Moved by his tale, Barnaby Wilson invited him to join their troupe. That very morning they would be setting off with their appalling deformities and magical talents in fifteen canvas-covered wagons to bring joy to Calabrian villages, all for an entrance fee of two centesimi a head. This, the circus director guessed, would increase Hercule’s chances of finding the girl by several hundred per cent.
Hercule thought long and hard over this generous offer from a man he’d met for the first time only a few hours before and who seemed motivated by nothing but compassion for his brothers and sisters in misfortune. But in the end, feeling himself indebted to Schuster, he declined.
That same morning, with a deep sense of melancholy, he left the remarkable group of people. As they emerged from beneath the earth at the Forum the light of dawn could already be discerned behind the Colosseum. Holding up a finger no bigger than a child’s, Barnaby Wilson pointed him in the direction of Borgo Santo Spirito on the other side of the river. The cockerels of the Eternal City had united in a song that Hercule interpreted as signifying a final separation. But he was mistaken.
IN THE SAME twilight hour as the phantom voice had begun talking to Hercule on the Piazza Navona, Julian Schuster had found himself in the Vatican in a papal stateroom in a magnificent building between the Belvedere palace and the Ethiopian College. He was listening with growing anxiety to what Cardinal Aurelio Rivero had to say about his protégé.
“This, Schuster, is undoubtedly a sensitive matter, and it must be solved in a manner satisfactory to all concerned. The general of your Order of brethren is following our investigations with great interest, and trusts us to bring the whole matter to a satisfactory conclusion. I suggest we as soon as possible carry out an examination of the boy in accordance with the rules laid down by Martín del Río.”
Cardinal Rivero, responsible for the brethren’s special commission in the fight against heresies, topped up Schuster’s wine glass, to remind him of the differences between the monastic way of life and that of their representatives in the Vatican.
“We are, even so, living in the nineteenth century,” Schuster made so bold as to say. “Not even in America did we cling to the Recherche de Magique!”
“New times, admittedly. But personally I draw quite other conclusions from this so-called ‘development’. With all due respect to reason, was it not the men of the Enlightenment who had us banned? Let me be honest: we must consolidate the power restored to us by the politicians, as a result of the Restoration.”
Schuster picked up an olive from the tray the Cardinal pushed over to him, but then, feeling he’d just overcome a temptation, replaced it.
“Your Eminence, what do you mean when you say the problem must be solved?”
“Hasn’t Abbot Kippenberg told you of our plans?”
“My task was to bring the boy to Rome for you to take a look at him. There was never any mention of plans.”
Rivero gave him a look that laid claim to a knowledge of details beyond an outsider’s horizon.
“In any case, it’s nothing for you to trouble your conscience with,” he said. “You’re free to return to Silesia tomorrow if you wish, I’ve ordered a carriage for you, with two changes of horses. Heisterbach needs your presence as oldest in your house. Considering recent events there, a moral inquisition ought to be initiated as soon as possible. I would suggest you take over Kippenberg’s duties as father confessor. A monastery dissolving into anarchy! Novices disappearing or breaking their vows – and all for the sake of an organ-playing monster who’s said to be able to read minds and, what’s more, is deaf and dumb!”
“With your permission, my Lord Cardinal, I’ll stay until the investigation is completed. It could be interesting to observe your methods.”
Rivero spat out an olive stone on to a gilded plate, and wiped his mouth with a silk handkerchief.
“The end justifies the means,” he said. “That is what outsiders think the brethren’s motto is, do they not?”
“Only so far as the means used are in accordance with the will of God,” Schuster replied.
“And if, as rumour has it, the boy is a mind reader, or worse, can read people’s hidden thoughts, how shall we proceed?”
“With all due respect, Your Eminence, I still don’t understand what you are trying to say.”
The Cardinal gave a curt laugh, then let his features settle back into a parody of the Holy St Christopher, who watched them guardedly from an oil painting on the wall.
“There’s a reason why people repress certain thoughts and reflexes,” Rivero said tersely, “and keep them a secret even to themselves. Otherwise what would become of us? Besides, it isn’t only God who whispers to us. In moments of weakness other voices can worm their way in . . .”
Rising from his armchair, the Cardinal started pacing the room with his hands behind his back. Stopping at the little altar where a Bible lay open, he touched it with a beautifully manicured fingernail.
“You mean the boy could be a spokesman for the Devil?” Schuster said.
“Please, spare me your ironies, my dear brother. Kippenberg has been keeping me informed of the goings on in your house. Already eight novices have broken their vows, half a dozen have uttered blasphemies, to put it mildly. Let us suppose it’s the boy who is behind all this, and that he, all by himself, is capable of throwing a whole monastery into chaos . . . does that seem reasonable: alone?”
Rivero broke off mid-sentence as a Swiss guard entered with a silver casket and placed it on the table underneath the enormous crucifix adorning the wall. Casting a guilty glance at Our Saviour, Schuster reflected: It’s this suffering, O bleeding God, which scares people away. Why couldn’t we have found a more beautiful symbol for our faith?
“Desire is in itself innocent enough,” he said. “It’s our attitude to the desire that’s sinful.”
