The Werewolf of Mariahilf am Inn II.12
A Gothic Horror Novel
Book II, Chapter 12: Santa Maria della Concerzione dei Cappucini
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Hermann had been unconscious for only a moment. He awoke with Benedikt helping him out of the private snug where he had collapsed. Still in a swoon, the Austrian man seized the ostler’s coat: “Please! I must know the rest!” But Benedikt signaled by a subtle inclination of the head that Hermann’s fainting spell had alerted the mistress of the house.
Hearing the goblet shatter, Frau Mattner hastened to the private room, fearing one of the men had challenged the other to a duel. But to her relief, the evidence pointed to this having been an accident. The two men stood sheepishly over the mess like children at a loss as to who was at fault.
Hermann effusively apologized and asked how much it would be to replace the goblet. Frau Mattner, still flurried by the extravagant sum Benedikt had paid for their meal, commented that she had always hated that goblet, and only wished the rest of the set would spontaneously shatter so she could replace it with a genteeler one.
She pointed to the stain on Hermann’s trousers and said that, because the wine had been white, the blot would “whoosh away in the cold air” once they were outside. Since Hermann no longer had wine to drink, Frau Mattner vowed to bring him another cup of hot cider—“Because you’re trembling terribly.”
It’s not the cold making me tremble, he thought.
The yawning middle-aged son emerged from the kitchen with two damp towels to clean up the floor. He used one of the towels to gather up the larger shards of glass. Frau Mattner clucked her tongue and warned him he would cut himself; but he replied that it had been thick glass and wouldn’t break the skin. Then he said “ouch” and she said “I told you so.”
Once the floor had been dried and mopped, and a cup of cider settled on the table in front of Hermann, the two were alone again and Benedikt continued the tale.
“Fr. Matteo and I sat together on the ledge of that stronghold that once been the mountain hideaway of a community of Waldensians, who had lived there in isolation—even after the great persecutions against them had ended. The ledge that we sat on projected so far from the cliff face that it was unscalable from the rocky base.
“With mortar and pestle, the friar muddled the yarrow plant into a poultice, which he used to treat my scathed shins. As he did so, a vapor rose from the valley and mingled with a faint mist falling from the clouds until the winds buffeting the rocks not only ruffled our garments but beaded our skin with the late-morning dew.
“‘Tell me, Benedikt,’ my master said. ‘Are we being rained on from above, or is the rising mist condensing on us?’
“‘Does it really matter? We’re getting wet either way.’
“‘No, it doesn’t matter. But take note of how a phenomenon can be viewed in different ways, depending on the kind of lens one peers through—and the side of that lens one stands on.’
“‘I almost regret following you here,’ I said. ‘You seem a bit mad.’
“But though I said this, I did not feel this way. He taught me that every day was pregnant with meaning, and that every hour should be savored as if it were our last. Though a Franciscan in habit, he resembled more in demeanor the dour and severe Dominican Savonarola.
“‘I am convinced that, if Fr. Matteo (like the agent of Archimedes’ boast) were to have stood at a fulcrum of a vast machine by which he could have moved the world, he would instead have used that proverbial device to hurl all the libraries of the Earth into Hell as trifling and inconsequential things.
“Oh, Hermann, in order for you to comprehend how the demon whose malevolent spirit has braided your destiny with mine came into this world, I must first tell you the history of Fr. Matteo di Pàdova, who revealed it to me, as we sat together in that sublime and elevated solitude, where only the benevolent shades of the Waldensians could listen in on us.
“Fr. Matteo was born in the Adriatic city of Trieste in 1770—the year that Antoinette (daughter of Empress Maria Theresa) was betrothed to the Dauphin of France. Matteo’s father was a scion of a cadet branch of the Barberini family of Rome. His mother was descended from the Hungarian Esterházys.
“He confided to me that merely having a patent of nobility in those days was no guarantor of wealth and success. And so, Matteo’s father, combining the influence of his rank with a modest inheritance established a maritime venture that provided insurance for merchant vessels plying the seas of the Adriatic, Mediterranean, and Aegean.
“‘I grew up,’ he told me, ‘speaking a dialect of Italian known as Triestine, which shares commonalities with the speech of the Veneto. For that reason, when I was forced into hiding, I claimed to have been from Padua. My father was fluent in Italian and German; but my mother could only speak the latter, which was how I acquired that language as well.
