The Bat Tattoo

14 Adelbert Delarue

I have no wish to push myself forward in these pages. I have been invited to set down some of my thoughts so I do it as well as I can. Today I am thinking of two visits I have made to Autun, an old walled town in Burgundy founded by the Romans.

In my head — is this not so with everyone? — there live images of scenes I remember, places I have been, objects of significance. Sometimes one of these images pulls me back to the time of its first appearance; then there comes to me the place, the scene with its reality heightened, its colour and detail by the force of memory made vivid.

One such image is that of the figure of Christ on the tympanum of the west portal of the Cathedral of St Lazare at Autun. In the eleventh century St Lazare was the patron of lepers; the tomb at Autun was said to contain all or at least part of him, so for the lepers it was a place of pilgrimage. For me too it is such a place although no part of me has yet visibly rotted away.

That the unclean might worship apart from the clean, the bishop and chapter of Saint-Nazaire caused a new church to be built for the lepers at Autun. It is in this church, the Cathedral of St Lazare, that Gislebertus, that genius of the Romanesque, with chisel and mallet wrought his marvels from 1125 to 1135.

The first time I went there I was not alone. I was young and my companion was a beautiful girl called Solange Tessier. She was studying art at the Sorbonne and she wished to see what Gislebertus had done at St Lazare.

Solange’s interest was purely artistic; she was Jewish but did not practise that religion. ‘It takes no practice to be a Jew,’ she said. ‘Either you are or you aren’t; two sets of dishes mean nothing.’ Myself, I had been educated by Jesuits under the governance of a Father Toussaint. He laid great stress on obedience and enforced it with a flexible black paddle on the hands: the sinner was permitted to choose the time of punishment within a twenty-four-hour span. This method of instruction naturally encouraged atheism in those pupils who were that way leaning. Between God and me the divergence widened until I wholly rejected the deity served by Father Toussaint and his black paddle. So the carvings of Gislebertus at St Lazare, however profoundly pious, would be for me nothing more than pictures in stone.

At that time I had not yet come into my inheritance. I was on a student allowance, Solange also; therefore we travelled by train and bus. It was a Saturday evening in October, already dark when we arrived. We registered at the Hôtel de la Tête Noir in the rue de l’Arquebuse. Our key for Room 309 was on a ring attached to a miniature wine bottle with the name of the hotel on the label. Such key-rings were sold as souvenirs at the reception desk; I have one before me as I write this. I cannot say it is empty because it has no inside to be filled — it is only a solid piece of wood in the shape of a bottle.

A middle-aged German couple came in as we stood at the reception desk. The man spoke French with an accent that pushed the words ahead of him like hostages. He explained that he and his wife were touring Burgundy and enjoying the food and the wines. I pitied them that they were not us.

We bought a half-bottle of the local Chardonnay and one of the Pinot Noir and took them up to our room. It was a pleasant little room; the flowered bedspread and the cosy lamps welcomed us; the slanting ceiling embraced us as we embraced each other. The wine was round and juicy; we drank it by the window from where we viewed the Champ de Mars and the Maine, illuminated and as full of detail as buildings in a model railway. Then we went out to see the cathedral for the first time.

Past dim cafés and ancient houses we walked uphill on narrow pavements. Many of the houses were dark and seemed empty; the streets were very quiet, with sometimes the sound and lights of cars, sometimes the single white eye and whine of a moped. Up the rue aux Cordiers we went, the Grande and Petite rues Chauchien and the rue des Bancs where we continued past the Musée Rolin to the Place du Terreau. There we saw the cathedral with its spire black against the dark sky.

Now there is a restaurant, Le Petit Rolin, just opposite the steps at the west portal of the cathedral. It was not there when Solange and I came to Autun; there were no sounds of diners and drinkers to distract us as we stood at the base of the steps and looked up at the tympanum. Spotlights pushed away the darkness from it and showed us the stone with a hard brightness not seen in the evenings of the twelfth century. This tympanum is a half-circle over the two great doors, the lintel supported by capitals at each end and a trumeau in the centre. The trumeau, with the figures of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, is a reconstruction, the original one having been thrown away.

