The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus
Page 41
Here dad broke off his story to take a drink. Obligingly, I clinked glasses with him. However, as soon as he’d drained his I asked, ‘What happened to the woman then?’ He replied, ‘Once the birthing was over, she asked me if I’d be godfather and arrange to have the child baptized ASAP. She also told me her husband’s and her names, to be written in the register. She then opened her knapsack (which bulged with valuables) and gave me, my wife and child, the maid and one other woman quite enough gifts to make us think very well of her indeed. However, in the act of doing this and telling us all about her husband she passed away, having first commended the child to our keeping. With the whole district in uproar and no one able to return home until things quietened down, it was all we could do to arrange for a priest to bury the mother and baptize the child. Both things were done in the end, though, and our secular and ecclesiastical betters bid me bring the child up to adulthood and cover my costs by accepting the woman’s entire estate, apart from certain rosaries, gemstones and suchlike stuff that I was to keep for the boy himself. My wife fed the child on goat’s milk, we raised the lad willingly, and we planned, when he reached adulthood, to give him to our daughter in marriage. However, after the Battle of Nördlingen I lost both the lass and the lad – and all our worldly goods besides.’
‘What you’ve told me,’ I said to dad, ‘is a quite fascinating story, but you left the best bit out; you didn’t say what the lady, or her husband, or the boy himself were called.’ ‘Sir,’ he replied, ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested. The lady was called Susanna Ramsi, her husband was Captain Sternfels von Fuchsheim, and because my name was Melchior I had the boy baptized as Melchior Sternfels von Fuchsheim, which is what was written in the register.’
So in this roundabout fashion I learnt that I was the physical son of my hermit and of Governor Ramsay’s sister – far too late, unfortunately, because my parents were both long dead and all I could find out about my Uncle Ramsay was that the people of Hanau had sent him packing, along with the Swedish garrison, and rage and impatience had driven him out of his mind as a result.
I got my godfather completely plastered and next day sent for his wife. When I told her who I was, at first she refused to believe it – until I’d opened my shirt and shown her a birthmark on my chest covered in black hair.
Nine
What childbed did to him, and how he once again became a widower
Not long after this I had my godfather ride with me to the Spessart to obtain proper documentary evidence of my aristocratic birth. I soon found what I wanted in the relevant baptismal register, backing up my godfather’s story. I also called on the priest who’d welcomed me into his house in Hanau and taken me under his wing. He gave me written proof of where my late father had died and how he’d had me with him until then and that eventually, under the name ‘Simplicius’, I’d spent some time with Mr Ramsay, the governor of Hanau. In fact, I had a notary draw up an instrument covering my whole life story ‘as recounted by eyewitnesses’. (I thought: just in case; you never know when you’re going to need such a thing.) The trip cost me over 400 thaler, too – and all for nothing, because on the way back a raiding party caught us, duffed us up, and picked us clean. Both I and dad (godfather, I should say) were left bollock-naked and only half alive.
Things started to go pear-shaped at home, too, because as soon as my wife found out she was married to a toff, as well as playing the great lady she neglected her household duties completely. The neglect I bore in silence (she was up the spout, see?), but I also took a hit on the farm front: most of my best cattle croaked.
I could have put up with all these things, but you know what they say: every mishap brings its brothers. When my wife dropped her infant, the maid was also brought to bed, and the child the maid bore looked a lot like me, while my wife’s was the dead spit of the stable lad. Plus, that same night, the female I mentioned in the last chapter left one outside my door – with a note saying I was the father. All of a sudden I had three sprogs, and I almost began to dread another one crawling its way out of every corner I approached – which gave me a few grey hairs, I can tell you! But that’s what happens when you live the kind of crazy, godless life I was living just then, guided only by my animal lusts.
But what could I do? I had to have them baptized, and at the same time I had to accept punishment from the authorities according to the law. And since the ones administering the law just then were the Swedes (whereas previously I’d served the Emperor), the price was even higher. All of which once again brought about my total ruin. Not only did this string of misfortunes cause me no end of grief; for her part, my wife simply shrugged it off. In fact, she teased me non-stop about the lovely bundle I’d found on the doorstep and the huge fine I’d had to pay because of it. Still, if she’d known how things were between me and our maid she’d have given me a really bad time. Of that I’m certain. However, the maid was a good, honest lass. Knowing I’d have been fined a fortune for putting a member of my household staff in the family way, she let a similarly large wad persuade her to point the finger of fatherhood elsewhere – namely at a dandy who’d visited me once or twice the year before and attended my wedding (otherwise she’d never have become involved with him, she said). Even so, the maid had to go. The fact was, my wife suspected I knew all about herself and the stable lad so wasn’t able to get her own back for fear of me pointing out one thing: I could hardly have been in her bed and the maid’s simultaneously! Anyway, it was punishment enough, thinking I might be raising my stable boy’s child whereas mine couldn’t be acknowledged as my own flesh and blood. Added to which I had to keep quiet about the whole thing and be glad no one else knew.
