The Unfortunate Tale of Humbert Humpfry

The Unfortunate Tale of Humbert Humpfry

There once was a man who lived in a nook in the side of a mountain. Well, it was more than just a nook, considerably more. But from the outside it looked like only a nook. If you focused with a discerning eye, you could just make it out – an unassuming door that was covered in vines. No mailbox, no doorbell, no windows. Just a blank slab of wood, painted green, to match the surrounding brush. The door hadn’t been opened in months. No one came in, and no one went out.

The door belonged to a house. Other than the door’s metal knob, nothing else said it was a house. But it was a house. A rather large house when you entered. On the inside it was vast, with many levels, and even more rooms. Small rooms that connected through short tunnels where the stone had been too hard to cut regular hallways through. And large rooms that opened into even larger rooms. Rooms where the rock above had been filled with giant pockets of silt, and when a drill had been taken to them, their entire ceilings fell to the ground creating the appearance of massive domed cathedrals. The rooms interconnected in an elaborate maze. On a map they would have looked pieced together in hodge-podge, but that they were not. They had been added as they were needed, in a specific way, each serving a specific function. To their caretaker – Humbert Humpfry – the rooms had an orderly flow.

Humbert moved between those rooms like a serpent, slithering this way and that, with purpose. Where his home, from the outside, was unassuming in appearance, Humbert was not. He was a lanky creature of sorts. With red, brittle straw hair, he looked like a matchstick from far away. Up close, his nose overpowered his head. It stood on his face like a stooped hunchback. Wiry glasses, snapped at the center and soldered over and over again, sat on that crooked nose. Below his head, a thin neck. When he ate, you could see the food traveling in a giant lump down his throat then disappearing behind his sternum. He liked to wear oversized shirts that hid his sunken chest and gangly arms. Who he was hiding them from, even he didn’t know.

Humbert and his things filled the house to the gills, sometimes only surface tension holding them from spilling over. In one room, across tables, lay Bunsen burners, beakers and test tubes, pipets and burets, crucibles and mortars, and myriad glass bottles all of different shapes and sizes connected through skinny plastic tubing. Everything was supported from a network of miniature scaffolding made from shiny metal pipework. In another room, plastic containers filled with liquids were arranged on deep shelves from floor to ceiling, each labeled alphabetically. And the rooms continued on and on. In those rooms Humbert’s things were landmarks, and he could navigate that dense labyrinth with his eyes closed by touch alone.

Originally cut into the mountain’s dense rock to shield it from errant electromagnetic waves, the house was a perfect hideaway for a recluse like Humbert. If you didn’t know it was there, it would be but impossible to find. Humbert was the only person that knew it existed. The hermit, as no one called him, liked it that way. His work was top secret, and that’s how he wanted it to remain. Knowing that he was protected by ten feet of granite comforted him. He could live out his days conducting his experiments in that cavern, trusting that his findings were safe from the interlopers that lurked in the valley below. All those jealous thinkers that couldn’t think a lick for themselves would never find him. And this way, he didn’t have to answer all the questions they asked. Like, ‘Humbert, how did you manage to get him to play chess? ‘He’s just a dumb simian, he can’t possibly know what he’s doing when he moves the pieces,’ and ‘Has he beaten you yet? He’s getting really good,’ or ‘How did you teach him to tie his shoelaces? Just last week he didn’t even know his shoes were meant for his feet and not his hands.’

Humbert had always been cagey. When they would not relent with their questions, he hid himself away in the mountain in that house. That was years ago. Since then, his closest friends and even his family members hadn’t seen or heard from him. Humbert had been meaning to call his mother, but he always came up with excuses for why not to phone her. Of them all, she was the one he missed the most. But he was so busy with his experiments that he didn’t give her much thought those days. All of his attention, he poured on the simian - Marcel.

“Good morning, Marcel. Time to get up and at ‘em, we have important work to do today.”

Marcel rolled on his side and stretched his arms out wide above his head. He released a deep guttural sound that was beginning to take on a shape of sorts.

“You’re almost there. It sounds good,” Humbert said.

