Bells

It starts in the morning, I become aware that the bell rings three times, while I prepare my coffee in the kitchen, still half asleep. I wonder, why three times? Is it a quarter to seven? Don’t the bells start ringing from seven, or do they start early and I never noticed before? Maybe for those who need to get up earlier?

And again, dong…. dong ….dong….it is a solitary bell. There is no hurry, it sounds somewhat restrained even. Now I know what’s going on. My mother has recently – actually not that recently, let’s call it in the intermediate time, when she was still aware of things and participating in our world, because recently, the bells didn’t matter anymore, like so many other things. Where was I? My mother was very interested in the bells, and the rules according to which they ring, and that’s the reason I know that now it is seven a.m.

The bells are „normal bells“ in the belltower which is maybe a hundred yards from our house, as the crow flies. The tower is square, built from grey stones; the windows are offset with red clinker bricks. The church has three bells in total, I believe. For Easter, the bells fly to Rome…. that’s what they told us when we were little. The bells ring for the third time, another set of three chimes. The bell ringing just now is a bit lower than the one before, a sonorous sound, but not obtrusive. 

Now it starts in earnest. All three bells are ringing ‚full-on‘ like one visitor put it once, for five minutes. This is on purpose, the bells herald the day, with verve. Here in the village, the world is still in order. With the racket also resonates that the tradition stems from different times, when people didn’t really ‚have the time‘; and if, it was often dangling from a chain and was shown off from a vest pocket on Sundays. Most people worked on farms or in the fields; wrist watches and radio alarms only came later. 

We, who have gotten used to the bells, sleep right through the noise, or if not, turn over reassuredly. Visitors, who usually sleep deeply here because it is so quiet, are surprised. During the day, the bells chime so regularly that you barely notice it. Once for the quarter, two for half an hour, three for three quarters of the hour. On the full hour, one bell rings four times followed by a deeper tone that rings the corresponding hour. 

At eleven, there is even more noise than at seven. It’s so the farmers in the fields would know it is lunchtime and come back to eat. Well. The bells also ring for the other usual church events: for the catholics it’s the morning prayer, evening mass, Sunday mass, and on occasions on Saturdays around six, but here I am lost to be honest, sporadic and former protestant churchgoer that I am. My mother never sent us to the village church, we went to the next town over. I remember, during mass they ring when the sermon is about to start and then again during the Lord’s prayer. 

They also ring when somebody died. Only last Saturday, when we wanted them to ring, we could not get hold of anyone. They made up for it on Sunday. 

As I mentioned, my Mum spend a lot of energy in the intermediate time to decipher the logic of the church bells. She kept asking, „Ernst, did you hear that? Why are they ringing now?“ Our neighbour, who helps out in the church and comes to pick hydrangea from our garden to decorate the altar, was meant to ask the priest. He didn’t know either. We didn’t think it was that important. The bells are controlled automatically. Maybe the sexton might have known more, who programs the ringing mechanism or however they do it. There must be an age old logic to it, after all. It just never seemed so important to know. 

I wonder if she would have liked that the bells rang for her, too?