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

by Carl-Johan Vallgren

  I do not know how to express these feelings, for they are as frightening as they are bewildering. Things are happening that are beyond my control. For every hour that passes I act more and more in defiance of my faith, in conflict with my convictions and all the obedience I believed myself to have embraced ever since I entered the Order. Just putting these lines in writing calls for an extreme act of will, my pen hardly obeys me, not in the physical sense, but spiritually: it wishes to write words that are not mine.

  Yes, that is how it is: my pen wishes to humiliate me, and you, too, my dearest Ildebrando. What force is this that will not leave even my words in peace? The accusations being brought against me are, as you of course understand, true, and I cannot explain my actions in any other way: it hasn’t been me! But who then, I ask myself, is it?

  Can you see how hard it is for me to formulate these notions on paper, how angular my handwriting has become, how it tilts and heels over in a style you have never seen before, as if I were writing with my left hand? Can you see the ink blots, the thwarted initials; how I, with all the will I can muster, and rigidly clasping the quill, struggle to bring one single lucid sentence to an end? It is as if an external force scarcely allows me to formulate these words.

  Nor can I allow myself to dictate this. For my words, Ildebrando, are like faeces. I think one thing, but emit something else, something despicable, something vulgar and gross comes out of my mouth causing those around me to back away. I am no longer responsible for my language, even less so for my actions. Pray for me, Ildebrando, pray for my salvation, it is under dire threat.

  Had it not been for my newly appointed secretary, the situation would long ago have gone to rack and ruin. He has of late relieved me of my daily duties, holding visitors at bay, admitting only my closest associates for an audience.

  You must believe me, Ildebrando, when I tell you that this is the fourth draft today of this letter. I’ve had to burn the others, since to my horror I’ve seen them imbued with sentiments that are not my own: abuses, curses. Sentences that are not of my making worm their way into the text, words I didn’t even know were thinkable, nor even how to spell. I think: write this, Aurelio! But when I follow the movements of my pen and hand, I see quite other words take shape on the paper. Even my handwriting is not my own!

  Everything you have heard about me, Ildebrando, is true: all these immoral acts, blasphemies, excretions, profanities. It is as if I were transported, wildly out of control, as if I were but an automaton, the creation of an evil-minded maker of dolls. Only the strength of my position and the help given me by my secretary have enabled me to stifle the scandal. The alien voice speaks within me, this obnoxious voice that wants to harm me, drives me to do all this, wishes to scandalise me and wreck my life. The voice that has spent the last few hours convincing me I must commit the ultimate mortal sin . . .

  My mental faculties are running out, Ildebrando. I finish here before the evil force starts in earnest dictating what I write.

  Rivero

  Naples, the XXII June MDCCCXXXVII

  Dear Aurelio,

  I send you this letter poised between hope and despair since I’ve received no answer to my last. Give me a sign of life, that is all I ask. Answer me by return of post.

  Your Ildebrando Montelli

  Naples, the I July

  Aurelio!

  I beg you once more: answer my letter at once. Give me, at the very least, a sign that you are well! This silence on your part fills me with the most ominous forebodings. Only this morning my last letter was returned. I have had my friends search for you, but you have been unavailable. Gianfranco informed me by messenger that you no longer give audiences. It is said he has spoken with your new secretary, who announced that you were “indisposed”. What does that mean, Aurelio? And who is this new secretary? I beg you, give me a sign of life!

  Ildebrando

  Naples, the VIII July

  My dearest Aurelio!

  Still no sign of life from you, and yet another missive returned with its seal unbroken. I’ve decided to send this letter by courier to assure myself that it at least reaches your secretary, who rumour has it is intractable, furtive and not of our ranks. Who is he, this stranger, Aurelio, who forestalls visitors on the very threshold of your office’s antechamber? I’ve heard rumours too outrageous to be true. No-one has seen you this past month, only this remarkable secretary, short of stature, who makes known in writing that you are not “passant” or are “indisposed for conversation”, and whose appearance – apart from his insignificant stature and peculiar mask – no-one seems able to describe. I do not expect a reply to this letter, your correspondence with the outside world having come to a total standstill. Unless I get some sign of life from you within ten days, I have decided to come to Rome and personally demand a meeting with you. Gianfranco has tried to find you a dozen times to date. There is growing concern within our ranks. Some say you have gone over to our enemies, that you are in some unknown place outside Rome, conspiring against the Society. Until I have spoken to you in private, I cannot know what to believe. My greatest fears now are for your health, if indeed you are still alive. God willing I hope to see you again or to soon receive some word from you.

  Your Ildebrando Montelli

  Sabine Hills, St Peter’s Day MDCCCXXXVII

  To my brethren in Jesus and in particular my oldest confessor, the most honourable and God-fearing Ildebrando Montelli, my mentor and Christian guide since the days of my novitiate, as well as to my colleagues at the Secretariats and Congregations and my sisters, Anna and Ricarda, and to all those who may find my imminent end to be of interest.

