The Tale of Tales

by Giambattista Basile

  “The king said this and other words, but he might as well have been playing the Gloria, for the old women had stopped up their ears. This, however, only added wood to the king’s fire: he felt himself heated up like an iron in the furnace of desire, squeezed by the tongs of deliberation, and pounded by the hammer of amorous torment, and all to forge a key that could open the little chest of jewels that was making him die of longing. And still he did not pull back, instead continuing to send forth entreaties and to strengthen his assaults, never taking a rest.

  “The old women, who had begun to put on airs and grow cocky as a result of the king’s offers and promises, resolved not to waste this opportunity to nab a bird that was about to fly into the snare all by himself. And so, one day when the king was ranting and raving6 above their window, they told him through the keyhole in a tiny little voice that the greatest favor they could do would be to show him, in eight days, just one finger of their hand. The king, who as a practiced soldier knew that fortresses are won span by span, did not refuse this solution, hoping to conquer finger by finger the stronghold that he was keeping under siege, since he also knew that ‘first take and then ask’ was an ancient proverb. And thus, once he had accepted this ultimatum of the eighth day by which to see the eighth wonder of the world, the old women’s sole activity became that of sucking their fingers like a pharmacist who has spilled some syrup, with the plan that when they reached the established day whoever had the smoothest finger would show it to the king.

  “Meanwhile, the king was on tenterhooks as he waited for the agreed-upon hour to blunt his desire: he counted the days, he numbered the nights, he weighed the hours, he measured the moments, he made note of the seconds, and he probed the instants that had been meted out to him in anticipation of the desired good. Now he begged the Sun to take a shortcut through the celestial fields so that by gaining ground it would unhitch its fiery carriage and water its horses, tired after such a long trip, before the usual time; now he implored Night to sink the shadows so that he could see the light, which yet unseen was keeping him in the kiln of Love’s flames; now he grew incensed with Time, who to spite him was wearing crutches and leaden shoes so as to delay the hour for liquidating the debt to the thing he loved and for respecting the contract stipulated between them.

  “But as the Sun in Leo7 would have it, the time came, and he went in person to the garden and knocked on the door, saying, ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’8 Then one of the two old women—the one most laden with years, since the touchstone had shown her finger to be of greater carats than her sister’s—stuck her finger through the keyhole and showed it to the king.

  “Now this was no mere finger, but a sharpened stick that pierced the king’s heart. Or rather, it was no stick, but a cudgel that stunned him on the head. But what am I saying, stick and cudgel? It was a match struck on the tinder of his desires, a fuse lit from the powder magazine of his longings. But what am I saying, stick, cudgel, match, fuse? It was a thorn under the tail of his thoughts—indeed, a cure of laxative figs that made him eliminate the gas of amorous affect in a mess of sighs.

  “And as he held that hand and kissed that finger, which had been transformed from a shoemaker’s rasp to a goldsmith’s burnisher, he began to say, ‘O archive of sweetness, O rubric of joys, O register of Love’s privileges, by reason of which I have become a store of troubles, a warehouse of anguish, and a customhouse of torment! Is it possible that you wish to appear so obstinate and hard that my laments cannot move you? I beg you, my fair heart, if you have shown me your tail through this hole, now show me your snout, and let us make a gelatin9 of happiness! If you have shown me your shell, O sea of beauty, now show me your sweet flesh; uncover those eyes of a peregrine falcon and let them feed on this heart! Who keeps the treasure of that beautiful face sequestered in a shithouse? Who quarantines that fair merchandise in a hovel? Who imprisons the forces of Love in that pigsty?10 Come out of that ditch, flee that stable, abandon that hole! “Jump, little snail, and give Cola your hand”;11 spend me for what I’m worth! You know, after all, that I’m a king and not any old cucumber; you know that I can do and undo as I like. But that impostor of a blind boy, son of a cripple and a whore, who has free rein over scepters, has willed that I be your subject and that I beg you for the grace of what I could seize however and whenever I please.12 And furthermore, I know, as a certain someone said, that caresses, and not bravado, sweeten up Venus.’

