Fantastic Tales

by Italo Calvino

  The other appeared satisfied with the explanation and even informed the merchant that he would find excellent seconds at the Pont-Neuf, opposite the Samaritaine. That was where people who had no other profession strolled about, always ready to embrace, for an escudo, whatever cause might come along, and could even supply swords. After those observations, he made a deep bow and departed.

  When Eustache was alone, he began to think and remained immersed in confusion for a long time, as his mind was entangled in three different resolutions: first, he thought of informing the judge of the soldier’s annoyances and threats, and of asking permission to bear arms to defend himself. But that would expose him to the risk of combat. Or he could decide to go to the site of the duel having advised the sergeants so that they would arrive just at the moment when the duel was to begin. But what guarantee did he have that they wouldn’t arrive after it was all over? Finally, he thought of consulting the gypsy from the Pont-Neuf. And that is what he decided to do.

  At midday, the maid replaced Javotte under the red tent, and she went home to dine with her husband. Eustache said nothing about the visit he’d had that morning, but later he asked her to take charge of the store while he went to pay a business call at the house of a gentleman who had just come to Paris and wanted to have clothing made. He took up his samples and went off to the Pont-Neuf.

  Château-Gaillard, located on the bank of the river, at the southern end of the bridge, and crowned by a round tower which in other times served as a prison, was now beginning to fall into ruins and collapse, being inhabited only by those who had no other refuge. Eustache, after pacing out his vacillation for some time on the rocky soil, found a small door in the center of which a bat was nailed. He knocked softly, and Master Gonin’s monkey instantly opened, lifting a latch, a service for which he was trained, as are at times house cats.

  The prestidigitator was sitting at a table, reading. He turned gravely and signaled to the young man to sit down on a footstool. When Eustache had told him of his adventure, he replied that he had just the thing for him, and that he’d been wise to come.

  “What you desire is a charm,” he added, “a magic charm to overcome your adversary. Is that not what you want?”

  “Yes, if it’s possible.”

  “Although everyone makes them, you will find none as efficacious as mine. Besides, it is not like the others, which are derived from diabolical arts, but is the result of a deep knowledge of white magic and will in no way compromise the salvation of your soul.”

  “That’s good, because if it were any other way, I would certainly refrain from using it. But, how much does your magic product cost? I’m not sure that I can pay it.”

  “Consider now that it’s your life you are buying, and glory besides. That being the case, do you think that these two excellent things could be acquired for less than a hundred escudos?”

  “A hundred devils take you!” grumbled Eustache, whose countenance darkened. “That’s more than I have! And what’s life worth without bread to eat, what’s glory worth without clothes to wear? And anyway, how do I know these aren’t the false promises of a charlatan who gulls credulous folks?”

  “Pay me afterward.”

  “That puts a different light on things. What would you like as security?”

  “Only your hand.”

  “Come now, do you take me for a fool listening to your boasting? Didn’t you tell me I’d end up on the gallows?”

  “No question about it, and I won’t withdraw the statement.”

  “Then, if that’s so, why should I be afraid of the duel?”

  “No reason, except a few stabs and scratches that will open the greatest doors to your soul …. After that, you will be taken up, dead or alive, and raised to the high but short half-cross, as the sentence reads. And there you will carry out your destiny. Do you understand?”

  The clothier understood so well that he hastened to offer his hand to the prestidigitator as a proof of his acceptance, asking him for ten days in which to find the money. The other agreed, after marking the final day for payment on the wall. Then he took up the book of Albertus Magnus—containing also the commentaries of Cornelius Agrippa and the Abbot Trithemius—and opened it to the chapter “Individual Combat.” And to convince Eustache even more that his operation had nothing diabolical to it, he told him he could go on saying his prayers without fear that they would be an obstacle.

