Joachim and the “Glöckner”: Their Relationship

Joachim’s relationship with the Bell ringer turns a childhood fear into an intimate, physical companionship. At first, the patient’s grinding teeth, dark appearance, and violently swinging bells make him the one person on the hospital grounds whom Joachim truly fears. Their bond begins to change after the Bell ringer returns a lost ink eraser; soon Joachim is riding on his shoulders, and what had sounded like a warning becomes the recognizable music of a daily meeting.

Identity and Setting

The Bell ringer was a patient at Hesterberg who had lived within its walls since shortly after birth. Though already in his late twenties, he had not been transferred to Stadtfeld Psychiatric Hospital: he had spent his entire life at Hesterberg and walked the same routes across its grounds according to a precise daily pattern. His established place in the institution shaped the setting of his relationship with Joachim. Their encounters took place not in a private home or a separate social world, but on the paths, lawns, and roads that were part of both the patient’s routine and the child’s way through the hospital grounds.

The man’s appearance and sound initially seemed to confirm Joachim’s fear. He wore a neglected Bundeswehr parka and trousers, heavy boots, and a large black beard; his jaws ground audibly even from several metres away. When he walked, patients, attendants, doctors, visitors, and even the food cart moved aside. He swung a gold bell in each hand with powerful, practiced movements, and the ringing announced him well before he came into view. Once a month, three attendants accompanied him outside the hospital so that he could climb the bell tower of Schleswig Cathedral. Joachim knew him first through this spectacle of sound and motion, which made the patient seem less like a person approaching than an immense, moving apparatus.

Fear and the First Encounter

When Joachim was alone on his way home from school, he usually avoided the Bell ringer as soon as he heard the bells. If his father was with him, he would take his father’s hand and let the patient pass; alone, he often ran in the opposite direction before seeing him. On one afternoon, however, the Bell ringer appeared behind him before he could get away. Joachim left the path, removed his schoolbag, and pressed himself against an avenue tree, hoping not to be noticed.

His middle brother had advised him never to show patients that he was afraid, on the reasoning that visible fear might provoke them by implying that something was wrong with them. Joachim tried to follow this advice: as the Bell ringer passed, he edged around the tree trunk and out of sight. But when he looked after the man, the bells abruptly stopped. The Bell ringer stood motionless with one bell raised and the other beside his head. Joachim imagined that he had been detected and would be pursued. When he heard the grinding teeth close by, he fled toward three doctors in white coats, dropping several pencils as he picked up his schoolbag. The escape brought not only panic but shame: he feared he might have overreacted and that the doctors would respond with friendly incomprehension. At this point, the patient remained a figure onto whom Joachim’s fear could project an imminent attack, even though the man’s reputation at the hospital was that he was harmless.

The Returned Ink Eraser

The next important encounter came on the minigolf course. Joachim was playing alone when he heard the familiar grinding sound and saw the Bell ringer near the loop. The patient reached into his parka and held out Joachim’s ink eraser, which had gone missing on the day he ran away from him. The returned object connected the frightening encounter to an act of attention: the Bell ringer had found the small school item and brought it back.

Joachim wanted to run, yet found himself walking toward the patient. He kept a minigolf club clenched in his fist and reached for the eraser. For a moment, the Bell ringer held on while Joachim pulled, and Joachim felt how impossible it would be to wrench anything from the man’s grasp by force. The patient’s jaws continued to grind; Joachim wondered whether the sounds might be speech, but could not know. Then the Bell ringer opened his hand. Rather than pursuing Joachim or using his strength against him, he released the eraser, and Joachim withdrew.

The patient next bent forward, prompting a fresh alarm in Joachim, who wondered if he was about to spring at him. Instead, Joachim noticed the bells on the grass. The Bell ringer began swinging the larger one, then brought in the smaller bell with its higher sound. The movement spread through his shoulders, back, and head until his whole body seemed to turn with the bells. Joachim watched, absorbed, as the patient gathered speed and ran across the lawn. The scene did not erase the earlier fear by explanation; it altered what Joachim could see. The same force and sound that had seemed threatening could also form a deliberate, exhilarating performance.

From Encounter to Companionship

The very next day, Joachim heard the bells after passing through Gate 1. Although his first impulse was still to get away, he stayed. He was surprised to find that he was no longer afraid. The ringing now seemed full and vibrant to him, stirring his ears and eardrums rather than announcing danger. The Bell ringer stopped in front of him and set down the bells. Joachim noticed the man’s dark, glistening eyes and the mixed smell of his parka, hair, and beard; he could not decide whether the smell was repulsive or intensely fragrant. The patient’s grinding teeth, once a source of alarm, now struck him as almost friendly and inviting.

Without ceremony, the Bell ringer took Joachim by the wrist and lifted him onto his shoulders. He ran with the bells swinging around them, and Joachim clung to the man’s black hair and held himself tight with his thighs so that he would not be struck or thrown down. Their route brought them alongside the food cart carrying metal troughs to the wards. They let it gain a short lead, then raced past it. In the cart’s stainless-steel sides, Joachim saw his own reflection: a blond, curly-haired rider on a large, shaggy, black figure. The cart drivers waved. The Bell ringer grunted happily, and the pair left the road, pushed through the undergrowth, and continued around the hospital park.

Afterward, Joachim was allowed to ride the patient almost every day. The encounter that had begun with a desperate flight became a recurring practice, recognizable in the sound of the bells and the physical act of being lifted onto the man’s shoulders. Joachim’s fingers kept the Bell ringer’s smell even after he washed his hands at night; he also noticed that the skin of his hands felt unusually soft and smooth after their rides. These details make the relationship bodily and lasting: the patient’s presence followed Joachim indoors, beyond the paths on which they met.

Trust, Care, and Significance

Their companionship also took shape around small offerings and routines. The Bell ringer loved sweets and was especially fond of chocolate. When Joachim brought him a bar, the patient became visibly restless, opened the wrapper with his pointed, bitten nails, carefully broke the chocolate into pieces, and arranged them in a line on a wall, bench, or step. Only after laying out this little train did he begin to eat, piece by piece, with complete attention. Joachim could ask if they were ready to go, but the patient did not hurry; the ritual held its own time and order. Their shared outings thus included not just speed and noise, but Joachim’s recognition of a particular pleasure and his willingness to wait while the Bell ringer enjoyed it.

Joachim’s bond with the patient stands out against a childhood environment in which the family casually used demeaning labels for the people who lived at the hospital. It also contrasts with the broader isolation Joachim observed there: the grounds could be crowded while patients sat or moved about alone, and even a large playground was often deserted. The Bell ringer was at first reduced, in Joachim’s eyes, to an alarming appearance and a sound; familiarity brought forward different particulars—the returned school object, the careful arrangement of chocolate, the joyful grunt, and the repeated invitation of the rides. Joachim’s father described the patient as one of the kindest people at the hospital and as the opposite of what his appearance suggested. The relationship gives that judgment lived form, without making Joachim’s initial terror unreal: trust develops through encounters, and the bells that once drove him to run become the signal of a companionship he returns to almost daily.