Tyll Read online

  “Good food?”

  Not for himself, the fool had protested, but for the animal. That’s how you do it: you stick food in a book and put it in front of the animal again and again and again, with patience and strength. In its voraciousness it turns the pages and in the process picks up more and more of human language. After two months you get results.

  “What kind of animal?”

  “It can be done with any kind. As long as it’s not too small, otherwise you won’t hear its voice. With worms you won’t get far. Insects aren’t good either; they’re always flying away before they’ve finished a sentence. Cats are always argumentative, and colorful Oriental birds like the ones the wise Jesuit describes aren’t found here. So that leaves dogs, horses, and donkeys.”

  “We have no more horses, and the dog has run away.”

  “He’s no great loss. But the donkey in the stable. Give me a year, then I can—”

  “Two months!”

  “That’s not much time.”

  Not without gloating, the King had reminded the fool that he himself had just spoken of two months. That was how much time he’d have, no more, and if there was no result to be seen in two months, he could brace himself for a thrashing of biblical proportions.

  “But I need food to put in the book,” the fool had replied almost sheepishly. “And not a small amount.”

  The King was indeed aware that they never had enough food. But he had gazed at the wretched white canvas on the wall and with sly anticipation promised his fool, who had for a while now loomed larger in his mind than was reasonable, that he could have as much food as he needed for the undertaking, provided that the donkey would speak in two months.

  The fool had actually kept up the pretense. Every day he had disappeared into the stable with oats, butter, and a bowl of honey-sweetened groats along with a book. Once, the King’s curiosity had become overwhelming and against all seemliness he had gone to take a look and had found the fool sitting on the floor, the book open on his knees, while beside him the donkey stared good-naturedly into space.

  Things were progressing quite well, the fool had immediately asserted, they had already done I and A, and by the day after tomorrow the next sound was to be expected. Then he had let out a bleating laugh, and the King, now feeling ashamed of his interest in all this nonsense, had withdrawn without a word to devote himself to affairs of state, which in dismal reality meant that he had drafted a further request for military support from his brother-in-law in England and a further request for money from the Dutch States General, as always without hope.

  “Well, what does he say,” the King repeated while looking into the fool’s eyes, “what can he say now?”

  “The donkey speaks well, but what he says doesn’t make much sense. He has little knowledge, he’s seen nothing of the world—give him time.”

  “Not a day more than agreed!”

  The fool giggled. “In the eyes, King, look me in the eyes, and now tell everyone what you see!”

  The King cleared his throat to reply, but then he found it hard to speak. It was dark. Colors and shapes assembled themselves. He saw himself standing before the English family again: the pale James, his feared father-in-law; his Danish mother-in-law, Anne, rigid with arrogance; and his bride, whom he hardly dared to look at. Then a whirling and swaying grew stronger and abated again, and he no longer knew where he was.

  He had to cough, and when he recovered his breath, he realized that he was lying on the ground. There were men standing around him. He saw them only blurrily. There was something white above them—it was the tent, held up by poles, rippling slightly in the wind. Now he recognized Count Hudenitz, pressing his plumed hat against his chest, his face furrowed with worry, next to him the fool, then the cook, then one of the soldiers, then a grinning fellow in a Swedish uniform. Had he fainted?

  The King reached his hand out. Count Hudenitz grasped it and helped him to his feet. He staggered, his legs gave way again, the cook held him from the other side until he was standing. Yes, he had fainted. At the most inappropriate time, in the tent of Gustav Adolf, whom he had to persuade with strength and shrewdness that their fortunes were linked, he had fallen over like a woman in a tight bodice.

  “Gentlemen!” he heard himself saying. “Applaud the fool!”

  He noticed that his shirtfront was soiled, his collar, his jacket, the decorations on his chest. Had he been sick too?

  “Clap for Tyll Ulenspiegel!” he cried. “What a feat! What an amazing thing!” He grabbed the fool by the ear. It felt soft and sharp and unpleasant. He let go of it again. “But watch out that we don’t give you to the Jesuits. That borders on witchcraft—what a trick!”

