In the gutter

In the gutter

I have no name, I have no parents. As far as I can tell, I was probably born in a urinal. This is how I earn my living: I walk through the alleys collecting shit and piss. The maître d' gave me this job. I'm glad I have it. I'm glad the maître d' exists.

The maître d' found me under a bridge, as he says, as an abandoned infant. Since then, he's given me bread. He gives bread to all of us: Jean, Philippe, the skinny Antoinette, and Roman, the Gypsy who proudly calls himself a Gypsy. In the evenings, we get broth, on Sundays with a piece of meat.

Le Maitre takes care of us. We sleep in his cellar, where there are straw mattresses and a stove. Le Maitre makes sure we wash when we come back from our excursions. He taught us how to pray. He says there's a place for everyone on earth. If we work hard, maybe we'll amount to something.

They call me "the handsome one." Antoinette likes to flirt with me, but she's too thin for my taste. Last year, I went to Madame d'Izère's ladies' room for the first time. The maître d' said I was a man now and should experience it. He paid for it. It was lovely. Afterwards, in Madame d'Izère's salon, there was cake, which I'd never tasted before. Cake tastes better than bread, but it's not as filling. You always want more.

I walk through the Rue des Forgerons, inspecting the chamber pots standing in front of the doors. People used to empty their chamber pots out of their windows onto the street, which even affected some noblemen traveling through the city with their carriages. The king forbade emptying chamber pots into the gutter. The maître d' has the license to have urine and excrement collected. We're the crew that does it. Le maître d' is a courtier. He's a respected man. And rich. He turns excrement into gold.

The work isn't easy. You have to be careful. Urine goes in the barrel on my cart. I collect excrement in a large zinc tub with a heavy lid. You have to separate both carefully. And of course, always wear gloves. The maître d' also impressed upon us the importance of washing ourselves thoroughly after work.

The smell doesn't bother me. That's strange, because my own feces don't smell at all. Not a bit, no matter what I eat. I urinate a lot, always the same color, a stream the color of amber. I can't remember ever being sick in my life.

We deliver the urine to the tanners down by the river. We take the excrement to the city walls, to the Champ de la Merde. There it has to sit until it's usable as fertilizer. We're called by many names. One of them is: "the gold diggers."

"Hey, handsome!" I look up. From the upstairs window of the blacksmith Gramasse's house, his cross-eyed daughter Babette grins at me. Her face is covered in pockmarks, and you never know if she's looking at you or past you. But she has the biggest tits in town. She's just heaved them onto the windowsill; I can barely see her face above them. She's not wearing a corset, and her nipples are clearly visible beneath her thin blouse.

“Hey, Babette,” I call back, waving with one hand, grabbing a chamber pot with the other and sniffing it. “What did you have for dinner last night? Cabbage?” She laughs, lets out a thunderous fart, and closes the window.

It's very early in the morning, the streets are still quiet. We're doing our first round after people have relieved themselves after sleeping. Roman whistles. That means I should hurry. He's standing at the corner and beckons me. The Gypsy accompanies me for my protection and otherwise doesn't lift a finger. He would never do my jobs; according to his people's customs, they would make him unclean. I can already see Roman turning the corner and waving to me.

The gypsy is a strange bird: eyes like coal, a stooped but poised posture; colorful shirts, baggy trousers, always barefoot, even in winter. The maître d' had him with him when he came to town.

No one knows where the maître d' came from, and he never talks about it. One day, so the story goes, he suddenly appeared, rented an unassuming house, and had heavy chests unloaded from his carriage. They were apparently made of a dark wood that doesn't grow in these parts.

Roman is a bit older than us and likes to act as the maître d's "right-hand man." But he has to bow and scrape just like the rest of us. Le Maitre brooks no dissent. Anyone who doesn't follow the rules is out immediately. The rules are simple: pray morning, noon, and night. Get up at five, go to bed at nine. Collect excrement twice a day. Utmost cleanliness. No detours.

Several have already been kicked out for shoplifting an apple at the market or for succumbing to the temptation of a pocket watch dangling from the tree, ready to be picked. The maître d' shows criminals the door. And never lets them back in.

I need to hurry. Three more house numbers, eight more chamber pots. Schmiedegasse is still deserted. This is how I like the city best: without its pompous citizens who consider us utter scum, but who would suffocate in their own without our services.

I don't think I'm from this city. I don't feel at home here. "You're probably an enchanted prince from beyond the Great Mountains," skinny Antoinette teases me whenever I bring it up. So I keep my mouth shut. I learned that well from the maître d', how to keep my mouth shut.

We have to take our carts to the city gate and out to the Champ de Merde. A sleepy guard turns his back on us as we pass through the gate. Outside, we have to go a little way along the trade route before we can turn off towards the shit field.

