Next day I woke up again (otherwise I’d still be asleep, of course). However, I was no longer in bed, nor even in a room, but in my old goose-house prison. There was the same awful gloom as there had been in the cellar. And I was wearing an outfit made of calfskin, with the rough side out. The trousers were cut in the Polish or Swabian style, and the jerkin followed the traditional pattern with a hood that had been pulled over my head and bore a fine pair of donkey’s ears. I had to chuckle at what my unlucky star had brought. Both nest and feathers revealed what kind of bird I’d become. That was when I first took a look inside myself, trying to work out the right course for me to follow. I determined there and then to be the most complete fool I could be and to bear patiently whatever fate should throw at me in future.
Seven
How Simplicius resigned himself to his animal state
I could of course have escaped, using the hole that the mad ensign had cut in the door, but I was supposed to be a fool so did no such thing. In fact, I not only behaved like a brainless idiot; I actually bawled like a hungry calf pining for its mother. Moreover, the message was picked up by the ears appointed for the purpose: two soldiers promptly came over to the goose house and demanded to know who was inside. ‘Idiots!’ I replied. ‘Can’t you hear it’s a calf?’ They opened the door, took me out and expressed surprise that a calf could talk. Except that the words sounded forced, as if spoken by apprentice actors before the training kicks in and they truly portray the characters they represent. These two clearly needed frequent prompting. I almost had to tell the jokes for them as the soldiers discussed what to do with me, eventually agreeing to offer me to the governor. Having heard me speak, they reasoned that he’d pay better than the butcher would. They asked me how I was feeling. ‘Not too good,’ I replied. ‘Why?’ they wanted to know. ‘I’ll tell you why,’ I said. ‘It’s clearly the custom here to shut respectable calves up in the goose house. The fact is, as you fellows must know: if I’m to grow up a proper ox I must be reared as a proper bullock.’ This brief exchange over, they led me across the street to the governor’s lodgings. A crowd of boys followed us, and since like myself the boys were also bawling like calves, a blind man might have thought from the noise that a bunch of calves was being driven past, whereas to look at we were just fools – some young, some older.
The two soldiers presented me to the governor as if they’d just taken me in a raid, and while they got a small tip I was promised, by the governor in person, the finest things he could lay hands on. Thinking of the story of the cheeky goldsmith’s boy, I said, ‘I’m sure, sir, but they mustn’t include being shut in a goose house. That won’t do for us calves if we’re to grow up properly and haul tomorrow’s carts.’ The governor reassured me: things would improve from now on. He even thought he’d been clever, making so sharp a fool out of me. What I thought was: ‘Not so fast, master! I’ve survived your tempering, and it’s toughened me up. Let’s just see who wins.’ A farmer who’d taken refuge in the citadel was bringing his cattle to the drinking trough at that moment, and quick as a flash I ran towards the animals, bawling like a calf who wants to suck. My sudden approach alarmed them even more than if I’d been a wolf, even though we were dressed the same. They panicked – just as if they’d disturbed a nest of August hornets. The farmer failed miserably in his efforts to round them up, and the crowd of onlookers that had already gathered hugely enjoyed the sight. When my master had finished laughing fit to bust, he gasped, ‘There you are: one fool makes a hundred!’ But what flashed through my mind was the thought: ‘A hundred and one, more like!’
From then on, whenever folk pointed me out and cried, ‘Look at the calf!’, I gave them nicknames too, sarcastic aliases, and they often (especially my master) found meaning in my inventions – which I based on their characters, you see. In sum, I was widely thought a brainless twit, while I called them all brainy ones. I reckon that’s what happens the world over: folk are quite happy with the way their own minds work, imagining they’re all smarter than the rest.
