French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) (32 page)

Van Hulst had done his sums. He really could not afford the clock. He would never be able to raise the sum against his income, which barely covered his expenses. And he had already used the remainder on his previous purchases. His methodical lifestyle was such that he would never allow himself to eat into his capital, however strong the temptation. He simply had to bargain the price down.

Old Walburge would never have given in; he was one of those hard-headed Flemish types, who digs in his heels for no particular reason, and refuses to budge, rather than be seen to compromise. But by going again and again to the shop, and showing so openly his disappointment and dismay at not being able to buy, he won the heart of Walburge’s daughter, a girl of tender age called Godeliève.
*
She was the fruit of a late marriage, somewhat too delicate and pale, and she adorned the old widower’s home like a large virgin lily.

Van Hulst soon got Godeliève on his side. He had started to engage her in conversation, leaning over the loom she worked at to examine the fine lace, playing over it with his fingers as though on a keyboard.

Soon they were joined in a silent, friendly conspiracy against old Walburge. The latter could refuse nothing to his daughter, whom he adored. And the combined force of their two willpowers went to work.

And so it was that one day, pressed yet again by Van Hulst, the antique-seller gave way and accepted his offer. The collector was
overjoyed, especially when he took possession of the precious clock and placed it on an old oak table, where it gleamed in a direct ray of light from his windows in the vast room on the first floor which housed his singular clock museum. No sooner was it placed there than the newcomer added its humming, like a small metal bee, to all the others; the strange room was like Time’s Beehive.

Van Hulst was not, however, merely interested in having a collection of rare clocks. He treasured them, but not just as still-lifes. Of course, their appearance mattered to him, their structure, mechanism, and artistic merit. But there was another motive behind his assembling so many clocks, and it had to do with his concern for the right time. It was not enough that they should be beautiful. He wanted to consider them as the same, as being of one mind, to think like him, and to keep time, without ever deviating, from the second he had synchronized and set them running. But such a degree of harmonization was a miracle he would never have thought possible up till then. As well ask the pebbles on the beach, come from every corner of the horizon and rolled in the sea by such varying tides, to be identical in size. Yet try he did. Having been initiated by a clockmaker, he now knew the secrets of the wheels, the springs, the cogs, the diamond pins, the workings, links, and circuits, every nerve and muscle, the complete anatomy of this gold-and-steel beast whose steady pulse gives the universe its rhythm… He had acquired all the right tools: the eyeglass, the tiny saws and files, all the minuscule implements needed to take apart, polish, correct, and restore such sensitive and delicate organisms. With observation, patience, punctiliousness, by slowing this one and accelerating that one, attending to the weak point in each, he might just attain what was now his obsessive dream: to see them all in unison; to hear them, if only once, strike the hour at the same time, synchronized with the clock-tower; to attain his ideal of harmonizing time.

Van Hulst’s compulsion lasted a long while. He never got discouraged. Every afternoon he put in long hours, trying to synchronize all his dials. Whenever he had to go out, he would give careful instructions to his old servant that under no circumstances was she to enter the closed room, where she might upset the weights, brush against the chains, or generally disturb the clocks and thereby upset the result he so desired, which was to get all his clocks to strike the hour
in perfect unison. He would remind her of all this, every time he went out. And these days he went out more often. He continued his quest, he remained on the look-out. He was also a frequent visitor at old Walburge’s shop, in the rue de l’Âneaveugle, to see if a new clock had come in. Mostly it was the gentle Godeliève who greeted him. She was always sitting in her place by the window, where the grey day, filtered through curtains, darkened her honey-coloured hair… She was like a Memling Madonna,
*
with eyes like little mirrors in which you could see yourself, amidst the blues of the sky. She worked unceasingly at her lace-making, and the spindles of the loom played with her fingers, animated her fingers, gave themselves up to her fingers, as though she had tamed them.

When old Walburge was out doing errands, Van Hulst engaged Godeliève in long and restful conversations. As a committed collector, he returned to the shop frequently. Little by little, however, he realized that he went there not only in the interests of his beloved museum, but also in part for the girl, who had become dear to him too. Especially since once again she had been unwell. She had grown pale, and thinner still, even though she was already as slender and incorporeal as the Saint Ursula in the Hospital reliquary. Van Hulst was deeply stirred by Godeliève’s frailty. What was wrong with her? Was there some hidden malady? Or a lack of vitality, something like a death-wish?

Before long, he became anxious as well. Perhaps she was fading away from some deep hurt, unavowed even to herself, from some secret too heavy for the delicate soul to bear. She surrounded herself in the mystery of it, in the nimbus of something that was divine in her. And seeing her melancholic, Van Hulst fell in love with her. He had to confess as much to himself. It was for her, to gaze upon her, and to hear her gentle voice—the mysterious voice that canal water has under the bridges—that he stopped by so often at the antique shop. The clocks were merely an excuse. By now he was neglecting his own, being so taken up with Godeliève. Is love not an obsession too, one that annihilates all the others, that makes one happier than all the others? And is the lover also not in pursuit of a breathtaking collection of wonderful little nothings: looks, the lowered gaze, the squeeze of a hand, words, declarations, letters, pledges, kisses, that are similarly inventoried and set in order like a treasured collection? And when it is first love, a whole museum comes into being!

Van Hulst, who was already greying, had in fact never experienced real passion. It was as though his heart had lain dormant, dulled by the dead city, with its aimless waters, its empty quays, its silence, Bruges the mystic, given up entirely to the sky.

No access of tender feeling had ever troubled his single life. But here was the old bachelor, chronically stuck in his ways, a victim of his tics and the mad devotion to his clocks, here he was about to betray that devotion, and become someone tender, ardent, and loving.