“‘I was the youngest of twelve children, a brooding and solitary youth. I had mastered Latin under the tutelage of a Jesuit, because this language was the key to unlocking the secrets of the natural philosophers whose researches I yearned to study and benefit from. I showed an aptitude toward mathematics and its sister arts, though my interest in music and astronomy was scant.
“‘To the amusement of my father, I transformed my private quarters into a laboratory. On the rooftop of our villa, I planted an herb garden whose beds were divided in decussated compartments that I built from shipping crates.
“‘I had been fascinated with Luigi Galvani’s discoveries into animal magnetism; and, after poring over the writings of the American philosopher Benjamin Franklin, I thought (in the precocity of adolescence) that I had stumbled upon something that Galvani himself had missed. I believed that if I could harness the electrical forces of the heavens, I could enhance and augment the medicinal properties of plants and herbs. I was only twelve when I asked my father to procure for me a rod of iron and several spools of copper filament.
“‘I mounted the rod to the highest point on the villa’s rooftop and formed a network of wires irradiating from it. These were wound round the roots and stems of the foliage in the beds. One summer’s night a massive storm rolled in from the east, flashing with lightning. I contemplated the spectacle from our dining room table. The storm raged all that night. By means of an improvised a galvanic apparatus that I had rigged up in my private laboratory, I saw sparks indicating that the lightning rod had been stricken several times.
“‘The following day, I announced to my parents and siblings that I had made a profound discovery, and I led them to the rooftop so that they might bear witness to what I was certain would be my crowning achievement. But the foliage was fried and the boxes were scorched black. The herb beds had become a sump of ooze and rainwater. Though mortified, the general hilarity the situation engendered in my family was so contagious that I, too, succumbed to it.
“‘Seeing great promise in the trajectory my studies were taking me, my father apprenticed me to a colleague and close friend, a Sephardic Jew from Smyrna named Ezra, who was a widower and ran an apothecary shop near the shore. The plan was for me to study under him for a period of four or five years until I was ready to be sent up to university to continue my studies. I would live and work in Master Ezra’s shop, and I share a room with his only surviving child—a boy my age named Samuel.
“‘During those first few months, Samuel acted as my tutor and taught me the rudiments of Hebrew. You may wonder why I troubled myself to learn this subtle and difficult language. It is because (as Master Ezra explained to me) the Materia Medica of the Greek pharmacologist Dioscurides had been inaccurately translated into Latin in the medieval period. But a revised Hebrew version was made by a group of scholars headed by one Hasdai ibn Shaprut. During this process, Ibn Shaprut and his disciples produced a series of important Hebrew commentaries on this work, which were still unavailable in Latin or any of the vulgar European tongues.
“‘Samuel and I achieved great fluency in Hebrew. We began to delve not only into Master Ezra’s collection of medical texts but into the writings of Moses ibn Maimon (more commonly known as Maimonides), who had not only written on medicine but on the nature of the godhead. But when my friend and I begged to be inducted into the mysteries of the Zohar, a vast tome that Master Ezra kept locked away in a separate room, the apothecary said that such things were not to be studied until a man had acquired a long beard; and that beard had acquired its first gray hairs.
“‘When it was time for me to depart Trieste, I said my goodbyes to my family, to my master—and to his son. The friendship that had blossomed between Samuel and me was so profound that I still cannot find adequate words to describe it. The best I can do is to compare it to the love between David and Jonathan as described in scripture—surpassing the love of women. . . .’”
A mocking smile hovered on Benedikt’s lips when he said this.
Hermann remembered the first time he had heard this expression. It had been used to describe the intensity of the love Saint John of the Cross felt toward Christ. But to this day, Hermann was unclear as to what it was supposed to mean. It sounded nonsensical, like when poets sing of “living rocks.” (How exactly do rocks live?) He didn’t react, other than to sip from his warm cider.
But even as he did this, he couldn’t help but recall his American friend, Marty P. Fitzsimmons, the self-proclaimed “mentalist and ratiocinative investigator” from a place called Kentucky, whose mannerisms had always grated on Hermann’s nerves as mincing and rather effete. But it was Marty alone who had remained at Hermann’s side in the moment of his deepest despair. Perhaps the love I feel toward Marty is a love surpassing the love of women.