Marcel climbed up out of his chamber and walked with Humbert to the kitchen. Before they started their lessons for the day, they would eat. A toasted roll with jam and black coffee for Humbert, four bananas and a coffee with a drop of cream for Marcel. In past weeks, Marcel had started drinking coffee. He liked the mental jolt it gave him, especially when they tackled reading exercises first thing in the morning.

Marcel sat in his chair, looking on as Humbert cleared the table. Humbert put the empty dishes in the sink and wiped off the table with a soiled rag. Pulling a piece of fruit from a wooden bowl, he presented it to Marcel.

“This is a fig. Say it. ‘Fih-ghh’. ‘Fih-ggh’. ‘Fih-ggh’.”

Marcel strained his face to speak. As hard as he tried, no words would come out. He had the ability to make noises and made them often – loud grunts when he was excited or scared, low grumbles when he was sad, and sharp cries when he was upset. He had all the necessary parts to vocalize his emotions – larynx, tongue and lips. He could even plant his tongue to the roof of his mouth to make the ’ggh’ sound. But what he didn’t have were the neural pathways to send commands from his brain to the muscles in his throat that initiated true speech. He tried again, contorting his face in peculiar ways, squeezing ever harder.

Nothing.

“It’s ok Marcel, we knew this wasn’t going to be easy,” Humbert said.

Marcel dashed the bowl of fruit to the floor. He let out a moan. Working himself up to the point of hyperventilation, he breathed down great gulps of air.

“Relax. Try again. Imagine the words bouncing off your tongue. Place your teeth to your lips. Hear the sound. ‘Fih-ghh’. ‘Fih-ghh’. ‘Fih-ghh’.”

Marcel screwed up his face and clenched his fists.

“…Fih.”

He had said it. It didn’t matter that it was only half the word, and pretty incomprehensible at that. What mattered was that the sensory connection was finally there. It took two months for him just to speak that one syllable, but still, he had said it. His brain had commanded his voice box to speak. To speak a syllable that he copied from a human, and not just another shapeless sound from a fellow simian.

Humbert had made a breakthrough.

They didn’t stop there. They toiled on for the rest of the day and into the night until Marcel could not keep his eyes open anymore.

By the end of the week, he was able to speak the word in full.

“Fig.”

He said it maybe a thousand times just that first week alone.

By the following week he added ‘apple’, ‘food’, ‘hello’, ‘want’, ‘hungry’, and ‘me’ to his lexicon. At the end of the month, he was already reading and speaking aloud short children’s books.

The months passed and Marcel devoured every text that Humbert gave him. He read when he awoke, read during the day, and read at night before he went to bed. The more he read, the more he understood, and the more he understood, the more he wanted to learn. His vocabulary grew and grew and grew like a thirsty plant tilted towards the sun. When Marcel had read every book the house had to offer, he grew bored. And boredom led to mischief. So, one morning when Humbert was preoccupied with his research, Marcel snuck out of the house.

He slipped out the back door and walked himself into town in search of printed word of any kind. As long as it was something he hadn’t read before, he snatched it up. Free books left on people’s front porches, pamphlets, advertisements, lunch menus, even a plastic sign that had fallen from a gate that read “Do not post any ads or leave flyers.” He chuckled to himself and thought it was rather silly. He’d rather see a new flyer everyday than have to look at that same stupid ‘Do not post’ sign. Humans were curious beings, he thought to himself.

All the texts Marcel found he had stuffed into his bag. When the bag was full, he turned back to head home.

On his way back, by chance he found himself at a small wooden library box in the front of a cottage just on the outskirts of the town. Inside the box were old classic texts. The Count of Monte Cristo, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick; or The Whale, The Adventures of Oliver Twist, and others. Marcel pulled Well’s The Island of Doctor Moreau from the box.

“That one is my favorite,” a small girl said. She had been hiding behind the gate. Her voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Her words rattled inside his head.

“Doctor Moreau turns animals, kind of like you, into men.”

Marcel looked at the girl timidly.

“It’s ok, I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?” she asked.

Marcel didn’t speak even though he now had the ability to. All this time and work, and he was too afraid to mutter a word.

“Do you live in town? I’ve never seen you before,” she asked.

Marcel stared blankly at her.

“This is my house,” she said pointing behind her. “My brothers are inside drawing now. Do you want to come inside and play in my treehouse? It would be easy for you to climb up to it.”

