Prevod

_Penta refuses to marry her brother and, cutting off her hands, sends them to him as a gift. He has her thrown into the sea in a chest. Washed ashore, she is taken home by a fisherman, whose jealous wife throws her back into the sea in the same chest;

and, found by a king, she becomes his wife. But through the treachery of that same wicked woman she is banished from the kingdom; and after long tribulations she is found by her husband and her brother, and all are left happy and consoled._ _When Zeza’s tale was finished, they all agreed that Cannetella, who had gone looking for a hair inside an egg, deserved what she had suffered, and worse:

yet they were greatly comforted to see her delivered from so many troubles. And it was worth reflecting that she who had turned up her nose at every man should have been brought to bow down before a locksmith to rescue her from such distress. But when the king signalled to Cecca to let her own tale loose, she wasted no time in speaking, and began as follows._ Virtue is refined in the crucible of hardship, and the candle of goodness shines brightest where the darkness is deepest. Toil gives birth to merit, and merit comes into the world with honour tied to its navel. Victory belongs not to those who stand with their hands on their hips, but to those who stir the pot, as did the daughter of the king of Preta-secca, who through bloody sweat and mortal danger made her way to the house of happiness. Her fortunes are the tale I have taken it into my head to tell you.

The king of Preta-secca, left a widower and shorn of his wife, had the devil Farfariello put it into his head to marry Penta, his own sister. So one day he called her aside in private and said:

“My sister, it is not the part of a sensible man to let a good thing leave his house. Besides, you never know what may come of letting strangers set foot inside it. So, having chewed the matter over thoroughly, I have resolved to take you for my wife, for you are made to suit my taste, and I understand your nature. Agree, then, to this plastering together, this apothecary’s compound, this uniantur acta, this misce et fiat potio, and we shall both have cause to rejoice.” Hearing this wild leap of a fifth, Penta was beside herself: one colour left her face as another entered it. Never would she have believed her brother capable of such antics, offering her a pair of rotten eggs when he himself needed a hundred fresh ones. For a good while she stood speechless, wondering how to answer so outrageous and preposterous a proposal. At last, throwing down the pack of patience, she said, “If you have lost your senses, I have no wish to lose my shame. I am utterly astonished that you should let such words escape your mouth. If they are a joke, they smack of the ass; if they are in earnest, they stink of the he-goat. And I am sorry that, though you have a tongue for uttering such filthy shamefulness, I have no ears for hearing it. I, your wife? You ought to be put under restraint! You brazen snout! Since when have we had these stews, these rotten messes, these mixtures? Where do you think we are? At a fair? Am I your sister, or a cheese for the cooking? Mend your ways, for your own life’s sake, and never let such words slip from your mouth again, or I shall do things beyond belief. If you will not regard me as your sister, I shall no longer regard you as what you are to me.” With that she darted into a room, barricaded the door behind her, and would not see her brother’s face for more than a month. She left the wretched king, who had charged in with a forehead fit to blunt cannonballs, as shamefaced as a child who has broken the pitcher, and as bewildered as a servant girl whose meat has been stolen by the cat. But after all those days, summoned once more by the king to pay tribute to his unbridled desires, she was determined to discover exactly what it was about her person that had so infatuated him. Leaving her room, she went to him and said, “My brother, I have looked and looked at myself in the mirror, and I can find nothing in this face worthy of your love. I am no such tempting morsel as to set people fluttering.” And the king replied:

“My Penta, you are beautiful and perfect from head to foot; but it is your hand that makes me swoon above all else. That hand is the meat-hook that pulls the entrails from the pot of my breast; that hand is the grappling iron that lifts the bucket of my soul from the well of this life;

