Tales From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio

by Giovanni Boccaccio

  Now, it so happened that one year, when Calandrino’s wife was not feeling very well, he went to the farm by himself to slaughter the pig. And when Bruno and Buffalmacco heard about this, knowing that his wife was remaining behind, they went to stay for a few days with a priest, who was a very great friend of theirs and lived near Calandrino’s farm.

  Calandrino had slaughtered the pig on the morning of the very day they arrived, and on seeing them with the priest, he called out to them, saying:

  ‘I bid you a hearty welcome, my friends. Come along inside, and I’ll show you what an excellent farmer I am.’ And having taken them into the farmhouse, he showed them the pig.

  It was a very fine pig, as they could see for themselves, and when they learnt from Calandrino that he intended to salt it and take it back to his family, Bruno said:

  ‘You must be out of your mind! Why not sell it, so that we can all have a good time on the proceeds? You can always tell your wife it’s been stolen.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ said Calandrino. ‘She wouldn’t believe me, and she’d kick me out of the house. Now, stop pestering me, because I shall never do anything of the sort.’

  They argued with him at great length, but it was no use. And after Calandrino had invited them to stay for supper with so reluctant an air that they decided not to accept, they all took their leave of him.

  After leaving Calandrino, Bruno said to Buffalmacco:

  ‘Why don’t we steal that pig of his tonight?’

  ‘But how are we to do that?’ said Buffalmacco.

  ‘I’ve already thought of a good way to do it,’ said Bruno, ‘provided that he doesn’t move it to some other place.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Buffalmacco, ‘let’s do it. After all, why not? And when the deed is done, you and I, and our friend the priest here, will all make merry together.’

  The priest was very much in favour of this idea, and so Bruno said:

  ‘This thing calls for a certain amount of finesse. Now you know, Buffalmacco, don’t you, that Calandrino is a mean sort of fellow, who’s very fond of drinking when other people pay. So let’s go and take him to the tavern, where the priest can pretend to play the host to the rest of us and pay for all the drinks. When he sees that he has nothing to pay, Calandrino will drink himself into a stupor, and then the rest will be plain sailing because there’s no one else staying at the house.’

  Everything turned out as Bruno had predicted. When Calandrino saw that the priest would not allow him to pay, he began to drink like a fish, and quaffed a great deal more than he needed to make him drunk. By the time he left the tavern, it was already very late, and not wishing to eat any supper, he staggered off home and went to bed, thinking he had bolted the door whereas in fact he had left it wide open.

  Buffalmacco and Bruno went and had supper with the priest, and when the meal was over they stealthily made their way to Caland-rino’s house, taking with them certain implements so that they could break in at the spot that Bruno had decided on earlier in the day. On finding the door open, however, they walked in, collected the pig, and carted it off to the priest’s house, where they stowed it away and went off to bed.

  Next morning, having slept off the effects of the wine, Calandrino got up and went downstairs to find that his pig had gone and the door was open. So he went round asking various people whether they knew who had taken the pig, and being unable to find any trace of it, he began to make a great outcry, shouting: ‘Alas! Woe is me! Somebody’s stolen my pig!’

  Meanwhile, Bruno and Buffalmacco got up and went round to Calandrino’s to hear what he had to say about the pig. And no sooner did he catch sight of them than he called out to them, almost in tears, saying:

  ‘Alas, my friends, somebody’s stolen my pig.’

  Bruno then went up to him, and, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, he said:

  ‘Fancy that! So you’ve had a bit of sense at last, have you?’

  ‘Pah!’ exclaimed Calandrino. ‘I’m telling you the gospel truth.’

  ‘That’s the way,’ said Bruno. ‘Go on shouting like that, so that people will think it’s really happened.’

  Whereupon Calandrino began to shout even louder, saying:

  ‘God’s body, man, I tell you it’s been stolen, it really has.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent,’ said Bruno. ‘Keep it up, give the thing plenty of voice and make yourself heard, so as to make it sound convincing.’

