French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) (31 page)

‘The man’s a monster, a vile wretch, a…’

‘… great sensualist and a wise man, my dear fellow, for he has contrived to get Death to work for him in the amorous exploits of his life, and he has given body to his dreams by idealizing that nuisance known as Memory. And whatever anyone may say, he is our superior, for he is the only man who mourns his mistresses sincerely, the only man who savours genuine loss, which is the the philtre and the poison that killed the legendary lovers of yesteryear. Very few of their kind remain, and they are stranded in this century, this century of unbelief and lucre, in which tuberculosis remains the only killer.’

‘B
ARBE
, what is the time?’

‘A quarter to five,’ answered presently the old servant, who had gone to the mantel where, between two old-fashioned vases, stood a small Empire-period clock with four little columns of white marble, bearing aloft a short pinion embellished with gilt bronzes in the form of sinuous swans’ necks.

‘But I think our clock is slow,’ she went on. And with the steady, deliberate tread of people in the provinces who aren’t in a hurry, she went to the window, lifted the muslin curtain, and stared out at the nearby tower, the dark tower of the Halles de Bruges, to which is affixed, like a great crown, a vast dial which declines the hour unceasingly to the deserted streets around it.

‘Oh, yes! It is slow: it’s about to strike five o’clock,’ she went on. ‘The hands are already in place.’

Sure enough, one minute later the peal went out, and sent a kind of carolling, flustered nest effect into the air; less a song than a plaint, less a snow of flying feathers than a rain of iron and ash… Then the great bell struck five times, at regular intervals, slow and solemn, and each time it struck the nimbus of melancholy in the silence expanded, as a stone thrown into the waters of a canal makes rings that shimmer outwards until they reach the banks.

‘How long it goes on!’ said Van Hulst, falling back among his pillows, wearied from sitting up, even for these few instants, on his bed, to which for weeks now he had been confined by illness.

He had recently entered upon his convalescence, after the attack of typhoid fever which had laid him low. But at least the accesses of the fever had taken from him the sense of time, prostrating him until he lost consciousness, or exalting him in delirium and nightmares whose melting imagery absorbed him. It was only now, when things had grown calmer, that the days had started to drag, divided into the minutes that he had to live through and, as it were, tell out one by one.

And movement, occupation of any kind, was forbidden: and no company was to be admitted to the empty house, to this solitary bachelor’s world, crossed only by the silent tread of the old servant, faithful Barbe, who had got him up and seen to his needs, watched over him and restored him with an almost maternal solicitude.

But she could do nothing now to divert him a little: she could not converse, or try reading aloud. And he felt so alone, a prey to the slow, sad passage of time. Especially in the leaden northern twilight, in this late autumn on the quays of Bruges (he lived on the Quai du Rosaire), where a contagious melancholy came in through the windows, settled on the furniture in pallid tones, afflicted the mirrors with a kind of valedictory light…

And then there was the impartial little clock in his room, telling out its rosary of minutes without end! During his enforced inaction, empty of event and thought, the patient had little by little become obsessed with the time. He worried about the clock as if it were a living presence. He looked at it like a friend. It made him learn patience. It distracted him with its moving hands and the noise of its workings. It alerted him to the arrival of cheerier moments, when his light meals were served, milk or broth; best of all, to the return of darkness, and with it a good stretch of oblivion, which helped shorten the time. Mesmerizing dial! Other patients use their eyes to count out, mechanically, the number of flowers on the wallpaper or on the cretonne curtains. He engaged in calculations based on the clock. He sought the day when he would be cured, which was already imminent—but still imprecise… He consulted the clock, he checked the time, since often, like today, there was a discrepancy between his timepiece and the ancient clock on the tower. When it pealed, he compared one with the other. It became a small diversion for him, seeking the same time on the two dials, as one might a resemblance beween two faces.

When Van Hulst was better, he carried over from his sickness this preoccupation with the
right time
. In a town as calm and circumscribed as his own dead Bruges, the tower can be seen, or at any rate heard, in every district, even as far as the suburbs. So the correct time, the official time, so to speak, was given out by this clock. Elsewhere, time is never more than approximate. Everyone keeps their own, and makes do with it. Van Hulst had set his watch against the dial on the belfry, and through the entire period of his illness had
never altered it; now, every time he went out, he would check it, and became almost vexed if he remarked it were slightly fast or a tiny bit behind. His timetable, his meals, when he went to bed, when he got up, always at the same time, were synchronized to the minute.

‘Gosh! I’m five minutes slow,’ he would say sometimes, as if dismayed.

He made sure that his watch and the clocks in his home were always synchronized, not just the little Empire-period clock with the swan’s neck bronzes, but the kitchen clock with its dial decorated in red tulips, which old Barbe would consult for her housework chores.

One Friday, market day, Van Hulst, who was still convalescing, was out on one of his gentle strolls; he lingered among the stalls in the main square, and noticed a rather strange Flemish clock. It was half-hidden, almost buried, in the miscellaneous chaos covering the pavement. They sell everything at this market: canvas, cotton stuffs, objects in metal, agricultural implements, toys, antiques. A pell-mell patchwork, a turning-out of the centuries. The market is not limited to the stalls, where the sellers display their wares elegantly, underneath pale canvas awnings, shaped into hoods, rather like the winged coifs worn by nuns. Frequently the merchandise is piled or stacked anyhow on the ground, still covered with grey dust, as though issued straight from some inventory, the sale of some missing person’s goods and chattels, brought out of a house long since deserted and closed-up. Everything is old, dusty, oxidized, rusted, faded, and would look plain ugly were it not for the intermittent northern sun, which suddenly lights up patinas, or Rembrandtian russet golds. It was among such ruins, where occasionally a surprise lies hidden—a piece of furniture, an old jewel, some lacework—but of fine workmanship, that Van Hulst found the Flemish clock, which he instantly wanted to possess. It was made up of a long oak case with sculpted panels, warmly coloured by time, in varnishes and sheen; but its most original feature was the dial. Made of copper and pewter, wrought with taste and imagination, a whole playful cosmography was affixed to it, with a laughing sun, a gondola shaped like a crescent moon, stars that browsed with the bodies of lambkins, moving over the numerals as though they wanted to pick them out like flowers in the grass.

