The Tale of Tales

by Giambattista Basile

  “This went on for a number of days until eventually the girl got a craving to see her mother, and told the slave. He entered into a room and spoke with I don’t know who, came back out, and gave her a large sack of money, telling her to give it to her mother. Then he reminded her not to get lost on the way and to return soon, and to tell no one where she was coming from or where she was staying.

  “Now when the girl arrived and her sisters saw how well dressed and well treated she looked, they almost died of envy. And when Luciella wanted to go back, her mother and sisters wanted to accompany her. But she refused their company and returned to the same palace through the same grotto, and after staying there peacefully for another few months she finally got the same longing again, and with the usual warning and the usual gifts was sent to her mother.

  “After this happened three or four more times, always adding a new sirocco gale of envy to the sisters’ hernia, those ugly harpies poked around so hard that they finally found out everything that was going on from an ogress, and when Luciella came home to them the next time they said to her, ‘Although you didn’t want to tell us anything of your pleasures, you should know that we know everything. Since every night you’re given a sleeping potion, you can’t be aware of the fact that a splendid young man is sleeping with you. But your happiness will always be incomplete unless you resolve to follow the advice of those who love you; at the end, you’re our blood, and we only desire what is profitable and pleasing for you. And so when you go to bed in the evening and the slave comes with the mouthwash, tell him to get you a napkin to clean your mouth, and carefully pour out the wine from the glass so that you’ll be able to stay awake during the night. As soon as you see that your husband has fallen asleep, open this padlock, and in spite of anything he may do, the spell will have to be broken, and you will become the happiest woman in the world.’

  “Poor Luciella, who didn’t know that under the saddle of velvet there was a festering wound, amid the flowers a serpent, and in the golden basin poison, believed the words of her sisters. And after returning to the grotto, night came and she did what those wily girls had told her to. When everything was quiet and silent she lit a candle with a flint and saw next to her a flower of beauty, a young man who was all lilies and roses.

  “At the sight of such a beauteous thing she said, ‘My word, now he’ll never escape from my clutches!’ and she took the padlock, opened it, and saw a group of women carrying quantities of fine yarn on their heads. One of them dropped a skein, and Luciella, who was a fountain of charity, didn’t remember where she was and raised her voice, crying, ‘Pick up the skein, madam!’ The young man awoke at this shout and felt such displeasure at having been discovered that in that same instant he called a slave, had Luciella’s original rags put on her back, and sent her away. And with the color of someone who has just gotten out of the hospital she returned to her sisters, who then kicked her out with wicked words and even worse actions.

  “Luciella then set off to beg her way through the world, and after a thousand torments and when the poor soul was pregnant and big-bellied, she arrived at the city of Tall Tower and went to the royal palace, where she asked for a little straw on which to rest. A lady-in-waiting of the court, who was a good person, took her in, and when it was time to unload her belly she gave birth to a son as beautiful as a golden ear of wheat.

  “The first night after he was born, while everyone was sleeping, a handsome young man entered the chambers and said, ‘O lovely son of mine: if my mother only knew, she would wash you in a basin of gold and swaddle you in layers of gold, and if the rooster never sang, I would never part from you!’ While saying this, he slipped away like quicksilver at the first song of the rooster.

  “The lady-in-waiting discovered what was going on, and when she saw that every night the same person was coming to make the same music, she told the queen, who—as soon as the Sun, like a physician, discharged all the stars from the hospital of the sky—had a most cruel proclamation issued: all the roosters of the city were to be killed, causing every hen there to be widowed and scalped2 in one fell swoop. And when the same young man returned that evening the queen, who was ready with her weapon and wasn’t wasting her time sorting lentils, realized that it was her son, and embraced him tightly. Since the curse put on him by an ogress had stipulated that he would always wander far from home until his mother embraced him and the rooster stopped crowing, as soon as he was in his mother’s arms the spell was broken and the evil influence ended.