  The fool was silent. He had a crooked smile on his face. As always the King couldn’t interpret the expression.

  “He is a magician, my fool. Fetch water, clean my garments, don’t stand around.” The King forced a laugh.

  Count Hudenitz set to work on his shirtfront with a cloth; as he wiped and rubbed, his wrinkled face hovered much too close to the King’s.

  “One must be careful of the fellow!” the King exclaimed. “Clean faster, Hudenitz. One must be careful! No sooner has he looked me in the eyes than I’ve fallen over—what a magician, what a trick!”

  “You fell over on your own,” said the fool.

  “You must teach me the trick!” the King cried. “As soon as the donkey has learned to speak, I want to learn the trick too.”

  “You’re teaching a donkey to speak?” one of the Dutchmen asked.

  “If someone like you can speak and if even the stupid King is constantly speaking, then why shouldn’t a donkey speak?”

  The King would have liked to slap the fool’s face, but he felt too weak, so he joined in the soldiers’ laughter, and then he was overcome with dizziness again. The cook supported him.

  And just at this completely inopportune moment someone folded back the flap to the adjacent room, and a man in the red uniform of the majordomo stepped out and scrutinized the King with a look of condescending curiosity.

  “His Majesty will see you now.”

  “Finally,” said the King.

  “Excuse me?” asked the master of ceremonies. “What was that?”

  “It’s about time,” said the King.

  “That’s no way to speak in the anteroom of His Majesty.”

  “This creature shall not talk to me!” The King pushed him away and entered the neighboring room with a firm step.

  He saw a map table, he saw an unmade bed, he saw gnawed bones and bitten apples on the ground. He saw a short, fat man—round head with a round nose, round belly, scrubby beard, thinning hair, shrewd little eyes. The man went straight up to the King, seized him by the arm with one hand and struck him so hard in the chest with the other that he would have fallen over if the man hadn’t pulled him to him and embraced him.

  “Dear friend,” he said. “Old dear good friend!”

  “Brother,” gasped the King.

  Gustav Adolf was pungent, and his strength was astonishing. Now he pushed the King away and eyed him.

  “At last we meet, dear brother,” said the King.

  He could see that Gustav Adolf didn’t like the form of address, and this confirmed his fears: the Swede didn’t regard him as his equal.

  “After all these years,” the King went on with as much dignity as he could, “after all the letters, all the messages, finally face-to-face.”

  “I’m glad too,” said Gustav Adolf. “How goes it, my friend, how are you faring? What about money? Have enough to eat?”

  It took the King a moment to realize that he was being greeted in the familiar form. Was this really happening? It must have been due to this man’s poor German; perhaps it was even a Swedish quirk.

  “C
oncern for Christendom weighs heavily on me,” said the King. “As it does on…” He swallowed, then brought himself to use the familiar form. “As it does on you, my friend.”

  “Yes, right,” said Gustav Adolf. “Something to drink?”

  The King reflected. The thought of wine nauseated him, but it probably wasn’t wise to decline.

  “That’s the spirit!” Gustav Adolf exclaimed, clenching his fist, and even as the King was hoping that he wouldn’t be subjected to it this time, Gustav Adolf struck.

  The King couldn’t breathe. Gustav Adolf handed him a cup. He took it and drank. The wine tasted disgusting.

  “It’s terrible wine,” said Gustav Adolf. “We got it from some cellar, can’t be choosy, that’s war.”

  “I think it’s turned,” said the King.

  “Better turned than none,” said Gustav Adolf. “What do you want, my friend, why are you here?”

  The King looked into the bearded, shrewd, round face. So this was the savior of Protestant Christendom, the great hope. And yet once it had been he himself. How had it come to pass that it was now this fellow here, this fat-gutted man with the scraps of food in his beard?