Marcel shifted his bag on his shoulder. He tried to talk but only air came from his mouth. Then the house’s screen door swung open, spooking Marcel. He dropped the book and ran as fast as he could down the dirt road. The girl watched him as he bolted through a clearing, becoming a small dot, then disappearing over the edge of the hill.

Ω

“Never, ever, ever! —, do that again. Do you hear me?” Humbert clamored.

Humbert was bright as a beet. Steam billowed from his head and clung to the ceiling like a rain cloud about to dump its load.

Marcel looked at him, paralyzed.

“You cannot go into town. There is nothing good there. They will take advantage of you. You’re lucky you got back today. Next time you might not be so lucky,” Humbert said.

“But—"

“There are wicked, wicked people in town,”

“I’m sorry. I promise, no one saw me,” Marcel replied.

It was the first time he had lied to Humbert. Pandora’s box cracked wide open.

“I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you. That’s all,” Humbert said.

Humbert hugged Marcel and patted him on the back.

Marcel didn't speak, only shaking his head in acknowledgement.

“Now come with me, let’s have something to eat.”

They went to the kitchen. Marcel sat down in his chair. Humbert brought out plates and prepared lunch. He sliced figs and drizzled honey over them. He topped each with a lump of ricotta cheese. It was their special snack. They sucked down the dressed figs and were satiated.

“I want to learn to play the cello,” Marcel declared.

“I don’t know how to play the cello. How would you learn?” Humbert asked.

“I will teach myself then.”

“And where will you get a cello?”

“From the conservatory in town,” Marcel replied. He said it meekly with his head turned down towards the floor.

“Marcel, we just went over this. Have you been listening to me, or just blindly shaking your head? You cannot go into town!”

Marcel kept his eyes fixed on a cracked tile in the floor.

“Why don’t you learn to play the piano? You can learn on the upright we have in the attic,” Humbert offered.

“But I really love the sound of the cello,” Marcel replied.

“I do too, but the piano I can teach you too. I have some of my mother’s old sheet music.”

Marcel ignored him.

“I will make one then. I will make a cello,” Marcel said.

Humbert’s molding of Marcel was taking on a life that not even he had dreamed possible. Humbert initially set out to merely instill basic human communication skills in the simian. Never had he imagined that Marcel would gain the mental prowess to attempt such endeavors as playing the cello. And to insist on making one? By God, he was now thinking like a human. But did a simian even have the manual dexterity to accomplish such a task while lacking the all-important opposable thumb? Probably not, but Humbert could not let his own doubts discourage Marcel.

Humbert gave Marcel a reprieve from his daily lessons for the next week so he could work on building his cello. Marcel toiled away in his chamber, only coming out to use the bathroom and eat short meals.

Ω

“It is complete,” Marcel declared. He cradled the cello. It lay flat across his arms like an oversized baby. Humbert was impressed. It was made from a kit of Frankenstein parts, and didn’t look like anything substantial. But oh, the sounds it would make. What a fine instrument it was, for a simian, or even a human.

Marcel came to him the following week.

“Will you be busy this coming Friday at say, 9pm?” Marcel asked.

“I will have to check my calendar. That is a bit late though, so I should be free,” Humbert said.

“Wonderful. Should you be free, I will be performing an unaccompanied suite in my chamber.”

“Ahh, that sounds like a grand event. I will try not to miss it,” Humbert said

Ω

All that week, Marcel practiced his cello. His playing was clunky, labored, and unnatural. At times it was downright awful. He stumbled across notes, his timing was off, he missed repeat signs and struggled with his vibrato. But it was still commendable for having been self-taught. And with those big beastly fingers thick as cigars, it was impressive he could even press down a single string without getting his digit stuck on the other strings.

Marcel wasn’t good at the cello. But what mattered most in Humbert’s eyes, as with all the things that Marcel did, was that as the days went by, he always got better, even if the changes were infinitesimal. Slowly and steadily stack the infinitesimal on top of itself and eventually you had something substantial.

Friday arrived and Marcel spent most of the day practicing for his concert of one.

Just before dusk, Humbert returned to his room for his evening ablutions. As he scrubbed himself, he thought of how much he had achieved in that last year. He was finally making something of his life’s work. And Marcel thought the same.

