Simplicissimus (12 page)

‘Good Lord’, I replied, ‘then we’ll all go down with it and break our necks as we fall!’

‘Yes’, said my companion, ‘that’s what they’re aiming to do, and they couldn’t care less. You’ll see, as soon as it gets really dangerous each one will grab a pretty woman or girl. They say that couples that fall down holding each other don’t get hurt at all.’

I believed this and was seized with such fear I might be killed that I did not know what to do. And when the musicians, whom I had not noticed until then, started playing and the men rushed over to the women, like soldiers dashing to their posts when the drum sounds, and each grabbed one by the hand, I could already see the floor giving way and myself and many others breaking our necks. But when they started jumping up and down, making the whole building shake, because the band had struck up a lively tune, I thought, ‘This is the end’. I assumed the whole building would suddenly collapse and was so terrified I promptly clutched like a bear the arm of a lady of high rank and even higher virtue, with whom my master happened to be conversing, and clung on to her like a burr. When she, not knowing the strange ideas I had in my head, kept trying to pull her arm away, I became desperate and started to scream as if someone were murdering me. As if that were not enough, something slipped out into my trousers which gave off an awful stench, the like of which I had not smelt for a long time.

All at once the music stopped and the dancers and their partners stood still. The noble lady, to whose arm I was clinging, was highly offended because she thought my master had ordered me to do it to make a laughing-stock of her. Therefore the governor ordered me to be beaten and then locked up somewhere, since this was not the first trick I had played on him that day. The orderlies who were to carry out the punishment not only took pity on me, they were unwilling to come too close because of the stench, so that they omitted the beating and shut me up in the goose-coop under the staircase. Since that time I have often reflected on this matter and have come to the conclusion that excrement which is emitted due to fear and terror gives off a much worse smell than the product of a strong laxative.

While I was penned up in my goose-coop I worked out the things I said about dancing and drunkenness in my book
Black and White: The Satirical Pilgrim,
published a few years ago, so that it is unnecessary to waste words on them here. I feel I must point out, however, that even at the time I did wonder whether the dancers would really have demolished the floor with their wild stamping or whether I had been the victim of a hoax.

Now I want to continue with my story and tell you how I got out of my goose-jail again. I had been squatting on my heels there for three whole hours, until the
praeludium veneris
(the decorous dancing, I should have said) was over, when someone crept up and started rattling the bolt. I was listening as carefully as any sow pissing into water, but the fellow at the door not only opened it, he slipped in as quickly as I would have liked to slip out. What is more, he dragged a woman in with him, leading her by the hand, just as I had seen them do when they were dancing. I had no idea what was going to happen, but by then I had had so many strange adventures that day that my simple mind had become accustomed to them and I had decided to bear everything fate would send in uncomplaining silence. Accordingly I pressed up against the door in fear and trembling, expecting the worst.

Immediately a whispering started up between the two. I could understand nothing of what was said except that one party was complaining of the awful smell in the place while the other was trying to make the first forget about it. ‘Be assured, o most beautiful creature’, he said, ‘that it pains me to the heart that a malevolent fate has not granted us a more becoming place to enjoy the fruits of love. But despite that, I can truly say that your sweet presence makes this wretched hole more exquisite than the most delightful paradise.’ After that I heard kissing and observed strange postures, but since I did not know what it all meant, I continued to remain as silent as a mouse. When, however, a funny noise started up and the coop, which only consisted of boards nailed together under the staircase, began to creak and the woman to moan as if she were in pain, I thought that these must be two of the crazy people who had been trying to demolish the floor and had come here to do the same to my prison and kill me. The moment this thought came into my head I opened the door, to escape being killed, and shot out with a fearful yell which was naturally as loud as that which brought me there in the first place. I did, however, have my wits sufficiently about me to lock the door behind me and make for the open door of the house.

That was the first wedding I had ever been present at in my life, though I had not been invited. That meant I did not have to give a present, but later on the bridegroom did present me with a whacking bill, which I paid in full.

I am not telling this story, reader, just to make you laugh, but so that my history will be complete and also that you may consider carefully what the fruits of dancing can be. It is certainly true, I believe, that during the dance many a bargain is struck which will later bring shame on a whole family.

Although I had managed to escape from the goose-coop, I now realised the full extent of my misfortune, for I had shitted my trousers and did not know what to do about it. Everything was quiet and everyone asleep in my master’s lodgings, so that I dared not approach the sentry standing by the door; they refused to let me into the main guard-house because I smelt so awful, and it was too cold for me to stay out in the street. I was at a loss what to do. It was already well past midnight when it occurred to me to seek refuge with the pastor I have mentioned so often. This seeming a good idea, I knocked at the door and kept on for so long that eventually the maid, somewhat annoyed, let me in. When she smelt the load I brought with me (her long nose immediately ferreted out my secret) she became even angrier and started to scold me, which her master, who by this time had more or less slept off the effects of the banquet, soon heard. He called the pair of us to his bedside. His nostrils twitched as he quickly got to the bottom of my problem and said that, despite the calendar, there was never a better time to have a bath than when in the state I was in at the moment. He ordered the maid to get my trousers washed before daybreak and to hang them by the stove in the sitting room. He also told her to find a bed for me, for he could see I was numb with cold.

