The Portable Dante (15 page)

My guide, with a gentle push, encouraged me to move among the sepulchers toward him: “Be sure you choose your words with care, ” he said.

And when I reached the margin of his tomb he looked at me, and half-contemptuously he asked, “And
who
would
your
ancestors be? ”

And I who wanted only to oblige him held nothing back but told him everything. At this he lifted up his brows a little,

then said, “Bitter enemies of mine they were and of my ancestors and of my party; I had to scatter them not once but twice. ”

“They were expelled, but only to return from everywhere, ” I said, “not once but twice— an art your men, however, never mastered!”

Just then along that same tomb’s open ledge a shade appeared, but just down to his chin, beside this other; I think he got up kneeling.

He looked around as though he hoped to see if someone else, perhaps, had come with me and, when his expectation was deceived,

he started weeping: “If it be great genius that carries you along through this blind jail, where is my son? Why is he not with you?”

“I do not come alone, ” I said to him, “that one waiting over there guides me through here, the one, perhaps, your Guido held in scorn. ”

(The place of pain assigned him, and what he asked, already had revealed his name to me and made my pointed answer possible.)

Instantly, he sprang to his full height and cried, “What did you say? He
held
? Is he not living? The day’s sweet light no longer strikes his eyes? ”

And when he heard the silence of my delay responding to his question, he collapsed into his tomb, not to be seen again.

That other stately shade, at whose request I had first stopped to talk, showed no concern nor moved his head nor turned to see what happened;

he merely picked up where we had left off: “If that art they did not master, ” he went on, “that gives me greater pain than does this bed.

But the face of the queen who reigns down here will glow not more than fifty times before you learn how hard it is to master such an art;

and as I hope that you may once more know the sweet world, tell me, why should your party be so harsh to my clan in every law they make?”

I answered: “The massacre and butchery that stained the waters of the Arbia red now cause such laws to issue from our councils. ”

He sighed, shaking his head. “It was not I alone took part, ” he said, “nor certainly would I have joined the rest without good cause.

But I alone stood up when all of them were ready to have Florence razed. It was
I
who openly stood up in her defense. ”

“And now, as I would have your seed find peace, ” I said, “I beg you to resolve a problem that has kept my reason tangled in a knot:

if I have heard correctly, all of you can see ahead to what the future holds but your knowledge of the present is not clear. ”

“Down here we see like those with faulty vision who only see, ” he said, “what’s at a distance; this much the sovereign lord grants us here.

When events are close to us, or when they happen, our mind is blank, and were it not for others we would know nothing of your living state.

Thus you can understand how all our knowledge will be completely dead at that time when the door to future things is closed forever. ”

Then I, moved by regret for what I’d done said, “Now, will you please tell the fallen one his son is still on earth among the living;

and if, when he asked, silence was my answer, tell him: while he was speaking, all my thoughts were struggling with that point you solved for me. ”

My teacher had begun to call me back, so I quickly asked that spirit to reveal the names of those who shared the tomb with him.

He said, “More than a thousand lie with me, the Second Frederick is here and the Cardinal is with us. And the rest I shall not mention. ”

His figure disappeared. I made my way to the ancient poet, reflecting on those words, those words which were prophetic enemies.

He moved, and as we went along he said, “What troubles you? Why are you so distraught?” And I told him all the thoughts that filled my mind.

“Be sure your mind retains, ” the sage commanded, “those words you heard pronounced against yourself, and listen carefully now. ” He raised a finger:

“When at last you stand in the glow of her sweet ray, the one whose splendid eyes see everything, from her you’ll learn your life’s itinerary. ”

Then to the left he turned. Leaving the walls, he headed toward the center by a path that strikes into a vale, whose stench arose,

disgusting us as high up as we were.

We reached the curving brink of a steep bank constructed of enormous broken rocks; below us was a crueler den of pain.

And the disgusting overflow of stench the deep abyss was vomiting forced us back from the edge. Crouched underneath the lid

of some great tomb, I saw it was inscribed: “Within lies Anastasius, the pope Photinus lured away from the straight path. ”

“Our descent will have to be delayed somewhat so that our sense of smell may grow accustomed to these vile fumes; then we will not mind them, ”

my master said. And I: “You will have to find some way to keep our time from being wasted. ” “That is precisely what I had in mind, ”

he said, and then began the lesson: “My son, within these boulders’ bounds are three more circles, concentrically arranged like those above,

all tightly packed with souls; and so that, later, the sight of them alone will be enough, I’ll tell you how and why they are imprisoned.

All malice has injustice as its end, an end achieved by violence or by fraud; while both are sins that earn the hate of Heaven,

since fraud belongs exclusively to man, God hates it more and, therefore, far below, the fraudulent are placed and suffer most.

In the first of the circles below are all the violent; since violence can be used against three persons, into three concentric rounds it is divided:

violence can be done to God, to self, or to one’s neighbor—to him or to his goods, as my reasoned explanation will make clear.

By violent means a man can kill his neighbor or wound him grievously; his goods may suffer violence by arson, theft, and devastation;

so, homicides and those who strike with malice, those who destroy and plunder, are all punished in the first round, but all in different groups.

Man can raise violent hands against himself and his own goods; so in the second round, paying the debt that never can be paid,

are suicides, self-robbers of your world, or those who gamble all their wealth away and weep up there when they should have rejoiced.

One can use violence against the deity by heartfelt disbelief and cursing Him, or by despising Nature and God’s bounty;

therefore, the smallest round stamps with its seal both Sodom and Cahors and all those souls who hate God in their hearts and curse His name.

Fraud, that gnaws the conscience of its servants, can be used on one who puts his trust in you or else on one who has no trust invested.

This latter sort seems only to destroy the bond of love that Nature gives to man; so in the second circle there are nests

of hypocrites, flatterers, dabblers in sorcery, falsifiers, thieves, and simonists, panders, seducers, grafters, and like filth.

The former kind of fraud both disregards the love Nature enjoys and that extra bond between men which creates a special trust;

thus, it is in the smallest of the circles, at the earth’s center, around the throne of Dis, that traitors suffer their eternal pain. ”

And I, “Master, your reasoning runs smooth, and your explanation certainly makes clear the nature of this pit and of its inmates,

but what about those in the slimy swamp, those driven by the wind, those beat by rain, and those who come to blows with harsh refrains?

Why are they, too, not punished here inside the city of flame, if they have earned God’s wrath? If they have not, why are they suffering?”

And he to me, “Why do you let your thoughts stray from the path they are accustomed to? Or have I missed the point you have in mind?

Have you forgotten how your
Ethics
reads, those terms it explicates in such detail: the three conditions that the heavens hate,

incontinence, malice, and bestiality? Do you not remember how incontinence offends God least, and merits the least blame?

If you will reconsider well this doctrine and then recall to mind who those souls were suffering pain above, outside the walls,

you will clearly see why they are separated from these malicious ones, and why God’s vengeance beats down upon their souls less heavily. ”

“O sun that shines to clear a misty vision, such joy is mine when you resolve my doubts that doubting pleases me no less than knowing!