Thirty-One
How Simplicius botches his trick badly and is soundly thrashed for it
As I stood there at the table, platter in hand, all sorts of strange thoughts and fancies plaguing my mind, my belly likewise left me no peace. It grumbled and rumbled constantly, telling me there were lads down there who’d rather be out in the open. The din around me was awful. I could help those fellows escape, I thought, by using the wheeze my friend had taught me only the night before. Following his instructions, I lifted my left leg as high as possible, pressed as hard as I could, and was about to murmur the Je pète spell three times under my breath when, quite unexpectedly, that gang of ruffians burst from my backside with such a roar that for a moment I was scared stiff. My heart sank as if I’d just climbed the ladder to the gallows and the hangman was slipping the noose over my head. In my panic, I couldn’t make my limbs obey me. Also, the noise was so loud that my voice threatened to join the rebellion. Not to be outdone by my sphincter, my lips wanted an equal hearing. Their function was to speak up (even shout, if necessary); they certainly weren’t going to murmur. So up went the volume, and the words I’d meant to mutter under my breath rang out loud and clear, soaring above the clamour from my bum. Je pète, je pète, je pète, I yelled, and the effect was so alarming I might have been having my throat cut. The more hideous the din from below, the more terrifying the cries that issued from above. It was as if both ends of my gut were competing to see which could make the loudest sound. OK, I got some relief internally, but at the expense of turning the governor, whose guests had been jerked back to sobriety by the surprise explosion, into a harsh master. I was stretched over a trencher and given a beating I remember to this day. I’d never been punished since first drawing breath, and when I was, it was for sullying the very air we must all breathe. Incense and candles were brought, and guests took out their own musk balls and balm boxes – even snuff, some of them. But nothing helped. I’d given the performance of my life, outdone the world’s greatest entertainer, brought peace to my innards (blows to my back, though), treated the guests to an almighty whiff, and put the staff to no end of trouble, making the room smell nice again.
Thirty-Two
More drinking, I’m afraid, plus how to get rid of priests at booze-ups
With that episode over, I found myself waiting at table once more. My priest was still there, and like the rest he was urged to take another drink. He felt bad about this, saying he’d no wish to go on boozing in this bestial fashion. A fellow diner explained rudely that he (meaning the priest) did indeed drink like a beast but that he (meaning himself) and others present drank like men. ‘Aminals’, he said indistinctly, ‘drink only what they want. They simply slake their thirst, having no taste for wine. Whereas we humans enjoy it. We pour the good juice of the grape down our throats as our ancestors did before us.’ ‘All well and good,’ returned the priest, ‘but I like to exercise moderation.’ ‘Fine,’ replied the other, ‘an honest man keeps his word.’ And he had a moderate drink poured for the priest. This he held out at the end of a swaying arm. The priest, however, walked off and left him to slurp his own bucketful.
With the priest got rid of and the massive drink downed, the talk lurched from pillar to post. The whole occasion might have been laid on to let people drink more than their fill, knock spots off one another, and either drag or be dragged by their mates through the mud. As soon as a fellow was in a state where he couldn’t sit or stand (never mind walk), his friend said, ‘There – now we’re quits! You got me pissed that day; this time I’ve got you well and truly plastered!’ And so on and so forth. Anyone left standing would think the world of himself. But by the end they all hit the floor as if they’d overdosed on henbane. It was carnival night all right. Yet no one except me showed surprise. This man sang; another man wept. This bloke was laughing; that one was prostrate with grief. Someone was shouting ‘Cheers!’ while his neighbour sat speechless. One man lay immobile, at peace, while another had glimpsed the devil, evidently, and was trying to punch him in the face. One slept in silence while another said incessantly, with menace, ‘Keep your filthy hands off me!’ While one burbled pillowtalk, another boasted of grisly deeds on the battlefield. Quite a few held forth on the Church and religion, others on politics, foreign affairs, and what the Emperor was up to. Some paced to and fro, unable to keep still; others just lay there, incapable of moving a finger, never mind getting to their feet or even taking a step. Plenty still sat at table, scoffing like threshers as if they’d not eaten for a week. Plenty more were still throwing up what they’d spent all day knocking back. All of a sudden, their every action was so comical, so silly, so peculiar, and at the same time so sinful and godless that the bad smell I’d released (and been so soundly thrashed for) seemed a minor indiscretion. To cap it all, a serious fight broke out at the bottom of the table, with folk throwing glasses, mugs, bowls and plates at one another’s heads and lashing out not just with fists but with chairs, chair legs, daggers, whatever they could lay hands on, until the red stuff flowed freely. Of course, my master soon put a stop to that.
Thirty-Three
How the governor shot an evil-smelling fox
Peace having been restored, the champion drinkers accompanied the musicians and the womenfolk into another building, where the great hall was dedicated to idiocy of a different sort. Meanwhile, my master had taken to his bed. He was feeling out of sorts. Not knowing whether it was because he was upset or from over-indulgence, I left him lying there to sleep in peace. However, hardly had I reached the door before he was whistling for me. The trouble was, no sound came out. His summons, when it came, was a whimpered ‘Simp!’. Leaping to his side, I saw his eyes were turned up like a pig having its throat slit. I stood there like a stick-in-the-mud: what was I to do? He was staring (at his strongbox, I thought) and stammering, ‘B-b-bring that here. N-n-no, the b-b-basin, blockhead! I have to shoot a f-f-f-fox!’ Wondering what he could possibly mean, I dashed over, seized the washbowl, and returned to find his cheeks puffed up like a trumpeter’s. He grabbed me by the arm, yanked me to a halt, and manoeuvred the washbowl (with me holding it) until it was right in front of his gob. Then, heaving in agony, he opened the latter abruptly and spewed into the former such a quantity of matter that the stink would have made me swoon – except that a couple of droplets hit me in the face. I nearly threw up myself, but I thought better of it when I saw how white he was going. I feared the soul might pass out of him with the (begging your pardon) feculence. Sweat formed on his brow; he looked like death. However, making a quick recovery, he had me fetch him fresh water to wash out his mouth – which tasted, he said, like the inside of an old wineskin.
After that he ordered me to take the fox away (so that’s what he’d meant!). Now that it lay in a silver washbowl, it no longer looked so nasty – more like a dish of appetisers for four, I thought, certainly not something to be thrown away. Also, I knew my master never put anything bad in his stomach, only the finest, most delicate pastries plus all sorts of roast meats, poultry, game and farm-reared animals, each of which a trained eye could still have identified separately. I carried it outside, but I didn’t know where to take it or how to dispose of it. My master hadn’t said, so I found the steward, showed him the bowl, and asked what I should do with the fox. He replied, ‘Get away, idiot! Take it to the furrier. He’ll skin it for you.’ I asked where to find the furrier. ‘No, no,’ he said, suddenly realizing how simple I was. ‘Take it to the doctor. Perhaps it’ll tell him something about our master’s state of health.’ I’d have gone on such a fool’s errand, too, if the steward hadn’t thought better of it. He suggested I presented the thing at the kitchen door instead with orders that the maids take it off my hands and spice it up a little. This I quite seriously did – for which I was well teased by those drabs.
Thirty-Four
How Simplicius ruined the dance
My master got up and went out as soon I was rid of the washbowl, so I followed him. We came
to a large building, inside which I could see a whirling mass of couples and singletons. The vigour of their stamping and whooping (what did they think they were doing?) made my hair stand on end. Clearly, they were out of their minds. However, as we approached I saw these were our guests – folk who only that morning had had all their wits about them. ‘Oh my God!’ I thought. ‘What’s up with the poor things? What madness has come over them!’ My next notion was: maybe evil spirits have entered them, choosing this way to mock the whole human race, making folk behave in a bestial fashion that, if they’d still had human souls (created in God’s own image) inside them, they’d never have stooped to – never! As my master strode into the room, the whirling ceased, except for a certain amount of bobbing and ducking of heads and some scuffling and sliding of feet on floorboards as (so it seemed) folk tried to erase the steps they’d just taken in their frantic cavorting. From the sweat pouring down their faces and the noise of their panting I could tell it had been hard work. Even so, their bright, sparkling eyes suggested they’d enjoyed the effort.
Keen to know the purpose of such lunatic behaviour, I asked my friend and confidant (the one who’d recently taught me soothsaying) what such frenzy meant. What did they hope to gain by all that whirlwind hopping and clattering? He told me (as if uttering a fundamental truth) that those present had solemnly sworn to do serious damage to the building. ‘Why else,’ he said, ‘do you suppose they’d stomp about like that? Didn’t you see how they knocked out the windows, just for fun? That’s what’ll happen to the floor.’ ‘Dear God!’, I replied. ‘Then we’ll all go tumbling down with them and break every bone in our bodies!’ ‘Right,’ said my friend, ‘that’s what we’re in for. Not that they give a fig, for despite the danger you’ll see each one grab a pretty woman or young virgin. Couples who keep a firm grip on each other come to no harm, they say.’ I swallowed the yarn whole, and an enormous fear of death came over me. I didn’t know which way to turn. And when the musicians, whom I’d not been aware of before, started adding to the din, the lads ran across to the lasses the way soldiers make a dash for their weapons and their stations the instant they hear the drum-roll. As each one seized his partner by the hand, I could already see the floor splintering and me and many others plunging to our deaths. Then, as they began stomping while at the same time belting out the latest hit till the walls shook, I said to myself, ‘That’s it: your life’s over!’ I meant it, too. The whole building was about to come crashing down! In a paroxysm of fear I grabbed the arm of a lady of noble birth and the highest virtue (with whom my master was at that moment conversing) and pressed her against me, like sticking on a burr. She pulled away, not knowing what daft idea I had in mind, so I pretended to be desperate, screaming blue murder. Worse: I involuntarily shat my trousers, with the result that an immeasurably foul smell embraced us, the like of which my nose hadn’t encountered in yonks. The musicians fell silent, the dancers ceased their whirling, and the grand lady to whose arm I still clung took offence, imagining my master had staged the whole thing to insult her. The governor promptly gave orders for me to be beaten and locked away somewhere, saying it wasn’t the first trick I’d played on him that day. The soldiers detailed to carry out those orders felt sorry for me, I’m sure, but they also, given the stink, couldn’t hang about. So I was spared the usual blows and bundled into the goose house under some stairs. I’ve thought a lot about it since: the type of excrement that sudden fear makes you shit smells far worse than when you’ve taken a strong laxative.
END OF BOOK ONE
Book Two
* * *
One
How a goose pair mate
It was in my goose house that I got the idea for what I wrote about dancing and boozing in the first part of my Black and White book published a few years back, so there’s no need for me to describe the location in detail. Still, this much I do have to say: I wasn’t sure at the time whether the dancers had created such havoc for the purpose of kicking the floor in or if I’d simply persuaded myself it was so. Anyway, now I want to go on with my story and tell you how I escaped from that goose prison. For three whole hours I squatted there uncomfortably until the praeludium veneris (as the last dance is called) came to an end and I heard someone steal across the yard and begin rattling at the latch. I pricked up my ears like a sow pissing into water, but the fellow at the door not only got it open; he slipped inside as nimbly as I should have liked to slip out. Plus he dragged a woman in after him, much as I’d seen them do while dancing. I’d no way of knowing what was about to happen. However, what with all the odd adventures my poor wits had encountered that day I almost expected weird things to occur. Having made up my mind to put up uncomplainingly with everything the future threw in my path, I squeezed up against the door, trembling with fear, to await the end. Immediately, the pair began whispering. It became clear that one party had strong feelings about how bad the place smelt. The other replied soothingly, ‘I know, dear lady, I know, and I regret very much that fate has not laid on a finer setting for our enjoyment of the fruits of love. But I promise: your lovely presence renders this wretched spot more delightful than heaven itself.’ After that I heard kissing and glimpsed certain curious postures. I’d no idea what they signified, though they made me keep as still as a mouse. The sound then changed, however, and the goose house (made only of boards nailed together and stored under a flight of stairs) began creaking – the more so as the woman increasingly gave the impression that whatever was happening was causing her pain. A thought seized me: these are two of the loonies that were helping to kick the floor in, and now they’ve chosen this place to cause even greater havoc and kill you that way. In the same moment, I seized the door to escape death, bursting out of the goose coop with the same cry of blue murder as had accompanied me in there. Still, I must have had some of my wits about me since I bolted the door shut behind me and made straight for the open house door. That was the first wedding I attended in my life, albeit uninvited. It meant I didn’t have to take a present, of course, although the bridegroom did subsequently present me with a hefty bill – which I paid, I might add. I tell this story, dear reader, not for laughs but to make my account complete and to point out what noble fruit dancing may well yield. This much I know for certain: dancing can lead to transactions that whole families have cause to be ashamed of.
Two
A good time to take a bath
All right, I’d been lucky to escape the goose house, but now I became properly aware of the pickle I was in. I had a trouserful, you see, and no idea where to take it. All was quiet in my master’s house; everyone was asleep. I had to avoid the sentry box outside the house. In the main guardroom they wouldn’t have me because I stank so badly. And it was too cold to sleep in the street. I was at a loss which way to turn. Not until well past midnight did I have the idea of calling on the priest I keep mentioning. I knocked politely at his door – and kept on knocking until his servant girl reluctantly let me in. However, at the first whiff of what I’d brought in with me (her long nose soon winkling out my secret) she turned actually nasty and started ticking me off. This woke her master (who’d probably slept enough anyway by then), and he summoned us both to his bedside. Sensing immediately what was wrong, with a twitch of his nostrils he declared that there was no better time to bathe, regardless of what the calendar said, than when one was in the state I was in. After my bath he told the girl (this was before it got properly light) to wash my trousers and hang them in front of the stove; I was clearly frozen stiff by now, so she should put me to bed. I’d scarcely got warm before I woke at sun-up to find the priest standing at the end of my bed. He’d come to see how I was and ask how things stood with me. My shirt and trousers were still drying, you understand, so I couldn’t get up and go to him. I told him everything, starting with the wheeze my friend had taught me and how badly it had turned out. I went on to report how, as soon as he’d left (the priest, obviously) the guests had gone completely mad and tried (my friend said)
to demolish the floor of the building they were in. Ditto into what a panic this had thrown me and how I’d tried to save my skin, managing only to shut myself in the goose house. Likewise what I’d learnt from the words and actions spoken and performed in same by the couple who’d eventually, in springing me, got themselves imprisoned. ‘Oh, Simp,’ the priest said, ‘you’ve really messed up this time! You had a good billet here but I’m afraid, very afraid, you’ll have lost it now. Quick – hop out of bed this instant and leave the house! If they find you here I can see myself joining you in your master’s bad books.’ That was it, then! I must put on my wet clothes and make myself scarce. It was my first lesson in how well you’re regarded so long as you have your master’s favour and how they look at you sideways the moment there’s trouble.
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus Page 11