Fantastic Tales

by Italo Calvino

  Chatting like this, we reached Ille, and I soon found myself in the presence of Monsieur de Peyrehorade. He was a little old man, still spry and active; he had powdered hair, a red nose, and a jovial, bantering manner. Before opening Monsieur de P.’s letter he had installed me at a well-appointed table and presented me to his wife and son as a famous archaeologist, who was going to raise the province of Roussillon from the obscurity in which it had been left by the neglect of the learned.

  While I was eating with a good appetite—for nothing makes one so hungry as mountain air—I examined my hosts. I have said a word or two about Monsieur de Peyrehorade; I should add that he was vivacity itself. He talked and ate, got up, ran to his library, brought me books, showed me engravings, and poured out drinks for me; he was never still for two minutes at a time. His wife was rather too stout, like most Catalan women over forty, and she seemed to me an out-and-out provincial, completely taken up with the cares of her household. Although the supper was ample for six people at least, she ran to the kitchen, had scores of pigeons killed and fried, and opened heaven knows how many pots of preserves. In a trice the table was littered with dishes and bottles, and I should undoubtedly have died of indigestion if I had so much as tasted all that was offered me. However, at each dish that I refused there were fresh apologies. They were afraid I would be very badly off at Ille—they had so few resources in the provinces, and Parisians were so hard to please!

  Monsieur Alphonse de Peyrehorade stirred no more than a statue in the midst of his parents’ comings and goings. He was a tall young man of twenty-six, with handsome, regular features, but which were lacking in expression. His figure and his athletic build fully justified the reputation he had enjoyed in the region as an indefatigable tennis player. That evening he was exquisitely dressed, just like the latest fashion plate. But he seemed to me to be ill at ease in his garments; he was as stiff as a post in his velvet collar, and did not turn round unless all of a piece. His large sunburnt hands, with their short nails, contrasted strangely with his costume. They were the hands of a ploughman poking out of the sleeves of a dandy. For the rest, although he studied me from head to foot very inquisitively in my capacity as a Parisian, he only spoke to me once in the whole evening, and that was to ask me where I had bought my watchchain.

  “Ah, now, my honoured guest,” Monsieur de Peyrehorade said to me when supper was drawing to its conclusion, “you belong to me. You are in my house and I shall not give you any peace until you have seen everything of any interest among our mountains. You must learn to know our Roussillon and to do it justice. You have no idea what we can show you—Phoenician, Celtic, Roman, Arab, and Byzantine monuments. You shall see them all—lock, stock, and barrel. I shall take you everywhere, and I shan’t spare you a single stone.”

  A fit of coughing compelled him to stop. I took advantage of it to tell him I should be greatly distressed if I disturbed him during the important event about to take place in his family. If he would be so kind as to give me the benefit of his valuable advice about the outings I ought to go on, then without putting him to the inconvenience of accompanying me, I would be able to …

  “Ah, you’re referring to this young fellow’s marriage!” he exclaimed, interrupting me. “That’s nothing. It takes place the day after tomorrow. You shall celebrate the wedding with us; it will be a quiet affair, for the bride is in mourning for an aunt, whose heiress she is. So there won’t be any festivities, and there won’t be a ball …. That’s a pity …. You would have seen our Catalan women dance …. They’re very pretty, and you might have been tempted to follow Alphonse’s example. One marriage, they say, leads to others …. On Saturday, after the young people are married, I shall be at liberty, and we’ll set out. I must apologize for boring you with a provincial wedding. To a Parisian who has had his fill of festivities … And a wedding without a ball too! However, you will see a bride … a bride … who will take your breath away …. But you are a serious man, and you are no longer interested in women. I have better things to show you. I’m going to give you something to feast your eyes on! I’ve a fine surprise in store for you tomorrow.”

  “Ah,” I replied, “it isn’t easy to have a treasure in your house without the public knowing about it. I think I can guess the surprise you have in store for me. If it’s your statue you’re talking about, I’m quite prepared to admire it, for my guide’s description of it has whetted my curiosity.”