“Most ingenious. Tell me, Schuster, are you preoccupied with false doctrines?”
“All that preoccupies me are your so-called plans.”
The Cardinal sat down again in his armchair.
“So how do you explain that the boy taught himself to play the organ with his feet in less than half a year, like any Conservatory student? Deaf as he is?”
“Musicality is a gift from above. In the Americas I saw savages learn to play the flute in four days.”
“And it never occurred to you that it was unnatural? You never asked yourself: how could it be possible for a savage to suddenly blow a trombone?” The Cardinal was touching on a raw nerve with Schuster.
“To be honest, I never have fully understood our theological stance in this matter. If you permit me, Your Eminence, music has been both embraced and developed by Christians, at the same time as the very same Christians exclude it as being something demonic; a paradox I’ve never been able to come to terms with. Mediaeval monks transformed song into an instrument by developing harmony and counterpoint. Music became an ecclesiastical concern, but then when least we expect it, it is turned against us. In the transition from one harmonious chord to the next it suddenly becomes demonic, and no-one has ever been able to explain to me how this feat is accomplished. Perhaps you can enlighten me?”
The Cardinal sighed.
“From what I’ve heard, you’re a headstrong man, Schuster. It must be your Spanish-German temperament. Your Habsburgian temperament, one might almost say. So I shall pretend not to have heard your sophistries. But how about you yourself, don’t you have any opinions on this matter?”
“Which matter?”
“Have you had any personal experience of the boy’s so-called gift?”
Schuster hesitated. Something told him not to expose too much of what he knew.
“No,” he said. “If one overlooks the fact that he learned to play the organ in so short a time, despite his apparently being deaf and indeed, in the physiological sense, lacking ears, which I admit is hard to explain. But since it’s not been possible to make any medical diagnosis, we’re none the wi
ser. It’s possible he can hear more than we think.”
“My view precisely,” the Cardinal answered, smiling. “Some people hear more than we think.”
Rivero opened the casket and took out a key. He got up, his costly cardinal’s gown with its gold brocades rustling slightly against the marble floor as he did so.
“I believe”, he said, “the time has come for a brief change of scene. I think perhaps you’ll understand things better if you allow me to show you some illustrations . . .”
For no fewer than three generations Julian Schuster had instilled in his novices the brethren’s conviction that the world could, in principle, be made a better place if one admitted to the possibility of a hidden, divine plan. Armed with the ingenious medium provided by a rock-steady ratio studium, he had infused into his pupils’ minds such ideas as discrécion, prudencia and caridad discreta, pleading for the regnum humanitatis, or the crystalline humanism he believed was the foundation of the Order’s belief system. But in this twilight hour, standing in a cellar beneath the brethren’s chancery as Cardinal Rivero inserted the key into the lock of an ancient oak door, he felt the convictions of a lifetime beginning to crumble. They had just walked past a dozen armed guards stationed in disconsolate backyards. Three times, notwithstanding his high rank, Rivero had had to show papers permitting Schuster to pass in his company.
“If you’d tried to get in here by yourself”, he said, pushing the door open, “you’d have had to wait four months for a permit, fill in some fifteen forms so bureaucratic that the procedure in itself would have put your nerves to a severe trial. An extensive investigation would have been made into all your doings since the day you entered the Order, you’d have had to get three high-ranking officials to vouch for you, and even then it’s by no means certain a dispensation would have been issued, even for one afternoon.”
They came into a hall-like area lit by candles mounted in brackets on the walls. By one of the reading desks a monk was leaning over a folio volume. Rivero turned off into an almost invisible path, bordered by heaps of books and shelves stacked with documents. With a shudder Schuster realised they were in the inquisitor’s library of forbidden books.
“Alas, Schuster! We’re almost the same age, you and I, yet fate has found fit to treat us so very differently. You have had the adventures, I a career. That you’ve had no promotions has of course nothing to do with your talents; you have all the qualities needed for a higher position in the Order. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t been offered a position already. You’ve had a classical education, and shown great competence in your practical work, not least in the Americas. You have been an example to the Freemasons and the men of the Enlightenment during an epoch when it could cost a man his life to publicly declare himself a member of your Order.
“Did you know, there has been some hint of a position for you in Spain? Our old allies, the Bourbons, are back on the throne. Only yesterday I was speaking with the Bishop of Córdoba at the Concilium, there’s a post vacant as abbot of a monastery in Granada, your home district, Schuster. But it must be filled forthwith.”
Schuster threw his superior a look of surprise.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“There’s a ship leaving for Málaga the day after tomorrow. You can be on it, on the condition, naturally, that you hand over all responsibility for the boy to me. The case may take some time.”
“This comes a little suddenly. Only moments ago you were saying they expect me back in Silesia.”
Rivero laid a fraternal hand on his shoulder, smiling a little too quickly, a little too amiably, for Schuster not to be suspicious of his intentions.
“On closer consideration, I do believe Granada is in greater need of your services. I would advise you to seize the opportunity while you can. Let us look after the boy here in peace and quiet, while you attend to your compatriots’ salvation.”
