Simplicissimus (15 page)
At that I looked the lady up, from toe to top, and down, from top to toe, with an adoring gaze, as if I were about to ask for her hand in marriage. Finally I said, ‘Master, I can see what’s wrong. It’s all that wretched tailor’s fault. He’s sewn the parts that should come up to her neck and cover her breasts onto the bottom of the dress. That’s why it trails along so much behind. The bungling fool should have his hands chopped off if he can’t do any better. Lady’, I said, turning to her, ‘get rid of him before he makes you a laughing stock and go to my Da’s tailor. They call him Master Paul and he made beautiful pleated skirts for my Ma, our Ann and our Ursula. They were finished off nice and straight at the bottom and I’m sure they didn’t drag in the mud like yours. You wouldn’t believe what lovely clothes he made for the hussies.’
My master asked me whether my Da’s Ann and Ursula were more beautiful than these ladies. ‘Oh no, master’, I replied. ‘This lady has hair as yellow as baby shit and the parting is as white and and as straight as if she had been hit on the scalp with a curry-comb. And her hair is in such neat rolls it looks like hollow pipes, or as if she had a pound of candles or a dozen sausages hanging down each side. And oh, look at her lovely smooth forehead, is it not more beautifully curved than a fat buttock and whiter than a dead man’s skull which has been hanging out in the wind and rain for years? But it’s a pity her delicate skin has been so spoilt by powder. When people see her who don’t know about it, they might think she has hereditary scabies which causes scales like that. And that would be an even greater pity for her sparkling black eyes. They glitter brighter than the soot on the door of my Da’s stove which had such a terrifying gleam when our Ann stood by it with a bundle of burning straw to heat the room, as if there were enough fire in it to set the whole world ablaze. Her cheeks are nice and rosy, but not as red as the new ribbons with which the Swabian carters from Ulm adorn their codpieces. But the deep red she has round her muzzle surpasses that colour by far and when she laughs or speaks (watch out for this, sir) you can see two rows of teeth in her mouth which look as neat and sugar-like as if they had been cut out of a piece of white turnip. Oh divine creature, I cannot believe it would hurt if you bit one with them! Her throat is as white as curdled milk and the little breasts below it are of the same colour and surely as firm to the touch as a nanny goat’s udders bursting with milk. They do not hang down slackly, like those of the old women who cleaned up my bottom when I was in heaven recently. And oh, sir, look at her hands and fingers! They are so slender, so long, so supple, so lithe, so dainty! Just like those gypsy women had to pick your pocket with. What, though, is all this compared with her body itself. It is true I cannot see it naked, but is it not as delicate, slim and graceful as if she had had the running tomtits for eight whole weeks?’ At this there was such loud laughter that they couldn’t hear me any longer, nor could I speak, so I made myself scarce. There were limits to the amount of mockery I was willing to take.
This was followed by the midday meal at which I once again put on a lively performance. I had decided I would castigate all follies and censure all vanities, for which my current position was well suited. No guest was too great for me to reproach and upbraid him for his vices, and if one objected then either the others laughed him to scorn or my master would remind him that no wise man gets angry at a fool. Ensign Madcap, who was my worst enemy, I put on the rack straight away. However the first to reason with me, at a nod from my master, was the secretary. I called him a fabricator of titles and mocked him for all the obsequious modes of address he used, asking how he would have addressed mankind’s first father, Adam.
‘You talk like an unreasoning calf’, he answered. ‘You don’t realise that since our first parents many different people have lived who so ennobled themselves and their family through rare virtues such as wisdom, heroic deeds and useful inventions that others raised them above all earthly things, even above the stars, making them into gods. If you were human, or if you had at least read the histories like a human being, you would see the differences between humans and would allow them their titles of honour. Since, however, you are a calf and incapable of achieving any human honour, you talk of this matter like a stupid calf, begrudging the human race something they delight in.’
