The Bells Read online

  Each afternoon I heard it. Perhaps this was the God of whom Nicolai had spoken? Not Karl Victor’s frightful God, but a God of beauty and of joy. The God who would find a way for me to stay in this beautiful and perfect place.

  And then, on Sunday morning, my sixth day in Nicolai’s room, the sound was suddenly louder, and instead of coming from the sky, it seemed to come from every direction: through the walls, down the passage, through the keyhole. God was coming closer, and I could not miss Him. And so, six days after we arrived in the abbey, I broke Nicolai’s interdiction. I left his cell.

  VIII.

  I held my ear to the keyhole until I was sure the passage was empty. Then I opened the door. I closed my eyes and listened for a footfall or the abbot’s sawing breath. My legs trembled as I took a step onto the smooth wooden floor of the vast passage.

  The sound was louder here. It was composed of human voices; now I was sure of that. They were singing. I tried to count them. One moment there were two, then eight, and then I heard at least … twelve? Then again only two. And for a moment, only a single voice remained, and I doubted I had ever heard any others.

  I descended the wide stairwell. Compared to Nicolai’s room, these new spaces were huge. I did not make a noise, and there were no other human sounds in the abbey, except for these voices. The workmen had ceased their work. No monks paced the cloister. I heard only the wind. It was as if all the humans of the world had vanished.

  I crept into the cloister. The damp grass was cold on my bare feet. Across the pit of the new church stood the vacant Abbey Square. I stopped. One voice began anew, alone, and then, moments later, another voice uttered the same phrase, and then another voice and another, all nearly the same, yet not quite: faster, or more slowly, or sung with different notes. I grew dizzy trying to sort it out. Surely these must be angels singing.

  I squeezed my eyes shut so tightly they began to ache. Swirls of pinkish light danced with the magic voices. And suddenly it all made sense. A realization stirred inside me. In the clanging of my mother’s bells, I had already heard this beauty—in flashes of random harmony. And these men and boys who sang, they had learned what was surely a magic feat. They could work that ocean of sound, infinite and overwhelming, and mold it into something beautiful. And I realized that I, too, could know this magic. Perhaps I did already.

  I passed the edge of the new church’s pit and walked through a tunnel made of planks that led across the Abbey Square to the provisional wooden church. I followed the sounds to a high oaken door. I heaved it open with all my might.

  I should have seen the simple church packed with monks and laity, the two groups separated by a wooden fence. I should have seen the Choir of St. Gall singing before the altar. I should have been alarmed enough to run. But the opening of the door released a flood of sound, and for a moment I knew nothing but this music. I belonged to my ears.

  The moments of discordance made me ache. When the voices lined up in thirds, they warmed my neck and back. I closed my eyes and heard the music. I felt the slight resonance of their song in my jaw and in my temples. I felt it in my tiny chest, and when I exhaled, I sighed, and so the slight ringing of my voice mingled with the music. My sigh was a spark. My voice sprang to life. I moaned, trying to find the notes to match my tiny body’s ringing with this beauty.

  I did not know the words, or even that what they sang were words, so I spat whatever sounds came upon my lips. One moment I felt the ecstasy of harmony, then the next, a cold tingle in my spine, as my noise clashed with their song. I sang as a puppy runs with hounds—frantically, ecstatically, foolishly—until suddenly I realized that the singing had stopped. I was moaning into shocked silence.

  A hand slapped my head so hard that stars flashed across my eyes. I fell to my knees. The great door opened, the hand lifted me by the neck, and I was thrown out of the church and into the dirt.

  I ran. I scrambled up the stairs. Each doorway I rushed past looked identical to the ones before it, and I tried five before I found the one that I had sought. I hid in the wardrobe and pulled one of Nicolai’s black woolen tunics over me. It was terribly hot, and soon I was sweating and gasping for air. But I remained there until two pairs of footsteps entered the room. One I recognized as Nicolai’s heavy tread. The other—I heard that breathing. The bellows at a forge.

