Felix Timmermans
The Coffin Procession
Felix Timmermans (1886-1947) was extremely popular in his day – not just in his native Belgium, but also worldwide – for his often light-hearted, rural-themed fiction, including Pallieter (1916), an uplifting book that was seen as an antidote to the grim misery of the World War One years. Curiously, though, at the beginning of his career, his outlook rendered rather pessimistic by a near-death battle with a serious illness, he penned a number of highly gloomy and macabre tales reminiscent of Poe. Several of these were featured in his collection Intimations of Death (1910) (published in English for the first time by Valancourt in 2019). ‘The Coffin Procession’ appeared in a 1924 collection by Timmermans and revisits the morbid themes of his earliest work. This is its first English-language appearance.
That winter, when he was living in Borgerhout (he lived now in the Sint-Andries neighborhood), Piet Lawijd had promised that if his little Rose might be cured of her scarlet fever, he would make a pilgrimage on foot to Scherpenheuvel and there would make an offering of his dead wife’s gold earrings and ten francs to the miracle-working statue of the Madonna.
The child was cured. Piet was firmly convinced that it was his promise that had brought about the miracle. And soon the little girl was playing once again in the street, in the clamor of the fertile, noisy neighborhood.
May, the month of Our Lady, came with its long days and blue skies, and the pilgrims went to the holy places, like Averbode, Scherpenheuvel, Edeghem, Lisp, and anywhere where there was a well-known statue of the Madonna to worship and call upon.
Piet Lawijd had forgotten his promise.
He toiled all day long at making shoes in his back room, behind the red geraniums and purple fuchsias that stood before the open window. He had to work hard to bring up his four children. He had no desire to remarry. His wife had been constantly sick for two years; he’d had his fill, he’d had enough.
Now and then he took a short break to watch his fancy pigeons or to look at his flowers by the little window, and on Sundays and Mondays he played cards from morning till night at the inn or on the doorstep of his house. You couldn’t find a better player at klaberjass. He loved his children too much to let them want for anything, and only seldom was he able to eat until his own belly was good and full. But if the opportunity presented itself, like on Saint Crispin’s day, he would stand aside for no man and would shovel down his rabbit with four pounds of potatoes like it was nothing.
But Piet Lawijd had forgotten his promise.
Yet one Monday evening his young daughter came dancing in, carrying a little pennant from Scherpenheuvel.
Piet was really shaken up by it.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘We practiced the music for the procession to Scherpenheuvel, and I got the little flag from the Pastor.’
Piet thought about his promise.
There was only one Sunday left in May for him to go with the procession to Scherpenheuvel. He could of course go alone, later in June, but alone was so alone, ten hours on foot from Antwerp! Prattling and chattering, the time passed quickly, but ten hours without even opening his mouth, no, that was only good for the blind men’s pilgrimage.
Maybe put it off until next year? And if little Rose got sick again in the winter? For Piet wasn’t at all superstitious, except when it came to death and sickness.
The question was whether there was still a procession going on Sunday, otherwise he could set out on his own.
That same evening he went to Mieke Mumbol, a little old lady who said prayers on commission, sat all day long in the church, and was well informed about the masses, novenas, octaves, holy days, and pilgrimages. He gave the old woman a penny and learned that the following Sunday the Coffin Procession was going to Scherpenheuvel; that was the final one this month, and this year, from Antwerp.
All he had to do was show up at the church of Sint Andries at three o’clock in the morning and join the party of pilgrims.
And on Sunday that’s just what he did, without knowing, or asking, or thinking any further about what exactly the Coffin Procession was.
It was four in the morning, the streets were still empty and unobstructed, lonely and silent, and the houses like stone masks, when the procession got underway.
The undersexton went in front with the cross, then two choirboys with the candles, and behind them the band, a few men who’d been scraped together whom you might see again the following day playing at a dance. They played a slow, airy march composed by the sexton of Berlaer, with whose words the hundreds of pilgrims sang along:
In Lourdes in the mountains
there appeared in a cave,
full of riches and luster,
the mother of God
Ave, Ave, Ave
Ave Maria
Piet walked between two women, right behind the musicians, and shyly mumbled along with the song.
Everyone had a little basket or pail with them, well supplied with food and drink.
After the singing, a Hail Mary was said, read by the Pastor himself.
When they came out of the great city, through the Berchem Gate, the large, bright-orange sun shone so intensely over the milky-white landscape that they soon had to cover their eyes with their hands . . .
They walked now under the shade of two rows of tall trees, and the erratic sunbeams, which fell through the cracks in the foliage and danced up and down on their buttons and their bodies, played tricks on their eyes.
In between two Hail Marys, the woman walking to Piet’s right said, after a heavy sigh:
‘I’m a little curious who’s going to die now.’
‘What do you mean, die?’ asked Piet.
‘Well, yes, someone always dies on this pilgrimage, don’t they?’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Piet said, sniffling a little, and opening his eyes wide with fright, for he couldn’t bear the thought of death.