The entertainment I staged with the farmer’s cows made a short morning even shorter, that being around the time of the winter solstice. I was still waiting at table, but I was serving up other things besides. For instance, when it was my turn to eat I couldn’t be persuaded to consume human food or drink. I insisted on fresh grass (confident that none would be available in wintertime). Sussing out what the problem was, my master got hold of two fresh calfskins from the butcher and had two small boys slip them over their heads and sit down beside me. A first course of winter salad was set before us, and the governor told us to ‘get outside that’. He also had a live calf brought in and, by lacing the same salad with salt, made it gobble the leaves up. I sat there rigid, staring as if in disbelief, but the bystanders urged me to tuck in too. ‘It’s OK,’ they said, noting my hesitation. ‘Calves often eat meat, fish, cheese, butter, other things – they’ve even been known to enjoy a drink or two. Oh, yes,’ they went on. ‘Animals know what’s good for them. There’s little to tell them from folk these days. Do you want to be the only one not joining in?’
I did join in eventually – but because I was hungry, not because I’d earlier seen for myself how some folk were more swinish than pigs, more ghoulish than lions, more lustful than billy goats, greedier than snaffling hounds, wilder than horses, coarser than donkeys, bigger drinkers than cattle, more cunning than foxes, more ravenous than wolves, dafter than apes, more toxic than snakes and toads – all eating human food but otherwise differing from animals only in the shape of their bodies. They were certainly far from the innocence of calves. I and my fellow calves ate as appetite dictated. Yet if a stranger had seen that roomful at lunch he’d surely have thought old Circe had come back to life to make animals out of people – a skill my master had acquired and practised in the present. Just as I’d been treated at the midday meal, so too I was treated at supper. And as my new neighbours at table (‘governor’s toadies’, perhaps I should say?) ate along to encourage me to eat too, they also had to accompany me to bed when my master insisted I must sleep in the byre. My intention, you see, was always to make equal fools of those who thought they were making a fool of me. What I was in no doubt of was that the good Lord gives us all, according to our station, sufficient wit to survive. Plenty of folk, even with the most exalted academic qualifications, kid themselves that they alone know everything – when it may well be that others know more.
Eight
Tells of the needle-sharp memories that some folk have, and how others forget things
I woke in the morning to find my two calf-skinned bedfellows gone, so I got up too. As the adjutant went to fetch the key to open the citadel, I slipped out to visit my priest and tell him everything that had happened to me both in heaven and in hell. It troubled my conscience, he could see, to dupe so many people, my master especially, whenever I played the fool. ‘You mustn’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘The foolish world wants to be duped. If you’ve been left with enough sense, use it to your own advantage. Think of yourself as being like the phoenix – you’ve passed through the fire from ignorance to awareness and been reborn to a different kind of life. But remember: you haven’t gone beyond the grave yet; all you’ve done, at great risk to your wits, is put on this fool’s cap. The times are so extraordinary, no one can know whether or not you’ll come through unscathed. Hell is soon entered; getting out is hard work – physical and mental. Whatever you think, you’re nowhere near man enough yet to cope with your present danger. For that, you’ll need a lot more caution and sense than you had back in the days when you’d no knowledge of what constitutes good sense – or indeed the lack of it. Stay humble. Wait for things to change. They will.’