  “The old woman knew where the old devil kept his tail, since she was a master fox, a big old cat, a shrewd, astute, and wily one, and she reflected that it’s precisely when a superior begs for something that he’s actually issuing a command, and that a vassal’s stubbornness gets the choleric humors of the master’s intestines moving, which then burst forth in a dysentery of ruin. And so she decided to act accordingly, and with the little voice of a skinned cat she said, ‘My lord, since you are inclined to put yourself beneath one who is under you, having deigned to descend from the scepter to the distaff, from the royal halls to the stable, from lavish robes to rags, from greatness to misery, from the terrace to the cellar, and from a steed to an ass, I cannot, nor ought not, nor want not to contradict the will of so great a king. And since you desire this alliance between prince and servant, this mosaic of ivory and poplar, this inlay of diamonds and glass, here I am, ready and prepared to do your will. I beg of you only one favor, as a first sign of the love that you bear me: that I be received in your bed at night and without a candle, since my heart could not bear the burden of being seen naked.’ The king, gurgling with delight, swore to her with one hand on the other that he would willingly do this. And so, after he sent a kiss of sugar to that fetid mouth, he left, and could hardly wait for the Sun to stop plowing and for the fields of the heavens to be sown with stars, so that he in turn could sow the field where he intended to harvest bushels of joy and heaps of delight.

  “When Night arrived—and, finding itself surrounded by so many shop burglars and cloak thieves,13 squirted out black ink like a squid—the old woman smoothed back all the wrinkles on her body and gathered them behind her shoulders in a knot, which she tied tightly with a piece of twine. A servant then led her by the hand in the darkness to the king’s bedroom, where, once she had taken off her rags, she flung herself onto the bed. The king was more than ready to light the fuse on his artillery, and as soon as he heard her come and lie down he smeared himself all over with musk and civet and sprayed himself from head to toe with cologne water, and then raced to bed like a Corsican hound. And it was lucky for the old woman that the king was wearing so much perfume, on account of which he wasn’t able to smell the fumes coming from her mouth, the stink of her little tickly areas, and the stench of that ugly thing.

  “But no sooner had he lain down than, feeling around, he became aware of that business on the back of her neck and discovered the dried tripe and deflated bladders that the wretched old woman kept in the back of her shop. Keeping his composure, he decided not to say anything right then, since he needed to have a clearer idea on the matter. And so, pretending not to notice, he cast anchor at Mandracchio when he had believed he would be on the coast of Posillipo, and sailed forth on a barge when he had thought he would be charting his course on a Florentine galley.14 But no sooner had the old woman dropped off into her first sleep than the king took a chamois bag containing a flint stone from his writing table of ebony and silver, and lit a little oil lamp. After conducting a search under the sheets and finding a harpy in the place of a nymph, a Fury in the place of a Grace, and a Gorgon in the place of a Cypriot, he flew into such a rage that he wanted to cut the towrope that had moored that ship. Snorting with fury, he yelled for all his servants, who when they heard the call to arms threw on their shirts15 and came upstairs.

  “Flailing about like an octopus, the king said to them, ‘Look at the fine trick this old bogeyman’s grandmother has played on me! I believed I was going to gobble up a milk-calf and instead I f
ind myself with a buffalo placenta; I thought I had trapped a splendid dove and I end up with this owl in my hand; I imagined I had a morsel fit for a king and I find myself with this disgusting thing in my claws: taste it and spit it out! And yet when you buy a cat in the bag this and even worse happens! And yet it was she who arranged this affront, and it will be she who shits her penance! So go and get her right now, just as she is, and throw her out the window!’

  “When the old woman heard this she began to defend herself with kicks and bites, saying that she appealed the sentence, since he was the one who had turned her like a winch until she came to his bed and that besides, she could call a hundred doctors to her defense along with, above all, the saying that goes, ‘An old chicken makes a good broth,’ and the other one, ‘Don’t leave the old road for the new.’ But after all that they picked her straight up and hurled her down into the garden, and she had the luck not to break her neck, for she was left hanging by her hair on the branch of a fig tree.

