The Pleasant Nights

This is the social world of Ruzante, the famous Paduan playwright, who in that same era had celebrated the bittersweet, rustic drive and endurance of the Paduan peasantry. The present story merits consideration beside his Moschetta and Fiorina (1552) in terms of their depictions of the harsh realism of country life in a time of wars, displacement, and privation.69 The latter play may have been specifically indebted to Straparola, insofar as Tia’s speech protesting her poverty in contrast to Marsilio’s wealth, and her low expectations of generosity, offers touches of diction dealing with her tattered clothes that reappear in the prologue of Ruzante’s play, according to Domenico Pirovano.70 More pervasively, the Trevisan, or Straparola on his behalf, draws upon the common regional dialect found generally throughout Angelo Beolco’s (Ruzante’s) plays, as in Straparola’s ‘ma mi mo ch’ a’ son mi e ch’ a’ no so ninte de lettra’ (but me, which is me, who doesn’t have any book learning’ and Ruzante’s ‘mo mi, che a’ son mi mo, e che a’ sè quelo che se pò saere’ (but me, which is me, who knows everything).71 This is but one of the many speech affectations characterizing the local lingo. Everyone in the framing tale congratulates Benedetto for imitating it so well.

One of the most important links between East and West is the Disciplina clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi, a Sephardic Jew who converted to Christianity in 1106 at the age of forty-four.74 This widely circulating collection contained three formative texts, No. 9, ‘The Parable of the Grape Farmer,’ No. 10, ‘The Parable of the Linen Sheet,’ and No. 11, ‘The Parable of the Sword.’ The first is of particular interest, because the husband, while working in the vineyard, injures one of his eyes. Returning home as the result of his accident, he interrupts his wife with her lover. She quickly invents a ruse by convincing him that he should avail himself of medications and a magic charm to protect his good eye. In offering such ministrations she effectively cuts off his sight while her lover makes his escape. Then she puts him to bed. In this tale, the lover is hidden, the husband is temporarily ‘blinded,’ and she makes use of a trumped up ceremony involving magic to allow the getaway. This is Straparola’s story in ovo. In the second, the mother and daughter in complicity prevail upon the returning husband to examine their handicraft by showing him a large sheet behind which the lover makes his escape. In the third, the wife quickly constructs the enmity between the two lovers by having one draw a sword and exit past the husband without speaking, while the other cowers in her bedroom. All are of Eastern origin, making the Disciplina clericalis a potential bridge whereby the Straparola type made its way into Europe.75

Others in this vein, now from Straparola’s own century, include Matteo Bandello’s story in Part I, No. 23, ‘Astuzia d’una fanciulla innamorata per salvar l’amante ed inganner la nutrice’ (Of the cleverness of a young girl in love in rescuing her lover by tricking her nurse).81 In this tale, it is the nurse who is blind in one eye, and she is playfully clasped by the neck in order to cover the good one long enough for the lover to escape. The point is moot which story was written first, but its divergence from Straparola’s suggests an even greater distancing of their respective sources, even though they belong to a common type.

Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof, whose Wendunmuth was published in 1563, also tells the now familiar story of the one-eyed knight who cut short his Turkish campaign to hurry home to his beloved spouse. His surprise arrival leads to the now familiar ruse of the dream concerning his restored vision and the strategic test. This wife likewise vigorously signals to her lover with her head to take to his heels.82 One final example is found in L’Héptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, which may be entitled provisionally, ‘The subtlety of a woman who allowed her lover to escape when her husband, blind in one eye, thought to take them by surprise.’83 This husband is a one-eyed valet-de-chambre, much older than his wife, who is kept for long periods away from home by his patron, the Duke d’Alençon. He gets wind of foul play and proposes his absence in order to double back to catch them. When he hammers at the door, the lover collapses into cowardly curses and regrets. The wife bluffs with the man outside, ‘If my husband were here, he would put an end to this knocking,’ and so she gains for time. She too pretends to have had a dream in which her husband had recovered his sight, showing him a good deal of affection while covering his good eye to test the veracity of her impressions. This time, however, the husband recognizes the trick and swears that bad women can never be made good, telling her that if she wouldn’t behave well when she was well treated, that he would now treat her as she deserved. The discussion among the guests in the framing-tale audience touch upon the very concerns that give these stories such vitality and urgency – the wiles of the two sexes in satisfying their sexual cravings outside of marriage, the varieties of marital inequality, and the cunning of the human spirit in its own right. None of these tales may be cited as Straparola’s source and yet by dint of the circulation of signature motifs, they are all part of a generic type predicated upon this elementary narrative idea.84

