The Portable Dante (25 page)

When they arrived, they looked at me sideways and for some time, without exchanging words; then they turned to one another and were saying:

“He seems alive, the way his throat is moving, and if both are dead, what privilege allows them to walk uncovered by the heavy cloak?”

Then they spoke to me: “O Tuscan who has come to visit the college of the sullen hypocrites, do not disdain to tell us who you are. ”

I answered them: “I was born and I grew up in the great city on the lovely Arno’s shore, and I have the body I have always had.

But who are you, distilling tears of grief, so many I see running down your cheeks? And what kind of pain is this that it can glitter?”

One of them answered: “The orange-gilded cloaks are thick with lead so heavy that it makes us, who are the scales it hangs on, creak as we walk.

Jovial Friars we were, both from Bologna. My name was Catalano, his, Loderingo, and both of us were chosen by your city,

that usually would choose one man alone, to keep the peace. Evidence of what we were may still be seen around Gardingo’s parts. ”

I began: “O Friars, all your wretchedness…” but said no more; I couldn’t, for I saw one crucified with three stakes on the ground.

And when he saw me all his body writhed, and through his beard he heaved out sighs of pain; then Friar Catalano, who watched the scene,

remarked: “That impaled figure you see there advised the Pharisees it was expedient to sacrifice one man for all the people.

Naked he lies stretched out across the road, as you can see, and he must feel the load of every weight that steps on him to cross.

His father-in-law and the other council members, who were the seed of evil for all Jews, are racked the same way all along this ditch. ”

And I saw Virgil staring down amazed at this body stretching out in crucifixion, so vilely punished in the eternal exile.

Then he looked up and asked one of the friars: “Could you please tell us, if your rule permits: is there a passage-way on the right, somewhere,

by which the two of us may leave this place without summoning one of those black angels to come down here and raise us from this pit?”

He answered: “Closer than you might expect, a ridge jutting out from the base of the great circle extends, and bridges every hideous ditch

except this one, whose arch is totally smashed and crosses nowhere; but you can climb up its massive ruins that slope against this bank. ”

My guide stood there awhile, his head bent low, then said: “He told a lie about this business, that one who hooks the sinners over there. ”

And the friar: “Once, in Bologna, I heard discussed the devil’s many vices; one of them is that he tells lies and is father of all lies. ”

In haste, taking great strides, my guide walked off, his face revealing traces of his anger. I turned and left the heavy-weighted souls

to make my way behind those cherished footprints.

In the season of the newborn year, when the sun renews its rays beneath Aquarius and nights begin to last as long as days,

at the time the hoarfrost paints upon the ground the outward semblance of his snow-white sister (but the color from his brush soon fades away),

the peasant wakes, gets up, goes out and sees the fields all white. No fodder for his sheep! He smites his thighs in anger and goes back

into his shack and, pacing up and down, complains, poor wretch, not knowing what to do; once more he goes outdoors, and hope fills him

again when he sees the world has changed its face in so little time, and he picks up his crook and out to pasture drives his sheep to graze—

just so I felt myself lose heart to see my master’s face wearing a troubled look, and as quickly came the salve to heal my sore:

for when we reached the shattered heap of bridge, my leader turned to me with that sweet look of warmth I first saw at the mountain’s foot.

He opened up his arms (but not before he had carefully studied how the ruins lay and found some sort of plan) to pick me up.

Like one who works and thinks things out ahead, always ready for the next move he will make, so, while he raised me up toward one great rock,

he had already singled out another, saying, “Now get a grip on that rock there, but test it first to see it holds your weight. ”

It was no road for one who wore a cloak! Even though I had his help and he weighed nothing, we could hardly lift ourselves from crag to crag.

And had it not been that the bank we climbed was lower than the one we had slid down— I cannot speak for him—but I for one

surely would have quit. But since the Evil Pits slope toward the yawning well that is the lowest, each valley is laid out in such a way

that one bank rises higher than the next. We somehow finally reached the point above where the last of all that rock was shaken loose.

My lungs were so pumped out of breath by the time I reached the top, I could not go on farther, and instantly I sat down where I was.

