The Tale of Tales

by Giambattista Basile

  THE CRUCIBLE*

  Eclogue

  Fabiello, Iacovuccio

  FABIELLO: Where are you going so quickly? Where are you going in such a hurry, Iacovuccio?

  IACOVUCCIO: To take this little thing home.

  FAB.: Is it something nice?

  IAC.: It sure is. Absolutely first-rate.

  FAB.: Well, then?

  IAC.: It’s a crucible.

  FAB.: What do you use it for?

  IAC.: If you only knew.

  FAB.: Hey, careful there. You get away from me!

  IAC.: Why?

  FAB.: Who knows, maybe you’ve been blinded by the demon! Do you get what I’m saying?

  IAC.: I hear you, but you’re a hundred miles off.1

  FAB.: What do I know, then?

  IAC.: He who knows not is quiet and keeps his trap shut.

  FAB.: I do know you’re not a goldsmith, and you’re not a distiller: draw your own conclusions!

  IAC.: Let’s move over to the side here, Fabiello. I want you to be amazed and stunned.

  FAB.: We can go wherever you want.

  IAC.: Let’s go stand under that awning. I’m going to make you jump out of your clothes!

  FAB.: Hurry up and get on with it, brother, you’re making me pant.

  IAC.: Take it easy, my brother! What a rush you’re in! Tell me, did your mother make you in such a hurry? Take a good look at this contraption.

  FAB.: I can see that it’s a pot where you purify silver.

  IAC.: You hit it on the head. You guessed it right off!

  FAB.: Cover it up. Who knows, some copper might come by and we’ll be taken off to the pen!

  IAC.: What a pants shitter you are! But you can tremble in peace. This isn’t one of those where you knead dough with all sorts of stratagems until three little coins2 turn into three pieces of wood!3

  FAB.: Tell me, then, what do you use it for?

  IAC.: To refine the things of this world, and to distinguish between garlic and figs.

  FAB.: You’ve got a lot of linen to card! You’ll get old in no time; in no time at all you’ll have white hair!

  IAC.: Look, there’s not a man on earth who wouldn’t pay an eye and a tooth to have a device like this one, which on the first try reveals every stain a person has inside him, the value of every art and every fortune! For inside here you can see if a noodle is empty or if it’s got some sense, if something is adulterated or pure.

  FAB.: What do you mean now?

  IAC.: Listen to me straight through; calm down, and I’ll explain myself better. Whatever by its outer aspect and on the face of things seems to be of value is all an illusion of the eye, a way to blind people, mere appearance. You can’t just skim the surface or scratch the skin; you need to pierce a hole and go all the way in, for in this world he who does not fish deep is a fine blockhead! Use this crucible, and you’ll be able to test whether the business is true or false, whether it’s a sprouted onion or a pasty.

  FAB.: It’s a wondrous thing, on the life of Lanfusa!4

  IAC.: Hear me out, and then marvel. Let’s move on. Take a deep breath, for you’re going to hear of miracles! Listen now to an example. You die of envy, you swell up and get a hernia over a lord, count, or knight, because he travels in a carriage; you see him served and accompanied by so many small-fry, such riffraff. There’s one who screws up his face at him over here, one who bows to him over there, one who takes off his hat to him, one who says, “Your slave!” He reduces silk and gold to rags; when he eats, they fan him; and he even has a chamber pot of silver! But don’t get pregnant on this pomp and appearance; don’t sigh and let your mouth water. Put it all in this crucible, and you’ll see just how many festering sores lie under the velvet saddle; you’ll find out just how many snakes lie hiding in the flowers and the grass; if you uncover the commode, with its fringes and embroidery, and bullion and silks, you’ll be able to tell if the business has to do with perfume or with stench! He has a gold basin, and he spits blood in it; he has choice morsels and they get stuck in his throat; and if you measure well, and observe even more carefully, what you think is a gift of fortune is a punishment from the heavens. All the crows he feeds bread to take out his eyes; all the dogs he keeps bark at him; he gives a salary to his enemies, who surround him, suck him up alive, and hoodwink him. Over here is one who sponges off him with grimaces and tall tales; over there is one who puffs him up with a bellows; one appears to be charitable right down to his asshole, a wolf in sheep’s clothing with a lovely face and a horrible spleen, and induces him to commit wrongs and injustices; another plots machinations. That one is a “lemme tell you all about it” and turns his poor noggin upside down; this one betrays him and gives him dysentery, so that he never sleeps restfully, eats with pleasure, or laughs with all his heart. If he eats, the noise drives him out of his mind; if he sleeps, his dreams terrify him; his haughtiness torments him, like Tityus’s bird; his vanity is the water and fruit that surround him as he’s dying of hunger; reason, lacking all reason, is Ixion’s wheel, which gives him no peace; the plots and chimeras are the stones that Sisyphus drags up the mountain, from where they fall—boom!—back down to the bottom!5 He sits on a golden chair inlaid with ivory and studded with gold; under his feet he has cushions of brocade and taffeta and Turkish carpets. But above his noggin hangs a sharp-edged sword suspended by a single hair, so that he is ever with diarrhea, spinning the fine thread of fear and frozen with terror, ever with worms and the runs and in a fright and a state of dread. And, at the very end, this magnificence and grandeur are all shadows and trash, and a bit of earth in a narrow ditch covers rogues and kings alike.