V. Fable 5
Madonna Modesta’s Shoes

S. LUCREZIA

Madonna Modesta, wife of Messer Tristano Zanchetto, in her young days gathers together a great number of shoes offered by her various lovers. Grown old, she gives them all away to members of the serving class and other folk of mean estate.

Commonly it happens that ill-gotten wealth and riches are dispersed after a short time or perish altogether, for it is the divine will that their return should follow the same path by which they arrived. This was indeed the case with a certain woman of Pistoia, for had she been as honest and wise as she was dissolute and foolish, the occasion leading to the story I’m about to tell you would never have come about. This fable of mine may scarcely be suitable for your ears, because it ends up with a picture of shame and dishonour which obscures and tarnishes the fame of those women whose lives are upright and honest. Nevertheless, I’ll not hesitate to relate it to you, for it may serve as an incentive to pursue the ways of righteousness and to eschew all wicked courses.

I’ll begin by telling this worshipful company that in our own time there lived in that ancient Tuscan city of Pistoia a young woman named Madonna Modesta, although the name hardly suited her on account of her evil life. In her person she was truly lovely and graceful, but her condition was of the meanest. She had a husband called Tristano Zanchetto – a name that contrasted with her own because it fitted him perfectly, buffoon that he was. He was a good-tempered fellow who enjoyed merry company and thought of little else besides his business of buying and selling, whereby he gained a good living for himself. Madonna Modesta was lecherous by nature and engaged continuously in the pleasures of love. When she saw that her husband had devoted himself heart and soul to commerce and was preoccupied strictly with matters of business, it came into her head that she too might embark in merchandising by setting up a new trade about which her husband, Messer Tristano, would never find out a thing.

Every day she placed herself in plain view at her window or on the balcony, amusing herself by throwing glances at any gallant who might be passing in the street. When her eye fell upon a young man whose appearance pleased her, she would employ every nod and wink she knew in an attempt to excite and lure him in. As time moved along, it proved that Madonna Modesta had no ordinary skill in the art of traffic, for she was so diligent in the display of her merchandise, and so attentive to the needs of her customers, that in all the city there was no one, rich or poor, noble or plebeian, who was not eager to sample and enjoy her goods. Once Madonna Modesta had attained a position of great notoriety in her calling and had gathered thereby a great deal of wealth, she decided to exact only a very small reward from all who came to claim her favours. In brief, it became her custom to demand of her lovers no greater price than a pair of shoes, stipulating, however, that each one should give shoes of a kind that he might wear himself in an ordinary way. Thus, if her lover should happen to be a nobleman, she expected of him a pair of velvet shoes, if a burgher, she would ask for a pair of shoes made of fine cloth, if a mechanic, a pair made of leather. So great a concourse of clients flocked to this good woman’s place of business that it was continuously occupied. Because she was young, beautiful, and shapely, and because the price of her favours was so modest, all the men of Pistoia went readily to her house and took their pleasures, gathering the ultimate fruits of love.

Now over time, Madonna Modesta filled a very large storehouse with shoes, the accumulated wealth of her tender calling. So vast was the tally of footwear that if a man here in Venice were to search every shop in the city, he wouldn’t find a third as many as Madonna Modesta had piled up in her stockroom.

