I had six, to be precise, who loved me and I them, but none of them had my whole heart or indeed my exclusive devotion. One I loved purely for her dark eyes, another for her golden-yellow hair, a third for her tender sweetness, the rest for something or other that the others hadn’t got. But if I also popped in on other girls who lacked these qualities it was either for the reason mentioned above or because the experience was new and different or because I didn’t turn any offer down. I wasn’t going to be in the town permanently in any case. My servant, a prize rascal himself, was kept busy arranging trysts and carrying love letters to and fro. He could keep his trap shut, too, and drew such a veil over my shoddy behaviour that none of the girls knew what was going on. In return he got presents from them all, which cost me a tidy sum, I can tell you. You know what they say: ‘The louder the drums drum, the less you hear the pipes piping.’ Anyway, I kept my affairs so secret that no one suspected me of being a skirt-chaser – aside from the priest, that is, because I didn’t borrow as much spiritual reading as before.
Nineteen
The way the Huntsman made friends, and how prayerful a sermon made him feel
When fate wants to bring a man down, it first hoists him up high, and the good Lord reliably gives us all an early warning. I got one too, but I ignored it! I was sure my current situation was rock-steady. Fate couldn’t knock me off my perch, I thought, because everyone (the commandant especially) wished me well. Those he valued highly I won round with various shows of deference. His faithful servants I bribed. And to all who stood above me I toasted brotherhood and swore unshakeable loyalty and devotion. Ordinary townsfolk and soldiers liked me for my cordial manner. ‘What a friendly fellow that Huntsman is!’ they often said. ‘He talks to every kid in the street and wouldn’t put anyone’s back up!’ Whenever I caught a rabbit or a brace or two of partridges, I’d send them to the kitchens of people whose friendship I was after, invite myself to dine with them, and send out for a jug of wine to wash the meal down, wine being a costly item in that town. In fact, I arranged for literally everything to be on me. And in conversation at such feasts I would praise the whole table except yours truly and behave generally as if I was a stranger to arrogance. And because, as a result, I invariably got my interlocutor onside and made everyone think I was the cat’s whiskers, it never crossed my mind that misfortune might strike, particularly with my purse bulging the way it did.
I often paid a visit to the town’s oldest clergyman, who lent me lots of books from his library. Each time I brought one back he discussed all sorts of things with me. In fact, we got on so well we never tired of each other’s company. Once the Martinmas goose had been disappeared, the meat broth slurped down, and even all the Christmas feasting seen to, I sent him a bottle of Strasbourg brandy for New Year, which in the Westphalian fashion he liked to sip with a piece of rock candy. I dropped in on him subsequently to find him reading my Chaste Joseph novel, which my landlord had lent him without my knowledge. It jolted me, I must confess, seeing so learned a man holding something I’d written. They say, don’t they, that a man is best known by his books? Still, he asked me to take a seat. He even praised my powers of invention. However, he tapped me over the knuckles for dwelling on the dalliances of Zuleika (Potiphar’s wife, you know). ‘ “When the heart overflows, it’s the mouth that leaks,” ’ he quoted, adding, ‘A man without personal acquaintance with love-making couldn’t have described the woman’s passion so well or portrayed it so vividly.’ I replied that it was indeed pure invention, what I’d written; I’d found it in another book and copied it as an exercise in fine writing. ‘Yes, yes,’ he answered, ‘say no more. I just think: the writer needs to know that I see through him like a window.’ His words alarmed me. Whoever told you?, I thought to myself, Old Nick himself? But the priest, seeing the colour drain from my cheeks, went on, ‘Look, the writer’s young, he’s bursting with health, he’s got time on his hands, and he’s good-looking. He hasn’t a care in the world and, from what I’ve heard, he’s pretty much awash with money. Yet I beg of him, in the name of the Lord, to think again. To remember what a dangerous situation he’s in. To beware, if he cares anything for his happiness and salvation, of the beast with the plaited tresses. Oh, I know the writer thinks, “What business it of the old Bible-basher what I do and don’t do?” (Got it in one! I thought.) “Who does he think he is, ordering me around like this?” The truth is, I have what they call the “cure of souls”. Nevertheless, the gentleman before me can rest entirely assured: he’s been good to me, bless him, and out of Christian love I’m as concerned for his temporal well-being as I would be for my own son’s. Still, it would be a shame, and one you couldn’t justify before your heavenly Father till the end of time, were you to hide the light he’s infused in you under a bushel and allow the fine mind I sense in this book to go stale. No, my advice to you, delivered in all paternal sincerity, would be to devote your youth, together with the resources you are squandering here, to study. That way you’ll be able to serve not only God and man but also yourself by withdrawing from a war in which I’m told you delight before defeat carries you off, confirming by your example the truth of the saying: a soldier in his youth; a beggar in his dotage.’ The old proverb filled me with impatience. I wasn’t used to hearing such stuff. However, not wanting to lose my reputation for being a fine fellow, I reacted very differently from the way I was feeling inside. I even thanked the priest heartily for his trust and promised to think about what he’d said. Inside, though, I muttered like the goldsmith’s boy in the story, ‘Kiss my arse.’ What had it got to do with the old sky-pilot, how I lived my life? I was at the top of my game – I wasn’t about to miss those treats in store. They always come too late, don’t they, warnings like that – once a young man has broken free and is hurtling towards his downfall?
Twenty
How he gave the good priest other fish to fry in order to make the man stop carping at his Epicurean lifestyle
However, I was neither so sex-mad nor so stupid as not to have thought about keeping in with the right people for as long as I meant to remain in said citadel (i.e. while winter lasted). I also realized I might be making a bad mistake, upsetting the priest like that; folk everywhere, no matter what their religious allegiance, tend to hold men of the cloth in high esteem. So after giving the matter thought, the very next day I retraced my steps to the cleric’s house and offered him a string of fancily worded, suitably erudite, plain lies to the effect that I’d decided to take his advice to heart. He was well chuffed – I could tell that from his manner. ‘It’s quite true,’ I told him, ‘I’ve always longed, even back in Soest, for such a guardian angel and wise counsellor as I’ve finally found in your esteemed self. Ah, if the winter would only pass or at least the weather improve! Then I could be on my way.’ At the same time, I asked him if he’d be so good as to help me with another bit of advice: which university should I attend? He replied that he himself had studied at Leiden, but for me he’d have suggested Geneva because of my High German accent. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ I answered. ‘Geneva’s farther than Leiden!’ ‘What’s that I hear?’ he replied in alarm. ‘By the sound of it, the gentleman’s a Papist! Oh God, how I’ve been deceived!’ ‘What do you mean, Reverend,’ I said, ‘what are you talking about? Does that make me a Papist – not wanting to go to Geneva?’ ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘not that. I heard the name of Mary invoked.’ ‘Surely to goodness,’ I said, ‘a Christian can utter his Redeemer’s mother’s moniker?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ he replied, ‘that’s fine. But I beg and beseech the gentleman, in the name of God, to which denomination does he adhere? I see him in my Reformed church every Sunday, though I’m very much afraid he’s actually a non-believer. The fact is, this last Christmas he wasn’t at the Lord’s Table either with us or with the Lutherans.’ I answered, ‘Look, Reverend knows I’m a Christian; if I weren’t, I wouldn’t go to church as often as I do. Otherwise, you’re quite right: I follow neither Calvin nor Luther. I simply believe what t
he twelve articles of our shared Christian faith say I believe. And I’ll not come off the fence until one side or another persuades me that it alone holds the whole truth and is the only religion offering salvation.’ ‘Now I’m quite sure!’ he said. ‘The gentleman is a soldier to the core, living for the day, risking his life for the old Emperor’s sake, virtually dispensing with religion and churchgoing, and thus placing his eternal salvation in the balance. Good God! How can any mortal, faced with the inescapable alternatives of damnation or redemption, still be so feckless? Is that all they taught the gentleman about Christianity back in Hanau? Why didn’t he follow in his own parents’ footsteps, I wonder, and embrace the true Christian religion? Why this reluctance to profess either it or any other belief based firmly on nature and Holy Writ – so firmly, indeed, that for all eternity neither Papist nor Lutheran will overturn it?’ I replied, ‘Reverend, that’s what everyone says about their own religion, but whose opinion should I believe? Does Reverend think it’s so light a matter, placing the salvation of my soul in the hands of one particular party when two other parties rubbish it as false teaching? Let him look (but through my unbiased eyes) at what Conrad Vetter and Johannes Nass write openly against Luther and at what Luther and his kind publish against the Pope. Let him especially consider what Spangenberg says about St Francis, who for some hundreds of years has been thought of as a holy and godly man. Which party shall I side with, when one tears strips off the other and says the fellow hadn’t a saintly bone in his body? Does Reverend think I’m wrong to protest that I’ve a brain in my head and can tell black from white? Would he have me jump straight in like the proverbial fly into hot porridge? I hope very much that’s not something a man of the cloth could ever do with a clear conscience. One party must be right and the other two wrong. But if, without due consideration, I simply took the plunge, I’d be as likely to get stuck with one of the latter as with the former. And spend all eternity regretting my error. No, I’d rather keep to the road than stray off it. Anyway, there are more denominations than just the ones we’ve got in Europe. There’s the Armenian, for instance, or the Abyssinian, or the Greek, or the Georgian – and I don’t know how many else. If God made me plump for one of them, I and my co-religionists would find ourselves at odds with all the others. However, if Reverend will be my Ananias, I’ll happily follow him and adopt the one he professes himself.’
What he said then was: ‘The gentleman is making a big mistake, but I trust God to put him straight and guide him out of the swamp he’s wandered into. That’s why I mean to prove the truth of our confession. I’m very keen to keep the gentleman from the gates of hell.’ I replied that I was keen on that as well, but under my breath I muttered, ‘You stay out of my love affairs and you’re welcome to your faith.’ From which the reader can judge what a wicked, godless lad I was at the time, putting the good pastor to all that trouble for nothing – simply to stop him interfering with my shameless lifestyle. Silently, I thought, ‘By the time you’re through with your proving, I’ll be long gone.’
Twenty-One
How the Huntsman suddenly became a husband
Opposite my quarters lived a retired lieutenant colonel. He had an extremely beautiful daughter, who tended to put on the style. I’d been keen to make her acquaintance for some time, albeit she didn’t, at first, strike me as someone I’d want to make love to exclusively or be with till death etc. Still, I often arranged to cross her path and even more often threw her amorous looks. However, so closely was she guarded against me that not once, when I felt like it, was I able to exchange words with her. And I couldn’t just drop in unannounced, not having been introduced to her parents. Anyway, I knew the bar would have been set too high for a fellow of such humble origins as I believed my own to be. The nearest I got to her was entering or coming out of church, when I took keen advantage of the occasion to move to her side and very possibly utter a few sighs – which I was good at, albeit the sighs themselves sprang from a false heart. She on the other hand received them coldly, which made me think she’d be harder to pull than your ordinary townsman’s daughter. Thinking she’d be a rare catch only sharpened my desire to win her.
The star that brought me to her for the first time was the one schoolkids carry around at that time of year as a perpetual reminder of how a star led the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem. So at first I took it as a good omen that one was shining in their house when her father personally sent for me. ‘Monsieur should know,’ he told me formally, ‘that his position of neutrality as between townsfolk and soldiery is one reason for my sending for him. In a matter that I intend to set in train between the two I require an independent witness.’ Thinking that this might be a development of enormous interest to me (pen and paper lay on the table), I assured him of my humblest compliance in any honest matter, adding specifically that I should consider it a great honour if Fortune favoured me to the extent of making me of any use to it whatsoever. However, all the matter consisted of was setting up a kingdom (the custom in many towns) for whoever found the bee in the Twelfth Night cake. I was to ensure that everything was done properly and that the court posts were all filled by lot, without regard to the persons concerned. For this occasion (which his secretary also attended) the lieutenant colonel laid on wine and sweetmeats. He was a big drinker, you see, and anyway this was after the evening meal. The secretary wrote down the names, I read them out, and the young lady drew the lots, with her parents looking on. I can’t remember exactly how it happened (this was the first time I’d met them), but as they were complaining about the long winter evenings they hinted that I might relieve the boredom by coming round for a chat; they didn’t go out much, they said. This was just what I’d been waiting for.
