Simplicissimus (38 page)
Afterwards I had more such customers but they made such excessive demands on my services that eventually I was unable to satisfy them any longer and tired of the whole stupid business.
It was frightening how many gifts, both of money and other things, I collected through these pursuits. I was no longer surprised that women enter brothels and make a trade of this bestial obscenity, since it brings such excellent rewards. I began to be concerned about what I was doing, not for reasons of religion or conscience, but because I was afraid I might be caught during one of these escapades and given the reward I really deserved. Therefore I tried to get back to Germany, all the more because the commandant of Lippstadt had written that he had captured several Cologne merchants, whom he was refusing to release until my property had been handed over to him. He added that he was keeping the promised command open for me, but hoped to see me back before the spring, otherwise he would have to fill the post with someone else. In the same envelope was a letter from my wife that was full of loving expressions of her longing to see me. Had she known the kind of life I was leading she would surely have sent a quite different message.
I could well imagine it was unlikely I would be able to leave with Monsieur Canard’s consent, so I decided to go secretly as soon as an opportunity presented itself. And that was what happened, most unfortunately for me as it turned out. One day I met some officers from the Duke of Weimar’s army and introduced myself to them as an ensign in Colonel Saint Andrée’s regiment. I told them I had been in Paris for some time on personal business and was now determined to return to my regiment and requested they allow me to accompany them. They willingly agreed and told me when they were leaving; I bought a nag, equipped myself for the journey as secretly as possible, packed up my money (around five hundred doubloons I had earned from those depraved women) and set off without obtaining Monsieur Canard’s permission. I did write to him, however, dating the letter from Maastricht to make him think I was heading for Cologne. In it I took my leave of him, saying I found it impossible to stay any longer because his piquant sausages did not agree with my stomach.
The second night out of Paris I had a rash which made me look as if I had erysipelas, and my head hurt so badly I couldn’t get up. It was in a miserable little village where I could not get a doctor. Worst of all, I had no one to look after me since the other officers continued on their way early next morning, setting off for Alsace and leaving me, as being no concern of theirs, lying there more or less on my deathbed. As they left they did have the goodness to ask the innkeeper to take care of me and my horse and left a message with the mayor to treat me as an officer of the king.
I lay there for a few days, oblivious to the world and rambling like a lunatic. They brought the priest, but he couldn’t make anything of what I was saying. Seeing that he could do nothing for my soul, he looked for ways of helping my body and had me bled, put in a warm bed and given an infusion to make me sweat. This was so effective that I recovered my senses that very same night and remembered where I was and how I had got there and fallen ill. The next morning the priest came back and found me in despair because not only had all my money been taken but I assumed I had the French disease – which I deserved more than the doubloons – since my whole body was covered with more spots than a leopard. I couldn’t walk or stand, sit or lie down. I was completely unreasonable and although I hardly thought the money I had lost had come from God I now insisted it was the devil himself had stolen it. I fretted and raged and the poor priest had his hands full trying to comfort me since I was suffering a double torment.
‘My friend’, he said, ‘at least behave like a rational human being, even if you can’t accept your cross like a good Christian. What are you doing? You have lost your money, do you want to lose your life and, what is more important, your hope of eternal salvation as well?’
‘I wouldn’t care about the money’, I replied, ‘if only I didn’t have this horrible disease, or were somewhere where it could be cured.’
‘All you need is patience’, said the priest. ‘What do you think the poor little children do? There are more than fifty of them in this village with the same disease.’
When I heard that children had it as well I immediately cheered up, for I could not imagine they would catch this filthy infection. I picked up my bag to see what was left in it, but apart from my linen there was nothing of value except a small case containing a lady’s portrait set with rubies which had been given me in Paris. I removed the picture and handed the rest to the priest, asking him to sell it in the nearest town so that I would have something to live on. The result was that I got scarcely a third of its value and since that did not last long I had to get rid of my horse too, which provided me with just enough to keep me until the pocks dried up and I was well again.
