Simplicissimus (7 page)

The mighty roar of the destructive wind and the crash of the falling tree woke me from my sleep. I was alone in my hut. I began to consider again what I should do. It was impossible for me to stay in the forest because everything had been taken away, leaving me with no means of survival. All that was left were a few books, scattered in a jumble on the ground. As I gathered them together, the tears streaming from my eyes, at the same time begging God to guide me and show me where I should go, I chanced upon a letter the hermit had written before his death:

I showered thousands of kisses on the letter and on the hermit’s grave, then set out to look for people, walking in a straight line for two days and finding a hollow tree to sleep in when night overtook me; my only food was the beech nuts I picked up as I went along. On the third day, however, I came to a flat field not far from Gelnhausen where I enjoyed a true feast, for it was covered in sheaves of wheat. It was my good fortune that the peasants had been driven off after the Battle of Nördlingen and had not been able to gather them in. As it was bitterly cold, I made a shelter in one of them and filled my belly with ears of corn from which I rubbed off the husks. It had been a long time since I enjoyed such a meal.

When day broke I ate some more wheat then went straight to Gelnhausen. There I found the gates open. They were partly burnt, but still half barricaded with piles of dung. I went in but could see no living person. On the other hand the streets were strewn with dead, some of whom had been stripped naked, others down to their undershirt or petticoat. This pitiful sight was a terrifying spectacle for me, as anyone might imagine. In my simplicity I could not conceive what calamity had overtaken the town to leave it in such a state. Not long afterwards, however, I learnt that imperial troops had surprised a company of Weimar dragoons there. I had not gone two stones’ throw into the town when I had seen enough and turned back and went round it through the meadows until I came to a good road which took me to the splendid fortress of Hanau. When I came upon the first sentries I tried to pass through, but two musketeers immediately came out, seized me and took me into their guard room.

Before I go on to relate what happened to me, I must describe my strange dress, for my clothing and appearance were so outlandish, so bizarre and unkempt that the governor even had a painting done of me. Firstly my hair had not been cut at all for eighteen months, neither after the Greek, nor the German or French fashion, had not been brushed, combed or curled, but still grew in all its natural profusion with more than a year’s worth of dust on it, instead of the powder fools of both sexes scatter over their wigs, and it framed my pale face so neatly that I looked for all the world like a barn owl hunting for a mouse or about to seize its prey. And since I used to go bare-headed all the time and my hair was naturally curly, I looked as if I were wearing a turban. And my dress matched this headgear, for I was wearing the hermit’s coat, if I can still call it a coat: the original garment from which it had been made had completely disappeared, apart from the basic shape which could be discerned beneath a thousand patches of different coloured cloth, sewn together with all sorts of stitching. Over this threadbare and often repaired coat I wore, instead of a cloak, the hair shirt, from which I had cut off the sleeves to make me a pair of stockings. Looped round my body were iron chains, neatly crossed front and back, as Saint William is usually represented in paintings, so that the figure I made was almost like those who have been prisoners of the Turks and now go about the country begging for their comrades. My shoes were made of wood and the laces woven from the bark of the lime-tree; my feet inside them were the colour of boiled lobster, as if I were wearing stockings of Spanish red or had dyed my skin with Pernambuco wood. I do believe that if any travelling showman had taken me and presented me as a Samoyed or Greenlander he would have found many a fool willing to part with a copper to see me. Even though anyone with a modicum of intelligence could easily deduce from my lean, half-starved look and neglected dress that I was not a fugitive from some kitchen or lady’s chamber, even less from the household of some great lord, I was still subjected to rigorous questioning by the guard. And just as the soldiers gaped at me, so I stared at the fantastic get-up of their officer, to whom I had to give an account of myself. I did not know whether he was a he or a she, for he wore his hair and beard in the French fashion, with long tresses hanging down each side, like horses’ tails, and such havoc had been wrought on his beard that there were only a few hairs left between his nose and mouth so that you could hardly tell he had one at all. No less confusing as regards his sex were his wide breeches, which seemed to me more like a woman’s skirt than a man’s trousers. Is this a man? I asked myself. If so, then he ought to have a decent beard, for the fop is not as young as he would like to appear. If it’s a woman then why does the old whore have so much stubble round her mouth? It must be a woman, I thought, for a real man would never show himself with such a wretched apology for a beard. Even billy-goats have a sense of shame and will not venture one single step among a strange flock if their beards have been clipped. I was so uncertain what to think that, knowing nothing of the current fashions, I eventually decided he must be a woman.

This mannish woman, or womanish man, as he seemed to me, had me thoroughly searched but found nothing apart from a notebook made out of birch-bark in which I wrote my daily prayers and where I had also placed the farewell note from the hermit that I mentioned in the last chapter. He took it away from me but since I did not want to lose it I fell down before him, clasped him by the knees and said, ‘O dear hermaphrodite, please let me keep my prayer-book.’

‘You foolish boy’, he answered, ‘who in the Devil’s name told you I was called Herman?’ He then ordered two soldiers to take me to the governor, and he also gave them the book to carry because, as I immediately realised, the fop could neither read nor write.

So I was led into the town and everyone ran to gape at me, as if some sea monster were on show. And as they saw me, each one formed their own idea as to what I was. Some assumed I was a spy, others a madman, yet others a wild man, and some even thought I was a spectre, a ghost or some such phenomenon. There were also those who took me for a fool, and they would have been closest to the truth had it not been for the knowledge of God I had in my heart.

