The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred (29 page)

Sitting at his desk, the judge thought he didn’t much believe in mankind’s spiritual profitability, least of all in his own. He cultivated the thought that morals have no intrinsic values of their own; they need tasks to endow them with meaning. The Jesuits were most likely prepared to agree with him, though naturally they would have condemned him had they known his motives.

He recalled the counsel for Kippenberg’s defence, who had rounded off his speech with a few words well worth considering: “Our verdict on a deed is never the same as the verdict for the aspect of the deed that God punishes or rewards.”

God alone knows the true nature of a deed. But if God existed, he would also know the true nature of the judge, and not only his own moral shortcomings . . .

The clock had just struck eleven when he laid aside the minutes of the trial. A branch was tapping the window. Turning round, he saw the cat was still there.

It must be sick, he thought, or deeply confused. Why else is it still sitting on that windowsill?

He repressed a shudder. Under cross-examination the abbot had told of the stray cat he’d let loose on his last victim. “A mottled tom-cat,” he’d said in a tone of voice one might use about some much-loved family pet. “It had lost an ear in a fight, and had a white patch on its forehead.”

The judge got up and walked over to the window. Confusedly he wondered if this could possibly be the same animal. This creature too, had an ear missing, though the patch on its forehead was more grey than white.

Next day was a Saturday. The judge rose early so as to be in good time for the abbot’s execution. His wife, the aristocratic Rosalinda von Kiesingen, with whom he had not been intimate for the best part of a decade, since the unfortunate maiming incident, about the details of which she still remained in doubt, regarded him with sleep-dazed eyes from her bedside as he did his morning toilet.

He poured water from the enamel pitcher, lathered the soap and took out a razor. As he shaved himself he pondered whether it was fitting to wear eau de cologne to an execution. He reminded himself of his duties. It was he, together with the doctor, who would ascertain that death had occurred. A death certificate would be signed, and a receipt issued for the doomed man’s last possessions. In view of all this he laid aside the aftershave lotion.

Dusting his armpits with talcum powder, he put on his starched front shirt, the loose collar with the silver button, the waistcoat and his dark official suit. Just as he was about to wind up his pocket watch, his wife sat up in bed.

“There’s someone out there,” she said. “Someone’s spying on us.”

“You’re imagining things,” he said.

But she insisted. “There’s someone outside that window! Please go and take a look.”

The judge went over to the French windows and drew up the blinds. What he saw made him start so violently that he almost lost his balance: at eye level, only a couple of inches away, was the stray cat. The animal’s breathing on the windowpane had misted it over. It was hissing quietly and baring its teeth. Heart pounding wildly, the judge looked into the spots in its amber-coloured irises, the almond-shaped pupils, and the red scar where there’d once been an ear. It hissed again, with hatred, so it seemed to him, before vanishing into the garden in three bounds.

“Something ought to be done about them,” his wife said, worried. “A cat-plague seems to have broken out.”

“Must be a good year for rats, then,” he answered.

“In that case the rat killers should be doing better. What did it look like?”

He described the cat; the mottled fur, the patch on the forehead, the missing ear.

“Must be the same one,” she said. “It’s been hanging around the house for almost a week. Yesterday morning it went for the gardener.”

The judge nodded, parting his hair down the middle with his comb.

“The servants have attempted to catch it,” his wife went on. “But it’s a sly one. By the way, there have been some more cases of hydrophobia reported from Pomerania.”

He cast a hurried glance through the window. The cat was nowhere to be seen. Instead, seeing rainclouds piling up, he looked in the cupboard for an umbrella.

“Will you be gone long?” his wife asked.

“Until dinnertime.”

“How awful to have to witness an execution.”

“It’s all part of the job.”

“For the masses it’s just a bit of entertainment. I wish we could kill that cat instead of a Jesuit.”

“Kippenberg’s a murderer,” he retorted. “He deserves his punishment!”

“Who knows but that cat isn’t just as vile an assassin? Hydrophobia is every bit as serious a matter. It hissed so at the gardener it scared him. I’m worried for the girls. What if they get bitten?”

He nodded solemnly.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll have a word with the mayor. The rat killers must be given greater resources . . .”

