Simplicissimus (34 page)

There is no point in my relating every trivial stage of my courtship in detail, every romance that has been printed contains more than enough of that kind of tomfoolery. All the reader needs to know is that eventually I was allowed first of all to kiss my sweetikins and then to take certain other liberties. This much desired progress I pursued with all kinds of persuasion until my beloved let me in at night and I slipped into bed with her as if we belonged together. Now, since everyone knows what usually happens in this kind of story, you’re probably thinking I did something improper. Not in the least! All my hopes were dashed. I encountered more resistance than I would ever have thought possible in a woman. The only things she was interested in were her reputation and marriage, and even though I promised her the latter with the most bloodcurdling oaths she refused to grant me anything before we were pronounced man and wife. She did permit me to stay lying beside her in bed and, quite worn out with disgust, I fell into a peaceful sleep.

My awakening, however, was rude. At four in the morning the lieutenant-colonel was standing beside the bed, a pistol in one hand and a torch in the other. ‘Arquebusier!’ he shouted to his servant, much more loudly than necessary since he was standing beside him, sword in hand. ‘Quick, fetch the priest!’ This was what woke me up and I immediately realised what danger I was in. ‘Oh no’, I thought, ‘that’ll be so you can make your confession before he makes mincemeat of you.’ I kept my eyes shut, hoping he would go away, but he said, ‘You libertine! Bringing shame and dishonour on my house! Would I do you wrong if I broke your necks, both yours and this trollop’s who has become your whore? Oh you beast, how is it that I haven’t already torn the heart out of your body, chopped it up and thrown it to the dogs?’ At that he ground his teeth and rolled his eyes like a deranged animal.

I didn’t know what to do and my bedmate could do nothing but cry. When I had finally recovered from the shock, however, I tried to protest our innocence, but he just told me to shut up and started upbraiding me again, telling me I had repaid the great trust he had put in me with the worst betrayal possible. Then his wife arrived and launched into a fresh sermon so that I wished I was anywhere else but there, even lying in the middle of a prickly thorn bush would have been better. I do believe that if the servant had not come back with the pastor she would have still been going on two hours later.

Before they arrived I had tried to get out of bed several times, but the lieutenant-colonel’s threatening gestures kept me lying there. Now I realised how a man’s courage drains away when he’s caught in the act and I knew how a burglar feels when he’s been apprehended after having broken in but before he has stolen anything. I thought back to the time when, if I had been attacked by the lieutenant-colonel and two arquebusiers, I would have straightaway sent all three of them packing. Now I was lying there like any other coward without the courage to raise my voice, never mind my fists.

‘Isn’t that a fine sight!’ he said to the pastor. ‘And I have to call you to witness my shame!’ Scarcely had he spoken these words than he started ranting and raging again so that all I could understand were bits about ‘wringing his neck’ and ‘washing my hands in blood’. He was foaming at the mouth like a wild boar and behaving as if he were about to go out of his mind. I kept thinking, ‘Now he’s going to put a bullet through your head.’ The pastor had to hold him back physically, to stop him, as he put it, doing something he would later regret.

‘Come now, colonel’, he said, ‘listen to reason. Remember the phrase about making a virtue of necessity. This fine young couple – you would be hard put to it to find another like it in the whole land – is not the first, and will certainly not be the last to give in to the irresistible power of love. This misdeed, for misdeed we must call it, can easily be put right by the couple themselves. I cannot approve of this anticipation of wedlock, but that does not mean these young people deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered. No one knows about this indiscretion and there will be no stain on your reputation, colonel, if you can just keep it secret, forgive them, consent to their marriage and announce it by publishing the banns in church in the usual way.’

‘What!?’ he replied, ‘I have to go cap in hand and see that they come out of it with honour, instead of giving them the punishment they deserve? I was going to tie them up together and drown them in the Lippe before it gets light. No, you must marry them on the spot, that’s why I sent for you. Otherwise I’ll wring their necks like a couple of chickens.’