  “We’re winning,” said Gustav Adolf. “Is that why you’re here? Because we’re defeating them, at every encounter? Up in the north we defeated them and then during the advance and then down in Bavaria. We’ve been victorious every time, because they’re weak and disorganized. Because they don’t know how to drill the men. But I do. How is it with your men, I mean, how was it when you had some, did they like you, your soldiers, there outside Prague, before the Kaiser killed them? Only yesterday I tore the ears off one who wanted to desert with the cashbox.”

  The King laughed uncertainly.

  “Really. That’s what I did, it’s not so hard. You grab, then you tear. Something like that gets around. The soldiers find it funny, because it happened to someone else, but at the same time they take care from then on not to do anything of that sort. I have barely any Swedes with me. Most of them out there are Germans, a few Finns too, along with Scotsmen and Irishmen and who knows what. They all love me. That’s why we win. Do you want to join me? Is that why you’re here?”

  The king cleared his throat. “Prague.”

  “What about Prague? Drink!”

  The king looked into the cup in disgust. “I require your support, brother. Give me troops, then Prague will fall.”

  “I don’t need Prague.”

  “The old seat of the Kaiser, restored to the true faith. It would be a great sign!”

  “I don’t need signs. We’ve always had good signs and good words and good books and good songs, we Protestants, but then we lost on the battlefield, and it was all for nothing. I need victories. I must prevail against Wallenstein. Have you ever met him, do you know him?”

  The King shook his head.

  “I need reports. I think about him all the time. Sometimes I dream about him.” Gustav Adolf went to the other side of the tent, bent down, rummaged in a chest, and held up a wax figure. “This is what he looks like! This is Friedland. I always look at him and think: I will defeat you. You’re shrewd, I’m shrewder. You’re strong, I’m stronger. Your troops love you, mine love me more. You have the devil on your side, but I have God. Every day I tell him that. Sometimes he replies.”

  “He replies?”

  “He has diabolical powers. Of course he replies.” With a suddenly morose expression Gustav Adolf pointed to the whitish face of the wax figure. “Then his mouth moves, and he mocks me. He has a soft voice because he’s small, but I understand everything. Stupid Swede, he calls me, Swedish scum, Gothic brute, and he says that I can’t read. I can read! Shall I show you? I read in three languages. I will defeat that swine. I’ll tear his ears off. I’ll sever his fingers. I’ll burn him to death.”

  “This war began in Prague,” said the King. “Only when we take back—”

  “We’re not doing it,” said Gustav Adolf. “It’s decided, we’re done talking about it.” He sat down on a chair, drank from his cup, and looked at the King with moistly gleaming eyes. “But the Palatinate.”

  “What about the Palatinate?”

  “You have to get it back.”

  It took the King a moment to grasp what he had heard. “Dear brother, you will help me reclaim my hereditary land?”

  “The Spanish troops in the Palatinate, that won’t do, they have to go. Either Wallenstein calls them off or I kill them. They shouldn’t flatter themselves, they may have their invincible infantry squares, but you know what? They’re not so invincible at all, the invincible squares.”

  “Dear brother!” The King reached for Gustav Adolf’s hand.

  He leaped to his feet, squeezing the King’s fingers so tight that the King had to suppress a yelp, put his hand on his shoulder, pulled him to him. The two of them embraced. And they were still doing it, and now that it was still going on, it had been going on for so long that the King’s emotion had disappeared. Finally Gustav Adolf let go of him and began to walk up and down in the tent.

  “When the snow is gone, we’ll come across Bavaria and at the same time from above, a pincer movement, crushing them. Then we’ll make the advance to Heidelberg and drive them out. If all goes well, we won’t even need to fight a big battle before we have the Electoral Palatinate, and then I’ll give it to you as a fief, and then the Kaiser will kick himself.”

  “As a fief?”

  “Yes, how else?”

  “You want to give me the Palatinate as a fief? My own hereditary land?”

  “Yes.”

