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

by Carl-Johan Vallgren

  It wasn’t unusual for Barnaby Wilson to find Hercule in his carriage half dead for lack of sleep after a night spent in the company of the poets, in a wild thicket of amorous trochees, ankle-deep in a flood of his own tears, sunk in one of Oehlenschläger’s or some other poet’s convoluted suites, just then in fashion. This, he’d say later, was the time when it became possible to find rhymes for his love for his Henriette.

  Following in the same poetic footsteps as those he just then admired, tourists had begun to find their way to the Italian coast – Englishmen inspired by the travels of Lord Byron or Shelley, Germans by those of the great Johan Wolfgang von Goethe. Though it was still long before the mass tourism of the twentieth century, Barnaby Wilson, whose nose for profit was surpassed only by his insight into the sciences of the wise, decided that his circus should camp at Genoa. It was late August and the town was filled with travellers, among whom Hercule hoped to find some trace of Henriette.

  Protected by the mask he, on Barnaby Wilson’s advice, had begun wearing, he took long walks through the town, looking into the faces of northerners burned by the Italian sun, at the men in cotton suits holding forth in taverns, at the women in white crinoline dresses strolling along the promenade, fluttering like butterflies in the shade of their little parasols. Himself, unnoticed, he fumbled in a fog of thoughts formed in some unknown dimension within the passers-by, townspeople, tourists, craftsmen, burghers and shop assistants. He plumbed the girls’ worries, groped merchants’ inner accounts and overheard the plans of pickpockets. Turned inside out, the world bared its entrails. He needed a sign, however insignificant; just some memory preserved by someone who had once met her.

  There were times when he really thought he was on her trail – the quiet rustle of her legs in some stranger’s memory; air purified by her breath; her heartbeat, tremulous as an animal’s. Then he would beat to windward through his cherished dreams, swim through the treacle of life’s fragments, through history’s murmur, like falling rain, until finally, in some market place, in an alleyway, in the great crowds, he realised it was all just his imagination playing tricks on him. In the same instant, he felt the ground slip from under his feet. The world, he felt, was far too big for him ever to find her . . .

  Melancholia, the age’s new malady, assailed him. For days on end he would lie on the bunk in his carriage, staring up at its roof. Sleep eluding him, he sought consolation in love lyrics. By the end of summer this had gone so far he had begun to neglect his circus duties. Not that Wilson had the heart to reproach him for errors that had their rootlets in his love. But when the audience noticeably began to fall off – either because Sir Hercules Barefoot was turning up too late or too early, or sometimes because he was reading poetry on a walk along the shore with the moon for a lamp, and didn’t turn up at all – then Wilson found it necessary to assert his authority and insist he bring his hot-air balloon down to earth. Whereupon Hercule returned to his duties, but this time firmly resolved not to rest for a minute until he had again found Henriette.

  Never before had he performed with such authority. He could recite the entire biography of an unknown member of the audience. He created a sensation with a new mnemonic act, writing down backwards the 180-digit numbers picked out of a book of mathematical examples that someone in the audience, at Barnaby Wilson’s behest, had read silently to themselves, number by number. He even described other volunteers’ repressed memories or ones that lay so far back in time as to have really fallen into oblivion; or else made up new ones for them, so plausible they could only assume they’d been forgotten and were grateful to believe they had now recalled them. Not for a moment did he relax his vigilance.

  Perhaps it was this sharpening of his faculty, born of the need of his search, directed towards a single goal, that blinded him to all other dangers. At least that’s how it would seem afterwards, when he became aware of how deeply he had flung those around him into misfortune.

  Almost a year had gone by since the events in Rome, and still Hercule knew nothing of Schuster’s fate. Sometimes the Jesuit haunted his dreams, but, if so, always faceless and mute as himself.

  He lived his life in these merciful curtains of mist until one morning he found a message on his caravan steps. It lacked a sender’s name or addresss, nor would it ever be cleared up who had left it there. The note described Schuster’s fate; how he’d been found at Trastevere strangled with a snare. And it ended with a couple of words warning the addressee not to try to discover who had written the letter.