Hardly was I warmed up than it started to get light and the pastor appeared at my bedside to find out what had happened to me. (My shirt and trousers still being wet, I could hardly get up and go to his room.) I told him everything, beginning with the fine art my fellow page had taught me and how disastrously it had turned out. Next I described how, after he had gone, the guests had taken leave of their senses and (as my comrade also explained to me) had decided to demolish the floor of the building. I told him of the dreadful fear that had seized me, the way I had tried to save myself from being killed and how I had been locked in the goose-coop for it. I also told him everything I had seen and heard of the pair who had set me free and how I had locked them in the coop in my place.

‘Oh Simplicius’, the pastor said, ‘Your prospects are as good as nil. You had a fine situation, but I’m very much afraid you’ve thrown it away. Now out of that bed as quick as you can and get out of my house before they find you here, otherwise I might fall into your master’s disfavour along with you.’

So I had to go off in my wet clothes, having learnt how well regarded by all and sundry a man is when he has his master’s favour and how looked down upon when he has lost it. I went to my master’s quarters, where everyone was still sleeping like a log apart from the cook and a couple of maids. The latter were cleaning up the room where the banquet had been held the previous evening while the former was preparing breakfast or, rather, a cold collation from the left-overs. First I came upon the maids. Parts of the room were covered in broken glass from the goblets and window-panes, others were full of what the guests had evacuated, both from above and from below, and in some places there were such large pools of spilt wine and beer that the floor was like a map on which you could have drawn various oceans, islands and continents. The stench in the whole room was far worse than in my goose-coop, so I didn’t stay there long. I went to the kitchen to dry off my clothes at the fire while I was still wearing them, waiting, in fear and trembling, to find out what fate would have in store for me once my master had woken up. At the same time I reflected on the folly and senselessness of the world and went over in my mind everything that had happened to me during the previous day and night, as well as the things I had seen and heard. The result was that I came to see the hermit’s life of poverty and indigence as a happy one and wished that both he and I could return to our former situation.

After my master had got up he sent his bodyguard to fetch me from the coop, but he returned with the news that he had found the door open and a hole cut behind the bolt with a knife, by which means the prisoner had let himself out. However, before this news reached him my master learnt from others that I had been in the kitchen for a long time. Meanwhile the servants had been sent running to and fro to invite the guests of the previous evening to breakfast. Among these was the pastor, who was summoned to appear sooner than the others because my master wanted to talk to him about me before they sat down to table. His first question was whether the pastor considered me sly or stupid; whether I was very simple-minded or very devious. He told him everything about my unseemly behaviour the previous day, and how it had been taken amiss by his guests, who thought it had been done deliberately to make fun of them. He went on to relate how he had had me locked up in the goose-coop to stop me doing anything else to bring him into disrepute, but that I had broken out and was now taking my ease in the kitchen, like a young lord who was too fine to wait on him. Never in his life had he had so many tricks played on him as I had done in the presence of all those respectable people. Since I had behaved so foolishly, the only thing he could think of was to have me soundly thrashed and send me packing.

The guests had gradually assembled whilst my master was complaining about me and when he had finished the pastor answered that if the governor would have the patience to hear him out he would tell him some things about me which would not only reveal my innocence but also correct the wrong impression those who were disgusted by my behaviour had of me.

While they were talking about me in the room above, down below in the kitchen Ensign Madcap, who was the one I had left locked up together with his lady in my stead, got me to agree, by threats and a silver coin, to keep quiet about his exploits.

The tables were set and, as the previous day, well supplied with food and diners. Yesterday’s carousers were all in a devil of a state and to put their heads and stomachs back in order were now sipping wines mixed with fruits, spices and bitter herbs. All they could talk about was themselves and how they had drunk the others under the table. There was not one of them would confess he had been blind drunk, although the previous evening some had claimed the devil should take them if they could drink any more. Some did say they had been quite merry, but others maintained that no one got blind drunk any longer since it had become the fashion to be merry. However, once they had tired of recounting and listening to their own follies, it was Simplicius’s turn to suffer. The governor himself reminded the pastor of his promise to recount all the comic things that had happened.

First of all he asked them to forgive him if he had to use words unbecoming his cloth. Then he explained the natural causes of the gases which plagued my guts, through which I had given such offence to the secretary in his office, and went on to describe how I had been taught, along with soothsaying, a trick to contain them, which had turned out very badly. He pointed out how strange the dancing must have appeared to me, since I had never seen it before, and recounted the explanation I had been given by my fellow page, which was what had made me grab the noble lady and got me locked up in the coop.

All this he narrated in such a prim and proper manner that the guests almost split their sides laughing. At the same time he made such humble apology for my simplicity and ignorance that I was restored to my master’s favour and allowed to wait at table. But the pastor refused to say anything of what I had seen in the coop and how I had been released from it because he thought that might offend some old maids (of both sexes) among them who thought clergymen should always be strait-laced and straight-faced. My master, on the other hand, to amuse his guests asked me what I had given my fellow page in return for teaching me such fine tricks. When I answered, ‘Nothing’, he said, ‘Then I will see he gets his due reward for his instruction’ and had him tied to a feeding trough and thrashed just as I had been the previous day after I had tried out his trick and discovered that I was the one who had been tricked.

By now my master had enough proof of my simplicity and decided to play on me for his own and his guests’ entertainment. He realised the musicians had no chance as long as I was to hand; with my simple ideas everyone thought me better than a whole orchestra. He asked me why I had cut a hole in the door of the goose-coop. I answered that someone else must have done it.