Tales From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio

by Giovanni Boccaccio

  ‘Before you go complaining, my dear, listen to what I have to say to you. I loved Spinelloccio as a brother, and I still do, but yesterday I discovered, without his knowing it, that my trust in him had come to this, that he makes love just as freely to my wife as he does to you. Now, because I love him, the only revenge I propose to take is one that exactly matches the offence. He has possessed my wife, and I intend to possess you. If you refuse to cooperate, I shall certainly catch him out sooner or later, and since I have no intention of allowing his offence to go unpunished, I shall deal with him in such a way as to make both of your lives a perpetual misery.’

  Having listened to Zeppa’s story and questioned him closely about it, the woman was convinced that he was telling the truth, and she said:

  ‘My dear Zeppa, if I have to bear the brunt of your revenge, so be it; but only if you will see that your wife harbours no resentment against me over this deed we are obliged to perform, just as I myself, in spite of what she has done to me, intend to harbour none against her.’

  To which Zeppa replied:

  ‘I shall certainly see to that; and what’s more, I shall present you with as fair and precious a jewel as any you possess.’ So saying, he took her in his arms and began to kiss her; and having laid her on the chest in which her husband was imprisoned, he sported with her upon it to his heart’s content, and she with him.

  Spinelloccio, who was inside the chest and had not only heard all that Zeppa had said but also his wife’s reply and the fandango that shortly thereafter took place directly above his head, was torn with anguish, and felt at any moment he would die. But for his fear of Zeppa, he would have given his wife a severe scolding, even though he was under lock and key. In the end, however, recalling that he himself was to blame in the first place, that Zeppa was justified in doing this to him and that he had chosen a civil and comradely way of taking his revenge, Spinelloccio vowed that, if Zeppa was agreeable, they would thenceforth become greater friends than ever.

  Having taken his fill of pleasure, Zeppa stepped down from the chest, and on being asked by the lady for the jewel he had promised, he opened the door and summoned his wife. The only words she uttered, on entering the room, were:

  ‘My dear, you’ve paid me back in my own coin.’ And as she said this, she laughed.

  Then Zeppa said to her:

  ‘Open up this chest.’

  She duly obeyed, and turning to the lady, Zeppa pointed to the huddled figure of her husband, Spinelloccio, who was now revealed inside it.

  It would be hard to decide which of the two was the more embarrassed: Spinelloccio, on seeing Zeppa standing over him and knowing that he knew what he had done; or the lady, on seeing her husband and realizing that he had heard and felt what she had been doing directly above his head.

  However, Zeppa broke the silence, saying to the lady:

  ‘Here’s the jewel I promised to give you.’

  Spinelloccio now emerged from the chest, and without making too much fuss, he said:

  ‘Now we are quits, Zeppa. So let us remain friends, as you were saying just now to my wife. And since we have always shared everything in common except our wives, let us share them as well.’

  Zeppa having consented to this proposal, all four breakfasted together in perfect amity. And from that day forth, each of the ladies had two husbands, and each of the men had two wives, nor did this arrangement ever give rise to any argument or dispute between them.

  NINTH STORY

  Being eager to ‘go the course’ with a company of revellers, Master Simone, a physician, is prevailed upon by Bruno and Buffalmacco to proceed by night to a certain spot, where he is thrown by Buffalmacco into a ditch and left to wallow in its filth.

  When the ladies had quite finished commenting upon the two Sienese and their wife-sharing, the queen, who short of offending Dioneo was the only one left to address them, began as follows:

  When you consider, fond ladies, how richly Spinelloccio deserved the trick played upon him by Zeppa, you will I think agree with what Pampinea was saying earlier, when she tried to show that one should not judge a person too harshly for playing a trick on another, if the victim is being hoist with his own petard, or if he is simply asking to be made a fool of. The case of Spinelloccio belongs to the first of these categories, and I now propose to tell you of a man who belonged to the second, for I consider that those who played the trick upon him are worthy rather of praise than of blame. The man to whom I refer was a physician, who came to Florence from Bologna, like the ass that he was, covered in vair1 from head to tail.

