The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred (11 page)

When the Jesuits had found him that freezing Easter morning, chained to the wall, scrofulous and covered in purulent sores, Hercule wasn’t sure whether what he saw was real or yet another of the hallucinations – his own or others’ – that had been making up his everyday existence. He was in such a bad state they had begun counting his days. He’d felt death’s angel breathing down his neck when it had come creeping through the darkness to collect someone who looked as though they deserved to be out of their misery.

Throughout those last days in the asylum it had been the thought of revenge that, against all odds, had kept Hercule’s heart beating, each beat more hesitant than the one before, a bit closer to death in each widening pause between despairing pulse beats, when even the memory of the girl he loved above all else lay buried in the stinking straw, next to the dead, who lay there in the darkness, losing their warmth like bread brought out of an oven to cool. Livid, his white-hot hatred had raged guerrilla warfare on death’s henchmen, and above all on the Moosbrugger brothers who had made his life a living hell for seven years. He revelled in fantasies of repaying everyone who had ever inflicted suffering on him, swore they would all get more than their share of his revenge.

Not until he arrived at the monastery had he realised the nightmare was over. He thought the Jesuits should really have chosen someone else, some able-bodied boy who could work as a servant. He saw his deliverance as a random act of Fate.

In music he discovered his wounds’ first bandage, and devoted himself to it with all the joy of his new-found freedom. On the afternoon that Julian Schuster, still unsure as to whether his protégé really was deaf and dumb, instructed him with signs and gestures on the fundaments of organ point, it struck him that music was somehow linked to this gift he’d been born with. Was not music, too, a systematic expression of the people’s innermost longing?

He heard it in the mystical sphere where it had its origin. The acoustic sounds had their counterparts in ideas he, with the help of his gift and the vibrations flowing through his body, could apprehend. He grasped it in the key system, in the Neapolitan sixth that made the abbot frown in consternation, reminding him as it did of some forgotten youthful sin, and which spoiled the monks’ concentration during Whitsun’s ninth prayer of jubilation, in the harmonies that pierced the brethren to the marrow of their bones and made them tremble to their extremities with subconscious longing. He was surprised by the progress he made and that he was in fact hearing the music, albeit freely turning it internally into his gift’s tonalities. He was surprised his toes hadn’t been destroyed by seven winters in an icy cellar. But though still tormented by those repulsive memories, by his hatred for the guards, by his hatred of mankind, he pushed on in every spare moment, indifferent to the commotion he was causing all around him and quite unaware he was making the novices doubt their faith or that the district’s peasants were beginning to regard him as a miracle worker. He went on playing, healed more and more by each modulation in the name of love, every dominant masked in a dominant seventh being tuned to beauty’s key note, or each time he dissolved a chromatic scale into an intoxication of ideas or joined together two remote keys, both built on the same longing: for Henriette Vogel.

UNAWARE THAT A
knot was about to be tied in this deformed boy’s destiny, Schuster fell asleep on his bunk in his cell. The crowd outside the monastery in the village of Heisterbach, Upper Silesia, had grown and been joined by folk from other widely scattered mountain villages. For the rumours about the miracle worker had, at a given point in time, crossed the boundary at which temptation becomes mass hysteria.

He was woken at dawn by knocking at his door. Opening it, he found Kippenberg standing outside in the corridor, clad only in his nightshirt.

“What’s up?” he asked.

The abbot, deathly pale, was holding a candle in his hand.

“Hurry,” he hissed, “for God’s sake! They’re storming the building!”

Schuster dressed swiftly, stuffed his rosary into his breeches pocket and sent a guilty prayer excusing himself for neglecting the paternosters he’d sworn to say first thing that morning. In the novices’ dormitory, where half-dressed men were running around looking for their belongings, total chaos reigned. Schuster sensed the terror in their prayers, one was sobbing, another weeping. Panic was rife. A glance at the window made him stiffen. Outside were so many dirty, emaciated people. Peasant women half out of their wits were pounding their fists against the walls and doors. Beside him he heard the abbot yelling at the top of his voice to make himself heard, “Where’s the boy, Schuster? We must get him out of harm’s way. Can’t you see they’re out of their wits?”