  Then he raised the lid of a coffer and took out an unglazed clay jar in which he mixed several ingredients, following, it appeared, the book’s instructions while quietly reciting some sort of incantation. When he was finished, he took Eustache’s right hand (Eustache was crossing himself with the other) and daubed it with the mixture he’d just made, right up to the wrist. Immediately after that, he removed a very old, greasy jar from another coffer and, tipping it very carefully, he poured a few drops over the back of the hand, pronouncing a few words in Latin that resembled the formula priests use at baptisms.

  At that, Eustache felt a kind of electric thrill that ran though his entire arm, and this frightened him a great deal. It seemed to him his hand was swelling, and yet—strange to tell—it clenched and stretched several times, cracking its joints, as when an animal awakens. Then he felt nothing more, his circulation seemed to return to normal, and Master Gonin said it was all over, that he could challenge the most celebrated swordsmen in the court and army and cut them buttonholes for all the useless buttons fashion loaded onto their uniforms.

  X. AT PRÉ-AUX-CLERCS

  The next morning, four men were crossing the green avenues of Pré-aux-Clercs looking for a spot that would serve their purpose and be sufficiently hidden. When they reached the bottom of a small hill that bordered the southern part, they stopped at the place where people played skittles, which seemed to them a satisfactory place to fight. Then Eustache and his adversary removed their doublets, and their seconds, in accordance with the rules, searched under their shirts and breeches. The clothier was excited because he had faith in the gypsy’s charm, and it is well known that magical business—charms, philtres, spells—never were believed so much as in that period, when they were the cause of so many legal trials, filling the registers of the tribunals because the judges shared in the general credulity.

  Eustache’s second, whom he’d found at the Pont-Neuf and paid one escudo, greeted the harquebusier’s friend and asked him if he too intended to fight. Since the friend answered that he didn’t, the hired second crossed his arms indifferently and stepped back to contemplate the combatants.

  The clothier could not avoid feeling some anxiety when his adversary saluted him with his sword, a salute he did not return. He stood stock-still, holding his sword as if it were a candle, so awkwardly assuming the en garde position that the soldier, out of decency, promised himself he would no more than scratch him. But no sooner had their weapons touched than Eustache noticed that his hand was dragging his arm forward, violently resisting any attempt to control it.

  More exactly, Eustache felt in his hand the powerful force it exercised over the muscles in his arm, whose movements had a prodigious strength and elasticity, comparable to that of a steel spring. Thus the soldier almost dislocated his wrist parrying a third-position thrust, but a fourth-position cut sent his sword flying ten paces, while Eustache’s, without pausing to gain new impetus, and in the same initial movement, pierced the harquebusier’s body so violently that the basket handle was embedded in the soldier’s chest. Eustache, who had not thrown himself forward completely but was dragged by an unforeseen shake of his right hand, would have broken his head in falling if he hadn’t landed on his adversary’s stomach.

  “My God, what a wrist!” exclaimed the soldier’s second. “This man could give a lesson to the knight Oaktwister! He doesn’t have his grace or his physique, but as far as the strength of his arm is concerned, it’s worse than that of a Welsh archer.”

  Meanwhile, Eustache had gotten to his feet with the help of his second and s
tood there, transfixed by what had just happened. But when he could clearly make out the harquebusier at his feet, nailed to the ground like a frog in a magic circle, he ran away so quickly that he left behind him on the grass, forgotten, his Sunday doublet, the one with the silk trim.

  Since the soldier was beyond question dead, the two seconds had no reason to remain and rapidly departed. They’d gone about a hundred paces when Eustache’s man exclaimed, slapping himself on the forehead, “I forgot the sword I lent him!” He let the other go his way and, back at the scene of the duel, began to search the dead man’s pockets, finding only some dice, a piece of string, and a dirty, old tarot deck.

  “A cardsharp, and what a cardsharp! Another thug who doesn’t even have a miserable watch! Let the devil take you, fuse-blower!” The encyclopedic education of our age frees us from the obligation of explaining everything in his remarks except the last term, which refers to the deceased’s profession as a harquebusier, whose weapon was fired with a burning fuse.