  Embittered by the news, he wandered the city streets, beside himself with grief and the hatred he again felt stirring inside him.

  Engulfed by this internal gloom, he failed to notice what was going on around him – that night was falling, that the stars had come out, and that the town had gone to its rest. Drifting helplessly about on the inland sea of his despair, blinded by weeping, he tottered about the empty streets, seeing nothing, feeling only this boundless sorrow and bottomless hatred. At the docks he tripped over rubbish, bumped against warehouse walls and crates, fell into holes in the paving, got up again cursing his existence and his fate. With tears coursing down his face, he wandered through aeons of despair.

  In this way, without noticing it, he reached the town’s outskirts. Only as he approached a village where the dogs threatened with their barking did he pull himself together, make his way back to the circus and come to a halt on a hillside with a view over the town. It was a warm night, he would later remember. The heat was monolithic, an immovable block, dripping with moisture. The night’s secrets filed past, the dreams people dreamed, the anxiety that kept the unhappy ones awake, the insomniacs’ prayers for repose. Far below him he could see a lantern in Barnaby Wilson’s caravan, and he wondered if his friend felt as uneasy as he.

  The salt smell of the sea reached him, he saw the waves sleepily nibbling at the beach, two fishing boats putting in at a quay, the cataclysms of the breakwaters, a schooner, sails reefed, approaching at the speed of the dawn. But something else, too, was silently approaching in the dark.

  Sensing this impending danger, he began running down towards the circus. But before he could get there he saw the night suddenly lit up by spurting flames as one by one the circus caravans were being set ablaze.

  He felt his friends’ mortal terror, felt their lives passing before their eyes before they expired with a last prayer on their lips.

  He collapsed on the road. The Cardinal’s men, he realised, were behind this, just as they had been behind Schuster’s death. It was they who had hunted him, but it was fate that was sacrificing his friends.

  All night he lay there on the road, shedding tears of grief and hatred, crying for himself and his atrocious fate, for his Henriette, for the castle in the air of their happiness and their house of playing cards, now in ruins. This was the end, he thought. Never again would he be able to pick himself up. This time all hope was lost.

  V

  THE WORLD CONSISTS of tremors, vibrations that flow through the universe linking humans with brute matter. You don’t believe me, but this is why you can comprehend my thoughts at this very moment, just as Swedenborg, in Lapland, could understand the thoughts of Madame de Marteville’s deceased husband and was able to find her lost receipts there. Swedenborg, that great man, has himself explained all this. A long time ago, he writes, in the Garden of Eden, people had no need of speech to make themselves understood. Adam and Eve understood each other through their thoughts’ ‘fluidum’. What need of human speech in paradise? There were no grammatical misunderstandings, no ambivalent verbal values, no stammerings, lispings or speech defects . . . Adam was the first telepathist! But after him came our Fall. When the serpent gave Man the apple he also gave him the spoken word. We are long since fallen, my friend. But humans can again immerse themselves in intuitive knowledge. Swedenborg, the great visionary, also stressed the importance of respiration to being able to fall into magnetic sleep. We must let go of our surroundings, he writes,
concentrate on prayer until the checks on our breathing set in, the fainting begins, and we are transported to the spirit world.

  You can comprehend thoughts, Herr Barfuss. I know you’re reading my thoughts at this very moment! I, as you know, speak with the spirits . . . In my youth, in Stockholm, that terrible Sodom, it was then Swedenborg personally initiated me into his doctrine of Correspondences: explained how the universe is made up of series and degrees between the interjacent determinators. There Anima, the soul’s highest function, is to be in contact with our Lord God, the all-embracing Fluidum Spirituosum . . .

  Countess Tavastestierna, his prospective helper, straightened out her pillows and lit one of her perfumed black cigars. He comprehended her very clearly. She was making a real effort to get every nuance across to him.

  What are thoughts? he had asked.

  Nothing but fluid undulations, my friend!

  And what about speech?