  “And thus his mother found that she had acquired a jewel of a grandson; Luciella found herself with a fairy of a husband; and her sisters, when they got the news of her good fortune, came to see her with brazen faces. But they were given pizza for pasty3 and received payment in the same coin, discovering with great anger in their souls that the son of envy is heartache.”4

  10

  THE BUDDY*

  Tenth Entertainment of the Second Day

  Cola Iacovo Aggrancato has a scoundrel of a buddy who sucks him out of everything, and since he’s unable to get him off his back with tricks and stratagems, he pulls his head out of the bag and banishes him from his house with rude words.

  The tale was truly wonderful and was told with grace and listened to with attention, so that a thousand things contributed to give it the juice necessary to provide pleasure. But since every little bit of time that put itself between one tale and the next kept the slave jerking about as if she had a cord around her neck,1 Iacova was urged to take her turn at the lathe. She put her hands into the barrel of nursery stories to refresh the thirst of the audience and spoke in this manner: “Lack of discretion, ladies and gentlemen, causes the merchant’s measure of good judgment to fall from his hands, the architect’s compass of manners to lose accuracy, and the mariner’s needle of reason to go awry. And when it takes root in the soil of ignorance, it produces no fruit but shame and humiliation. You can see this happen every day, and in particular it befell a certain bald-faced buddy, as I’m about to tell you.

  “There was a certain Cola Iacovo Aggrancato of Pomigliano,2 husband of Masella Cernecchia of Resina3 and a man as rich as the sea who didn’t even know what he owned, since his pigs were in the pen and he had enough straw to last him till morning.4 With all of this, and in spite of the fact that he had neither children nor troubles and that he weighed his brass by the bushel, he could have run a hundred miles without dropping half a cent5 and, subjecting himself to every sort of deprivation, he led the miserable life of a dog, and all so that he could save up and accumulate.

  “Nevertheless, every time he sat down to eat barely enough to keep alive, it was just his misfortune that a bad-day buddy of his would turn up and refuse to leave him alone for a moment; as if there were a clock in his body and an hourglass between his teeth he presented himself at feeding time so that he could join them and, unabashed, he stuck to them like a tick, and they couldn’t have driven him off with a pickax. He counted the bites that went into their mouths and came out with quips and beat with a stick until he was told, ‘Please, help yourself.’ At which point, without having to be begged too hard, he would throw himself between husband and wife and, as if overcome with cravings, dying of hunger, sharp as a razor, fierce as a hound sent to sic, and with a wolfish craving in his belly and lightning speed—‘where are you coming from, the mill?’6—he would wave his hands around like a piper, roll his eyes like a wild cat, and work his teeth like a grindstone. He swallowed things whole, not allowing one mouthful to wait for the next, and when his cheeks were good and full, his tummy loaded and his belly like a drum, when he had seen the bottom of the plates and swept up the whole town, without even saying ‘take care’ he would grab a jug of wine and suck it up, empty it dry, siphon it off, glug it down, and drain it all in one breath until you could see the bottom. And then he would be off on his way to tend to his business, leaving Cola Iacovo and Masella with long faces.

  “When they
saw this lack of discretion on the part of their buddy, who like a ripped bag gobbled up, guzzled, devoured, gulped down, shoveled in, emptied, ripped off, stole away, lifted, porked down, razed to the ground, polished off, sent down his hatch, demolished, and cleared out everything on the table, they didn’t know how to remove this bloodsucker, this poultice on their chest, this infection between their legs, this August cure,7 this horsefly, this greedy tick, this tourniquet, this splint, this high rent, this perpetual lease, this octopus, this subjection,8 this weight, this headache; and they could barely wait for the time when, at least once, they could relax and eat without this attendant at their side, this grease on their corks.

  “One morning, having learned that his buddy had gone out of town to assist some official, Cola Iacovo said, ‘Oh, may the Sun in Leo be praised; for once in a hundred years we’ll be able to work our chops, unrein our jaws, and stick our noses in without always having that itch up our ass! And so if the Court9 wants to ruin me, I’ll be ruined! In this shithole of a world you get as much as you’re able to tear off with your teeth; hurry and light the fire, for now that we’ve got a time-out10 when we can have a nice feast, let’s give ourselves the satisfaction of eating something tasty, some juicy morsels!’ As he was saying this he ran off to buy a fine Pantano11 eel, a bag of superfine flour, and a good flask of Mangiaguerra wine. After he got back home his wife busied herself preparing a nice pizza while he fried the eel, and when everything was ready they sat down at the table.