I thought, ‘What can you do? It’s a case of needs must when the devil drives. And you certainly won’t have to be ashamed of the girl. In fact, when you consider your own origins, you’re scarcely good enough to do up her shoelaces.’ Out loud, however, I swore by all that was holy that we had done nothing to be ashamed of, but the answer I got was that then we should have behaved in such a way that no one would suspect we had done anything to be ashamed of. As things were, the suspicion had been aroused and wouldn’t go away.

At that the priest hitched us there and then, sitting up in bed as we were, after which the pair of us were forced to get up and leave the house. As we were just going, the lieutenant-colonel said that neither I nor his daughter should darken his doorway ever again. Now that I had recovered somewhat and felt my sword at my side once more, I made a joke of it. ‘I can’t understand why you insist on doing everything topsy-turvy fashion. When other people have just been wed, their close relatives send them off to the bedroom, while you, dear father-in-law, are turning me not only out of bed, but out of doors as well. Instead of wishing me every happiness for my marriage, you will not even allow me the happiness of staying in my father-in-law’s presence and serving him. If this habit should catch on weddings would not add much to the sum total of friendship in the world.’

The people in my lodgings were rather surprised when I brought this young lady home, and even more so when they saw she made no secret of the fact that she was going to bed with me. Although this whole farce had put me somewhat out of humour, I saw no reason to spurn my bride. I held my darling in my arms, but at the same time my head was full of thoughts of what to do about the situation. At first I decided it served me right, but then I felt I had been treated disgracefully and could not come out of it with honour unless I had my just revenge. However, when I remembered that it was my father-in-law on whom I would be taking revenge, and that it would also rebound on my innocent darling, all my plans simply evaporated. I was so ashamed, I resolved to stay in my lodgings and not go out at all, but then I realised that would be the most foolish thing of all to do. Finally I decided that first and foremost I must win back my father-in-law’s friendship; for the rest, I would behave towards others as if nothing untoward had happened and that as far as my marriage was concerned everything was as it should be. I told myself that was how I must tackle it, given the rather unusual way it had all come about. ‘If people should find out you’re unhappy with your marriage and have been trapped into it, like a poor girl married off to some impotent old moneybags’, I said to myself, ‘all you’ll get is mockery.’

With these thoughts going through my mind, I got up early, though I would have preferred to stay longer in bed. First of all I sent for my brother-in-law, who was married to my wife’s sister, told him briefly how we were now related and asked him to bring his wife round to help us prepare some food so that I would have something to offer the guests at my wedding breakfast. And if he would be good enough to go and intercede with our parents-in-law on my behalf, I added, I would invite some guests who would complete the reconciliation. He agreed, and I went to see the commandant, whom I regaled with an amusing account of how my father-in-law and I had created a new fashion in accelerated marriages in which engagement, wedding and bedding all took place within the hour. And since, I went on, my father-in-law had economised on a wedding breakfast, I had decided to make up for it by giving a modest supper for a number of notables, to which he, of course, was humbly invited.

The commandant laughed fit to burst at my humorous narrative, and since I could see he was in the right mood, I became even freer in my speech. I excused myself by pointing out that he could hardly expect me to be staid and sober at such a time. Other men were out of their right minds for four weeks before and after they got married. They had four weeks to get their idiocies out of their system bit by bit, allowing them keep their lack of sense more or less concealed. Since matrimony had taken me by surprise I had to unload my silliness all at once so that I could settle down to a sober married life.

The commandant asked me about the marriage contract and how many gold pieces the old skinflint, who was not short of the wherewithal, had given me for a dowry. I replied that our marriage agreement consisted of one point and one point alone, namely that he should never see his daughter and me again. Since, however, there had been neither lawyer nor witnesses present I hoped it could be rescinded, especially as in my opinion one of the purposes of marriage was to foster friendship. Unless, that is, he were trying to marry off his daughter in the same way as Pythagoras, which I found it impossible to believe, since to my knowledge I had never insulted him.

