The Bells Read online

  He touched my throat again, this time with his full hand, as if he meant to choke me. But his cold touch was gentle. I swallowed hard.

  “I can open your voice, Moses. I will. We can leave this abbey if you wish. We can go back from whence you came. But Moses, listen to me: the abbot, who is ready to send you to a filthy workhouse, will, the moment I say, give you the greatest luxury any boy like you could dream of. They need people like you and me, Moses.”

  As he whispered into my ear, I felt the warmth of his face against my skin. “They need us like they need their gold and their beautiful churches and their libraries. Do you want to see Nicolai again? Do you want to stay here? Or do you want to leave? It is no matter to me. I will share a horse’s stall with you, if that is your choice. But if you want to stay, then sing.”

  Then Ulrich von Güttigen began to whisper a melody I had heard in the church that morning. His voice was not warm like the voices I had tried to accompany, but it moved lightly and precisely from one note to the next. When Nicolai sang, his whole body reverberated with the sound. In contrast, Ulrich von Güttigen was like a poorly constructed violin, whose strings vibrate perfectly but whose body resonates as weakly as a cask of wine.

  Was this what Nicolai meant? Was this God’s design? I had dreamed of something else, less repulsive than this soundless man and his entreaties. But perhaps God, it occurred to me, was not so good and perfect as the abbot claimed, and perhaps this man was all He could offer me.

  And so I sang.

  I chose one voice that I remembered from the church. At first my notes were soft and unsure, but I felt the sound spread outward from my throat, just as a bell’s ring spreads quickly throughout the metal. The sound moved along my jaw, to the hollows below my ears. I felt it in my back, and downward to my navel. I sang no words, just sounds.

  Ulrich’s weak voice ceased as mine grew louder. He still held my neck, and then his hand probed downward. It stroked from my chin to my chest, like a doctor’s cold instrument, and in that moment I felt that he was right; his hand seemed to open me. Its touch made my sounds fuller, like my mother’s ringing bells. His other hand joined the first. He caressed my face, my chest. The hands reached around my back and held me tight, as if he wanted the sound to flow from me down to his yellowed, bony arms, into his empty chest. A sob escaped from his mouth, though there were no tears in those eyes. And then he stepped back and, for a moment, rose up on his toes, closed his eyes, and skewed his head violently, as if jolted by a sudden pain.

  I stopped.

  He stumbled backward and leaned against the harpsichord as if his legs would not hold him. His eyes were fixed on my face. I saw fear in his eyes. “My God,” he said. “I am damned.”

  X.

  And so my singing life began. I lay one last night on Nicolai’s divan, and he spoke long into the morning of the splendor of my fortune. “You won’t have to share a room anymore with an old, snoring monk,” he said, and his smile was so sad one would have thought I was moving farther away than down the two flights of stairs. “You’ll have friends your own age to play with. You’ll laugh and run about. At night you’ll whisper secrets to each other.”

  Even after Nicolai began to snore, I lay awake. His hope had infected me. I had never wanted for more when I lived with my mother, but now I realized I would have friends. Would we have fun? Would we play together as the children in the village had? Would I start to speak?

  The next morning, Nicolai packed a parcel with two apples, some nuts, and a rosary, and put it in my hand. He opened his door and motioned for me to precede him out. I hesitated for a moment, and then reached up for the giant palm. I looked into his face. “Thank you, Nicolai,” I said.

  Tears leapt into his eyes and he took me in his arms.

  He carried me down the stairs and along a hallway to where Ulrich waited outside the practice room. When Ulrich bade him leave us, Nicolai hugged me even tighter, then took a deep breath and set me down. He bit his lip, nodded, and tried to smile, and then turned and hurried away, never glancing back.

  There had not yet been time to get me new clothes, and so I still wore the simple ones that Nicolai had bought for me several weeks before in Uri. I still had no shoes. When Ulrich opened the door, twelve pairs of prepubescent eyes had turned on me.

  Ulrich told these boys what little he knew of me: that I was from a wild mountain village; that I had an extraordinary, untrained voice that one day might be the finest their choir had ever known. He said all this as if I were a bottle of fine wine about to be stored in the abbey’s cellar.

