Page 186 - THE DECAMERON: 100 Days on 100 Etchings by Petru Rusu

“Salabaetto“
Dioneo explains that there’s a custom in countries with seaports
to take a merchant’s cargo into a warehouse owned by the local
government once it’s docked, so that the merchant pays the
proper fees. The merchant would draw up a list of goods, which
was made public so that other merchants could consult it and
decide if anyone had items to barter. It was good system for
trade and government, but other parties beautiful women used
the list for more nefarious purposes. In Palermo, Sicily, beautiful
women were notorious for consulting the lists to find out how
much a man was worth. In this way, they could strip him of
everything he owned. Enter Salabaetto, a young Florentine with
500 gold florins worth of leftover woolens to sell in Palermo.
He’s handsome and he knows it, so he expects to conduct a
little affair while he’s there. Madonna Jancofiore recognizes a
victim when she sees him, so she sends her maidservant to
tell Salabaetto that she’s sick with love for him. He believes the
maidservant, accepts a ring that Jancofiore sent, and promises
to meet her at a bath house. Jancofiore makes a good show
of it, sending slave-girls ahead of her with expensive items to
make their “date” more sumptuous and to impress the gullible
Florentine. It works. Salabaetto thinks he’s in heaven as he’s
bathed and sprinkled with rose water and when he finally
“embraces” Jancofiore. She invites him to dine at her house in
the evening. When he arrives there, he’s impressed. She’s made
him a fancy supper and brings him to her bedroom where all her
fine gowns and fancy mechanical birds are on display. In short,
he thinks she’s a fine and wealthy lady despite the rumors he’s
heard in town. After all, he is handsome and why shouldn’t she
be violently in love with him? The affair goes on for some time,
until Salabaetto sells his goods at a profit and Jancofiore finds
out. She invites him to her house and works him up into a frenzy
of passion. At that moment, one of her slaves calls her out of
the room. When she returns, she’s all tears. Her brother, she
tells Salabaetto, has written to say that he needs 1,000 pounds
immediately or he’s a dead man. If she had time, she says, she
could raise twice that much. But now, alas... Salabaetto falls
for it hook, line and sinker. He immediately offers her the 500
florins he earned from the sale of the woolens. Once Jancofiore
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has the cash in hand, she refuses to see him. Salabaetto kicks
himself for not listening to all those rumors and warnings. Now
he has to deal with the owners of the merchandise. Instead of
returning to Pisa, he hurries to Naples. In Naples, he finds an old
friend, Pietro dello Canigiano (FYI, a real friend of Boccaccio’s),
who scolds him first and then offers his help. On his friend’s
advice, he packs up some merchandise bales and oil casks and
heads back to Palermo. When he registers his merchandise at
the warehouse, Salabaetto claims that it’s worth 2,000 gold
florins. He also tells the officials there that he expects another
cargo load worth 3,000 more. Of course, Jancofiore hears
about this and decides that perhaps she should pay back the
500 florins to get her hands on an even bigger pile of money.
Salabaetto visits her and she immediately gives her excuses.
She also returns his money. The stage is set for sweet revenge.
Salabaetto carries on with Jancofiore as he did before, but this
time, the roles are reversed. He tells her that he intends to set
up shop in Palermo and if she ever needs money, she should
ask him. Then, one night, he comes to her and he’s upset.
Pirates have taken the ship with his goods and are demanding
a ransom. But Salabaetto can’t raise 1,000 gold florins on his
own because no one will lend to a stranger. Jancofiore says she
knows someone who can lend, but his interest rates are high.
And she would probably have to “co-sign” for him, leveraging
all of her belongings and her body against the loan. Salabaetto
knows she’s doing this to get her hands on the items in the
warehouse, so he tells her that he can use the merchandise in
the warehouse as collateral. On one condition: he gets to keep
the key to his merchandise, just in case he needs to get to it.
So they seal the deal and Salabaetto sails immediately back to
Naples with his 1,500 florins. He settles up with his employers
for the 500 and retires from business. As for Jancofiore, she
quickly gets suspicious when Salabaetto doesn’t show his face
for two months. When she goes to inspect the merchandise,
she finds that it’s seawater -not olive oil- in the casks and “tow”
(short, broken fibers, mostly worthless) in the bales. It’s not
even worth 200 florins. And that, Dioneo says, is how Madonna
Jancofiore learned not to mess with Florentines.
“Salabaetto” retrieved from publicly source: shmoop
<https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/decameron/summary/eighth-day-tenth-story>