The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,183

all people, the famous Doctor Johann Georg Faustus had saved his life, and that he was now traveling the empire at the man’s side. He was torn between admiration and fear. The doctor’s black eyes were deep and mysterious, like pools in the woods; dark secrets appeared to lie at their bottom, hidden from regular mortals like him. They seemed to magically draw Karl in as well as frighten him. Even after many days on the road together, Faust remained a mystery to him—not least because the doctor wasn’t particularly communicative.

“Is it true that you once found a treasure near Wittenberge by the Elbe?” asked Karl, trying to strike up conversation. They had not long left the city of Ulm.

“What? Is that what they say?” The doctor turned and met Karl’s inquisitive gaze. “And? Was it gold ducats, diamonds, or the philosopher’s stone? Although according to another rumor, I already found the latter in Krakow.” Clearly, the never-ending questions of his new travel companion had begun to annoy Faust, and yet Karl thought he could see a vain side in the itinerant scholar.

“Well, apparently you were digging in an old cellar when you found a worm who guarded a treasure. You chased the worm away with a mirror, and the treasure—”

“Do you really think I would sit on this rickety old wagon and sell cheap swill if I’d found a treasure?”

“It makes for a good story, at least.” Karl sighed. “I’m beginning to get the impression that not even half of what they say about you is true.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to find out what’s true and what isn’t. Giddyup!”

The doctor flicked the reins and the wagon rattled on, always toward the next rise, the next mountain range on the horizon. Satan stormed ahead, occasionally howling with pleasure, its jowls dripping. Satan was the hellish messenger announcing the famous Doctor Faustus, magician, chiromancer, miracle worker, and astrologer, in the townships along the imperial road. As alternative means of defense, the wagon also carried a sword and a newfangled wheel-lock pistol, but they hadn’t needed the weapons so far. The sight of Satan alone made wayside robbers take to their heels.

They usually stopped in larger cities, where Faust and his assistant stayed for several days at a time. In the course of the following weeks they visited Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Würzburg, Mainz, and Frankfurt am Main, a large city of commerce, where they set up shop at the cloth market in front of the city hall and thrilled the crowds. Leipzig aside, Karl hadn’t seen much of the empire.

Every city had its own smells. The pungent stench of lime kilns, the delicious smell of baked gingerbread, the numbing scent of hop mash, and the blood odor of freshly slaughtered pigs—but most of all, the stink of the gutter. Dialects changed and so did the people, who gaped at the two travelers as if they were kings from the Orient, and made the sign of the cross once they’d passed. After his initial reservations, Karl began to like this way of traveling. He enjoyed the wide world of the highway, which was so different from the drab routine at the university. His role as the announcer, assistant, and joker was growing on him, even if he’d never become an outstanding juggler.

Faust’s reputation preceded him. Even from afar, people recognized the wagon with the strange-looking symbols and the mysterious man on the box seat with the blue-and-black star cloak and the floppy hat. The doctor usually rented a room in one of the better inns and set up on the market square to sell his foul and potent theriac. Faust read palms, cast quick horoscopes, and placed his hand on people’s foreheads after previously rubbing his palm with his stinking miracle cure. It was one of Karl’s jobs to appear as a blind young soldier who was healed by the famous Doctor Faustus.

But the biggest attraction by far was always the laterna magica.

They’d use the biggest room with shutters at the tavern. People paid two hellers’ admittance and had the experience of a lifetime inside the darkened room. They’d never seen anything like it. The spectators trembled with fear as the ghastliest figures appeared on a white sheet stretched at the front of the room: devils, fiends, witches, and ghosts that Faust invoked with a loud voice and then chased away with the help of Latin spells. The cries of the audience could be heard in the streets, and people staggered