Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann

Author:Daniel Kehlmann [Kehlmann, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

II

Gustav Adolf had no right to keep him waiting. Not only because it was impolite. No, he literally wasn’t permitted to do it. How one behaved toward other royal personages was not at one’s discretion, it was governed by strict rules. The crown of Saint Wenceslas was older than the crown of Sweden, and Bohemia was the older and richer of the two lands, thus the ruler of Bohemia enjoyed seniority over a king of Sweden—not to mention the fact that an elector too had royal rank, the Palatine court had once had an official opinion issued on it, it was proven. Now, it was true, he had been placed under the imperial ban, but the Swedish king had declared war on the Kaiser who had imposed the ban, and the Protestant Union had never accepted the revocation of the electoral dignity, therefore the King of Sweden was obliged to treat him as an elector and as such he had equal status to him—an equal status in general princely rank, and if one took into account how far back the family traced its lineage, the Palatine House clearly outranked the House of Vasa. Thus, however you looked at it, it wouldn’t do that Gustav Adolf was keeping him waiting.

The king had a headache. He had difficulty breathing. He had not been prepared for the smell of the camp. He had known that cleanliness didn’t prevail when thousands upon thousands of soldiers along with their supply train were camping in one place, and he still remembered the smell of his own army, which he had commanded outside Prague before it disappeared, seeping away into the ground, dispersing like smoke, but that had been nothing like this—this was unimaginable. You smelled the camp even before it came into view, a whiff of sourness and acridity hovering over the depopulated landscape.

“God, how it stinks,” the King had said.

“Awful,” the fool had replied. “Absolutely awful. Winter King, it’s time you took a bath.”

The cook and the four soldiers the Dutch States General had reluctantly given him for protection had laughed stupidly, and the King had considered for a moment whether he should put up with it, but that’s what fools were for, in the end, such conduct was proper when you were a king. The world treated you with respect, but this one person was permitted to say anything.

“The King needs a bath,” said the cook.

“He needs to wash his feet,” cried a soldier.

The King looked at Count Hudenitz riding next to him, but since the count’s face remained impassive, he could pretend he hadn’t heard it.

“And behind his ears,” said another soldier, and again everyone laughed except the count and the fool.

The King didn’t know what he ought to do. It would have been appropriate to strike at the shameless fellow, but he didn’t feel well, for days he had had a cough, and what if the man struck back? The soldier was ultimately answerable to the States General, not to him.

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