Simplicissimus (44 page)

‘Oh, Simplicius’, he replied, ‘if I were to tell you all of my doings we would both soon weary of it. However, to show you that I’m keeping nothing back I’ll tell you the truth about these scars, even though it makes me look a fool. I think I must have been destined from birth to have a face covered in scars. Even as a child I was scratched by my schoolmates whenever I wrestled with them. One of the demons attending the Huntsman of Soest gave me such a going-over you could see the marks of his claws on my face for six weeks afterwards. However, they healed up and left no traces; the weals you can see came from somewhere else. When I was quartered with the Swedes in Pomerania I had a beautiful mistress and made my landlord give up his bed to us. His cat had got used to sleeping there and, unlike its master and mistress, was unwilling to give up its comfortable bed tamely, and used to come and pester us every night. This annoyed my mistress so much (she couldn’t stand cats anyway) that she swore she wouldn’t make love to me again until I got rid of the cat. I naturally wanted to continue to enjoy her favours and decided to carry out her wishes in such a way that I would get my own back on the cat and enjoy myself into the bargain. I put it in a sack and went with it to a big open field together with my landlord’s two powerful watch-dogs, which didn’t care for cats at all but had taken to me. I chose the field because I thought that with no tree in sight for the cat to climb up the dogs would chase it all over the place like a hare, which would amuse me no end. But damn me if that cat didn’t have other ideas. When I let it out of the sack and it saw nothing but an open field with its two worst enemies and nothing to climb up it didn’t just sit there and wait to be torn to pieces, it shot up onto my head, that being the highest place it could see. I knocked my hat off attempting to stop it and the more I tried to dislodge it, the deeper it stuck its claws in to hold on. The dogs naturally joined in, baring their teeth and jumping up all round me to get at the cat, which refused to get down and clung on as best it could, with its claws fixed into my face and other parts of my head. It kept lunging at the dogs with its needle-sharp claws. Most of the time it missed them, but never me. Since it did occasionally catch the dogs on the nose, they tried to knock it off with their paws, giving me even more slashes across the face. And when I tried to get hold of the cat with both hands to pull it off, it bit and scratched with all its might. I was so badly scratched, mauled and savaged by both the dogs and the cat that I was unrecognisable and, worst of all, I was in danger of having my nose or ears bitten off completely when the dogs snapped at the cat. My collar and jerkin were as covered in blood as the stalls used to restrain horses when they bleed them on St. Stephen’s Day. The only way I could think of to stop my head being used as a battle-ground was to fall down onto the ground so the dogs could get at the cat. Eventually the dogs did kill the cat, but instead of the fun I had expected all I got were derisive remarks and the face you now see before you. I was so furious I later shot the two dogs and beat my mistress, since she had put me up to it, black and blue so that she ran away from me. Doubtless she couldn’t have loved such a repulsive face any longer anyway.

I was tempted to laugh at Oliver’s tale but had to put on a show of sympathy. Then, just as I was starting to tell him my own story, we saw a coach with two outriders approaching, so we went down from the church tower and took up position in a house on the street from which it was easy to waylay them as they passed. I kept my loaded musket in reserve while Oliver shot down one of the riders before they knew we were there. The other galloped off and I, with my gun cocked, forced the coachman to stop and get down, at which Oliver leapt on him and split open his head from skull to teeth with his broadsword. He would have gone on to butcher the women and children in the coach – they already looked pale as corpses – but I refused to allow it, telling him he would have to deal with me first.

‘Oh you fool, Simplicius’, he said, ‘I would never have thought you would get cold feet like this.’

‘What have you got against these poor innocent children, brother?’ I replied. ‘If they were men and could defend themselves it would be different.’

‘Fry the eggs and you get rid of the brood’, he replied. ‘I know these young bloodsuckers well. Their father, the major, is a real slave-driver, the biggest bully in the whole army.’ With that, he was all for killing them again, but I managed to restrain him until eventually he relented. It was a major’s wife, her maid and three pretty children, for whom I felt heartily sorry. We locked them up in a cellar so they wouldn’t raise the alarm too soon. All they had to eat there, until someone came to free them, was fruit and some turnips. After that we stripped the coach of everything of value and rode off with seven fine horses into the densest part of the forest.