‘Don’t you know that this is the Coffin Procession? . . . Just look behind you and you’ll see the coffin being carried by two men.’
Piet turned around, and standing on his tiptoes, he peered over the hundreds of swaying heads and, indeed, in front of the yellow stagecoach he saw a white coffin dancing above the dark forms of the people.
‘And what is that for?’ Piet asked, stiff with terror.
‘Well, I’ll tell you the short version,’ said the woman, but she told him the long one instead, how over the course of many years someone always died on this pilgrimage, and when people came to feel that this had to happen, that it was unavoidable, they had started bringing a coffin along with them, to make it easier to transport the dead person back home.
‘Then why do you go with them, and why do the others go?’ asked Piet, a shiver running through his body.
‘Because of the great merit,’ said the woman, ‘there is, after all, more merit in taking part in a procession in which someone must die, whether it’s me, you, or someone else, than in some other, ordinary procession.’
‘Yes, there’s more merit in it,’ thought Piet, but he didn’t say it. He chewed a wad of tobacco to calm his frightened nerves, and he started to think in a deathly terrified way about the procession and its obligatory death, beginning with: ‘If I had known that, I would have gone with another procession, for that death could befall me just as easily as someone else,’ and ending with, ‘then I’ll go on my own. After all, I didn’t promise to be brought home between four planks of wood. I promised to make the pilgrimage on foot, on foot,’ he especially emphasized ‘on foot’ and added, ‘and to come back on foot as well! . . . I’m sticking to my promise, I’m doing it all on foot!’
And when they came to Lier, he said to the woman: ‘I’m just going to go and buy a tart, I’ll catch up with you shortly.’
But he only went and stood at the baker’s shop window until all the pilgrims had passed by. He let the procession go on, and when they had disappeared over the tall bridge, he said: ‘I’ll just wait half an hour or so, otherwise I’ll catch up with them again.’ He wanted to put as much distance between himself and the procession as possible, as if to make clear to the invisible powers that he was no part of it, so that he wouldn’t wind up in the coffin by mistake. ‘I have nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with that procession,’ he said with decision, and so as not to be bored during that half hour, he stepped inside a little inn, ‘The Open House’. But the people there were playing cards just then, and presently he stood watching with his pint in his hand, and he forgot about the pilgrimage, got caught up in the card game, gave advice after each hand, and all of the men thought: that must be a good card player, and when the one who had lost the most money stood up, he took his place, and they played, earnestly, solemnly, full of silence and contemplation, until at the end of the game everyone shot up in amazement, and the players and the onlookers called out at the top of their voices, so that the tavern sang with the noise like a glass goblet.
Other players joined in, the best were called to play, but Piet won, won almost continuously, and none of them could do anything other than praise him. And Piet grew red-faced from glory and from the beer. More money was wagered, and each man played with a pounding heart and the tips of their noses white with emotion. The men stood around them in a tight, thick circle, with their pint glasses in their hands. They forgot their beers and their Sunday cigars.
Women came to call their husbands to eat, but the men snarled them away, or else the women came to join in watching and forgot about eating too.
It was one o’clock in the afternoon, and it was only with the cry that, ‘The pigeons are there! they’re there! At Teresa and Louis’s son Jef’s place, his witzwing1 just showed up!’ that relief came, and the card game languished.
Now that Piet had a thick sack full of money, he bought a couple of rounds for those who had stuck around, but all that drink tingled like steam heat up to his brain and his thoughts began to dance and spin. And at three p.m. he went outside on his wobbly beer legs and sang, supporting himself by leaning against the houses,
‘In Lourdes in the mountains
there appeared in a cave. . . .’
and thinking that he was going towards Scherpenheuvel, he set out in the direction of Antwerp, in the hope of finding something good to eat and still to make it to Scherpenheuvel by evening.
The procession had arrived safely in the holy place.
No one had died yet. And in the morning, after the mass and the communion, and after having bought a toy trumpet, a little pennant, cookies, and prints for the children, they once more left the rolling hills, which lie long and blue and supple around Scherpenheuvel.
The music sounded and they rushed through the Lord’s Prayer, and fear settled on everyone’s heart. Now someone was going to die, and each of them thought: ‘It could be me,’ and they prayed for it not to be them, and that it might be someone else. And those who walked in front looked behind them to see whether someone back there had died yet, and those in the back craned their necks to see whether in front of them someone’s flame of life had been snuffed out, and those in the middle looked both forward and back. And louder, more pleading and more plaintively, did they pray that no one would die.
Death hung over them like an invisible cloud, targeting the one that it wanted, and every heart was pinched by fear to the size of a bean. Their faces were white with terror, and they hastened so as to be home as quickly as possible. That wouldn’t help them much, of course, but it nonetheless lowered the chance of death a little. They passed through Aerschot. Not more than two times out of ten did they make it so far without someone having died.
Rikus, the sexton, with his chicken’s head on which a single feather blew, who organized the procession and made all the arrangements for the masses, eating, and sleeping, walked in his tight black tailcoat, jittery from head to toe, constantly asking fearfully: ‘No one’s sick? No one’s unwell? Oh, if just for once no one died!’ He gave no thought to himself dying, he was of too great importance, for otherwise who would organize the procession?
