The Old Man and the Bells

Vignette: “J'ai acheté ton âme pour toi ; Je l'ai enlevé aux pensées noires et à l'esprit de perdition, et je le donne à Dieu.”

« I have bought your soul for you; I have taken it away from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God. »

– Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862.

The old man walked down the Rue Cardinal Lemoine. He wore a weathered fedora and an old brown trench coat. The morning paper in his pack was sopping wet from the rain. He had dined that day at La Closerie des Lilas, a café on Boulevard Montparnasse nigh the Port-Royal Metro. He had tried to write that morning in the booth where a writer once went fishing. He had gone there every second of July, the twelfth night before Bastille Day. He had not gone there to commemorate the valiant workers of the towering barricades of 1848, nor the flare and farewell in a hot July of 1830, nor the appointment of the King and the Queen to Lady Guillotine after 1789, after the Bastille fell. No. He was there for a different reason. The old man had been a bright-eyed boy who dreamed of becoming a journalist on that day his favorite writer ended his own life. The old man had been a scholar for a very long time, had tried to teach strength and endurance through clinging to long-hard values, values that did not conflict with heavy drinking in his mind. The way his face expressed itself reminded of the way his favorite writer stared dead-eyed from his porch in a still-shot. You would have thought you passed a ghost.

He watched the world shift around him. Cars mass-produced. Mass transit. Television. The world hopped faster than any could catch a freight train. Then came the Internet. Knock-out. There is info in the sea but knowledge in the heart and the sea knows not the heart and the heart can’t stop the sea, all the levees broken, all flooded, every second, another firing of thunder in the brain, ding, it’s late for dinner, time to come home, ding, it’s been too long LOL where are you, ding, why are u not answering? That was the life of his nieces and nephews. If you could call it a life. Thought the old man. He was very much in the Latin Quarter as he hobbled down the hill. He lived in France now. In France, life was simple. There was a time of rising, times of dining, times when you would do things and not do them, a secular monasticism. He liked that. It felt much normal to him. He liked the simplicity. In America they drank whole buckets of coffee. He liked his cup petit, stronger than three whole mugs. He liked the way the French thought of life, their sophistication, their sense of the pace of life that to live is to live and not forget about living while you’re living. But the old spell of melancholy had swept onto him. The world moved far faster now, if he could keep up, if he could keep up. . . He scratched his whiskers.

Then he wondered why he was still alive. No more bullfights. Animal cruelty. No more trips to the races. Gambling. No more hunting. Poaching. No more fishing. Licensing. No more sex. Loving. But not for him. He had seen the sun rise over the arena of Lutetia, old Rome’s ghost now a backyard park near Place Contrescarpe. The old man had hobbled that morning from La Closerie at Montparnasse to Le Jardin du Luxembourg and come to the Place by way of Pantheon. Before that, he had walked to Val de Grace where he in his youth had started on El Camino de Santiago on the Rue San Jacques, a pilgrimage he had never finished. He never made it to Santiago. But he made it to the arena and sat there, alone in the last remnant of Roman Paris above the earth. Alone in the arena, he sat and hummed as pigeons landed. He had tried to imagine gladiatorial fights. It was no use as the pigeons relieved themselves of duty. His thoughts digressed back and forth in time. No, that was then, when I went drinking at Isle Sant Michel while the Allies advanced. No, that was the time I shot that lion for a life turned long and unhappy. That was the time I fought a bull right here in the year 300! The old man’s mind was scrambled in confusion. He could no longer tell fact from fiction, his life from his field. A moment. A moment of clarity!

