March 2021 sits uncomfortably with many of us, a reminder of March 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic’s unsettling consequences. One year ago, in response to the massive changes taking place, a certain book began flying off bookshelves. It was Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” (1353), a collection of short stories toldby a fictional group sheltered outside Florence, Italy as the Black Deathdevastated 14th century Europe.
The New York Times Magazinecreated their own “Decameron,” with short stories detailing COVID-19.On July 7, the magazine issue was published. Then, on Nov. 10, The New York Times Magazine released “The Decameron Project” (2020) as a print book, explaining the project and presenting the 29 stories.
Victor LaValle’s “Recognition” (2020), the first story in the collection, dissects death by introducing past lives and their odd manifestations. The protagonist, unnamed, befriends a woman named Mirta. At the end of the story, Mirta explains through her door that she recognized the character because they met in a past life. Seconds later, Mirta's door opens and she is found dead. She has left the protagonist a note, ensuring they would meet again in another life. Culminating quickly, the story teaches that death, though jarring, immediate and unwanted, can also connect. In the fiction’s comforting claim, guilt is mitigated by the promised continuation of friendship, assured by a supernatural ghost or a festering déjà vu.
In the preface to the collection, renowned authorMargaret Atwood’s story, “Impatient Griselda” (2020), is hinted to be genius. It is. An alien, sent as a part of an "intergalactical-crises aid package," distracts quarantined humans with an atrociously entertaining story, all while berating humankind for their despicable qualities. Immediately, the alien’s translation device cannot interpret the word "vegan" in a request for snacks. The suggested and obvious solution, then, is to not eat. The “little young entities” don’t like the alien’s bluntness or that it looks like an octopus. It enjoys this, as its lack of skeletonmakes oozing under doors manageable.
Continuing with hilarious discrepancies in language and culture, the alien tells a folk story of sisters tricking and killing a duke. The story is almost believable until the alien nonchalantly states that the sisters ate the corpse, a more substantive and menacing translational glitch. Still, the alien insists that “storytelling does help us understand one another across our social and historical and evolutionary chasms...” The story initially appears to prove the opposite. Yet, the ridiculousness of the misconceptions reveals human ignorance. Fiction does unite, especially during difficult times. Those who reject this pleasure because of their natural differences should have their corpses eaten.
Etgar Keret’s story “Outside” (2020), translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen, features a character who has forgotten everything about his life before isolation. He goes outside, trying to remember if he was a social worker. His instincts are revivified by a beggar asking for food. He remembers to ignore them and walk with a head down. The story ends with the line, “The body remembers everything, and the heart that softened while you were alone will harden back up in no time.” The story is brief but insightful. Isolation stole our humanity. Yet, in the world before, were we more inhumane?
Edwidge Danticat’s“One Thing” (2020) tells the story of Marie-Jeanneremembering the behavioral intricacies of her science teacher's husband. She is “the love of Ray’s life,” talking to his unconscious body through a phone held to his ear by the nurse also regulating his ventilator. Danticat’s beautiful writing effortlessly paints the pain of losing loved ones to the debilitating effects of COVID-19. It is an intensely moving story to end the collection.
In the introduction to the collection, Rivka Galchen writes, "Memento vivere." In Latin, it means, "Remember that you must live." She marks this message as the meaning of “The Decameron.” We live through fiction, reading stories that are so much like our own to remember our place in this new world.
“The Decameron Project” is available everywhere and should be purchased by anyone impacted by COVID-19 — which is everyone.