Now it came about that one day Messer Tristano needed this same storage place for stowing away certain merchandise consigned to him from several parts of the world. So he called his beloved wife to ask her for the keys to the warehouse. She, crafty wench that she was, presented them to him without any explanation whatsoever. When the husband opened the storehouse, which he expected to find empty, and saw that it was quite full of shoes of various sorts and qualities, as I’ve already explained, he was astounded and could hardly guess where so huge a cache of footwear had come from. Calling his wife, he questioned her as to the meaning of all those wares in his storehouse, to which the astute lady made him this reply: ‘What do you think, good husband Tristano? That you are to write yourself down as the only merchant in this city? In believing that, you’d be hugely mistaken, for you should know that we women also know a thing or two about the art of traffic. So while you’ve been a great merchant, used to numerous and weighty ventures, I’ve contented myself with commerce on a smaller scale. That’s why I store my merchandise in this warehouse under lock and key to keep it safe. I’m only suggesting that you take care and keep a watch over your own goods and I’ll do the same for mine.’ Messer Tristano, who knew nothing more than what his wife told him and asked no further questions, felt most gratified by the ingenuity and foresight of his clever Modesta, and urged her to pursue her enterprise with even greater diligence. So the good Madonna carried on in secret with her amorous trade, in which she so excelled and prospered that she gathered together so vast a store of shoes that she could easily have supplied not only the needs of Pistoia, but of any great city in the world.

While Madonna Modesta remained young, full of grace and beauty, her trade showed no signs of abatement. But alas, with the passing years, cruel Time – the master of the sublunary world, who fixes the beginning, middle, and end of all things – found her out. Once fresh, plump, and the picture of loveliness, her face and form were now altered. Wrinkles furrowed her brow and her countenance sagged, though her love of the game was as hot as ever. Still her eyes filled with rheum and her breasts dried up like shrivelled bladders. Whenever she smiled, the skin of her cheeks puckered in creases, bringing those who saw her to laughter. Madonna Modesta had grown old and grey-haired, and lovers no longer paid her court as formerly they had done. There were no more shoes to add to her store, and for that she lamented bitterly in her heart.

From the earliest years of her youth down to the present hour she had given herself entirely to dispensing her favours with all the material gains. She had grown accustomed to her dainty ways and the luxuriousness of her life, more than any other woman in the world, so that withdrawing herself from lechery exceeded all her means or powers. Even though in her body the vital fluids were on the wane, which make all plants and living things take root and grow, yet the yearning to satisfy her forbidden but insatiable appetites was as violent as ever. Seeing that she was bereft of her youthful beauty and was no longer flattered and caressed by handsome young gallants as she had been in former days, Madonna Modesta reordered her mode of life. Once more she displayed herself on the high balcony of her house ogling and casting her snares, but now towards the serving men, porters, chimney sweepers, and comehither wastrels below. Those whose eye she caught she would entice into her house to serve her ends, taking such pleasure with them as she had been accustomed to take before. But whereas in times past she had demanded from each of her lovers a pair of shoes of a quality in keeping with the donor’s condition as the price of her favours, she now found herself obliged to give a pair of shoes from her stock to all those she had beckoned in. Madonna Modesta had now sunk into such a shameful state that all the meanest ruffians of Pistoia frequented her dwelling, some to satisfy their itch, others to mock and tease, and still others to collect the shameful reward she was now accustomed to give. So it came to pass that the storehouse, once crammed full of shoes, was nearly emptied out.

Messer Tristano one day, having a mind to go in secret to see how his wife’s commerce was prospering, and whether her store of merchandise was increasing, took the key to the depot without his wife’s knowledge and opened the door, only to discover upon looking in that nearly all the shoes were gone. This amazed him beyond measure, for he couldn’t understand how his wife could have disposed of the great trove of shoes he had seen there earlier. Then he began to imagine that she must be made of gold by now through her wheelering traffic, consoling himself with the thought that from then on he might take advantage of the profits.