On the tympanum Christ, in high relief, presides over the Last Judgement. He is shown in an elliptical enclosure called a mandorla. His pose is fully frontal; his elbows are at his sides, his forearms extended, palms upturned; his knees are bent, his legs turned out. His face looks straight ahead; his mouth is slightly open; he seems without anger, seems entranced. He has become not so much a judge as a medium: through him like lightning pass divine mercy or implacable wrath. I was a hardened atheist, yes, but I cowered before this Christ, this living stone, when I saw him that first time. On the mandorla are carved the words: OMNIA DISPONO SOLUS MERITOSQUE CORONO QUOS SCELUS EXERCET ME JUDICE POENA COERCET [I alone dispose of all things and crown the just. Those who follow crime I judge and punish.]

‘The one who was the victim is now the judge,’ said Solange.

‘He is the Lamb who was slain,’ I murmured as if Father Toussaint stood over me. Forgotten verses from Revelation came to me: “‘And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains. And said to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?”’

Solange was watching me. ‘Are you OK?’ she said. ‘It goes?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It goes.’

‘“Gislebertus hoc fecit.”’ She read the words carved in the stone at the feet of Christ. [Gislebertus made this.] ‘It was done by a man, a stonecarver who was paid for the job. He did not descend the mountain with the tympanum under his arm.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘And in any case there is no God.’

‘Adelbert, you piss into the wind.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The belief in God is God. The God in people’s heads does all the things God is meant to do, so He exists even for those who claim that He does not exist.’ She spoke the word ‘He’ with a capital letter. ‘And this God in the head of Gislebertus used him to carve this tympanum for the glorification of His only son.’

‘I’m not sure I follow your reasoning.’

‘That’s OK.’ She kissed me. ‘God will forgive you.’

‘So you believe in Him then?’

‘How could I not? I prayed for an Adelbert kind of guy and He gave me you.’ More kisses.

Filling the stone half-circle around Christ are angels with trumpets, the Holy Virgin, the saints, the weighing of heavenbound souls by the Archangel Michael and those of the damned by a hideous devil who opposes him. Below them on the lintel are the saved in ecstasy and the sinners in despair.

Those figures! Gislebertus, having called them into being, allotted them spaces in which to fit themselves and their actions. Their bodies and limbs grew long or short in such shapes as were necessary for their gestures. Motionless in the stone they walk, creep, sing, weep, crouch, leap; they have no rest from the life hammered into them by this stonecarver who chiselled his name under the feet of Christ. One particular sinner on the lintel caught our eye; his scream echoes in the silent stone as two great hands (nothing more is visible) grab him by the head to pull him up out of sight. ‘Gislebertus could not refrain from showing us this,’ said Solange. ‘He was compelled.’

She had brought her Nikon with her; she was rarely without it; in our Paris walks she photographed every thing from every angle with short lenses and long ones, film both fast and slow. Now she put the camera to her eye and looked through the viewfinder. Then she slung the Nikon from her shoulder again without taking any pictures.

‘No pictures?’ I said. ‘Even without flash you have enough light.’

She said, ‘When we’re home I don’t want to look at a little glossy print of what the camera saw, I want the whole thing big in my eye as it is now. I owe Christ and Gislebertus that much.’

‘Christ has got into your head?’

‘He was a man. They hung him on a cross with nails through his hands and feet and gave him vinegar to drink. The nails tore his hands as his body sagged until his diaphragm collapsed and he could no longer breathe. Now at communion the believers eat his body and drink his blood. Here in stone he offers himself.’

For a while we were silent, then Solange said, ‘This Gislebertus, I think he would have been a chain smoker if there had been cigarettes in the twelfth century. He was addicted to stone, I know that — he could not leave it alone. Every time he found an empty space of stone he had to let in Heaven and Hell. He was like Thelonious Monk with a chisel and mallet.’

‘Thelonious Monk!’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Very funky and off-straight. The performances of Gislebertus had of course to be planned but they are like jazz improvisations in stone. I think he must have been an obsessive, and to such people the Romanesque style comes naturally: again and again they reiterate the folds in garments — you can almost hear the left hand doing the bass part while the right hand carves the tune.’ Ah, Solange! She had a husky voice, her breath was sweet, her cheek cool in the fresh October breeze. She liked the sound of what she had said and gave me a sidelong glance and a little smile.

We went back down the rue des Bancs to Le Relais des Hautes Quartiers. There we drank Pinot Noir with our boeuf bourgignon and felt well pleased with the world. The quiet voices of the other diners and the clink of cutlery made a soothing background; the music was old standards, not too loud. By the light of the candle on our table we held with our eyes each other’s faces. Then we walked slowly down to the hotel, went to our room and made love. As we lay in each other’s arms afterwards Solange said, ‘God is an idea I can understand but the Jesus thing baffles me.’

