The Bells (13 page)

IV.

A
year after the death of Frau Duft, I began to grow.

It was as if all of that Nebelmatt plunder, all those St. Gall lamb shanks, all that bacon, all that mutton, all that cheese, those almonds, that milk, cider, and wine, had all merely been stored away in my little body, and then, all of a sudden, I discovered all that hidden fuel and used it finally to burst my shell.

It began as a dull pain in my hands and feet during choir practice one day. The ache remained for several weeks, then one morning I awoke to discover it had spread to my knees, my hips, and elbows, and then to all my joints. It hurt so much I could not sleep. The pain spread to my eye sockets, and I imagined my skull would split. In six months my hands and feet had doubled in size; in a year I had grown a head taller.

In the abbey, my growth was viewed with concern, like the gathering of dark clouds. “Hard times to come,” Nicolai told me one night in his cell. He told me how my voice would soon crack, and I would no longer be a soprano.

“There is no telling what will happen,” he said. “You will probably be a tenor, but maybe a bass.” He hoped Ulrich’s favor would be enough to find a way for me to stay in the abbey. Staudach, Nicolai said, might not agree to make me a novice, with no wealthy parent to be my benefactor, but he might let me polish silver until my voice developed its final character. “Then,” Nicolai said, “we can find the best place for you to begin your career.” He nodded knowingly. “Venice, most likely.”

“My career?” I asked.

“You do want to be a musician, do you not?”

I considered this. “Like Bugatti?”

“Well,” said Nicolai, as he glanced over at Remus, deep in his book, “in a way. Maybe Staudach would let me out to take you on tour. We could sing in all the greatest cathedrals of Europe.” Nicolai waved an arm as if those great buildings were lined up on his wall.

I told him I would like that.

“Of course,” he said, “the next time I leave these walls, I doubt Stuckduck will let me back in. But then we could start our own monastery—you, me, and Remus.” At this, Remus looked up from his book. He snorted, then returned to his pages. Nicolai ignored him. “One thing is sure: if you’re allowed to tour the world and become rich and famous, you are not leaving me behind!”

I smiled.

He lay back on his bed and closed his eyes contentedly. “Now we just have to wait for your voice. Be patient.”

Many nights I stood naked before the narrow mirror in my attic room and examined the body that seemed every night to have changed.
I have made you a musico
, Rapucci had said, and now there was no doubt. There were Bugatti’s long, delicate fingers, his broad, rounded chest, almost like a bird’s. My head brushed the slanted ceiling. Bugatti had seemed so tall to me years before, but now I was taller still, taller than all the monks save Nicolai. The novices my age had dark hairs above their lips, I had none. They had Adam’s apples jutting from their necks; mine was as smooth as a woman’s. My skin was white and pure, with dabs of red on my cheeks, but not a single imperfection, none of the pimples like the other boys. My lips were slightly plump, not unlike a woman’s, but no one would ever have mistaken this face for a woman’s face. Those eyes were so piercing they made me start each time I glimpsed them in the mirror. But still I looked every night, for I saw in the glass not a man, not a woman, but an angel.

I outgrew that church. I destroyed the choir, because even when I sang at low volume my voice made the other boys’ seem narrow and cold. In our brief encounters at the gate, where Amalia still bowed her head and seemed to be in prayer to any who might see her, I longed to hear her praise my singing. “Oh, Moses,” she said one Sunday, “my heart flutters when you sing. To think my mother and I used to have you to ourselves.” I peered through a higher gap now, looking down upon her beauty. Occasionally, she glanced up, and I saw her trying to discern my shape through the tangles of golden leaves, but she never saw my angelic form. “Touch my hand,” she said one day, impetuously, abandoning her pious bow for a moment to reach out to touch the gate. I passed two long, slender fingers through a hole and caressed the soft skin of her hand for an instant. Her cheeks burned as she hurried back to meet her aunt.

Everyone wanted to hear me sing. Even Protestants from the city came to hear our Mass. Eventually, the huge church was too small to sustain the crowds. Staudach portioned the entrance so that the wealthier worshippers, whose favor he required, would be sure of securing pews. The others jostled to stand at the back. The crowd whispered and slept and ate while Staudach preached of God’s perfection, but they were silent while I sang.

