“You must use this time, my son,” he said, “for reflection. I regret to tell you that you will have to remain here some days more.”
He must have seen the terror in my eyes, for he smiled that avuncular smile. “It is for your own good. Though you have threatened both the abbey’s reputation and the reputation of this city’s finest family, do not think I am cold to your own welfare.”
He placed a new fig in my mouth, forcing it between my lips. “It is for your welfare that I am here today. You see, were you any other novice, Moses, I would still be speaking with you now, but our conversation would be different. If I were speaking to a boy who would one day become a man, I would ask him to search within his soul and ask himself whether he is prepared for the vows before him. Whether he is prepared to forsake worldly love for a higher one. He might tell me that he is not, and then, in that case, I would suggest he seek another calling.
“But, Moses,” he continued softly, “for you, all of this is different. There is no other calling. You can have what I have offered you or you can have misery. For you, worldly love is mere deception. And so I cannot offer you the choice that novices have been offered in this abbey for a thousand years. The choice has been made for you already.”
He offered me another fig, but now I closed my lips tight. I told myself I would accept no more benevolence from this awful man who kept me from my love. Nevertheless, he held the fig against my lips, patiently waiting for me to open them.
“I have spoken with Karoline Duft at great length. Great length. You may be relieved to know I have told her nothing of your”—here he let pass a respectful pause, and I cringed—“condition. She is very concerned about the honor of her respected family, and wishes, as I do, for the greatest discretion in all of this. She is doubly concerned about the approaching marriage of her niece, the girl who, it seems, you have deceived. She says this girl has been mysteriously resisting the wishes of her father, which was what first awakened Karoline’s suspicions. Karoline believes she finally knows why the girl did not wish to marry: she was besotted with another man.”
He drew the fig back from my lips, and as I opened my eyes, I felt the blood once again flow in my veins. She is mine, I wanted to scream at him, though I knew I would sound the world’s biggest fool. Mine!
Finally, he placed the rejected fig back in the bowl. He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was slightly tinged by anger.
“How could you be so cruel, Moses? Surely you knew of such a marriage? She is a fine girl, from the best family in the abbey’s lands. He is a noble man of great standing in one of Europe’s greatest cities. My son, they will be happy.”
He sighed, waiting for my reply. I was silent. He shook his head in dismay.
“Was it jealousy? Did you loathe her because she was rich and educated? Or do you have secret reasons for your wickedness? At first, when I was informed that a novice had been up to such impropriety, I did not think for a moment it could be you. You last of all. But then I reconsidered. After all, they love your voices in Europe’s most depraved cities. Did you sing to her? It must be that. That naïve girl spellbound by your voice. I thank God that years ago I stopped your singing in my church.”
The abbot stood. He stepped toward the door and then turned again toward me. The hem of his cuculla hissed across the floor. Every word he said was true, and yet an anger had begun to pulse inside of me. How dare he disrespect those sounds I treasured most? “Misery, for you and for whomever you deceive,” he continued. “I hope you see that now. It is fortunate there seems to be no permanent damage. Of course, the Duft woman is so worried that you have spoilt the girl for her husband. She asked me if there were some remedy the abbey’s physicians might provide.” The abbot drew tight his lips to contain his laugh. “I told her that would be unnecessary, but she remains unappeased. So it must be. But I trust the husband will not be disappointed.”
I flushed in shame, and prayed the abbot could not see it in the dark.
“However, she was even more concerned that the girl would refuse the connection out of lingering”—he waved his hand in the air, searching disdainfully for the right word—“attachment to you, and in this, I am pleased to say, I was able to comfort her. The matter was easily settled.”
I sat up.
“You see, the girl knows nothing of what has passed. And so I wrote a letter to Herr Willibald Duft, informing him of the death of the choirboy who, years ago, sang for his ailing wife. I explained you had fallen off a roof. I could not fathom why you were up there in the middle of the night. I trust he will share this regretful news with his daughter; Karoline Duft will see to that.” He bowed his head humbly. “Perhaps what I have reported is only half true, and there is some shame in this.” His head snapped up. “But it corrects your far greater deception. It is better for you, for her, and for all of us—”
“No,” I pleaded. I crouched on my hands and knees, trying to stand. I felt so weak. “You must let me speak—”
The abbot ignored me. “It seems the girl wants nothing more now than to escape this city. The wedding is tomorrow. Here, in our church. I myself will wed them.”
I tried to stand. The abbot watched me struggle. He shook his head as if pity overwhelmed him. Then he raised his foot and placed his shoe on my shoulder. A slight shove was all it took to knock me down.
He left the cell, but he spoke through the last crack before shutting the door. “Truth, no matter how unfortunate, is always preferable to deception, Moses. I will let you out when it is safe for you—and for her.”
In the dark, I tried to call for help, but I could only moan. After several hours someone slid food beneath the door. I struggled to crawl across the floor and stuff it into my mouth. I had to grow strong again. In the blackness of the cell, I lost any sense of time; it slowed and sped. In hours or days, I heard the stamping feet and chatter of a thousand people, and I knew they were arriving for the wedding. I struggled to my feet. I yelled that there was a fire, a flood, that I was sick, that I wished to confess my sins, but no one came except to deliver food. I yelled for Amalia. I had told her she must marry, but now a sickness crept up inside of me. No! I would have said, if only she could have heard. My ears tell me that we have made a grave mistake! We love each other, you and I! Stop! I am not dead!