that hand is the vice in which my spirit is held while Love files it away. O hand, O lovely hand! Ladle that serves up sweetness! Pincers that pluck out desires! Shovel that heaps coals upon this heart!” He would have said more, but Penta answered, “Enough, I understand you. Wait a little, do not stir an inch; we shall see each other again directly.” Going into her room, she sent for a slave who had very little wit, put a cleaver and a handful of coins into his hands, and said, “My Ali, cut off my hands. Me want make fine beauty secret, become more white.” The slave, thinking he was pleasing her, struck twice and chopped them clean off. She had them laid in an earthenware basin and sent them to her brother beneath a silk cloth, with a message that he might enjoy what he desired most, in good health and with sons to follow. At this treatment the king flew into such a rage that he went clean out of his mind. He immediately had a chest made and thoroughly coated with pitch, thrust his sister inside it, and ordered it thrown into the sea. Some fishermen hauling in a net caught it and opened it, finding Penta within, far lovelier than the moon when she looks as though she has spent Lent at Taranto. Masiello, the chief and most important of the company, took her home and told his wife Nuccia to treat her kindly. But that woman, the very mother of suspicion and jealousy, no sooner saw her husband leave than she put Penta back into the chest and threw her into the sea once more. Tossed by the waves, it drifted hither and thither until it was encountered by a ship carrying the king of Terra-verde. Seeing this thing floating on the waves, he ordered the sails lowered and a boat put out. They fetched the chest aboard, opened it, and discovered the unfortunate girl. The king, beholding this living beauty inside a coffin of death, thought he had found a great treasure, though his heart ached to see a cabinet full of love’s jewels without its handles. He took her to his kingdom and gave her to the queen as a lady-in-waiting. With her feet she performed every service imaginable, even sewing, threading needles, starching collars, and combing the queen’s hair, so that she was cherished like a daughter. But after a few months the queen, summoned to appear at the Fates’ counting-house to pay her debt to Nature, called the king to her and said, “Soon my soul must loosen the marriage-knot that binds it to my body. But if you love me, and wish me to pass contented into the other world, you must grant me a favour.” “Command me, my sweet lips,” said the king, “for if I cannot give you proof of my love in life, I shall show you in death how dearly I cherish you.” “Then listen,” replied the queen. “Since you promise, I beg you with all my strength that, once I have closed my eyes against the dust, you should marry Penta. Although we know neither who she is nor where she comes from, the brand of her good manners shows that she is a horse of noble breeding.” “Live another hundred years for my sake,” answered the king. “But if you must indeed bid me good night and leave me to a miserable day, I swear I shall take her for my wife. Nor do I care that she has no hands and is short in weight, for one should always take as little as possible of a bad thing.” These last words, however, he mumbled under his tongue, lest his wife take offence. And when the queen had snuffed out the candle of her days, he married Penta, and on the very first night planted a son in her womb. But the king was obliged to make another voyage to the kingdom of Auto-scuoglio, and, taking leave of Penta, he weighed anchor. At the end of nine months Penta brought into the world a little boy as pretty as a picture, and illuminations were held throughout the city. The council at once dispatched a felucca to carry the news to the king. But the boat ran into such a storm that one moment it was smothered by the waves and flung up to the stars, and the next sent rolling towards the bottom of the sea. At last, as Heaven willed, it reached that very shore where Penta had been rescued by a man’s compassion and driven away by a woman’s savagery. There, as ill luck would have it, the skipper found Nuccia washing her little boy’s rags. Curious about other people’s affairs, as women naturally are, she asked him where he came from, where he was bound, and who had sent him. The skipper said, “I come from Terra-verde, and I am going to Auto-scuoglio to find the king of that country and deliver a letter, for which purpose I have been sent expressly. I suppose his wife is writing to him, but I could not tell you precisely what it concerns.” “And who is this king’s wife?” Nuccia asked. The skipper answered, “From what I hear, they say she is a very beautiful young woman called Penta the Handless, because both her hands are missing. I am told she was found in a chest at sea, and by her good fortune has become this king’s wife. I do not know what urgent news she has written, but I must hurry at full speed to get there quickly.” On hearing this, that she-devil Nuccia invited the skipper to drink, and when she had made him drunk up to the eyes she took the letters from his pocket. She had them read to her, bursting with such envy that not a syllable passed without drawing a sigh from her. Then she made the same scholar of her acquaintance who had read the letter imitate the handwriting and write that the queen had given birth to a mastiff puppy, and that they awaited orders as to what should be done. Once it was written and sealed, she slipped it into the sailor’s pocket. When he awoke and saw that the weather had cleared, he sailed close to the wind until he caught the southwester astern, and reached the king. On receiving the letter, the king replied that they should keep the queen cheerful and not allow her the least grain of distress, for such things were permitted by Heaven, and a good man must not seek to set the stars in order. The skipper was sent off again, and after two evenings reached Nuccia’s shore once more. She greeted him with great ceremony, gave him plenty to swallow, and once again sent him sprawling. At last, befuddled and stupefied, he lay down to sleep. Nuccia put her hand into his breeches, found the reply, and had it read to her. At once she had another forged letter written to the council of Terra-verde, ordering them to burn the mother and child without delay. When the skipper had digested his wine, he departed, and on reaching Terra-verde delivered the letter. Once it was opened, a great murmuring arose among those wise old men. After much debate they concluded that the king had either gone mad or been bewitched, since, with a pearl for a wife and a jewel for an heir, he wished to grind them into tooth-powder for Death. They therefore agreed to take a middle course and send the young woman wandering into exile with her son, so that no further word of either should ever be heard. Giving her a handful of small coins to keep herself alive, they robbed a royal house of its treasure, the city of its beacon, and her husband of the two pillars of his hopes. Poor Penta, finding herself turned out of doors, though she was neither a loose woman, a banished man’s kinswoman, nor a troublesome student, took the little fellow in her arms and, watering him with milk and tears, set off towards Lago-truvolo. That country was ruled by a magician, who, seeing this beautiful cripple who crippled hearts, this woman who waged fiercer war with the stumps of her arms than Briareus with his hundred hands, wished to hear the whole history of her misfortunes: from the day when her brother, denied a feast of flesh, had tried to make her a feast for fish, down to the day she had set foot in his kingdom. Hearing this bitter tale, the magician shed tears beyond counting, and the compassion that entered through the holes of his ears escaped in sighs through the vent of his mouth. At last, comforting her with kind words, he said, “Be of good cheer, my daughter. However rotten the house of a soul may be, the props of hope can hold it upright. Do not let your spirits fail, for Heaven sometimes drives human misfortunes to the very brink of ruin to make their outcome all the more marvellous. Have no fear, then: you have found both a mother and a father, and I shall help you with my very blood.” Poor Penta thanked him and said, “I care not a whit if Heaven rains down misfortunes and hails disasters, now that I am beneath the shelter of Your Grace, who has both power and means. It is only this lovely little innocent who holds my heart in thrall.” After a thousand courtesies on one side and expressions of gratitude on the other, the magician gave her a fine apartment in his palace and had her cared for like a daughter. The next morning he issued a proclamation that whoever came to his court to tell of a misfortune would receive a crown and a sceptre of gold worth more than a kingdom.