  Not daring to take anything from the man’s uniform, the sale of which might have gotten him into trouble, he limited himself to stealing his boots, which he rolled up under his cape together with Eustache’s doublet and went off grumbling.

  XI. OBSESSION

  The clothier was several days locked up in his house, his heart heavy because of that tragic death which he had caused over such insignificant offenses—and the means he’d used, as reprehensible and blameworthy in this world as in the next. There were moments when he thought it was all a dream, and if it hadn’t been for the doublet he’d left on the grass, evidence that shone by its very absence, he would have doubted his own memory.

  Finally, one afternoon, he tried to open his eyes to the evidence and went to the Pré-aux-Clercs, as if he were taking a walk. His eyes clouded over when he recognized the skittles field where the duel had taken place and he had to sit down. Some lawyers were playing there, as they often did before dining. Eustache, when the mist clouding his eyes had lifted, thought he saw on the ground between the spread legs of one of the players a huge bloodstain.

  He convulsively got up and hastened to leave the field, bearing in his eyes the bloodstain, which retained its form and settled onto all the objects on which his gaze rested. It was like those livid stains that jump around in front of our eyes when we look into the sun.

  When he returned home, he discovered he’d been followed. Only then did he think that someone from the Hotel de la Reine Margarite, before which he’d passed the other morning and this afternoon, might have recognized him. And even though the laws about dueling were not rigorously enforced in that era, he feared the authorities might find it convenient to hang a poor merchant as a warning to the courtiers, whom at that time the law did not dare to attack as it would later on.

  These thoughts and many others caused him to spend a very agitated night. He could not close his eyes without there appearing to him a thousand gallows, from each one hanging a rope, and from each rope a dead man who twisted around laughing in a horrible way, or a skeleton whose ribs shone bright white in the light of the full moon.

  But a happy idea came to erase all those twisted visions: Eustache remembered the magistrate, the old customer of his father-in-law who had welcomed him in such a friendly way. He proposed to visit him the next morning and tell him everything, persuaded that he would protect him, even if it were only for the sake of Javotte, whom he’d seen and caressed since she was a little girl, and for Master Goubard, whom he held in great esteem. The poor tailor finally calmed down and slept until the morning, resting in the pillow of his sound resolution.

  The next day, at around nine, he knocked at the magistrate’s door. The magistrate’s secretary, thinking he’d come to take measurements for some suit or to propose a sale, immediately led him to his master, who, half-reclined in an armchair covered with cushions, was reading a jolly book. He had in his hand the ancient poem of Merlinus Coccaius and was taking special pleasure in his narration of the deeds of Baldus, the valiant precursor of Pantagruel, and even more in the incomparable subtleties and thefts of Cingar, that grotesque model who happily gave form to our Panurge.

  Master Chevassut was reading the story of the sheep Cingar tosses overboard—he tosses into the sea the one sheep he’d bought which is instantly followed by all the others—when he noticed his visitor. Leaving the book on a table, he turned to the clothier in a very good mood.

  He asked Eustache about his wife’s health, about his father-in-law, and badgered him with all manner of banal jokes, alluding to his condition as a newlywed. The young man took advantage of that moment to tell him of his adventure, of his dispute with the harquebusier, and, encouraged by the magistrate’s calm, paternal air, he also confessed the tragic outcome.

  Master Chevassut stared at him with the same astonishment with which he would have stared at the giant Fracasse in his book, or the faithful Falquet, who resembled a greyhound. But Master Eustache Bouteroue, a merchant from the porticos? Even though he had heard that a certain Eustache was presently a suspect, he’d not given the least credence to such reports, nor to the deed itself, attributed to a dwarf who was servant to the clothier, no taller than Gribouille or Triboulet, and which had left a soldier of the king nailed to the ground.

  But when he was no longer in any doubt about the facts, he promised the poor clothier he would use his influence to silence the matter and throw the agents of justice off his trail. He assured him, as well, that so long as no witnesses came forward to accuse him, he need not worry.