  The door slammed shut.

  “Father Abbot—” Nicolai began.

  “I should expel you from the abbey,” Abbot Coelestin roared. “Hiding a child in your cell!”

  “He has no place to go,” Nicolai pleaded. He whispered as if he did not wish to be overheard. “If you would only accept him as a—”

  “Do you hear me?” the abbot shouted. “Expulsion! What would you do then? Sing for your food?”

  “Father Abbot, please.”

  “Where is he?”

  There was silence in the room. Very, very slowly I leaned so I could peer out through the crack between the wardrobe doors. Glaring up at giant Nicolai, the abbot looked almost like an angry child.

  Nicolai shrugged his massive shoulders. “Perhaps he ran away.”

  The abbot’s glare held fast.

  “Abbot, please. Do not punish this boy for what I have done.” Nicolai laid a hand on the abbot’s shoulder.

  Without unfixing his eyes, the abbot grasped Nicolai’s wrist. He lifted it from off his shoulder. Nicolai grimaced as the abbot’s claws dug into his flesh. The abbot spoke slowly, carefully forming every word. “You seem to think that charity is as plentiful as air.” He flung Nicolai’s arm away.

  Nicolai rubbed his wrist. “One boy cannot hurt.”

  The abbot seemed not to hear him.

  Nicolai put his palms together. “Abbot,” he said. “Please, I beg you.”

  That face! Was there ever one so large that was so innocent? So kind? It seemed to say to the abbot, But we are brothers, you and I!

  “Beg me?” the abbot said, surprised by the suggestion. He looked about the room. “Beg me for what? Nicolai, I have already given you everything there is to give. I have given you a room princes would be happy to live in. I have given you food. I have given you more wine than any man should drink. I am building you the greatest church in the Confederation. And you? What have you given me? What have you given this abbey? You pray. You eat. You chant. You drink. You sleep. Nothing more.”

  Nicolai spoke weakly, “Saint Benedict said—”

  “Saint Benedict?” The abbot snorted. He drove a thumb into his own chest. “You quote Saint Benedict to me? Go be a hermit like Saint Benedict, Nicolai. There are caves enough for you and your Dominikus. And while you, far away, live like the saints of the past, we will continue to strive to be the saints of the future.”

  There was silence in the room as the abbot drew a long, calming breath and lowered his voice. “Here, Nicolai, we have mouths to feed. We have souls to save. The peasants in my lands would like one day to know what beauty is, for once in their lives to see and hear and taste God’s glory here on earth as you have every day of your wasted life in this abbey. You see, I can tolerate useless monks, Nicolai, if I must. If Dominikus wants to read and translate books that no one else cares about, all very well. If you were only a useless monk then I would simply leave you here in this cell until you died, and then I would fill it with a monk who could be of use to God.”

  “Abbot, you do not mean wha—”

  “I do.” The abbot nodded coldly as he advanced another step. “And if you ever cross me again, Nicolai, if you ever show me the faintest sign that you are anything other than the useless, archaic monk I have come to tolerate, I will make sure that every monastery in Europe knows never to let you through their gate.”

  Nicolai’s jaw hung open. He gave a tiny nod. “Yes, Abbot,” he whispered.

  The abbot wiped his brow with a handkerchief drawn from a pocket. He took several breaths and then he tipped his giant forehead as if to say he was satisfied with the culmination of the discussion. He looked around
the room. His eyes fell on the watercolor of Venice propped on the table. Without examining it closely, he lifted it, creased a fold through the middle with his fingernails, and tore it in two. Nicolai merely cringed at the rip. The abbot placed the scraps back on the table and looked at Nicolai. “Now get me that boy,” he said.

  There was silence. Then Nicolai spoke in a low whisper: “I cannot.”

  I wished I could dissolve into sound.

  “Then I will get him myself.”