I lost track of minutes and hours. My ears rebelled against my other senses. You fool! they said. You fool! The sounds of the festivities seeped into my cell. I covered my ears and screamed, but that just made every sound even louder, for they did not come from the church above, but from deep within my head. They were there when I paced the cell awake; they were there when I tossed on the floor wracked by nightmares. Karl Victor at the pulpit. Bugatti singing for the lovers. Nicolai and Remus in the smiling crowd. Those bells of my childhood ringing through the world. Amalia in her husband’s arms. Everyone had forgotten me.
Finally, the door opened. “You may return to your own cell,” the abbot said. His lip rose slightly in disgust at what he saw. Two soldiers stood behind him, but I was prepared to best all three. Only I needed an answer first.
“Has the wedding happened?” I asked. My voice was cracked and hoarse. “Is it too late?”
The abbot shook his head sadly. “But dear boy,” he said, “that was three weeks ago.”
XVI.
The soldiers lifted me off my knees and dragged me behind the abbot out of the cellars. When we reached the ground floor of the dormitories, the abbot stopped and turned. The soldiers dropped me to the wooden floor. I knelt and looked up at the abbot.
“You must bathe,” he said. “Change your clothes. Should you wish to confess your sins, you may come to me.”
There was no fatherly smile now, just disgust at what he saw in the light: my filthy clothes, my pallid skin, and my other deficiencies.
I lunged at him. He was not expecting this, and so my pounce toppled him backward. Few sounds in my life have I enjoyed as much as the pleasant thump of his
skull on the oaken floor. He yelled. He cursed. He raised his hands before his eyes in fear that I would try to gouge them out. But that would have to wait for another day. The soldiers grasped for me as I took off. My legs were long, my body light, and they were armed and muscled. And more: love blew at my back. The soldiers had no chance to catch me as I darted into the cloister. I was through the gate and into the Abbey Square before they could raise an alarm.
It was mid-morning in early autumn. The hundred persons crossing to the abbot’s palace, loitering in the sun, or accessing the perfect church all turned to watch the filthy novice monk—his lanky legs barely touching the ground, like an alighting bird’s—race across the square. Three soldiers chased me now, but I left them far behind.
They called to a fourth soldier who stood blocking the gate to the city.
“Knock him out,” one yelled.
“Tried to murder the abbot,” another called.
The soldier at the gate was young, dull-eyed, and built like a bear, with shoulders twice as wide as mine, though he was not as tall. He smiled and bared his claws.
Ten strides shy of this single strapping youth, I inhaled the deepest breath I could, and when I exhaled, I sang the most awful screeching devilish scream. I twisted up my face. I spread my long arms like a dragon’s wings. My scream was so loud and harsh that every person in the square covered his ears. The oaf at the gate stumbled back in fright, sure that I was a demon who had escaped from hell. He held his hands before his face. I only touched him lightly on the arm as I flew past, but he recoiled as if my touch had burned him.
There were people on the streets!
My first reaction entering that daylit city for the first time in years was not unlike the man who comes home to find his rooms overrun by mice. These streets had been mine and hers alone! How I wished these people would again retreat into their houses. They drove carriages and oxcarts filled with bolts of white linen. Their clothes were fine and clean. They stared at the filthy monster. Children pointed with pink fingers.
The soldiers had lost me, or given up the chase, when I arrived at Haus Duft. I banged my fists on the stately front doors until the elderly porter opened them. I grabbed his velvet coat with one hand and tugged his silly cravat with the other.
“Call Amalia,” I said. “I must speak with her immediately.”
I saw he could not concentrate on my words as long as he was being choked, so I released him and smoothed out his fabrics. He stared at me as if I were a wolf, distracted by my filthy face and odor.
“Fräulein Amalia Duft,” I said, calm and patient as a schoolmaster.
“Fräulein Duft,” he repeated unsteadily. Then a light came into his eyes. “Frau Riecher now,” he said. He shook his head. “But she left for Vienna ten days ago.”
I backed away, and he did not miss his chance. He slammed the door in my face.
I stumbled through the city. I had only one place in the world left to go.
As soon as I had unlocked the door, I heard a chair knocked over. The old, scarred man had leapt up in surprise. “Where have you been?” Ulrich yelled. He grasped the table as if the earth quaked around him. “Where is she? What has happened?”
I walked across the room and began to climb the stairs.
“Moses!” he called after me. “Tell me there is nothing wrong! Where is she?”
In our room, where we had spent our nights, I pressed my teary face to the sheets. I cried until I drifted into dreams of her.
When I finally opened my eyes again, it was nearly dark, and her scent had been slaughtered by my stink. I hunted the room for other remains, but there was nothing. I had found and lost the world’s greatest treasure: the sounds of love.