When I was brought before the governor, a Scot by the name of James Ramsay, he asked me where I came from. I answered that I did not know, so he asked, ‘Where are you going, then?’ Again I answered, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘What the Devil do you know, then?’ he said. ‘What is your business?’ Once more I answered that I didn’t know. He then asked, ‘Where is your home?’ and when I again replied that I didn’t know, the expression on his face changed, whether from anger or astonishment I couldn’t say. Since, however, everyone tends to suspect the worst, and especially since the enemy was close at hand and had, as already reported, taken Gelnhausen the previous night and destroyed a regiment of dragoons, he came round to the view of those who through I was a traitor or spy and ordered me to be searched. He was told by the soldiers of the watch who had brought me to him that this had already been done and that nothing had been found but a notebook, which they handed to him. He read a few lines and asked me who had given it to me. I answered that it had always belonged to me, since I had made it and written in it myself. ‘But why on birch-bark?’ he asked.

‘Because the bark of other trees is not suitable’, I replied.

‘Do not be impudent’, he said. ‘I am asking why did you not write on paper?’

‘Because’, I said, ‘we had no more left in the forest.’

‘Where? In which forest?’ the governor asked, at which I took up my old refrain of ‘I don’t know.’

At that the governor turned to several of his officers who were in attendance and said, ‘Either he is an arch-rogue or he is a fool. But he cannot be a fool since he can write so well.’ As he spoke he leafed through the book, to show them my handwriting, and did it so vigorously that the hermit’s letter fell out. He got one of the men to pick it up, but I went pale because I considered it my greatest treasure and holy relic. The governor noticed this and it made him even more suspicious of treachery, especially after he had opened the letter and read it, for he said, ‘I know this hand. This has been written by some officer I know well, though I cannot at the moment think who it is.’ He must have found the contents strange and incomprehensible too, for he said, ‘Without doubt this must be some code which nobody can understand apart from the one with whom it has been agreed.’ He asked me what my name was, and when I answered ‘Simplicius’, he said, ‘A fine one we have here! Away with him, clap him in irons, hand and foot’. And so the two soldiers accompanied me to my new lodgings, namely the goal, and handed me over to the keeper who, in accordance with his orders, adorned my hands and feet with iron fetters and chains, as if I were not carrying enough already with those I had round my body.

As if this were not enough for a welcome to the world, along came the torturer and his henchman with their cruel instruments which, notwithstanding the fact that I could comfort myself with my innocence, made my wretched situation truly terrifying. ‘Ah, God!’ I said to myself, ‘It serves you right Simplicius, for abandoning the service of God to go out into the world. Now you have received the just reward for your folly, you disgrace to the Christian faith. O unhappy Simplicius, see where your ingratitude has brought you. Scarcely has God revealed Himself to you and taken you into His service than you run away from His service and turn your back on Him. Could you not have gone on eating acorns and beans and thus served your Maker undisturbed? You knew very well, didn’t you, that your teacher, the faithful hermit, had fled the world and chosen the wilderness? And you abandoned it, you blind dolt, in the hope of satisfying your shameful lust to see the world!? Look where it has brought you. You thought to feast your eyes and now you are condemned to perish in this deadly labyrinth. You unthinking simpleton, was it not clear to you that your blessed mentor would not have exchanged the pleasures of the world for the hard life he led in the wilderness if he had not been certain he could never find rest, true peace and eternal bliss in the world? Poor Simplicius, off you go now and receive the reward for your vain thoughts and foolish presumption. You cannot complain of injustice, nor comfort yourself with your innocence. Of your own accord you rushed to meet this torture and the death that will surely follow.’

Thus I accused myself, asked God for His forgiveness and commended my soul to Him. In the meantime we were approaching the Thieves’ Tower but, as the proverb says, God’s help is closest where need is greatest. As I was standing outside the prison, surrounded by guards, amid a large throng of people, waiting for the door to be opened so I could be taken in, the pastor whose village had recently been burnt and plundered, who was also under arrest, wanted to see what the commotion was. When he looked out of the window and saw me he shouted out in a very loud voice, ‘Is that you, Simplicius?’ When I heard him and saw him I couldn’t stop myself from stretching out my hands towards him and crying, ‘O father! O father! O father!’ He asked me what I had done. I replied that I didn’t know; they had presumably brought me here because I had run away from the forest. When, however, he heard from those standing around that I was thought to be a spy, he asked them not to proceed further against me until he had explained my case to the governor. This, he said, would help set both of us free and prevent the governor from harming us wrongfully, since he knew me better than any man alive.

He was allowed to go to the governor, and over half an hour later I was fetched and taken to the servants’ hall, where two tailors, a cobbler with shoes, a shopkeeper with hats and stockings and another with various articles of clothing were already waiting to clothe me as quickly as possible. They took off my coat, chains and all, and my hair shirt, so that the tailors could take my measurements. After that a barber appeared with lather and fragrant soaps, but just as he was about to demonstrate his art on me there came a counter order which alarmed me very much: I was to put my clothes back on again. However, the intention was not as bad as I feared. A painter came with all his equipment, with red lead and vermilion for my eyelids, lake, indigo and vermilion for my coral lips, gamboge, ochre and yellow lead for my white teeth, which I was baring, so hungry I was, lamp-black, charcoal and raw umber for my golden hair, white lead for my terrible eyes and many other pigments for my weather-stained coat. He also brought a whole handful of brushes.