Losing no time, he called her to him and said, ‘Modesta, I’ve always rated you as a wise and prudent woman, but today I happened to open your storehouse to see how your commerce was thriving, thinking that by this time your stock of shoes must have increased by leaps and bounds, but instead I found that your wares have nearly all disappeared. At first I was amazed by it, but afterwards I understood that you must have traded them for a great sum of money. Thus I reassured myself. Now if this notion of mine proves true, I’m led to think that your profits have been substantial indeed.’

When her husband completed his speech, Madonna Modesta heaved a deep sigh and answered him, ‘Messer Tristano, my husband, don’t be amazed at what you’ve just witnessed, for I must explain that all those shoes you saw some time ago in my warehouse have all walked away in the same fashion they came to me. Over and above this, let me add as a rule that things ill-gotten ill-go within a little space of time. So once more I ask you not to be surprised or to wonder at what you have seen.’ Messer Tristano, without in the least understanding the meaning of his wife’s words, fell into a state of fear and confusion, terrified that a similar misfortune might befall his own goods and merchandise. With that, he ceased to discuss the matter with her further, but took anxious measures to prevent his own merchandise from vanishing as his wife’s had done.

Madonna Modesta, now finding herself slighted by men of all walks and conditions, and entirely beggared of all the shoes she had gained in the course of her lecherous youth, fell into a grave sickness through grief and passion and in a very brief space of time died from her declining condition. So it happened that Madonna Modesta, in life so mindless of the future, made a shameful and miserable end. Of all the possessions she had gathered together, she left nothing behind her to serve as an example to the rest of the world except a disgraceful memory.

When the Signora had ended her short fable, all the company began to laugh out loud, heaping abundant blame upon Madonna Modesta, whose life was modest in all things except her lecherous cravings. Nor could they stop laughing when they recalled the part about the shoes which were acquired with no less sweetness than with which they were lost. But because it was on Cateruzza’s account that the Trevisan had urged the Signora to tell this fable, the lady now began to spur the damsel on with words that carried a sting, even though they were gently spoken. As a penalty for having failed to tell her story, she commanded Cateruzza expressly to propose an enigma that was relevant to the subject of the fable they had just heard.

When she heard the Signora’s command, Cateruzza rose from her seat and, turning towards her, said, ‘Dear Signora, I’m not in the least displeased by your taunts. On the contrary, I accept them gladly for myself with my entire heart. But the task of making my enigma agree in some measure with the fable you have just told us is no easy one, seeing that I’m entirely unprepared. But since it is your pleasure to punish my fault, as an obedient girl and your most compliant handmaiden, I’ll begin at once.’

My lady seats her in a chair,

And raises then her skirt with care;

And as I know she waits for me,

I bring her what she fain would see.

Then soft I lift her dainty leg,

Whereon she cries, ‘Hold, hold, I beg!

It is too strait, and eke too small;

Be gentle, or you’ll ruin all.’

And so to give her smallest pain,

I try once more, and then again.

Cataruzza’s enigma provoked as much laughter as the Signora’s ingenious fable. But because certain of the listeners imposed upon it a lewd interpretation, she set about at once to make clear to them the honesty of her intent, in terms as civil as she could find: ‘Noble ladies, the real subject of my riddle is neither more nor less than a tight shoe, for when the lady is seated, the shoemaker, with the shoe in his hand, raises her foot, whereupon she tells him to put the shoe on gently because it is too tight and gives her pain. Then he takes it off and then puts it on again and again until it fits her well and she is pleased with it.’