‘How is that?’

‘He is the redeemer, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘He died for our sins?’

‘Yes.’

‘So now we sinners have a clean slate and we don’t need a Last Judgement, do we?’

‘That isn’t how it works, Solange. Christ was the ransom for the many but one still needs to claim the benefit of what he did. If you believe that kind of thing, that is.’

‘What is that benefit?’

‘The restoration of your relationship with God.’

‘Why does it need to be restored?’

‘Because of the Fall, because of the Original Sin.’

‘That’s going back a long way!’

‘That’s why it’s called the Original.’

‘How does one claim that benefit, how does one get restored?’

‘By having faith in Christ.’

‘And that puts you right with God?’

‘If you seek his forgiveness.’

‘OK, so you have faith in Christ and you ask forgiveness from God, then you die. Then do you still have to go through the Last Judgement?’

‘Yes.’

‘What then, you get preferential treatment because you had faith in Christ and forgiveness from God?’

‘It isn’t that kind of thing. I was taught that if you have faith in Christ then he takes on himself the burden of your sins and enables you to restore your relationship with God. He does this out of love. “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.’” As I said those words I believed that it was possible to know and be known fully. I drew Solange closer to me, her long warm body. She was snoring gently. Charity is caritas in Latin, which expresses better what I felt for Solange.

The next day was Sunday. After a late breakfast at the hotel we checked out and walked around the town. In the Champ de Mars when it was time for lunch we had omelettes and a bottle of Pinot Noir at a bistro patronised by young locals with children and elderly ones with small dogs.

From there we once more ascended the hill to the rue des Bancs and the Musée Rolin where Gislebertus’s Eve was to be seen. We paid at the reception desk and were directed to the room where Eve resided. A Japanese woman sat on a bench viewing her. By the door a man who looked like someone’s nephew kept an eye on us. Eve and her bit of stone garden were in two pieces carefully fitted together. She was fixed to the wall against a background of black cloth. She would have looked quite different as part of the cathedral; here her isolation and the lighting put her as it were on centre stage.

‘Well,’ said Solange, ‘here she is: the Original Sinner who gave Adam the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.’

‘Somebody had to get the ball rolling.’

‘This is the first medieval nude. She used to be on the lintel over the north door of the cathedral but she was taken down and used as a building block in a private house when they mortared over the tympanum.’

‘Who and why?’

‘The cathedral chapter. In the eighteenth century the canons found Gislebertus not to their taste, so they covered up the tympanum and removed some of the other carvings. How do you like Eve?’

Eve was designed for a lintel and so is a horizontal composition. Her nudity is sinuous as she glides serpent-like through the foliage and grasses of the garden. Her face is contemplative; almost her mind might be on other things, possibly she hums a little tune as she reaches behind her for the stone fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Does she think of what will follow from the eating of that apple? ‘She is what she is,’ I said. ‘She is the mother of us all, a mystery.’

‘I want pictures of her,’ said Solange. ‘This is a woman thing.’

As she brought her camera up to her eye the man seated near the door explained, with an apologetic expression, that there was an eight-franc charge for photography. I paid him and Solange photographed Eve from several angles, including a close-up of her bottom seen from the rear. ‘She’s only a relief really,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see what he’d have done with her in the round.’

While I pondered the Original Sin and later ones we went again to the cathedral where we looked at the tympanum in the daylight. The stone was grey, weathered and pitted; to my eyes it showed itself doubly: then and now, with Christ as always offering himself. The tympanum in my eyes went from something to nothing and back again; my mind could not contain it as one or the other.

We went into the cathedral and tilted our heads back to view the many Gislebertus capitals which had been spared by the canons. These were Bible stories in stone, from Noah’s Ark to the fall of Simon Magus; also lesser-known scenes with grimacing devils and various fanciful creatures. I had little response left for these — my mind was filled with the Christ of the tympanum and the mystery of Eve.

We left the cathedral a few minutes before Sunday services began. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and as we started back down the hill the bells of St Lazare suddenly pealed. ‘There is a God!’ they shouted with their great metal throats. ‘Believe us!’

I turned back towards the cathedral as if pulled by a chain. ‘They get paid to say that,’ said Solange. ‘It’s their job.’