He spoke in that ambiguous way deliberately. I expect he’d read on my face what a prince I thought I was, deceiving people so successfully. Maybe he was tiring of me and beginning to wonder if I was worth the effort? So I too changed my tune. I thanked him effusively for the wonderful remed
ies he’d given me to keep my wits about me. In fact, so keen was I to repay the debt I felt I owed him, I came close to overdoing the promises of good behaviour. He was tickled pink, though. His mood changed instantly, and he started hyping his own remedies, explaining how Simonides Melicus had devised a new skill that Metrodorus Scepticus had strenuously brought to perfection. Using it, the latter had been able to teach people how a single word could prompt them to repeat everything they’d ever heard or read. However, only brain-strengthening remedies such as those he’d given me made this possible. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I thought, ‘but in one of those books you lent my hermit I read something very different about Scepticus’ memory booster.’ I knew better than to say this out loud, though, because if I’m honest it was only while learning to be a fool that I acquired the sense to button my lip when necessary. The priest went on to relate how Cyrus had been able to address every one of his 30,000 soldiers individually, how Lucius Scipio had known the names of all Rome’s citizens, and how Cyneas, Pyrrhus’ envoy, had been able to recite the names of each one of that city’s senators or noblemen only a day after arriving. ‘Mithridates,’ he further informed me, ‘King of Pontus and Bithynia, ruled over peoples speaking twenty-two languages, in each of which he was able to dispense justice to the nation. The king could also, as we read in Sabellicus, Bk X, ch. 9, converse with each of his subjects in that person’s own tongue. The Greek scholar Charmides would answer from memory any question he was asked concerning the contents of any book in his library, so long as he himself had perused that book once. Lucius Seneca was able to repeat two thousand names that had been read off to him, and according to Ravisius he could also, when two hundred lines of verse were read out to him by two hundred schoolchildren, recite them all back, starting with the last and ending with the first. Esdras, as Eusebius tells us in lib. temp. fulg., Bk VIII, ch. 7, knew the Five Books of Moses by heart and dictated them himself, word for word, to the scribes who wrote them down. Themistocles learnt Persian in a year. Crassus could speak the five different dialects of the Greek language current in Asia, using them to govern his subjects there. Julius Caesar could simultaneously read, dictate and give audience. I’ll pass over Aelius Hadrianus, Porcius Latro, the Romans, and so on, pointing out only that St Jerome is said to have known Hebrew, Chaldean, Greek, Persian, Median, Arabic and Latin. The hermit Anthony knew the entire Bible by rote, simply from having heard it read aloud. Colerus too, citing Marcus Antonius Muretus, writes in Bk XVIII, ch. 21 of a Corsican who, after hearing six thousand names read out, said them all back quickly and in the right order.
‘I’m telling you all this,’ he went on, ‘because I don’t want you thinking a person can’t wonderfully strengthen and preserve their memory by medical means, just as it’s possible, conversely, to weaken it in all sorts of ways and even expunge it completely. Pliny writes in Bk VII, ch. 24 that there’s nothing as fickle as man’s memory, and that illness, panic, anxiety or distress can make it vanish completely or at least lose much of its vividness. A certain Athenian scholar is said to have forgotten everything he’d ever learnt (including his ABC) the day a boulder fell on his head. Another, following an illness, forgot the name of his slave. And Messala Corvinus couldn’t remember his own name, although he’d had a good memory before. Schramhans writes in fol. 60 of his fasciculus historiarum (although this sounds so fanciful that Pliny might have written it himself) that a priest, after drinking blood from his own arteries, forgot how to read and write, though his memory remained intact otherwise, and that when, over a year later, he again drank blood from the same source, he recovered the ability to do both. More plausible, perhaps, is what Johann Wierus writes in Bk III, ch. 18 of his de praestigiis daemonum – namely, that if you eat bears’ brains you find yourself experiencing the same powerful phantasms as an actual bear. He cites as proof the example of a Spanish nobleman who, having so supped, strayed into some wild countryside and fancied that he was indeed a bear. Just imagine, my boy! If your master had possessed that skill, you might have turned into a bear, like Callisto, rather than a bull, like Jupiter.’
The priest told me many more things of the same sort before giving me another lot of the remedy and issuing guidelines as to how I should conduct myself in future. I then made my way back – again followed by a crowd of urchins (more than a hundred this time), all bawling like calves. My master was just getting up, and the noise made him run to the window. At the sight of so many fools at once he had the goodness to respond with a hearty laugh.
