Fantastic Tales

by Italo Calvino

  Heroic Means Used by Thieves to Enter Houses

  You take the severed hand of a hanged man, which must be purchased before his death; you submerge it meticulously, taking care to have it almost enclosed in a copper receptacle that contains cyma and saltpeter with spondillis grease. You place the receptacle in a fire made of ferns and completely dry verbena until the hand, after a quarter of an hour, is completely dry and ready to be preserved. Later you make a candle with seal grease and Lapland sesame and you cause the hand to take hold of the candle as if it were a candlestick. Wherever you go, carrying it before you, all barriers will fall, all locks will open, and the people who come before you will remain motionless.

  The hand prepared in this manner receives the name hand of glory.

  “What an invention!” exclaimed Eustache Bouteroue. “Wait a minute! Although you haven’t formally sold me your hand, it belongs to me because you didn’t redeem it on the appointed day. And the proof of it is that after the agreed-on time limit passed, it has behaved itself—owing to the spirit that possesses it—in such a way that I could enjoy it in the shortest possible time. Tomorrow, Parliament will sentence you to the gallows; the day after tomorrow, the sentence will be carried out, and that same day will I harvest this so very desired fruit and prepare it in the proper way.”

  “Oh no you won’t!” exclaimed Eustache. “Tomorrow, I will reveal the entire mystery to those gentlemen!”

  “Ah, very well! Do it … and you will be burned alive for having made use of magic. That will get you accustomed to the Devil’s grill …. But that will never happen, because your horoscope says the gallows, and nothing can free you from it.”

  Then the unfortunate Eustache began to shout so desperately and to weep so bitterly that it was heartrending.

  “Come, come, dear friend!” said Master Gonin tenderly. “Why rebel against destiny?”

  “Heavens above! It’s easy for you to talk that way,” said Eustache between sobs. “But when death is so near …”

  “But what is so strange about death? Death doesn’t matter a fig to me! ‘No one dies before his time,’ said the tragedian Seneca. Are you perhaps the only vassal of that Lady, my friend? I am as well, and so is he, and he, and he, and Martin, and Philippe …. Death respects no one. It’s so bold that it condemns, kills, and carries away with no discrimination whatsoever popes, emperors, and kings, as well as provosts, sergeants, and other scum. Which is why you ought not be so afflicted in doing now what others will do later. Their luck is more deplorable than yours, for if death is an evil, it’s only an evil for those who are going to die. Only one day remains to you to suffer this evil, but the majority of people have twenty or thirty years, or even more.

  “An ancient author said: ‘The hour life has given you, you are already letting slip away.’ We are in death even in the midst of life, because when we are no longer in life, we are beyond death. Or, to put it better, death doesn’t concern you dead or alive—alive because you exist, and dead because you no longer exist.

  “These arguments, my friend, should be sufficient to give you courage when you drink the absinthe of death. Until then, meditate on this beautiful verse by Lucretius, the gist of which is: ‘Live as long as you can, for it will take nothing away from the eternity of your death.’”

  After delivering these maxims, the quintessence of classic and modern authors, chosen for their subtlety and sophistication in the taste of the age, Master Gonin put away his lantern and knocked at the cell door, which the jailer opened. And the darkness again fell on the prisoner like a lead plate.

  XIII. WHEREIN THE AUTHOR SPEAKS HIS MIND

  Those who wish to know all the details of Eustache Bouteroue’s trial will find the documents in the Arrêts memorables du Parlement de Paris, which are in the manuscript library. You will find them with the aid of Monsieur Paris, with his accustomed solicitude. This trial—they are arranged in alphabetical order—comes right before the trial of the Baron de Boutteville, also quite curious for the singularity of his duel with the Marquis de Bussi, in which, to challenge the law, he came expressly from Lorrain to Paris and fought right in the Place Royale at three o’clock in the afternoon on Easter Sunday (1627). But this does not interest us now. In the trial of Eustache Bouteroue, only the duel and the outrages perpetrated on the person of the magistrate are dealt with, not the magic spell that caused the disorder. But an early note remits the reader to the Recueil d’histoires tragiques de Belleforest (in the edition published at The Hague, the Rouen edition being incomplete). It is there you will find the details we need with regard to the adventure Belleforest quite properly entitles: The Possessed Hand.

  XIV. CONCLUSION

  The day of his execution, Eustache, who was then lodged in a cell less dark than the first, received a visit from a confessor who mumbled some spiritual advice to him in the same style as that of the gypsy, and produced no better effect. He was an ordained priest from one of those good families that have an abbot son in order to glorify their name. He wore an embroidered collar, had his beard trimmed in the shape of a spindle, and a curled and twisted mustache. His hair was curled tightly and he spoke in a mellow voice and with an affected style. Eustache, seeing how superficial and pleased with himself he was, did not have the courage to confess all his sins and relied on his own prayers to be forgiven.