When have I ever lived my life? Thought the old man. I gave it to my studies, to my teaching. I never married, never had kids of my own. Too many papers to grade. Too many publications. Too many conferences, talks, lectures, book reviews, journals. I never lived my life. I was a scholar of my field. But you know, I always loved that chap Tolkien. I could’ve studied fantasy. I might’ve lived a real life then. But no. I stuck to my guns, to blood and iron, to the Real. I’m still that bright-eyed boy who wanted to be a journalist and turned to teaching, earned my degrees and laurels, gave my talks and lectured on and on and on. For what? To what end did I do those things? Another conferee. Another party. Another drink. Oh, yes, I much enjoyed that paper in last season’s issue. What have you to say about the psychological dissonance of trauma in the dual-personality of . . . his thoughts trailed off my, how interesting that all was, and oh. Right. That was in the first decade of my career. By the time I was finished . . . The old man teared up.

There he was. Alone. In Paris. His footsteps did not cross to the Ile San Louis. By chance he came down to the Seine after having crossed past the Prefecture of Police. The sun had set in his endless musing. He felt the dread. This Paris was more well-lit than the Paris of Victor Hugo. DONG. The old man shook. DONG. But the bells of Notre Dame did not ring. No one had rung them. “For whom the bells toll”? For me? He didn’t catch that misquote. His mind used to be sharper, more precise, more focused, his memory his strongest fortitude. That too had failed him now. Gone. All gone with sight, motion, sound, coherence, thought, and voice. He walked down closer to the water. The Pont du Change. He knew where he was all right, where Hugo reported the best swimmers were always drowned, the place where that other depressed man who had wasted his life in a false pursuit had jumped. Inspector Javert, thought the old man. But the old man knew there was no Javert. Javert was fiction. Gone. Now, he couldn’t remember much of what he had thought before. Dementia.

Now the old man had much forgotten his own name, even if for a few minutes. Dementia had not yet set-in in its later stages. But he scrambled through the ramparts of his mind as they burst asunder. His brain had become a siege before his walls. The Enemy was winning. The onset was beginning. He had then remembered most of his favorite writer’s life and little of his own. Now he remembered nothing. He stared at the dark smooth river and said nothing. His was a gifted mind. A gifted mind gets lost if kept encased inside itself, its own prison, jailor, court, judge, and jury. He undercut himself, all his achievements, all his accolades, all his honors and glories.

  The old man stepped one foot over the black, smooth waters of the Seine. But wait. He thinks of his family, his nieces and nephews, he turns, he tries to climb the bank, the bank is slippery, and the river black and smooth, and . . . 

Strong hands. Yanked back. A young policeman saved him from the leap. A Gendarme.

“Excusez-moi, monsieur, étiez-vous sur le point de sauter? Viens avec moi!”

« Excuse me, Sir, were you about to jump ? Come with me! »

 “La vie ne peut pas être supportée.” Said the old man.

 « Life cannot be borne. »

“Monsieur, vous pouvez renaître. Viens avec moi.” Said the Gendarme.

« Sir, you can be reborn. Come with me. »

The old man was very startled. A light appeared to emanate from the Gendarme’s hands. He wondered. He thought of the Bishop of Digne, Monsignor Bienvenu, of Jean Valjean and two silver candlesticks.[8] He thought of the promise that was kept. To be saved from perdition. To become an honest man.

The Gendarme guided him along before the gates of Notre Dame, its twin towers spiring high. That was before the fire. They walked down along the black-checkered floor up toward the pews closest to the Altar with the golden cross.

 Monsieur, vous avez cherché l'espoir aux mauvais endroits. Regardez ici maintenant!

 «  Sir, you have sought hope in the wrong places. Look here now! »

Then the Host appeared as if the sun, the chamber more bathed in light and color than San Chapelle at sunrise. The old man’s thoughts cleared. He knelt down, folded his hands, and prayed. The light shined brighter.

---

 It was in all the morning papers. Digitized. A single line of text. On their cells. To them, the youth of a proud new era at petit-déjeuner over a petit cup of coffee and a bagette or croissant, it was a line of text on the screen, a headline among hoards. Just a single line. About how an old man had strangely disappeared last night with strange lights noted by some Gendarme on patrol flowing from the cathedral at midnight.

 They glanced. Their eyes glazed over. They kept on texting.

 The sun also rose over Notre Dame.

Winter 2021