THE PENTAMERON; or, THE FIVE DAYS OF FIFTY STORIES, AS TOLD BY A GROUP OF FRIENDS ESCAPING THE COVID PANDEMIC
DAY TWO
by Mariah Ashe
THE PENTAMERON; or, THE FIVE DAYS OF FIFTY STORIES, AS TOLD BY A GROUP OF FRIENDS ESCAPING THE COVID PANDEMIC is a reworking of the 15th Century work “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles.” First translated into English in 1899 by Robert Douglas, this collection is now, for the first time, elevated to the level of Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre with a frame story fitting for it.
Story the First
In the area of Tacoma, on a campus that I shall not name, there used to be a professor of English—I do not know whether she still teaches—who enjoyed a fair reputation and an even fairer situation. You see, this woman had a husband who loved and respected her, and she was also in a position, due to her great beauty and charm, to have her way with nearly any student whom she wanted, provided she retain the cover of secrecy.
To come to the story, there was a semester when this professor had in her class a young man who caught her eye, and he was not shy about keeping it, either. The professor, who well knew the game that she played, so enticed the student that he made the first move, and she, though interested in the extreme, gave him a harsh and sharp reply. He was not to be rebuffed, however, and continued to implore her love with the most humble requests, which was, of course, the very course of events that she desired. Eventually, the pair came to terms, and their love affair consisted of many pleasant rendezvous.
Now, this lucky young man had a friend who was in the same class, and he, too, possessed a great desire for the professor, though she seemed to have no regard for him; for she seemed to hardly notice even his classwork. Nonetheless, this second young man would hear the stories told to him by his friend, and with each liaison related, he became all the more enflamed. The result was that the loveless begged his friend to find some way to put him in the professor’s intimate company, if not her good graces, and the other, after much persistent pleading, agreed.
“Here is what we shall do,” the fruitful proposed, “the next time that my lover calls to me and sets a time for rendezvous, you will, instead, go in my place. We meet by cover of night in her office, and I enter by the window, so you shall simply crawl in for me.”
“But how will I be able to carry out the liaison?” the fruitless asked. “Surely, she will know that I am not you.”
“I shall come along to answer any questions before your going inside, where it will, I well know, be dark enough to hide anything. Thus, you will need to say nothing, and all you must do is confidently enter. I tell you, it will be that easy.”
The friend doubted whether things would happen as promised, but he quickly agreed to the plan, considering all that there was for him to gain and nothing to lose.
When the next rendezvous was appointed, the lover proved true, first coming to his friend with the good news then accompanying him across campus to the hall that housed the English professor’s office, and they could see that the light was on in her window. Here, they stopped, and the friend aired his final concerns.
“Are you sure about all this?” he asked.
“Of course not,” the lover replied, “but one does not require assurance to act. What I know is that it is a worthwhile risk to run; for we are, I think, not likely to get caught. Remember, we regularly copy each other’s schoolwork in her class, and she has not yet so much as suspected the fact.”
When they came to the window, the lover knocked once with his knuckle, and she inside did not wait for more, quickly pulling aside her curtains and throwing open the glass.
“Who is there?” she asked in a low whisper.
“It is I,” her lover replied.
“Is it lesson time, then?”
“It is.”
As he spoke, the young man pushed his friend toward the window, indicating that the time was come for him to climb in and partake of a side of higher education that had been hitherto denied him. Inside, it could be seen that the light had been turned off, and this fact did as much to convince the young man as did his friend’s insistence. Confidently, therefore, as instructed, the friend thrust his leg up into the air then through the window’s opening, touching the other side’s floor on tiptoe.
It must be said that, as the story goes, something—all accounts are adamant that the young men did nothing to give themselves away—caused the professor to be suspicious on this particular evening. Thus, whatever the cause, she demanded that he entering stop where and how he was, straddling the windowsill with one foot outside and one in. Then, with no more introduction, she stepped right up to this figure climbing into her dark room, and she thrust her hand down the front of his pants, grasping the utensil with which he planned to do his night’s work.
“What is this?” she cried aloud. “Surely, I know that this, I do not know. Get out!”
In the next moment, the figure was pushed from the window’s opening, and after a tumble in the grass, he set to running at the heels of his friend. The professor, by poking her head out the window, saw every bit of this retreat, and she laughed when she called out to the student who was, as of now, her former lover:
“What a fool you were for thinking you could put your name to another’s work!”
Daisy: That, then, is the story of those who were successful in cheating their instructor in schoolwork, but when it came to the area of love, they found deception to be far less easily attained.
Chase: What fools they were, indeed.
Pierce: I could have told them what would happen.
Neil: They were only in college, remember. We might assume them to have been fresh students on campus, too.
Chase: Still, old enough to know better, I would think.
Daisy: Did you in your time?
Phil: Yeah, Chase. I seem to remember hearing of some stories of like ignorance on your part from back around that same age.
Chase: Point taken.
Pierce: The point still stands, though.
Neil: In any event, I bet those two students never again tried anything so foolish.
Pierce: Hopefully, they realized that their skills needed honing. Sometimes, though, that initial discouragement can prove too much.
Phil: I sure hope that the latter was not the case for them.
Daisy: Certainly, they loved better after. That, we know for sure.
Pierce: That is good to hear.
Neil: It is always good when a bad ending has its own good ending hiding behind it.
Chase: Well, it is, then, not truly a bad ending, at least in full. I, however, if it please the Storytelling Boat, have a story that features not only a truly bad ending, but it includes what I would call the worst of endings.
Pierce: Go ahead, I say. I want to hear this story that fits our theme so well.
Phil: The Boat’s attention is yours, Chase. You requested this second slot, anyway.
