The Morning Bell

The Morning Bell “They killed him, that they did. When they finally found him. It did take them some time, though. If I am any luckier than him, I can’t tell. Let’s hear the verdict first. If yesterday you had told me I would be sleeping on the cold ground in this godforsaken cell, I would have laughed right in your face. I might even have called you names. Here in Cashel we don’t do things as you do in the black city. Here it is said to be more peaceful, quieter and all that. And in a way it is. We monks are granted a special treatment. The Cistercian Order is not as full of contradictory rules as in the other orders. Why should I not say it? I am imprisoned; well, I can see no iron door, but I can see no window either, if you get my meaning. And it’s so cold and damp and smelly in here. It’s colder outside? But at least outside one can see the sun. I remember the sun on the very day he went to see me. It was a bright, cold, misty disc. It was one of those frosty December days when the whole nature and animals and trees and whatnots stand petrified and white. The matins were just over; I was asked to go to the castle to get some of our wood that’s stored up there. Because it’s drier up there; can’t you smell the pungent dampness oozing? Well I can, without effort. The door of the Abbey was no sooner shut that I felt a hand shaking my shoulder. Such a fright I had! I think I swore. I have always been scolded for the laxness of my tongue. It was – well, my man; if man we may call him. He had this big hump on his back and that limp leg of his. He was ugly. Some of his teeth were God knows where, and the little teeth he had left were of some doubtful colour and constitution. It’s difficult not to shiver at the thought. He had a big, reddish, untrimmed beard. Those who didn’t call him names called him Judas. I never heard him complaining or showing any resentment; his simple life in the woods was enough for him I guess. In fact it worked against him, people started speaking about black magic and cats and crows and reading into the entrails of dogs and such nonsense. It died out as a false rumour is bound to. But a somewhat devilish image still stuck onto the man’s back and protruded like his hump. That’s what I had in mind when I saw that it was him that gave me such a fright. He talked to me; I didn’t know the heathen creature could speak. I had heard him growl, when he was coming to beg something to eat, but that was all. He could talk in a clear, connected speech like now, you know. Quite amazed me, in fact. The man asks me if I can hear his confession. You know, I’m not supposed to do that sort of things, but I did take pity on the man’s misfortune. He was shivering from head to toe. If only somebody had told me it was not from cold, I wouldn’t have gone behind this bloody bush. He didn’t want to come into the Abbey; he was eager to be listened to. I had refused to some respectable people what I granted him without further ado. He asked me, I accepted. There’s nothing I can add on that point. There may be some curious part in me that was stirred by the outcome that was very likely to be matter for gossip. I can’t answer for this part. I had to walk with him to a distant bush, him limping like some drunkard, me frozen to the bones. We finally got there, and he insisted on me not looking at him, as in, you understand, a real confession. I wasn’t only accepting to hear him, but I accepted to take orders from him. Saturnine day. The humpback started to deliver his confessions as if he wanted to get through with it, but I wasn’t going to give in to this sort of devilry. I asked him to slow down and to be clearer. I could hear him moan, moan you understand. I became sort of feverish: the man was guilty of something, or at least felt guilty of it; he was ashamed of something, and this was new to me. So he starts again. I could see the vapour his breath made in the air; and now I think of it, it was the breath from his mouth and nostrils. Gosh. Cold days had arrived on Time’s swift wings and cold was giving shapes to our breaths; I should have paid more attention to these sculpted shapes as he was unfolding his dark secret. From what I could make out, he was speaking of a little girl he had given shelter to. But what I couldn’t figure out is that the girl seemed to come from the village. At this point his English became as limping as his leg, as deformed as his back, but somehow or another I could understand him. His language was suggestive, in every possible way you can understand this word. His words triggered images in my head, before my eyes. I was carried away by his words, his raucous voice, by his strange narrative, by the morning bell that was ringing in my © Copyright Rodolphe Blet 2009

