|
The Devil's breeches
Aet, who knows I collect folktales, had the great kindness to send me some Estonian folktales. Three of them were about plucky people beating the Devil.
I've noticed that the Devil in Slavic tales is often an inexorable dark force, who comes to find you without warning or reason - a stroke of unpredictable mischance.
In Western European tales, on the other hand, the Devil generally doesn't just come hunting; you have to call him. This makes the hero/heroine a little less pure and innocent, because, after all, they have the taint of having wanted to sell their souls in the first place.
This is an Italian tale, in which the Devil is really only a minor character. As is proper for folktales, I am altering it in the telling, making it mine. But I have kept the title I found it under.
This is the story of an extraordinarily handsome lad, Calvino by name, and what became of him.
The story begins, as so many do, with his having fallen upon hard times. His father had gone to his eternal rest the year before, and it had not taken him even that long to squander his meager inheritance. So it was that he found himself in the palace of a local king, who offered him a position as a footman.
However, Calvino was so pleasant to look upon that the queen soon took a fancy to him. She requested that he become her personal servant. After a few days in her presence, Calvino realized that the queen was falling in love with him. She would order him to do some small yet time-consuming task, simply so she could watch him as he moved about her chambers.
This did not strike Calvino as a situation which was good for his health, and so he abruptly left the king's service, offering a hasty story of urgent personal business.
This was in the time of the vast walled cities, you must understand, each city a state unto itself, each with its small king. So Calvino simply traveled to the next nearest city and asked its king for a job ... which he was promptly given.
This time, it was the king's daughter that was struck by the young man's beauty, and who began watching him intently as he went about his daily work. In due time, Calvino saw which way the land lay, and was forced to flee that position as well.
This continued with some five or six more masters, and by then Calvino had journeyed a vast distance began to despair of ever finding a place to take root. One night, between cities, as he sat in an inn pondering his last few coins, he exclaimed, "Damn my good looks! They cause me nothing but torment. I'd give my soul just to be rid of them."
"What are you complaining about?" said a voice from behind him. Calvino turned to behold a young nobleman, with dark mustaches and dark eyes, in rich and immaculate attire. Calvino gestured to the nobleman to sit at his table, and explained his peculiar situation.
"Listen," the nobleman said when the tale was done, "follow my instructions exactly and your problem will be solved. Take this pair of breeches. Be sure to wear them at all times; never take them off, even to sleep. I'll return for them in seven years - seven years exactly. In the meantime you must never wash, not so much as your face; you must never trim your beard, nor your hair, nor your fingernails. If you do this, your wants will be satisfied."
At that he stood up, and the clock struck midnight as if signalled to do so. Calvino turned to see the clock, startled, and when he had turned back, the nobleman was gone.
Calvino went to his room, put on the breeches, and promptly fell asleep. In the morning, when he awoke and stood from the bed, he felt the breeches weighing him down. He reached into one of the swollen pockets, and to his great surprise, pulled out some gold coins. He pulled out huge handfuls, throwing them onto the bed to count them, but the pockets refused to empty; for every coin he removed, it seemed, another appeared to take its place.
He lost no time then, but proceeded to the nearest city, found the best inn and engaged its best room. He stayed in that room for some days; the innkeeper and his helpers were most obliging, since the word soon got out that he gave a gold coin for even the most minor service.
While at the inn, Calvino was accumulating his coins, and when the time and money were right, he found the largest, grandest house for sale in the city, and bought it, then and there. It lay within sight of the palace gates, and were it any larger it would have been a palace in its own right.
Calvino had all of the rooms on the ground floor of the house lined with iron; he had all the doors save one walled up, and that one fitted with heavy bars and locks. With the bottom of his house transformed into a vault, he began to stockpile coins in earnest. When one room filled up with coins, he would move to the next.
As time passed, his hair and beard became so long that his own dead father would not have recognized him. His fingernails were as long as combs for carding wool; his toenails were so long that he had to wear sandals, when he wore shoes at all. A crust formed on his skin an inch thick. In short, he looked more like an animal than a man. Yet his breeches continued to remain as clean as the day he had put them on.
Now, the king of this city happened to be engaged in a long, inconclusive, and expensive war with a neighboring city. The treasury had been drained bare, and the king was desperate for money to continue the fight. One day his chancellor commented, "Majesty, it's said that the gentleman in the house at the end of the avenue has more money than our treasury can hold. It may just be a story, but it cannot possibly hurt to find out."
The king agreed, and sent the steward to pay our Calvino a visit. Now, the steward had really only been trying to placate the king, but when Calvino showed him around his vault-rooms, packed to the ceiling with coins, the steward was beside himself with joy. He explained the situation to Calvino.
"You may tell His Majesty," said Calvino, "that my money is at his disposal ... on the sole condition that he give me one of his three daughters in marriage. I don't care which one. I will expect an answer within three days."
