[Music]
All right, this is this is the story of Saint Anthony's Gift.
It's another Italian folktale from the collection by Italo Calvino.
Once on the earth there was no fire, none at all, and men were very cold.
So they went out to St. Anthony in the desert and they said “Help us out please, the cold
is just unbearable!”
And Saint Anthony, moved by pity, decided to help them.
And since the only fire that existed anywhere was in hell he decided to go down to hell
and get fire for man.
Now before he was a hermit Saint Anthony was a shepherd and he had this very little piglet
which was his special favorite and was his constant companion, stayed with him even out
in the desert.
So St. Anthony took his fennel staff and his piglet and he walked all the way to hell.
And he banged on the gates of hell and he said “Let me in, I'm cold and I want to warm up!”
The devils peered out over the top of the gate and they recognized him—they saw the
halo—and they said “No, you can't come in, not you, it's some sort of a trick, we
know this trick.”
St. Anthony says “No really, I'm just an old man and I'm cold.
I want to come in and warm up, please let me in!”
So the devils mutter to each other for a bit one of them leans over the top of the gate
and says, “The pig can come in, but you have to stay outside.”
The gate creaks open just a tiny bit, wide enough for the pig to enter.
St. Anthony sits down on the doorstep of hell with his staff across his knees and waits.
As soon as the pig gets inside of hell, he just starts tearing the place up.
He's running back and forth, rooting against everything, knocking over racks of torture
implements, upsetting cauldrons of boiling oil, just making a mess,
scattering paperwork everywhere. (There's bureaucracy in hell.) [Laughter]
The devils have to stop what they're doing and chase him around, but they can't catch
him, he's too fast for them.
He’s making a tremendous racket and eventually one of the devils calls over the gate to St. Anthony.
“Come in here and get control of your pig!
He's raising… he's making a mess in hell!” [Laughter]
So they open the doors and St. Anthony comes in with his staff.
He taps the pig on the back with his staff and the pig quiets down, heels and sits at his feet.
St. Anthony says, “Well since I'm here I may as well get warmed up,” and he sits
himself down on a sack of cork and starts warming his hands by one of the fires.
The devils say, “Fine. Keep that pig under control.
As soon as we're done cleaning up, both of you are out of here!”
So the Devils are running around, picking up all the things that have been knocked over,
refilling the cauldrons of oil,
picking up all the damned paper… picking up all the Damned Paperwork, [Laughter]
and every time a devil runs by Saint Anthony
where he's sitting, a messenger, say, with the message about a soul that has just fallen into perdition,
he whacks him on the back with his staff.
“Cut that out!” (says the devil.)
Another one runs by, putting some thumb screws back on the wall: whack!
“Stop that, or you're not gonna like what happens!” they say.
Finally another devil coming running by with stack full of papers.
“Lucifer, here's all the seminarian files you were asking for!” [Laughter]
St. Anthony sticks out his staff and trips him. All the paperwork goes flying everywhere.
Finally the deputy assistant regional manager of this quadrant of hell says,
(There's bureaucracy in hell, that's why it's hell.) [Laughter]
“We've had enough of this, you're making a mess with this stick, now we're gonna burn it!”
He grabs the fennel staff away from St. Anthony and thrusts it into the fire.
The minute this happens, the pig starts cutting up again, running around, knocking all the
things over, scattering the papers that have been just put back into, just been alphabetized again.
And everybody's running around, finally they say “Get out, get control of your pig and
get out of here!”
St. Anthony says, “If you want me to control the pig, you've got to give me back my staff.”
“Fine!” they say, “here!”
They put it into his hands, he taps the pig on the back with the fennel staff, and the
pig calms down. They say “Out! Now!” So he walks out, hanging his head.
“It's so cold out here.”
He walks out through the gates of hell with this pig and his fennel staff.
Now fennel wood is very porous and it happens that if a spark or a cinder gets inside of
a stick of fennel it can smolder there for a long time without producing smoke or any
outward sign of fire.
So what the devils didn't know was that Saint Anthony was carrying fire inside of his staff
when they kicked him out. So he and the pig hike all the way back to earth.
He gets back to earth, he breaks the staff over his knee and dumps out all of the cinders
on to the ground and men are able to light their fires from that and be warm.
And then Saint Anthony goes back to the desert to meditate.
That's the story of how Saint Anthony brought fire out of hell for the benefit of mankind.
[Applause] Thank you.