  ‘You’ll drive me to perdition in a minute,’ said Calandrino. ‘Do I have to hang myself by the neck before I can convince you that it really has been stolen?’

  ‘Get away with you!’ said Bruno. ‘How can that be, when I saw it there myself only yesterday? Are you trying to make me believe it’s flown away?’

  ‘It’s gone, I tell you,’ said Calandrino.

  ‘Go on,’ said Bruno, ‘you’re joking.’

  ‘I swear to you I’m telling the truth,’ said Calandrino. ‘What am I to do now? I can’t go back home without the pig. My wife will never believe me, but even if she does, she’ll make my life a misery for the next twelve months.’

  ‘Upon my soul,’ said Bruno, ‘it’s a serious business, if you’re speaking the truth. But as you know, Calandrino, I was telling you only yesterday that you ought to say this. I wouldn’t like to think that you were fooling your wife and us too at the same time.’

  Calandrino protested loudly, saying:

  ‘Ah! why are you so intent on driving me to despair and provoking me to curse God and all the Saints in Heaven? I tell you the pig was stolen from me during the night.’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ said Buffalmacco, ‘we’ll have to see if we can find some way of getting it back.’

  ‘How are we to do that?’ asked Calandrino.

  So Buffalmacco said:

  ‘Whoever took your pig, we can be quite sure that he didn’t come all the way from India to do it. It must have been one of your neighbours. So all you have to do is to bring them all together so that I can give them the bread and cheese test,1 and we’ll soon see who’s got it.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Bruno, ‘your bread and cheese will work miracles, I’m sure, on some of the fine folk who live around here. It’s quite obvious that one of them has the pig. They’d guess what we were up to, and stay away.’

  ‘What’s to be done, then?’ asked Buffalmacco.

  ‘What we ought to do,’ Bruno replied, ‘is to use the best ginger sweets we can get hold of, along with some fine Vernaccia wine, and invite them round for a drink. They wouldn’t suspect anything, and they’d all turn up. And it’s just as easy to bless ginger sweets as it is to bless bread and cheese.’

  ‘You certainly have a point there,’ said Buffalmacco. ‘What do you say, Calandrino? Shall we give it a try?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Calandrino. ‘Let’s do that, for the love of God. If only I could find out who took it, I shouldn’t feel half so miserable about it!’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ said Bruno. ‘Now I’d be quite willing to go to Florence and get these things for you, if you’ll give me the money.’

  Calandrino gave him all the money he had, which amounted to about forty pence, and so Bruno went to Florence and called on a friend of his, who was an apothecary. Having bought a pound of the best ginger sweets he had in stock, he got him to make two special ones, consisting of dog ginger2 seasoned with fresh hepatic aloes; then he had these coated with sugar, like the rest, and so as not to lose them or confuse them with the others, he had a tiny mark put on them which enabled him to recognize them without any difficulty. And having bought a flask of fine Vernaccia, he returned to Calandrino’s place in the country, and said to him:

  ‘See to it that you invite all the people you suspect to come and drink with you tomorrow morning. It’s a holiday, so they’ll all come readily enough. Tonight, along with Buffalmacco, I shall cast a spell on the sweets, and bring them round to your house first thing tomorrow morning. I shall hand the sweets out mys
elf, to save you the trouble, and I shall pronounce all the right words and do all the right things.’

  Calandrino issued the invitations, and next morning a goodly crowd of people assembled round the elm in front of the church, of whom some were farmworkers and others were young Florentines who happened to be staying in the country. Then along came Bruno and Buffalmacco with the box of sweets and the flask of wine, and having got them to stand in a circle, Bruno made the following announcement:

  ‘Gentlemen, I must explain to you why you are here, so that if you should take offence at anything that happens, you won’t go and blame it on me. The night before last, Calandrino, who is here among us, was robbed of a fine fat pig, and he can’t find out who has taken it. And since it could only have been taken by one of the people here, he wants to discover who it was by offering, to each of you in turn, one of these sweets to eat, together with a drink of this wine. I should explain to you right away that whoever has taken the pig will be unable to swallow the sweet – in fact, he will find it more bitter than poison, and spit it out. So before he is put to so much shame in the presence of all these people, perhaps it would be better for the person responsible to make a clean breast of it to the priest, and I can call the whole thing off.’

