Bruno was more than ever convinced, having listened to his prattle, that the man was a complete nincompoop, and said to him:
‘Shed a little more light up here, Master, and just be patient till I’ve finished putting the tails on these mice, then I’ll give you my answer.’
When he had finished off the tails, Bruno pretended to be very worried by the doctor’s request, and said:
‘I know about the great things you would do for me, Master, but nevertheless the favour you are asking, though it may seem trivial to a man of your rare intellect, is anything but simple to my way of thinking, and even if I were in a position to grant it, I know of no one in the world for whom I would do it, apart from yourself. And I would do it for you, not only because I love you as a brother, but because your words are seasoned with so much wisdom that they would startle a pious old lady out of her boots, let alone persuade me to change my mind; indeed, the more time I spend in your company, the wiser you appear. Besides, even if I had no other reason for loving you, I am bound to love you on seeing that you have lost your heart to such a beauty as the one you described. I must however point out that I am not as influential as you suppose in these matters, and it is not within my power to grant your request. But if you will give me your solemn pledge, as a gentleman and a moron, to keep my words a secret, I shall explain how you can achieve your aim without my assistance. And since you have all those fine books and the other things you were telling me about, I feel certain that your efforts will be crowned with success.’
‘Have no fear, you may speak out,’ said the Master. ‘If you knew me a little better, you’d soon find out whether I can keep a secret or not. Why, when Messer Guasparruolo da Saliceto was on the magistrates’ bench at Forlimpopoli,14 he confided nearly all his secrets to me, knowing they would be in safe keeping. And if you want me to prove it, I was the first man he told that he was about to marry Bergamina. Now what do you think of that?’
‘That settles it,’ said Bruno. ‘If a man of that sort confided in you, I can certainly do the same. Now what you have to do is this. In this company of ours we have a captain and two counsellors, all of whom hold office for six months, and we know for certain that from the beginning of next month, Buffalmacco is to be captain and I am to be one of the counsellors. Whenever there is any question of nominating and electing a new member, the captain’s views carry a great deal of weight, so I advise you to go out of your way to make friends with Buffalmacco, and entertain him on a suitably lavish scale. Buffalmacco’s the sort of man who will take a powerful liking to you from the moment he discovers how intelligent you are, and when you’ve softened him up a little with your sparkling wit and those priceless treasures of yours, you can put the question to him, and he won’t know how to refuse. I’ve already had a word with him about you, and he’s dying to make your acquaintance, so do as I’ve suggested, and then leave the rest to Buffalmacco and myself.’
‘This plan of yours seems most excellent,’ said the Master, ‘for if Buffalmacco takes a delight in the company of the wise, he has only to converse with me for a little while, and I guarantee that he will never want to let me out of his sight. I have enough intelligence to supply a whole city, and still remain a paragon of wisdom.’
Having thus arranged matters with Master Simone, Bruno recounted the whole tale in all its particulars to Buffalmacco, who was so impatient to proceed to the task of supplying Master Simpleton with the object of his quest, that every hour that passed seemed more like a thousand.
Being inordinately eager to go the course, the physician never relaxed until he had made Buffalmacco his friend, which he easily succeeded in doing. He then began to treat him to the finest suppers and breakfasts you could possibly imagine, to which Bruno also was invited. For their part, Bruno and Buffalmacco assiduously courted his company, and on finding themselves regaled with precious wines and fat capons and an abundance of other excellent dishes at Master Simone’s table, they stuffed themselves like princes, and turned up for a meal even when they were not invited, always giving him to understand that they would not have done this for anyone else.
Eventually however the Master made the same request to Buffalmacco that he had previously made to Bruno, whereupon BufFalmacco pretended to be very angry and subjected Bruno to a torrent of abuse, saying:
‘By the great tall God of Passignano,15 I swear I’ve a good mind to give you such a pasting over the face that your nose would end up in your boots, traitor that you are, for you alone can have revealed these secrets to the Master.’