“Come on, shake off the covers of this sloth, ” the master said, “for sitting softly cushioned, or tucked in bed, is no way to win fame;

and without it man must waste his life away, leaving such traces of what he was on earth as smoke in wind and foam upon the water.

Stand up! Dominate this weariness of yours with the strength of soul that wins in every battle if it does not sink beneath the body’s weight.

Much steeper stairs than these we’ll have to climb; we have not seen enough of sinners yet! If you understand me, act, learn from my words. ”

At this I stood up straight and made it seem I had more breath than I began to breathe, and said: “Move on, for I am strong and ready. ”

We climbed and made our way along the bridge, which was jagged, tight and difficult to cross, and steep—far more than any we had climbed.

Not to seem faint, I spoke while I was climbing; then came a voice from the depths of the next chasm, a voice unable to articulate.

I don’t know what it said, even though I stood at the very top of the arch that crosses there; to me it seemed whoever spoke, spoke running.

I was bending over, but no living eyes could penetrate the bottom of that darkness; therefore I said: “Master, why not go down

this bridge onto the next encircling bank, for I hear sounds I cannot understand, and I look down but cannot see a thing. ”

“No other answer, ” he replied, “I give you than doing what you ask, for a fit request is answered best in silence and in deed. ”

From the bridge’s height we came down to the point where it ends and joins the edge of the eighth bank, and then the
bolgia
opened up to me:

down there I saw a terrible confusion of serpents, all of such a monstrous kind the thought of them still makes my blood run cold.

Let all the sands of Libya boast no longer, for though she breeds chelydri and jaculi, phareans, cenchres, and head-tailed amphisbenes,

she never bred so great a plague of venom, not even if combined with Ethiopia or all the sands that lie by the Red Sea.

Within this cruel and bitterest abundance people ran terrified and naked, hopeless of finding hiding-holes or heliotrope.

Their hands were tied behind their backs with serpents, which pushed their tails and heads around the loins and coiled themselves in knots around the front.

And then—at a sinner running by our bank a snake shot out and, striking, hit his mark: right where the neck attaches to the shoulder.

No o or
i
was ever quicker put by pen to paper than he flared up and burned, and turned into a heap of crumbled ash;

and then, these ashes scattered on the ground began to come together on their own and quickly take the form they had before:

precisely so, philosophers declare, the phoenix dies to be reborn again as she approaches her five-hundredth year;

alive, she does not feed on herbs or grain, but on teardrops of frankincense and balm, and wraps herself to die in nard and myrrh.

As a man in a fit will fall, not knowing why (perhaps some hidden demon pulls him down, or some oppilation chokes his vital spirits),

then, struggling to his feet, will look around, confused and overwhelmed by the great anguish he has suffered, moaning as he stares about—

so did this sinner when he finally rose. Oh, how harsh the power of the Lord can be, raining in its vengeance blows like these!

My guide asked him to tell us who he was, and he replied: “It’s not too long ago I rained from Tuscany to this fierce gullet.

I loved the bestial life more than the human, like the bastard that I was; I’m Vanni Fucci, the beast! Pistoia was my fitting den. ”

I told my guide: “Tell him not to run away; ask him what sin has driven him down here, for I knew him as a man of bloody rage. ”

The sinner heard and did not try to feign; directing straight at me his mind and face, he reddened with a look of ugly shame,

and said: “That you have caught me by surprise here in this wretched
bolgia,
makes me grieve more than the day I lost my other life.

Now I am forced to answer what you ask: I am stuck so far down here because of theft: I stole the treasure of the sacristy—

a crime falsely attributed to another. I don’t want you to rejoice at having seen me, if ever you escape from these dark pits,

so open your ears and hear my prophecy: Pistoia first shall be stripped of all its Blacks, and Florence then shall change its men and laws;

from Valdimagra Mars shall thrust a bolt of lightning wrapped in thick, foreboding clouds, then bolt and clouds will battle bitterly

in a violent storm above Piceno’s fields, where rapidly the bolt will burst the cloud, and no White will escape without his wounds.

And I have told you this so you will suffer!”