  Footsteps crossed to the wardrobe. The door opened, and I felt the cloth lifted off of me. I kept my eyes shut, but I heard his breath above me. Fingers grabbed me by the hair and I cried against the pain, but he just pulled harder until I was on my feet and next to Nicolai’s bed.

  Nicolai stood in the middle of the room. He slouched as if he carried a sack of potatoes on his shoulders. “I am so sorry,” he said to me.

  “You are forgiven,” said the abbot. “For now.”

  “Abbot,” said Nicolai. He stepped forward and reached out a hand as if to grasp me. “Let me find a place for him, I will find a farmer. I will—”

  The abbot stuck a finger into Nicolai’s face to stop him. “You will visit your Offices.” He jabbed his finger again. “You will consider the wrong you have done this abbey. You will forget this boy. And I, I will take him to one of my orphanages and care for him just as I care for the other hundred thousand souls that are my charge. He shall have neither penalty nor advantage for the damage he has done today.”

  The abbot clamped my neck with two sharp fingers and pulled me out of the room. I began to cry.

  He dragged me down the stairs, lifting me enough with his pincers that my feet only just skimmed each stair. “If you ever interrupt my Mass again,” he whispered in my ear, “I will cut out your tongue and feed it to—”

  “Stop!”

  We turned. Nicolai stood at the top of the stairs. The potato sack had disappeared. There were tears in his eyes.

  “You cannot do this,” he said.

  “Do you know what you are saying?” asked the abbot.

  “Abbot, I vowed to protect that child.”

  For a moment, the abbot was speechless. I heard the breath catch in his throat. I felt his clamped hand shake with anger, as did his voice when he finally spoke. “You have a single vow, Brother Nicolai, and that is to this abbey. And so, let me make myself clear: You have a choice. You can return to your first and perpetual vow, and I will take this child where I please. Or you may sever that vow, and you and this child can leave the monastery together, immediately. I prefer the second option.”

  Nicolai’s face was red, like when he was drunk. “Father, I beg forgiveness, I choose—”

  His choice was never revealed, because at that moment we heard a fourth person stumbling up the stairs. “Praise God,” this new voice said. “Abbot, you have found him.”

  IX.

  “Ulrich von Güttigen,” the yellow-skinned man gasped and held out a sweaty hand to me. “I am Regens Chori at the abbey.” I shrank from the hand as though it too meant to pull me down the stairs. I recognized this man from the church. It was he who had stood before the singers I had tried to join.

  “Yes, I have found him,” said the abbot. He pushed me down another step so I stood between the two men. “And now he is off to Rorschach. He will not disturb us again.”

  “No!” the choirmaster said. He grabbed my arm.

  The abbot tightened his fingers on my neck. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Ulrich looked from the abbot to Nicolai and back to the abbot. I tried to pry away my arm, but the choirmaster’s hold was firm.

  “For the choir, of course.”

  “The choir?”

  “Yes.”

  In the silence that followed, I gave up my squirming and looked closely at this Ulrich von Güttigen. His yellow skin was taut and translucent, like the skin of a chicken plunged briefly in boiling water. His white hair, too, seemed to have been boiled off like feathers, and clung only behind his ears and on the top of his head in wisps.

  Yet his looks did not strike me so much as his sounds. Though he heaved for air, his breath was a mere whisper, like a breeze under a door. His heart beat too quietly for me to hear, and though I strained for more clues by which to know him—rubbing hands or twisting feet or a click in his knees—I heard nothing.

  “We need to hear him sing,” Ulrich said. He pulled me toward him and chewed his lip in eagerness.

  “We have heard him sing. Most disturbingly.”

  “A few notes, Abbot. Merely a glimpse, perhaps, of something extraordinary.”

  “Hear him,” Nicolai interrupted.

  The abbot and Ulrich turned to the large monk, who still stood at the top of the stairs.

  “This does not concern you,” the abbot said. But he turned back to the choirmaster and muttered, “Fine, we will hear the boy.”