With showtime approaching, Marcel donned his performance suit – a tattered sportscoat he had found in Humbert’s closet and a top hat he fashioned out of a section of discarded stovepipe he had found in the attic.

“He is going to be so proud…” Marcel said to himself.

He ran out the back door of the house and down the hill. Back into the town he went. Thirty minutes later, ten minutes late to his show mind you, Marcel slipped into his chamber holding a slender brown case over his shoulder. He beamed a smile as he pulled a brand-new shiny bow from the case. The one he had been using had snapped that afternoon. Having no time to handcraft a new one as he had done each time it had broken in the past, Marcel had gotten this one in town. Swiped it from the conservatory. He had been swift and stealthy in his minor crime. This time, no one in town saw him.

Ω

“We have talked about not going into town before,” Humbert screamed.

Marcel swung around, dropping the bow to the floor. The case clunked next to him. Blood drained from the simian’s face.

“But Father, I swear, I was not seen.”

“Come here,” Humbert demanded.

Marcel stepped forward apprehensively. He had never been struck by Humbert. In fact, he was never the subject of physical punishment by anyone. But something vestigial in him raised his guard.

Humbert reached out with both hands and wrapped them around Marcel’s neck. Marcel scoured. His shoulders slunk down, and his arms dangled at his sides. He closed his eyes expecting the blows to rain forth atop his head.

A click sounded and Humbert stepped back.

“I’m sorry I have to do this Marcel, but it is for the best. You don’t know what they are like out there. They can be so terrible…”

Marcel’s body jerked and a look of desperation came over his face. A puff of smoke rose from his neck where the collar had singed his fur. Humbert felt terrible, but he knew he had to be stern with Marcel. How else would Marcel learn this wasn’t just another slap on the wrist like all the other times?

“You hurt me,” Marcel whimpered.

Humbert could not face the simian.

Marcel picked up his bow and put it back in its case. He slinked back towards his bedroom in shame. Humbert watched sadly as Marcel walked away. He didn’t want to be so hard on him. He regarded Marcel like he was his own paternal son. And that was all the more reason to dole out tough love, he thought to himself. Marcel was simply getting too brazen. Without retribution, Marcel would get himself into trouble in town if people happened upon him.

A deep rumbling sound of metal on stone reverberated through Marcel’s chamber. He looked up as a rectangle of light in the floor above him grew smaller and smaller and then disappeared.

Marcel stood in the dark, holding his bow case, sealed into that torturous oubliette.

He was deflated. His grand performance fizzled out before it had even started. He wouldn’t be deterred though. It would only drive him harder and farther. He would win back Humbert’s trust. It would just take time, but then again, extra time would allow him to practice more.

Ω

Each night Marcel practiced his cello in his chamber alone. He didn’t know it, but Humbert would come down from his study late at night and listen to him play. With the metal plate sealing off the opening in the floor, it was hard for Humbert to hear. To listen better, he used a stethoscope with the round diaphragm pressed to the floor.

As weeks passed, Humbert would leave the chamber open with the plate pushed to the side later and later into the night so he could hear better. He told Marcel he was leaving his chamber open as a reward for Marcel’s good behavior. Should he continue to stay out of trouble, eventually he wouldn’t need to close off the chamber at all he told him.

The months passed and passed, and Marcel did not once come up out of his chamber in the late-night hours. Humbert happily reached the point where the trust he so longed for between them returned. Humbert woke one morning and learned their bond had been fully cemented when he found he’d left the trigger for Marcel’s shock collar on his desk and not within arm’s reach under his pillow.

As Marcel continued in his ascent up the ladder of musical accomplishment, Humbert continued to feed Marcel’s brain with bits and pieces of knowledge. His education took on a wide depth and breadth – the other fine arts, anthropology, socials sciences and history, physics, astronomy, and mathematics.

Humbert came to Marcel one day.

“Where did you find this?” Humbert asked Marcel. He was holding a piece of paper filled with notes and equations. The palimpsest was worn ragged, having been struck through and written over countless times.

“Those are my notes,” Marcel replied.

“What do you mean, your notes?”

“Sorry, I mean my solutions. To the math problems you gave me.”

“Ahh, yes, those problems. Indeed,” Humbert said, feigning understanding.