  All of them were only too eager to eat one of the sweets, and so Bruno, having lined them up with Calandrino in the middle, started from one end and began to hand one out to each of them in turn. When he came to Calandrino, he picked up one of the sweets of the canine variety and placed it in the palm of his hand. Calandrino promptly tossed it into his mouth and began to chew on it, but no sooner did his tongue come into contact with the aloe than, finding the bitter taste quite intolerable, he spat it out again.

  They were all keeping a close watch on one another to see who was going to spit out his sweet, and Bruno, who still had several more to distribute, carried on as though nothing had happened until he heard a voice behind him saying: ‘Hey, Calandrino, what’s the meaning of this?’ Turning quickly round, and seeing that Calandrino had spat his out, he said:

  ‘Wait a minute! Perhaps he spat it out for some other reason. Here, take another!’ And picking up the second one, he thrust it into Calandrino’s mouth before proceeding to hand out the ones he had left.

  Bitter as Calandrino had found the first, the second seemed a great deal more so, but being ashamed to spit it out, he kept it in his mouth for a while. As he chewed away at it, tears as big as hazelnuts began to roll down his cheeks until eventually, being unable to bear it any longer, he spat it out like the first.

  Buffalmacco was meanwhile handing out drinks all round, with the assistance of Bruno. And when, along with all the others, they observed what had happened, everyone declared that Calandrino had obviously stolen the pig himself, and there were one or two who gave him a severe scolding about it.

  However, when the crowd had dispersed, leaving Bruno and Buffalmacco alone with Calandrino, Buffalmacco turned to him and said:

  ‘I was convinced all along that you were the one who had taken it. You were just pretending to us that it had been stolen so that you wouldn’t have to buy us a few drinks out of the proceeds.’

  Calandrino, who still had the bitter taste of the aloe in his mouth, swore to them that he had not taken the pig, but Buffalmacco said:

  ‘Own up, man, how much did it fetch? Six florins?’

  Calandrino was by now on the brink of despair, but Bruno said:

  ‘You might as well know, Calandrino, that one of the fellows we were drinking and eating with this morning told me that you had a girl up here, that you kept her for your pleasure and gave her all the little titbits that came your way, and that he was quite certain you had sent her this pig of yours. You’ve become quite an expert at fooling people, haven’t you? Remember the time you took us along the Mugnone?3 There we were, collecting those black stones, and as soon as you’d got us stranded up the creek without a paddle, you cleared off home, and then tried to make us believe that you’d found the thing. And now that you’ve given away the pig, or sold it rather, you think you can persuade us, by uttering a few oaths, that it’s been stolen. But you can’t fool us any more: we’ve cottoned on to these tricks of yours. As a matter of fact, that’s why we took so much trouble with the spell we cast on the sweets; and unless you give us two brace of capons for our pains, we intend to tell Monna Tessa the whole story.’

  Seeing that they refused to believe him, and thinking that he had enough trouble on his hands without letting himself in for a diatribe from his wife, Calandrino gave them the two brace of capons. And after they had salted the pig, they carried their spoils back to Florence with them, leaving Calandrino to scratch his head and rue his losses.

  SEVENTH STORY

  A scholar falls in love with a widow, who, being in love with someone else, causes him to spend a winter’s night waiting for her in the snow. But on a later occasion, as a result of following his advice, she is forced to spend a whole day, in mid July, at the top of a tower, where, being completely naked, she is exposed to the flies and the gadflies and the rays of the sun.