With all these quips and jokes, which people here were not used to hearing from me, I got the commandant to agree to come to my wedding supper and to persuade my father-in-law to accompany him. He immediately sent a cask of wine and a stag to my kitchen, and I had such a banquet prepared as if I were going to entertain princes. I also gathered a distinguished company together that not only had a merry time together but, more importantly, so reconciled my parents-in-law to my wife and me that they showered more blessings on us than they had curses the previous night. The rumour was spread around the town that we had deliberately gone about the wedding in this way so as to avoid having tricks played on us by ill-disposed people.

In fact, this rapid wedding suited me down to the ground. If I had been married in the normal way and the banns been read from the pulpit then I’m afraid there would have been minxes enough to cause trouble since there were a good half dozen among the daughters of respectable citizens with whom I was on all too intimate terms.

The next day my father-in-law entertained the wedding guests, but nowhere near as sumptuously as I had, for he was stingy. In the course of the festivity he started talking to me about what business I intended to follow and how I was going to organise my household. Only then did I realise I had lost my freedom and was expected to live the life of a dutiful son-in-law. I put on a show of obedience and begged my dear father-in-law, as a gentleman of great experience, to give me the benefit of his advice.

The commandant praised this reply and said, ‘Given that he’s a lively young soldier, it would be extremely foolish during the present wars for him to take up any profession but soldiering. It’s much better to keep your horse in someone else’s stable that to feed someone else’s in your own. As far as I’m concerned, I’m ready to make him a lieutenant with his own troop to command, if he wants.’

My father-in-law and I both thanked him. I did not reject the idea, as I had before, but I showed him the document from the merchant in Cologne with whom I had deposited my treasure, saying, ‘I’ll have to go and collect this before I enter the Swedish service. If they get word that I have gone over to the enemy they will just give me the finger and keep my treasure, which is not the kind of thing you’ll find just lying by the roadside.’ They both approved of this plan and so it was agreed between the three of us that I should go to Cologne in a few days’ time, collect my treasure and return to the fortress, where I would take command of a troop. At the same time a day was set when my father-in-law was to be given a company and the position of lieutenant-colonel in the commandant’s regiment. During that winter Count Götz was encamped in Westphalia with a large contingent of imperial troops, his headquarters being in Dortmund, and the commandant, expecting a siege in the coming spring, was accordingly on the look-out for good soldiers. However, it turned out to be wasted effort since Götz, following the defeat of his fellow general, Johann de Werth, in the Breisgau, had to withdraw from Westphalia in the spring in order to go to the relief of Breisach, which was being besieged by the Duke of Weimar.

Things that are destined happen in many ways. For some people adversity comes gradually, bit by bit, while others are overwhelmed by it all at once. For me it started so sweetly, so pleasantly that I didn’t see it as misfortune at all but as the greatest good fortune. I had scarcely spent more than a week of married bliss with my dear wife when I donned my hunter’s outfit, slung my musket over my shoulder and said farewell to her and her friends.

Since I knew all the paths and tracks, I managed to slip through unobserved and without danger. Indeed, no one saw me until I came to the barrier outside Deutz, on this side of the Rhine, opposite Cologne. I, however, saw many people. One who struck me in particular was a farmer in Berg, who reminded me of my Da in the Spessart, and his son, who was just like my simple-minded self as a boy. This peasant lad was herding the swine and as I was passing the sows sensed my presence and started to grunt, which made the lad swear at them, ‘Damn and blast ye, ye poxy beasts, why don’t ye all go to hell!’ The dairymaid heard this and shouted to the lad that he should stop swearing or she would tell his father. To this the boy answered that she could kiss his arse and go fuck her mammy into the bargain. The farmer heard his son and came running out of the house with his stick, crying, ‘Shut thy gob, thou goddam foul-mouthed lummocks! I’ll teach thee to swear, God rot thee!’ caught him by the collar and thrashed him like a dancing bear. With each blow he said, ‘Thou little bugger! I’ll teach thee to cuss! Devil take thee! I’ll teach thee to kiss my arse! I’ll teach thee to go fuck thy mammy! etc. etc.’ This punishment naturally reminded me of me and my Da, but I had not the honest faith to thank God for bringing me out of such darkness and ignorance to the light of better knowledge and understanding. How then should I have expected the good fortune He sent me day by day to continue?