  “Early the next morning—before the Sun took possession of the territories it had been ceded by Night—some fairies came passing by the garden. Due to some irritation or other they had never spoken or laughed, and when they saw, hanging from the tree, the ugly shade who had caused the shadows to clear out before the usual time, they were overcome by such side-splitting laughter that they came close to getting a hernia, and once they set their tongues in motion they weren’t able to close their mouths about that lovely spectacle for a good while. And such was their amusement and pleasure that in payment each of them cast a spell on her: one by one, they wished that she might become young, beautiful, rich, noble, virtuous, well loved, and blessed by good luck.

  “When the fairies had left, the old woman found herself on the ground, sitting on a chair of rich velvet fringed in gold under the same tree as before, which had been transformed into a canopy of green velvet backed in gold. Her face had turned into that of a fifteen-year-old girl, so beautiful that by comparison all other beauties would have looked like worn-out house slippers alongside an elegant, perfect-fitting little pump; next to this enthroned grace all other graces would have been deemed worthy of Ferrivecchi or Lavinaro;16 and where she played her chitchat and blandishments with a winning hand, all the others would have played a losing bank. And, furthermore, she was so primped up, fancified, and sumptuous that she looked like a royal majesty: her gold was blinding, her jewels dazzling, the bloom of her flowers stunning; and surrounding her were so many servants and ladies-in-waiting that it looked like the day of pardon.17

  “In the meantime the king, who had thrown a blanket over his shoulders and a pair of old slippers on his feet, went to the window to see what had happened to the old woman. When he saw what he never would have imagined, he stood there with his mouth hanging open and looked that fine piece of a girl up and down from head to toe for a good long while, as if he were enchanted. Now he admired her hair, in part spread out over her shoulders and in part harnessed with a golden tie, which gave the Sun cause for envy; now he stared at her eyelashes, crossbows that took hearts as their targets; now he looked at her eyes, blind lanterns of Love’s patrol;18 now he contemplated her mouth, amorous winepress where the Graces squeezed out delight and obtained sweet Greco and savory Mangiaguerra wines.19 He swung from side to side like a shaky rafter, and nearly went out of his mind when he saw the baubles and trinkets that were hanging at her neck and the magnificent clothes she was wearing. Talking to himself, he said, ‘Am I asleep or am I awake? Am I in my right mind or am I going crazy? Am I myself or am I not myself? What kind of move20 caused such a lovely ball to hit this king, so that I am sent to my ruin? I’ll be done for, I’ll be destroyed if I don’t pull myself out of this! How has this sun risen? How has this flower blossomed? How was this bird hatched, so that she can pull my desires like a hook? What sort of boat brought her to these lands? What sort of cloud rained her down? What sort of torrents of beauty are carrying me straight to a sea of woes?’

  “As he was saying this he flew down the stairs and ran into the garden, where he went before the renovated old woman and, nearly wiping the ground, said to her, ‘O my dear little pigeon-face; O little doll of the Graces, splendid dove of the carriage of Venus, triumphal cart of Love! If you have set your heart to soak in the Sarno River,21 if cane seeds have not gotten into your ears and sparrow shit has not fallen into your eyes, I am sure that you can see and hear the pain and torment that, directly and on the rebound, those beauties of yours have cast into my chest. And if you cannot surmise from the ash cloth of this face the lye that boils inside this chest,22 if you cannot imagine from the flames of these sighs the furnace that burns in these veins, then if you are sympathetic and of good judgment you can at least infer from that golden hair what sort of cord binds me, and from those black eyes what sort of coals roast me, and from the red arches of those lips what sort of arrow pierces me. Do not, then, bar the door of pity, do not lift the bridge of mercy, do not stop the duct of compassion! If you do not deem me worthy of obtaining a pardon from this lovely face, at least give me a safeguard of good words, a pass of a promise or two, and a pledge card of fair hopes, for otherwise I shall take my slippers far from here23 and you shall never again see their shape.’