  Though the ladies shook with laughter over the hapless Calandrino, they would have laughed even more if the people who had stolen his pig had not relieved him also of his capons, which made them feel sorry for him. However, the story having come to an end, the queen called upon Pampinea to tell hers, and she began forthwith, as follows:

  Dearest ladies, one cunning deed is often capped by another, and hence it is unwise to take a delight in deceiving others. Many of the stories already narrated have caused us to laugh a great deal over tricks that people have played on each other, but in no case have we heard of the victim avenging himself. I therefore propose to enlist your sympathy for an act of just retribution that was dealt to a fellow townswoman of ours, who very nearly lost her life when she was hoist with her own petard. Nor will it be unprofitable for you to hear this tale, for it will teach you to think twice before playing tricks on people, which is always a sensible precaution.

  Not many years ago, there lived in Florence a young woman called Elena, who was fair of body, proud of spirit, very gently bred, and reasonably well endowed with Fortune’s blessings. When her husband died prematurely, leaving her a widow,1 she made up her mind that she would never remarry, having fallen in love with a handsome and charming young man of her own choosing. And now that she was free from all other cares, she succeeded, with the assistance of a maidservant whom she greatly trusted, in passing many a pleasant hour in his arms, to the wondrous delight of both parties.

  Now it happened that around that time, a young nobleman of our city called Rinieri,2 having spent some years studying in Paris with the purpose, not of selling his knowledge for gain as many people do, but of learning the reasons and causes of things (a most fitting pursuit for any gentleman), returned from Paris to Florence. There he was held in high esteem for his nobility and his learning, and he led the life of a gentleman.

  But it frequently happens that the more keen a man’s awareness of life’s profundities, the more vulnerable he is to the forces of Love, and so it was in the case of this Rinieri. For one day, being in need of a little diversion, he went to a banquet, where his eyes came to rest upon this young woman, Elena, who was dressed (as our widows usually are) in black, and seemed to him the loveliest and most fascinating woman he had ever seen. He thought to himself that the man to whom God should grant the favour of holding her naked in his arms could truly claim that he was in Paradise. And having stolen many a cautious glance at the lady, knowing that so great and precious a prize could not be won without considerable effort, he firmly resolved to devote all his care and attention to pleasing the lady, so that he might win her love and savour her manifest beauty to the full.

  The young woman, who was her own greatest admirer, was not in the habit of keeping her eyes fixed upon the ground, but darted coy glances in every direction and swiftly singled out those men who were showing an interest in her. And on cat
ching sight of Rinieri, she laughed to herself and thought: ‘I shan’t have wasted my time in coming here today, for unless I am mistaken, I’m about to lead a simpleton by the nose.’ She then began to look at him every so often out of the corner of her eye, and did her utmost to make it appear that she took an interest in him, being of the opinion, in any case, that the more men she could entice and conquer with her charms, the more highly would her beauty be prized, especially by the young man on whom, along with her love, she had bestowed it.

  The learned scholar, setting all philosophical meditations aside, filled his mind exclusively with thoughts of the lady; and thinking it would please her, he discovered where she lived and began to walk past her house at frequent intervals, inventing various pretexts for passing that way. For the reason already mentioned, this greatly encouraged the lady’s vanity, and she pretended to be very flattered. And so at the first opportunity the scholar made friends with her maidservant, declared his love for the lady, and begged her to use her influence with her mistress so that he might win her favours.

  The maid promised him the moon and reported their conversation to her mistress, who laughed so much that she nearly died. And she said:

  ‘I wonder where he’s left all that wisdom that he brought back with him from Paris? But never mind, let’s give him what he’s looking for. Next time he speaks to you, tell him that I love him far more than he loves me; but tell him that I have to protect my honour, so that I may hold up my head in the company of other women. And if he’s as wise a man as they say he is, this ought to make him think more highly of me.’

  Ah, what a poor, misguided wretch she must have been, dear ladies, to suppose that she could get the better of a scholar!