The Bells (35 page)

XXIII.

T
he composer Chevalier Christoph Willibald Gluck was asleep when the ghost slid into his bedroom. It glided to his bedside and coughed. The maestro did not awake. “Hello!” the ghost said. “Wake up!” Still Gluck did not stir, so the ghost shook his arm.

Gluck’s eyes shot open. He jerked up in fright. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“Light a candle.”

Gluck leaned to the table beside his bed and did as instructed. When the ghost’s face was illuminated, he gasped.

“Orpheus!” he said.

Orpheus nodded gravely.

“Will you sing again?” he asked. “Will you sing for me again?”

Orpheus seemed to consider this a moment. “I cannot say,” he said. “It is not for me to decide.”

“Who decides?” Gluck threw back his sheets and climbed out of his bed. “Who decides?” The ghost stepped back as Gluck advanced.

“The … the music,” said the ghost. “The music decides it.”

Gluck nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” The composer took Orpheus’s hand in both of his. For a moment he pressed it to his brow in supplication. “Orpheus,” whispered Gluck, “but why have you come to me tonight?”

“Music,” said the ghost, as if reciting a message committed to memory, “has blessed you with Her favor. Now you must do something in return.” And then Orpheus told Gluck what he must do, when a ringing bell woke the composer from his dreams.

It took me several days to get everything in order. I told my friends what part they must play, and the danger it entailed. “May the empress cut off our heads,” said Nicolai. Tasso turned white at Nicolai’s words, and so the giant slapped the little man on the back, knocking him several steps across the floor. We bid Herr Kost goodbye and told him he might seek other tenants. Remus had Nicolai’s shattered lenses replaced. I bought a short knife, which the bladesmith said was the sharpest I could hope to find in Vienna, and I wore it on my belt. I purchased a lump of the softest beeswax, some woolen batting, and a yard of muslin, which I cut into strips.

Tasso brought me the small iron stove he used on cold nights beneath the stage. He collected all his possessions in a bundle, then returned for a final evening at the theater—Guadagni was singing
Orfeo
once again.

Late that night, we heard Tasso running up the stairs. He darted into the parlor, grinning wickedly. “Now I never can go back!” He slammed the door behind him. When I asked him what he meant, he scurried first to the fireplace—the stage where I had sung my concert several months before. He crept back and forth like a cat burglar. He peered up at the ceiling. “I watched his feet through the cracks above,” he narrated in a crafty whisper, “but I listened, too. I waited until he sang high and loud, and then”—Tasso yanked an invisible line—“I pulled. His song became a scream. He fell!

“But then,” Tasso’s face turned pale and grave, “I almost died.” He nodded thrice—once at each of us. “You see, Guadagni was expecting this. Must have dreamed about it every night. His scream was just a battle cry! He landed like a cat. He pulled a knife from his shirt, and even before he saw me in the darkness he stabbed the air.” Tasso jabbed to his left, his right, murdering half a dozen men. “He would have killed us all!”

Tasso shrugged nonchalantly. “But I was too quick for him. I grabbed a loop, set loose a counterweight, and shot right past his head. Kicked the knife out of his hand. I smiled and waved at him from the chute. ‘You won’t survive the night,’ he snarled, and tried to climb back onto the stage, but he couldn’t manage it—flailed there like a drowning rat clutching some scrap of floating wood until two stagehands came and pulled him up. They laughed at him! The whole theater
laughed
at Guadagni!”

We, too, laughed and cheered the hero Tasso, but finally Remus cut us off and pointed out that Guadagni likely meant his threat. “You’d better hide away in the coach until we’re ready,” Remus advised. “He’ll come looking for you here.” Tasso’s eyes grew wide in terror. He vanished like a mouse.

As Remus had suggested, Tasso spent those last two days preparing our coach and team of mares. He tried to teach me to drive them, but I found this as difficult as juggling. When I finally judged we were ready, we filled our new home with our belongings. Last of all, with Nicolai’s help, we lifted Tasso’s stove to the coach’s roof and then I strapped it down.