As the news spread throughout Europe, people flocked to that court in numbers greater than broccoli plants, all hoping to win the treasure. One told how he had spent his whole life serving at court and, after wasting his lye and soap, his youth and health, had been paid with a caciocavallo cheese. Another said that a superior had done him an injustice against which he dared not protest, so that he had to swallow the pill and could find no vent for his anger. One complained that he had put all his possessions aboard a ship, and a little contrary wind had swept away everything, cooked and raw alike.

Another lamented that he had spent all his years exercising his pen, yet had never gained a feather’s worth of profit. Above all he despaired that the labours of his ink should have met with so little success, when the stuff of cuttlefish was so fortunate in the world. Meanwhile the king of Terra-verde returned home and found the fine mess awaiting him. He raged like a lion unchained, and would have had his councillors flayed if they had not shown him his letter. Seeing that the handwriting was forged, he summoned the messenger and made him recount everything he had done on his journey. From this he perceived that Masiello’s wife had brought about his ruin. He immediately fitted out a galley and went in person to that shore, where he found the woman and, by gentle questioning, drew the whole plot out of her. Learning that jealousy had been its cause, he resolved that she should become a waxen torch. He had her coated all over in wax and tallow, set her inside a great pile of seasoned wood, and put a light to it. When he saw that the fire, sticking out its red tongue, had gulped down that wretched woman, he set sail. Out on the open sea he encountered a ship carrying the king of Preta-secca, who, after a thousand courtesies, told the king of Terra-verde that he was sailing towards Lago-truvolo because of the proclamation issued by its ruler. He was going to try his luck, for in ill fortune he yielded to no man, however sorrowful. “If that is the question,” replied the king of Terra-verde, “I can leap past you with both feet together, and give the most unfortunate man alive fifteen points and a fault. Where others measure sorrow by little scoops, I can measure mine by the bushel.

