The Church Bells Ring in the Early Morning

The morning air is brisk and cold. The sharp winter sun warm. His body feels both sensations at the same time, as his mind tries to reconcile the two.

Nothing much happens in this docile city, which always seems especially docile on a Sunday morning. There was that explosion a while back. But they never figured out who caused it, or why it happened. Or perhaps they did manage to find out, but just didn’t want to tell anyone. Better let it fade into memory, drift further down the back pages of people’s newsfeeds. The strutting teenage celebrities filming their short clips in the street for socials already moved on to new things: apparently they want to ban certain people from participating in the spring carnival this year, and also science says that the early blooming of the tulips is worrying — both for climate security as well as for the tourism industry.

The church bells clang far off in the heart of what was once the historic city centre. They sound wistful, ghostly even, as they echo between the concrete apartment-blocks in the otherwise quiet morning.

He sips his coffee. The explosion killed some people, right? Took out half a block of social housing. It wasn’t a gas leak or anything like that, he remembers. Terrorists? Refugees? The State, even? Why didn’t we hear anything more about it? He looks at two magpies making a nest in the bare tree branches above his balcony. Down below, on the roof of the parking garage, lies a dead pigeon that is slowly decomposing. The two magpies fly down and start pecking at its feathers. At first, he thinks that maybe they’ll use what’s left of the pigeon to further construct their nest. A curved tibia bone nestled between some branches for support. But the magpies start dragging the body off towards the side of the roof. He watches as they tumble the body over the side with dexterous movement of their beaks. They squawk and flap their wings as it falls into the gutter pipe that leads down to the street. Why did they do that? People say magpies are smart. Like crows, almost. The bloated corpse of the pigeon will remain stuck in the pipe, blocking the gutter when the inevitable winter rains return. Is that their plan, to flood the world below while they remain safe in their nest far above? Perhaps they simply found the pigeon’s body an unseemly sight and thought to do something about it.

Somewhere far off a dog barks at the church bells that are still sounding throughout the city. The bells are insistent and unceasing, like an air raid siren. The city was, after all, famously bombed during the Second World War. And the church was the only building that survived the fire that spread throughout the old city centre. But they reconstructed, building what they considered to be the city of the future back then. Building not only a city, but a society, a people, a point of view on the world that was yet to come.

He sits on the balcony and finishes his coffee. The heat from the ceramic cup has dissapated, and his hands are growing cold. But he keeps sitting there, waiting for the thing to happen. He can feel it in the air. It isn’t far off anymore. The thing that will disrupt the otherwise quiet life here. Will they even notice it happening? Even the explosion (when was that again?) somehow seemed to have escape their notice. Perhaps that was the thing. Or the start of it, at least. The two magpies fly up to their nest and disappear below the brim of twigs and tufts and pieces of sun-bleached plastic. The sun shines brightly, but it’s still cold outside. The city is docile and quiet, though the church bells are still ringing, much longer than they normally do on a Sunday morning.

#45 Written on a sunny Sunday morning, just before the church bells started sounding.