Roman, who's letting me pull the cart alone, nods forward with his chin. "Look over there!" A cloud of dust is approaching the town. At least a dozen riders are on the move. "Must be distinguished people," says Roman. "I can see three carriages." The guy has eyes like a lynx. I see nothing but swirling dust, no matter how hard I squint.

But then I hear the clatter of hooves and shouts. In the cloud of dust, I can now make out standards and flags. A group of riders breaks away from the main group. They mercilessly spur their horses and charge towards us. There are three of them, with a giant in silver armor at the front—he must be the leader. He almost runs us over.

"Move aside, scum!" the guy shouts and kicks at us. Roman falls against me, I stagger against the cart, the cart tips over. Piss and shit spill across the trade route. A whole morning's work for nothing.

The Silver Man's horse prances and flares its nostrils. He holds a bullwhip in his hand, swinging it over our heads. The giant's two companions lash out at us with the broadsides of their swords. We hop around between the horses like firecrackers, trying to dodge whips, blades, and hooves.

In vain. A sword strikes Roman on the head. He falls right into the spilled excrement and screams bloody murder – not from fright, but from shame. For the Gypsy, contact with the excrement is far more unpleasant than for the rest of us; it makes him not only dirty, but unclean – a great disgrace.

The knights roar. The giant stops his horse in front of me, presses the handle of his whip against my throat and yells: "Clean up your stinking buddy and the other rubbish, you freak! And hurry up!"

The pig had flipped up his visor, and I took a good look at the face behind it. Chubby cheeks, a mustache like two shoelaces, poisonous green eyes, a nose reddened by wine. I remember that face. I take off my jacket and use it to roughly clear the path. Roman trudges groaning to the side of the road.

The vanguard gallops on towards the city. Now the entourage passes us: six more armored horsemen in front, followed by three carriages. The first three knights carry different standards: one with three lilies, one with a sun, one with two dragons.

From the windows of passing carriages, their doors bearing the same coats of arms, powdered ladies' faces gaze at me. The young women, with beauty marks and towering hairstyles, fan themselves and hold smelling salt bottles under their noses.

Three riders bring up the rear of the procession. One kicks at me. I stumble and fall on top of Roman. He stinks and groans horribly. I look at the gash on his forehead. A lot of blood, but nothing serious, I hope. I have nothing clean left to wipe the blood away. Roman is unconscious. I cradle his head in my lap and watch the group of travelers depart. Two piercing green eyes are indelibly etched in my memory.

First interlude: The Brown Hand rises

The king must go. That was the core tenet of the manifesto of the secret society Brown Hand. It was a straightforward program, containing only this one point. Furthermore, the secret society was so extremely secretive that its existence was known only to one of its members, the only one so far.

Princep Siklovic buried his incomplete incisors deep into his cracked lower lip, which still had some chewing tobacco flavoring on it, while he wrote the sentence "The king must go" with extreme linguistic and physical effort.

The beginnings of the rebel's secret society were humble, like all cradles of great promises of salvation, as meager as its dwelling and its education. The former, a ramshackle cottage outside the city near the sewage fields, furnished with a wobbly stool, a plank on bricks for a table, and a straw mattress for a bed, was considerably more impressive than the latter.

After the conspiracy, conceived that evening by the light of a smoldering lamp, was uncovered, handwriting experts puzzled for a long time over the original wording of the manifesto. They agreed on "Dr Knög mss wech" (The king must go) and distilled from it the stirring cry of liberation, "The king must go!", which Siklovic believed he had just committed to paper, fearless, unwashed, and unheard of – for now.

Siklovic needed co-conspirators less urgently than a bomb. A bomb was essential, that much was clear. Who had ever heard of an assassination without a bomb? In fact, no one among the long-suffering subjects of the declining kingdom, ruled for centuries by an unbroken succession of the most incompetent rulers of incestuous blood, had ever heard of an assassination or any plans for one, even though there were plenty of reasons to. Until then, there had only been ice bombs. But not as an instrument for the liberation of the masses, but rather as an exclusive culinary delight at court.

The bomb would be sorted out. First, they could consider co-conspirators. Princep Siklovic bent deeply over a second piece of paper, on which he listed the following founding members of his deadly secret society:

All his brothers and cousins, except for Andros, who had once stolen a goat from him. Then there was Babette, the blacksmith's daughter, because she had the biggest breasts in town. Princep placed importance on adequate representation of the female population in the liberation movement.

Who else was a possibility? And where would the damn bomb come from? No bomb, no revolution. A guillotine would be nice too. Maybe world domination after that.

Princep chewed thoughtfully, and somehow blissfully, on the end of his pencil stub. He probably needed financial assistance from abroad. And a new pencil, too. Princep stubbed out a bit of graphite.

Since it was too late to write anyway, Princep switched off the lamp and lay down on his straw mattress. He briefly considered going to the nearby pond to wash himself, but then, as every evening, preferred not to stand out from the stench of his goats in front of the house – for camouflage purposes.

Princep was a cunning conspirator, a complete scoundrel. We'd be hearing more about him. And smelling of him again.