“As I recall,” Benedikt resumed, “Matteo’s father made a generous donation to the Medical University of Vienna so that his son would be admitted without the need of an examination or the standard formalities involved in matriculation. Matteo’s father knew a sound investment when he saw one. But the young man’s natural attainments and keenness of intellect marked him early on as one who would go far in advancing the Hippocratic art.
“There was a special wing of Vienna’s University of Medicine where the windows were curtained and the chambers equipped with trunks of ice from the mountains, constantly replenished during the hot summer months, in order to keep the spaces inside the wing cool. The reason for this was that it housed a collection of anatomical figurines sculpted from wax by the Florentine artist Clemente Michelangelo Susini (in collaboration with the renowned Italian physician Paolo Mascagni).
“On what would turn out to be the most fateful day of Matteo’s life—in the summer of 1793 (the year that Louis XVI of France was executed)—he found himself one evening in a exclusive cabinet of the wing, where he was studying a life-size figurine reproduced from sketches that had been made by Maria Theresa’s personal physician, Dr. Gerard Van Swieten, during an expedition he led into Carinthia in 1762.
“With its lusterless eyes forged of Venetian glass, the model stood upright on a plinth of wood, jaws open so that its prominent canines could be clearly seen. It was said to represent a mountain peasant suffering from a condition Van Swieten characterized as hirsutism; but the locals believed him to have been a werewolf.
“In his hands, Matteo held Van Swieten’s original diagrams. The model’s internal organs were constructed in a way so as to facilitate their being removed and manipulated. The autopsy of the original corpse had revealed few discrepancies between the subject’s organs and those of a normal man. But the organ of generation was not only unnaturally enlarged but contained a deformity running along its length that resembled the ridges found on the spines and tails of certain reptiles.
“Van Swieten had dismissed the villagers’ superstitious claims that the man had been a werewolf. He convinced the other physicians participating in the expedition that abominations such as these were common in nature. Nevertheless, he believed this specimen was worth preserving in wax for future men of learning to study and analyze; and so, upon returning to Vienna, he commissioned Susini to create it.”
Hermann wiped his brow and shook his head in disbelief, as Benedikt stretched his arms, yawned and emitted a postprandial fart.
“Fr. Matteo said that he recalled dismissively informing the poor curator at the door that he was done, and then he left. The frail old man had been obliged to stand at the threshold in a state of rigid attention for nearly three hours so that—once Matteo had finished—he could douse the lights, lock up the wing, and eat his humble evening repast. The reason Fr. Matteo told me this was in order to contrast what he called the sick irony of his studying medicine but feeling no compassion toward those he might one day be called upon to treat But all this would change in the wake of the moral and spiritual transformation he would later undergo in Rome.
“Fr. Matteo continued his story: ‘I had a room overlooking the Graben, that promenade in the heart of Vienna constructed over the ruins of the southwestern portion of the defensive ditch of the Roman encampment of Vindobona. The outer door of my building faced the Holy Trinity Column—a baroque confection of winged cherubs and withered corpses whose faces peer out of an illusory froth of heavenly clouds that are actually intended to represent the bulbous inflammations that grew on the flesh of those suffering from a seventeenth-century outbreak of the bubonic plague, which the column commemorates.
“‘Shivering at the base of the column was a wraith of a man, whom I soon recognized to be my dear Samuel. I ran to him and we embraced. I thought at first that the tears he shed were of joy for our reunion. But, oh how mistaken I was!
“‘He reported that my family had been poisoned one evening as they supped. The household’s oldest and most trusted servants (the elderly cook and her husband) were accused and hanged summarily without any regard to their claim that a scullion whom my father had welcomed into the household weeks before as a gift from a relative in Rome had been the culprit.
“‘But the tragedy did not end there. A few days before the murder took place, Master Ezra was visited by a man who purchased from his shop a large quantity of aconite. Samuel, who had been at the counter at the time, noted that the man wore a ring bearing the insignia of the House Barberini, which he had recognized from my father’s crest.