“Isn’t he in his cell?”

“No, I’ve given orders to search for him.”

Somewhere from the direction of the refectory came the ominous sound of a windowpane breaking. The crowd’s roar came in even louder from outside.

“They’re breaking in,” the abbot gasped. “The boy has bewitched them.”

In a corner to Schuster’s left was crouched a young novice, trembling in fear, a scapular pressed against his chest. Further down the corridor a group of boys had gathered with spades in their hands, to all appearances prepared to defend the monastery to the last. But when one of them yelled “Where’s that child of Satan? Let’s get rid of him, once and for all!” he realised he had mistaken their intention.

Turning to the abbot, he shouted, “If the peasants don’t tear him to pieces, the brethren will. We’ve got to find him.”

Leaving the dormitory with Kippenberg at his heels, he followed the passage that led to the west wing. It was just getting light. Through the windows he saw the sun rising over the limestone mountains that in the dawn of time had assumed the shape of a group of slumbering Amazons. In the foreground the mob was swaying to and fro. Everywhere were people. They had surrounded the entire building, their clenched fists hammering on the doors and windows. Howling with excitement they were after the monster, screaming out their wretchedness, their bondage, all their humiliations: the bread they had to eke out with bark from young birch trees, the eternal childbirths, the starvation, the trials and tribulations sent to them by an arrogant God who never heeded their prayers. They needed this monster, Schuster realised with bitter clarity, for their existence was so miserable they were prepared to stake their last hope on a mere miracle worker.

Neither in the west wing nor in the kitchen was he to be found. They searched the storage rooms, the lavatory, and again the cell where he slept, all with no result. Steadying himself against Schuster, Kippenberg whispered feverishly, “In the chapel. We haven’t looked in chapel.”

To a sinister accompaniment of a human battering-ram beating violently on the monastery gates they hurried along the corridors. If the sluice gate doesn’t hold, Schuster thought, they’ll all drown, and none will be spared.

Rounding a corner, they halted at the chapel door. In there, almost drowned by the din outside, sounds of the organ could be heard, desperate ancient harmonies, a lachrymose melody of unhappy love.

Opening the door, Schuster stepped into a darkness more constricting than in the passage. The crowds were banging against the windows with their clenched fists and everywhere ghostly faces with wide-open mouths and feverish eyes were screaming at them to hand over the monster.

They found him sitting on the bench at the organ, staring blankly in front of him, his feet resting on the keyboard. Julian Schuster discovered experiences can touch one another, and miracles can repeat themselves; for now, just as he had that time in Tihuan’s hut half a lifetime ago, he heard a phantom voice inside him; the very same as had been pursuing him all day, and which he now realised was the boy’s.

Help me
, it pleaded,
for God’s sake . . . I’ve got to get out of here . . .

Dizzy, as if a plug had been pulled out and all the blood was leaving his head, Schuster sank to the floor, his face the greyish yellow of the splinter from Jesus’ cross the house kept in a reliquary. Unmistakably he felt the boy’s presence inside himself, in the confusion rummaging about in his own mind, reading his every thought as clearly as if it were printed in a book.

“Holy Mary Mother of God,” he whispered. “The boy’s possessed.”

But he got no further. For now the very thing he most feared happened. A dull crash as the gates gave way. It was like the Flood, he’d recall later, a sea of shouting, screaming people pouring into the chapel. And somewhere amid the flailing arms and hysterical faces the boy, terrified, being carried aloft like driftwood afloat on the agitated surface of upstretched hands.

GROPING WITH HIS
sixth sense’s antennae for this mysterious invisible person who, in an unmistakably provocative tone of voice, kept speaking to him, beside the church on the Piazza Navona where God in His active days had allowed the blessed St Agnes’ hair to grow so long it covered her private parts, to be exact on the square metre where, according to legend, the martyr had halted and generously prayed for her executioners’ salvation, exactly there, was Hercule Barfuss.