  FAB.: You’re right, on the soul of you-know-who! I swear, it’s even worse than you say, for the greater a lord is, the more massive his calamities are. And in short, that man from Trecchiena6 who went around selling walnuts spoke well when he said, “All that glitters isn’t gold!”

  IAC.: Listen to this other one, and you’ll become a lotus tree!7 Here’s a man who praises war and puts it above all else, and when the time comes for a banner to be raised, for the rat-ta-tat-tat of a drum to be heard, he races off to enlist, pulled by the throat by four chips8 thrown on a bench. He gets fresh money, he buys new clothes on the Giudecca,9 he puts on his carob pod10 and he looks like a pack mule, with his plume and saddlecloth. If a friend asks him, “Where are we going?” he cheerfully answers, walking on air, “To war, to war!” He hangs out in taverns, he triumphs on Mulberry Street,11 he goes off to his quarters, he sells his billets,12 he makes noise and a racket, and even Gradasso couldn’t make him retreat!13 Poor fellow, if you melt him down in this crucible! All that happiness, those airs, and that strutting are transformed into tribulation and torment. Cold numbs him, heat puts an end to him, hunger gnaws at him, fatigue massacres him, danger is always at his side, and rewards are far away. Wounds come in cash, pay comes on credit, suffering is long and sweetness short, life uncertain and death sure. At the end, he’s either exhausted by so many torments and beats it out of there, and with three jumps is able to verify whether the cord is a fuse or a halter,14 or else he’s completely destroyed, or crippled, and he’s got nothing left other than the subsidy15 of a pair of crutches, or a treatment for scabies, or—and it’s the lesser evil—a pension plan16 in the hospital.

  FAB.: You’ve revealed everything rotten about it and there’s nothing left to say; it’s true and more than true, since a poor soldier spends the last drops of life either as a pauper or full of holes!

  IAC.: And what do you say about a man full of himself, who walks on his tiptoes, struts like a peacock, and swells up and boasts that he descends from the race and lineage of Achilles or Alexander: all day long he draws family trees, and he pulls the branch of a holly oak from the trunk of a chestnut; all day long he writes stories and Johnny-ologies of fathers who never had children, and he would have it that a man who sell
s quarter barrels of oil is a quarter part noble. He adjusts privileges on sheets of parchment and fumes them so that they’ll look old, thus feeding the fumes of vanity; he buys tombstones and attaches to them epitaphs made of a thousand nursery rhymes. He pays the Zazzeras17 to dress up his shirttails, he spends at the Campaniles’18 to tune his bells, and he spends an eye and a tooth at the di Pietris’19 to lay down the foundations for a few crumbling houses. But when he is put to the test in the crucible, he who stretches himself out the longest, he who expects the best and talks through his nose and brags, still has calluses from his hoe!

  FAB.: You’re touching where it hurts and there’s nothing left to say; you’ve hit the nail on the head! I remember, by the way (and keep these words in mind), that a wise man once said, “There’s nothing worse than a peasant who’s come up in the world.”

