The Watchers (4 page)

Authors: Jon Steele

Tags: #Fiction, #General

‘…
quatre-vingt-dix, quatre-vingt-onze, quatre-vingt-douze
…’

He came to Rue Viret as the headlamps of the Number 16 bus rounded a bend and made flashes of reds and blues and greens in the rain. The bus splashed through a puddle, rolled by Rochat, rounded another bend and disappeared.

‘Right on time, Rochat. Must be punctual in all things.’

Rochat hurried across the road and up the last of the wood stairs.

‘…
cent et vingt et sept, cent et vingt et huit, cent et vingt et neuf …
’

He pulled hard on the handrail and jumped over the last step and landed on the stones of the esplanade. The great floodlit façade of Lausanne Cathedral filled his eyes.

‘
Bonsoir
. Still standing, are you? Good for you. Listen, you old pile of stones, we must be ready. Old man winter is trying to sneak into Lausanne tonight and Monsieur Dufaux wants us to chase him away. Do you hear?’

He shuffled towards the cathedral. The limestone arch above the great wood doors dripping with rain and sparkling in the floodlamps. The cathedral seemed to grow bigger in his eyes.

‘What do you mean you don’t need me to tell you winter is hiding in the rain? What do you mean you already know? How could you already know? Oh, I see, because you know everything already. And why should I believe you?’ He pressed his ear to cathedral stone and listened. He rolled his eyes. ‘Because cathedrals don’t lie? Says who?’

He felt the cold gaze of the saints and prophets carved in stone either side of the great wood doors, all staring down on him with grumpy faces. Monsieur Moses the most grumpy-faced of all. Ready to smash the stone tablets in his hands on the ground. Rochat waved him away.

‘Oh, please, it’s the same silliness with you every night. Thou shalt not this, thou shalt not that. That’s all you have to say. And where would you be without your silly stone tablets? Looking very silly with nothing to complain about, that’s what I think.’

Rochat leaned back and saw the gargoyles peeking from the upper façade. He watched rain drip from their mouths and fall to the empty stone jamb between the doors.

He remembered a story he learned in school.

Once there was a gold statue of Mother Mary standing on the jamb. And lots of people climbed the steps of Escaliers du marché on their knees to pray before her and there were miracles. The blind could see, the lame could walk. Till some grumpy men from Berne came and tore Mary from the jamb and melted her into coins. The teacher said they were called Reformationmen. Rochat rapped Monsieur Moses on his stone toes.

‘Friends of yours, I’m very sure.’

He watched a small pool of rain gather at the lip of the jamb, tiny drops falling to the ground.

‘But perhaps there’s one more miracle left for Rochat.’

He ducked under the jamb and let a few drops of rain fall in his mouth. He looked at his foot. Still stuck to the end of a crooked leg, still twisted to the side.

‘No miracles left for Rochat then.’

Tin-throated bells rang up from Place de la Palud,
tinktink
,
tinktink
,
tinktink
. The bells lived down the hill in the Hôtel de Ville near Café du Grütli. And every night they liked to remind Rochat to hurry along.

‘Yes, yes, I know, fifteen minutes. Don’t worry, Rochat won’t be late. Rochat is never late.’

He pulled at the iron handles of the doors. Locked as always but it was his duty to check. He shuffled to the doors of the old bishop’s house and the cathedral museum. Locked as well.

‘Tinny bells and grumpy statues and checking all the doors. So many duties, Rochat. No time for miracles, not for Rochat.’

He shuffled along the façade and around the belfry tower to a red door almost hidden by a high wood fence running the length of the cathedral. He pulled a ring of skeleton keys from his overcoat and slid the largest key into the lock. He turned the key, pressed his shoulder to the door and pushed. Old wood screeched and scraped over dusty stone. He stepped in, closed the door with a loud bang. Rochat listened to the sound echo down a hundred dark passageways.

‘
Bonsoir
, it’s only me.’

…
it’s only me, only me, only me
…

He didn’t bother with the light, he knew his way in the dark. An alcove of three doors: skinny red door to the outside, big door to the nave, bigger wood door to the belfry tower. He sorted through the keys; finding the small one with jagged edges to open the tower door, he crossed through and locked up behind him. He shuffled down a corridor to a stone arch opening to a spiral staircase. Stone steps wound up to a narrow wood bridge that crossed above the women’s choir loft. He tiptoed but his lightest step creaked in the dark. He passed through another stone arch and made his way up another set of winding steps to another narrow wood bridge crossing higher above the women’s choir loft, but in the opposite direction from below.

‘Back and forth and forth and back. A very strange way to climb a tower. Then again, it’s the only way to climb this tower so there.’

…
so there, so there, so there
…

He stopped, waited for his voice to fade.

‘I really must stop talking to myself.’

…
to myself, to myself, to myself
…

Floodlamps on the esplanade seeped through a window of leaded glass. The light dissolving into teasing shadows on the stone walls.

‘And good evening to you, mesdemoiselles. Keeping the bad shadows away, I trust?’

He heard the flimsy door at the end of the walkway swing on its hinges. Rochat was very sure the teasing shadows had something to do with the mystery of the always swinging door. He shuffled along the walkway and crossed through the doorway. He gave it a solid push till it snapped shut.

‘And please remember to close the door after yourselves, mesdemoiselles! I’m very busy with my duties and don’t have time for your games.’

Rochat pressed his ear to the door and listened. He heard the teasing shadows giggling.
What silly things teasing shadows can be
, he thought.

He was in a dark chamber at the bottom of a stone staircase that curled up like a corkscrew. A slender window, big enough for an archer’s bow, was cut through the chamber wall. Rochat looked out and saw the rain still coming down, saw the lights of Lausanne shimmering in the fog rising from Lac Léman.