“‘On the same day my family was murdered, my friend returned to his father’s shop and saw the same man exiting the back door in a furtive manner. A man who was with him wiped his dagger with the tails of his blood-red coat.
“‘Concealed behind a horse cart, Samuel overheard the two speaking as they passed. The man with the dagger asked why they needed to kill the apothecary as well. The wearer of the ring replied that these were the orders of Signore Ludovico, who had sent them on their mission. Both agreed that apothecary’s son would be accused of parricide. What Samuel had never known (because I had never spoken of the matter with him before) was that my uncle’s name was Ludovico.
“‘Without restraint, Samuel and I wept for our loss. We recited together in Hebrew the song of David: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. We hid our faces from the passersby. But even as we grieved, my mind was evolving a plan, which I rehearsed to him. We would flee to the Low Countries and take up residence in Ghent or Amsterdam. We would make our living as physicians or apothecaries. But I would first need to return to my room and retrieve money and a few items to aid us in our flight. I told my lover to remain by the Plague Column until I returned.’”
Hermann’s right eye twitched when Benedikt referred to Matteo’s friend as his lover. Perhaps I misheard, he thought. Caught up in the heat of his narrative, the ostler had swiftly moved on.
“‘I was not allowed to bring Samuel with me to my room. In the wake of the revolution in France, the Emperor had issued a decree commanding his secret policemen to man the entrances of all the major buildings and residences in Vienna, and deny access to persons who did not possess official permits. This was to prevent the gathering of suspicious assemblies that might plot the overthrow of the government. The only individuals excepted from this rule were court officials and ladies of the night, a fact that led some to claim there was little distinction between the two. The man on duty at the door lazily waved me through.
“‘Once in my room, I rummaged through my wardrobe. Samuel and I were of the same build. I gathered enough clothes for us to share. I ran to my wooden chest and unlocked it. Inside was a silk cummerbund in which two earrings had been sewn up. They were from the Persian city of Hormuz and adorned with rubies and pearls. My father had given me this in the event of such an emergency. Between the earrings and a modest sum of coins I carried in my purse, we would be able to travel comfortably across the countryside.
“‘There was a commotion at my window, which stood open due to the summer heat. I went to it and saw a band of ostensibly drunken rowdies singing bawdy Italian songs. They had surrounded Samuel. One man held something close to his waist. Samuel looked up at my window. There was terror in his eyes. In an instant, the ruffian had clapped his free hand around his neck and forced his head down, as he was led off toward St. Peter’s Church and to what I knew in my heart would be his inevitable death. Three of the assassins lingered behind, blandly whistling to one another as they circled the Plague Column, waiting for me to come back down.
“‘My calculating mind comprehended at once what had happened. I traced the skein to my uncle who sought to lay claim over my father’s estate and possessions. Only I remained in his way. As the Queen of the Night says in Amadeus Mozart’s comedy: The vengeance of Hell seethed in my heart. I cast to the floor the garments I had collected for us and ripped open the cummerbund to remove the precious earrings. I put them in my purse with my other coins. On a hook in the corner of my room was a threadbare cape that I sometimes used in the winter months when stepping outside for brief errands. This, I put over my shoulders and descended the steps.
“‘In the vestibule, I beckoned for the policeman to come to the steps so that I could address him in the shadows. I told him that I was troubled by the three Italians circling the Plague Column. They knew I spoke their language. They had followed me from the university and asked me if I supported what they called the condign death of the French King and his bitch wife. I alleged the men threatened to kill me if I did not join their cabal.
“‘The policeman adjusted his jabot and tricorn and stepped outside. From my vantage point, I saw him perform a motion with his hands that attracted the attention of six of his colleagues, two of whom were dressed as beggars. They converged on the men, as I slipped out the door and bent my steps toward the alley leading to the New Market where the Church of the Capuchins is located.
“‘I beat thrice on the door and a poor friar answered. He asked me who I was. I answered (in Latin) that I was a poor sinner, a son of God, and one who sought His refuge. The man permitted me to step inside, but bade me remain in the nave so that he could relay what I had said to his superior. Within moments an older man, dressed as a Franciscan (with an immaculately trimmed beard), approached. He told me that the brothers did not take in strays, that the church was neither a sanctuary nor a place of charity. Beneath Vienna’s Capuchin Church lies the Imperial Crypt of the Habsburgs. What this means is that the property on which it stands belongs as much to the Emperor of Austria as to the See of Saint Peter.