Once we had tethered them, I looked around and saw a man standing stock-still beside a tree not far from us. I pointed him out to Oliver, saying we had better be careful, but he just laughed. ‘It’s only a Jew I tied up there, you fool. The blackguard froze to death ages ago.’ He went up to him, gave him a pat under the chin and said, ‘But you gave me lots of lovely ducats, didn’t you, you cur!’ As he shook the dead Jew’s chin a few doubloons fell out which the poor soul had managed to keep hidden even after his death. Oliver felt in his mouth and collected twelve doubloons and a precious ruby. ‘I have you to thank for this, Simplicius’, he said and gave me the ruby, keeping the money for himself. Then he went to fetch the labourer and told me to stay with the horses, but to be careful the dead Jew didn’t bite me, by which he meant to suggest that I lacked his bravery.

Once he had gone, I started reflecting on the dangers of the situation I was in. I thought of mounting one of the horses and riding off, but I was worried that Oliver might catch me in the act and shoot me, since I suspected he was just testing my loyalty and hiding somewhere nearby to see what I did. Then I contemplated slipping away on foot, but I was afraid that even if I avoided Oliver I was unlikely to escape the Black Forest peasants, who had the reputation of knocking any soldiers they caught on the head. On the other hand, I told myself, if you take all the horses, so that Oliver has no means of pursuing you, and are caught by Weimar troops you’ll be condemned as a murderer and broken on the wheel. All in all, there seemed to be no safe means of getting away, especially as I was in a trackless forest I was completely unfamiliar with.

At the same time I was having qualms of conscience for stopping the coach and allowing the poor coachman to be butchered and the two women and the innocent children locked in a cellar, where they might perhaps languish and die like the Jew over there. I tried to comfort myself that I was innocent, having been compelled to take part against my will, but my conscience countered that with all the other evil deeds I had recently committed I deserved to fall into the hands of justice in the company of that arch-murderer. Any punishment I received would be my just desserts; perhaps the Lord of Righteousness had even ordained I should be brought to book in this manner. Finally I became more optimistic and asked the Lord in His great goodness to rescue me from this predicament. Having worked myself into a more pious mood, I told myself, ‘What a fool you are! You’re not tied up or imprisoned, the whole wide world is open to you. Haven’t you got enough horses to escape on? Or if you don’t want to go on horseback, aren’t your legs fast enough to get you away?’

While I was tormenting myself with these thoughts and not coming to any decision, Oliver returned with the farm labourer, who led us to a farm where we ate and each slept in turn for a few hours. After midnight we rode on and came about noon to the Swiss frontier, where Oliver was well known. We ordered a splendid meal and sat down to have a good time while the landlord sent for two Jews, who bought the horses from us at half price. It all went so smoothly there was no need for much discussion at all. The main thing the Jews wanted to know was whether the horses had come from the Swedish or the imperial army. When we told them they were from the Weimar forces they said, ‘In that case we can’t take them to Basle. We’ll have to ride them to Swabia to sell them to the Bavarians.’ I was astonished at their wide acquaintance and familiarity with the different armies.

We enjoyed a princely banquet and I tucked into the tasty Black Forest trout and delicious crayfish. We left towards evening, having loaded the labourer down with roast meat and other provisions like a pack-horse, and reached an isolated farmhouse the next day where we were given a friendly welcome. As the weather was bad we stayed there for a few days then continued along byways through the forest back to the cottage to which Oliver had originally taken me.

While we were sitting there resting and recuperating Oliver sent the labourer out to buy food and some powder and shot. When the latter had gone, he took off his coat and said, ‘Brother, I’m tired of carrying all this damn money round with me.’ Then he untied a couple of rolls he wore next to his bare skin, threw them down on the table and said, ‘You’ll have to look after these until we’ve both got enough and I call it a day, the blasted money’s giving me blisters!’