  We are constantly seeing fellow-citizens of ours returning from Bologna as judges or physicians or lawyers, tricked out in long flowing robes of scarlet and vair, looking very grand and impressive, but failing to live up to their splendid appearance. Master Simone da Villa was a man of this sort, for his patrimony was far more substantial than his learning, and when, a few years ago, he came to Florence dressed in scarlet robes with a fine-looking hood, and calling himself a doctor of medicine, he set up house in the street we now call Via del Cocomero.2

  Being, as we have said, newly arrived in Florence, this Master Simone made it a practice, among his other eccentricities, to ask whoever he happened to be with at the time about all the people he saw passing down the street; and he duly noted and remembered everything he was told about them, as though this information was essential in prescribing the right medicine for his patients.

  Among the people who aroused his greatest curiosity were the two painters already mentioned twice here today,3 Bruno and Buffalmacco, who were neighbours of his and never out of one another’s company. Since they seemed to him the jolliest and most carefree fellows in the world, as was indeed the case, he made various inquiries about their social condition, and everyone told him that these two men were painters, who hadn’t a penny to bless themselves with. But as he was unable to conceive how they could possibly lead such merry lives without visible means of support, he came to the conclusion, having heard that they were very clever, that they must be drawing huge profits from a source that other people had no knowledge of. He therefore became eager to make friends with one of them at least, if not with both, and eventually succeeded in striking up an acquaintance with Bruno, who, realizing from the first that this physician was a blockhead, began to take a huge delight in the man’s extraordinary simplicity, whilst the physician for his part found Bruno wondrously entertaining. Having invited Bruno to breakfast with him a few times, thereby assuming that he could treat him as a familiar, he told him how amazed he was that he and Buffalmacco, considering they were so poor, could lead such merry lives; and he pleaded with Bruno to explain to him how they did it. Taking the physician’s words as yet another proof of his crass stupidity, Bruno burst out laughing, and on the principle that a silly question deserves a silly answer, he replied as follows:

  ‘Master Simone, there are few people to whom I would reveal this secret of ours, but since you are a friend and I know you won’t let it go any further, I shan’t keep it all to myself. It’s perfectly true that my comrade and I lead as full and contented a life as you suppose, and even more so. Yet if we had to rely on our painting, or on the income from our capital, we shouldn’t have enough to pay the water-rates. Not that I want you to think that we live by stealing: no, we simply go the course, as the saying is, by which means we obtain all the pleasures and necessities of life without doing harm to anyone; and that is how, as you’ve noticed, we always manage to be so cheerful.’

  The physician, hanging on his every word without knowing what he was talking about, was filled with amazement by all this, and promptly conceived a burning desire to discover what was meant by ‘going the course’. So he begged and pleaded with him to explain it, declaring most emphatically that he would never tell another living soul.

  ‘Good heavens, Master!’ exclaimed Bruno. ‘Do you realize what you are asking me to do? The secret you want me to reveal is so tremendous that if anyone we
re to find out I had told you, I could be ruined and driven from the face of the earth; I could even finish up in the jaws of the Lucifer at San Gallo.4 However, such is my veneration for your truly distinguished ineptitude that I am obliged to grant your every wish, and therefore I shall let you into the secret, but only on condition that you swear by the cross of Montesone5 to keep your promise, and never repeat it to anyone.’

  The physician gave him the required assurance, and Bruno continued:

  ‘Know then, my sweet Master, that not long ago there came to this city a great master in necromancy, whose name was Michael Scott,6 for he was a native of Scotland. He was entertained in princely style by many Florentine nobles, of whom only a handful are still alive, and when the time came for him to depart, they persuaded him to leave behind him two able disciples, whom he charged with the duty of ministering promptly to the pleasures of these nobles who had done him so much honour.

  ‘These two men freely assisted the aforesaid nobles in certain love-affairs and other little escapades of theirs, and after a while, having taken a liking to the city and the ways of its people, they decided to settle here permanently. They soon acquired a goodly number of intimate friends in the city, without caring whether they were rich or poor, patrician or plebeian, provided only that they were men whose interests coincided with their own. And in order to please these friends of theirs, they founded a society of about five-and-twenty members, who were to meet at least twice a month in whatever place the pair of them should decide. When they are all assembled, each of the members makes a wish, and the two magicians see that it is granted that same night.

  ‘Now, because Buffalmacco and I are on the most friendly and intimate of terms with these two men, they enrolled us in this society of theirs, and we’ve belonged to it ever since. I assure you that whenever we hold one of our meetings, it’s a wonderful thing to behold the tapestries all round the walls of the banqueting hall, and the tables set in regal style, and the noble array of handsome-looking servants, both male and female, who are at the beck and call of every member of the company, and the bowls and the jugs, the flasks and the goblets, and the rest of the vessels from which we either eat or drink, all made of silver or of gold; and no less marvellous than all this, the abundance and variety of the dishes that are set before us one after the other, each of them suited to our own particular tastes.

  ‘I could never describe to you the range and multiplicity of the dulcet sounds from countless instruments, and the melodious songs, that descend upon our ears at these gatherings. Nor could I tell you how many candles we burn at these banquets, or estimate the number of sweetmeats we consume, or the value of the wines that we drink. Neither would I want you to imagine, my dear wiseacre, that we attend these meetings in the clothes you normally see us wearing; even the most beggarly of the people present looks like an emperor, for we are decked out, one and all, in sumptuous robes and other finery.

  ‘But over and above all these other delights, there are the beautiful women who are brought to us there, the moment we ask for them, from every corner of the earth. Not only would you see the Begum of Barbanicky, the Queen of the Basques, and the Sultana of Egypt, but also the Empress of Uzbek, the Chitchatess of Norwake, the Semolina of Nomansland, and the Scalpedra of Narsia. But why bother to enumerate them all? You would see every queen in the world there, not even excluding the Skinkymurra of Prester John,7 who has horns sticking out of his anus: now there’s a pretty sight! And when they have wined and dined, these ladies trip the light fantastic for a little while, after which each of them retires to a bedroom with the man who asked for her to be brought.

  ‘Now these rooms, mark you, are so glorious to behold that you’d swear you were in Paradise itself. Moreover they’re as fragrant as the spice-jars in your dispensary when you’re pounding the cumin,8 and the beds on which we lie are every bit as splendid as the Doge’s bed in Venice. I leave you to imagine how busily these ladies work the treadle, and how nimbly they pull the shuttle through, to weave a fine close fabric. But the people who have the best time of all, in my opinion, are Buffalmacco and myself, because Buffalmacco invariably sends for the Queen of France, and I send for the Queen of England, who when all’s said and done are two of the handsomest women on God’s earth. So you can work it out for yourself whether we have good reason to be happier than other men, considering that we enjoy the love of two such queens as these, not to mention the fact that when we have need of a couple of thousand florins, they hand them over to us right away. And that’s what we mean when we talk about going the course, for just as the corsair takes away other people’s goods, we do the same; but whereas corsairs never restore their plunder, we give ours back as soon as we’ve put it to good use.

  ‘Now that you’ve discovered what is meant, my precious Master, by going the course, you will see for yourself how important it is that you should keep it a secret; so there’s no need for me to say any more on the subject.’

  Master Simone, the extent of whose medical knowledge was sufficient, perhaps, to treat an infant for thrush, took everything Bruno had said as the gospel truth, and was inflamed with an intense longing to become a member of their society, as though this were the highest good to which any mortal being could possibly aspire. He accordingly told Bruno that he was no longer in the least surprised that they were always so cheerfully disposed; and it was with the greatest difficulty that he restrained himself from urging him to enrol him there and then, rather than waiting until he had plied him more generously with his hospitality, after which he could plead his cause with a better chance of success.

  Having therefore held himself in check, he assiduously began to court Bruno’s friendship, regularly inviting him to breakfast and supper, and displaying boundless affection towards him. And they spent so much time in one another’s company that it began to look as though the physician was unable to exist without him.

  Bruno counted his blessings, and in order not to appear ungrateful for the physician’s lavish hospitality, he painted a Lenten mural for him on the wall of his dining-room and an Agnus Dei at the entrance to his bedroom and a chamber-pot over his front door,9 so that those people who needed to consult him could distinguish his house from the rest. Moreover, he decorated the loggia with a painting of the battle between the cats and the mice, which in the eyes of the physician was something of a masterpiece.

  One morning, after failing to turn up to supper the previous evening, Bruno said to the physician:

  ‘I was with the company last night, but as I’m tiring a little of the Queen of England, I got them to fetch me the Gumedra of the Great Khan of Altarisi.’

  ‘Gumedra?’ said the physician. ‘What does that signify? I don’t understand these titles.’

  ‘I’m not a bit surprised, my dear Master,’ said Bruno, ‘for I’ve heard that neither Watercress nor Avadinner say anything on the subject.’

  ‘You mean Hippocras and Avicenna,’10 said the physician.

  ‘You may well be right,’ said Bruno, ‘for these names of yours mean about as much to me as mine do to you. However, the word Gumedra in the language of the Great Khan is equivalent to the word Empress in ours. And believe you me, she’s really delicious! She’d soon make you forget all about your medicines and your pills and your poultices, I can tell you.’

  From time to time, by recounting other tales of a similar kind, Bruno added further fuel to the flames of the physician’s longings, until, very late one evening, when Bruno was busy painting the battle between the cats and the mice by the light of a lantern being held aloft by Master Simone, the physician decided that Bruno was by now sufficiently in his debt for him to bring his feelings into the open. And since they were alone in the house, he said:

  ‘As God is my witness, Bruno, there isn’t anyone on earth for whom I would do all the things I would do for you. Why, even if you were to ask me to go all the way from here to Peretola,11 I almost believe I would do it. So I trust you will not take it amiss if I spe
ak to you now as an intimate friend, and ask you a favour in strict confidence. As you know, you spoke to me not long ago about the doings of your merry company, and ever since that day, I’ve been positively dying to attend your meetings. I have good reason for wanting to come, as you’ll see for yourself if I should happen to be invited, for I assure you here and now that if I don’t get those magicians of yours to fetch the comeliest serving wench you’ve seen for many a long day, I deserve to be taken for an idiot. I fell passionately in love with the girl from the moment I clapped eyes on her, last year in Cacavincigli,12 and I swear to God that I offered her ten Bolognese groats, but she turned them down. So I implore you, from the bottom of my heart, to tell me what I have to do to become a member, and I beg you to use all your power and influence to bring it about, for I can assure you that you could never have a better or more loyal comrade, nor one who would bring you greater credit. I don’t suppose, for instance, that any of your members is a doctor of medicine, and you can see for yourself what a handsome fellow I am, with a fine pair of shanks and a face like a rose. Besides, I know lots of good stories and some excellent songs. Would you like to hear one?’ And without waiting for an answer, he burst into song.

  Bruno was so amused by all this that he had a job to keep a straight face; and when the song was finished, the Master said:

  ‘Well, Bruno, what do you think of that?’

  ‘It’s fantastic,’ said Bruno. ‘With a cacophonous voice like that, you could charm the vultures out of the trees.’

  ‘If you hadn’t heard it with your own ears,’ said the Master, ‘you wouldn’t have believed it possible, would you?’

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t,’ said Bruno.

  ‘I know lots of others,’ said the Master, ‘but let’s forget about those for the moment. Such as you see me, my father was a nobleman, though he lived in the country, and on my mother’s side I was born into a family from Vallecchio.13 Furthermore, as you will have seen, I have a finer collection of books, and a more splendid wardrobe, than any other doctor in Florence. God’s faith! I have a robe that cost me nearly a hundred pounds in farthings, all told, ten years ago at the very least. So I do implore you to have me enrolled in your company; and if you get me in, God’s faith! you can be as ill as you like, and I’ll never charge you a penny for my services.’