Tales From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio
Maso replied that they were chiefly to be found in Nomansland, the territory of the Basques, in a region called Cornucopia, where the vines are tied up with sausages, and you could buy a goose for a penny, with a gosling thrown in for good measure. And in those parts there was a mountain made entirely of grated Parmesan cheese, on whose slopes there were people who spent their whole time making macaroni and ravioli, which they cooked in chicken broth and then cast it to the four winds, and the faster you could pick it up, the more you got of it. And not far away, there was a stream of Vernaccia wine, the finest that was ever drunk, without a single drop of water in it.’
‘That’s a marvellous place, by the sound of it,’ said Calandrino, ‘but tell me, what do they do with all the chickens they cook?’
‘They are all eaten by the Basques,’ Maso replied.
Then Calandrino asked him whether he had ever been there himself, and Maso replied:
‘Been there myself? If I’ve been there once, I’ve been there a thousand times at least.’
Whereupon Calandrino asked:
‘How many miles away is it?’
‘More than a milling, that spends the whole night trilling,’3 said Maso.
‘In that case,’ said Calandrino, ‘it must be further than the Abruzzi.’
‘It is indeed,’ Maso replied. ‘Just a trifle.’
Seeing that Maso was saying this with a completely straight face, the simple-minded Calandrino took every word of it as gospel, and he said:
‘It’s too far away for me, then; but if it were nearer, I can assure you that one of these days I’d come with you, so as to see all that macaroni tumbling down, and feed my face on it. But do please tell me, are there none of these magical stones to be found in this part of the world?’
‘Yes,’ replied Maso. ‘There are two kinds of stone that are very magical indeed. First of all we have the sandstones of Settignano and Montici, from which, when they are turned into millstones, we get all our flour; hence the popular saying, in the countries I was telling you about, that blessings come from God and millstones from Montici. But we have such a lot of these sandstones, that we think as little of them as they do of emeralds, of which they have whole mountains, higher than Monte Morello,4 that sparkle and glitter in the middle of the night, believe you me if they don’t! And by the way, did you know that anyone who could master the art of setting millstones in rings, before a hole was bored in them, and who took them to the Sultan, could have anything he chose? Now, the second is a stone that we lapidaries call the heliotrope,5 which has the miraculous power of making people invisible when they are out of sight, provided they are carrying it on their person.’
‘Amazing!’ said Calandrino. ‘But this second stone, where is it to be found?’
Maso replied that one could usually find decent specimens in the valley of the Mugnone,6 whereupon Calandrino said:
‘How big are these stones? What colour are they?’
‘The size varies,’ Maso replied. ‘Some of them are bigger and others smaller, but they are all very nearly black in colour.’
Having made a mental note of all that he had heard, Calandrino pretended that he had other things to attend to and took his leave of Maso, determined to go and look for one of these stones; but he decided that before doing so, he would have to inform Bruno and Buffalmacco, who were his bosom friends. He therefore went to look for them, so that they could all set forth at once in search of the stone before anyone else should come to hear about it, and he spent the whole of the rest of the morning trying to trace them.
Finally, in mid-afternoon, he suddenly remembered that they were working at the nunnery a little beyond the city gate on the road to Faenza, so he abandoned everything he was doing and proceeded to the nunnery, running nearly all the way in spite of the tremendous heat. And having called them away from their painting, he said to them:
‘Pay attention to me, my friends, and we can become the richest men in Florence, for I have heard on good authority that along the Mugnone there’s a certain kind of stone, and when you pick it up you become invisible. I reckon we ought to go there right away, before anyone else does. We’ll find it without a doubt, because I know what it looks like; and once we’ve found it, all we have to do is to put it in our purses and go to the money-changers, whose counters, as you know, are always loaded with groats and florins, and help ourselves to as much as we want. No one will see us; and so we’ll be able to get rich quick, without being forced to daub walls all the time like a lot of snails.’
When Bruno and Buffalmacco heard this, they had a good laugh to themselves, stared one another in the face pretending to be greatly astonished, and told Calandrino that they thought it a splendid idea. Then Buffalmacco asked him what the stone was called, but Calandrino, being rather dense, had already forgotten its name, and so he replied:
‘Why should we bother about the name, when we know about its special powers? Let’s not waste any more time, but go and look for it now.’
‘Very well,’ said Bruno, ‘but what do these stones look like?’
‘They come in various shapes and sizes,’ said Calandrino, ‘but they’re all the same colour, which is very nearly black. So what we have to do is to collect all the black stones we happen to see, until we come across the right one. Come on, let’s get going.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Bruno. And turning to Buffalmacco, he said:
‘Calandrino appears to be talking sense, but there’s no point in going there at this time of day, because the sun is shining straight down on the Mugnone and it will have dried all the stones, so that the ones that seem black in the early morning, before the sun gets at them, will be just as white as the others. Besides, as it’s the middle of the week there’ll be a lot of people along the Mugnone, and if they were to see us they might guess what we were up to, in which case they might follow our example, and come across the stone before we do. We don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Wouldn’t you agree, Buffalmacco, that we ought to do this job in the early morning, so that we can distinguish the black stones from the white ones, and that we should wait until the weekend, when nobody will see us?’