Van Hulst was delighted with this antique clock, which wore its date of birth triumphantly: ‘1700’, incised onto the original metal.
But had the mechanism survived, after counting out innumerable years? This was Van Hulst’s chief concern, for he desired it less as an antique curiosity than as one more clock which, old as it was, would synchronize with the young clocks in his house.

The merchant assured him that the clock worked perfectly, that even the chiming mechanism functioned accurately; in short, that it had never once gone wrong, throughout all its long years of telling the time.

And chime it did, loudly! Strong-voiced clock, it sang out the hour, in its new home at Van Hulst’s. And how thin, by comparison, were the little chimes of the Empire clock and the clock with the red tulips. Rather like children’s voices, issuing from clocks that had not yet come of age. But their venerable ancestor lived in harmony with them. Each kept slightly different time; but by an amusing anomaly, it was the old clock that struck the hour first, ahead of the others, as though enjoining them to follow suit. Was this grandmother more solid and indefatigable than her children?

Van Hulst smiled, cheered by the family of clocks that brought his home to life. Nevertheless, it troubled him rather that they were not perpetually in unison. When one lives together, is it not better to think as one!

The obsession with the
right time
, which had come over him during his illness, became stronger since he had added the Flemish clock to his collection. One was fast, the other was slow… which was right? He synchronized them all with the dial on the tower, that he could see from his windows. Especially when the hour struck. It displeased him that one should ring for longer than the other. When this happened, it was as though they were running after each other, calling each other, losing and seeking each other at all the variable intersections of time.

Little by little, Van Hulst developed a taste for pendulums and clocks. He had acquired others, from the Friday market, from jewellers and auctioneers. Without intending to, he had started a real collection, an interest that started to consume him. No man is ever really happy without an
idée fixe
.
*
It fills his time, the vacancies of his thought, startles his boredom, gives direction to his aimlessness, and sends a brisk, revivifying breeze over the monotonous water of his existence. Van Hulst had access to a subtle joy and to incessant surprises.
Now he had a veritable hobby. In the heart of morose Bruges, in the life of this bachelor, which had been free of incident, in which every day had been the same and of the same grey tone as the air of the town, what a change had come about! Now his life was intent, always on the alert for some new treasure! He experienced the collector’s lucky find! The encounter with the unexpected, that swells his treasure! Van Hulst already had some expertise. He had studied, sought, compared. He could see at a glance what period a clock was from. He could tell its age, sort the genuine article from the fake, appreciate a beautiful style; and he came to know the signatures of master clockmakers, whose products were works of art. By now, he possessed a whole series of different clocks, scarcely noticing he had done so. He had haunted the antique shops of Bruges. To swell his collection, he had even travelled to nearby towns. He followed auction sales, especially when estates were being sold off, for then one could pick up rare and curious items that had been forever in the possession of dynastic families. His collection became impressive. He had clocks of every type: Empire clocks in marble and bronze, or in bronze gilt; Louis XV and Louis XVI clocks, with curved panels in rosewood, with encrustations and marquetry, showing romantic scenes which enlivened the woodwork like a fan; he had mythological, idyllic, warlike clocks; clocks made out of biscuit, of costly and fragile pastes; Sèvres and Saxe clocks, where time laughs among flowers; Moorish clocks, Norman, or Flemish, with oak or mahogany casings, and chimes that whistled like blackbirds or squeaked like well-chains. Then there were the rarities: maritime water-clocks, in which water-drops compose the seconds. Finally, he possessed a whole panoply of little table clocks, and ceremonial clocks as delicate and as finely wrought as jewels.

Van Hulst considered that he needed more still. Is this not the subtle pleasure of the collector, that he can perpetually prolong his desire? It is infinite, and meets no limit, and knows nothing of that total possession which can disappoint by its very plenitude. And then there is the excitement caused when he cannot obtain the object he ardently desires! There was, in fact, just such an object, a very old clock that Van Hulst had spotted one day at Walburge’s, the richest antique-seller in Bruges, whose shop is situated on the rue de L’Âneaveugle,
*
and well known to collectors, and to foreigners who find it mentioned in guides. But the old antique-seller was connoisseur and
merchant in equal measure; if he had something special, he would refuse to sell it unless he got a good price. The old clock coveted by Van Hulst was in fact a very rare piece indeed, unique of its kind, marvellously carved, and adorned with painted scenes from the gospels, in the style of prayerbook illumination, and signed by the artist whose name was prized by connoisseurs. Walburge was asking a great deal of money for this clock. Van Hulst would bargain, leave, and then come back. He would have to dig deep, and he hesitated. The merchant stuck to his guns. With his shrewd eye, he could tell how much his client wanted the clock. Every time he entered the shop, Van Hulst would set to and examine the precious thing once more, with the excitement, the feeling in his fingertips that is a kind of pleasure; he had the nervous, sensitive hands of the collector, who are
tactile
by nature, and he would touch, handle, stroke the object of desire. It was as though he already half-owned it. But the embrace was incomplete, a half-possession: the caresses of the fiancé who dreams of a full consummation.