‘Brother’, I replied, ‘if you had as little as I have it wouldn’t chafe.’

Oliver interrupted me. ‘What do you mean? What’s mine is yours and anything we get together will be shared out equally.’

I picked up the two rolls. They were extremely heavy, since they contained nothing but gold coins. I pointed out that it was an uncomfortable way to pack them and offered to sew the coins into our clothes, making them less awkward to carry. He agreed and took me to a hollow tree where he kept scissors, needles and thread. Using a pair of trousers, I made us both a kind of singlet, not unlike a monk’s scapular, into which I sewed the gold pieces. When we put them on under our shirts it was as if we had golden armour over our chests and backs. I was suddenly struck by a thought and asked him why he had no silver coins, to which he replied that he had a hoard of more than a thousand thalers hidden in a tree. He let the labourer take the housekeeping money from it and never asked for an account; it wasn’t worth it for sheep-shit like that, he said.

When we had finished stowing the money we went back to our quarters, where we spent the night cooking and warming ourselves at the stove. An hour after daybreak, when we were least expecting it, a corporal and six musketeers entered the cottage with guns at the ready, burst open the door of the room and shouted to us to surrender. But we always kept our cocked muskets to hand, Oliver his sharp sword as well; the table was between him and the soldiers and I was behind the door, by the stove. Oliver replied with two bullets, which sent two of them tumbling to the ground, I dispatched a third and wounded another with similar shots. Then Oliver unsheathed his fearsome blade, which was so keen it could split hairs and could best be compared to King Arthur’s Excalibur, and sliced open the fifth from the shoulder to the belly so that all his innards spewed out and he collapsed to the floor beside them. At the same time I hit the sixth on the head with the butt of my musket, killing him on the spot. Oliver received a similar blow from the seventh which was so powerful it spattered his brains over the wall, but I gave the man a crack that sent him to join his comrades in the regiment in the sky. When the soldier I had wounded saw this mayhem and realised I was going to set about him with the butt-end of my musket next, he threw away his gun and ran off as if the devil himself were at his heels. The whole fight lasted no longer than it takes to say the Lord’s Prayer and seven brave soldiers went to meet their Maker.

Now that I was left sole master of the field I went to look at Oliver, to see if perhaps he was still alive, but finding him dead as a doornail I decided it would be pointless to leave so much gold on a corpse that had no use for it, so I took off the money-jerkin I had made the previous day and slipped it over my head to join the other. Since I had broken my own musket, I took Oliver’s, along with his sword, and thus prepared for all emergencies I left the cottage. I followed the path by which I knew the farm labourer would come back and sat down, a little way off the track, to wait for him and to think over what I should do next.

I had scarcely been sitting there, wrapped in thought, for half an hour when our landlord appeared, wheezing like a bear. He was running as fast as he could and didn’t see me until I grabbed him. ‘Why so fast?’ I said. ‘Has something happened?’

‘You must get away as quick as you can’, he replied. ‘There’s a corporal coming with six musketeers to arrest you and Oliver and to take you to Liechteneck, dead or alive. They caught me to make me lead them to you, but I managed to escape and I’ve run all the way here to warn you.’

‘You blackguard’, I thought, ‘you betrayed us to get your hands on the silver Oliver stored in the tree.’ I kept this to myself, however, because I wanted to use him as a guide. When I told him that both Oliver and those who had come to capture him were dead he refused to believe it, so I did him the pleasure of taking him to see the gruesome sight of the seven bodies. ‘I let the seventh man go’, I said, ‘and I would to God I could bring the others back to life.’

The labourer was terrified. ‘What are we going to do now?’

‘That I have already decided’, I said. ‘You have three choices: either you lead me by a safe route through the forest to Villingen, or you show me the tree where Oliver hid his money, or you join the corpses on the floor here. If you take me to Villingen you can keep the money for yourself, if you show me where it’s hidden we’ll share it; if you do neither I’ll shoot you dead and go on my way.’