But Bruno was stoutly defended by the physician, who swore and affirmed that he had heard about these things from another source, and eventually succeeded in mollifying BufFalmacco with a goodly quantity of his pearls of wisdom, after which BufFalmacco turned to him and said:
‘It’s quite plain that you’ve been at Bologna, my dear Master, and that you came back here with a pair of well-sealed lips. Moreover you obviously didn’t learn your alphabet from a blackboard, as many an ignoramus has done, but from a blackamoor; and unless I’m mistaken, you were christened on a Sunday.16 Bruno tells me you were studying medicine up there in Bologna, but it seems to me that you studied how to capture men’s minds, for what with your wisdom and your singular ways, you’re a better exponent of that particular art than any other man I ever saw.’
But at this point he was interrupted by the physician, who turned to Bruno and said:
‘What a thing it is to meet and converse with men of wisdom! Who but this worthy man would have been so prompt to read all my thoughts? You were not nearly so quick as Buffalmacco to appreciate my excellence; but you might at least tell him what I said to you when you told me he took a delight in the company of the wise: do you think I’ve been as good as my word?’
‘Better,’ said Bruno.
The Master then turned to Buffalmacco, saying:
‘You’d have had a lot more to say if you’d seen me in Bologna, where there wasn’t a single person, great or small, student or professor, who didn’t worship the very ground beneath my feet, such was the pleasure I was able to give to each and every one of them with my wise and witty conversation. And I can tell you this, that whenever I opened my mouth, I made everybody laugh because I was so popular. When the time came for me to leave Bologna, they were all heartbroken and wanted me to stay. In fact they were so anxious to keep me there that they offered to let me do all the teaching in the faculty of medicine. But I declined the offer because I’d made up my mind to return to the huge estates that my family has always owned in this part of the world. And that was what I did.’
Whereupon Bruno said to Buffalmacco:
‘There now, I told you so, but you wouldn’t believe me. Holy Mother of Jesus! There’s not a doctor in the land who knows more than he does about the urine of an ass, nor would you find his equal if you were to go all the way from here to the gates of Paris. Surely you’ll agree to help him now.’
‘Bruno is quite right,’ said the physician, ‘but people don’t appreciate me here. You Florentines are not very bright on the whole; I only wish you could see me in my natural element, surrounded by my fellow doctors.’
So Buffalmacco said:
‘I must confess, Master, that you have a much better head on your shoulders than I ever gave you credit for. So speaking with all the deference that is due to a man of your great wisdom, I give you my equivocal promise that without fail I shall see that you are enrolled in our company.’
Now that he had been given this assurance, the doctor positively lavished hospitality on the two men, who enjoyed themselves enormously, persuading him to swallow the most fantastic pieces of nonsense; and they promised that he should have as his mistress die Countess of Cesspool,17 who was the finest thing to be found in the entire arse-gallery of the human race. When the doctor asked them who this Countess was, Buffalmacco replied:
‘Ah! my pretty pumpkin, she’s a very great lady, and there are few houses anywhere on earth in which
she doesn’t make her presence smelt; why, even the Franciscans pay their tributes to her on the big bass drum, to say nothing of the countless others she receives. And I can tell you this, that wherever she happens to be, she lets people know about it, even though she generally holds herself aloof. All the same, she swept past your front door the other night when she was on her way to the Arno to bathe her feet and get a breath of fresh air; but she spends most of her time in Laterina.18 You can regularly see her footmen going the rounds, all carrying a rod in one hand and a bucket in the other as symbols of her authority; and wherever you look you’ll find many of her nobles, such as Baron Ffouljakes, Lord Dung, Viscount Broom-handle, and the Earl of Loosefart, and others, with all of whom I believe you are acquainted, though perhaps you don’t recall them just at present. This, then, if all goes according to plan, is the great lady in whose tender arms we shall place you, in which case you can forget about that girl from Cacavincigli.’