A little later, on entering the dining room, the judge again saw the cat. This time it was perched in a tree outside the kitchen door. The coachman and one of the maids were trying to frighten it away. The girl was throwing stones, the coachman brandishing a rake. But the cat showed no signs of fear. Baring its teeth, it spat and hissed as if considering attacking them.

The housemaid, the young one he’d been diverting himself with this past month, served him his breakfast. She blushed and refused to meet his eye.

“Know anything about that rascal?” he asked, indicating the scene outside the window.

“It came here a week ago, sir,” she answered.

“Why haven’t you tried to scare it off earlier?”

“It ain’t so easily frightened, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“It bites if you gets too close.”

“I want you to speak to the gardener,” he said. “Tell him to set a trap, or shoot it if that’s more expedient. And make sure the girls stay indoors until I get home.”

He ate quickly, glancing through the incomplete death certificate. Two attestations missing, he thought, and anyway the Kippenberg case would be added to the records without in fact having been properly solved. Still no motive, nor was there an answer to the riddle about “the boy” or “the voice”. He cut short his ponderings and looked at his pocket watch; if he didn’t hurry now he’d be late . . .

When he came out into the yard, the coachman had already brought the coach round. The cat was no longer anywhere in sight.

“Scooted off down to the woods,” the coachman explained. “But I swear to God, sir, it’ll be back any moment. Seems to me it’s looking for something.”

“And what might that be?”

“Don’t know, sir. But looks like it’s lost something, and if you bothers it, it gets mad.”

The air was still heavy with impending rain which the judge hoped would soon start to fall. A downpour might keep the crowds away from the place of execution.

“The gardener will have to deal with it,” he said. “A couple of traps should do the trick.”

“Don’t think as how it will, sir. There’s something eerie about that cat. A proper witch’s cat, if you ask me.”

The judge was just about to climb into the coupé when he again saw the animal, this time over by the garden gate. He asked the coachman to wait a moment.

Armed with his furled umbrella, he approached the gate where the cat was sitting, motionless, on the gravel. He threw some stones, but it didn’t budge. Just went on looking at him, exactly as it had done yesterday evening, very calmly, without averting its gaze.

Now he was no more than three feet away from it. The cat put its back up and looked intensely at him, straight in the eyes. Cautiously he lifted the umbrella. A single forceful blow, he thought, and that would be that.

But, in that very same instant quite another sensation overwhelmed him. This cat that was staring him in the eye, he felt, was trying to tell him something. Of course it was absurd, but he couldn’t explain it any other way. It felt as if the creature was trying to whisper something to him, inaudibly, though he didn’t know what.

Suddenly he felt giddy. Could it have something to do with the execution, he wondered; all this unending work he’d recently done supervising it? He felt an irresistible urge to touch the animal, put out a hand and stroke its fur. And when he listened, he felt that this was precisely what the cat was whispering:
Touch me, touch me!

He did. The cat looked at him. Bewildered by his own behaviour, he stretched out his hand. Cats can’t talk, he thought, or whisper, or think. At that moment, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his hand. The cat had scratched him. Frightened, he let out a cry, and at that same moment the monster, with unnatural swiftness, vanished into the undergrowth.

By the time the judge arrived at the site of the execution, a large crowd had already gathered, men and women of all ages, also a few children. Women in particular would come to executions, stricken by some sort of sinister bloodlust. If one wasn’t careful, it could all degenerate into a riot. He had heard them howl with suppressed passion as a murderer was led away to the headsman. And then seen them vomit when the broad axe fell. A company of recruits had been ordered out to form a rank of fixed bayonets as the doomed man approached.

At the witness stand the judge greeted the persons of authority presiding. A secretary from the mayor’s office, the doctor, the county police commissioner, the parish constable and the prison governor.

Ignoring their enquiries about his bandaged hand, he muttered, “Nothing worth mentioning. Accident with a stray cat.”

A young medical student had obtained permission to examine the murderer’s head immediately after decapitation. Science wanted to ascertain whether any living reflexes were left after it had been severed from the body. “Blinking,” he divulged expertly, “eye movements, lips still twitching . . .”

Over by the scaffold the executioner was passing the time with his assistant. Only once before had the judge met him, but his appearance was hard to forget. The headsman, himself a pardoned criminal, had had both his ears cut off for stealing cattle.

At the command of the county police commissioner, the recruits shoved the crowds aside in order to leave the scaffold free. Hoping to gather up a few drops of the murderer’s blood while it was still fresh, some of the women had equipped themselves with cups and tins. It was said to help against eczema and epilepsia.

