the high wall for a way out, found none, and so I turned around and listened. Tap. Tap. Tap. I crouched behind some rotting barrels and willed my sounds to disappear. My breath was only the slightest whisper, but my heart still beat like a drum. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound passed the opening of the alley. The ghost paused there. The wind gathered at the end of the alley, whining around the barrels.

  The cane had turned and now tapped down the alley toward me. It was less urgent now. Tap. It clicked once as I inhaled in terror. Tap. Once as I exhaled.

  Tap.

  When the figure drew closer, I discerned faint footsteps, quiet as my own when I crossed roofs and escaped from bedrooms. It was not a ghost, but a man whose feet did indeed touch the ground. This did not comfort me.

  The cane and the steps stopped. The wind flapped his robe. His breath was softer than mine.

  I stood. I stumbled into the barrels. They broke apart, strewing rotten wood across the alley. He came closer, swinging his cane at my feet. I backed up against the wall. When his cane swung for my feet, I darted past him, but his ear was faster. A hand grabbed my sleeve and jerked with such force that I lost my footing. He dragged me toward him. I fought against his grasp, but he dropped his cane—it clattered to the ground—and clutched me with both hands.

  “Let me go!” I yelled. He was old and crippled, but to him I was no stronger than a screaming child. One hand drew back his hood. Our faces were inches apart. Even in the dim light, I could make out every ravaged feature. He had no hair left at all. His skin was mottled red, with patches of whiteness like the gristle of raw lamb. His left cheek was taut and smooth, like thin muslin that would rip at a needle’s touch. His right cheek was bubbled and scarred. His eye sockets were empty; his eyelids, wrinkled flaps of skin.

  “I found you,” Ulrich said.

  “Who is there?” someone cried from a window in the alley.

  “Come with me,” Ulrich whispered. “My house is near.”

  I struggled to get free.

  “I will not let you go again,” he said. He grabbed me again with both hands. “I do not care if they find us, though we will both be punished.”

  “Who is there? We are armed!” the voice cried.

  “Come!” Ulrich snapped. He held me by the sleeve and tugged. I was as submissive as I had been when he had carried me down so many midnight hallways. Though I was taller than he now, I could not muster the courage to strike the crippled man.

  He tapped his way up the alley. He wove us expertly through the streets, and so I saw that his memory for shape was far better than his memory for sound. We came to a square with a three-spouted fountain, and he pushed me into a doorway of a narrow house. He unlocked the door and pushed me inside.

  The house had only one room on the ground floor. It was extraordinarily neat, with a single chair at a small table, and a bed pressed into a corner. There was no decoration on the walls, no other furniture, no lamps or candles of any kind. The only light came from the glow of coals in a stove. A steep flight of stairs led upward into darkness. The bed was neatly made, the chair centered at the table. There were no stray ashes around the stove, no scraps of food on the ground. The stone floor gleamed.

  He locked the door and put the key in his pocket.

  “Unlock the door,” I said.

  His head rose as if he could see me with his empty eyes. “Your voice is so much the same,” he said. “But stronger.”

  “Unlock it,” I said.

  “If I unlock it, will you leave?”

  “If I wish.”

  He considered for a moment, then he unlocked the door. He walked to me, reached out until he found my chest, and slipped the key into my pocket.

  “That is your key,” he said. “This is your house. If you wish.”

  “I do not.”

  He said nothing. The coals crackled in the stove like ice.

  I walked p
ast him to the door. Our backs were to each other when he spoke.

  “When I recovered sufficiently to walk, Abbot Coelestin gave me a bag of gold. He said he would hang me for your castration if I ever returned to this city. Then he had me sent to Zurich. I was pushed off the wagon and left by the lake. I did not even have a staff. I listened to the wagon vanish. The waves upon the lake. Passing horses. Vendors from a nearby market. I have never heard such an empty world. If I had possessed a pistol I would have put it to my head.”

  I heard the pleading in his voice, but still, I reached for the door handle.

  Ulrich continued: “ ‘A coach,’ I shouted. ‘Get me a coach!’ ”

  My teacher’s cold and eager voice chilled my spine. He took two steps toward me. I feared his gentle touch now with as much revulsion as I had as a child.

  “Moses, Nicolai should have taken my ears! He could have cut them off, and I would have thanked him as I screamed. But blindness is the devil’s curse! All I do is hear. I hear ants crawl across my floor. I hear the earth settle beneath my feet. I hear my scars fester as I try to sleep. I hear you, Moses. I, too, wander at night, for I, too, must stay hidden. I have followed you. I have heard your step, your breath. That breath I taught to breathe.”

  I turned around and saw tears flowing from where his eyes used to be. He reached out a hand as if he wished to touch my arm. I shied away.

  “But what is there to hear? I heard beauty in this world once, but the noises of this dreadful city remind me every moment what I have lost. Moses, I so want to hear you sing again. Please.”

  He paused. I could not take my eyes off his burnt head, which shone crimson in the coals’ light. He wiped his face of tears.

  “Moses, please—”

  “I no longer sing,” I said abruptly. “The abbot forbids it.”