  “He is your brother now,” Ulrich said to them, “and for as long as you and he remain in this choir. Help him to understand this world, which is so unfamiliar to him.”

  The boys nodded at their master. I watched this man who had repulsed me so, and now I felt such gratitude. I hadn’t been so happy since before I lost my mother.

  Next, Ulrich instructed a boy named Feder to lead us in warm-up exercises. He pushed me lightly toward the boys, and then left the room. The boys gathered about this Feder. “Hello,” he said to me. He looked about my age, but taller. He smiled.

  I nodded and smiled back—the warmest, most genuine smile the world had ever known. I thought to say something, but my mouth would not comply. I was too frightened that I might sound foolish in front of my new friends.

  Feder walked toward me, still smiling, until he towered over me. I only reached his shoulders. Then the smile vanished from his face so suddenly I cringed in surprise. The boys behind him laughed.

  “You may sing with us—if you can,” he said. His eyes were as cold as his voice. “But you are not one of us.” He peered down into my eyes as if looking for the signal that I understood, and I did not disappoint him. Tears began to pool. I struggled not to blink, but then I did, and two drops rolled down my cheeks. The boys snickered and shouted for him to knock me down, but he did not. As my tears flowed freely, he sniffed the air and said, “Does everyone in your family smell like a goat?”

  And so my brief dream of friends my own age was abandoned almost as soon as I had conceived it. But I did not complain to Nicolai or to anyone else, for, as an orphan, what more could I expect? At noon I followed the pack of boys to the refectory. I took a plate of food, and in the other hand the largest, reddest apple I had ever seen. But then Feder appeared behind me, pinched my arm, and led me to a chair that faced the wall. “This is your seat,” he whispered in my ear. “And that food is a gift from me. A gift from me. That peasant who does the spooning out—his cousin works on our estate.” Feder pointed at the blank wall. “You’ll look at that wall. If you dare turn around to look at us, I’ll take my gift away. You say a word to my friends, I’ll take my gift away. Understand?” He pinched my arm so hard I almost dropped my plate. “And this,” he said, taking the apple from my other hand, “is not meant for those like you.”

  My bed was as soft and warm as my mother’s embrace, and I would have slept the deepest sleep on it if only I had been allowed. Five other boys shared my room, and though Feder was not one of them, his orders were communicated. “What are you doing?” fat Thomas asked when he found me lying on my bed that first night. “Dogs sleep on the floor.” He kicked me in the shin and again in my behind as I scrambled off the bed. No one complained when I sneaked up a hand to grab a blanket. I curled up underneath my bed, and fell asleep to the boys telling jokes about foul-smelling hounds.

  The very next day Nicolai rushed into the practice room bearing new clothes and shoes for me. I turned red and the boys sniggered as he stripped me naked in the corner. But at least, it seemed to me, I looked just like them now. However, I soon learned that there were other signals of their supremacy too faint for me to read. These sons of officials, master weavers, or heirs to landed farmers had fathers, uncles, cousins with names that made the others lick their lips. Their parents merely stored them here in the choir for some years, hoping frequent contact with God and so much gold would prepare them fo
r their destinies as landed gentry. And so it was their constant struggle to climb a ladder, which I anchored from the very bottom. Balthasar beat Thomas’s term dog with swine. Proud Gerhard pretended not to see me, but ground his heel into my foot as he passed. Johannes, blond and angel-faced, saw me admiring the rosary Nicolai had gifted me. He made sure that the others were gathered around when he tore it from my hands, snapped the string, and scattered the beads down the passage. Hubert, a gaunt, yellow child with sunken eyes, who could not sing but was said to be the richest of the lot, had a devil’s ear for taunts. “Look, it’s the giant monk’s plaything,” he said one night as I entered the crowded room. And then to me: “I am sure you preferred sleeping in his room.” I turned red even though at the time I did not understand the implication. I came to dread passing Nicolai when I was with the boys. “Why does he always smile at you?” Feder would ask, so innocently. “Perhaps tonight, late at night, you should visit him in his room.”