In the last of the evening’s pinkish light, I saw the painter’s wife in her portrait. It still lay on the floor where Amalia had dashed it in her anger. I hugged the canvas to my chest and remembered then that in his sadness, the painter had painted her portrait with his blood. If only I could drain mine with song!
I stepped to the window and punched through it. The broken glass tinkled in the street below like falling ice. I broke off a large shard and sat on the bed, the portrait between my feet. I would slice my veins and die here on this bed.
But suddenly Ulrich stood at the door.
“What are you doing here!” I roared, furious that he would dare to pollute our sanctuary.
“Please,” he said. “I have waited every night for a month. I must know. Is she … is she dead?”
“It is nothing to you!” I yelled. “Get out or I will knock you down the stairs!”
But he took another skating step into the room, his hands stretched before him. “I listened to you,” he said. “Every night. I heard you sing. I heard her ringing with your voice.”
No words had ever been more repulsive to my ears. I stood up. I lifted a chair from the table and heaved it across the room. He heard the whoosh of air and held up his arm. The chair grazed his arm, knocked him back, but he did not fall.
“Just tell me and I will leave,” he said. “Is she dead?”
“As good as dead,” I yelled. “Married and gone to Vienna. Now go.”
But he did not move. He reached out a hand as if for something to lean upon, but found nothing.
“Not dead?” he said, as if to himself.
“Get out!” I yelled again.
“But then,” he said as I laid my hands on another chair. “Why are you here?”
I hurled the chair across the table. This time, it glanced off his head. He stumbled back and fell, without so much as a groan. He sat by the door. His sealed eyes stared at me.
“Moses. Why have you not gone after her?” he murmured.
That he should ask such a stupid thing angered me even more.
“She called you her Orpheus.”
This only brought back the cold guilt of my deceit. “And that,” I said, lifting another chair, “is exactly what I can never be.”
I thought then how this man huddled on the floor now was the architect of my tragedy—and yet to kill the pathetic, broken Ulrich would be such small recompense for all that I had lost. I dropped the chair, and he did not even cringe at the noise.
“Leave me be,” I said. I turned my back and hid my face in my hands.
There was such a silence I feared I may have killed him after all. But when I turned, he still sat there, his head gently shaking. “I have wronged you,” he said.
“That you did,” I replied.
“No,” he said. “Not that. Of course there is that as well, but that is so long ago, and I have asked God every day to forgive me for it. What I speak of is another wrong, one that carries to this day.”
He was climbing to his feet. Blood traced a line from his temple to his chin. He held out a hand for some support.
“Moses, when I finally found you again, I so feared that you would leave this city, that I would never hear your voice again. I knew I would never find you if you left. And so, when you told me of the shame the abbot used to keep you here, I did not contradict him. He fears that you will tell others what happened in his abbey, and because of this, he has lied to you. I, too, in my silence, have lied to you.”
I watched him, confused. He reached out and shuffled toward the table.
“Yes, the world is indeed a difficult place for those like you. If the abbot has told you that you may not marry, that you may not become a priest, here he has not lied. If he has told you that simple men will laugh when they hear you are not a man, that they will not let you live among them without ridicule, that is also true.”
He had one hand on the table now. I felt a warm prickling along my neck.
Ulrich crept as he spoke, “But there is more he did not say. More that I would have told you if I had not feared that I would never hear you sing again. Moses, beyond these villages where you will find no friends, there are cities that even the abbot does not comprehend.”
I saw that his hands shook as they sli
d along the edge of the table. “In those cities they can be cruel as well—but there, you will sing. You will tame them with your voice. They will give you gold and make you rich. Moses, you must know that Vienna is such a place.”
He reached the end of the table. He released it. A hand reached for my face. “She called you Orpheus!” he said again, as if this were reason enough to travel across worlds. He took another sliding step toward me; the white and cracked hand strained for my face. “I heard it all, every note of every night. Hate me for it! Kill me! I don’t care anymore. But, Moses, you, too, heard it all! When you came tonight alone, I thought that she was dead. Only death would have explained it to me, but even death was not enough to stop Orpheus! Moses! Your Eurydice is alive!”
When his hand reached my cheek, I did not shy from his touch. He gasped, as though the feel of my skin awakened in him a million faint memories of my voice.
“But I am not Orpheus,” I said weakly.
His hands felt along my jaw. He ran them down my long, noble neck. One hand paused briefly to hold the place where the treasure of my voice lay hidden in my throat. Then he felt the contours of my bulging chest, below which breathed lungs twelve times as large as the ones he had touched years before.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, you are.”
One last time he laid a hand upon my throat, his touch as light as silk. “Go!” he whispered. “Go!”
ACT III
I.
I did not even pause to wash the prison grime from off my face. I left that blind man in the attic. He fell to his knees and called for me to sing one final time. I did not.
I strode out of the city at dusk, and then asked the first farmer I met which way was Austria. He looked me over, for he had certainly never seen such a large man with such a boyish face, and I felt a shadow of the old shame. But then he rubbed his chin, and we both turned twice around. He finally pointed toward the distant Rhine. “That way,” he said. Then he shrugged and turned back to his plough.
The Bells Page 21