  Tremors conveyed to the mouth, which turn into air vibrations, which turn into sound. Believe me, thought is the real speech, infinitely more perfect than the larynx’s coarse articulation. And that is why it can also be heard by the angels! You may well be an angel yourself, Herr Barfuss, though your earthly form is anything but angelic, but rather demonic, repugnant, in fact . . . But allow me to finish: the angels’ speech to us, too, is pure thought. You know, Herr Barfuss, don’t you, that I can hear the voices of the little angels, and even the voices of the spirits. I cannot hear the thoughts of men, apart from yours, of which you so generously allow me to partake. But I can hear an angel’s speech as clearly as a peasant can hear a sermon at Candlemas. It’s only at card games the angels refuse to help me. “That’s where we draw the line, we can’t help you, m’lady,” they say. So that’s where you come into it. You won’t let me down this evening, will you? There’s such a terrible lot at stake. And in return, tomorrow the spirits have promised to tell me where you can find your girl.

  Please, oh please, do tell me where she is . . .

  I’m sorry, you must think more clearly, sharply. I can’t hear you all that well. On the other hand I can hear perfectly clearly the spirit voices in this room; like now! There’s one sitting on my shoulder, can’t you see him?

  He stared, but saw nothing. Only the Countess sitting up in her bed in her nightdress, on Østergade, here in Copenhagen, with the coverlet drawn over her though it was already afternoon. And further away in the room was Baptiste, her blackamoor servant, who had just come in carrying a tea tray.

  I can’t see anything . . .

  That’s right . . . not everybody can see the spirits, or hear them. No more than little Baptiste is capable of hearing us two at this very moment. One has to have a special predisposition to it! But right now there’s one of them sitting on my shoulder. I think he’s German, or possibly Dutch . . . In his last life he was a bricklayer. But in heaven he’s a mason! That’s right, a mason! There are some cracks appearing in the mosaic. They’re laying new tiles, he says, and replacing the old ones.

  Hercule was doing his very best, but not even his gift could help him to hear the Dutch bricklayer’s thoughts. Or to see him.

  A bricklayer in heaven? he asked.

  Exactly! Earth is a copy of heaven, as I’ve already explained to you. There are bricklayers and carpenters in heaven, just as there are here. Think of how bored they would otherwise be, all those dead people! When the very best of men die, their souls go up to heaven and you can’t imagine how amazed they are when they find that heaven is packed with services, functions, offices, workshops, even weaving mills, flax plantations, confectioners, coopers’ workshops and breweries. Many of the new arrivals, you see, believe they’re going to get away from all earthly toils and enjoy eternal rest. But they are soon relieved of that delusion. “Have you understood that eternal rest from labour is to sit and to lie for ever inhaling pleasures into your bosom and imbibing delights with your mouth?” they are asked on arrival. And when the new arrivals say, “Yes, that’s how we’ve understood the matter,” they’re reminded that idleness merely breeds laxity, which is why it cannot be associated with lasting pleasure.

  The countess knitted her brow and listened again to the voice of the Dutch spirit that only she could hear . . .

  Wait, he’s talking to me again . . . They’ve already found the girl, he says. But they’ll know more tomorrow. That’ll be fun, won’t it, Herr Barfuss . . . just think! You’re going to meet your loved one again, at last . . .

  Was it really possible? he thought: that he could find Henriette in this way, with the help of the spirits?

  Where is she? he asked again.

  Come come, my little friend, you know we have an agreement. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow. First you must help me with my game of cards with Lord Chief Justice Conrad. And to win it. Above all to win it!

  How is she? She isn’t ill, is she?

  Perfect. That is, she’s perfectly well. The Dutch spirit says she thinks about you non-stop, always. Can’t get you out of her mind, though she sometimes wishes she could forget you.

  Why would she want to forget me?

  Maybe because she loves you even though you are such a repugnant little monster . . .

  What does she look like? Has she changed?

  Like the Queen of Sheba. Big-bosomed and stately. Her disposition is good. And her eyes are blue!

  Henriette’s eyes are brown . . .