  And when I began to sing with relish, Feder whispered to the boys, “Look, he so wants to be a singer! Of course he does! But what else lies open to those like him?” He turned to me. “Who did you say your parents were? Did they keep swine?” For the first time in my life I was ashamed of my mother. I knew a swineherd would have looked down upon her. I feared that somehow Feder knew more than he said; that cruel smile told me as much. He walked toward me, and though I backed away, he wrapped an arm around my neck and drew me tighter with each word. “Don’t worry, boy,” he growled. “In five years, when that fine voice of yours is rough, and that vile monk doesn’t want you as his toy, there will still be pigs enough for you to tend.”

  We rose at six, long after the monks. After breakfast we rehearsed until Mass, then studied pronunciation of the Latin texts, practiced letters, and performed exercises until lunch. After a midday break, Ulrich sat us on the floor around the harpsichord and supplied us with sheets of paper and stubs of pencils. He pounded the keys, and the boys stared blankly up at him. He explained the difference between the hypophrygian and Ionian modes, or paced back and forth berating the Council of Trent. Almost every day he’d poke a single finger into the keys. “That’s the monks,” he’d say. “A thousand years the same: chromatic, mostly monophonic, with dashes of bravado slipped in by the geniuses.” And then he’d pound some chords. “It is all different now. What you must learn to sing—polyphony. Heavy sonorities, contrasts. Even if you cannot learn to hear it here,” he tapped his head, “and most of us never do, you must understand it, or you will remain brainless tools, as stupid as this harpsichord.” Then he’d play some Vivaldi and tell us to write it down, which I could soon do as easily as other children could sketch a house with two windows and a door. The other boys would peer over my shoulder and copy exactly what I wrote. When Ulrich’s patience waned, he set us free until our rehearsal with the adult singers and instrumental accompaniment, which continued until supper. In all those years, we learned neither mathematics nor French, and what I know of the Bible and of God I learned only from the daily sermons.

  For the first six months after I joined his choir, though Ulrich owned my days, he left me alone from supper until breakfast. But as I learned to control my voice, he grew more frantic in his attention. When we were lined up in front of our practice mirrors, it was always I who saw him in my glass, just behind me, his eyes closed, as if he were trying to catch the scent of my hair. Soon, rarely an evening passed in which he did not linger outside the refectory door. He’d lay a firm hand on my shoulder. “Moses,” he’d say, “there was one last thing I wished to show you,” and then he’d lead me to the practice room, his hand never straying from my shoulder. I loathed being alone with him—his stink, his cold voice, his lack of human sounds. Sometimes I thought I would have preferred to spend the time with a corpse, for at least it could not have reached out to touch me.

  Yet, just as I had learned to hear in the belfry, it was there, alone with Ulrich in the studio, that I learned to master my voice. A goat could have learned to sing if it had had the attention of that man! To those who say I am a genius who appeared from nothing, my talent needing no time to ripen—to them I say, Practice! Practice! There is no other path to greatness.

  In those many hours with Ulrich, I learned my fluid poise, exact phrasing, precise pronunciation of the Latin. He would touch me. His icy hands ran down my back or caressed my chest, sometimes reaching down as far as the backs of my knees or up to my temples. It was the kind of touch one might use to stroke a flower’s petals. Ulrich’s hand found those parts of me that were still quiet—he reached the stubborn limits to my ringing. And so it seemed to me his touch was magic, for the voice that first came only from my throat spread in just seconds to my jaw, and with his yellowed hands on my chest and back, soon song rang through me as though I were a bell. The hands sought deeper. They found more song hidden in tightened thighs, in clenched fists, in the slumping arches of my feet. Mine was a tiny body, but he made it huge with song.

  The first time he came at night, he stumbled into our room, tripped over a bed, and drove knees and elbows into the guts of sleeping boys. I crawled from beneath my bed and peeked across the room—a mole from out his hole. Ulrich shook Thomas. “Where is Moses?” he asked the boy, whose wide eyes perceived a murderer. “There’s something … I must …” Thomas raised a shaking finger and pointed at my gleaming eyes.

