‘Just passing through,
mon général
.’
Harper moved on and followed the spider-webbed shadows of bare plane trees on the pavement. Twelve bells sounded over Lausanne. He looked back through the trees, beyond Flon and above the Palud quarter. He saw Lausanne Cathedral reaching for the clouds. Something caught his eye in the belfry – something in the shadows of the arches and pillars. Bright as firelight, floating from side to side. The light drifted away and the floodlamps went black.
‘And so concludes our special midnight show.’
He walked on.
History Channel was waiting.
three
Rochat sat on the porch of the loge where the afternoon sun heated the limestone pillars and it felt as warm as a summer’s day. He knew it was a trick. Winter may have retreated in the night, but a new wave of storm clouds hovered on the horizon for the next battle. But for the moment, all was well. He closed his eyes and dozed.
It had been a busy day of sweeping balconies and climbing timbers to scrub pigeon poop from the tops of the bells. Then checking the clappers and tightening the lashings around the heavy wood yokes above the bells, greasing the wheels and chains of the rocking motors. Then tidying up the loge and carrying four empty Chianti jugs down the tower steps to the esplanade. Filling them with water from the fountain, carrying them back up the tower and storing them behind the door. Marie-Madeleine stirred in the timbers and rang for five o’clock. Rochat opened his eyes.
The sun was low in the sky now, the mountains on the far shore of the lake like jagged shadows. He leaned around a stone pillar to see Marie-Madeleine.
‘And a very good afternoon to you too, madame. I hope you’re feeling well. You and your sisters must sing very soon, you know.’
Marie-Madeleine remained quiet.
‘Oh, I see, saving your voice for your performance. And do excuse me for disturbing you.’
Rochat settled back against the stone pillars and watched two streaks of white light in the darkening sky. One streak stretching to the southeast, the other to the southwest, the two streaks crossing to make a giant X in the sky. In the setting sun it turned the colour of fire and reflected in the mirrorlike surface of the lake till it faded and floated away. Rochat scratched his head.
‘Anyone up here care to tell me what that means?’
There was the usual cooing of pigeons and unmoving silence of the bells.
‘Well, I think someone is sending me a secret message, that’s what I think.’
A gust of wind whipped through the timbers and circled the bells.
‘I hear you whispering, mesdames. A giant X in the sky means nothing, you say? It’s only vapour trails? And what do you know about vapour trails? You’re a bunch of old bells from middles of ages. I think it’s a secret message, that’s what I think.’
Far below the belfry, the cobblestone lanes of the old city surrendered to the evening. Rochat listened to sounds drifting in the wind. The ferry tooting its horn as it crossed the lake from Évian, a train rolling through Gare Simplon, footsteps of passers-by on the cathedral esplanade. All the sounds echoing against the cathedral stones and rising to the belfry. Then a familiar set of footsteps approached the cathedral and stopped just below the tower.
‘Rochat! Marc Rochat!’
He looked down through the iron railings and saw a familiar form 95 metres below.
‘Monsieur Buhlmann, what are you doing here?’
The old man shouted back:
‘I tried to call you on the telephone. Is it working?’
‘
Oui
, but I was cleaning the bells and took it off the hook. I must’ve forgotten to put it back.’
‘
Pas grave
.’ Monsieur Buhlmann held up a large shopping bag and gave it a shake. ‘I have something for you, Marc.’
‘I’ll come down, monsieur.’
‘No, I want to come up.’
‘
D’accord
.’
Monsieur Buhlmann continued looking up. Rochat continued to look down.
‘Marc?’
‘
Oui?
’
‘If I’m to come up, you must first lower down the keys.’
‘Ah.’
Rochat dashed into the loge, grabbed a block of wood with a big wad of string wrapped around it. He tied the end of the string to his ring of skeleton keys and dashed back to the railings. He slowly wound out the string to lower the keys. Monsieur Buhlmann untied the string and waved.
‘
Bien, à tout de suite
.’
Rochat began to rewind the string round the block of wood, imagining if he had a fishing rod this key business would be much easier. Then imagining if he put a hook at the end of the line instead of skeleton keys and waited for unsuspecting Lausannois to walk by, he could snatch their hats and reel them up and mount them on the walls of the loge.