Nine
In somewhat cack-handed praise of a beautiful lady
As soon as I reached home I was shown into the reception room, my master having some noble visitors of the fair sex who were anxious both to see and to hear his new fool. I made my appearance – and stood there as if struck dumb, which caused the one I’d caught hold of on the dance floor to remark: she’d been told this calf could talk but now realized it wasn’t true. In reply I said, ‘I myself believed monkeys had no speech, but my ears tell me that too is untrue.’ ‘Hang on!’ said my master. ‘Are you saying these ladies are monkeys?’ ‘If they’re not,’ I replied, ‘they soon will be. Who knows what the future holds? I didn’t intend to become a calf, but I did!’ My master wanted to know what told me these folk would turn into monkeys. I replied, ‘Your monkey goes around bare-bummed, but these bints go bare-breasted. Others cover up.’ ‘Bad boy!’ said my master. ‘You’re a foolish calf; you know no better. These ladies leave exposed what’s worth seeing, whereas monkeys go naked because they can’t afford clothes. Take back what you said this instant, otherwise you’ll get a whipping and I’ll have the dogs chase you into the goose house! That’s what we do with calves who misbehave. Tell me: do you even know how to flatter a lady who’s worth flattering?’ I gave the lady in question a good looking-over, my gaze travelling from top to toe, then back up again from toe to top, staring at her as rapturously as if I’d a mind to marry her. At length I said, ‘Master, I see what’s wrong now. It’s all the thieving tailor’s fault. The fabric from the top, where it ought to go around the neck and cover the bosom, he’s left under the skirt. That’s why it trails out behind like that. The bungler should have his hands cut off at the wrist if that’s the best he can do.’ I turned to the lady: ‘Miss,’ I said, ‘sack the man immediately before he ruins your name. Make sure you get hold of dad’s tailor. Master Paulie, he’s called. He made really lovely pleated skirts for my mum and our Ann and our Ursula. They were quite straight at the hem and didn’t drag in the dirt the way yours must. And you wouldn’t believe what splendid clothes he made for the local whores.’ The governor wanted to know: were dad’s Ann and Ursula as stunning as this young lady? ‘Certainly not, master!’ I said. ‘Look at that hair! It’s as yellow as a baby’s poo. And those partings – white and perfectly straight, like pig bristles trimmed to the hide. Also, this young beauty’s locks are so prettily curled they look like bosun’s pipes, or as if she had a couple of pounds of candles or a string of sausages hanging down each side. And just look at that lovely smooth brow – as smooth a curve, surely, as a plump arse cheek, and whiter than a skull that’s hung outside in all weathers for years. But what a pity her delicate complexion is so badly blotched with excess hair powder that folk who didn’t know better might think the lass had dandruff! And that would be an even greater shame, given her sparkling eyes, which shine out of their gloomy sockets more alarmingly than the soot deposits on the door of dad’s stove when our Ann used to toss in a bunch of straw to heat the room, exposing fire enough to consume the whole world, so it seemed. Her cheeks are nice and red, I grant you that – though not as red as the ribbons with which the Ulm carters recently began decorating their trouser flaps. However, her lips are an even brighter scarlet, and when she laughs or says something (which please, master, pay attention to) she reveals two rows of teeth in her mouth, so beautifully straight and sugary-looking as if carved from turnip. What a vision! It wouldn’t even hurt to have them bite you. Her throat
, too, is as pure in colour as solidified curds, and her tiny breasts, lower down, are equally white and undoubtedly as hard to the touch as a goat’s udder bursting with milk. They don’t sag, certainly, like those of the old women who were wiping my bottom only the other day, when I was in heaven. And look at her hands, master, her fingers, so long, so lithe, so svelte, so nimble, and so neatly formed – just like gypsies used to have, the better to slip into a trouser pocket and fish around. But what are all these delights beside her whole body? OK, I can’t see it naked, but isn’t it as delicate, slim and enticing as if she’d had the trots for a couple of months?’ At this such a howl of laughter arose that I could no longer be heard nor speak any more. So I made myself scarce, hoping other folk would tease me only for as long as I wanted.
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus Page 13