As the prisoner’s cart appeared round the bend in the road, an excited murmur rose from the crowds. The recruits fell into line and the police commissioner quickly read out the sentence. As Kippenberg climbed down from the cart, silence fell once more. The doomed man was clad in prison garb, shackled and was wearing a black scarf. Fear had robbed him of his sense of balance. He reeled along like a drunk between two prison wardens. The judge noticed that the rumour was true: his hair had indeed turned white as chalk. The prison governor offered him a dram, but the abbot seemed no longer aware of what was going on around him. He collapsed and had to be dragged the last few metres to the block. By now, weeping openly, he was trying to postpone the inevitable with kicks and blows. Forcing him down on to the block, they took off his scarf, but let the shackles remain. The executioner tactfully averted his gaze.

“The boy!” Kippenberg screamed. “The boy’s laughing . . . at you too, Your Honour . . . You’re next in line!”

To all appearances the headsman had been drinking. The first blow cut into the doomed man’s shoulder. The sound of a collarbone cracking could be heard loud and clear by everyone. Kippenberg didn’t make a sound, but his eyes rotated in their sockets so that only the whites showed. The headsman struck again, this time striking Kippenberg in the back. After this, the mob began to jeer at the executioner. A woman in the front row fainted. Not until the third attempt, by which point Kippenberg had already lost consciousness, did the headsman succeed in decapitating him. The blow fell aslant, separating the upper part of the abbot’s head from the lower, the lower jaw still hanging intact on the neck, its line of teeth in a perfect horseshoe. The fountain of blood spurted from the carotid artery.

Von Kiesingen looked the other way. The prison governor, he noted, was leaning over the platform, vomiting straight down into the crowd. The young medical student, on the other hand, appeared to be in fine fettle. Fifteen metres away, the judge saw him standing with the severed head in his hands. It made him think of an insane Hamlet, wildly shaking a bloodied skull in the hope of making it blink.

Seen from the perspective of a stray cat, the garden was simply one part of a vast nature. The house was of no interest to him, nor were its people. For more than an hour he’d been lying in wait by a molehill on the slope leading down to the woods. Now, without forewarning, the animal was filled with a dark power which had of late been coming and going from its consciousness at will. A power that extinguished its own intention and, seemingly imprisoned from within, turned the cat into an obedient instrument, as if borrowing its body for obscure reasons, never asking why. Thus, the cat relinquished its plans to go hunting and left the garden slope.

Creeping through the undergrowth and rose-hip bushes, it threw a disdainful glance at the cat-trap hung up by the head gardener in a tree some hours before. Still on the alert for any humans who might be about, those beings who, screaming insanely, had not long ago chased it, it made its way down into a ditch, slouched onwards, came suddenly to a halt and looked out over the woods. There, in the fork of a tree and all but hidden by its foliage, was a stunted man with a mask on his face, seemingly asleep. Leaves and pine cones had fallen on the little fellow’s clothes, and he was sitting so still a spider could have begun spinning its web between his feet. But a moment later the stray cat, soon tiring of what it saw, availed itself of the natural protection afforded by the screen of a fountain to stand by the house in front of an open cellar window.

A smell of mould and damp arose from inside. Opening the hatch slightly with its paw, the cat crept in and with an agile leap jumped down on to the floor. For a moment it stood there, a little unsure as to what had actually impelled it to enter this building, with its hostile inhabitants who had just spent hours chasing it, even trying to shoot it. But once more the alien will took over and, with an authority it had to yield to and in a tone that brooked no arguments, drove it silently on through the dark into a confined space filled with foodstuffs, barrels of beer, herring and pork, and where an assortment of hams and sausages hung from rafters in the ceiling making the poor stray’s mouth water. Not spoiled with such easily accessible delicacies, his legs ignored an impulse to halt and make a meal of this extravagant spread, and had not its short-term feline memory been so dependent on a continual flow of sensory stimulae in order to survive in the world – the heartbeat, for instance, of a mortally terrified prey, or a field mouse’s desperate squeakings from its half-metre-deep subterranean nest – had it not been for this flagrant shortcoming in the make-up of a cat’s memory, it would doubtless have rebelled against this superordinate power that was driving it on.