Every day
at just before 5Oclock the bells ring in the church which sits over the
courtyard from me. I have no idea why, nor do my orthodox believer visitors,
who are increasing, as they have been since around 1999. It is not Easter or
lent, nor some other festival in their calendar, which is not the same as the
one used in the west, and which I wouldn’t know of even if it was
In England
I lived by a church: every Sunday morning the bells played the same melody,
four notes repeated in two variations.
I don’t
know why they did that, these people do though.
It was a
solemn but uplifting sound, all very Elgar and Kipling and cricket being played
by bewhiskered men in misty villages.
And in
English cathedral cities you sometimes hear a fluid many noted peal of bells,
all joyous and, celebratory: I’m sure there are web pages that explain all
this.
Another
time I lived in the city centre in Catholic Austria, Salzburg, and there were
churches everywhere, they made a weird cacophony of tones that went on forever
and implied that god was a bewildered elderly gentleman with back problems and
an inescapable sense of foreboding.
But this
Russian church only has two bells: a big one and a smaller one, though still
quite full and resonant.
Had I a
scientific turn of mind I could listen to it via a microphone and a digital
tuner and then draw profound conclusions from the musical intervals employed, and,
in doing so, reveal the mind of God, the music of the spheres and a grand
unified theory of everything.. Though in my heart I know it would just be a
cold man on a balcony trying to work out what all the flashing numbers mean and
struggling to remember what he thought he was doing.
There is no fixed tempo, each bell just
starts clanging randomly, and seemingly irrespective of what the other is
doing. The larger bell rings less often, likely because the gnomes have to work
harder to pull it over the dragon’s nose, or whatever it is they do to make
this thing happen. It happens for five minutes and then it stops happening, and
I have no idea why.
What are
they trying to say?
What do
they want from us?
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