The Black Death is killing everyone in Florence. Seven young women and three young men leave the town to seek refuge in the Tuscan countryside. Every night, to pass the time, everyone shares a tale. With one day devoted to chores and the holy day when no one does anything, they will spend ten days telling these tales, totalling a hundred short tales. Most days, there is a theme: misadventures that end happily, stories about lovers whose relationship ends in disaster, and stories about wives playing tricks on their husbands. The stories have a similar feel to the Arabian Nights, but they are much more funny, often cheeky, and satirically describe religion and priests and mock lust and ambition of both men and women. These tales inspired Shakespeare, Molière, Chaucer and many others. This was a very pleasant reading that made me laugh more than once.
“He began by delivering a long speech in which he showed her how powerful an enemy the devil was to the Lord God, and followed this up by impressing upon her that of all the ways of serving God, the one that He most appreciated consisted in putting the devil back in Hell, to which the Almighty had consigned him in the first place. The girl asked him how this was done, and Rustico replied: ‘You will soon find out, but just do whatever you see me doing for the present.’ And so saying, he began to divest himself of the few clothes he was wearing, leaving himself completely naked. The girl followed his example, and he sank to his knees as though he were about to pray, getting her to kneel directly opposite. In this posture, the girl’s beauty was displayed to Rustico in all its glory, and his longings blazed more fiercely than ever, bringing about the resurrection of the flesh. Alibech stared at this in amazement, and said: ‘Rustico, what is that thing I see sticking out in front of you, which I do not possess?’ ‘Oh, my daughter,’ said Rustico, ‘this is the devil I was telling you about. Do you see what he’s doing? He’s hurting me so much that I can hardly endure it.’ ‘Oh, praise be to God,’ said the girl, ‘I can see that I am better off than you are, for I have no such devil to contend with.’ ‘You’re right there,’ said Rustico. ‘But you have something else instead, that I haven’t.’ ‘Oh?’ said Alibech. ‘And what’s that?’ ‘You have Hell,’ said Rustico. ‘And I honestly believe that God has sent you here for the salvation of my soul, because if this devil continues to plague the life out of me, and if you are prepared to take sufficient pity upon me to let me put him back into Hell, you will be giving me marvellous relief, as well as rendering incalculable service and pleasure to God, which is what you say you came here for in the first place.’ ‘Oh, Father,’ replied the girl in all innocence, ‘if I really do have a Hell, let’s do as you suggest just as soon as you are ready.’ ‘God bless you, my daughter,’ said Rustico. ‘Let us go and put him back, and then perhaps he’ll leave me alone.’ At which point he conveyed the girl to one of their beds, where he instructed her in the art of incarcerating that accursed fiend. Never having put a single devil into Hell before, the girl found the first experience a little painful, and she said to Rustico: ‘This devil must certainly be a bad lot, Father, and a true enemy of God, for as well as plaguing mankind, he even hurts Hell when he’s driven back inside it.”
Original title : Decamerone
Translated from vernacular Florentine language
Read and listened to as an audiobook