Then, in a single night, all of this, and much more, did change.

We were in Nicolai’s room. Remus was reading gloomily, and Nicolai was regaling me with visions of our future: we would travel Europe together as singer and agent. He had somehow conspired to escape the refectory that night with three pitchers of abbey wine, and having already drunk two of them, he was bleary eyed, and in the best of moods. Now his plan for me had morphed: A palace in Venice would be our home, and from there we would travel to the greatest of Europe’s stages. We would take Remus along to carry our bags, he explained, laughing and roaring so loudly I was sure every monk in the passage could hear.

Nicolai had decided that since my voice was so amazingly slow in changing, I would certainly become a tenor. “Tenors are the worst,” he said. “They dress like princes, strut around as if their every movement should make ladies swoon, which of course is the case. Everywhere they go they leave a trail of unconscious women in their wake. You cannot invite them to your dinner parties, because you’d have a pile of guests upon the floor.” Suddenly he looked very concerned. “You won’t be like that, will you, Moses?”

I shook my head.

“No?” he cried, after downing another goblet of wine. “And why not? What is wrong with making a few women faint? That is what they want. Every woman wants to faint from love at least once in her life. Men want that, too, of course, but their size makes it harder for them to swoon. I’ve only swooned once before out of love.”

“Not for real,” Remus said, looking up. “At the Teatro Ducale you were faking.”

“I was not.”

I glimpsed a suppressed grin on Remus’s face. “If you ever really faint,” he said, “the world will know. Floors are not built to withstand such stress.”

Nicolai shrugged. “He’s right. I am not permitted to faint. What I would not give to be a slender lady! Then I could collapse whenever the spirit took me! I would do it all the time.” He stood up and gave his best impression of daintiness, his giant hands before his chest like a rabbit’s paws. “I would tune my ears and eyes so sharply to beauty in all its forms that I would totter on the edge. All I would need would be a glimpse to make my heart flutter, and I would fall.” He looked at me, pretended to fall in love, put a hand to his forehead, and then swooned, carefully, gently, onto the bed. Even so, the bed frame whined. I clapped at his performance. Remus grunted.

“As it is,” Nicolai said, reclining on the mattress and staring at the ceiling, “with this frame I need to dull my ears and cloud my eyes so I do not run risks for myself and for mankind. This body is a responsibility.” He rubbed his vast gut with two giant hands.

Remus shook his head.

“Don’t worry, Moses,” Nicolai said, giving his belly a last, loving pat. “Remus worships this form one way or another.”

Remus looked up angrily from his book, no grin on his face now. “You need to watch your tongue. That wine is making it loose.”

“Oh, dear Remus, we don’t have secrets here. Not with Moses. He keeps nothing from us. We keep nothing from him.”

“Some things are better left unspoken.”

Nicolai nodded up at the ceiling. “You are right, Remus. Some loves cannot be spoken of.”

Remus frowned. “Thank you.” He shrugged abashedly at me as if to pardon the affront.

“Sometimes only song can do.” Nicolai sat up. I smiled. Remus looked pained. We both heard the energy in his voice—the gathering of a storm.

“No, Nicolai. Not now.”

“Moses?”

“Yes?” I sat up and placed my hands on my knees, an eager audience.

He poured another goblet of wine and drank it down like water, and then stood in the middle of the room. He swayed from side to side. His eyes were unfocused, but so bright and joyful. “It is time to sing!”

Remus closed his book. “Nicolai, it is too late,” he said. He stood. “Moses and I will go.”

“It is never too late to sing of love.”

“Tonight it is.” Remus pointed his book at Nicolai. “Don’t give them another reason to hate you, Nicolai.”

“Hate me? How could anyone hate me for my love?”

“We will talk about it in the morning.”

“When I am not so drunk on love?”

“Among other liquids.” Remus nodded at me and beckoned toward the door.

“No!” cried Nicolai, as if I were about to betray him. He raised a finger to keep me in my chair, swaying gently behind it. “A sincere lover never backs down from a declaration of his love. Now I must sing, or else the gods will not believe in my love.”

“Please,” Remus said earnestly. “Not tonight.”

Nicolai looked at me. “Do you see the problem? If I sing they hate me; if I do not, I hate myself.” He shrugged. “It is not a difficult choice.”