The cause of our sins is often the means by which we are punished. The smallpox made such a mess of my looks that from now on women left me in peace. My face was pitted like a barn floor where they’ve been threshing peas. I became so ugly that my lovely curly hair, which had ensnared many a woman, was ashamed of me and bid me farewell, leaving something akin to hog’s bristles in its place so that I had to wear a wig. And just as my external attractions had disappeared, so had my sweet voice since I had had pocks all over my throat. My eyes, which until now had always sparkled with fire enough to kindle love in any heart, were as red and watery as those of an eighty-year-old woman with cataracts. To top it all, I was in a foreign country where I knew neither man nor beast I could trust, could not speak the language and had no money left.
This made me think back and bemoan all the excellent opportunities to improve my situation which I had squandered. I came to the conclusion that it was my extraordinary good fortune in warfare and in finding the treasure that was the cause of my misfortune; it could not have cast me down so low had it not previously looked on me with false smiles as it raised me up. I even decided that all the good things that had happened to me were in fact bad and had led me to my ruin. Where was the hermit, who only wanted what was best for me, Colonel Ramsay, who had taken me in when I was destitute, the pastor, who had given me good advice? They were all gone and there was no one left to give me a helping hand. My money had also vanished, and I was told to go too and find board and lodgings elsewhere even if, like the prodigal son, I had to share it with the swine. It was then that I remembered the advice of the priest who said I should spend my youth and money on studying, but now it was too late to clip my wings, the bird had already flown.
How rapid the change from fortune to misfortune! Only a month ago I was admired by princes, adored by women, idolised by the common people, and now I was a nobody the dogs used as a pissing-post. The innkeeper was throwing me out because I couldn’t pay any more and I must have gone over the question of what to do a thousand times in my mind. I would gladly have enlisted but, given that I looked like a mangy cuckoo, no recruiting officer would take me; I was still too weak for physical labour, and anyway I had no experience. The only comfort was that summer was approaching and I could at a pinch bed down in a hedge, since no one would have me in their house. I still possessed the good clothes I had had made for the journey and a bag full of expensive linen, which no one would buy because they were afraid some disease might be included in the bargain. I slung my bag over my shoulder, took my sword in my hand and followed a track that brought me to a small town which boasted a chemist’s shop. There I had a salve made up to remove the pock-marks on my face. The chemist’s assistant was not as squeamish as other fools, who would not take my clothes from me, and accepted a fine shirt in place of the money I did not have. I thought getting rid of the disfiguring marks would be the first step to improving my wretched situation. I immediately felt more cheerful when the chemist assured me that in a week’s time there would be little to be seen apart from the deep scars the pocks had eaten into my skin.
It happened to be market day in the town and there was a tooth-drawer who earned plenty of money by palming off rubbish on the people. ‘You fool’, I said to myself, ‘why don’t you set up a stall like that? You must be a pretty poor specimen if you didn’t learn enough in all that time you spent with Monsieur Canard to gull a simple peasant and earn a decent supper.’
At that particular time I had an appetite like a gannet. My belly was always crying out for more and all I had left in my purse was one diamond ring worth about twenty crowns. I sold it for twelve and, since I knew that would soon be gone and I had no money coming in, I decided to set up as a doctor. I bought the four ingredients for the universal antidote to poisons and made it up; then I mixed herbs, roots, butter and different oils to make a green ointment for treating wounds (it was strong enough to cure a horse); from cadmium, gravel, crab-stones, emery and talc I prepared a powder for whitening teeth, and from lye, copper, sal ammoniac and camphor a blue tincture for scurvy, stomatitis, toothache and sore eyes. I purchased a quantity of small tins and wooden boxes, papers and jars to keep my wares in, and to make the whole thing look more impressive I had little leaflets printed in French saying what each remedy was for.