  “Ah, so he’s told you about the idol, for that is what they call my beautiful Venus Tur—but I refuse to say another word. Tomorrow, as soon as it is daylight, you shall see her, and you shall tell me if I am not right in considering her a masterpiece. Upon my word, you couldn’t have arrived at a better time! There are inscriptions which I in my ignorance explain as best I can … but a scholar from Paris! … You’ll probably laugh at my interpretation, for I have written a treatise on it …. I—an old provincial antiquarian—I’ve been so bold … I want to set the press groaning. If you would be so good as to read and correct it, I might hope … For example, I would very much like to know how you would translate this inscription on the pedestal: ‘CAVE ….’ But I don’t want to ask you anything yet! Tomorrow, tomorrow! Not a word about the Venus today.”

  “You’re quite right, Peyrehorade,” said his wife, “to stop talking about your idol. You ought to see that you’re preventing our guest from eating. Why, he has seen far more beautiful statues in Paris than yours. There are dozens of them in the Tuileries, and in bronze too.”

  “Now there’s ignorance for you—the blessed ignorance of the provinces!” interrupted Monsieur de Peyrehorade. “Fancy comparing a splendid antique statute to the mediocre figures of Coustou!

  How irreverently of the gods

  My wife is pleased to talk!

  “Do you know my wife wanted me to have my statue melted down to make a bell for our church? She would have been its godmother. A masterpiece of Myron’s, Monsieur!”

  “A masterpiece! A masterpiece! A fine masterpiece it is to break a man’s leg!”

  “Look here, wife,” said Monsieur de Peyrehorade in a determined voice, as he stretched his right leg out towards her, clad in a shad owed silk stocking, “if my Venus had broken this leg I wouldn’t have complained.”

  “Good gracious! Peyrehorade, how can you say a thing like that? Fortunately, the man is getting better …. All the same, I can’t bring myself to look at a statue which did a dreadful thing like that. Poor Jean Coll!”

  “Wounded by Venus, Monsieur,” said Monsieur de Peyrehorade, laughing loudly. “The rascal complains of being wounded by Venus!

  Veneris nec praemia nôris.

  Who hasn’t been wounded by Venus in his time?”

  Monsieur Alphonse, who understood French better than Latin, gave a knowing wink, and looked at me as if to say: “Do you understand that, you Parisian?”

  Supper came to an end. For an hour I had not been able to eat any more. I was tired, and I could not manage to hide my frequent yawns. Madame de Peyrehorade was the first to notice and said that it was time to retire. Then began fresh apologies for the poor bed I was going to have. I would not be as comfortable as I was in Paris; in the country things were so inferior. I must make allowances for the people of Roussillon. It was in vain I protested that after a journey among the mountains a bundle of straw would seem a wonderful bed: they still begged me to pardon poor country folk if they did not treat me as well as they would have wished. At last, accompanied by Monsieur de Peyrehorade, I reached the room prepared for me. The staircase, the top steps of which were of wood, led to the centre of a corridor, off which several rooms opened.

  “To the right,” said my host, “is the set of rooms I intend for the future Madame Alphonse. Your room is at the other end of the corridor. You will understand,” he added, with a look which he meant to be sly, “you will readily understand that newly married people have to be isolated. You are at one end of the house and they at the other.”

  We en
tered a handsomely furnished room, where the first object which met my eye was a bed seven feet long, six feet wide, and so high that one needed a stool to get into it. My host pointed out the position of the bell, and after making sure that the sugar-bowl was full, and the bottles of eau-de-Cologne in their proper places on the dressing-table, and asking me several times if I had all I wanted, wished me good night and left me alone.