They were not problems Humbert had given Marcel as part of his studies, but were, in fact, a collection of unsolved math problems – Goldbach’s conjecture, the Twin Prime conjecture, and many others. They were included in an appendix at the end of a college textbook Humbert had given Marcel. Included as a challenge of sorts to young brilliant minds, something to inspire them should they embark on a lifelong career in academia. They were deceptively simple problems that had stumped even the greatest of mathematicians, some for hundreds of years. All of them Marcel had solved.

Ω

One evening Humbert was in the parlor as usual, listening to Marcel play when the simian struck a few notes that were familiar to him. It was a song Humbert’s mother used to play for him and his brothers when they were little boys. The rich sounds of Bach floated up through the opening in the floor, echoing off the gritty stone. As Marcel played, silt shook from the walls before Humbert’s feet.

The piece came to an end, and Humbert stood up. He walked towards Marcel’s chamber.

“Marvelous,” Humbert said ecstatically into the opening in the floor.

Marcel did not respond.

“A presentation such as that commands accolade, my boy. You’re ready for the grand stage,” Humbert said.

Again, Marcel did not respond.

“Marcel!” Humbert shouted into the pit below.

Eerie silence, and then the sound of the cello reassuringly filled the space between Humbert’s ears again.

Humbert lowered himself backwards down the ship’s ladder into Marcel’s chamber. Stepping back off the ladder, his foot came down on something that almost made him fall over. He turned and found scattered about the floor crumpled sheets of music and other detritus. Marcel had thrown housekeeping to the wind apparently. The place was a stye, definitely not in the usual order Marcel kept things. Humbert thought not much of it, only that he would have to reprimand the simian for his untidiness later.

Humbert followed the litter, like a pigeon following breadcrumbs, all the way back to Marcel’s bedroom. He approached slowly and light-footed. He didn’t want to shake Marcel’s concentration. The door to Marcel’s bedroom was slightly cracked. Humbert put his ear to the opening and listened.

The sound was robust. A deep bass filled the cavern’s insides. And then, fluttering notes of a violin squeezed their way in between the notes of the cello. A beautiful counterpoint, Humbert thought to himself.

Wait!

What?

A violin?

Humbert flung the door open. It came to rest, its handle embedding in the thick plaster wall. He stormed into an empty room. On the nightstand next to the bed a shiny black disc spun. Humbert pulled it up over his head and flung it down, smashing it to pieces on the ground. He let out a cry.

Humbert walked back to the chamber’s outer room. He held a jagged piece of the disc in his hand.

He didn't see it coming. Just felt the heavy thud that sent a jolt up through the back of his head, sparks exiting at the crown. A stream of blood dribbled down his cheek.

Humbert awoke, face down on the floor. He heard muffled speech- “I’m sorry I have to do this father, but it is for the best. You don’t know what they are like out there. They can be so, so terrible.”

“Marcel, please don’t. There is a reason—,” Humbert implored.

His pleas were drowned out by the thunderous sounds of metal grating on stone. The plate sliced through a beam of light, sealing off the oubliette.

Marcel squeezed the trigger. He heard a muffled shout come up through the floor. He squeezed the trigger again.

“Marcel, please,” Humbert shouted louder, still barely audible through the plate of thick steel above his head. Marcel ignored the faint cries for help.

Marcel poured himself a glass of milk and sat at the kitchen table. He drained the cup and poured himself another. He squeezed the trigger. Again. And again. And again. And again. Humbert’s screams made curds in his glass of milk. They floated to the surface. Marcel sat back in his chair and chewed them, then swallowed the rest of the milk.

Ω

“Good morning, father. Are you ready for our lesson?” Marcel asked.

Humbert sat at the kitchen table poking at his toast. A beam of light peaking over the horizon coruscated off the metal band around his neck.

“We have a lot to cover today. Time to be up and at ‘em as they say,” Marcel declared encouragingly.

Humbert looked at Marcel, his eyes vacuous.

“Eeh, eeh, eeh, eeh,” Humbert chattered.

“It’s sounding good my boy. You are getting there,” Marcel said, holding the trigger loosely in his hand.

Marcel was proud of Humbert. He had already come a long way.

The End

October 2024