Having been born and bred in Bologna, the physician was unable to grasp the meaning of their words, and told them that the lady would suit him down to the ground. Nor did he have long to wait before the two painters brought him the news of his election to the company.
On the morning of the day appointed for the next meeting of the society, the Master invited the pair of them to breakfast, and after the meal he asked them how he was to get there, to which Buffalmacco replied:
‘See here, Master, for reasons you are now about to hear, you will have to be very brave, otherwise you may run into trouble and make things very awkward for us. This evening, after dark, you must contrive to climb up on to one of the raised tombs19 that were erected just recently outside Santa Maria Novella, wearing one of your most sumptuous robes, for not only does the company require you to be nobly dressed when you are presented for the first time, but since you are gently bred, the Countess is proposing (or so we have been told, for we have never actually met her) to make you a Knight of the Bath20 at her own expense. And you are to remain on the tomb till we send for you.
‘Now, so that you will know exactly what to expect, I should explain that we shall be sending a black creature with horns to come and fetch you, which, though not very large, will attempt to frighten you by parading up and down before you in the piazza, leaping high in the air, and making loud hissing noises. When it sees that you are not afraid, it will come silently towards you, and as soon as it has drawn near to where you are sitting, you must clamber boldly down from the tomb, and, without invoking God or any of the Saints, leap on to its back. Once you are seated firmly on its back, you must fold your arms across your chest and leave them there, for you mustn’t touch the beast with your hands.
‘It will then move slowly off, and convey you to the place where we are all assembled; but I must stress here and now that if you invoke God or any of the Saints, or if you display any fear, you could be thrown off or dashed against something, and then you really will be in a stinking mess. So unless you’re quite sure that your courage won’t desert you, I advise you not to come, for you would only do yourself an injury and bring no credit to ourselves.’
‘You don’t know me yet,’ said the physician. ‘Perhaps it’s because I wear gloves and long robes that you doubt my courage. But if I were to tell you about some of my nocturnal escapades in Bologna, when I used to go after the women with my companions, you’d be lost in admiration. God’s faith, I remember a night when there was one girl (a scraggy little baggage, what’s more, no bigger than a midget) who refused to come with us, so after giving her a few good punches I picked her up bodily and carried her very nearly a stone’s throw, and in the end I forced her to come. Then there was the time when I was all by myself except for my servant, and shortly after the Angelus I walked past the cemetery of the Franciscans, where a woman had been buried earlier in the day, and I wasn’t the least bit afraid. So you have no need to worry on that score, because I’m as brave and as bold a man as you’re ever likely to meet. As to my being nobly dressed for the occasion, I can tell you that I shall wear the scarlet robes in which I was commenced,21 and you’ll soon discover whether the company will rejoice to see me, and whether I’m not elected captain before very long. Just wait till I arrive there this evening, and you’ll see how things will go, for this Countess has never set eyes on me yet, and she’s already so enamoured of me that she wants to make me a Knight of the Bath. Perhaps you think a knighthood wouldn’t suit me, and that I shan’t know what to do with it when I’ve got it; but leave it to me, and I’ll show you!’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Buffalmacco, ‘but see that you don’t let us down, either by not coming or by not being there when we send for you. The reason I say this is that the weather is cold, and you medical men are very sensitive to the cold.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ said the physician. ‘I’m not one of your coldblooded creatures; I don’t mind the cold. In fact, whenever I get up in the night to relieve nature, as we all do at times, I very rarely throw anything over my nightshirt other than a fur coat. So you may rest assured that I shall be there.’
Bruno and Buffalmacco then departed, and when darkness was beginning to fall, the Master invented some excuse for leaving his wife, and having smuggled his splendid gown out of the house, he duly put it on and made his way to one of the aforementioned tombs, where, since it was a bitterly cold evening, he sat huddled on the marble, and began to await the arrival of the mysterious beast.