  I write these lines in a state of acute anxiety, with the greatest effort, being as I am at the mercy of forces over which I have no control, and no longer capable of fighting off the inevitable. There is nothing left for me but to relinquish myself into the hands of the Good Lord in the hope that He will receive an undeserving soul. All that I, Aurelio Rivero, can hope for, is that someone will be able to decipher this epistle, since I am no longer master of the hand that writes it.

  This place is a deserted farmstead in what appears to be the Sabine Hills, whither in early June of this year I was taken against my will by my secretary, who has complete control over my actions I write this letter with his gracious permission; anything else would be impossible, since he controls my every step and has complete insight into my soul, my thoughts, my mind and even into my innumerable sins my handwriting shifts violently and I beg my reader’s patience Nor are all of the words my own! news has reached me about Luca S. and all the others in Rome who were involved in the death of Julian Schuster, our brother of the Order Wittold Kossak too has been

  but for the providence of Our Lord escaped when he was lured by two children to a place outside Regia all, all has to do with my scribe who holds me prisoner here may this letter reach those who seek knowledge of my terrible fate!

  Forgive me for the evil-doings I am guilty of in the chapel of St Maria Maggiore in the church of John the Baptist, in St Luigi dei Francesci, where I in my confused state was allowed to must finish now secretary calling me and I can do nothing but obey because of his terrible power.

  Sabine Hills, the VIII after Trinity Sunday

  I write this letter in secret, my custodian having left the building in order to carry out his errands and get some food for me – for he wants to keep me alive to torment me I am a prisoner here, locked up like a common thief God is no longer with me in my darkness, only the cup of poison, so that I shall commit the ultimate sin.

  It is only through an extreme act of will I can refrain from blaspheming against Our Lord and my loved ones in this letter.

  a faint streak of light is breaking through a window hatch six ells up on what I believe to be the western wall of my cell. Apart from that, nothing! No furniture, no lamps, the floor is bare, stone walls, a raw cold in the mornings as the tower faces north

  my personal secretary and gaoler has
used his cunning and power to lure me here, exploiting my weakness, my sorely disturbed mind even enticing out of its dark corners long-forgotten events from my earliest years here voices hear within me very clearly, even hallucinations of a strange kind he sees into my soul, exploits my weaknesses, my fear of mortal sin, deeply impressed on me since childhood, hence death by my own hand, which he is trying to force me to commit, using illusory powers, offering practical assistance no furniture or comfort in this cell, only the cup of poison, a snare made of pure copper wires, a sharp pair of scissors A ladder attached to the wall leads up to the gallery, there’s a single window hatch, if you look through a crack there’s a backyard with an almond tree in the background, I think, the silhouette of the Sabine Hills must finish he’s coming back

  Sabine Hills, August or September

  May this letter reach a Christian soul! I, Cardinal Aurelio Rivero, am slowly going out of my mind, voices pursue me incessantly, my secretary-cum-enemy has chosen this path to drive me into taking my own life He even makes himself invisible, only to reappear, laughing, out of nowhere!

  this is a desolate region, no-one lives here. I have lapsed into complete silence, lost my faculty for speech, my secretary poisons my drink, bringing on hallucinations, scenes from hell worse than those depicted by Dante, this is a dead place, the morning comes slowly, imperceptibly to overpower me hear sounds from the locked room next door: chairs scraping, music, someone playing a piano my scribe, the deformed boy, speaks to me through my thoughts May God have mercy on my soul when I appear before His throne.

  hoping this letter by the grace of God finds an addressee willing to pray for my salvation I go to my doom

  IX

  SO IT WAS; driven by hatred, Hercule had cultivated his gift to the point where he could appear unnoticed, managing to blot out the idea of him in people’s minds by pinpointing where in their grey brain-matter it had initially appeared, and transforming it into something else.

  Some might say he had made himself invisible, but in that case he would have had to correct them: nobody can make themselves invisible, only unnoticed, such as is often the case with the lonely.

  The apprentices in the slaughterhouse yard where he was standing, for instance, didn’t notice him, even though he was right in their midst. Possibly they apprehended him as a breath from death’s angel (always present in such places), or from some dead animal’s carcass, a pig about to be stabbed, or some caged beast.

  Beside him, a butcher’s apprentice was flaying a sheep. To him, he didn’t exist, other than as a vague presentiment that every now and then made him look reluctantly over in his direction. But without noticing him. Until, finally, these repeated premonitions which never came to anything tired him out, and were therefore added to the dormant pile of non-essentials that people daily surround themselves with in order to be able to concentrate on their work. Consumed by a stifled repugnance coupled with the low-intensity bloodthirstiness characteristic of every butcher, the apprentice flayed the body until its skin hung loose like a bloodied skirt from the sheep’s vacantly staring head.