Well, young man
, the voice inside Hercule now said,
why so jittery? Isn’t this what you do all day long, climb shamelessly in and out of people, listen to their most hidden thoughts, the snakepit of remorse, search out their anguished hearts, the thorny thickets of their blazing megalomania and inferiority complexes, their misgivings at a world being declared round though as far as the eye can see it’s as flat as a frying pan, all their congenital pettinesses, so trivial they’d die of shame if they knew you knew about them. Sooner or later you’ll have to allow for the contrary, that’s to say, the likes of me!

He looked around, hoping for a glimpse of whomever was addressing him; but due to his own insignificant stature all he could see, at waist level, were billowing crowds shouting, laughing, children crying, women blushing, men in breeches and filthy horsehair shirts guzzling wine from leather flasks and gesturing obscenely to some actors who were performing on a stage on wheels to one side of the market place.

Who are you?
he asked, a trifle nervously, unsure whether this intruder wished him ill or was just making fun of him to pass the time.

I’m made of the same stuff as you are, unfortunate man, and our gift is the most terrible thing imaginable, is it not? What excitement is there in a life where nothing’s hidden any more? You see a beautiful woman and think how sweet creation is, and the next minute her entrails are revealed to you, the darkness of her soul, the swamp of stupidity and ill will as she looks at you with disgust. You see a little boy and think, what an uncorrupted human being. And before you’ve even had time to finish your thought and your ridiculous attempt to see youth as something glorious, you hear the same old tune from the depths of his childish soul: “I’m going to be a soldier when I grow up, and kill everyone in sight!” Behind the most delightful smile lurks an assassin. Behind the priesthood’s love of mankind lurks only contempt and love of power. With the passing of the years our gifts make us cynical, and that’s for sure . . .

Right in front of Hercule, a woman, horrified by the sight of him, crossed herself, and snatched up her little daughter in her arms to protect her from whatever misfortune might be heralded by so hateful a spectacle. He tried to read her lips, but she was too quick for him, and instead, like a faint crackling sound, he heard her think:
A monster . . . bad luck. Alessandro said they put the Evil Eye on folk . . .
He calmed her with a brief negation of her fear, sending a sense of harmony through her instead; at which the woman, infused suddenly with a sense of security of whose source she had no idea, gave a cautious smile.

You can see for yourself!
the voice inside him said.
The likes of us must always be a step ahead, open up a back door into men’s hearts, whisper a few hurried words of reassurance, but take care to shut it behind us before they have time even to realise we’ve been there, because if they catch us at it they’ll burn us at the stake as sorcerers, or throw us in the lunatic asylum, something of which you yourself, if I’m not mistaken, have the most ghastly memories . . .

The phantom voice gave another laugh, this time not at all unfriendly, but rather sad, compassionate, reminiscent to Hercule of Schuster.

What do you know about that?
he asked.

I know most things. What did you think? That you’re the only person in the world to be possessed of these faculties? There are more of us than you might believe, the age of sibyls and mind readers isn’t over yet, no matter how hard the men of the Enlightenment try to bury us in formulas, or how the priesthood wants nothing better than to have us put to death. I’m one of those clairvoyants in the service of truth, and in a way I’ve come further than you. After all, you can’t see me, you don’t know who I am; whereas I, on the contrary, have had my eyes on you for several days or weeks, to be precise, ever since you arrived here in Rome in the company of that sceptical old Jesuit and started your wide-eyed tour of the Eternal City, a free man for the first time, lucky fellow!

Up on the stage Il Dottore was in the act of reproaching the young Pulcinella for his foolishness and lack of initiative in a love affair, and a man in a black mask was approaching Colombina with a knife in his hand. But the crowds were melting away. “Malocchio, Malocchio!” (the Evil Eye) someone shouted, and had our hero been able to hear it, he might have shuddered at being the object of such an accusation, before realising that the warning was directed up on the stage at Colombina, whose life was in mortal danger but who, oblivious to this wicked world, had lost herself in the memory of her beloved and, looking wholly unconcerned, was sniffing his handkerchief perfumed with snuff.