“So I shall go with you, and let us behave like gentlemen: whichever of us wins, we shall share the winnings like good companions, down to the last fennel seed.” “Gladly,” said the king of Preta-secca. Pledging their word to one another, they sailed in company to Lago-truvolo. Once ashore, they presented themselves to the magician, who welcomed them with the honours due to crowned heads, seated them beneath the canopy, and bade them a thousand welcomes. Learning that they had come to the contest of unfortunate men, he asked what burden of grief exposed them to the sirocco of sighs. The king of Preta-secca began by telling of the love he had conceived for his own flesh and blood, of his sister’s conduct as an honourable woman, and of the dog’s heart he had shown in shutting her inside a pitch-coated chest and throwing her into the sea. On one side his conscience pierced him for his own wickedness; on the other he was stabbed by grief for his lost sister. Here shame tormented him, there loss, so that all the sorrows of the most anguished souls in Hell, distilled together in an alembic, could not yield an essence of misery equal to what his heart endured. When this king had finished speaking, the other began. “Alas, your sufferings are sugar biscuits, candy twists, and honey fritters beside the anguish I feel. That Penta the Handless, whom I found like a Venetian wax taper inside that chest, as though to light my funeral, became my wife and bore me a beautiful little boy. Yet through the malice of a hideous hag both mother and child narrowly escaped being burned alive. Instead—O nail driven through my heart! O grief that leaves me no peace!—they were both given their dismissal and sent out of my kingdom. So, stripped of every pleasure, I do not know how the donkey of this life keeps from collapsing beneath its load of pain.” Having heard them both, the magician saw as plainly as the nose on his face that one was Penta’s brother and the other her husband. He sent for her little son Nufriello and said, “Go and kiss the feet of your lord father.” The child obeyed, and the father, seeing the good manners and charm of this little rascal, threw a beautiful gold chain around his neck.

Then the magician said to him, “Kiss your uncle’s hand, my lovely boy.” The handsome little fellow obeyed at once. Astonished by the lively spirit of the little sprig, the king gave him a fine jewel and asked the magician whether the child was his son. He replied that he should ask the mother. Penta, who had heard everything from behind the door curtain, came out. Like a little dog that has strayed and, finding its master after many days, barks, licks him, wags its tail, and gives a thousand other signs of joy, so she ran now to her brother and now to her husband, drawn now by love for the one and now by kinship with the other, embracing first this one and then that with a joy beyond imagining. You may picture a trio of broken words and interrupted sighs. But when that music paused, they returned to caressing the child, and father and uncle took turns clasping and kissing him, quite beside themselves with delight;

and after all that had been done and said on either side, the magician concluded with these words: “Heaven knows how my heart blossoms to see Lady Penta comforted. Her virtues deserve that she should be borne upon the palms of our hands, and for her sake I devised this means of bringing her husband and brother to my kingdom. To either of you I would give myself as a slave in chains. But since a man is bound by his words as an ox is bound by its horns, and an honest man’s promise is a legal bond, I judge that the king of Terra-verde has indeed suffered enough to burst his heart, and I intend to keep my word. Therefore I give him not only the crown and sceptre announced in the proclamation, but my kingdom as well. Having neither children nor little ones of my own, with your good leave I wish to adopt this handsome husband and wife, and they shall be as dear to me as the pupils of my eyes. And so that nothing may remain wanting to Penta’s happiness, let her put her stumps beneath her apron, and she shall draw out hands more beautiful than those she had before.” When she did so, and everything happened just as the magician had said, their joy was beyond telling. You may imagine how they overflowed with delight, especially her husband, who valued this blessing more highly than the second kingdom the magician had given him. After several days of great festivities, the king of Preta-secca returned to his own kingdom. The king of Terra-verde sent word to his younger brother to govern his realm and remained with the magician, paying off inches of hardship with yards of pleasure, and bearing witness to the world that _He does not prize the sweet_ _Who has not tasted bitterness before._