When the explanation of Cateruzza’s enigma had come to an end and reaped the praise of the entire company, the Signora, seeing that the hour was now late, gave order that under pain of her displeasure no one should leave the place. Then bidding them summon the trusty steward of the household, she asked him to set out the tables in the great hall. While the feast was in course of preparation, she proposed that the ladies and gentlemen should divert themselves with dancing. Then, after the measures were finished, they sang two songs, whereupon the Signora rose to her feet and went into the dining hall with Signor the Ambassador on one hand and Messer Pietro Bembo on the other, with the rest of the company following in their due order. When they had all washed their hands, each one sat down according to his rank at the table, which was richly spread with rare and delicate dishes and clear, exquisite wines. When this merry feast had come to an end amid the loving discourse of the guests, everyone now in a happier mood than ever, they rose from the table and once more began to dance. But insofar as the rosy light of dawn was then beginning to appear, the Signora bade the servants to light the torches and attend Signor the Ambassador as far as the steps, begging him and all the others to return to the meeting place at the appointed hour.

The End of the Fifth Night

V. 5 Commentary

A pregnant detail is seen in the final sentence in which the revellers are reminded to return for further stories after this, the final night of the first volume. It signals that at the time of publication, Straparola had stories in mind for successive gatherings, although they would not appear for another three years. Meanwhile, the order of narrators is broken so that the Signora, herself, might provide the finale to the collection. Straparola does not appear to have given much thought to the matching of tales with their narrators. The young ladies are too much alike to have made it possible. But the present tale may be an exception, for the noble, dignified, and upright Signora has been prevailed upon to supply a story of her own, and for her contribution, she has been assigned the tale of Madonna Modesta – a married woman who is all but in name a prostitute. In keeping with Lucrezia’s own posture of moral rectitude, the story is sandwiched between a sermonizing prologue and a categorical epilogue of the most cautionary and straight-laced kind. For Lucrezia, it would seem that Modesta’s curriculum is that of a nymphomaniac who died in misery after a life of abject debauchery. On her part, there are no signs of the empathy that might be felt for a creature imprisoned by her libidinous constitution, whose drives are expressed as erotic charity reduced to the taking and eventual giving of shoes. Yet what she relates as an exemplum of depravity doubles as a heartrending glimpse into the crisis of passing beauty and an aging woman’s inability to relinquish the mating game. For despite the didactic stance, the story presents a profile of complex personhood – that of a sinner in God’s eye because she is a woman of emphatic appetites in excessive measure, yet a creature of personable instincts and compulsive temperament, whose humour it is to calibrate the trajectory of her life in terms of sexual conquest and gratification. This is the economy of her life, as it is for Chaucer’s Dame Alyce, the celebrated and controversial Wife of Bath, who, like Modesta, despite her advancing age, has no personal identity outside her involvement in the battle of the sexes. The sanctimonious Signora may cast the first stone at a harlot born, yet of this fallen soul she lets slip that ‘in her person she was truly lovely and graceful.’ Straparola is up to something.

The story’s extraordinary ‘idea’ is that Madonna Modesta receives her remuneration in the form of shoes, each lover contributing a pair in keeping with his class and station in life. A warehouse full of these tokens becomes the objective correlative of her prodigious appetite, while the variety of shoes from velvet to leather and all grades between bespeak the catholicity of her tastes and democratic liberality in her choice of partners. Overtones remain of the sinner who becomes an all-embracing saint. At the same time, the shoes represent the comic codification of her favours, which dimension alone could have brought the assembly to such hollow laughter at the end of the story. In imitation of her husband, she too becomes a successful merchant, trading her own endlessly renewable commodity for footwear. How ironic, then, that with the passage of time she continues to service her sexual cravings only by disposing of her favours to men of the downtrodden classes by enticing them with the offer of free shoes – those she had formerly collected from lovers and admirers. And how poignant it is that when her warehouse is at last empty, her life is culminated shortly thereafter in sickness and death. Modesta is ambiguously a nymphomaniac with the heart of a vital woman whose sexual cravings are a costly addiction. Paul Meyer, for that reason, may have gotten it partially wrong, ‘that the story is more moral in its substance than in its form, in which the sense is that goods badly acquired profit nothing.’89 All is vanity, to be sure, but some enactments elicit more pathos than others.