  Maybe the Dutch spirit is colour-blind. Everything that exists on earth is also to be found in the spirit world, even colour-blindness . . . Look, Herr Barfuss, can’t you see! He’s floating away from my shoulder now, like smoke, like steam from a small geyser; the spirit world is calling him back, the pearly gates need a new mosaic, the mortar is running out and the Dutch spirit has to sprinkle it with water from the spring of paradise. In heaven everybody’s dreadfully busy . . .

  The Countess took a sip of tea and stubbed her cigarette in an ashtray the negro servant put beside her. For a while she searched among the objects lying scattered on the eiderdown – books by Swedenborg, letters, powder compacts, snuff, dice and a pack of playing cards – all before turning to Baptiste and asking him to fetch the box of healing crystals that, alongside games of chance and Swedenborg’s spirit world, were her great passion in life.

  Heavenly speech, she continued, noisily blowing her nose on her sleeve, is brought out by the wonderful rings of heavenly design! Did you know that the angels’ speech corresponds to all languages now spoken? Just like your own, Herr Barfuss. Isn’t that why we understand each other so well, even though you’re a deformed little German dwarf and I’m a Swedish countess, thoughts being a lingua franca? The angels’ speech, the great Swedenborg tells us, starts by penetrating our inner vision where they instil lofty, scarcely comprehensible ideas; after which they develop like a deposit in the common language of human beings. Angelic speech is just as sonorous as if it had been formed with the tongue and the mouth, but usually it’s much better articulated. It doesn’t come through the air and the ear, but on an internal path to the organs of the brain!

  The Countess smiled, displaying her three remaining teeth. He smelled her odour of sweat, bad breath and old powder, for she never washed. In those northern cities no-one did. On the other hand, one didn’t wash in the next world either. Smells, the Countess maintained, caused a great many problems in the spiritual world. Particularly unpleasant was the smell given off by demons. This was because they couldn’t smell it themselves.

  She picked up her pack of cards from the eiderdown. Not the marked deck she could fool her aristocratic women friends with, but a still-sealed Spanish pack.

  Just do me one last favour, my little deformed friend, she said. Be my saviour this evening. The Lord Chief Justice Conrad so badly wants a game of poker, and I’m in financial straits, but who is going to pay Baptiste if I don’t? The blackamoor would starve to death if it weren’t for me. And who would put a roof over your head, repulsive little monster that you ar
e? Tomorrow the spirits will reward you . . .

  Countess Tavastestierna, who had promised him to find Henriette with the aid of the spirits, hailed originally from Sweden. But at that time the two of them were in Denmark, in Copenhagen, whither years ago she had fled from her creditors. How he had come to be here himself, Hercule wasn’t quite sure. He must have arrived in the town in the course of his wanderings, and somehow or other the Countess, whose interest in the supernatural was matched only by her mania for gambling, had become aware of his qualities.

  As others had too.

  One morning some months before, he had suddenly come to his senses in London. How he arrived there he couldn’t recall. Several weeks seemed to have passed since he’d last been lucid. He found himself standing naked on a demonstration table at the famous Athenaeum Club surrounded by a small group of inquisitive gentlemen. One of these, from the Teratological Society, was pointing out Hercule’s abnormalities to the audience’s mutterings.

  “. . . these disturbances occur as disorders in the foetal phase. Why, we don’t as yet know. Syphilis, or perhaps the mother’s foetal membranes were too constricting?”

  Charts had been unrolled; pictures of other monsters were shown: albinos, duplications, craniophagi, microcephalics.

  “Gentlemen, look at the cleft in the face . . . this abnormal harelip is a sign of retardation. Moreover, our monster is deaf and dumb. The back has characteristic papillomas. Not long ago I had the privilege of witnessing the dissection of a similar tumour at St George’s Hospital. In it we discovered teeth, hair and cartilage, as well as a small, scarcely developed brain. What we see here is an autostisis with traces of parasitism. In some cases this deformity can develop in the foetal stage to become a full-grown parasite – another head, maybe even another body. It’s not unthinkable that the papillomas we see on the subject’s back could reveal traces of a parasite that under more favourable conditions might have developed into a Siamese twin . . .”