“‘Despite my disheveled appearance, my carriage and fluency in Latin betrayed my aristocratic origins. This played to my advantage, for I could tell that, whatever ecclesiastical title this man held, he too was of noble birth and that is mandate came down to him from the Hofburg. Since the time of Joseph II, the churches, monasteries, and other diocesan institutions operating in Austria had been compelled to declare fealty to the Emperor in Vienna over the Pope in Rome.
“‘I placed one of the earrings into this man’s hand and told him that I would not overstay my welcome; that my plans were to leave Austria; that I needed certificates and attestations confirming me to be Fra Matteo di Pàdova, a lay brother of the Capuchin order. I wished to be transferred to Rome. The man looked over his shoulder to ensure the humble friar at the door who had let me in, had not overheard the conversation. I told the man that, if everything I was proposing to him were done to my satisfaction, the partner of the earring would be placed in his palm on the day I departed. It was late; and the poor monk at the door looked to his superior with an air of expectancy. The man nodded curtly; and the bolt of the door was shot through for the night.
“‘Within two months, I arrived in Rome and bent my steps to the cobbled street in front of the Palazzo Barberini, where my uncle and his family lived. I must have stood there for an hour, telling the wooden beads of my rosary, before I crossed the piazza and entered the fumigated precincts of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, where I would be serving my mission.
“‘The monastery that was attached to this church was run by an abbot of unimpeachable integrity. He welcomed me, cursorily read over my papers, and told me that my duties would seem mundane and quotidian, but that they were to the greater glory of God. I was to be an ostiarius, which is to say a gatekeeper. But it was no ordinary gate that I would be charged to watch over.
“‘The abbot conducted me into the catacombs of the church, famous throughout Christendom because its subterranean precincts are adorned with the skeletal remains of the Order’s departed brethren. Into this ghastly underworld we descended, turning off into a secret corridor that led into the catacomb’s dungeon. Our way was lit by a profusion of guttering candles—wedged between grinning skulls, stuffed behind rib cages, or ensconced in dramatic ossicular sculptures that filled the walls, columns, and arches.
“‘We arrived at a prison cell. A young monk, rose from his knees at our approach. The abbot introduced me to him, but I was staring at the figure on the other side of the bars. He stood in the shadows at the back of the cell. But his eyes peered from the gloom and reflected the light of tapers. The abbot explained that the man had a Jesuit priest, but had gone mad. He had not uttered a word since his incarceration here over three decades prior. Some believed him to be a revenant or vampire. But there were some who speculated that he might be a saint, for a sweet odor exuded from his skin, and his body no longer aged or threw off waste.
“‘The rationalist within me found this story absurd. But I detected no imposture. I was confused as to what my duties were to entail. The abbot informed me that I was to keep vigil over the man—alternately with two other young monks—and pray for the wretch’s salvation. But most importantly, I was to feed him at prescribed hours throughout my watch, for the man howled like a wolf when he hungered.
“‘As he said this, the young monk poured a bucket of pig’s entrails into a bin fastened to the gate, and shoved it through to the other side. A metallic bang echoed through the catacombs, as the slops splattered onto the hay-covered flags of the cell. There was a rattle of chains as the man lunged as far as he could from the wall and fell to his knees, gorging himself on the ordure. The firelight fell full on his face. Yes, Hermann, it was the man who was hanged in the valley. It was the werewolf of Mariahilf am Inn.”
—All the candles in the public house went out simultaneously, amid a chorus of laughter and cheers from the drunken patrons in the common room. Frau Mattner’s voice carried over the din: “It’s that damned poltergeist again!”
“Come,” Benedikt said, as he climbed out of the private snug and seized Hermann’s sleeve in the dark. “It is late; and I have lost my inspiration for the evening.”
This story becomes more fascinating with every chapter! I am equally interested in the intimate details of the period’s history which I am otherwise not very familiar with but is really brought to gritty life here.
Daniel, on first pass this is an extremely detailed and complex narrative. I must read again to better understand the path we are taking I believe to the origin of the Werewolf, if I understand correctly?