  The windows were shut. Before undressing, I opened one to breathe the cool night air, which was delicious after such a lengthy supper. In front was the Canigou, which is always a wonderful sight, but which that night struck me as the most beautiful mountain in the world, lighted up as it was by a splendid moon. I stood for a few minutes contemplating its marvellous outline, and I was just going to close my window when, lowering my gaze, I saw the statue on a pedestal about forty yards from the house. It had been placed at a corner of the quickset hedge which separated a little garden from a large, perfectly level, square plot which, I learnt later, was the town tennis court. This ground had been Monsieur de Peyrehorade’s property, but he had given it to the public at his son’s urgent request.

  From where I was, it was difficult for me to make out the posture of the statue; I could only judge its height, which I guessed was about six feet. At that moment two town rowdies passed along the tennis court, close to the hedge, whistling the pretty Roussillon tune, Montagues régalades. They stopped to look at the statue, and one of them even apostrophized her in a loud voice. He spoke the Catalan dialect, but I had been long enough in the province of Roussillon to be able to understand nearly all that he said.

  “So there you are, you hussy!” (The Catalan expression was more forcible than that.) “There you are,” he said. “So it was you as broke Jean Coil’s leg! If you belonged to me I’d break your neck.”

  “Bah! What with?” asked the other. “She’s made of copper, and so hard that Étienne broke his file on her, trying to cut into her. It’s copper from pagan times, and harder than anything I can think of.”

  “If I had my cold chisel” (apparently he was a locksmith’s apprentice), “I’d soon knock out her big white eyes; it would be like getting a couple of almonds out of their shells. There’s over five francs’ worth of silver in them.” They moved a few paces farther off.

  “I must wish the idol good night,” said the taller of the apprentices, stopping suddenly.

  He stooped, and probably picked up a stone. I saw him stretch out his arm and throw something, and immediately after, I heard a loud noise come from the bronze. At the same moment the apprentice raised his hand to his head and cried out in pain.

  “She’s thrown it back at me!” he exclaimed.

  And the two scamps took to their heels as fast as they could. The stone had obviously rebounded from the metal, and had punished the rascal for the outrage done to the goddess.

  I shut the window, laughing heartily.

  “Yet another vandal punished by Venus! Would that all destroyers of our ancient monuments could have their heads broken like that!”

  And with this charitable wish I fell asleep.

  It was broad daylight when I awoke. On one side of the bed stood Monsieur de Peyrehorade in a dressing-gown; on the other, a servant sent by his wife with a cup of chocolate in his hand.

  “Come now, Parisian, get up! How lazy you people from the capital are!” said my host, while I hurriedly dressed. “It’s eight o’clock and here you are, still in bed. I’ve been up since six o’clock. I’ve been upstairs three times; I’ve tiptoed up to your door; but there was no sign of life at all. It is bad for you to sleep too much at your age. And my Venus waiting to be seen! Come along, drink this cup of Barcelona chocolate as fast as you can …. It’s real contraband. You can’t get chocolate like this in Paris. Take in all the nourishment you can, for when you see my Venus, no one will be able to tear you away.”

  I was ready in five minutes, that is to say, I was only half shaved, carelessly buttoned, and scalded by the chocolate which I had swallowed boiling hot. I went down into the garden and soon found myself in front of an admirable statue.

  It was indeed a Venus, and one of extraordinary beauty. The upper part of her body was bare, just as the ancients usually depicted their great deities; her right hand, raised to the level of her breast, was turned palm inwards, the thumb and two first fingers extended, while the other two were slightly curved. The other hand was near the hips, and held up the drapery which covered the lower part of the body. The attitude of this statue reminded me of that of the Morra player, which, for some reason or other, goes by the name of Germanicus. Perhaps the sculptor wished to depict the goddess playing the game of Morra.

  However that might be, it is impossible to imagine anything more perfect than the body of that Venus; nothing could be more harmonious or more voluptuous than her outlines, nothing more graceful or dignified than her drapery. I had expected some work of the Later Empire, and I was confronted with a masterpiece of the most perfect period of sculpture. What struck me most of all was the exquisite truth of form, which might have led one to suppose that it had been moulded by nature herself, if nature ever produced such perfect specimens.