The door to a world of wonders

Roman isn't doing well. We made it back home, but the maître d' isn't here. He's "at court." How that sounds. I wonder if that silver-skinned villain with the poisonous green eyes is hanging around there too? The one who got Roman into such a mess? Roman's head wound isn't actually that bad, but it'll get infected because he fell headfirst into the shit. There's just too much shit in the world.

It isn't long before Roman is feverish, Roman is talking. About the passage to the realm of souls. About Lajavo, shame. About the Gypsy court, the Kris. All of this makes little sense, but it frightens me greatly. I hold Roman tight. Antoinette says he's gone. Where is the maître d'? The maître d' could surely help. But he's not there.

I have to do something. I'm going to the Rue du Pharmacien. The pharmacy is a place I've only been to once before, accompanied by the maître d', who wasn't feeling well at the time. When you stand in front of the pharmacy door, you have to pull a bell.

A hatch opens in the heavy oak door. "Well, well," says the pharmacist, peering at me over a nosepiece holding two magnifying glasses. "What does the maître d' need today? More dewormer for his mangy puppies?"

I clench my fists, but I do it behind my back as I bow. As I straighten up, something in my eyes warns the pharmacist. "The young gentleman wishes?" he asks, reaching for the shutter, ready to slam it shut.

“Roman has a fever,” I blurt out.

"How high is the fever?"

“Deadly, says Antoinette.”

"Ah, Dr. Antoinette, the leading expert, naturally. There are no doctors outside the castle, certainly no female ones, and thankfully there never will be any, anywhere."

Everyone in town goes to the apothecary when something pinches, pinches, or bothers them. He is a barber-surgeon, surgeon, dentist, wound healer, and midwife all in one. Up in the castle, there are a dozen real doctors. They are exclusively for the king and his private court and never show their faces in the town.

“Roman is dying,” I insist. “Please, Your Grace, he needs your help!”

The pharmacist looked at me doubtfully, but not unkindly. "Well, we'll see. And if so, it will be God's will, si Dieu le veut. The young gentleman may follow me." The door with the hatch, where the pharmacist handles customer requests, takes orders, and hands out powders and tinctures, swung inwards. For the first time, I saw what lay behind it: a world full of wonders.

I enter a room filled from floor to ceiling with shelves and cabinets, all made of the same wood, cherry, I believe. Large and small drawers bear enamel plaques with inscriptions. I cannot decipher them because I cannot read. Porcelain vessels of all sizes stand on the shelves, along with bottles containing clear and cloudy liquids. Something is floating in some of them, and it doesn't look good.

From the center of the cabinet of curiosities, a massive marble block rises from the black and white checkered tiled floor. On the block, I can make out knives, tongs, mortars, large spoons and bowls, as well as other mysterious implements I've never seen before. Above the block, a scale with two brass pans hangs from the ceiling.

And there, suspended by chains from the ceiling beams, hangs across the room: a gigantic creature, probably four meters long, covered in green-gray scales, with clawed feet and a gaping mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth. It is utterly terrifying. A dragon, most certainly a dragon!

"You can close your mouth again, my boy," the pharmacist said, amused, and closed the door behind me. I turned to him. He was a thin man with pale, wrinkled skin like parchment and wore a leather cap with earflaps, beneath which gray hair peeked out. He wore an apron over his doublet and pointed shoes with buckles, silver buckles, neatly polished.

I point to the ceiling. "That, that," I stammer, "that's a..." "A crocodile, yes," the pharmacist interrupts, placing a hand on my twitching shoulder. "Don't worry, it can't hurt you anymore. It's been dead for a long time and comes from far, far away. Where the sun always shines."

Where the sun always shines! "How far?" I ask, having almost forgotten why I came. "Further than the Bois de Laballe?" "Much farther," says the pharmacist, "far to the east, where many of my ingredients come from. Including this." He goes to the marble block and spoons something from one of the bowls into a paper bag. "You're in luck, I've just prepared a quinine mixture."

He carefully folds the paper bag, sets it down, and reaches for another, which he fills with herbs from one of the scale pans. "Here, take this too. It's a tea made from willow bark, meadowsweet, elderflower, and linden blossom. Brew it and give it to Roman to drink, twice a day. He'll sweat even more, but that's good. Dissolve the white powder in the other bag in wine or beer—for heaven's sake, don't use the water from our well. Give it to him to drink once a day, and the fever will go down. And you can do something else for your Roman."

"What?", I ask, and have to glance again at the crocodile thing on the ceiling.

“Pray,” the pharmacist says, chuckling, and gently pushes me toward the door. “Tell the maître d' that I'll issue the bill as usual,” he instructs me as I stand on the threshold. “As usual?” “Yes. Normal price. But it doubles if the patient survives the treatment.” Behind the now-closed oak door, I hear the pharmacist chuckle again. I clutch the paper bags to my chest and run home.