A less rigorous view of the human condition suggests that instincts and appetites, mediated through personal predilections and habits, are tantamount to destiny. The story invites a smile at the commoditisation of the sexual drives and the scope of her prodigality. But it is also a story about the ripening and withering that comes with time, a transformation that alienates Modesta from her former self, yet does not free her from her youthful appetites. This perspective is furthered by the little meditation on the contrasting ages of life which forms the apex of the narrative – a reflection upon withered skin and sagging breasts, evoking a sense of nostalgia and loss that can only be met with resolve or selfdeception. As will be seen, the story had been an illustration of this complex mood of regret and persistence throughout a history going back more than three centuries.

Two documents came to the attention of Paul Meyer, cited in the article mentioned above, pertaining to the origins of this tale. Both involve knives rather than shoes, often decorated with pearls and precious stones, given to a beautiful woman in exchange for sexual favours in her youth, which she then, in her later years, trades away to lovers just to bring them to her bed. One is in Italian, dates to the fifteenth century, and explains the origin of the proverb, ‘Ta farai come colei che renderai i coltellini’ (you’re just like the woman who gave back the little knives), suggesting that at one time the story was well enough known to generate a lasting dictum.90 The other is in a French treatise on the four ages of man by Philippe de Navarre, demonstrating that as early as the first half of the thirteenth century the story was in circulation as an exemplum and cautionary tale about squandering the resources of youth and resisting the wisdom that should come with age. Both tell of the passage of time and the loss of lovers to younger women, and how the once great supply of precious knives becomes the protagonist’s only resource for drawing in partners in her advancing years.91 Philippe de Navarre currently holds the credit for launching the vignette, which he undoubtedly found among the exempla gracing sermons or among the tales of the folk, but a rival literary version exists in the Panciatichiano-Palatino MS. of the Novelle antiche dating to the 1260s.92 Moreover, Francisco Delicado redeployed the same idea in his Portrait of Lozana, confirming the story’s early circulation. Just how the object given and received changed from knives to shoes, and precisely where Straparola found his story are matters, for the moment, of pure speculation, whether he transcribed the work from a written record or collected it from an oral source. It is not a story that appears to have survived among the folk during nineteenth century; that fact may tip the scales in favour of a written source.

Overlooked, however, is an important intermediary version associated with the Sermones vulgares tradition of Jacques de Vitry. It does not occur in the edition of The Exempla or Illustrative Stories edited by Thomas Frederick Crane because Jacques de Vitry probably did not make his own collection of the exempla. Rather, once the tradition was begun in his name, manuscripts appeared which included many other exempla not included in the original sermons, among them Brit. Lib. MS. Harl. 463. It tells of the woman who stored up knives and who later gave them away to lovers in her old age to keep up her carnal life. She too had to lure them from members of the inferior classes with the promise of gifts, the exemplum touching upon the ages of life. The manuscript collection is not attributed to Jacques de Vitry because the opening pages are lost, but the coincidence of materials almost assures that association. This version may predate that which occurs in the Panciatichiana-Palatino MS.93 In sum, the story of Madonna Modesta is a literary variation upon a well-established story dealing with the ironies of aging and the indomitable drives of human nature, but a variation for which no immediate sources survive. Those changes may hence be credited to Straparola, to the makers of the folk tradition, or to a lost intermediary source – a now familiar dilemma. It may, again, come down to predilections concerning the scope, variety, and vitality of the oral tradition from which Straparola was inclined to furnish himself versus impressions of Straparola’s own talents and inclinations for invention.