  “But no sooner were they seated than their sponge of a buddy came knocking at the door. When Masella looked out and saw the party pooper of their happiness, she said to her husband, ‘My dear Cola Iacovo, there’s never been a roast in the butcher shop of human delights that didn’t come with the bone of displeasure; one never sleeps between the white sheets of satisfaction without a few bedbugs of travail; a laundry of pleasure has never been done without some rain of dissatisfaction falling on it! Here we are with this bitter mouthful that has gone down the wrong way; here we are with this shit of a meal stuck in our throats!’ To which Cola Iacovo answered, ‘Put away those things on the table, get rid of them, hide them, cover them up so you can’t see them, and then open the door; maybe if he finds the village sacked he’ll have the discretion to leave quickly and give us the chance to gobble up this little bit of poison!’ While their buddy was ringing the alarm and chiming the Gloria, Masella stuck the eel behind a cupboard, the flask of wine under the bed, and the pizza between the mattresses, and Cola Iacovo dove down under the table and kept a lookout through a hole in the tablecloth, which hung down to the ground.

  “The buddy saw all this traffic through the keyhole, and as soon as the door was opened for him, he went in brazen faced, pretending to be all bewildered and frightened, and when Masella asked him what had happened, he said, ‘While you were making me suffer with such tribulation and worry outside the door and I was waiting for you to open as if for the urge to go or for the crow to come home, a snake slithered by my feet, and oh, dear mother, what a huge and hideous thing! Let’s just say that it was as big as the eel you put in the cupboard. When I found myself in that tight spot I started trembling like a rush; my body began to spin the fine thread of terror; I was wormy with fear and shaking with shock. Then I picked up a rock from the ground, which was as big as that flask under the bed, and boom! I threw it at the snake’s head and made a pizza out of it, just like the one between the mattresses! And as it was dying and writhing in pain, I could see that it was looking at me, like my buddy under the table. I don’t have a drop of blood left in my body; I’m scared stiff and terrified!’

  “No longer able to keep still at those words, Cola Iacovo, who couldn’t swallow this sugar, stuck his head out from behind the tablecloth, like Trastullo12 when he comes onto the stage, and said, ‘If that’s how it is, we’re in a mess! Now we’ve really filled the spindle! Look, now we’ve baked the bread! Look, now we’ve won the case! Look, if we owe you something report us to the Bagliva court;13 if we insulted you register a complaint at the Zecca!14 If you feel offended hog-tie me; if you’ve got a fancy use an enema tip to get rid of it; if you expect something from us chase us with a fox’s tail15 or hit us on the nose in Naples!16 What are these terms; what kind of way to proceed is this? You act like an occupying soldier17 who wants to scare us out of our possessions! A finger should have been enough, but you took the whole hand, and at this point it’s clear that you intend to kick us out of our house with all this commotion! He who lacks discretion owns the whole world, but he who will not measure his actions is measured by others, and if you have nothing to measure with, we have reels and rolling pins! And finally, you know what they say: “A nice face deserves a nice pounding”! And so each bit of straw to its mattress, and leave us with our own misfortunes. From today on, if you think you can keep on playing this music you’re wasting your footsteps and you won’t get a crumb out of it; you’ll lose your every adornment and nothing will go right for you. If you think you can keep on sleeping in this soft bed, you’ve got a good time coming, you really do! You’ve taken the March cure!18 You can go find a toothpick if you think this inn is open for your rotten gullet! Look how you run to slip it on the ring!19 Forget it, get it out of your head; it’s wasted effort, it’s thrown to the wind, and there’s no more bait or trimmings for you! You set your eyes on the suckers and the pigeons, you spotted the featherbrains, you sounded out the jackasses, you found the Land of Plenty! And now you can just go back where you came from; nothing is going to be done for you any longer and you can call this house a feather,20 for you won’t be drawing any more water from my well! And if you’re a dinner spy, a bread gobbler, a table cleaner, a kitchen sweeper, a pot licker, a bowl shiner, a glutton, a sewer pipe; if you’re ravenous and have a wolf’s appetite, if your intestines flood open and crash in so that you could teach an ass a few things, then empty a ship, bolt down the prince’s bear,21 do away with the Holy Grail,22 drink your fill in the Tiber or the Angravio,23 and eat up Mariaccio’s trousers,24 and then go to some other parish, go pull up the trawl net, go pick rags from the garbage dump, go look for nails in the street gullies,25 go collect wax from funeral candles, and go unplug latrine pipes so you can fill your gorge. May this house be like fire to you, for everyone has their own problems, everyone knows what they’ve got under their clothes and what their stomach can take. We have no need for these bankrupt firms, these unsuccessful clients, these broken lances! He who can save himself is saved; we’ve got to wean you from this titty, you idler of a bird, useless thing, good-for-nothing! Go to work; go to work, learn a trade, find yourself a master!’