It was midnight when we departed our rooms for the final time, on December 30, 1762, one day short of Guadagni’s deadline. It took us the better part of an hour to ease the giant coach down the icy, pitted street. Tasso sat on his perch and coaxed the mares slowly, taking utmost care not to crack a wheel. We came to the glacis and beheld a full moon shining silver on the wide expanse of snow. This plate of ice crackled as we passed, as though the earth below were stirring in its sleep. We drove through the palace gate and into the city. The streets were empty, windows dark. The city slept, just as I had planned it.

Tasso steered the carriage to the Riecher Palace, and when we arrived, I leaned out the coach door and whispered exactly where to stop.

I turned back to my friends. “Ready?” They nodded, and we set out.

We walked back toward the Stephansdom, which was a black tower in the sky. Remus and I held Nicolai’s arms so he would not fall on the patches of ice. We soon came to the church and slipped inside. We paused in the entrance. The cavernous nave was lit by the glow of candles whose light barely warmed the branched pillars of the ceiling. We saw no one, but I heard the creak of a pew, and a soft footstep on the stone, and I knew we were not alone. Nicolai squinted toward the altar as if something wicked hid behind it.

I whispered to Tasso to follow me. I showed him which door I wished to open. The little man scurried toward it through the shadows. I listened to the clink of metal as he probed the lock. Then I heard the joyful creak of hinges.

We climbed the stairs slowly. Nicolai crawled on all fours in front, and once we knew we were out of hearing of those in the nave, he said between heaving breaths, “I feel the burden … of my sins … lighten with each stair.” I silently hoped he did not tumble down and kill us all.

We finally reached the top, and for several minutes we rested. I lit a candle. Nicolai mopped his brow with the sleeve of his tattered coat. He squinted up at the sixteen bell ropes hanging through the sixteen holes in the ceiling.

“If this bell takes sixteen men to ring it, how are we three to do it? You overestimate my girth if you think I am worth fourteen men.”

“No,” I said, standing up and walking to one of the ropes. “Sixteen is not necessary. It is simply a matter of timing. Not even sixteen men could lift her, but you three can make her rock. You can make her swing.”

I grasped the rope with one hand and pulled hard. The rope could have been hooked to the ceiling for all I felt it budge. But I listened. Those sixteen ropes passed through sixteen holes in the ceiling, and then through sixteen pulleys, and into a single strand, which curled around her wheel. Those pulleys gave the slightest squeak. The Pummerin rocked the slightest hair. Now I listened for a second squeak—the sign that her movement had crested and reversed—and when I heard this, I tugged again. The squeak was louder this time. I repeated this process—then again, again, again—giving sharp, timed tugs to the rope, and gradually I perceived a give.

“They’re moving!” Tasso said. He pointed at the ropes.

They were indeed. All sixteen ropes gently bowed their tails upon the floor in perfect coordination.

“It will take a while,” I said, “before she swings heavily enough to ring. But that is fine. I have much to do.”

Remus laid his hand on a bell rope. When he felt it drop in his hand, he pulled it along. “I can feel it,” he said. He ran his thumb along the frayed fibers as if the rope were some exotic creature he had never read about in any of his books.

“You keep it going,” I said, and let go of my rope.

I took the beeswax, wool, and muslin from the sack, and began with Nicolai’s ears. I filled the cavities with the soft wax, and then stoppered it with wool. I wrapped muslin around his head several times to hold the stoppers in place. He soon looked like a maimed soldier, escaped from a surgery.

“Can you hear?” I asked.

“Has the bell started ringing?” he shouted so loudly that Remus cringed. I thanked God that we were cloistered in the city’s highest tower; no one would hear us shout.

“Tasso, you’re next!” I said. Nicolai climbed to his feet and grabbed the nearest bell rope. He pulled with all his strength, but timed it poorly.

“No!” yelled Remus. “Now!”

Soon they were pulling in unison, and the bell ropes were dancing. I finished Tasso’s ears and began Remus’s.

“And then I will do yours,” Remus said.

“It is not necessary,” I replied.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “You will go deaf!”

I had no time to explain. “My mother,” I said, “she was a bell.” He looked puzzled, but then I plugged his second ear, and we could talk no more. As Remus took his station, it occurred to me I should have reviewed my plans with them one last time. But now, the swinging of the bell was enough to pull Tasso off his feet. Remus sat down with each pull and then stood when the bell reversed and dragged him back up. Nicolai pulled the rope from above his head to his waist.

