
He walked.
He walked past the chattering pigeons and tourists. He walked with his back straight and his head tilted down, as if the layers of the isle’s history were an archaeological field to tunnel through.
He walked through the entrance of Notre Dame, ignoring the saints and virgins, until he found the stairway leading to the southern bell tower.
He climbed.
He stepped over a rope line.
He climbed higher.
He stopped when he mounted the last set of stairs. When he saw what he came for. The lonely bass bell, sequestered from its four siblings in the north tower.
A man with a blue cape stood beside it.
***
I took in the disheveled American and reached for my phone. Security was third on speed dial. And I had a lunch date to keep.
“Monsieur,” I said. “You are not permitted.”
I took in his eyes. Leaden, like a soldier’s. Bearing the shadows of battles yet to be waged.
The phone stayed in my pocket.
“Are you the one?” he said. “The keeper of the bells?”
I paused.
“Yes, I am Monsieur Fontaine, the chief sacristan.”
The man put his hand on the bell. For support, it seemed. Emmanuel did not budge. His clapper alone weighed 1,000 pounds. Gone were the days of striking hammers and the romantic piffle of Quasimodo’s rope swinging. Everything ran to a computer’s atomic precision.
With my finger on the button.
“I need for you to ring this bell,” he said.
I laughed.
“Monsieur, the bourdon is rarely rung by itself, except to mark the deaths of great and distinguished men, like a pope or archbishop. I am afraid you ask the impossible.” I cleared my throat. “And now you really must—”
“I know why it’s rung,” he said, more quietly. “As you say: to mark the deaths of great people.”
I caught his distinction and nearly reached for my phone again. This American seemed intent on lecturing me on his tour-book interpretation of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.
Well. If equality were his aim, Death would sound constantly throughout the city. Even the tourist parts. And I would never get to lunch.
But instead of a speech, the man looked down at his feet.
My eyes followed suit.
He did not wear shoes. Or if he did, they were forgotten beneath a pair of yellow hospital booties speckled red. The afternoon sun bathed their trauma in a soft, opal light.
I slowly raised my eyes to his.
“Monsieur,” I murmured, taking a step forward. “I am very—”
He waved me off.
“This . . . she . . . I didn’t know where to . . . ”
True.
“I need to feel." He inhaled sharply. “That someone. Is listening. That someone. Acknowledges it.” He tried to smile at me, but his face would not suffer it.
“You know?”
I closed my eyes.
I was not a man who looked outside my own reality. Or cared to, in truth. But sometimes, when working the towers, it felt like the cathedral breathed. Like she sighed over the wingspan of her centuries, for all that she had been forced to see. During these moments, the bells’ clanging could remind me of a bloodletting. Or an exorcism.
If one believed in such things.
I opened my eyes.
***
He walked down the stairs. Over the rope line.
Down again.
He walked from the cathedral, past the tourists and pigeons, snapping up their photos and breadcrumbs.
He walked because he was afraid to stop. Afraid he might never stop. The river was there. The bridge above it. They pulled on him with the oblivion of mercy.
A solitary note clanged.
Low. Solemn.
Again.
And again.
He stopped walking.
Everyone—tourists, Frenchmen, the stone martyrs—offered him a drink from their silence. All listening, instead of talking. Feeling, instead of looking. Connected, for a brief reverberation, by the atomic weight of thirteen metric tons, swinging.
His feet halted on Point Zero. The origin of all measured distance.
His back hunched.
He grieved.