And it was all the more ardent this time, in that his passion could not so easily find satisfaction. Collecting had been child’s play, almost instant gratification. But how could he satisfy his passion for the sweet and delicate Godeliève! So delicate! She constantly fell ill, and sometimes weeks would pass before he saw her again. But he went on stopping by the antique shop, asking after her, discussing her with her father. The latter was also worried now, concerned by the mysterious malady that no doctor seemed able to fathom. Van Hulst dared not go every day to the rue de l’Âneaveugle. But even when he stayed home his sole thought was for Godeliève, completely taken up as he was by the girl he had once hoped to make his. He grew alarmed. Perhaps the nameless illness that was eating away at her would end up killing her! The idea sent him into a panic. What if she should slip through his fingers! The collector’s instinct within him rose up once more, whetted by the challenge, and he came to desire the object all the more ardently as it escaped him. She was now the wonderful clock that was his heart’s whole desire; it was the ticking of her heart that he wanted to hear; it was her face he wanted to set as a guide to his life, that soft dial of flesh with its eyes in enamel, which had gradually led him into neglecting his clocks. The long vigils in his museum were all over, like the dream of synchronized time, the diverting sessions of clock-restoration, identifying all the little malfunctions in the cogs and the springs before him on his bench, with the glass fixed in his eye, pursued with all the patience of laboratory science. He still wound up his clocks and pendulums, but he did it mechanically, merely out of habit, raising the weighted chains, turning the keys, but he was no longer concerned with the dials or the time they showed, he abandoned them to themselves, scattered like a flock the shepherd has set loose, his eye suddenly distracted, gazing from star to star…

His single thought was for Godeliève. Would he win her one day? He had never dared declare himself. And anyway, what was the good? She seemed reserved for death, rather than as someone’s fiancée. On his latest visits to the antique shop he had not seen her. She had taken to her bed. Was it not his great misfortune, to have met Godeliève, to have conceived this unattainable love for her, a love that was enough to have spoilt all his earlier joys?

Van Hulst started to brood; he scarcely spoke; his old servant Barbe scarcely recognized her master. It was as though he were always waiting for something. His thoughts grew dark; he imagined the worst.

His fears, as it happened, were only too justified. One Sunday, towards evening, a messenger arrived at his house, sent by Walburge the antiques merchant, one of those messengers they have in Bruges who go from door to door, sent by families when they have to announce a bereavement. Godeliève was dead. She had suffocated in a sudden coughing fit that had brought up blood. Hurrying immediately over to his shop, Van Hulst had learned this from old Walburge himself.

And there on a white bed, with a few lilies scattered round the pillow and with her face framed by rivulets of hair, now stilled, in the light of a calmly burning candle, he suffered the grief of gazing one last time upon the young woman he had hoped one day to win, but in a different white dress, and with other lilies.

Returning home fairly late in the evening (he had stayed a good while at Walburge’s), Van Hulst was startled to find there was still a light in the corridor. Barbe was waiting up, she of all people, who was usually in a hurry to get to bed. He could hear her walking about. Her footsteps seemed to be coming from the first floor, apparently from the room that housed the clock museum. What had happened? Did she not obey him? Did she thus dare to handle and disturb what he had expressly forbidden her to go anywhere near when he was out? But the moment she heard him come in, Barbe leaned over the banister and cried out from the stairwell:

‘Monsieur! Monsieur!’

Her voice had a slight quaver in it, as if she had some serious news to impart, which frightened him rather.

Van Hulst hurried up the stairs. Barbe cried out from further off:

‘Monsieur! The clocks have struck!…’

‘What? How?’ Van Hulst was baffled.

The servant explained that her master had left open the door of the museum, no doubt accidentally. In the stillness of the house she had suddenly heard a loud noise. As the great clock-tower struck ten, all the chime mechanisms from all the clocks began to strike, all together and at the same time. The result was tumultuous, a strange coppery sound breaking the silence. She had entered the room. All the clocks stopped at the tenth stroke, perfectly in unison, as if in measure, with not a single voice out of line or going over; they were all juxtaposed, and superimposed, and they all sounded as one. And on all the dials all the hands were opened at exactly the same compass angle… Shocked, Van Hulst looked hard. Most of the clocks still showed exactly the same time. A mere twenty minutes had passed since the incredible moment he had dreamed of for so long, and that had come to pass. It would never come again. Little disharmonies were already creeping in. The old Flemish clock began running fast; the little Louis XV pendulum, with its romantic panelwork, was going slow.

Strange skulduggery! The clocks had synchronized themselves, for the space of a minute. They had coalesced, just this once, and they had done so
against him
, to avenge his neglect of them; the very evening that Godeliève had died, together they had struck, or rather they had sung the hour, like a conspiracy of abandoned mistresses whose reign, from that moment on, began once more.

The truth dawned on Van Hulst: his plan to harmonize time had been realized, but without him, and without his having been able to enjoy it, punished as he was for coveting love, for having cherished and mourned Godeliève, for having abandoned the ideal for reality. The ideal is always jealous, and demands, if it is to be attained, immense, single-minded purpose. Is it not our renunciation of Life itself, that alone makes us fit to attain our Dream?

A
S
she was getting dressed after lunch, in her special and even mysterious dress, the snow started to fall.

Below the curtains which glowed like stained glass, lifted and pinned back to let in a bit of light, she watched it falling, the beautiful snow falling and falling—and it was sad and it was solemn; it gave the impression of some ironic and occult force, of some divine soul, terrible and cold, that in disdain spread wide its light layer of crystal ice over the panoply of human pretentiousness that analyses everything and understands nothing.