  IAC.: Now look: a vainglorious man, a perfume shitter, full of conceit, who has the presumption to hang a garland of cheese around his horse’s neck, and goes off in a pique with great ostentation. He blows up balloons of air and blurts out nonsense, he spits out rotund words and swaggers about, twists and screws up his mouth, sucks his lips when he speaks, and measures his footsteps: try and guess who he thinks he is! He glories in himself and boasts, “Hey there, bring on the tawny horse, or the dapple! Call twenty of my men! See if my nephew the count wants to go for a little spin! When is our administrator going to bring me the carriage? Tell the master tailor that before evening I want the gold-embroidered breeches! Send an answer to that lady who suffers agonies for me and tell her that maybe, just maybe, I’ll love her!” But as soon as he’s tested in this crucible, there’s not a coin left; it’s all a straw fire, and the more he struts about the more he yawns with hunger: he’s always talking of big money and he’s without a cent, he puts on airs and has nothing to put in his mouth, he has a pleated collar and not a wrinkle in his purse, a nice belly but not a bit of cash. In conclusion, every beard of his turns out to be a sideburn, every pole a toothpick, every pie a boiled chestnut, and every bombard ends up shooting wind.

  FAB.: May this tongue of yours be blessed! How well you’ve dissected it, how well you’ve investigated it! In short, it’s an ancient saying that a vain man is like a bladder.

  IAC.: He who follows the court is put under a spell by that ugly witch and swells up with wind, feeds on the smoke of the roast with his bladder full of hope, waits for bubbles of soap and lye that pop on the way before they ever get to him. With his mouth wide open he’s amazed at such magnificent splendor, and for a used rag and the privilege of sopping up some broth with a hard piece of stale bread in the servants’ quarters he sells his freedom, which has such a high price! If you pour some solvent on this false gold, you’ll see labyrinths of fraud and betrayal; you’ll find, my brother, abysses of deceit and simulation; you’ll discover a large town of biting and cruel tongues. One minute he’s raised high on the palm of the hand, the next he’s thrown down to the bottom of the barrel; one minute he’s in his master’s favors, the next he makes him sick; now he’s poor and now he’s rich, now fat and tall, now small and thin. He offers his services, he labors, he makes sacrifices, he sweats like a dog; instead of walking he moves at a trot and even carries water on his ears. But he’s wasting his time, his work, and his seed, since everything is done for the wind, everything is thrown to sea. You can do as much as you like, and it comes to nil; you can make plans and projects based on your hopes, your merits, and your sacrifices, but every little wind that blows in the wrong direction dashes all your labors to the ground. At the end, you find in front of you a buffoon, a spy, a Ganymede,20 a wild and tough-skinned animal, or else one who makes houses with two doors21 or a man with two faces.

  FAB.: Brother, you’re giving me new life! Believe me, I’ve learned more in this short time, and more in this one sitting, than I did in the many years that I spent in school! A council of doctors once decreed, “He who serves in court, dies on the haystack.”

  IAC.: You’ve heard what a courtier is; now hear about those who serve on a lower scale. Take a servant: handsome, polite and clean, and by all means well reared. He bows down a thousand times, he tidies up your house, pulls up water, cooks, brushes your clothes, curries the mule, washes the dishes, and if you send him to the town square he returns before a bit of spittle has had the time to dry;22 he’s incapable of standing with his hands by his side or being idle, he rinses glasses and empties your chamber pot. But if you want proof and put him to the royal test, you’ll find that every novelty is pretty but that a donkey can’t run forever; when three days have gone by you’ll discover that he’s a deceiver, a lifelong sluggard, a first-rate panderer, a con man, a glutton, a bettor: if he spends, he skims a bit off; if he gives the mule some fodder, he gives her everything from the grape to the seed; he corrupts your maid; he goes through your pockets; and finally, to round things off, in one clean sweep23 he rids you even of your dustpan and then kicks up his heels! You see what happens when you tie up the pigs next to the cucumbers!

  FAB.: Those are words of substance, truly juicy! Oh, wretched and unfortunate is he who meets up with a wily servant!

  IAC.: Here we have a swashbuckler: he’s the leader of the pack of thugs, the master builder of swaggerers, the boss of bullies, the head of the trade council of roughnecks, the true ringleader of blusterers, and the abbot of valiant men. He presumes to terrify people and takes pride in it, frightening you with a turn of his eyes; he paces like a pike soldier, with his cape thrown over his shoulder, his hat sitting low on his eyes, his collar turned up, his moustache curled, his eyes crossed, and his hand on his hip; he boasts, he stamps his feet, even a speck of dust bothers him, and he would start a fight with flies. He always travels with a gang, and you hear him talk of nothing but “driving it in”: one of his men pierces, another perforates, does people in, guts them, takes them off the list, pokes the air out of them; one breaks bones, another hands out thrashings, breaks down all resistance, beats up, smashes, rips apart, decapitates, chops to pieces; one tears out people’s stomachs or livers, another fills them with punches, leaves them black and blue, puts dents in them, sticks it to them: if you hear him bragging, earth, hold onto your life! One jots things down in his notebook, another removes people from the world, sends them off to their relatives, squeezes every last coin out of them, puts this one under salt and plants that one in the ground and makes mincemeat24 of that other one, shoves them around and cuts them down by the hundred, and always in ruin and uproar, splitting skulls and chopping off legs.