Regarding ‘the ages of man’ as a thematic perspective, Modesta’s story is not without literary counterparts – and particularly those concerning old wives or aging prostitutes who, speaking in moments of candour, longing, or stoic resignation, reflect upon the loss of the beauty and enchantment that once empowered them. Leading examples are Chaucer’s Dame Alyce and Francesco Delicado’s Lozana and her associates. In the Prologue to her tale, the Wife of Bath famously reminisces over her life, attributing to her composite constellation her ‘venerian’ compulsions and her manly drives.94 ‘I koude noght withdrawe / My chamber of Venus from a goode felawe,’ she confessed, as long as he liked and appreciated her, no matter what his size, shape, or colour (ll. 622–5), in Madonna Modesta’s same spirit of catholicity. In this she followed her appetite. She was simply born lecherous, having ‘a coltes tooth,’ making it a terrible pity that casual sex was also deemed a sin. Dame Alyce had also advanced in age and had lost much of her younger charms, bereft of her beauty and ‘pith,’ which elicited from her one of the most plangent moments in all of literature when she says she will let it go, the devil take it. Now that the flour was all sold, she would market the bran to the best of her remaining ability (ll. 474–80). She too, in spite of the passage of time, could not give up the game, for her sexual desires were her life force and the centre of her being. That existential core expressed in libidinous desires is the same as in Straparola’s tale.

Equally apt for comparison is the heroine of Francesco Delicado’s work, the title of which translates as the Portrait of Lozana the Lusty Andalusian Woman.95 Lozana is a wonderfully worldly-wise, aging courtesan whose perspective on the times, conditioned by years in the sex industry, is witty, frank, deeply sardonic, stoic, and compassionate all at once. She meditates upon the men who sought to enjoy favours without paying, making allusion to Saint Nafissa, canonized for liberal and indiscriminate acts of sexual charity for the needy. Having been recently deceived by a fool who ‘wanted to ejaculate his load … without paying the bridge-toll,’ she confesses, nevertheless, to her enjoyment of the encounter while vowing never to let it happen to her again. Her associate, Madam Divicia, is described as having a grand collection of knives gained free of charge which she will in turn give out gratis. Sagueso, a customer, comes along teasing them as old whores, while Divicia contemplates the inadmissibility of returning to her own village where her sullied reputation would follow her in retirement. There is nothing left but to brave it out with aging customers, pretending the best is still to come. Here too, as with the Wife of Bath and Modesta, is the language of merchandising, forming a metaphor of life as sexual brokering, a giving and receiving that can somehow never be replaced. The women engage in mutual banter over their advancing age and the decay of their bodies. Divicia boasts, in a moment of nostalgia, of how in her youth she had been the best there was, if only she had protected what she had earned. Later, in her room with her lover who seduces her while she is asleep, she tells him that if he wants to repeat it while she is awake, she would give him a pair of the most beautiful knives ever to be seen. Such gifts were incentives to retain a few indulgent lovers, as with Madonna Modesta, fearful that her life was otherwise at an end. These narratives recommend themselves to the attention as bittersweet, humorous representations of the crisis of aging epitomized by diminishing sexual desirability. We may be amused or scandalized by the raw drives of the human animal, advancing and retreating with the passage of biological time, here emblematized as a warehouse of waxing and waning quantities of shoes. There is something fetishistic about payment in shoes in the first place, and something pathetic on the part of a woman past her prime in soliciting sex from riff-raff in need of footwear. But the sex drive is a life force, the passage of time is inexorable, habits and cravings run deep, and the rituals of the game are all that remain. Or in the words of Alexander Pope, ‘Think not, when Woman’s transient Breath is fled, / That all her Vanities at once are dead; / Succeeding Vanities she still regards, / And tho’ she plays no more, o’erlooks the Cards.’96 Desire for the game even survives the grave.

V. Fable 4
Tia Rabboso, or the Ruses of an Adulterous Wife

V.4 Commentary

V. Fable 5
Madonna Modesta’s Shoes

V. 5 Commentary

V. Fable 4Tia Rabboso, or the Ruses of an Adulterous Wife

V.4 Commentary

V. Fable 5Madonna Modesta’s Shoes

V. 5 Commentary

V. Fable 4
Tia Rabboso, or the Ruses of an Adulterous Wife

V. Fable 5
Madonna Modesta’s Shoes