  “When he heard himself given this straight-talking lecture, this bursting abscess, this carding without a reed, the hapless buddy grew all cold and icy, like a thief caught in the act, a pilgrim who has lost his way, a sailor who has wrecked his boat, a whore who has lost her client, or a little girl who has dirtied her bed. And with his tongue between his teeth, his head bowed low, his beard stuck to his chest, his eyes teary, his nose moldy, his teeth icy, his hands empty, his heart heavy, and his tail between his legs, he gathered up his things and left very quietly, cautiously, slowly, and deliberately, silently and without a word. Not once did he turn his head back, and he was reminded of that honorable saying: A dog not invited to the wedding should not go, or it will get a beating.”

  They all laughed so hard at the humiliation of the shameless buddy that they didn’t realize the Sun had been too extravagant with its light and gone bankrupt and, after putting its golden keys under the door, escaped to safety. But then Cola Ambruoso and Marchionno came out with their thigh pieces and their jackets of fringed twill to recite the second motif, and everyone’s ears perked up when they heard the epitaph of the eclogue that follows.

  THE DYE

  Eclogue

  Cola Ambruoso and Marchionno

  COLA AMBRUOSO: Of all the trades, Marchionno, dyeing must be given first prize and first p
lace, as was noted by someone, whether he was a scullery boy or a cook I don’t know.

  MARCHIONNO: I oppose that conclusion, Cola Ambruoso, because it’s a filthy art; your hands are always covered with gallnut,1 vitriol, and alum, just like the varnish on a Moor.

  COLA: On the contrary, it’s the cleanest of all practices; one, in fact, of a man who wants to appear clean even if he is full of grease.

  MAR.: You’ll have me believe that it’s like being a perfumer or an embroiderer! Go on, get out of here, you’re wrong!

  COLA: I want to prove to you, and even put it to the test of the oven, that the art of the dyer is a noble thing. Nowadays it’s used by everyone; with its help man is able to survive and is held in high esteem; whether you have deceit in your belly or vice in your breast, with the dye you can cover any defect.

  MAR.: What do the vices of life have to do with dyeing wool or second-rate silk?

  COLA: How clear it is that you don’t have a clue! You think I’m talking about dyeing socks and old rags! The dye I’m talking about is quite a different thing from indigo or sappanwood;2 it’s a dye that makes the color of myrtle appear like flesh to people!

  MAR.: I’m tied in a sack; I don’t understand a speck of this; this talk of yours leaves me all tangled up and in the dark!

  COLA: Look, if you listen to me I’ll teach you how to be a dyer, or else how to recognize those who dye, and you’ll get great pleasure out of learning this new art, this art which is the latest thing among the shrewdest of people, an art that can take a cockroach and make it look just like a cat! Listen: someone may be a three-alarm scoundrel, who sweeps away whatever he runs into and whatever he eyes, lifts whatever he sees, and makes off with whatever he finds. Now those who know this dye do not give him the vile name of pilfering thief or sly rogue but will say that he makes good use of his judgment and that his money comes from underground, that he earns a living and would be able to survive even in the woods, that he takes good advantage and is a good knave, a sea bream that knows its way around the port, an ingenious guy, a pirate who knows how to use the crucible, one who never loses his hat in a crowd. And, in short, with this dye, so lovely and gallant, a scoundrel goes by the name of a judicious man!