‘I have been just as much a human being as you’, I replied, ‘and have also read quite a lot, enough to conclude that either you do not understand this matter properly, or your own advantage stops you from saying what you think. Tell me, what are these marvellous deeds and admirable inventions which are sufficient to ennoble whole families for several hundred years after the death of the heroes or the artists themselves? Do not the heroes’ strength and the artists’ wisdom and understanding both die with them? If you cannot see that, and if parents do pass on their qualities to their children, then I must assume your father was a codfish and your mother a stick-in-the-mud flounder.’
‘Ha!’ answered the secretary, ‘if this is going to be decided by insults, then I could point out that your father was a coarse Spessart peasant, but although the greatest oafs come from there, you have sunk even lower by becoming a brainless calf.’
‘Exactly’, I replied. ‘That is just what I’ve been saying, namely that the parents’ virtues do not pass on to the children, so that the children are not automatically worthy of their parents’ titles. It is no disgrace that I have become a calf, since in that I have the honour to follow in the footsteps of the mighty King Nebuchadnezzar. Who knows whether it is not God’s will that I should become a man again like him, and a greater one than my Da? I praise those who ennoble themselves by their own virtues.’
‘Assuming, for the sake of argument alone,’ the secretary said, ‘that children might not always inherit their parents’ titles, you must admit that those who ennoble themselves by their own achievements are worthy of all the praise they get? And if that is the case, then it follows that it is right to honour their children for the parents’ sake for, as they say, blood will out. If there were still some of Alexander the Great’s descendants here today, who would not honour in them their forefather’s bold courage in battle? He showed his desire to fight when, as a child and too young still to bear arms, he cried because he was afraid his father might win everything and leave no conquests for him. Did he not conquer the whole world before he was thirty and wished there were another for him to overcome? Did he not, when abandoned by his men in a battle against the Indians, sweat blood from sheer rage? Did he not look as if he was surrounded by flames so that even the barbarians fled from him in battle out of fear? Who would not think him higher and greater than other men? Does not his biographer, Quintus Curtius Rufus, attest that his breath smelt of balsam, his sweat of musk and his dead body of rare spices?
And here I could add the examples of Julius Caesar and Pompey. The first, above and beyond the victories he won in the civil wars, engaged in battle fifty times, defeating and killing 1,152,000 men; the other, besides the 940 ships he took from pirates, captured and subdued eight hundred and seventy-six cities and towns, from the Alps to the southernmost point of Spain. Of the fame of Marcus Sergius I will say nothing, and only dwell briefly on that of Lucius Siccius Dentatus, who was Tribune of the People when Spurius Turpeius and Aulus Eternius were consuls. He took part in a hundred and ten pitched battles, eight times defeating men who had challenged him; on his body he had forty-five scars from wounds to show, all of them in front, none in his back, and he marched through Rome in the triumphs of nine generals, which they had chiefly earned through their courage. The fate of Marcus Manlius Capitolinus would be no less, if it had not been diminished by the manner of his death, for he could show thirty-three scars, not to mention his saving the Capitol and its treasures from the Gauls. And what of Hercules and Theseus and all the rest, whose undying fame it is almost impossible to recount? Should these not be honoured in their descendants?
But now I will turn from war and weapons to the arts. They appear to be of lesser importance but the masters in them still achieve great fame. What skill do we not see in Zeuxis who, by his ingenuity and craft, deceived the birds into thinking the grapes he had painted were real; or in Apelles whose picture of Venus was so natural, so beautiful, so perfect, so exquisitely delicate in every line that the young men fell in love with her. Plutarch writes that Archimedes pulled a large ship, laden with goods, across the market square in Syracuse with one hand on one single rope, just as if he were leading a packhorse by the bridle. Twenty oxen could not have pulled it, to say nothing of two hundred calves like you. Should he not be honoured by a special title which reflects his skill. He also made a mirror with which he could set the enemy’s ships on fire while they were out at sea; and Ptolemaeus devised a remarkable mirror which could show as many faces as there are hours in the day.