Starting that evening (when I only flirted with the girl slightly), I relaunched my campaign as lover and fool. Both the girl and her parents thought I’d taken the bait, although for my part I wasn’t really serious. Before evenings at her place I got myself up like the witches, having spent the previous day mining my romances to pen love letters that would read as if I were living 100 miles away and wouldn’t be able to see her again for years. I soon became a frequent visitor at the house because her parents, far from putting obstacles in the way of my courtship, actually encouraged it. In fact, it was they who suggested I teach their daughter to play the lute. I now had free access to the house during the day as well as evenings. As a result, in a change to my usual couplet
I and the bat
Think night-flying is where it’s at
I composed a little song in praise of my good fortune. Not only on certain pleasurable evenings, I sang, but also on many a joyful day could I feast my eyes on and cause my heart to beat faster in the presence of my beloved. On the other hand, in the same song I cursed my misfortune in that my nights were made chilly and indeed chilling by my inability to spend them in the same worshipful contemplation of my darling as occupied my days. All right, it was a tad cheeky, but I did actually sing it to my sweetheart with rapt sighs set to a saucy melody, with the lute playing its part (if you know what I mean) in encouraging the young lady to cooperate in making my nights as pleasurable as my days. However, the answer I got was a round rebuff. She was a smart girl, you see, quite up to parrying, with the utmost politeness, the suggestive improvisations I wove into my song. I was careful not to mention marriage at any stage, although marriage was clearly the theme; I chose my words carefully. The girl’s sister (who was already married) soon noticed this, which is why she lost no opportunity, from then on, to make sure that I and my sweetheart were not left alone too much; she could see that her sister loved me sincerely, and she was afraid things might end in tears.
I won’t describe every detail of my wooing. There’s no need: novels are full of such drivel. All the dear reader need know is that I was first permitted to kiss my beloved and then to take certain other liberties. I pursued this highly desirable trail, planting various stimuli, until eventually, one night, my darling admitted me to her bed
as gracefully as if I’d been hers. We all know what tends to happen in such situations, so the reader may well suppose I overstepped the line, as it were. Not a bit of it! All my plans proved vain. I met with such resistance as I could never have imagined a woman mounting. Her mind was firmly set on her honour and the state of matrimony, and although I promised her both with the most fervent oaths I was told there’d be no sex before marriage – end of story! Still, she let me lie on top of the bed beside her, and it was in that position, exhausted and very grumpy, that I fell fast asleep. I was in for a rude awakening, though, when at four in the morning the lieutenant colonel, hopping up and down at the foot of the bed with a pistol in one hand and a torch in the other, yelled ‘Croat!’ to the servant who stood beside him, brandishing an unsheathed sabre. ‘Run and fetch the padre!’ At that I started up, realizing immediately what a pickle I was in. Blimey, I thought, better say your prayers before he blows you away! I could see only sparks before my eyes, and I was very much in two minds about whether to open them properly or not. ‘You bastard,’ he flung at me, ‘bringing shame on my household like this! I’ve every right to take both you and this slut (who’s now stooped to becoming your whore) outside and wring your necks! Oh, you beast, you vile beast! I want to rip your heart out, chop it in pieces, and hurl it to the dogs. That’s what I feel like doing!’ And he ground his teeth and rolled his eyes like a rabid animal. I’d no idea what to do, and my bedmate could do nothing but sob. I finally recovered myself sufficiently to try and explain that we’d done nothing dishonourable. However, he shut me up by promptly resuming his tirade. He’d trusted me as someone quite different, he said, and I’d repaid his trust with this utterly disgusting act of betrayal. Then his wife appeared and launched into a fresh litany of complaint. I heartily wished I’d been elsewhere; a thorn bush would have done. Honestly, she’d have been at it for hours, I’m convinced, if the servant hadn’t eventually come back with the priest.
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus Page 28