  Master Chevassut was accompanying him to the door, reiterating his promises, when, at the instant he was humbly saying good-bye to him, Eustache gave the magistrate a slap that turned his head around, a stunning blow that turned the magistrate’s face half red and half blue, like the shield of Paris, and left him mute in astonishment, his mouth open wide and as silent as a fish.

  Poor Eustache was so horrified by his action that he threw himself at the magistrate’s feet, begging his pardon in the most supplicating and pious terms, swearing that it had been a convulsive, unforeseen movement in which his own will had no part and for which he hoped for mercy, from him and from God. The old man got up, more astounded than angry. But no sooner was he on his feet than Eustache slapped him on the other cheek so it was even with the first. The blow was so hard that his five fingers left an imprint from which it would have been possible to make a mold.

  This was now intolerable, and Master Chevassut ran to the bell to summon his people. But the tailor followed him, continuing his dance, which constituted a singular scene, because with each blow he gave to thank his protector, the unhappy man dissolved in tears, excuses, and choked supplications that contrasted with the action in the most comic way. But it was useless to try to stop the impulses governing his hand. He was like a boy holding on to a huge bird by a string. The bird drags the frightened child all around the room, and the boy neither dares to let it go free nor has the strength to stop it. Thus was the unfortunate Eustache dragged along by his hand in the pursuit of the magistrate, who ran around tables and chairs, ringing the bell and shouting furiously in pain and anger. Finally, the servants came in and subdued Eustache, who was out of breath and fainting. Master Chevassut, who of course did not believe in white magic, could only think that he’d been made a fool of and mistreated by that young man for some reason he could not imagine. He summoned the police and handed over his man under the double accusation of homicide committed during a duel and assault on a magistrate in his own home. Eustache only recovered consciousness when he heard the locks of the cell to which he was destined. “I’m innocent!” he shouted to the jailer who led him. “For God’s sake!” replied the jailer gravely, “where do you think you are? All of you here are innocent!”

  XII. CONCERNING ALBERTUS MAGNUS AND DEATH

  Eustache was locked in one of those cells in the Châtelet of which Cyrano said that when people saw him there they took him for a candle under a cupping glass. “If th
ey’re giving me,” Eustache thought after examining all the corners in a pirouette turn—“if they’re giving me this stone suit as clothing, it’s too large; if they’re giving it to me as a tomb, it’s too small. The teeth of the fleas are longer than their bodies, and you suffer from gallstones here, which is no less painful for being external.”

  Here our hero could reflect at his leisure on his bad luck and curse the fatal help he’d received from the gypsy, who had distracted one of his limbs from the natural authority of his head, with disastrous consequences. But his surprise was enormous when he saw him appear one day in his cell, calmly asking him how he was. “May the devil hang you by your guts, you damned charlatan and fortune-teller! Your cursed charms are to blame for all this!”

  “What?” answered the other. “Is it my fault you didn’t come on the tenth day to have me remove the charm by bringing me the sum we’d agreed on?”

  “What? Did I know you needed the money so badly?” said Eustache, lowering his voice. “You who can make gold whenever you want it, like the writer Flamel!”

  “That’s not so!” answered the other. “It’s the other way around! Some day I will accomplish that great hermetic task, because I am on the way to discovering it. But until now I’ve only managed to transform fine gold into a very good and pure iron, a secret that the great Ramon Llull possessed at the end of his life.”

  “An extraordinary knowledge!” said the tailor. “Now, you have finally come to get me out of here! For heaven’s sake! It’s high time! I’d given up hope.”

  “This is the key to the situation, my friend. This is, in effect, what I am going to try to bring about, to open the doors without keys, in order to be able to enter and leave, and you will see through which operation that is obtained.”

  Saying that, the gypsy took his volume of Albertus Magnus out of his pocket and, by the light of a lantern he’d brought with him, he read the following paragraph: