Eight days I spent in that place – eight days and as many nights. The other three must have lain with me too, I reckon. Certainly, they didn’t all sound the same or let go so completely. And although I was with the quartet for more than a week, I never caught a glimpse of their faces. Either the women were veiled – or the two of us were in total darkness. When the eight days were over I was placed blindfold in a closed carriage with the old woman and driven (with her uncovering my eyes on the way) back to my old master’s house. Afterwards, the carriage drove swiftly away. My honorarium was 200 pistoles, and when I asked the old woman if I should tip anyone she said, ‘Better not. That would offend the ladies. They might think you’d had the impression of being in a brothel, where everything must be paid for.’ After that first time, I’d found myself with other, similar clients, who’d worn me out to the point where, in the end, such larks became more of a drag.
Six
Simplicius flits, and how subsequently he was fleeced when he thought he’d caught what everyone (except the French) calls ‘the French disease’
This sideline of mine brought in so many ‘gratuities’ both in cash and in kind that I began to worry (plus I stopped wondering why women work in brothels and make a trade of such bestial behaviour: it’s so damn profitable). However, I did start to think, not from any inner godliness, driven by my conscience, but because – well, I might catch something! It would have served me right, too! So I was considering a return to Germany. The fact was, the commandant had written to tell me he’d kidnapped a number of Cologne businessmen and wasn’t letting them go till my stuff had been handed over. Also, he stood by his promise of a commission and wanted me back by the spring; if I wasn’t there promptly, he’d have to give someone else the job. My wife, too, had enclosed a letter full of affectionate references to how much she missed me. If she’d known what a respectable life I was leading, her note would have been worded differently, no doubt.
I hardly supposed I’d be released with M. Canard’s blessing, so I planned to slip away secretly as soon as an opportunity presented itself, which unfortunately for me happened very soon. One day I bumped into a number of officers of the Weimar army. Introducing myself to them as an ensign in the regiment commanded by Colonel de S. A., I said I’d been in Paris for a while on personal business but had now decided to return to my regiment; might I please travel with them? They promptly agreed and told me when they’d be leaving. I bought myself a nag and made my preparations for the trip with maximum secrecy. These included gathering together my moolah (some 500 dubloons, all earned from godless women). It was without M. Canard’s consent that I quit his employment, though I did write to him later. I dated the letter from Maastricht, wanting him to think I’d gone to Cologne. In it I said a proper goodbye, adding that I’d had to leave because I couldn’t digest any more of his spicy sausages.
Two nights out of Paris I woke with a dreadful rash and a headache so bad I couldn’t get up. There was no medicine to be had in that wretched little village. Worse: I’d no one to look after me, since the officers had left early to continue on their way to Alsace, leaving me (I was not their responsibility, after all) lying there with a potentially fatal illness. They’d simply, when taking their leave of the landlord, said I was still in bed and my horse in the stable. The village headman had been asked to keep an eye on ‘an officer attached to the king’s army’.
There I lay, then, for several days, completely out of it and raving like a loony. Eventually they summoned the priest, but he got no sense out of me either. He couldn’t cure my soul, he decided, so he tried various ways of aiding the flesh. He bled me, gave me a drink to make me sweat, and made me lie in a warm bed, also to cause my body to perspire. Something must have helped, because I came to in the night, remembered where I was and how I’d got there, and knew that I was ill. Next morning the priest called again and found me in the depths of despair. Not only had all my money been swiped; I also thought I’d picked up a dose of (forgive me) ‘the beloved Frenchman’ (which of course I deserved more than all that money). My body was marked all over like a tiger. I could neither walk nor stand nor sit nor lie. I’ve never felt so twitchy. All right, the lost money had hardly been a gift from God, I couldn’t claim that, but in my rage I swore the devil had taken it off me. I was in a terrible state. The poor reverend had a job consoling me. The fact was, the shoe pinched terribly – and in two places! ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘if you can’t bear your cross like a true Christian, then at least behave like a rational human being. What will you do if on top of losing your money you forfeit not only life but your very salvation too?’ I replied, ‘I’d not be worrying about money if it weren’t for this awful bloody illness hanging over me. If only I was somewhere I could be treated and get back on my feet!’ ‘You must be patient,’ replied the sky pilot. ‘What else can the little children do, over fifty of whom are suffering from the same complaint in this very village?’ As soon as I heard kids had it too, my mood improved. Surely they couldn’t have caught the nasty plague I thought I had? I reached for my bag and rummaged through it to see what I could find. However, apart from fresh linen it held nothing of value except a locket containing a female portrait encircled with rubies, which someone had given me in Paris. This portrait I removed, handing the rest to the priest with the request that he sell it in the nearest town and give me the money to buy food. He got barely a third of what the stuff was worth, so when that ran out my horse had to go. The proceeds of the second sale were similarly meagre, but I managed to make them last until the pustules had dried and I was feeling better.
Seven
Simplicius casts his mind back, and just before being swamped learns to swim
What makes a man sin will often, they say, be how he receives his punishment. Those pockmarks so messed up my looks that the women left me alone from then on. My face became as pitted as a barn floor that’s been used for threshing peas. My once lovely curls, in which so many lasses had become entangled, left home in shame, giving way to something not far off hog bristles. I had to wear a wig. And just as no outward sign of my handsomeness remained, my fine voice packed up too, leaving me with what sounded like a throatful of dead leaves. My eyes, once beacons of love that fired up all who gazed therein, were now as red and rheumy as a hag of eighty’s – one with cataracts into the bargain. And on top of all this I was in a strange country where neither man nor beast would give me the time of day; no one understood what I said, and I soon hadn’t a sou to my name.
That was when I started dwelling on the past, lamenting all the chances I’d once had for making something of myself but had so shamefully ignored. Maybe my fantastic good luck on the battlefield and all the treasure I’d happened across had actually caused (certainly foreshadowed) the bad luck that had since brought me low – lower, surely, than would have happened if fate hadn’t first given me a quizzical look and raised me so high. It even occurred to me that the good things that had come my way and I’d so enjoyed had in fact been evil, leading me into error. There was no hermit any more to wish me well, no Colonel Ramsay to rescue me in my distress, no sympathetic priest to put me on the right track – nobody, in a word, who might have done anything for me. Now that my money had run out it was: be off with you, try next door! Like the prodigal son, I had to eat with the swine. For the first time I thought of the advice given me by that old clergyman. He’d said I should apply my money and my youth to some course of study. However, it was far too late to clip this cockerel’s wings: the bird had flown! How quickly things change, and how much woe the changes bring! A month back I’d been a man who moved princes to admiration. Women found me magnetic. Folk as a whole saw me as a miracle of nature; an angel, almost! Now I was the lowest of the low, someone the dogs peed on. I racked my brains as to what I might do. The landlord threw me out as soon as I could no longer pay. I’d have been happy to earn my own living, yet no one would have me as a soldier because I looked so scabby, and I couldn’t get work as a labourer
because I still tired easily and anyway wasn’t used to that sort of work. My only consolation was that spring was turning into summer and I could doss behind a hedge in an emergency – like no one wanting me in their house, for instance. I still had the fine outfit I’d had made for the journey, plus a knapsack full of good-quality linen, but no one wanted to buy that off me in case he picked up a disease as well. So I slung it on my back, took my rapier in my hand, and put one foot in front of the other until I came to a village large enough to have its own apothecary. I entered his shop and had an ointment made up that would heal the worst blotches on my face. Having no money, I gave the young assistant a nice soft shirt in return. He was less fussy than all the other idiots who refused to take any clothes off me. Once those ugly scars have gone, I told myself, things will improve, you’ll see. The apprentice apothecary helped cheer me up, assuring me that within a week, apart from the deep pits that the pustules had etched in the flesh, my face would be virtually unblemished. That made me feel a lot better. It chanced to be market day, and behind one stall a snake-oil salesman was making loads of money flogging folk all kinds of rubbish. ‘Blockhead!’ I said (meaning me). ‘That’s the trade for you! If you’ve not been at Canard’s place long enough to learn how to swindle simple rustics into providing your living, what kind of twerp are you?’
Eight
How he became a travelling quack and swindler
I ate like a thresher the whole time in those days. My belly was never satisfied. I knew I’d nothing in reserve except a single gold ring set with one diamond. It was worth about twenty crowns, though I flogged it for twelve, and I could well imagine even that much running out soon with nothing coming in. So I decided to turn doctor. I purchased the ingredients for a panacea and duly made it up. I also mixed herbs, roots, butter and various oils into a green ointment to heal wounds of all kinds (it would have cured a sick horse, very probably). Likewise a powder containing zinc ore, ground pebbles, crabs’ eyes, emery and rottenstone for whitening the teeth and a blue liquid combining lye, copper, sal ammoniac and camphor for the relief of scurvy, stomatitis, toothache and sore eyes. I got hold of masses of tins, little boxes, papers and phials to scrape my commodities into, and to tart them up a bit I had a French-language label designed and printed to show what each one was good for. The work took me only three days, and I’d spent no more than three crowns on drugs and packaging by the time I left the little place behind me and set out to walk from village to village, toting my wares, selling remedies as I went, passing into Alsace. Continuing via neutral Strasbourg, I’d catch a boat down the Rhine if I could, travelling with other merchants to Cologne, and from there rejoin my wife. It was a good plan; pity things went so wrong.
The first time I set up shop to sell my quackeries (it was outside a church, I remember), takings were poor. My French was hesitant and my patter too timid. I saw at once that I’d have to beef up my approach if I was going to make any money. I packed up my stuff and withdrew to the tavern, where I learnt from the landlord that all sorts would be gathering that very afternoon under the lime trees outside. I’d a good chance of selling there if my stuff was any good. Trouble was, with so many rip-off artists around, folk would be loath to shell out unless they could see with their own eyes that my remedies worked. That gave me an idea. Drinking half my glass of best Strasbourg schnapps, I took the rest outside and caught a toad – the golden-yellow, occasionally reddish-yellow kind with black markings on the belly that in spring and summer squat in filthy ditches, singing; they look awful, too. I stuck him in a glass of water and stood this on the table, next to my display under the limes. Folk did indeed begin to assemble, crowding around the stall. I’d borrowed a pair of tongs from the landlady’s kitchen, and I heard several people say I’d be using them to draw teeth later. However, I began (in my mangled French), ‘Chentlemen and sharezami, je suis kein tooth-puller, but I have here this excellent eyewash, which will rinse all flux from red eyes.’ ‘Oh aye,’ said one fellow, ‘we can tell from your peepers. I’ve seen brighter will-’o-the wisps!’ ‘Oui, oui,’ I replied, ‘but if I have not this eyewash I am going … how you say? Blind – no see! So I sell not the eyewash. The universal remedy and the powder for white teeth I sell, the healing wantment I sell. But the eyewash I include as free gift.’ And so on. I was no fairground barker, I told them. I didn’t set out to diddle folk. I had this universal remedy to offer. If they tried the product and weren’t happy with it, they could have their money back. Asking one of the bystanders to select a box of remedy, I took out a pea-sized chunk and dropped it into the schnapps (which to the onlookers, of course, looked like water). I crushed it till it dissolved, then with the tongs I plucked the toad from the glass of water and said, ‘Voyez, mayzami, if this filthy creature drinks the remedy and leeves – uh, huh: I say you no buy.’ With that I dropped the poor toad (which had been born and grew up in water, you see, and could tolerate no other environment) right into the schnapps and clapped a piece of paper over the top to stop it jumping out. The toad began wriggling and splashing about, reacting far more violently than if I’d tossed it onto hot coals. The schnapps was far too strong for it. In seconds the creature flipped over and died. The onlookers, open-mouthed, took out their purses. They’d seen all the proof they needed: my remedy definitely worked. I could hardly keep pace, bundling the worthless stuff up into fliers and taking the peasants’ money off them. Some purchased three, four, five, even six boxes at a time, anxious never to be without so priceless an antidote when they needed it. Others bought for friends and relations who lived elsewhere, so that by means of my trick, despite this not being market day, come late afternoon I’d made ten crowns and still had over half my stuff left! That same evening I moved on to the next village, nervous that some enquiring spirit might catch his own toad and pop it in water to test my remedy. When the test failed, I’d be in trouble. So to prove the excellence of my remedy by another route I made up two substances: a yellow arsenic using a mixture of flour, saffron and gall and a sublimate of mercury using flour and vitriol. When I was ready to conduct the experiment, I put two glasses of fresh water on the table, one of which contained a fairly strong admixture of nitric acid. Into the latter I stirred some remedy and into both just enough of my two poisons to turn the liquid in the glass containing no remedy (hence no nitric acid) as black as ink while that in the other glass, because of the acid, stayed as it had been. ‘Aha,’ people said, ‘look: that’s a really good remedy – and isn’t it cheap!’ When I then poured the two together, everything went clear again, making the good peasants pull out their purses. This not only put food in my stomach; it put a horse under me as well. In fact, I made so much money on my trip that I arrived at the German frontier in a very mellow mood. So there you are, you dear rustics: don’t fall for the yarn those foreign market barkers spin. It’s about filling their bellies, not improving your health!
Nine
How the doc became a musketeer under Captain Thinpickings
Passing through Lorraine, I ran out of stock, and since I was avoiding garrison towns I’d no way of replenishing it. So I needed another idea until I could make some more remedy. I bought a big bottle of schnapps, dyed the juice with saffron, transferred it to tiny phials, and sold it as special gold water, good against fever. That way I turned a small amount of schnapps into a large sum of money. Later, when I was running low on phials, I heard about a glass kiln in the Fleckenstein area and decided to get a fresh supply. This meant making a detour, and one day, after asking directions, I was set upon and captured by a raiding party from Philippsburg, temporarily quartered in Schloss Wagelnburg. They robbed me of everything I’d swindled folk out of on my trip, and since the farmer who’d come along to show me the way told the lads I was a medic, it was as a medic that, willy-nilly, I was escorted to Philippsburg.
There I told my interrogators straight out who I was, but no one believed me. They insisted I was something I couldn’t possibly have been. I was a doctor, they’d b
een told, so a doctor I must be. I had to swear I belonged to the Imperial Dragoons at Soest and (also under oath) disclose all that had happened to me since that time and what plans I had for the future. However, they told me, the Emperor needed troops both there and at Soest, so I could stay with them there until a suitable occasion arose for me to rejoin my regiment. That was the offer. If it was not to my liking, I could sit in a cell for as long as it took me to accept the title ‘Doctor’, because that had been why they’d taken me prisoner.
It was a let-down, certainly, becoming a musketeer against my will. In fact, it made me bloody mad, because a cheapskate ran the catering department and the helpings were shockingly small. And I mean ‘shockingly’. I got an actual shock each morning when I saw what there was to eat, knowing it had to get me through the whole day. I could have swallowed it in one gulp with no trouble at all. It’s true: your poor musketeer leads a miserable life in barracks, stuck there with nothing to eat but dry bread – and not a lot of that. He’s doing time, you could say, eking out a wretched existence on bread and water. In fact, a gaolbird has it better. He can just lie there. He’s not even allowed to stand guard, do his rounds, perform sentry duty, plus he has as little chance as your poor squaddie of ever being sprung from the prison he’s in. OK, there were those who took the edge off their plight in various ways, but by methods that neither appealed to me nor struck me as entirely proper when it came to putting more food on your plate. The fact was, some men in the garrison were so low-spirited they found themselves women (former whores, some of them) purely because, by having the sluts do little jobs like sewing, washing, spinning wool, wheeling and dealing (stealing, even), they could wangle extra rations. One of them operated as a kind of NCO, organizing the other womenfolk; she drew regular wages like an ensign. Another was a midwife, and by plying that trade paid for many a slap-up meal for herself and her pimp. Others could starch and do laundry; they washed shirts, hose, nightwear and I don’t know what else for the unmarried officers and men (hence their various monikers). Yet others sold tobacco or supplied pipes to those without. Some dealt in schnapps (said to be adulterated with home-distilled stuff, which didn’t make it any less strong). One was a seamstress, who could do every sort of stitch and turned out fancy patterns, earning money that way. Another could top up the larder with natural goodies, collecting slugs and snails in winter, nibbling on salad leaves in spring, raiding birds’ nests in summer, and in autumn gleaning and grazing on treats galore. There were folk who loaded themselves up like mules with firewood for sale, while others traded in different commodities. That sort of thing wasn’t for me, though; I had a wife already. Other blokes made a living from gambling, out-cheating the cheats and using loaded dice and marked cards to part simple fellows from their pelf, but that wasn’t for me, either, thanks very much. Yet others did army fieldwork, toiling like beasts, but I was too lazy for that. There were men with skills who followed a trade, but not yours truly – he’d never learnt one. No, that’s not quite true: if anyone had wanted a musician, I’d have been laughing. But in that neck of the woods they were happy with their drums and fifes. Some stood in for others and did guard duty day and night, but I preferred to go hungry than punish my body like that. Some survived by joining raiding parties, but me they didn’t trust off the premises. Some could catch mice better than cats could, but that was an occupation I shunned. In short, whichever way I turned there was nothing I could do to stop my tummy rumbling. And do you know what was worst? Putting up with the teasing, as when fellows said, ‘Call yourself a doctor – when all you can do is starve?’ It was sheer hunger that drove me to bamboozle a couple of those lovely carp into leaving the ditch under the wall. As soon as the colonel heard what I’d done I was made to ride the sharp-boned donkey as punishment and banned from using my tricks ever again; otherwise I’d hang, he said. In the end, it was other people’s misfortune that saved me. After actually curing a few cases of jaundice and high fever (the patients must have had fantastic faith in me), I obtained permission to go outside the gates to gather roots and herbs for my medicines. At least, that was my pretext; in reality I set traps for hares and was lucky enough to catch two that first night. I gave them to the colonel and was rewarded not only with a thaler for my pains but also a permit to go out after hares whenever I was not on watch. The terrain was fairly wild and there was no one hunting the animals on a regular basis. Plus the hare population itself was exploding. The combination made my luck turn. You’d have thought it was raining hares or that I had some way of casting a spell on them, coaxing them into my noose. Seeing I could be trusted, the officers also let me go out with others on raiding parties. So it was back to my old Soest lifestyle, except that I wasn’t allowed to lead such parties; I couldn’t be in command as I had been in Westphalia. That called for a detailed knowledge of the area – the different currents in the Rhine, for instance.
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus Page 32