  The four of us descended the stairs and wound through a series of unfamiliar corridors. Ulrich did not release my arm until we entered a large room with mirrors along one wall. A small stage ran across the other end of the room. In the room’s center stood a device that appeared to me a coffin with three rows of keys at one end. I was afraid they meant to bury me alive in it. Ulrich placed a stool next to this casket and lifted me up onto it. He saw my frightened eyes staring down at the wooden box and said as kindly as his nervous voice could manage, “But have you never seen a harpsichord before?” He pressed one of the keys, and a beautiful, clear ringing filled the room. “You can sing that note, can’t you, my boy?”

  As the three men watched me eagerly, the stool felt like it might topple beneath me. Ulrich licked his lips and hit the key again. “That note.” My mouth was dry, my tongue thick with dread.

  “Sing,” the abbot said. He slapped the back of his hand. “I do not have time for games.” The key was hit again. Ulrich sang the note, his voice clear and cold.

  “Go ahead, Moses,” Nicolai said. He nodded, smiled, and raised his thick eyebrows as far as they would go. “They just want to hear you sing.”

  The abbot looked in disgust at Nicolai’s smile and said coldly, “Boy, sing or you will never see Nicolai again.”

  Ulrich hit the key again, bowing with the gentle effort.

  “Just that note,” Nicolai urged me, as if the abbot had not spoken. “Just once.”

  I doubt that even an angel could have coaxed me into song. The twang of the harpsichord’s string could have been a dog’s bark for all I cared to mimic it. I would stand there until they took me down.

  “He has had his chance,” the abbot said. He grabbed me by the arm and would have pulled me from my perch, but Ulrich interrupted him.

  “Alone,” he said. He laid his pale hand on the abbot’s. “Leave us alone. Then he will sing.”

  “Why would he do it alone with you if he will not sing when his future is at stake?”

  “I need to speak with him.”

  The abbot threw up his arms. “Then speak!”

  “Alone.”

  “Aagg!” the abbot bleated. “I do not have time for this. You have ten minutes. Then he will be on a wagon to Rorschach.”

  He left. Nicolai just watched him go, but did not move to follow.

  “Please, Brother Nicolai.” Ulrich gestured toward the door.

  The large monk looked stricken at the thought of leaving me. “He is not afraid of me.”

  I nodded in agreement. I prayed my protector would not leave me alone with this man.

  But Ulrich stepped to Nicolai and began to push him out. “I need to speak with him alone,” he whispered gravely. “Please.”

  Nicolai shook his arm from the man’s touch. “I vowed to protect him.”

  Ulrich spoke softly, firmly. “Leaving us alone is the best thing you can do for him. Stand outside the door, if you like.”

  Nicolai looked at me. He must have seen my wide eyes, my open mouth. I clenched my hands into fists. “Moses,” he said. “He will
not hurt you. I promise. Do what he says.” But he looked pale and worried as he turned and stepped outside the door.

  Then I was alone with this yellow man of so few sounds. He stood so close that I should have heard more—a squishing when he turned his neck, his tongue behind his teeth, his feet sliding on the wooden floor, a wetness in his throat as he exhaled. But all I heard was that gentle draft of air from his mouth. He studied my face, then bent closer.

  “I heard you,” he whispered, as if he were afraid Nicolai might overhear. “The others might have heard your voice. It’s imperfect. It’s not yet trained. But they are fools. I heard you. I heard your lungs. I heard you here.” He reached up and, with a cold finger, gently traced the line of my throat. “You could not help it, could you? You would have burst if you had stayed silent another second?”

  The choirmaster smelled like rotted hay. His nose was level with mine. I almost wished the abbot would come back and take me far away.

  “I think you have heard me, too. I cannot sing like you, Moses. We have different gifts. But we fit together.” Ulrich intertwined his fingers in front of my face.

  I closed my eyes, terrified to look at him so close, willing him to disappear.

  “The abbot cannot take you from me, Moses. I have heard you and you have heard me. God meant for us to meet.”