We had only our rucksacks with us so there was no need to go back to the hotel. We walked to the train station from where the bus for Le Creusot would depart. At the Hotel de France bar opposite we had coffee and Poire William, then I wanted to take a picture of Solange. ‘Better not,’ she said, ‘it’s bad luck.’

‘How is it bad luck?’

‘Years from now the photograph will be with you but maybe I won’t.’

‘Where will you be, Solange?’

‘I don’t know. Gone, maybe.’

I took the photograph. I have it still but Solange is not with me. We loved each other; I thought we would be together always. On our return to Paris I departed for Dortmund for my annual visit to my uncle Dietrich von Peng, the executor of the estate. Solange also was leaving Paris for a two-week holiday in New York. She met a painter there and married him and now she lives in America. I had a letter from her: ‘Dear Adelbert,’ she wrote:

What if you had not taken that photo? Remember the two great hands that grab the poor sinner by the head? Goneness is like that, always waiting to grab someone. Maybe the one being grabbed is not even a sinner; maybe Goneness reaches blindly for anyone, good or bad.

I remember all there was.

Solange

Nineteen Octobers passed, and in the twentieth I wished to see the Christ of Saint Lazare again. I desired also to hear the bells. I went without Victoria, without Jean-Louis and the Rolls-Royce. I went alone as a pilgrim. Taking only a rucksack, I walked from my house in the Avenue Montaigne to Franklin D. Roosevelt, where I took the RER to the Gare de Lyon.

There in the daytime it was like a labyrinth of the night. There were many large young people with backpacks as big as steamer trunks and many old people with trolley bags. I already had my ticket and seat reservation, so I went to Platform 13 where I found the 12.34 to Marseille and Saint-Charles. This train would stop at Chagny, from where a bus would take me to Autun just as it had taken the two of us long ago.

I boarded the second-class coach and went to my seat. Soon an old lady was ushered in by a young man who kissed her and left. The old lady smiled and sat down opposite me. She settled back with closed eyes for a moment, then took a computer game out of her handbag and began to play. Only one other passenger came into the compartment, a very abled-looking young man, powerfully built. He took a DISABLED seat by the window and peeled an orange.

I closed my eyes and gave myself to the journey. I had no wish to relive old times; I wanted to stay in the present October to receive what new thoughts might come to me.

I opened my travel book: Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey, an English edition. Closing my eyes again I saw the rustlers’ cavern behind the waterfall and I saw Bern Venters shoot the Masked Rider, who turned out to be a beautiful girl. He tended her wound and took her to his hidden valley. ‘“I’ll try — to live,” she said. The broken whisper just reached his ears. “Do what — you want — with me.”’

The train was moving. We glided under gantries and wires, past coloured lights and signals of various kinds. Through zones of bleakness we passed, then through human habitations. Sometimes files of poplars marched rearward beyond the gantries and the wires while TGV trains shot by us like thunderbolts. Strange towers and stretches of flatness appeared and disappeared; haggard landscapes, rivers and canals. Graffiti on walls, bridges, and power stations offered illegible messages, some perhaps for me.

Were there so many electrical towers nineteen years ago? Birches, poplars, and willows tried to remember Claude as they struck wistful poses: ‘Was it like this?’ they said. ‘Was it like that?’ The paper sign on the outside of the window said MARSEILLE backwards over sky, trees, hills, valleys, farms, rivers, boats and bridges. At Sens there were little trees on the platform with straight trunks and round leafy tops that might have been done by the Douanier Rousseau.

As we travelled on I found myself looking within more than without. Père Lachaise Cemetery appeared on the screen of my memory in the October of four years ago with the yellow leaves of autumn scattered among the tombs. Women sort themselves according to the famous dead they visit; I recall a lady I met at the tomb of Seurat: she was dotty but nice. And of course always at the supine statue of Victor Noir there are those who rub themselves against him and easily transfer their attentions from a bronze member to a live one. The dead are never lonely in Père Lachaise and the living need not be.

At the time I speak of I was without a long-term female friend, and being a romantic I craved the company of a like-minded person. I went to where Chopin lies, a little south of Bellini and east of Cherubini, near the Carrefour du Grand Rond. The paving stones glistened from the soft rain that had fallen a little while ago; the sky was grey and gentle, the trees sympathetic; almost I could hear a shadowy mazurka as I approached.

I stopped about three metres from the tomb to watch a young woman who was standing before it. She was looking at the marble muse who sits grieving for the departed composer. At the muse’s feet were fresh flowers. Below her, in an oval inset on the plinth, is a relief profile of Chopin.