  The acrid odour of entrails had caused Hercule momentarily to forget what he was here for. He stared as if bewitched when the apprentice opened up the sheep’s belly and tipped out its clump of intestines. The boy proceeded to plunge his hands into the reeking abdominal cavity, withdrawing the liver, lungs and stomach, before very carefully lifting out the bag of taut, moist membrane. He then laid it with utmost care on the ground, as if it were a fragile bundle. Using the tip of his knife, he opened the membrane, and it was only when the parcel burst open, steaming in the cold morning air, that Hercule understood what was in it: two unborn lambs, about to be slaughtered for the sake of their precious fleeces.

  That, he thought, was exactly how he would now slaughter his final victim – among other beasts, like the beast he was . . .

  It was hatred which had driven him to this macabre lookout post at the slaughterhouse yard, there to refuel and fertilise itself, remaining intact for higher purposes; hatred so potent it could only be measured against the love whose hub had gone for ever.

  Hate was his only friend, his armour bearer from moment to moment. It had a stench of carcasses, sodden earth, cold sweat and excrement, an odour of dying gasps and the blood of a thousand slaughtered animals. Hatred even emitted a sound of its own. A ringing sound which never ceased. The tinnitus of hate. An incessant hum, it reverberated through him, buzzing like a moth against the glass of a lamp; forever keeping him awake, the only sound he’d ever heard, reminding him of the vengeance he must exact. It wasn’t his life they’d taken, but its meaning, and here vengeance could only be paid out in the same coin. Revenge as a monetary standard. Death pays for death; these were the two sides of his equation.

  Hate even has its own taste, he thought, looking over to the tavern on the yard’s far side. His oral cavity had been filled with a sweet dough spewed up, ruminated, then blanched in the stomach of his hatred, but impossible to spit out, grief having sewn his lips together.

  His hate could also be touched: it was a razor blade his toes could grasp with all their strength, and which could be swallowed, an icy blade that cut throats and sliced open stomachs, cold as ice, hot as burning coals.

  There, alone in the inn on the other side of the yard, sat the man who had unleashed these passions. At one of its windows, sitting bent over a mug of beer, looking through some papers, was the final, but also the most powerful object of his hatred, had it been quantifiable. But the hatred would not let itself be quantified. All objects of such hatred were of equal importance, he’d noticed, and he found this confusing. He didn’t hate this man any more than he had hated the others. He hated them all to the same extent, but limitlessly. Hatred had no chronology. It stretched away in all directions into infinity. Not being conceivable from any other perspective than infinity, it had always been there, and always would be. It abrogated all sense of time. It was Being itself.

  But with this man at the inn table he had to be careful, for he possessed a gift not unlike his own. Which was why he now raised his eyes from his papers and looked about him, as if aware of being watched.

  Hercule read the man’s emotions. His thirst had been quenched. His premonitions had made him wary. In a moment he would get up and leave.

  To a deaf person, in this city of a million inhabitants the carriages slid by on soundless wheels. The frantic animals in the slaughterhouse yard, the bellowings, the howls and death rattles from throats choking in their own blood went unheard. The apprentices talked and laughed without him noticing them, mouths moving like fishes’ mute gobs.

  Having made up his mind not to let the man out of his sight, Hercule left the slaughterhouse and went into the alley, where a cab almost ran him down, its driver swearing at his suddenly rearing horses. Only the horses notice me, he thought, and perhaps also those children who, somewhat astonished, are looking over in my direction.

  Overhead the sun broke through the cloud cover like an icebreaker. It was morning, but already very hot. He waited for the inn door to open and his enemy to appear. This man is the last, he thought. Only when he too was gone would Hercule at last have avenged his love.

  But hate made him careless, as love had once done. Inside the inn, Johannes Langhans was beginning to track down the deformed man’s tinnitus of desire for revenge. Then, taking care to let his thoughts go in a misleading direction, he left the premises through a back door and hailed a cab.

  It took a while before Hercule realised his enemy had gone. Not that this troubled him in the least, since he already knew where to find him. He’d only followed him to the inn in order to strengthen his resolve. But his plans for the Jesuit were already formed. And any moment now he would implement them.

  When Johannes Langhans got back to his office, only his immediate superior, Secretary Wohlrat, was still there. After enquiring about a couple of appointments, all having to do with the paperwork he’d been looking through in the ta
vern, he withdrew to his own office room, a gloomy chamber at the end of a dark corridor.

  Next to the pile of documents which had heaped up during the week, lay a note. Sealed and stamped, the letter was addressed to him personally. He opened it and read:

  Most honourable head of division! A messenger will be coming this afternoon to deliver information of a delicate nature concerning Count Kollowrat. In order to avoid any unauthorised persons gaining cognisance of this material we would like to meet you on neutral ground.

  There followed some directions to an address in the suburbs. The letter had been signed with a scarcely legible signature, and lacked a return address.

  Langhans remained seated, held the note. There was something about this communiqué that wasn’t right.

  After having thought over the ins and outs of the matter awhile, it struck him that the envelope had not been stamped by the office, and in order to elucidate this mystery he went back to the office where the secretary was standing bent over a pile of books.

  “Do you know who handed this in?” he asked, holding out the letter.