ears and in the valley beyond. I didn’t speak a single word, not one. He was justifying himself for his conduct. His pleading tone told me more than the mere words and at once I understood. I remembered that a little girl from the village was missing, a girl with blond hair. Like ‘his’ girl. I was having the story from the man, the real story, from the mouth of the man who had abducted that little girl in her sleep, in her very bed in her very house at night. It sounded incredible, simply unbelievable. He was pouring his insanity into my ears. Why me? He was telling me of him speaking on a daily basis with that girl – in secret lest her father should know of it and beat him so the girl said – of her being mistreated by her father who was soiling so beautiful a thing, so caring and tender a girl who didn’t want to go back to her old home and preferred the new one with him in the woods, of them being so friendly to each other, of her having nightmares and yelling at her father not to lie in her bed, not to wee in her again. He was telling me this with clenched fists, the clouds of vapour becoming denser and irregular both in shapes and rhythm. He was becoming a thing of wrath; I could hear his leather-battered shoes scraping the cold, sterile ground on the deserted field. He was telling me she was his now, that he could bring her up by himself. I could hear him break thorns from the bush behind which he was hiding and confessing and prick his skin. I could hear that, can you believe it? I didn’t have to strain my ears, I could hear his little gasps of pains, even the sound the thorns made piercing his filthy skin. God, this humpback was trying to reach his soul through with the thorns and impale it. What was I supposed to do? I had passed the threshold of the cloister to get wood, for God’s sake; and now I didn’t know what to do. I was halfminded to go to the man’s house, however derelict and grimy and free the little girl. But I was also half-minded to run into the cloister and tell everything to the first monk I chanced to meet and lock myself up in my cell. Two half-minds don’t make one, as you surely know. The bitter irony of it is that I didn’t go to the man’s house and that’s what they blame me for; that I didn’t tell anyone and that’s what they blame me for; and now I am locked up in a cell – not mine, mind you – I want to go out of it and run, run away as if I were guilty myself and hide in the first bush I happen to meet and cry and beg for God’s mercy. Ought I to betray the man’s faith by breaking the bond of confession? Ought I to betray God? One monk has told me that I wasn’t officially allowed to hear a confession, hence I wasn’t bound strictly speaking to the code of duty and had to report what I had heard. No, thank God, the girl’s not dead. They found her playing in the yard near the house. They say that when she saw them coming she locked herself up in the house; they had to persuade her to unbolt the door, which she did after a good while. They still had the blood of the humpback on their hands when they carried her away from his house. Why me, I ask? It could have been you or any other monk, but it was me. What did I do after? After what? The confession? Nothing. I couldn’t move, I was frozen to the ground; my blood seemed to be congealed as well. I can’t say I panicked because in my mind panicking is like a chicken running with its head chopped off. I stood up for a long time, well after he had left. I realised he had left when I first tried to move. I peered around the bush and I saw a heap of thorns lying on the white ground. I eventually went to the castle and brought back some wood with two lads, in a low cart. I lived two days and two nights completely awake, because I was frighten to death to fall asleep; and every time, the morning bell was calling back its horde of excruciating images. What sort of images could I have seen then, when one’s imagination is unleashed? Then I heard they had caught him. Me? At best they’ll send me home and out of the Order. Yes, my trial is being held up at the very moment we speak. I’d like to be there and defend my own case. They didn’t see the clouds of reeking vapour exude from his foul mouth, they didn’t hear the thorns pricking the sinful flesh, the abominable soul, they didn’t see the images in my head, the images those ghastly words triggered. I did. They found out because they had the decency, in their barbarity, to let him speak. I guess they weren't taken aback nor even decent when they heard him speak; they were awed. Apparently – but I have only second-hand testimonies – he claimed he had paid his debt to God, and that his sinful acts were pardoned, but not the father’s. He still had to answer to God. He said a monk had heard him and offered him penitence. No, of course I didn’t. © Copyright Rodolphe Blet 2009

After this second confession of his, they tore him to pieces with their bare teeth and hands. Didn’t bother to use weapons or such sharp things. Naturally enough they enquired who that devilish monk was. I had said nothing, not a word. I guess my silence was interpreted as consent. I remember that on the road back from the castle, with the wheels of the cart creaking under their wooden burden on the cold-hardened stones, I wished I were somewhere else, in a Carmelite convent where silence is Godly, where the morning bell sounds differently. Here in Cashel silence is wicked and the morning bell spells out ‘legion’ in the frosty air every time it rings. And now I am wallowing in this damp cell, waiting to be condemned for my lack of initiative. When there’s life there’s hope? Tell this to that godforsaken humpback.”

© Copyright Rodolphe Blet 2009