How long before she would ring? And then, how long until someone arrived to stop them? The timing must be perfect. But before I left, there was one more thing—one more thing I had vowed to do.

I dashed up the stairs, plunging into darkness. I felt my way until I broke into her belfry. The moon shone through the open sides, casting sharp shadows along her lips as she swung, and I crept beneath her. Her still gentle rocking breathed a cold wind across my face. I judged a mere ten minutes before she would strike.

I took the knife from my belt and cut at the leather wrapping around the clapper, which they had placed there to dampen the massive ringing. I tore away scraps of leather and clumps of woolen padding. It was slow going, but after several minutes I had set her free. Tonight she would ring as she was created to.

I hurried down the stairs. “Keep pulling!” I shouted as I rushed past my friends, each rising up and gently falling down, but they did not hear me. Round and round I flew down the steps of the tower, and thankfully I reached the nave before I fainted. I blew out my candle. I slipped through the church and escaped into the night.

When I was halfway across the square, I heard the faintest hum, and it filled me with such joy that I stopped. I closed my eyes. A boom throbbed the night. I let it shake me from head to toe. It washed away any remaining fear.

“Yes!” I yelled up to my friends. “You are doing it!”

They were! They were ringing the empire’s largest, loudest bell, which tolled like footsteps on the heavens now.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The ringing filled even the silence between the strikes, and every ear in Vienna must have heard it by now. Soldiers shot up in beds, thinking the Prussian army was closing in. The empress awoke and called for her minister. Children screamed in every house, startled from their dreams. Dogs brayed at the sky. The vibrations set ice and snow sliding off roofs. The ringing cracked windows throughout the Innenstadt, as far away as the imperial palace. Everyone knew this sound, but surely, they thought, she had not rung this loudly in fifty years!

I ran out of the square.

Climbing onto the coach, I unstrapped the stove on top. I struggled to lift it to my shoulder. Several of the windows in the Riecher Palace glimmered, but the one nearest to the coach was still dark. I threw a momentary prayer to God. I tottered back, stumbled forward, and heaved the stove through a window.

A thunderous crash. The tumbling stove banged like a bouncing cannonball and shattering glass jingled and tinkled across the darkened room, but I prayed that mine were the only ears that could discern the sounds above the pealing.

From my perch on the coach’s roof, I looked up and down the street, confirmed that the ogre was not peering out of his gate, and then, as if it were a door, I stepped through the window.

As it turned out, the drop to the floor was farther than I had expected, and I soon found myself sprawled in broken glass. But in a moment I was up again—no time to dwell on the cuts and scrapes. I shook off the shards like a dog shakes off water.

I seemed to have landed in some sort of library. I shoved the stove beneath a desk and crept toward the door and listened. But just then, my luck ended. Through the tremendous pealing, I discerned a footstep, then, in horror, I spied the tremble of the turning doorknob. My calculations had been all wrong! I had been heard. I barely had enough time to dash behind the door when it opened and Countess Riecher herself strode in.

She held her hands against her ears, so the sleeves of her silk dressing gown bunched up around her shoulders. I marveled at the sharpness of her elbows. She gazed at the smashed window for a moment. “That damn bell,” she murmured, and turned away.

Perhaps she had not heard me after all. She appeared to be searching along a shelf.

I did not move.

She located what she sought and, with a quick movement, released one ear, grabbed something from off the shelf, and plugged it into her skull.

Of course! I realized. She lives just below the bells. She was just the sort to have some means of blocking out the sound. When she turned back toward the door, I still stood there, hoping she would mistake my shadow for some forgotten bust or statue. But, of course, this was not a woman who forgot anything. She peered at me in the dim moonlight, trying to discern my face. She backed away.

I lunged for her. She yelled, but even if her husband had been lying in bed on the other side of the wall, he could not have heard her.

Her eyes grew wide. “You,” she said, though I doubt she heard herself above the din.

“You!” I cried back. I spread my long arms and towered above her.

She attacked.

She scratched my neck and tried to pry out my eyes with the daggers of her polished nails. I yelped and tried to fend her off, but she was a lioness—all claws and roar.