  “That won’t do.”

  “Sure it will.”

  “The Palatinate doesn’t belong to you.”

  “When I conquer it, it will belong to me.”

  “I thought you had come to the Empire for God and the cause of faith!”

  “I could smack you, of course I have! What do you think, you mouse, you pebble, you trout! But I want something out of it too. If I simply hand over the Palatinate to you, what’s in it for me?”

  “You want money?”

  “I do want money, but money isn’t all I want.”

  “I’ll bring you the support of England.”

  “Because of your wife? Hasn’t done you any good so far. They’ve left you in the lurch. Do you think I’m stupid? Do I look like someone who believes the English are suddenly going to come running now just because you call them?”

  “When I reclaim the Electoral Palatinate, I’ll be the head of the Protestant faction in the Empire, and then they’ll come.”

  “You’ll never again be the head of anything.”

  “How dare—”

  “Quiet down, poor fellow, listen. You played for high stakes, that’s good, I like that. Then you lost, and in the process you set off this whole terrific war. These things happen. Some play for high stakes and win. Like me. A small country, a small military, over in the Empire the Protestant cause seems lost, and who advised me to stake everything on one card, to raise the army and march to Germany? Everyone advised against it. Don’t do it, let it be, you can’t win—but I did it, and I won, and soon I’ll be in Vienna and will tear off Wallenstein’s ears, and the Kaiser will kneel before me, and I’ll say: Do you still want to be Kaiser? Then do what Gustav Adolf tells you! But it could have turned out differently. I could be dead. I could be sitting in a boat and rowing back across the Baltic Sea in tears. It doesn’t do any good to be a real man, strong and clever and fearless, because you can lose anyway. Just as someone can be a fellow like you and can win all the same. Anything is possible. I took a risk and won, you took a risk and lost and then what were you supposed to do? Yes, you could have hanged yourself, but that’s not for everyone, and besides, it’s a sin. That’s why you’re still here. Because you have to do somet
hing. And so you write letters and make requests and demands and come to audiences and speak and negotiate as if you still had any relevance, but you don’t! England isn’t sending you any troops. The Union isn’t coming to your aid. Your brothers in the Empire have abandoned you. There’s only one person who can give you back the Palatinate, and that’s me. And I’ll give it to you as a fief. When you kneel before me and swear allegiance to me as your lord. So what do you say, Friedrich? What’s it going to be?”

  Gustav Adolf crossed his arms and looked the King in the face. His bristly beard trembled. His chest rose and sank. The King could hear his breathing clearly.

  “I need time to think,” the King stammered.

  Gustav Adolf laughed.

  “You can’t expect…” The King cleared his throat, didn’t know how to continue the sentence, rubbed his forehead, implored himself not to lose consciousness again, not now of all times, not now at any price, and started over: “You can’t expect me to make a decision like that without—”

  “That’s exactly what I expect. When I called together my generals to intervene in the war for better or worse, do you think I mulled it over endlessly? Do you think I consulted with my wife? Do you think I prayed first? I shall decide now, I said, and then I decided, and immediately forgot why, but that didn’t matter either, because it was decided! And now the generals were standing in front of me and shouting ‘Vivat!’ and I said: I am the Lion of Midnight! That just occurred to me.” He tapped himself on the forehead. “Things like that just come. I’m not thinking about anything, and suddenly it’s there. The Lion of Midnight! That’s me. So accept the Lion’s offer or decline it, but don’t waste my time.”

  “My family has had sovereignty over the Electoral Palatinate as well as imperial immediacy since—”

  “And you think you can’t be the first of your family to be given the Palatinate by the Swede as a fief. But you’ll see, I’m not a bad fellow. I’ll tax you lightly, and if you don’t feel like coming to Sweden for my birthday, send your chancellor. I won’t hurt you. Take my hand, put it there, don’t be a shoe!”

  “A shoe?” The King wasn’t sure whether he’d heard correctly. Where had this man learned German?