Since Bruno’s advice was supported by Buffalmacco, Calandrino agreed to wait, and it was arranged that on the following Sunday morning they would all go and look for the magic stone. Meanwhile Calandrino pleaded with them not to breathe a word of this to anyone, as it had been revealed to him in strict confidence, and he then went on to tell them what he had heard about the land of Cornucopia, declaring with many an oath that he was speaking the gospel truth. And when he had taken his leave of them, they put their heads together and agreed on their plan of campaign.
Calandrino looked forward eagerly to Sunday morning, and when it came, he got up at crack of dawn and went round to call for his friends. Then they all proceeded to the Mugnone by way of the Porta San Gallo and began to work their way downstream, looking for the stone. Being the keenest of the trio, Calandrino went on ahead, darting this way and that, and whenever he caught sight of a black stone he leapt on it, picked it up, and stuffed it down his shirt, while the other two trailed along behind, occasionally picking up an odd stone here and there. Before he had gone very far, Calandrino found that there was no more room in his shirt, so he gathered up the hem of his skirt, which was not cut in the Hainaut style,7 attached it securely to his waist all round, and turned it into a capacious bag, which took him no long time to fill, after which he made a second bag out of his cloak, which in no time at all he had likewise filled up with stones.
Now that Calandrino was fully laden and the hour of breakfast was approaching, Bruno turned to Buffalmacco, as they had prearranged, and said:
‘Where’s Calandrino got to?’
Buffalmacco, who could see him quite plainly, turned to gaze in every direction, and then replied:
‘I’ve no idea. He was here a moment ago, just a little way ahead of us.’
‘A moment ago, indeed! I’
ll bet you he’s at home by now, tucking into his breakfast, after putting this crazy idea into our heads of searching for black stones along the Mugnone.’
‘Well,’ said Buffalmacco, ‘I can’t say I blame him for leaving us in the lurch like this, seeing that we were stupid enough to believe him in the first place. What a pair of blockheads we are! No one in his right mind would ever have believed all that talk about finding such a valuable stone in the Mugnone.’
Hearing them talk in this fashion, Calandrino concluded that he must have picked up the stone without knowing it, and that because of its special powers they were unable to see him, even though he was standing just a few yards away. He therefore decided, being delighted with his good fortune, to go back home; and without saying anything to the others, he turned about and started to return by the way he had come.
On seeing this, Buffalmacco turned to Bruno and said:
‘What’ll we do now? Why don’t we go home, the same as he did?’
‘Come on then,’ Bruno replied. ‘But I swear to God that I won’t fall for any more of Calandrino’s tricks. If he were as close to me now as he’s been all morning, I’d give him such a rap on the heels with this pebble that he wouldn’t forget this little hoax of his for the best part of a month.’ No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he took aim and caught Calandrino squarely on the heel with the pebble, whereupon Calandrino, grimacing with pain, jerked his foot high in the air and began to puff and gasp for breath. But he none the less managed to hold his tongue, and continued on his way.
Then Buffalmacco took between his fingers one of the stones he had collected earlier, and said to Bruno:
‘D’you see this nice sharp bit of flint? How I’d love to send it whizzing into Calandrino’s back!’ He then let it go, and it caught Calandrino a nasty blow in the small of the back. But to cut a long story short, they kept stoning Calandrino in this fashion, making various abusive remarks, all the way back along the Mugnone to the Porta San Gallo, where, having thrown away the rest of the stones they had collected, they paused to chat with the customs guards. These latter, having been let into the secret beforehand, had allowed Calandrino to pass unchallenged, and were splitting their sides with laughter.
Calandrino walked on without stopping until he reached his house, which was situated near the Canto alla Macina, and Fortune favoured the hoax to such an extent that at no point along his route, either beside the river or in the city streets, did anyone address a single word to him, though as a matter of fact he encountered very few people because nearly everyone was at breakfast.
Calandrino let himself into the house, staggering under his burden, but as luck would have it, his wife, a handsome-looking gentlewoman called Monna Tessa, was standing at the head of the stairs; and as she was somewhat annoyed with him for staying out so long, no sooner did she catch sight of him than she began to scold him, saying:
‘A fine fellow you are, I must say, coming home to breakfast when everyone else has finished eating. Where the devil have you been?’
On realizing that she could see him, Calandrino was filled with anger and dismay, and began to shout:
‘Blast you, woman, why did you have to be standing there? Now you’ve ruined everything, but I swear to God I’ll make you pay for it.’ And having ascended the stairs, he deposited his enormous collection of stones in one of the smaller rooms and rushed upon his wife like a madman. Catching her by the tresses, he hurled her to the ground at his feet and began to pummel her and kick her as hard as he could until she was bruised and battered all over from head to foot, whilst all the time she was pleading in vain for mercy and clasping her hands in a gesture of supplication.