The woman was wearing jeans, black boots, a yellow wind-breaker, and a black baseball cap with the insignia of the New York Yankees. She had a large shoulder bag. She was short and plump, with a round face and short straight blonde hair. She shook her head sadly and put her bag on the ground, then she took a half-bottle of champagne and two glasses out of it. I was not close enough to read the label on the champagne. She popped the cork which flew straight up, then fell at my feet; she filled the glasses. She raised one to the marble muse, then poured it over the flowers. The second glass she raised to Chopin’s profile, then drank.

Again she shook her head, took a paper bag out of the shoulder bag, put the two glasses in it, placed the bag on the ground and stamped on it. I moved towards her. ‘End of a romance?’ I said.

She turned to me with tears running down her face. I held out my arms and she moved into them. That was how I met Victoria Fawles. The champagne was Pol Roger; I have kept the bottle.

The next stop was Laroche-Migennes; after that came Tonnerre. Sometimes the window filled up with sky, leaving only a thin residue of earth at the bottom of the glass as we continued in a southeasterly direction. Montbard came next. The old woman and the young man had left the train at Tonnerre and there were other people in the compartment now but my mind and my vision did not focus on them. Superimposed on the wall opposite me was the mental image of the tympanum of the west portal of St Lazare. Although Christ is the judge he seems to be pinned there like a butterfly with outspread wings. If there were a God, might He have punished His only son in this way? Might He have said to Christ, ‘You and your big ideas! You took it on yourself to be a ransom for the many; now the many are your problem, and you can judge them through all eternity.’ What a thought.

Sometimes there were hills. It became sunny and we were at Dijon. Here the train stood for a long time while backpackers drank mineral water and Coke and bought things at the vending machine while their shadows did the same. Does Solange remember when we shared an orange at Dijon? I licked the juice that ran down her chin.

South of Dijon we passed vineyards. Next came Beaune, then Chagny, a peaceful little station where I and several others left the train for the 16.43 bus for Autun. Our driver was a short sturdy woman who conversed non-stop with a friend in the first seat while smoothly passing oncoming traffic in streets only wide enough for one car. Then up and down on winding roads through vineyards we went, through Nolay, Epinac, Sully and many smaller towns and villages to arrive at Autun at 18.06.

Through the October darkness I walked slowly up the hill to the Hôtel de la Tête Noir, putting my feet into the footsteps of nineteen years before. Almost I expected to smell the fragrance of Solange’s hair if I turned my head. I registered at the hotel and was given, as I had requested, the key to Room 309, attached by a ring to its miniature bottle. I bought a half-bottle of Pinot Noir, then went up to the room where Solange and I had lain in each other’s arms, had slept and awakened together. I had told myself that I was not going to relive the past but of course this is not possible: what we call the present is only the accumulated past.

I went to the window and raised my glass to the lights of the Champ de Mars and the Mairie. When I had finished the wine I went out and walked to St Lazare past the same dim cafés and ancient houses as before while cars and mopeds passed me going up the hill. At the cathedral I stood with my back to Le Petit Rolin and looked up at the tympanum that Solange and I had looked at together. ‘Speak to me,’ I said to Christ. ‘Speak to me as the son of God. Tell me something.’

‘I have nothing to say,’ said Christ. ‘This is all there is.’

‘But meaning,’ I said, ‘there must be meaning.’

‘Reality has no meaning,’ said Christ, ‘it is only itself. I am only myself; I am an image carved in stone. Gislebertus hoc fecit.’

‘That is not a good enough answer,’ I said. ‘You’re being evasive. Ideas are part of reality. There came to me the idea to travel here to see you and it meant something to me.’

‘What?’ said Christ.

‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking you.’

‘I don’t know what this idea meant; sometimes people say they’ve come to see me when they really want to see someone or something else. Maybe God knows.’

‘Are you saying there is a God?’

No answer.

I begin to be tired of talking about this. The next day I looked at the tympanum by daylight and still Christ said nothing. As I turned to start down the hill the bells shouted, ‘There is a God! Believe us!’ I waved goodbye without turning around, and walked down to the Hôtel de France where I had coffee and Poire William. Then I took the bus to Le Creusot where I got the TGV train to the Gare de Lyon; from there the RER to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and from there I walked home. No longer was I looking for meaning but still I wanted something and I had no idea what it might be.