The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred (38 page)

To me he was mainly great-grandfather, a relatively ordinary old man, short of stature, and with the lower half of his face hidden by a mask, but for those of us who knew him, he was part of our everyday life. We all loved him dearly and admired him for his goodness and generosity; and the grief we felt when he died was not of this world. He was one of the kindest and most loving people I have ever met, always close to laughter, but also to despair over the sorry state of our world.

Among the photographs which remain of him there is one I often take out and look at across the illusory distance to a moment in our existence we call time. It was taken one morning in August 1908 in Martha’s Vineyard. My grandfather’s father, Barefoot, is sitting in the arbour at a table laid for breakfast, surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He is looking straight into the camera and one almost discerns a smile beneath his mask. His eyes, those dark, beautiful eyes, radiate a happiness that can only be communicated by the sign language of the deaf, where the look in the eyes is so important a part of the idiom.

I can see what that look in his eyes expresses: blind faith in love as a power so strong it can overcome death, and that he himself will soon, very soon, be reunited with Henriette Vogel, his beloved.

Tisbury, 1994

Jonathan Barefoot

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Epub ISBN: 9781448113750

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Published by Vintage 2006

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Veronica Britten-Austin 2005

Carl-Johan Vallgren has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published with the title
Den vidunderliga kärlekens historia
by

Albert Bonniers Förlag AB, Stockholm

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by

The Harvill Press

Vintage