  The priest absolved him and to pass the time, since he had to remain with the condemned man until two, shared with him a book entitled The Tears of the Penitent Soul, or the Return of the Sinner Toward His God. Eustache opened the book to the first page, where the king’s permission to publish it was recorded, and began to read, quite remorsefully, where it said: “Henri, King of France and Navarre, to our subjects and vassals” etc., up to the phrase “considering these causes and desiring to treat the aforementioned favorably …” Here he could not hold back his tears and returned the book to the priest, telling him it was too moving and that he was afraid he would be overcome if he went on reading. Then the confessor took a deck of cards out of his pocket and suggested to the penitent they play a few hands. The priest won some money Javotte had sent Eustache to procure him some consolation. The poor Eustache was not able to pay much attention to the game and didn’t really notice the loss.

  At two, Eustache left the Châtelet, his voice trembling when he said the routine Our Fathers and was led to the square of the Augustinians, located between the two arches that form the entrance to rue Dauphine and the Pont-Neuf, where he was honored with a stone gallows. He showed quite a bit of resolve as he climbed the ladder. After all, since the location of this execution was one of the most frequented of places, there were many people watching him. Of course, since we take as much time as possible to make that leap into the void, in the instant when the executioner prepared to put the noose around his neck with the same ceremony as he would in bestowing the Golden Fleece—this kind of person, when they exercise their profession before the public, carry things out with ability and even with a certain grace—Eustache begged him to stop for an instant so he could say just two prayers, one to Saint Ignatius and the other to Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, saints he’d reserved for last because they’d been beatified that same, year of 1609. But the executioner replied that the public also had its business to take care of and that it was in bad taste to make them wait for a spectacle as simple as a mere execution. The noose, which he tightened as he pushed him off the stepladder, cut off Eustache’s reply.

  It is stated as fact that when everything seemed over and the executioner was on his way home, Master Gonin appeared at one of the pathways to the Château-Gaillard that overlooked the square. Instantly, even though the tailor’s body was hanging completely lax and inanimate, his arm rose, and his hand began to wave in a merry way, like the tail of a dog that sees its master. That drew a surprised gasp from the crowd and caused those who were leaving to return in haste, like people who think the show is over when another act remains.

  The executioner put the stepladde
r back and touched the dead man’s ankles: there was no pulse. He cut an artery: no blood flowed. But even so, the arm continued in its disordered movements.

  The executioner was not a man who was easily frightened. He climbed up onto the back of his victim, accompanied by the shouts of those present, but the hand showed the same irreverence to him as it had to Magistrate Chevassut. The executioner, cursing, took out the huge knife he always carried with him and with two strokes cut off the possessed hand.

  The hand made a prodigious leap and fell, bloody, amid the crowd, which scattered in shock. Then, making several leaps, thanks to the elasticity of its fingers, and since everyone got out of its path, it quickly made its way to the foot of the little tower of the Château-Gaillard. Then, scrambling with its fingers like a crab along the salients and the rough spots in the wall, it climbed to the little window where the gypsy was waiting for it.

  Belleforest ends his singular history here, closing with these words:

  This adventure, annotated, commented, and illustrated, constituted for a long time the principal subject of conversation in polite society as well as among the lower classes, always eager for strange and supernatural tales. But even today it is a good story for amusing children by the fireside, although it should not be taken lightly by serious persons of good judgment.

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

  Young Goodman Brown

  (1835)

  New England’s Puritan fantastic is born from an obsession with universal damnation, which triumphs in the witches’ Sabbath of this story. Every one of the inhabitants of the villages—even the most devout—is a witch! Not in vain was Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) a descendant of one of the judges who passed sentence on the witches of Salem. In this story, which displays Hawthorne’s desperate religiosity, the witches’ Sabbath is depicted the way the Puritans imagined it to be (with the interesting syncretic addition of the Indians’ magic rites), but involving here an entire Puritan society that was in need of salvation.

  Before Poe and sometimes better than Poe, Hawthorne was the great narrator in the fantastic genre in the United States.

  YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.

  “Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, “prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she’s afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year.”

  “My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done ‘twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?”

  “Then God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons; “and may you find all well when you come back.”

  “Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee.”

  So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.

  “Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done to-night. But no, no; ‘t would kill her to think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.”

  With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

  “There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”

  His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown’s approach and walked onward side by side with him.

  “You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone.”

  “Faith kept me back a while,” replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.

  It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have felt abashed at the governor’s dinner table or in King William’s court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.

  “Come, Goodman Brown,” cried his fellow-traveller, “this is a dull pace for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary.”

  “Friend,” said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, “having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot’st of.”

  “Sayest thou so?” replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. “Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet.”

  “Too far! too far!” exclaimed the Goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept—”

  “Such company, thou wouldst say,” observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. “Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that’s no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war. They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you for their sake.”

  “If it be as thou sayest,” replied Goodman Brown, “I marvel they never spoke of these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumour of the sort would have driven them from New England. We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness.”

  “Wickedness or not,” said the traveller with the twisted staff, �
�I have a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too—But these are state secrets.”

  “Can this be so?” cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed companion. “Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day.”

  Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.

  “Ha! ha! ha!” shouted he again and again; then composing himself, “Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don’t kill me with laughing.”

  “Well, then, to end the matter at once,” said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, “there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I’d rather break my own.”

  “Nay, if that be the case,” answered the other, “e’en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm.”

  As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.

  “A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall,” said he. “But with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I was going.”