While I tormented myself with such thoughts, my wife enjoyed her jug of wine hourly. In fact, she’d rarely been without it beside her since our wedding day, and she retired most nights half-cut. She drank the child into an early grave and rotted her own gut so badly that she soon made me a widower once more – which so affected me I practically laughed myself witless.
Ten
The stories countryfolk tell regarding enchanted Lake Mummel
Finding myself back in my original state of freedom (with a much lighter purse, of course, but a substantial household that included many livestock and a large servant body), I came to see my godfather, Melchior, as my real father, his wife (my godmother) as my mother, and they and the bastard Simplicius, who’d been deposited on my doorstep, as my heirs. To the first two (the old couple) I left the house and farm, along with the rest of my belongings, except for a small number of gold coins and pieces of jewellery that I kept back for extreme emergencies. The fact was, I’d conceived such a loathing of cohabiting with and holding property in common with women that I resolved, having had two bad experiences, never to get spliced again. The old couple (nonpareils in re rusticorum) immediately set about reshaping my management model, shedding staff and livestock not fit for purpose and hiring or purchasing others that were. My ancient dad and mum both assured me that all would be well in the long run. They promised me that, if I gave them a free hand, they’d have a good horse ready for me whenever I needed one and make the place so profitable I’d be able to ask an honest neighbour in for a jug of wine anytime I liked. I soon found out what brand of folk were now in charge at the farm. My godfather and his staff organized the arable land to perfection and drove harder bargains with livestock-dealers and timber- and resin-buyers than any Jew. And my godmother ran the livestock-breeding and dairy businesses better than ten wives like the last one. Before long, my small estate had all the reserves it needed, plus livestock of both kinds, small and large. In a very short time it was reckoned the best in the district. Meanwhile, I was going for long walks, devoting a lot of thought to various matters. My godmother was making more from the bees alone, selling wax and honey, than my late wife had made from the cattle, pigs and other animals combined; and I could imagine she wouldn’t miss other opportunities, either.
One day I strolled into to
wn, more in search of a drink of cold water than in pursuit of my former habit of getting acquainted with recently arrived young swells. I was falling back into my old parsimonious ways, do you see, not mixing overmuch with folk who blow their own and their parents’ money on things of little or no value. All the same, I fell in with a group of moderate spenders who were discussing a local curiosity – namely, Lake Mummel, a reputedly bottomless body of water lying at the foot of a nearby mountain. They’d asked some of the older locals along to tell stories they’d themselves heard about this enchanted lake – stories I listened to with great enjoyment, despite knowing they were mere folk tales as idle as any peddled by Pliny.
According to one, if you tied a uneven number of peas, say (or pebbles, or whatever), in a handkerchief and hung the bundle in the water, it would come out containing an even number; likewise, conversely. Another, which most of them came out with (confirming it with examples), was that if you threw a stone into the water, or a handful of stones, then however clear the sky might have been beforehand a terrible storm would arise, with driving rain, hail and mighty gusts of wind. They went on to recount all manner of curious tales that had become attached to the lake and to the miraculous earth and water sprites that had been seen there and had actually spoken to folk. One person told of a time when some herdsmen had been watching over their cattle by the lake and a brown bull had emerged to join the other animals, immediately followed by a tiny figure who’d tried to drive him back. The bull obstinately refused until the little man threatened him with all the sufferings that plague mankind if he didn’t return on the instant. Whereupon both bull and manikin promptly re-entered the lake and disappeared. Another tale recounted how on one occasion, in winter, a farmer had quite safely driven his team of oxen across the frozen surface of the lake, dragging a number of tree trunks to be sawn into boards. However, when he called the dog across after him, the ice had cracked and the poor dog had fallen through, never to be seen again. A third, claiming his story was entirely true, told how a hunter tracking game had passed near the lake and spotted a water sprite sitting cross-legged on the water with a lapful of gold coins, apparently playing with them. When the hunter made as if to shoot him the manikin simply ducked, uttering the words, ‘If you’d asked me for help in your penurious state, I’d have showered wealth on you and your whole family.’