  Ulrich yanked me onto his shoulder and carried me from the room. The halls were dark; the abbey slept. He held me against the wall, his warm breath of rotting hay wafting across my face. His nose brushed mine. “I have forgotten it,” he whispered, and I would have thought him drunk, but everyone knew wine never touched his lips. “It is gone again!”

  He put me on the floor, took my wrist, and dragged me through the halls, both our steps as quiet as ghosts’.

  The practice room was dark, but he lifted me again and I found the stool below my feet. I listened for him, and did not hear a sound. I just prayed that he was gone. When he spoke again I felt a chill.

  “There are deaf composers,” he whispered from the darkness, “who hear the music in their heads. As beautiful in deafness as in life, they claim!”

  I reached a hand out to locate the voice. Before my elbow was straight, my hand brushed his face. He gasped at my touch, and I withdrew in terror. But then he grabbed my arm and clenched my wrist so hard I whimpered. “I would give my ears for that!” he shouted. “Cut them off and never hear you sing again, if only I could hear it there!” He tapped my head firmly with his finger, and I almost fell, but he pulled me toward him by the wrist until I was pressed up against him. Again, I felt his breath along my cheek. He whispered in my ear. “I lie awake, Moses. Every night since you came. It is as though you were outside my window, but there is a wind blowing, and though I strain to hear you, I cannot.”

  He pressed his forehead to mine, his cold cheek against my warmth. “You shouldn’t have come,” he whispered.

  He let go of my arm and pushed me back so I could stand. His footsteps retreated. His fingers fumbled at the harpsichord. He played a note.

  “Sing,” he said. I sang the single note. Terror made it small.

  “No!” he cried. “Sing!” He slammed his finger into the key.

  I took a breath, and as I exhaled again I heard my breath in my chest. I did not force it open, but as Ulrich had taught me, I felt my next inhalation flow to those closed places, so that they, too, were open. My fear receded. With my next exhalation came the note—this time not loud, but clear. I sang, filling the room with my voice, until my breath ended. There was a silence.

  “The Credo from today,” he said and played the soprano melody from the third movement. I sang.

  Suddenly his hands were on me again—the hand petting the flower. On my chest, under my arms, the small of my back, until all these parts were vibrating with the song. Then his hands pushed against my back and pressed my chest against his ear.

  “Sing!” he ordered. I felt the song s
pread through me. It shook my knees.

  “Yes!” he gasped. I felt that he was right, that my voice had never rung so brilliantly. As I stood and sang for many minutes, he kept his head against my chest, like a child against his mother’s bosom.

  XI.

  We should blame St. Paul for the choirboy. Without his interdiction Mulier taceat in ecclesia, the world would have no need for these brats. For St. Paul, in ordering women silent in his churches, could not silence the female voice. From months before our birth, our ears are tuned to our mother’s sounds (as mine were to my mother’s bells), and thus, in the quest for perfect beauty, the church needed a substitution. In the choir of St. Gall, I was the best substitute they had ever known.

  Suddenly the abbot prized me as he prized the jewel in his ring, or the pure white stone of the twin towers of his new church, which began to rise like two unfinished staircases to heaven. When he heard me sing, or took a moment to observe our practice, he smiled greedily as if a feast were being prepared for him to eat. My reticence was an asset. I spoke only to Nicolai, in whose room I hid whenever I could evade Ulrich and the choir, but even then I offered little more than mumbles. When Nicolai asked me who my father was, I shrugged. When he asked me my real name, I said, “Moses.”

  For the Holy Offices, and most of the Masses, the chanting of the choir monks such as Nicolai was adequate to raise Staudach’s flock toward heaven. But on Holy Days, or for the celebration of the arrival of holy relics, or for Masses in memory of a generous bequest, the abbot called on Ulrich’s choir and we assumed our liturgical reason for existing. In all, we sang some twenty Masses each year as a united choir, and portions of our group were sent out on many more occasions to honor the smaller parishes in the abbey’s vast lands. Ulrich’s sublime taste selected our repertoire, which included ethereal masses from Cavalli, Charpentier, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, and Dufay. At our furtive midnight rehearsals, the repulsive man withdrew cantatas smuggled in from Leipzig, and in secret, I polluted the abbey with Bach’s Protestant song.