Buffalmacco, who was tall in stature and sturdy as an ox, had procured one of the masks that people used to wear at those special festivals that are nowadays no longer held;22 and having donned a coat of black fur, he got himself up to look exactly like a bear, except that his mask had die face of the devil and was furnished with horns. In this strange garb, with Bruno following at a safe distance in order to observe die proceedings, he made his way to the new piazza at Santa Maria Novella. And no sooner did he perceive that the learned doctor was there than he began to dance and leap all over the piazza, hissing, screaming and shrieking like one possessed.
When the Master saw and heard all this, every hair of his head stood on end and he began to tremble all over, just like a woman, except that he was far more frightened. He began to think he should have stayed at home, but now that he had come so far, he tried to put a bold face upon it, such was his eagerness to observe the marvels of which the two men had spoken.
After cavorting madly for some little time in the manner we have described, Buffalmacco appeared to calm down, and coming over to the tomb on which the Master was seated, he stopped and stood perfectly still. Being terrified out of his wits, the Master could not decide whether to mount the creature or remain where he was, but in the end, fearing lest the thing should attack him if he failed to climb on to its back, he chose the lesser of the two evils; and having clambered down from the tomb, he leapt on the creature’s back, whispering ‘God preserve me’ as he did so. Once he was firmly seated, still trembling like a leaf, he folded his arms across his chest as instructed, whereupon Buffalmacco moved slowly off on all fours in the direction of Santa Maria della Scala, and carried him almost as far as the nunnery of Ripole.23
Now at that time there were some ditches in those parts into which the farmers used to pour the offerings of the Countess of Cesspool, to enrich their lands. And when Buffalmacco reached this spot, he ambled up to the edge of one of die ditches, and, choosing the right moment, grabbed one of the doctor’s feet and heaved him smartly off his back, casting him head first into the ditch. He then began to snarl in a most terrifying manner, leaping frantically all over the place, and eventually made his way back past Santa Maria della Scala towards the meadow of Ognissanti, where he rejoined Bruno who had run away because he was unable to contain his laughter. And hugging one another with glee, they went and watched from a safe distance to see what the filth-bespattered doctor would do.
The worthy physician, finding himself in this unspeakably loathsome place, endeavoured to stand on his feet and gr
ope his way out, but stumbled and fell in all directions before he finally succeeded in scrambling clear, sorrowing and forlorn, and covered in filth from head to toe, having parted company with his doctoral hood and swallowed several drams of the ditchwater. Then, scraping the stuff off with his hands as best he could, he made his way back to his house, not knowing what else he could do, and knocked at the door until his wife came down to let him in.
He was no sooner inside the house, reeking to high heaven, and the door had been closed behind him, than Bruno and Buffalmacco were listening at the keyhole to hear what sort of a reception the Master’s wife would accord him. And as they stood there on the doorstep, all ears, they heard the lady giving him the biggest scolding that ever a poor devil received.
‘God, what a fine state you are in!’ she said. ‘Went to see some other woman, and wanted to cut a dashing figure in your scarlet robe, I suppose? Were you not satisfied with me? Hell’s bells, I could satisfy a whole parish, let alone you. I wish to Christ they had drowned you, instead of simply dumping you where you deserved. A splendid physician you are, I don’t think, to abandon your wife and go chasing after other people’s women at this time of night!’
To these reproaches she added countless others whilst the physician was giving himself a good wash, and never stopped tormenting him until well into the small hours.
Next morning, Bruno and Buffalmacco painted bruises on their torsoes to make it look as if they had been severely beaten, then made their way to the house of the physician, who was already up and about. A foul smell assailed their nostrils from the moment they set foot inside the house, for no amount of washing and scrubbing had been able to disperse all trace of it. When the doctor was told that they had called to see him, he advanced to meet them, bidding them good morning, but Bruno and Buffalmacco looked at him angrily, as they had prearranged, and replied:
The Decameron Page 89