These and other stories, which to me sounded like the kind of fairy tales you tell children, I listened to with a grin on my face, not believing for a moment that any such bottomless lake could exist up there in the mountains. Nevertheless, there were other rustics (elderly, plausible fellows, some of them) who claimed they or their fathers remembered a time when various princely high-ups visited the lake. A reigning Duke of Württemberg etc. etc. once had a raft made to take him out and measure its depth. However, by the time they’d sent a weight down carrying nine bobbin-lengths of twist (a measurement that Black Forest farmers’ wives will understand better than me or any geometrician) and still not touched bottom, the raft began to sink (not something timber normally does) and the men had to abandon their mission and paddle to safety while they still could. The remains of the raft can still be seen on the lakeshore, and to commemorate the incident the royal arms of Württemberg are carved there in stone – other messages, too. And there are stories, backed up by a body of evidence, that once upon a time the Archduke of Austria etc. etc. even tried to have the lake drained, though many advised against it. The locals actually begged him to stop work, fearing the whole landscape might collapse and drown them. Furthermore, certain highly respected royals had had barrel after barrel of trout released into the lake, and within the hour every one of those trout had expired before their very eyes and been washed down the outflow. This was despite the fact that the stream that flows down the valley below the lake (and is named after the lake and takes the outflow from the lake) supports a population of such fish.
Eleven
A patient’s quite exceptional ‘thank you’ moves Simplicius to almost holy thoughts
These latter reports almost made me swallow the earlier ones whole as well. My curiosity was so piqued that I decided to take a look at the enchanted lake for myself. The other members of the listening group delivered a mixture of verdicts, exposing varying, often incompatible views and opinions. I pointed out that the German name Mummelsee suggested some kind of masquerade – i.e. a degree of opacity, in that not everyone was going to be able to unlock its hidden essence or inner profundity, although these could hardly be fancies, such exalted folk having already made the attempt. So first I went back to the place where a year earlier I’d first set eyes on my late wife and sipped the sweet poison of love.
There, in a shady spot, I lay down on the green grass – not, as before, listening to the nightingale’s song but mulling over the changes I’d undergone since. I thought about how on this same spot I’d set out on the journey from free man to slave of love and about how, since then, I’d moved from officer to farmer, from prosperous farmer to poor nobleman, from a Simplicius to a Melchior, from widower to married man, from married man to cuckold, then from cuckold back to widower once more. I’d also gone from being the son of a peasant farmer to being the son of a proper soldier, then back to being dad’s son, just as I’d started out. I also dwelt on how fate, having robbed me of Herzbruder, had provided an old married couple to look after me. I mused on the pious life and death of my father, the pitiable death suffered by my mother, and again on the range of transformations I’d gone through in my life. I felt the tears welling up. And as I recalled how much lovely money I’d had and frittered away at certain points, almost regretting those periods, two poor old scrotes who looked as if they’d enjoyed a few jugs of wine in their day (the gout had settled in their legs; they looked as if they required spa treatment) collapsed nearby for a much-needed rest. Thinking they were alone, they embarked on something of a moan-fest. One said, ‘My quack sent me here either because he’d given up on my health or because he needed the kickbacks (for me as well as for the other patients he’d recommended) to pay for the keg of butter the landlord had sent him recently. I wish I’d never got involved with the man or that he’d suggested I take the waters from the outset. That way I’d either have more money left or enjoy better health. The fact of the matter is, this spa is doing me good!’ The other responded, ‘Say no more. I thank God that he no longer lets me have more money than I need. Otherwise, if my quack had known I had the extra, he’d never have sent me on this spa cure. Instead, I’d have had to share it out between him and his apothecaries (who grease his palm annually for the purpose) – be it at the cost of my death and ruin. Sharks like that will only ever advise folk like us to visit a spot as healthy as this when they’ve run out of other ways of fleecing us. If a patient comes to them and they sniff money, they know he’ll only be worth their while for as long as they can keep him ill.’
The pair had plenty more gripes about their quacks, but I won’t relate them all because said medics might turn against me and prescribe some purgative that will feel as if it’s driving my soul out of my back door. The only reason I tell you this much is that the latter scrote, in thanking God for not giving him more money, relieved me to the point of driving all negative thoughts about money from my mind. Enough was enough, I resolved; I’d quit striving for honour or money or any of the other things the world loves and instead cultivate a godly life, ruing my lack of repentance and aiming, like my late father, to scale the highest peaks of virtue.
Twelve
How Simplicius travels with the sylphs to the centre of the Earth