Aerschot was already far behind them; from atop the last hill they could now see, far in the distance, the pepperpot tower of Lier, and still no one had died.
That had never happened before!
Fear squeezed more and more around their hearts, each of them held his soul in his body with an iron grip. And they raced forth as fast as they could, and no one felt pain in their legs or in their overworked knees. The whole procession was like a balloon that has been blown up too full and for whose approaching burst one sticks one’s fingers in one’s ears.
There were only two who were not afraid. The sexton, who for today was immortal, and the fat, jolly pastor, who said reassuringly to the people: ‘What God keeps is well kept, and if they come for me, I’m ready, so you can feel free to pray that I’m the one they take.’
They came to Lier. As usual, they had to pass through a tight press of people, who always came with big, fearful eyes to watch the Coffin Procession curiously and ask who had died.
And now it was a real disappointment for the people of Lier, when they perceived that no one was dead.
‘Should I leave my house unattended,’ said Jef Verdicht, the book printer, ‘to go and see an empty coffin? I’ll stay home this time. I’m sweating like a watering can, and it’s just a pilgrimage like any other.’
The happiness of the pilgrims made little cracks in their dark fear, and when they made it back to Oude-God without anyone dying, Rikus waved his long arms in the air like windmill blades and called out, ‘We’ll ring the bells! We’ll light our windows with candles tonight!’
Just yonder was Antwerp!
Still no one dead!
‘Faster! Faster!’ went from mouth to mouth. And suddenly, because that procession of hundreds of people was like one person, they went faster, faster in order to outwit Death, and they broke out into a run! The undersexton in front with the cross, the two altar boys, the musicians, who weren’t playing, the pastor, who had to keep up while at the same time smilingly and sympathetically urging the people to remain calm, and then all the women and men, the crippled, the blind, the lame, they ran, and the two coffin bearers ran, and the stagecoach tottered now behind them at a trot, and those who couldn’t walk sat inside it, squashed together like herring in a tin, and some hung from the stairs, and those who couldn’t get inside were carried along behind, pulled, dragged.
It was like a hunt after a deer by an invisible hunter. And they ran, just ran, and loudly and confusedly they began saying the Hail Marys, no one could pray one all the way through, and it rose to a cry, a howl.
And the townspeople in their Sunday best, who sat at the outdoor cafés along the Steenweg, drinking or playing cards, or else were bowling, had to laugh at the racing speed of that dressed-up crowd, and yelled, ‘Fools! Fools! Fools!’
But when they heard what it was, they too got excited and they ran along with them to see if anyone would die before they reached the Berchem Gate, and there were some who took advantage of this to get out of paying for their beer.
And there was the fortress wall and the Berchem Gate with its bronze lions!
And people collided with each other, stormed through the wide gate, and those within the fortress had soon begun to cry out, to cheer, and to rave with joy. Everyone wanted to get through immediately, they squeezed, they pulled and pushed.
The pastor shouted: ‘Now you’re going to cause even more deaths yourselves!’ A wild, mad desire to stay alive scorched their spirits, they didn’t listen, and they gushed through the gate like a bag of peas that is shaken empty. They fell over one another, but they were inside the fortress! and they opened their mouths to cry out with joy.
And there came the packed stagecoach inside the fortress walls! They were saved, no one had died! And the band began to play the ‘Flemish Lion’ and some knelt and others danced.
The tears streamed down dirty, dusty, sweaty faces. They sang, they cheered. Every one of them was happy, not only because he was not dead, but because no one had lost their life. Unconsciously they felt like one whole, like one body with many limbs, like a chain of brotherhood.
They danced in a circle around the cross, they tossed their hats in the air and swung their canes!
At the pastor’s command, the cross bearer started forward and now the pilgrims went arm-in-arm, dancing and singing behind him to the melody of the music:
Where can we be better off
than with our best friends.
And in the distance, in the day’s fading gold, stood the tarnished green copper of the Sint Andries church tower, black against the sky.
And there were bells in the tower that swung gloomily back and forth, everyone could see it, and everyone could hear it.
‘The death bells! The death bells!’ they said in astonishment, ‘and yet no one died!’
And there was a woman who came to meet the procession and went to the pastor and said something to him.
And the news flew over the heads of the crowd.
Piet Lawijd had died yesterday at an inn, where he had wagered he could eat twenty-four hard boiled eggs.
And soon everyone knew that he had accompanied the procession, but that in Lier he had fled out of fright.
The joy was dissipated at once, and terror struck like flames around their hearts.
Fate itched with cold fingers in their hair.
Translated from the Dutch by James D. Jenkins
1 A particular variety of fancy pigeon. The reference is to pigeon racing, then a popular practice in Flanders, in which breeders would release the birds – who would travel distances of 100 km or more – then measure how long it took them to return home. Their return after such a long journey was apparently, as here, a source of great local excitement. [Translator’s note.]