The Bells
The tolling of the six o'clock bells from the Notre Dame, calling believers to stop for an Angelus, inspired a memory in his mind. He might have lived near a church, he thought, once upon a time, back in the childhood he had long forgotten. Yes, indeed, perhaps his father's home had even been close to a cathedral, for the bells ringing in his memory were loud and sonorous: calling out proudly, echoing forever and ever in the eternal circle of his mind. It was his first taste of music, those beautiful bells, tinkling and ringing and tolling joyously with the merriment and serenity and nobility he had never known.
In all of his life, he had never missed his home. But the music of the bells made him miss, just a little, his little, dark room in the corner of the little stone house in the outskirts of Rouen. It reminded him of his rare moments of peace and tranquility – it reminded him of his moments. His time alone; times that he spent silent and undisturbed, sitting still against the door, creating music he did not know was music. It reminded him of his childhood tunes, innocent and whimsical, lacking the darker, horrifying tunes of his Don Juan. (Some might argue that the songs of his youth were nothing close to innocence, but 'might' was the key word here – nobody had actually listened to the compositions of his youth).
The bells tolled on heavily, ceremoniously, regally. The sound made him think of slow, low B-flats near the end of his piano: boom, boom, boom. The organ would sound nice with that, he thought. The melodies arranged themselves in his mind: it began with a Baroque-esque wedding march, slow and royal, and the little bells on the altar chimed in after the organ, jingling with mirth. It was all grandioso e pesante until the strings found themselves in with a glissando up, and four other loud low B-flats on the piano introduced the brass and the vocals, singing high up to the Heaven con brio, "Gloria in excelsis Deo!" Yes, this was the Gloria to his Kyrie, another piece to his Wedding Mass!
For a brief second, all was silent to him. The grand bells outside seemed to have taken a pause, and the air around him seemed to have stopped whirring. It was not until he began to write furiously on his composition paper that everything came back to life. His quill danced on paper, leaving unintelligible red dots behind. His Don Juan would marry someday – someday that was not today, but it would be his glory. Erik was just planning ahead for his Don Juan. Yes, the mass would be the ultimate triumph of Juan, and Don Juan Triumphant would not burn to the end!
For the next fortnight, he did not notice that the bells stopped chiming every six hours. All he heard was the organ, and the orchestra, and the piano, and the little altar bells, and the chorus that was so much better than the Opera's, and divine little angels on harps. Every time he paused to refill his bottle of red ink, the bells were still ringing on high, majestically, angelically, joyfully.
For him, the bells would toll on forever.