24 Heures
would write stories about the Mysterious Hat Thief of Lausanne Cathedral. Lausannois would appear on the front pages of newspapers, standing on the esplanade with confused looks on their faces: ‘I was walking here when my hat vanished from my head! Where are the police when citizens cannot walk safely in the streets?’
Everyone in Café du Grütli would talk about it with their after-dinner cigarettes and wine. And he imagined a few days later he’d lower those same hats back on to the same unsuspecting heads. And the same Lausannois would appear in the newspapers again: ‘
C’est un miracle
! I was walking by the cathedral and my hat reappeared on my head!’
The sound of the creaky door echoed up the tower steps. Rochat hurried into the loge, hung the line on the nail.
‘It’s a long way up, Rochat. The old man will be wanting his tea.’
He opened the small window on the east wall, called out to Marie-Madeleine:
‘Monsieur Buhlmann is coming. Tell your sisters. What do you mean you’re busy? Busy doing what? Oh, of course. Preparing for your performance. Do forgive me, madame.’ He slapped the window closed, opened it just as quick. ‘And tell your sisters they must sing very well tonight.’
He slapped shut the window again, filled the electric kettle, switched it on. Two cups of tea were steeping as Monsieur Buhlmann came through the door of the loge.
‘
Salut, Marc! Ça va?
’
‘
Oui, très bien. Et toi?
’
‘
En forme, Marc! En forme
!’
Monsieur Buhlmann sat on a stool to catch his breath. He tossed the skeleton keys on the table. He took big gulps of air. He didn’t look
en forme
at all.
‘Are you all right, monsieur?’
‘Oh, I’m fine, Marc. But it’s a cruel joke to grow old. When I was your age, I climbed that tower five or six times a day. Now look at me. It’s all I can do to come on Sundays for your day off. But at least I can still make it once a week.’
‘You shouldn’t have troubled yourself, I could have come down.’
‘No, I wanted to see you today. You don’t remember what day this is?’
Rochat took a sip of tea and remembered.
‘Saturday.
La grande sonnerie
times.’
‘Yes, Marc. Saturday, the day the bells sing. Anything else?’
Rochat glanced at the calendar hanging on a nail.
‘December elevens.’
‘Yes, December eleventh, and what of it?’
Rochat looked out the open door of the loge, saw the first flickers of stars over the Alps.
‘It was unusually warm today.’
‘Yes, it was very warm for December, too warm. The oceans will soon rise and swallow the earth. Thankfully, Switzerland should be the last to go. But that’s not it, either. Come on, don’t you remember?’
Rochat thought about it again. Saturday, December elevens, unusually warm for this time of year.
‘I’m afraid not, monsieur.’
‘
Mon cher
, it was this very day when you were ten … no, twelve … that you first came to the belfry. Your father, rest his soul, carried you up the tower on his shoulders.’
Yes, it was colder then, Rochat remembered. And there was snow on the ground. And his father did hoist him on to his shoulders and carry him up the winding tower steps to meet
le guet
of Lausanne Cathedral. Monsieur Buhlmann tapped Rochat’s knee.
‘You came to the door and you hid behind your father’s black overcoat, the very overcoat you wear these days. You looked like you thought I might eat you.’
‘I was afraid you might, monsieur.’
‘Do you remember what we did eat?’
‘We ate raclette. You cooked it on the balcony.’
Monsieur Buhlmann reached into the bag and dug around.
‘The very thing. And today, I went to the Swiss Farm Expo at the Palais Beaulieu to see my cousin from Fribourg. You should see the place, Marc. Cows and goats and hogs everywhere. Switzerland is the only civilized country in the world that invites its prize farm animals into public buildings and lets them shit wherever they please. Just goes to show you, scratch a Swiss banker’s skin and you’ll find a peasant trying to get out. What was I saying? Oh, my cousin. One of his milking cows won a blue ribbon so now he’s drunk as a skunk with his Swiss hillbilly friends. But another hall was filled with the most wonderful … ah, here it is.’ He pulled out a block of cheese the size of a bread loaf and held it under his nose. He took long dreamy smells. ‘Raclette valaisanne, Marc. With just a taste of black pepper, not too oily.
C’est belle, non?
’
‘It smells very good, monsieur.’
Next from the bag was a bowl covered in silver foil. Monsieur Buhlmann peeled back the foil, took another long sniff.
‘And boiled potatoes with onions and garlic. I had my batty wife cook them just now, very fresh. Where’s the grill?’
‘It lives in the winch shed next to Marie with the other things.’
‘Glad to hear it didn’t run away. Which reminds me, I ran into that mad vigneron from Grandaux, JP Riccard. Still wearing his apron and boots from the last harvest. He gave me two bottles of his Villette. Gold medal this year. I know you’ll only have one glass, so I’ll drink your share. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘That’s a lot of wine, monsieur.’
‘Not as much as I used to drink, Marc. When I was young I could drink a barrel of wine every day.’
Monsieur Buhlmann certainly could drink, Rochat thought. He was famous for it. Rochat remembered one night when the old man began to recite the ballad of William Tell from the belfry. The Lausannois were confused and called the police. The police rushed to investigate, Monsieur Buhlmann invited them up for a glass. Rochat came to the rescue and let the old man sleep on the bed while he called the hour through the night.
‘Marc, I must pee. Another joke on old men. When we were young we held our water like men. When we’re old we wet ourselves like babies. Where’s the piss pot?’
‘Behind the door, in the tool cabinet.’
Monsieur Buhlmann stood and opened the cabinet. He pulled out a plastic Evian water bottle with the spout chopped off. He turned away, opened his trousers, stood very still.
‘And this, this is the cruellest of God’s bad jokes.’
‘Monsieur?’
‘Waiting for your tired old dick to pee.’
After a quiet moment, Rochat heard a small trickle. Monsieur Buhlmann held up the bottle to examine the contents.
‘All that hard work for such a miserable piss.’ He picked up a Chianti jug of water from the floor and headed out of the door. ‘Come, Marc. Let’s finish the business and get the grill.’
Rochat took the keys and followed the old man around the tower to the north balcony where the tiles of the cathedral roof were only 10 metres below the railings. A rain gutter ran along under the tiles at the bottom of the slope. Monsieur Buhlmann emptied the piss pot into the gutter, rinsed out the pot with fresh water and washed his hands. Rochat thought about it. All the men who’d worked in the tower, hundreds of years of emptying piss pots on to the roof.
‘Monsieur, do you think it’s all right to pour pee on the cathedral?’
‘Why, if these blasted pigeons are free to shit all over the cathedral roof like prize cows in the Palais Beaulieu, I don’t think the creator gives a hoot about a little piss from the likes of you and me.’
‘Oh.’
Monsieur Buhlmann looked into the high carpentry to see the upper bells.
‘The bells seem very happy, Marc. You’re taking good care of them.’
‘I do all the things you showed me.’
‘How is Marie treating you?
‘Not too loud when I’m trying to sleep.’
‘And Clémence, still moody?’
‘She says she misses the good old days.’
‘Same old song. Now, I’ll run electricity from the loge, you fetch the grill.’
Rochat climbed through the timbers and squeezed around Marie-Madeleine’s bronze skirt. He unlocked the winch shed, moved things about and stumbled out with the grill, an odd-looking contraption Monsieur Buhlmann built himself. A metal tray on a short-legged table, metal brackets and adjustable clamps atop the table to hold a block of cheese, a high-powered heating lamp along the side to do the melting. Monsieur Buhlmann was very proud of his grill. Rochat slid the contraption under Marie-Madeleine, lifted it through the timbers and carried it to the south balcony where Monsieur Buhlmann was waiting in the arches near Clémence, electric cable in hand.
‘We’ll cook the raclette here, Marc. We’ll tell Clémence we’re burning a witch at the stake. That’ll cheer her up.’
‘She’ll like that very much.’
Faint bells sounded three times from the Hôtel de Ville down in Place de la Palud. Monsieur Buhlmann smiled.
‘Quarter to six, Marc. Just enough time to pop in the loge and have a glass, two if we hurry. Where’s the corkscrew?’
‘Where you left it when you retired, monsieur.’
Monsieur Buhlmann found the corkscrew hanging under the table in the loge. He opened a bottle, poured a mouthful into a glass. He sniffed at it and sipped.
‘Marc, don’t let anyone tell you there’s a better
vin blanc
in the world than a Villette from Lavaux. It tastes like your first kiss. Not a silly kiss, but the first kiss from the first girl you love. Which reminds me, while I was watching the milking competition, I realized we need to find you a girl.’