  “These and a thousand other words issued forth from the depths of the king’s heart and deeply moved the renovated old woman, who at the end accepted him as her husband. And so she rose from her seat and took him by the hand, and they went together to the royal palace, where in the wink of an eye a huge banquet was prepared. Since all the ladies of the land were invited, the old bride wanted her sister to be among them, but they had a lot to do and say before they were able to find her and drag her to the feast, because out of great fear she had gone and holed herself up and hidden away so that not a trace of her could be found. But God willed that she finally came, and once she was sitting next to her sister, whom it was no joke for her to recognize, they began the merrymaking.

  “The wretched old woman had another hunger that was gnawing at her, though, since she was consumed with envy to see her sister’s coat shine, and every few minutes she would pull her by the sleeve and say, ‘What did you do, my sister, what did you do? “Lucky you, you’ve got the chain!”’24 And her sister would answer, ‘Just think about eating now, and we’ll talk about it later.’ The king kept on asking what was going on, and to cover things up his bride answered that her sister wanted a little green sauce. And the king immediately ordered that garlic paste, mustard, pepper sauce, and a thousand other relishes that stimulate the appetite be brought.

  “But the old woman, to whom the grape relish tasted like cow bile, went back to nagging her sister, and asked her again, ‘What did you do, my sister, what did you do? Tell me, or I’ll make you the fig under my cloak.’25 And her sister answered, ‘Be quiet, for we have more time than money; eat now, and may it go down the wrong way, and then we’ll talk.’ The king, curious, asked what she wanted, and his bride, who felt as tangled up as a chick in a pile of tow and would have liked to do without that hammering at her temples, answered that she wanted something sweet. And then there came a blizzard of pastries, a bombardment of wafers and little doughnuts, a flood of blancmange, and a downpour of honey brittle.26

  “But the old woman, who was as agitated as a squid and had a bad case of the runs, started up with the same music again until the bride could no longer stand it, and to get her off her back she answered, ‘I skinned myself, sister.’ When the envious sister heard this she said, under her breath, ‘All right then, your words don’t fall on deaf ears! I want to try my luck, too, for every spirit has a stomach, and if I come away with my hands full you won’t be the only one having a good time. I want my part, too, right up to the fennel.’27

  “Uh, chi bella vo’ parere, pena vo’ patere.” [“Ugh, she who wants to appear beautiful must suffer.”]

  “As she was thus speaking, the tables were cleared. Pretending to go and satisfy a bodily
need, she ran straight off to a barber’s shop, where she found the master barber, took him aside in a back room, and said to him, ‘Here are fifty ducats for you; skin me from head to toe.’28 The barber, judging her to be crazy, answered, ‘Go on, sister; you’re talking funny and you’re surely in need of someone to accompany you.’29 And the old woman replied, with a face of marble, ‘You’re the one who’s crazy, if you can’t recognize your own good fortune. For if I win at a certain game, in addition to the fifty ducats I’ll let you hold your basin under Fortune’s beard. So, then, gather up your instruments and don’t waste time; you’re in for some good luck.’

  “After arguing, fighting with her, and protesting for a good while, the barber was finally led by the nose, and behaved like the guy who ‘ties up the ass wherever his master wants.’ And when he had set her on a stool he started to hack away at that black bark, which drizzled and piddled blood all over and which every now and then, as steady as if he were giving her a shave, said, ‘Ugh, she who wants to appear beautiful must suffer.’ And as he continued to send her to her ruin and she repeated the same refrain, they kept up a counterpoint on the lute30 of her body until he reached the rosette of her navel,31 at which point her blood abandoned her and with it her strength, and she fired a departing shot from below, proving at her own risk the truth of Sannazaro’s verse: Envy, my son, destroys itself.”32

  This tale ended at the time of day when the Sun was given the deadline of one hour to vacate the quarters of the air, like a bothersome student.33 Then the prince summoned Fabiello and Iacovuccio, one the linen valet and the other the steward of the house, to come and provide the day of telling with its dessert. And there they appeared, as quickly as cops, one dressed in trousers of black frieze with martingale straps and a bell-shaped jacket with buttons the size of antelope balls, and a flat cap that went down over his ears; the other with a beret the shape of a cutting board, a pot-bellied jacket, and breeches of white Taranta cloth. Coming out from behind a backdrop of myrtle bushes as if it were a set, they spoke in this manner: