In late May Magdalena Holt left the establishment, marked for life, yet firmly resolved to return to her childhood island and marry the man whom, with Hercule’s help, she had realised she loved and a few years earlier had become engaged to by correspondence. Her long, drawn-out convalescence, which she barely survived and then only with the aid of Providence, left with her departure a feeling that all this was only the beginning of the house’s misfortune. It had become poisoned with suspicion. The girls grew cautious and reserved. Some refused to sleep with clients they didn’t know, others adopted an old wartime habit of sleeping with a dagger under their pillow. Rumours of the bloody deed spread and frightened off some clients. Others didn’t relish the thought of a brothel that had been visited by inquisitive gendarmes. By early summer the establishment had lost half its trade. The clients became ever fewer, and several of the girls stole away in the dead of night without giving notice, leaving only a hastily scribbled farewell note.
It was in these difficult times that the decision was made to auction off Henriette Vogel on the open market of love.
Henriette had grown to be an unusually well-developed girl, tall for her age and looking older than was attested by her birth certificate. Several men had already cast languishing glances in her direction, and more than one client had asked Madam Schall in a whisper whether the girl wasn’t a little old to be still wearing her hair in plaits. In a house where everything was for sale and fidelity was at best a daydream nurtured on lazy Sunday afternoons, there was no moral obstacle to selling off a ten-year-old girl’s maidenhead to the highest bidder. The Jus primae noctis was at that time an oft-used item of merchandise in the town’s brothels, and could fetch a considerable sum, invaluable for an establishment teetering on the brink of ruin. Anyway, the girl had been brought up to follow in her mother’s footsteps, the profession, then as now, being one that was handed down from generation to generation.
Even so, it was the failing economy that drove her mother and Madam Schall to the difficult decision. The girls did their best to prepare Henriette for her ordeal by means of an informal initiation rite made up of a thousand words of good advice and various admonitions. They gave her knowledge of tricks to bring the man to his bliss as quickly as possible and with minimum trouble; the surest manipulations, the least painful positions, how forgetfulness could help, and how by means of a brew of cloves, wine and camphor she could drive away recurrent attacks of nausea. They explained the simplest way to get rid of men after the act, how to negotiate a price and how far it could be bartered down. They told her never to fall in love, though that could sometimes be the easiest way to avoid humiliation, and never to go along with something her instinct contradicted, at least not unless the price had been fixed to her satisfaction. Kisses cost extra. They asked her to keep certain of love’s words and gestures to herself so they should not be worn out the day she, against all odds, found a man to take her to a happier existence as a married woman in a middle-class home – most of the girls’ dream. They taught her to protect herself against pregnancy and disease, and how best to defend herself against sailors who’d had one over the eight. They also gave her little gifts, accessories, jewellery, perfumes and amulets that would protect her from shameful diseases and bring her luck.
Henriette put up with all this in so carefree a way it seemed to verge on indifference. She allowed herself to be instructed in the arts of paid love, she delved into the musk-scented ambience of bedroom antics, accepted the ritual gifts, tried on suitable garments – hats with cockades in them, cordwain shoes, and frilly underwear – all the time heroically fighting off her fear of the evening of the auction. At moments she even managed to forget all about her coming ordeal. Her thoughts were with Hercule Barfuss.
He was in despair. Stricken to the ground by life’s injustice, he scarcely ate. He knew her future had long ago been sealed, but love refused to take facts into consideration. He couldn’t imagine any injustice more hideous than that she should be sold to nameless men. For the first time in his life he understood that a future awaited them, and it was blacker than night. Looking into it he saw nothing; it had no room for creatures such as he. Unable to envisage himself in so alien a place, he saw his life had been a provisional arrangement, protected by a sisterhood that before long would start questioning who he was and what he was doing here. It was like looking down into the grave.
Two weeks before the evening of the auction, to all appearances fatally weakened by his despair, Hercule was assailed by feverish cramps. After a night when all hope seemed to have fled and his heart could almost be heard grinding to a halt, with a deep sigh, as when a cork is pulled out of a bottle, the old wise woman employed by Madam Schall had to draw on all her professional skills to resuscitate him. Only slowly and with the help of Henriette’s care did he recover. She sat at his bedside from early morning to late at night. In the end, overcome by tiredness, she was found seated on the edge of his bed, one hand on his furry back and the other in an open Bible. She fed him with spoonfuls of meat broth, laid on mustard compresses, and calmed his fever with ice packs.
Delirious, he saw her face floating around the room, but it was a mask ripped off by an invisible hand, and underneath was a sheet of paper scribbled over with an obscure future filled with misfortune. Adrift in the floating ice of his subconscious, he was surrounded by a grief so strong that it could undoubtedly have changed the course of history. Hercule awaited the end.
So came the evening of the auction. The ground floor was filled with guests and the sound of clinking glasses and girls exchanging businesslike jokes. The bidding for an hour’s pleasure could begin.
There was crunching on the gravel as new cabs arrived. Lusts and desires spread throughout the establishment like a dense fog. Around this way of life there were no mitigating circumstances. Each evening demanded that happiness be reinvented and die as each succesive client climbed into one of the girls’ beds.