  But his sword, no matter how much strength and valor it shows, is a virgin to blood and a widow to honor! And this crucible will uncover the copper beneath, for the bravado of his mouth is in fact the trembling in his heart; the daggers in his eyes his feet in retreat; the thunder of his boasting the thin shit of fear; the thrusting of his sleep the blow he receives upon waking; the endless allowances25 for outbursts the sequestration of his sword, which, like an honorable woman, is ashamed to show itself naked. If he looks bilious, he’s always sick to his stomach with fear; if he gnaws on lions, he’s shitting rabbits; if he issues challenges, he’s sewed up and stuffed; if he threatens, he gets a lashing and then another one; if he plays the dice of swashbucklery, he always meets up with his match. In words he is brave but in effects brief; he grabs for his steel and then weighs anchor; he looks for a scuffle and then scuffles to get away. He is more volatile than valiant, always encountering those who trip him up and then make sure to clarify things, those who set his jacket straight on his shoulders, those who shake him up and give him his change, those who settle his accounts, card his wool, go after him with a belt, give him a beating, make his ears ring and his molars shake, ransack the hold of his body, tear out his tonsils, and make him foam with blood; or else take out an orb, give him a good combing, dress him up in his best finery, plane him down, tickle him with a club, deal him a hook, or let loose an uppercut or a haymaker, a jawbreaker, a backhander, a
whack, a punch, a smack, a head butt, a roundhouse, a clobbering, a kick, a slug, a fusillade strong enough to close a shop, or go for the jugular and try to strangle him! Enough said: he gets struck by the point and wounded by the blade; he talks like a man and runs like a deer; he sows spit and reaps eggplant;26 and just when you think he’s going to butt you like a billy goat, get the best of an entire army, start spinning his spoons27—day breaks, and it’s a fine one. He looks like a horse returning home; he slinks away, he’s out of there, he weighs anchor and beats it; he disappears, gives his notice, and goes off to pick violets. He decamps and sneaks off and sinks out of sight and fires a departing shot; he throws up his heels and tears off and races away; he grabs his saddlebags and says, “Help me, heels, I’m putting you on now!” His anklebones touch his shoulders, and he has the foot of a hare; he wields his broadsword standing on his two legs; like a big sluggard he hobbles along and then flees; he takes his blows and then goes to jail!

  FAB.: The spitting image of those blustering cocks! Oh, it’s so true to life! And don’t forget to mention, on my word, that you won’t find more than one of them who can break a chain with his tongue, and even he’s no good as a quail dog!

  IAC.: One minute a flatterer praises you and raises you up to the top of the moon; he follows wherever you lead, he offers you line and bait, he blows in your sails, nor does he ever contradict you. If you’re an ogre or an Aesop he’ll say that you’re Narcissus, and if you have a scar on your face he’ll swear that it’s a mole and such a pretty thing. If you’re a lazy bum he’ll say that you’re Hercules or Samson;28 if you come from a lowly family he’ll maintain that it’s the lineage of a count; in short, he’ll pet you and caress you. But see that you don’t get too attached to the words of these gluttonous chatterboxes, and see that you don’t found your hopes on them! Don’t believe them for a second, don’t think they’re worth a cent, don’t let yourself be led on, but put them to the test in this crucible, and you’ll be able to touch with your own hand their two faces: one in front and one behind, with one thing on their tongues and another in their hearts. They’re all face licking and feigning: they cheat you, put you in the middle, trick you, steal from you, deceive you, hoodwink you, slip you one and bamboozle you, and they swindle you and blind you and burn you! When they humor you, know that a storm is brewing; they bite with their giggles, they filthy you with their praise, they make your head swell and your bag deflate. Their whole goal is to pilfer and to sponge, and with the bloodhounds of their praise and nursery rhymes and tall tales they go hunting for dough in your heart, and they’ll sell you bladders for lanterns to scrounge up a few silver coins so that they can go to whores or taverns.