And who would refuse to praise the man who first invented letters? Indeed, who would not praise above all others the one who first invented the noble art of printing, which has brought such benefits to mankind? If Ceres was considered a goddess because she invented agriculture and the grinding of corn, why should it be wrong to honour others with titles which reflect their achievements? True, it is unimportant whether a brute calf like you with your unreasoning bullock’s brain can take this in or not. You are like the dog which lay on the straw in the manger and would not let the ox have it, even though it could not eat it itself. You will never achieve any honour and so you begrudge it to those who are worthy of it.’
Seeing that he was trying to force me into a corner, I answered, ‘The glorious deeds of heroism would indeed be praiseworthy, if they had not been accomplished with the injury and death of many others. What kind of praise would you call that which is stained with the blood of so many innocent people? And what kind of nobility is that which has been won by the annihilation of so many thousands of other people? As far as the arts are concerned, what are they but vanities and follies? They are as empty, vain and useless as the titles which they might bring a man. They serve either greed, lust or luxury, or to kill other men, like those terrible guns I saw recently on the half-waggons. We could manage quite well without writing and printing if we would only follow the example of that holy man who said that to contemplate the wonders of Creation and recognise God’s omnipotence the only book he needed was the whole wide world itself.’
My master also wanted to have his fun with me and said, ‘I see that you despise the titles of nobility because you do not think you will ever be ennobled.’
I replied, ‘Master, if I were to be offered the honour of your position here and now, I would not accept it.’
My master laughed and said, ‘That I can believe; all an ox wants is his oats. But if you had nobility of spirit, which those of noble birth should have, then you would strive after high honours and dignities with all your might. For my part, I am happy that fortune has raised me above others.’
I sighed and said, ‘Oh what a wearisome happiness! Master, I assure you that you are the most wretched person in the whole of Hanau.’
‘How do you mean? How do you mean, Calf?’ said my master. ‘Tell me the reason, it’s not obvious to me.’
‘If you do not know, or feel’, I replied, ‘how many worries and cares you are burdened with as governor of Hanau, then you are blinded by your great desire for the honour you enjoy, or else you are made of wood and completely unfeeling. You give the orders, it is true, and everyone who comes before you has to obey you. But do they do it for nothing? Are you not their servant? Do you not have to take care of each and every one of them? Look, you are surrounded by the enemy and the responsibility for holding this fortress falls on you alone. You must look for ways of inflicting damage on your opponents, at the same time making sure your sallies are not detected. Does it not quite often happen that you stand on guard like a common soldier? And as well as that you have to see that there is no shortage of money, ammunition, food or men so that all the time you are extorting contributions from the whole countryside around. When you send out your soldiers to do that, the best work they do is robbing, plundering, stealing, burning and murdering. Only recently they plundered Orb, captured Braunfels and burnt Staden to the ground. They brought you the booty, true, but you have a heavy responsibility to bear in the eyes of God.
There is enjoyment as well as honour, I grant you, but do you know who will enjoy the treasures you are collecting? And even assuming you manage to keep the riches (which is uncertain), you will have to leave them behind when you depart this life. All you will take with you is the sin you incurred in amassing them. If you do have the good fortune to enjoy your booty, what will you be doing but squandering the sweat and blood of the poor who at present are living in misery, lacking the basic necessities and even dying of starvation?
Oh, and how often do I see how the heavy burden of responsibility keeps you awake, with your thoughts restlessly running hither and thither, while I and the other calves sleep peacefully, without a care in the world. But if you don’t do all this it could cost you your head if you overlook something that needs to be done to safeguard the people in your charge or the fortress. I have no such cares, and since I know that I must pay my debt to nature, it doesn’t worry me if someone attacks my byre or that I have a constant skirmish with work to survive. And if I die young I will at least have avoided the laborious life of a draught ox.