‘Rain or fog, you can’t hide from Marc Rochat. I see you.’

He hurried up the tower, round and round between close-in walls. He touched the newel pillar running up the centre of the tower. His fingers tracing over the smooth finger marks made by all the men who’d climbed these same steps, touching the same place in stone every night for eight hundred years. Round and round, higher and higher. He felt cold air coming down the tower. He heard wind sounds in the open sky. He smelled the lake and pine trees and ice and snow from far away.

He circled once more and jumped over the last step and landed on the south balcony of the belfry as if jumping into the sky. His open arms like perfect wings and for a moment he was flying. High above Lausanne, high above Lac Léman and the Alps on the far shore, higher than the whole world. He settled back on his heels and opened his eyes.

‘
Bonsoir
, Lausanne. Rochat is here to watch over you.’

He shuffled along the narrow balcony to the northwest turret. High stone pillars and arches opening to the night sky to one side, fat supporting pillars and arches opening to the centre of the belfry. Inside was the massive criss-cross carpentry, six storeys high and fitted together like some giant’s puzzle. Rochat reached into the timbers, touched the iron spikes and wood pegs holding the timbers together.

‘
En garde, mes amis
. I know you’re very old, but we must stand very straight tonight. It’s our duty.’

He shuffled along the north balcony, checking that all was well in the old city. He ducked through the northeast turret to the east balcony. The lantern tower at the far end of the cathedral was steady in the wind and the weathercock atop the tower told Rochat he was right. Winds from Mont Blanc, winter was on the attack.

He felt a matronly gaze at his back. He turned slowly to the carpentry and the seven-ton bell hanging alone in a timbered cage. Rochat pulled off his hat and bowed graciously.

‘
Bonsoir
, Madame Madeleine,
ça va?
’

The bell didn’t respond.

‘Oh, I see. Madame is fussy tonight.’

Rochat jumped into the carpentry, checking the heavy iron hammer outside the edge of the bell’s bronze skirt. Pulling at the steel cables connecting to the winch motor, making sure everything was primed and ready.

‘Or perhaps madame is sleeping, hmm?’

He tapped his knuckles against her and leaned close. He heard a deep tone swirl through cold bronze.

‘What’s that? Madame never sleeps, madame is only resting? Yes of course. How could I be so rude as to think otherwise?’

He refitted his hat and shuffled back to the south balcony, stopping at the skinny wood door set between two stone pillars. He pulled a chain at the side of the door, a small lamp flickered awake. Pigeons fled from the upper carpentry, wings fluttering like runaway feet.

‘Sorry to disturb you, you blasted pooping things, but it’s my duty.’

He opened the door, stepped into the loge, a small room of wood walls built between the criss-cross timbers, one and a half metres wide by 6 metres long. And he would have to stand on his own shoulders twice before touching the lowest point of the slanted wood ceiling. A small table jutted from the west wall and the two steps at the north end of the room rose to a narrow bed. Rochat lit seven candles and set them about the loge. He opened a cabinet, carefully removing an old brass lantern. A stunted, half-melted candle sat inside. He calculated how long it might last.

‘A little while longer, I think.’ He took a fresh candle from a drawer and slipped it in the pocket of his coat. ‘
En garde
, after all.’

He opened a small square window in the west wall, just above the table. He poked out his head to see another solitary bell hanging in the timbers.

‘
Bonsoir
, Madame Clémence! Any heretics burned at the stake today? No? Too bad. Yes, yes, I know, not like the good old days. How sad for you.’

He snapped shut the window and, with barely enough room to do so, he turned around and opened a small window in the east wall. Marie-Madeleine was just outside. Rochat thought he might give her a tap with a broomstick to check if she was truly awake. But just then all the carpentry groaned like a very old lady yawning and stretching in a very old bed.

‘
Oui
, madame is awake.’

He heard the winch strain at steel cables, the steel hammer cocking back and …

GONG! GONG! GONG
!

Vibrations pulsed through the timbers and shook the room. He struck a match, lit the lantern.

GONG! GONG! GONG
!

He shuffled out of the door, hurried through the turret to the east balcony. He stood at the iron railings just in front of Marie-Madeleine.

GONG! GONG! GONG
!

He stood very still, waiting for Marie-Madeleine’s voice to almost fade. Then he raised the lantern into the dark.

‘
C’est le guet! Il a sonné l’heure! Il a sonné l’heure
!’

two

There it was again.

She could see it through the rain.

A light moving around the bell tower.

She first noticed it after moving into the flat last summer, doing the same thing as now. Sitting at her dressing table, running a brush through her hair, getting ready for a night out. She remembered swallows darting by her windows and drawing her eyes outside. Lausanne Cathedral stood against the last flush of an evening sky.

Pretty, she thought, in an
Addams Family
sort of way. That’s when she saw the light in the tower, waving in her direction. It drifted out of sight, and then reappeared facing the lake. It waved once more then,
poof
, it was gone.

Nightwatchman with a flashlight, she thought.

But after a few more sightings she realized the nightwatchman only appeared when the cathedral bells rang the hour. Always beginning at nine in the evening, always moving counter-clockwise around the tower. East, north, west, south. Then she realized it wasn’t a flashlight in his hands, it was a lantern. And it looked as if he was shouting something from the balconies.

One night, just before nine, she stepped on to her terrace and waited. The bells rang nine times and presto, there he was. And damn if he wasn’t shouting something. But his voice was lost in the din of traffic rising from Pont Bessières. She grabbed her cellphone, texted her sister in Los Angeles.