He returned to his wine, poured yet another goblet, took a gulp, and stepped onto his improvised stage. Remus pulled my sleeve. I leaned as if I would get up to leave with him, but I did not. I could not.

Nicolai began extremely quietly:
O cessate di piagarmi, o lasciatemi morir, o lasciatemi morir!
He turned toward me and whispered: “ ‘O release me from this anguish, o let me die, o let me die!’ Don’t you see, Moses? I’m tortured by love!”

Luc’ ingrate, dispietate
. He swayed wildly, his arms like branches in the wind. He sang more loudly now, loud enough that other monks must have heard him through the walls.
Più del gelo e più dei marmi fredde e sordi ai miei martir, fredde e sorde ai miei martir
. Nicolai put his hands over his eyes as though he wished to tear them out.

“Okay, Nicolai,” said Remus. He tugged harder on my shirt. “That is enough. You have made your point.”

Nicolai repeated,
O cessate di piagarmi, o lasciatemi morir, o lasciatemi morir!

“Moses,” Remus said. He shook my arm. “We have to go. He’ll stop if we leave.”

“That’s what they do,” Nicolai said to me, as if Remus were not there. “They just repeat the same thing over and over and over and over again. It makes it stronger. And besides, it is not the words that matter. It is the song.”

O cessate di piagarmi, o lasciatemi morir, o lasciatemi morir!
He sang even more loudly now, and placed his hand over his heart as if it were about to burst. His vibrant bass rang in my stomach. I was sure the whole wing could hear his love song. I couldn’t contain the smile growing on my face. I laughed with joy. Nicolai did not have my perfect control of the notes, but he grasped the power of the music.

“You, too, Moses.” He reached a hand out to welcome me onto his stage.

“Moses, please,” Remus said.

I looked from the one man to the other, Remus with such worry on his face, Nicolai with such joy. It was not a difficult choice to make.

I had never sung in Italian before, but I did my best to imitate Nicolai, two octaves higher.
O cessate di piagarmi, o lasciatemi morir, o lasciatemi morir!

“Louder!” he yelled, like some pagan priest. “Heaven needs to hear us!”

O cessate di piagarmi, o lasciatemi morir, o lasciatemi morir!

“Together!” He shut his eyes and waved his arms.

O cessate di piagarmi, o lasciatemi morir, o lasciatemi morir!

As I repeated the words again alone, Nicolai improvised, and then he sang a simple bass line while I improvised. We sang the same words over and over, each time further and further from the original until only the words remained the same. The song was no longer about love; now it was about music, about the power of music. Power like Zeus’s thunderbolt.

Nicolai sang alone.

We sang together.

I sang alone.

Nicolai laughed while I trilled. I drew out each word to ten, twenty notes, and that single sentence lasted a minute. Nicolai shook his head in admiration. Though Remus crouched as though he wanted to run out of the room, his eyes were riveted on my face, his mouth slightly ajar. I realized in that moment that no one, save for Ulrich, knew the true power of my voice. In church, I had been restrained by those tame, sacred songs. Now I felt the power of this Italian music, so much more potent than even Bach’s. I drew a breath into my enormous lungs and I sang. My voice swelled as it climbed. Nicolai’s mirror rang with the vibrations of my voice. I sang more loudly. I wanted to shatter every window in the abbey with the beauty of my song. I breathed again, and my voice ebbed, then swelled higher, until I found a note as high and clear as I had ever sung. I held it, my voice vibrating tiny ripples of sound within the larger wave, until that giant breath was gone.

I stopped and gasped for air. It took several seconds until my voice finally dissipated into the night. Then, in the silence, I could see on my friends’ faces that in an instant my life had changed.

Nicolai no longer smiled. He held his hand in front of his mouth. His face was white, as though he had seen a ghost. “God forgive us,” he said.

Remus stared at the floor.

“What?” I asked. “What is wrong?” But I already knew what was wrong, knew it even though I did not understand it at all.

Nicolai had tears in his eyes. “How could I have been such a fool?” he said.

Remus looked up at me, and his eyes seemed to say,
Moses, it is time for us to stop pretending
. And then he looked back at the floor.

Nicolai stared at me as if my body were dissolving into mist. He took a step toward me and reached out.