From his attic room Hercule inhaled the loveless air and cursed the deadly irony of Henriette from now on having to share it with the man who was shortly to take possession of her. Sobbing, he banged his head against the wall, again and again, trying in vain to knock himself out.
By the time he ceased doing so, an atmosphere of tense excitement had fallen over the house, and Hercule realised the auction had begun. He felt the madness spin round the room like an autumn gale that had lost its way. Half choked by his sobs, he wondered what unforgivable sin he must have committed to be punished with such terrible grief. Yet somewhere in the midst of his despair, with the image of Henriette Vogel in his mind, standing in her underclothes in a corner of the large salon, surrounded by faceless men, he must have passed out. Suddenly he was awoken by a terrifying grip on his throat that could have killed him on the spot. The man who had all but murdered Magdalena Holt was now alone with Henriette.
Years later, sitting on the windowsill of a burgher house in Danzig and staring out through the eyes of a stray cat, Hercule would recall in detail all that ensued that evening, which in less than a week would lead to his being torn up by the roots and ruthlessly flung into orbit around an extinct sun. He had run along the corridor and down the stairs. The clients turned round, astonished, and stared at him in disgust, revulsion writ large on their faces. Some of the girls had tried to bar his way. There was an eruption of horror from someone who was scared out of his wits by the mere sight of him. Tracking down the pulsating sick lust, Hercule prayed to God that there had not yet been time for anything to happen to Henriette. Opening a door to one of the rooms, he saw a man dressed in women’s clothing turn towards him and smile – but in an instant the smile turned into a disgusted grimace.
The instincts raging in the house confused him. They were everywhere: the bitterest longings of souls and bodies. Consumed by fear, he went on running, staggering and limping on his short legs, weighed down by the burden of his enormous head, the image of Henriette Vogel engraved on his retina.
In one r
oom some naked clients leaned drunkenly over a blindfolded girl who had collapsed on the floor. Opening the door to another room he saw two men sharing the same girl, her features so distorted by shame that he didn’t recognise her. A group of sailors pointed at him, and burst into nervous laughter, two of them calling to mind their deformed sister. He rushed on, determinedly pursuing his trail.
At the far end of the wing he came to the bridal chamber. Tried to open it. Found it locked. The noise brought people to the scene: the sailors who had been laughing at him; a gold-braided officer wearing his jacket, but neither trousers nor shoes. Girls he knew, scantily clad in whatever had lain to hand.
Somebody spoke: “What’s going on, what’s all the noise about?” But the boy seemed not to hear. Just went on hammering the door with his head and feet. All around him he heard people’s thoughts: hideous child . . . so deformed . . . should never have been allowed to be born . . . In the midst of all this commotion, Madam Schall arrived. Someone thought: the bidding’s over, young cripple. The girl’s already been sold. One hundred and eighty gold marks! For a price like that one could stay here a whole year, loving and breakfast thrown in.
He continued beating at the door until the key turned on the inside.
Never would he forget the look of the man who was yet to have the last word in his life’s drama: the searching blue eyes, the moustache glistening with sweat, the well-pressed velvet coat, the unbuttoned breeches. The man looked at the crowd, one by one, coldly. Finally his glance fell on the deformed boy.
“What kind of a freak is that?” he asked, turning to Madam Schall. “Is this a brothel you’re running or a madhouse?”
“I beg your pardon, Herr Court Magistrate,” she answered. “But the boy was carrying on so, we were afraid there had been some accident.”
Through a crack in the door Hercule saw Henriette. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, still clothed, her face white as a sheet. This time, he told himself, I’m not too late.
“Be sure to lock that animal away and leave us in peace.”
The gathered crowd withdrew to the salons and private rooms, and Madam Schall apologised for what had happened. She would look after the boy, she said; he had recently been ill and was not quite recovered. The man with the moustache nodded and made a gesture indicating that he wanted to shut the door. But at that moment Hercule forced his way into the room.
A new uproar began. He clung to Henriette, who had started weeping heart-rendingly. Once again people came running to see what was going on. Madam Schall tried to tear him away from the girl. But then, as if paralysed, a deathly pallor on her face, she stopped short, as if afraid she was going mad; for she heard a voice, like a ghost inside her, which she knew to be Hercule. The voice said clearly, He’s the one who cut off Magdalena Holt’s breast!
Above the murmur of voices and Henriette’s lamentations the magistrate yelled, “Get that damned abortion out of here before there’s an accident!”
But even if Hercule had been able to hear such ruthless language it wouldn’t have affected him. So focused was his mind on saving Henriette that he didn’t even notice the violent kick that landed on his back. But Madam Schall – still shaken by the haunted voice that had spoken up inside her and which she was sure was inspired by the Holy Ghost – did notice it, and put an end to the tumult by thrusting the official personage to one side.
“Enough!” she said, in an icy-cold voice acquired over a lifetime spent on the brink of disaster. “Herr von Kiesingen may collect his money from my office. The girl is no longer for sale!”
Less than a week later, the establishment was closed down. No amount of protesting availed. No petitions from influential gentlemen who had been protecting Madam Schall’s activities for years. No pleas for mercy. The order to raid the place had been made by Klaus von Kiesingen, president of the Königsberg Divisional Court of Appeal.
Madam Schall herself was put on the first boat to Tallinn, where an elderly admirer had paid a small fortune to have her acquitted from the charges of procuring. Several of the girls were interned in the notorious Danzig spinning house, where more than one of them died of its hardships. The others were scattered to the winds. Rumour had it that Henriette Vogel and her mother managed to escape to relatives in Saxony, though other rumours had them separated in stormy circumstances and the girl ending up in a Berlin brothel.
For our hero, years of darkness and humiliation were in store.
II
ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON in the dog days Julian Schuster, a Jesuit monk in the monastery at Heisterbach in the hills of Upper Silesia, stopped at its refectory window, and, unable to conceal an expression of profound surprise, looked around him. What had drawn his attention? Not the small crowd that was settled outside the monastery gates hoping to witness a miracle. Not the two novices sitting in the yard, absorbed in Loyola’s spiritual exercises. Nor yet the abbot Johann Kippenberg, who was walking around the gallery, his forehead deeply furrowed by dark thoughts in which Schuster himself played a certain part. What had drawn his attention was nothing he could even see. It was a voice, a voice that seemed to be speaking inside him, in a way he had never experienced before.
To Schuster it sounded like the voice of a confused boy. And he wondered whether it wasn’t his own voice, speaking from some murky recess of his mind.
How long, the scarcely audible voice said, have I lived in the valley of death . . .
Then, in a hum which made it impossible to catch any more words, it disappeared again.
“Odd,” Schuster mumbled, looking up at the abbot, who was whispering something to one of the novices. “Why does old age invariably set in with furtively talking to oneself? And as if that’s not bad enough, believing the person you pretend you’re listening so attentively to is someone else.”
Quite right. In the context of his own epoch, Schuster was already old. Though his name suggested otherwise, just like Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Order, he was of Iberian birth. But from his steel-grey lion mane, his massive body and an iron physique built up during the adventurous years of his novitiate, not many people would have guessed he was turning eighty-four.
Again he heard that voice inside himself, and even though he couldn’t quite catch what it said, he understood intuitively it was connected with some kind of loss.
A little perturbed by the merciless ravages of old age, he did his best to concentrate on the murmur of the crowd at the gates.
“They’re crazy,” he muttered to himself. “If those peasants had their way the boy would be canonised at once. This will end in a catastrophe.”
The words, with their hint of a prophecy, relieved his unrest. His thoughts were interrupted by someone speaking to him. Not the ghost-voice this time, nor yet his own, from the depths of his mass of memories, but the abbot’s through the open window.
“What shall we do, Schuster?” Kippenberg sighed. “We can’t just drive them away.”
The abbot, Austrian by birth and educated in Rome under Cardinal Teobaldi, was half Schuster’s age. During the difficult years when the Jesuit Order had been banned, he’d helped build it up on Prussian soil. Behind the gentle eyes lay an organisational talent quite out of the ordinary, which, Schuster guessed, would by and by see him one of the congregation’s leaders.
“Why not let the boy go out there to them awhile?” he replied. “It could hardly make things worse. The peasants aren’t asking for much. It’s all about some heifer that’s escaped, or a charm that’s been lost. They imagine the boy can peer into hidden realms. We can only meet superstition with knowledge.”
“We haven’t the right to,” said Kippenberg. “Not in the name of our Society. Not on monastic ground, before we’ve confirmed whether he . . .”
The abbot fell silent. And again Schuster heard the voice inside his head: search, it was saying, very clearly, before becoming incomprehensible again: I must find . . .
“You know, Kippenberg,” he said, “in my youth we used to lu
re the Indians out of the Music State’s rainforest with an organ. To them, the savages, it was a miracle. And short of producing a miracle we couldn’t get them to believe.”
“But this lot aren’t savages,” the abbot retorted. “We don’t need to preach the gospel to them. This region is Catholic. I’m worried, and so ought you to be, Schuster. Yesterday I was afraid the mob might storm the monastery. Haven’t you noticed how the crowd has been growing daily? There are hundreds of people out there, maybe thousands . . . How is the boy anyway, is he still refusing to speak?”
“It’s not certain that he can speak,” Schuster said. “Besides which, he seems not to hear. I’ll have a doctor examine him. We can’t exclude the possibility of his being deaf.”
“It’s not possible to learn to play the organ, Schuster, if you are deaf. You must know that.”
“The handicap could have come on later in life. A result of shock, maybe. The boy could be an army child from the war.”
“What about his lights, his intelligence?”
“Strangely enough, he seems to understand almost everything one says to him. Lip-reading, perhaps. I just can’t understand why I was moved to pick him out. He’s no good at anything except playing the organ. Work helping in the kitchen is too heavy for him, and you can’t carry water or sort turnips with your feet . . .”
The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred Page 6