In three days I was ready and had spent no more than three crowns on medicines and equipment. I packed up and left the small town, intending to make my way from village to village, selling my wares, until I reached Alsace. Strasbourg being a neutral city, I hoped there would be an opportunity to accompany a party of merchants down the Rhine to Cologne, from where I would make my way back to my wife. The idea was good, but the execution went badly wrong.
The first time I set up my stall outside a church and offered my quack remedies for sale my takings were very poor. I was much too timid and didn’t have the cheap-jack’s boasting patter. I quickly realised I would have to go about it in a different way if I wanted to make money. I went with my things to the inn and while I was eating the innkeeper told me people of all kinds would gather in the afternoon beneath the lime-trees outside. I would certainly be able to sell something there, he said, if I had something good to sell. However, he went on, there were so many swindlers going round the country that people were unwilling to part with their money unless they could see with their own eyes that the antidote really worked.
Now I knew what was needed. I took a half glass full of good Strasbourg schnapps and went out and caught a toad, one of those revolting golden or reddish ones with black spots on their bellies that sit croaking in filthy puddles in the spring and summer, which I put in a glass of water beside my goods on a table under the limes. I had borrowed a pair of tongs from the innkeeper’s wife and as people gathered round they assumed I was going to pull teeth, but I addressed them as follows, ‘My masters and goot frents’ – I still couldn’t speak much French – ‘I be no teeths-pull-outer, but here haf I goot vatter for ze eyes zat make all the bad vatter go avay from ze red eyes.’
‘Yes’, one of the bystanders said, ‘we can tell from your eyes, they look like two will-o’-the-wisps.’
‘Zat is verry true’, I said, ‘but if I had ze vatter not I vould be qvite blind. Ze vatter I sell not. Ze poison-cure and ze powder for ze wite teeths and ze wound-cream I sell, but you buy and I gif avay ze vatter for ze eyes, I no pull ze wool ovver zem. Zis poison-cure I try out and if you not like, you not buy.’
I got one of the bystanders to choose one of my boxes of antidote, took out a lump the size of a pea, dropped it in the schnapps, that the people assumed was water, crushed it, then took the toad out of the glass of water with the tongs and said, ‘See my goot frents, if zis fenomous reptile can my antidote trink and die not, zen it is no goot and you not buy.’
With that I put the poor toad, which is born in water and can stand no other liquid, into the schnapps and held a paper over the glass so it couldn’t jump out. It wriggled and writhed worse than if I had dropped it onto red-hot coals because the schnapps was much too strong for it, and after a short while it curled up its toes and died. This visible proof of the effectiveness of my antidote loosened the peasants’ tongues and their purses, and I was kept busy wrapping up the stuff in the leaflets and taking money for it. Having seen the evidence with their own eyes, they thought it must be the best in the world. Some bought three, four, five, even six boxes so that they would have a supply of this excellent antidote against poison whenever they needed it and some bought it for their friends and relatives who lived in other places, so that even though it wasn’t market day, by that evening I had taken ten crowns and still had half my wares left.
I left for another village that very same night because I was afraid some peasant with an inquiring mind might try out my antidote by putting it in a glass of water with a toad. If the experiment failed, my back would suffer for it. However, in order to prove the excellence of my antidote in another way I made ‘yellow arsenic’ from flour, saffron and gallic acid and a ‘sublimate of mercury’ from flour and vitriol. Whenever I wanted to do a demonstration I had two glasses of water on my table, one of which had a strong admixture of aqua fortis. I put my antidote in the latter and scraped a quantity of my two ‘poisons’ into each glass. The water in the one without my antidote – and therefore without aqua fortis – turned as black as ink, while the other, because of the acid, remained as it was. ‘Oh, look’, the people said, ‘what an excellent antidote, and so cheap.’ When I poured the two together everything went clear and the peasants pulled out their purses and bought my cure, not only satisfying my belly, but putting me on horseback again and money into my purse as well. In this way I safely reached the German border.