By now they had come to a room the size of the novices’ dormitory in Heisterbach. Confronted by this enormous collection of forbidden books that had been spared being burned at the stake, Schuster was filled with awe and fear in equal measure. Thousands of volumes filled the shelves, voluminous tomes bound in calfskin and morocco, dusty folios, printed matter in demy and quarto. Yellowing parchments lay heaped up atop locked cabinets, illustrated works and encyclopedias filled entire sections. Ladders were needed to get at the ones highest up.
“We’re standing amid a sea of blasphemies,” Rivero said solemnly, “which would threaten to drown us were it not for this dam: the Index Tridentinus. Do you know how many years it has taken the Church to collect this mass of unbelief? Five centuries! Thousands upon thousands of our Christian brethren have dedicated their lives to this end, since it’s widely acknowledged that the Devil writes books faster than man can read them.”
The room was lit by large, whale-oil lamps. The dust hung static in the columns of light. Schuster had a vague feeling of having experienced this moment many times before, though he’d forgotten just where and when and for what reason.
“Look around you,” Rivero muttered. “Profanations of the papacy and the Holy Scriptures, the most absurd accusations ever aimed at our faith; Solomon’s Key, The Lucifer Letters, the Kabbala, Satanic manuals all. Centuries of censura subsequens that have saved men from God’s punishment. I tell you, were these writings to be released, there would be a second Flood.”
With a ringed finger the Cardinal pointed at a section of manuscripts locked into a huge glass cupboard.
“The writings of Cathars and spiritualists, disrespectful interpretations of the Bible by Beguines and Beghards, instruction books in unjustifiable self-mutilation written by flagellants. Books by Moors, Jews and Calvinists. Donatists’ liturgies for the worship of demons, satanic bibles by Arians and Bogomils, collections of letters that confuse God with the snake in paradise. All this heathen ingenuity is enough to make one lose one’s mind!”
Unconsciously, Rivero placed his hand on his heart, as if the simple act of listing them was a malignant blasphemy.
“There are spiritual paths here that no man should ever tread. Paths over abysses that lead deep into the most unfathomable darkness, into the most bitter loneliness imaginable!”
Schuster got the feeling of being in the middle of an enlarged human brain stuffed full with perilous information; and this led his thoughts back to the boy, his ward. What plans were they discussing? What were they intending to do to him? Ponderings were interrupted as the Cardinal took a step towards another section.
“Have you ever leafed through the spurious Gospel of Peter? It’s enough to raise the hairs on the arms of a child murderer. Or the Bible of the Manichees? These envoys of the Devil are trying to prove that it wasn’t Our Lord who died on the cross, but one of the common thieves. That his body was nothing but an illusion of the demiurge, and that for him to have died an agonising death on the cross would be beneath the dignity of their supposed God. They maintain that Christ was pure spirit!”
Rivero went on to mutter something about lost souls before going over to a folio that lay open on a desk affixed to the wall.
“Published in Bologna in 1661. Designs for engines and automatic machines that we hope will never see the light of day.”
The open volume showed a picture of something resembling an insect, crowned with a rotating metal blade, in the shape of a four-leafed clover.
“A helixapteron or dragonfly machine,” Rivero said disdainfully. “I wish I could experience this upward striving as an innocent longing for the kingdom of heaven, but it’s the other way round: they want to put themselves in God’s place, be His equal instead of His servant.”
He turned the page to another design, a winged construction surrounding a kind of cylinder.
“In the beginning God created only four types of being capable of flight: angels, birds, bats and insects. The day man carries out his perverse fantasies about flying machines, we’ll be done for. It’ll be the ultimate revolt agai
nst the plan of Creation before Our Lord has our earth laid waste.”
“Can they in fact be constructed?” Schuster asked, looking at a draft for what would become a twentieth-century aircraft.
“In theory: yes. And look at this; still more machines, ideas that can only have been inspired by the darkest of powers.”
Rivero turned another page, a woodcut illustrating a self-acting machine with pistons and tubes with dense smoke rising from their vents, as from a minor volcano.
“A steam engine, of course,” he said. “The technique was known as far back as in antiquity, but the Greeks were more interested in experiments on the mind than in engineering. As you know, the English have started mass-producing these engines.”
They crossed the threshold to another room, not quite so big as the last. Here were no bookshelves, only oaken cupboards locked with iron bolts. A vague premonition told Schuster that this was where the most renegade writings were kept, and when Rivero unlocked one cupboard Schuster glimpsed a row of black Devil’s bibles with Roman numerals on them.
Still muttering, the Cardinal picked out a leather-bound volume and blew the dust off its covers.
“This is a very useful book,” he said, “in the right hands, that’s to say.”
Schuster read the yellowing title page: SPIRITUS SUCUBA E INCUBU.
“This folio contains illustrations of the fruits of the Devil’s concubinage,” Rivero muttered, “as well as case descriptions of monsters. Look at this: Printed at Avignon, under the pontificate of Benedictus XII!” He pointed at a woodcut representing a boy with a horn in the middle of his forehead. “A well-known case. The mother was a dissident nun, the father an incubus.”
The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred Page 11