Bruno and Buffalmacco, having tarried for a while at the city gate to have a good laugh with the watchmen, slowly set off to follow Calandrino at a distance, and when, on reaching his front door, they heard the sound of the terrible beating he was inflicting on his wife, they pretended they had only just returned, and called out to him. Calandrino appeared at the window, flushed, panting, and covered in sweat, and asked them to come up. So up the stairs they went, scowling all over their faces, to find the room cluttered up with stones and the woman huddled in a corner, her hair dishevelled, her clothes torn, and her face covered with scratches and bruises, crying her eyes out, whilst at the other side of the room Calandrino was sitting gasping for breath as though he were completely exhausted, his clothes in total disarray.
Having spent a little time surveying the scene, they said:
‘What’s all this, Calandrino? Are you planning to build a wall with all these stones we can see lying about?’ And so as to add insult to injury, they continued:
‘What’s happened to Monna Tessa? It looks as though you’ve been giving her a beating. Whatever made you do that?’
What with the weight of all the stones he had carried, and the fury with which he had assailed his wife, and his despair over losing the fortune he had imagined to be within his grasp, Calandrino was so fatigued that he couldn’t draw sufficient breath to utter a single word in reply. So Buffalmacco, having paused for a while, began all over again, saying:
‘Look here, Calandrino, you had no right to play such a mean trick on us, just because you were feeling piqued about something or other. You talked us into going with you to look for this magic stone, and then, without so much as bidding us fare you well or fare you badly, you left us standing there along the Mugnone like a pair of boobies, and cleared off home. We’re not exactly pleased with the way you’ve behaved: and you can rest assured that you’ll never do this to us again.’
This was more than Calandrino could bear, so he summoned up all his energies and replied:
‘Don’t be angry, my friends, you’re quite wrong about what happened. I actually found the stone, and if you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it. When you started asking one another where I was, I was standing less than ten yards away from you the whole time. And when I saw that you were making tracks for home and couldn’t see me, I walked ahead of you. As a matter of fact, I was just a little way in front of you all the way back to the city gate.’
He then gave them an account of everything they had said and done from beginning to end, and showed them the marks made by the stones on his heels and his back, after which he said:
‘And I’ll tell you another thing: as I was coming in at the city gate, loaded up to the eyebrows with all these stones you see here, nobody said a word to me, and you know for yourselves what those customs men are like, with their tedious and offensive manner of demanding to see everything. Besides, I met various friends and neighbours as I was coming along the road, who are always in the habit of bidding me good morning and offering me a drink, yet none of them uttered so much as a syllable, and they passed me by as though they hadn’t seen me. But when I finally arrived home, I was met by this blasted devil of a woman; and because, as you know, all things lose their virtue in the presence of a woman,8 the spell was broken and she saw me. So instead of being the luckiest man in Florence, she’s made me the unluckiest, which is why I beat her with all the strength I had in my hands. So help me God, I could slit the woman’s throat for her. I curse the hour that I first set eyes on her, and the day she came into this house.’
And flying once more into a rage, he made as though to get up and give her another good thrashing.
As they listened to Calandrino’s tale, Bruno and Buffalmacco feigned great astonishment, and nodded at regular intervals to confirm what he was saying, though it was all they could do to prevent themselves from bursting out laughing. But when they saw him rising furiously to his feet to beat his wife a second time, they rushed forward to restrain him, declaring that if anyone was to blame it was not the lady, but Calandrino himself, for he was well aware that women caused things to lose their virtue, and hadn’t warned her beforehand not to show her face that day in his presence. Moreover it was God Himself, they argued, who had prevented him from taking this precaution, either because Calandrino
was not destined to enjoy this singular piece of good fortune, or because he was intending to deceive his companions, to whom he should have revealed his discovery the moment he realized the stone was in his possession.
After a lot of palaver, they managed, with a great deal of effort, to conciliate the hapless lady and her husband, and they then departed, leaving him to sit and brood with his house full of stones.
FOURTH STORY
The Provost of Fiesole falls in love with a widow, but his love is not reciprocated. He goes to bed with her maid, thinking it to be the widow, and the lady’s brothers cause him to be found there by his bishop.
When Elissa came to the end of her tale, which in the course of its telling had brought no small pleasure to the entire company, the queen turned to Emilia and indicated that she would like her to tell her own story next; so Emilia promptly began, as follows:
Worthy ladies, it has already been shown, as I recall, in several of the stories we have heard, that priests, friars, and clerics of all descriptions will stop at nothing to force themselves on our attention. But however much we may discuss this particular subject, more will remain to be said; and I therefore propose to tell you a story about a provost1 who was determined, come what may, to obtain the favours of a certain widow, whether she wanted to grant them to him or not. But being highly intelligent, the lady, who was of gentle birth, treated him according to his deserts.
As you all know, Fiesole, which stands on top of a hill, clearly visible from where we are now, is a city of great antiquity,2 and was once very large. Although it has now fallen into total ruin, it has never been without a bishop, and there is one living there to this day. Some years ago, a widow of gentle birth called Monna Piccarda had an estate there, not far from the principal church; and since she was not the wealthiest of women, she resided there for almost the entire year, in a house of modest proportions, together with her two brothers, a pair of very worthy and polite young gentlemen.