Simplicissimus (10 page)

While we were talking, a number of enemy prisoners were led across the square. This interrupted our discussion because we too went to look at the captives. As we did so I heard a piece of nonsense I would not have dreamt possible. It was a new fashion of greeting and welcoming each other. One of our garrison had previously served the emperor and knew one of the prisoners. Delighted to see him, he went over and shook him heartily by the hand, saying, ‘Pox on you, brother, are you still alive? By the holy fuckrament, the Devil looks after his own! Strike me blind, but I thought you’d been hanged long ago.’ The other replied, ‘I’ll be damned, brother, is that you or isn’t it? Devil take you, how did you get here? For the life of me I never thought I’d ever see you again. I assumed the Devil would have come to fetch you long ago.’ And when they parted, instead of ‘God be with you’, they said, ‘See you on the gallows! Perhaps we can get together tomorrow and drink ourselves stupid.’

‘Is that not a fine, pious welcome?’ I said to the pastor. ‘Are they not most Christian good wishes? Have these men not a most godly plan for tomorrow? Who would know they were Christians? Who could listen to them without astonishment? If that is the way they talk to each other in brotherly love, what does it sound like when they quarrel? If these men belong to Christ’s flock and you are their appointed shepherd, I think it is your duty to lead them to better pastures.’

‘Yes, my child’, answered the pastor, ‘that is the way it is with soldiers, God have mercy on them. If I were to say anything it would be no better than preaching to the deaf, and all I would achieve would be to arouse the hatred of these godless fellows and put myself in danger.’

I expressed my surprise and continued talking to the pastor a little while longer before going to wait on the governor, for I had his permission to go out at certain times to look at the town and see the pastor. My master had heard of my simplicity and thought it might be cured by wandering around, seeing this and hearing that, and being taught by others – that is to have the corners rubbed off me and be knocked into shape.

My master’s favour towards me increased with every day because as time passed I came to resemble more and more not only his sister, who had married the hermit, but the governor himself. The good food and idle life quickly made me sleek. And I enjoyed the same favour in many quarters, for anyone who had business with the governor was generous to me as well. His secretary was especially well-disposed towards me. He had to teach me arithmetic and derived much amusement from my simplicity and ignorance. He had only recently left university and was therefore still full of student pranks, which sometimes made him look as if he had a screw loose. He often managed to convince me that black was white and white black, so that although I started by believing everything he said, I ended up believing nothing.

I once criticised him for his dirty inkwell but he replied that it was the best thing in his whole room for he could draw up out of it anything he wanted: fine gold ducats, fine clothes, in short all his possessions had been fished out of his inkwell one by one. I refused to believe that such magnificent things could be obtained from such a paltry container. He replied that it was the
spiritus paperi
, as he called the ink, that did it, and that an inkwell was called a well because you could draw up all sorts of things out of it. I asked how he got them out since the opening was hardly big enough to put two fingers in. He answered that he had an arm in his head that did the work and he hoped that soon it would pull out a beautiful and rich young girl for him. If luck were on his side he believed he could even obtain land and servants of his own from it; that had certainly happened in the past. I marvelled at his skill and asked if there were others who had mastered it.

‘Certainly’, he said. ‘All officials, doctors, secretaries, procurators, advocates, commissioners, notaries, merchants, dealers and countless others can, and if they work hard at pulling things out they usually become rich men.’

‘So the farmers and other hard-working people are fools to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow instead of learning this art?’ I said.

‘Some do not know how useful this art is’, he replied, ‘and therefore have no desire to learn it. Some would like to learn it but lack the arm in their head or something else that is needed. Others have learnt the art and have the arm, but do not have the knack of using it to get rich. Yet others have learnt the art and have the skill, but live in Stony Ground and do not have the opportunity of exercising them that I have.’

While we were talking about the inkwell (which reminded me of Fortunatus’s inexhaustible purse), I happened to pick up a book in which the correct modes of address were listed. In my opinion it contained more nonsense than I had yet set eyes on. I said to the secretary, ‘These are all children of Adam, all of the same substance, namely dust and ashes. Where, then, do these great differences come from? Most Holy, Most Invincible, Most Serene? Are those not attributes of God? One is gracious, another worshipful. And always well-born, high-born, most nobly born? We know they were born! No man falls from the skies, appears out of the water or grows out of the earth like a cabbage. And why only your Excellency? Why not Your Wyellency or Your Zedellency?’

The secretary had to laugh at me and took the trouble to explain this or that title and especially the forms of address, but I insisted that the titles did not do justice to men. It would surely reflect greater honour on a man to be addressed as ‘most friendly’ than as ‘most worshipful’? And the word ‘well-born’ was a flat lie, as any baron’s mother would tell you if you asked her whether she felt ‘well’ while her son was being born.

I laughed so much at this that I broke wind with a violence that made both of us start. As if the terrible noise were not enough, it immediately announced its presence to our noses, filling the whole of the room. ‘Get out’, shouted the secretary. ‘Go and join the other pigs in the pigsty. That’s where you belong, not talking to decent people.’ But faced with the awful stench, he was forced to beat a retreat as well. Thus I put myself in bad odour, as the saying goes, with the secretary, which meant an end to the enjoyable times I had in his office.

This misfortune was not at all my fault. The unaccustomed food and medicines they gave me every day to set my shrunken stomach and shrivelled intestines to rights generated many a violent thunderstorm and strong wind in my belly which tormented me severely as they sought to force their way out. I could not imagine there was anything wrong in letting nature have its way down there, especially as it was impossible to resist such a strong internal force in the long run anyway. The hermit had never warned me about this (presumably because we were rarely visited by such uninvited guests), nor had my Da ever forbidden me to let these jokers loose on the world, so that I was in the habit of giving free passage to anything that wanted to get out until, as I have just related, I lost the good-will of the secretary.

The secretary’s favour would not have been such a great loss had not a worse misfortune happened to me. I suffered the fate of every honest man who comes to court, where everyone prepares treachery against another, like Goliath against David, the Minotaur against Theseus, the Medusa against Perseus, Circe against Ulysses, Nessus against Hercules, even mothers against their own sons. There was another page besides me, a downright snake in the grass who had been with the governor for a couple of years already. Since we were the same age, I took him to my heart; I imagined myself David and he was my Jonathan. But he was jealous of me because of the great favour the governor showed towards me, which increased with every day. He was afraid I would step into his shoes, and behind my back he eyed me with resentment and looked for ways of tripping me up, hoping that my fall would prevent his own. But my eye was as innocent as my mind, and I confided all my little secrets to him, although since these consisted of nothing but simplicity and piety he could not use them against me.

Once we talked together in bed for a long time before going to sleep and the conversation came round to soothsaying, which he promised he would teach me for nothing. He told me to put my head under the cover, for that, he said, was the way he would teach me the art. I obeyed and lay there eagerly awaiting the arrival of the spirit of soothsaying. ’Strewth! It announced its arrival to my nose and so pungently I had to take my head out from under the cover.

‘What’s wrong’, asked my instructor.

‘You farted.’

‘There’, he said, ‘you say sooth. You see, you’ve learnt the art already.’

I did not take that amiss, for in those days I saw no harm in anything. What I did do was to ask him how he managed to let them off so silently. My companion answered, ‘That’s easy. You just have to lift up your left leg, like a dog pissing against the corner of a house, and repeat under your breath, Je pète, je pète, je pète, at the same time pressing as hard as you can, and they’ll slip out as quietly as if they’d just robbed a safe.’

‘Good’, I said. ‘Then when there’s a stench people will assume it’s the dogs that were responsible for the foul air, especially if I lift my left leg up nice and high.’ If only, I thought, I’d known the art this morning in the secretary’s office!

The next day the governor gave a princely banquet for his officers and friends because he had received the good news that his side had taken the fortress of Braunfels without the loss of a single man. Like any other servant, it was my duty to help serve the dishes, pour out wine and wait at table with a plate in my hand. A large, fat calf’s head (which people say no poor man may eat) was given to me to take up. Because it was well cooked, one of its eyes was hanging out, along with all the bits and pieces, and I found it an attractive and seductive sight, made even more enticing by the fresh smell of the juices and the ginger sprinkled over it. I felt such a craving for it that my mouth began to water. In short, the eye made eyes at my eyes, my nose and my mouth, and seemed to be begging me to stow it away in my starving stomach. I needed no second asking, but followed my desire. As I was walking along I scooped out the eye with a spoon I had been given that very day and did it so neatly, and packed it off to its destination so quickly that no one noticed until the splendid dish was on the table and gave both me and itself away. When he saw that one of the tastiest pieces was missing, the carver gave a start and my master immediately realised why. He had no intention of becoming the butt of gibes about the man whose servants dared serve up a one-eyed calf’s head at his banquet. The cook was summoned to the table and interrogated, along with those who had been serving, with the result that poor Simplicius was exposed. It came out that when the calf’s head had been given him to bring up, both eyes were still in. What had happened after that no one could say. With what seemed to me a terrifying expression on his face, my master asked me what I had done with the calf’s eye. Quickly I whipped my spoon out of my pouch and demonstrated the answer to the question, giving the calf’s head the coup de grace and swallowing the second tasty morsel in the twinkling of an eye.

‘Par Dieu’, said my master, ‘that trick tastes better than ten whole calves.’ Everyone present applauded the governor’s wit and described what I had done out of simplicity as an incredibly clever subterfuge, promising courage and fearless resolve for the future. Not only did I escape punishment by repeating what I had done to deserve it, I was praised by sundry buffoons, sycophants and court jesters for having acted wisely in bringing the two eyes together again so that they could support each other in the way nature intended, both in this world and the next. My master, however, warned me not to try the trick on him again.

At this banquet (and I assume it happens at others) the guests came to table like good Christians, saying grace quietly and, to all appearances, very reverently. This reverent silence, as if they were eating in a Capuchin monastery, lasted as long as they were occupied with the soup and first courses. But hardly had each one said ‘In God’s name’ three or four times than it all became much livelier. It is beyond my powers to describe how each man’s voice gradually grew louder and louder the longer he spoke; I could perhaps compare the whole company to an orator who starts his speech softly and ends up with a voice like thunder. The servants brought dishes called appetisers, because they were well spiced and were to be eaten before the drinking began, to give the diners a good thirst. The same was true of the
entremets
, which were chosen so that they went well with the drink, to say nothing of all kinds of French
ragoûts
and Spanish
olla podridas
. These dishes were very skilfully prepared and had countless different ingredients, with the result that they were so peppered and spiced, mixed and masked (all to give a good thirst), that the original natural ingredients were completely unrecognisable. Even the Roman epicure, Gnaeus Manlius, coming from Asia as he did and bringing the best cooks with him, would not have recognised them. I wondered whether such dishes might not destroy the senses of a man who indulges in them – and the drink, to encourage which they have mostly been concocted – and change him, perhaps even transform him into a beast?

Who knows, perhaps these were the means Circe used to change Ulysses’ companions into swine? I saw these guests gobble up the courses like pigs, swill the wine like cattle, behave like asses and finally spew like dogs. They poured the fine wines of Hochheim, Bacherach and Klingenberg into their bellies from glasses the size of buckets and the effects very quickly made themselves felt higher up, in their heads. Then I saw to my astonishment how they all were changed. Sensible people, who only a short while ago had been in full possession of their faculties, suddenly started acting the fool and saying the silliest things imaginable. The longer the banquet went on, the more stupid their tricks became and the bigger the toasts they drank, so that it seemed as if tricks and toasts were trying to outdo each other until the contest ended up in a wallow of obscenity.