The steward dutifully, if nervously, relayed the message. The king did not receive it well, especially when Calvino's appearance was described to him. "You might at least have asked him for a portrait, to prepare my daughters for the shock."
"I will do just that," replied the steward.
Upon being informed of the king's request, Calvino summoned an artist on the spot. Equipped with several excellent sketches, the steward returned to the palace. "Oh, dear, it is even worse than I imagined," the king exclaimed. "Well, let us see." So he summoned his oldest daughter as a trial.
Upon seeing the portrait, she said simply, "Does he strike you as a man a maiden could possibly marry?" and stomped off without asking permission to leave.
The king sighed and tried his middle daughter, who gave almost exactly the same reply, but louder and more angrily.
He was convinced then that the matter was hopeless. Just for the sake of being thorough, he called in his youngest daughter, who was barely of an age to marry. To his surprise, the maiden - whose whole family, let it be said, called her Bella - studied the sketches closely, as if learning her lessons.
"Look here, Father," she said, "and see how the shape of his forehead can be seen below this mane. Notice his graceful nose. Certainly his skin is a horrid color, but if washed, it would be something else entirely. Do you see how beautiful his hands would be, if those nails were trimmed? Take heart, Father. I'll marry this man myself."
The king kissed his daughter gratefully, and summoned the steward to convey the news. When the other sisters heard of Bella's betrothal, they teased her mercilessly, but she paid them no mind.
The steward had to bring several servants to carry the agreed-upon sum from Calvino's mansion. "I must count this," said the steward, looking at the piles of coins Calvino had set aside. "I believe you have given me considerably more than the specified amount."
"No worries," said Calvino. "In fact, fill a bag for yourself. And tell the king not to concern himself with the wedding expenses - I'll handle those on my own."
Indeed, the next day all the jewelers in town found they had been given generous orders, which they promptly filled. When the jewelry was assembled in one room, it alone was worth a king's fortune; and it took four valets to deliver the baubles to the astonished Bella. She tried on the various pieces for hours, while her sisters barely concealed their envy, muttering "If only he had better looks ...."
Meanwhile, dressmakers, milliners, shoemakers, hatters, bakers, butchers and all manner of other tradesmen throughout the city were becoming aware, by their orders, that some very large event was to take place at Calvino's mansion. And they knew when it was to take place: every one of them had been given strict orders that all must be ready a fortnight hence.
Money will work miracles, for indeed everything was ready at the specified time, and delivered in hundreds of boxes, barrels, bags, and crates.
The evening before the wedding, Calvino filled four tubs with hot water. The first tub's water turned black with accumulated filth as soon as he stepped into it; by the time he had soaked in the third tub for a considerable time, most of his skin was visible; in the fourth tub, he was actually able to soap and scrub himself. "Send for the barber!" he cried. The barber had never worked harder in his life, but eventually Calvino was neatly shorn and pomaded, with finger- and toenails trimmed.
The next morning, as his carriage arrived at the palace, the sisters were watching out their windows to see the monster arrive. "But who is this handsome young man? Probably sent to fetch you to the bridegroom, Bella."
Bella, too, was deceived. When she arrived at Calvino's mansion, she said to the young man, "And now where is my groom?"
Calvino held up a portrait similar to the ones Bella had already seen, and said, "Look at my mouth. Look at my eyes. Do you recognize me?"
Bella was overcome with joy; the young man was even more handsome than she had imagined. "But how on earth did you come to be in such a state?"
"Ask me nothing more about that," replied Calvino.
Of course the king and the other two sisters - as well as many others - attended the wedding banquet. When the remaining sisters saw the true face of Bella's bridegroom, they no longer made even a pretense of concealing their envy. "We'd give our souls," they were heard to say to one another, "for the sake of seeing their happiness end."
Now, as it happens, at the stroke of midnight that night, the nobleman's seven years were up, and at eleven o'clock Calvino reluctantly made his apologies to his new bride, saying only that he needed to be alone for a while.
He had already bundled up the breeches some days before, and sat waiting, with them placed before him. When the clock struck midnight, the nobleman appeared and advanced toward him.
"I know you now," said Calvino.
"You should," said the Devil.
"Here, take your breeches!" Calvino said, holding them out with a trembling hand. "Go on, take them!"
"I ought to take your soul now," said the Devil.
Calvino shuddered.
"But since you are responsible for my finding two other souls," continued the Devil, "I'll take those two instead of yours, and leave you in peace."
And both the Devil and his breeches were gone.
Calvino returned to his bedchambers and his new bride, uncertain what had just happened, but greatly relieved. In the morning, he awoke to the summons of a messenger from the king, who wanted to know if either he or Bella had seen the king's two eldest daughters since the wedding feast, and did he have any idea where they had gone?
Only then did Calvino realize who the two souls were that the Devil had taken.
© Columbine
|
|