  The hair, which was raised off the forehead, looked as if it had been gilded at some time. The head was small, like those of nearly all Greek statues, and bent slightly forward. As for the face, I should never be able to express its strange character; it was of quite a different type from that of any other antique statue I could remember. It was not at all the calm and austere beauty of the Greek sculptors, whose rule was to give a majestic immobility to every feature. Here, on the contrary, I noticed with astonishment that the artist had deliberately set out to express ill-nature raised to the level of wickedness. Every feature was slightly contracted: the eyes were rather slanted, the mouth turned up at the corners, and the nostrils somewhat distended. Disdain, irony, cruelty, could be distinguished in that face which was, notwithstanding, of incredible beauty. Indeed, the longer one looked at that wonderful statue, the more distress one felt at the thought that such a marvellous beauty could be united with an utter absence of goodness.

  “If the model ever existed,” I said to Monsieur de Peyrehorade, “and I doubt if Heaven ever produced such a woman, how I pity her lovers! She must have delighted in making them die of despair. There is something ferocious in her expression, and yet I have never seen anything so beautiful.”

  “Venus with all her might has fastened on her prey,”

  exclaimed Monsieur de Peyrehorade, pleased with my enthusiasm.

  That expression of fiendish scorn was perhaps enhanced by the contrast offered by her eyes, which were encrusted with silver and shone brightly, with the greenish black patina which time had given to the whole statue. Those bright eyes produced a kind of illusion which recalled real life. I remembered what my guide had said, that she made those who looked at her lower their eyes. That was almost true, and I could hardly restrain an impulse of anger with myself for feeling rather ill at ease before that bronze face.

  “Now that you have admired it in detail, my dear colleague in antiquarian research,” said my host, “let us, by your leave, open a scientific conference. What do you think about this inscription, which you haven’t noticed yet?”

  He showed me the pedestal of the statue, and I read on it these words:

  CAVE AMANTEM

  “Quid dicis, doctissime?” he asked me, rubbing his hands together.”

  Let us see if we agree on the meaning of this cave amantem.”

  “But,” I answered, “it has two meanings. It can be translated: ‘Beware of him who loves thee; mistrust thy lovers.’ But in that sense I don’t know whether cave amantem would be good Latin. Looking at the lady’s diabolical expression, I would rather think that the artist intended to put the spectator on his guard against her terrible beauty; I would therefore translate it: ‘Beware if she loves thee.’”

  “Humph!” said Monsieur de Peyrehorade; “yes, that is an admissible inte
rpretation; but, with all respect, I prefer the first translation, and I will tell you why. You know who Venus’s lover was?”

  “There were several.”

  “Yes, but the chief one was Vulcan. Didn’t the sculptor mean: ‘In spite of all thy beauty and thy scornful expression, thou shalt have for thy lover a blacksmith, an ugly cripple’? What a profound lesson, Monsieur, for flirts!”

  I could hardly help smiling at this far-fetched explanation.

  “Latin is a difficult tongue, because of its conciseness,” I remarked, to avoid contradicting my antiquarian friend outright; and I stepped back a few paces to see the statue better.

  “One moment, colleague,” said Monsieur de Peyrehorade, seizing me by the arm, “you haven’t seen everything. There is another inscription. Climb up on the pedestal and look at the right arm.” And saying this, he helped me up.

  I held on rather unceremoniously to the Venus’s neck, and began to make myself better acquainted with her. I even looked at her right in the face for a moment, and found her even more spiteful and beautiful at close quarters. Then I discovered that there were some written characters, in what seemed to me an ancient, running hand, engraved on the arm. With the help of my spectacles I spelt out the following, while Monsieur de Peyrehorade repeated every word as soon as I uttered it, with approving gestures and voice. It read thus:

  VENERI TVRBVL …

  EVTYCHES MYRO

  IMPERIO FECIT.