The Portable Dante (28 page)

for all his enemies were Christian souls (none among the ones who conquered Acri, none a trader in the Sultan’s kingdom).

His lofty papal seat, his sacred vows were no concern to him, nor was the cord I wore (that once made those it girded leaner).

As Constantine once had Silvestro brought from Mount Soracte to cure his leprosy, so this one sought me out as his physician

to cure his burning fever caused by pride. He asked me to advise him. I was silent, for his words were drunken. Then he spoke again:

’Fear not, I tell you: the sin you will commit, it is forgiven. Now you will teach me how I can level Palestrina to the ground.

Mine is the power, as you cannot deny, to lock and unlock Heaven. Two keys I have, those keys my predecessor did not cherish. ’

And when his weighty arguments had forced me to the point that silence seemed the poorer choice, I said: ‘Father, since you grant me absolution

for the sin I find I must fall into now: ample promise with a scant fulfillment will bring you triumph on your lofty throne. ’

Saint Francis came to get me when I died, but one of the black Cherubim cried out: ’Don’t touch him, don’t cheat me of what is mine!

He must come down to join my other servants for the false counsel he gave. From then to now I have been ready at his hair, because

one cannot be absolved unless repentant, nor can one both repent and will a thing at once—the one is canceled by the other!’

O wretched me! How I shook when he took me, saying: ‘Perhaps you never stopped to think that I might be somewhat of a logician!’

He took me down to Minòs, who eight times twisted his tail around his hardened back, then in his rage he bit it, and announced:

’He goes with those the thievish fire burns. ’ And here you see me now, lost, wrapped this way, moving, as I do, with my resentment. ”

When he had brought his story to a close, the flame, in grievous pain, departed from us gnarling and flickering its pointed horn.

My guide and I moved farther on; we climbed the ridge until we stood on the next arch that spans the fosse where penalties are paid

by those who, sowing discord, earned Hell’s wages.

Who could, even in the simplest kind of prose describe in full the scene of blood and wounds that I saw now—no matter how he tried!

Certainly any tongue would have to fail: man’s memory and man’s vocabulary are not enough to comprehend such pain.

If one could bring together all the wounded who once upon the fateful soil of Puglia grieved for their life’s blood spilled by the Romans,

and spilled again in the long years of the war that ended in great spoils of golden rings (as Livy’s history tells, that does not err),

and pile them with the ones who felt the blows when they stood up against great Robert Guiscard, and with those others whose bones are still in heaps

at Ceprano (there where every Puglian turned traitor), and add those from Tagliacozzo, where old Alardo conquered, weaponless—

if all these maimed with limbs lopped off or pierced were brought together, the scene would be nothing to compare with the foul ninth
bolgia’s
bloody sight.

No wine cask with its stave or cant-bar sprung was ever split the way I saw someone ripped open from his chin to where we fart.

Between his legs his guts spilled out, with the heart and other vital parts, and the dirty sack that turns to shit whatever the mouth gulps down.

While I stood staring into his misery, he looked at me and with both hands he opened his chest and said: “See how I tear myself!

See how Mahomet is deformed and torn! In front of me, and weeping, Ali walks, his face cleft from his chin up to the crown.

The souls that you see passing in this ditch were all sowers of scandal and schism in life, and so in death you see them torn asunder.

A devil stands back there who trims us all in this cruel way, and each one of this mob receives anew the blade of the devil’s sword

each time we make one round of this sad road, because the wounds have all healed up again by the time each one presents himself once more.

But who are you there, gawking from the bridge and trying to put off, perhaps, fulfillment of the sentence passed on you when you confessed?”

“Death does not have him yet, he is not here to suffer for his guilt, ” my master answered; “but that he may have full experience,

I, who am dead, must lead him through this Hell from round to round, down to the very bottom, and this is as true as my presence speaking here. ”

More than a hundred in that ditch stopped short to look at me when they had heard his words, forgetting in their stupor what they suffered.

“And you, who will behold the sun, perhaps quite soon, tell Fra Dolcino that unless he wants to follow me here quick, he’d better

stock up on food, or else the binding snows will give the Novarese their victory, a conquest not won easily otherwise. ”

With the heel of one foot raised to take a step, Mahomet said these words to me, and then stretched out and down his foot and moved away.

Another, with his throat slit, and his nose cut off as far as where the eyebrows start (and he only had a single ear to show),

who had stopped like all the rest to stare in wonder, stepped out from the group and opened up his throat, which ran with red from all sides of his wound,

and spoke: “O you whom guilt does not condemn, whom I have seen in Italy up there, unless I am deceived by similarity,

recall to mind Pier da Medicina, should you return to see the gentle plain declining from Vercelli to Marcabò,

and inform the two best citizens of Fano— tell Messer Guido and tell Angiolello— that, if our foresight here is no deception,

from their ship they shall be hurled bound in a sack to drown in the water near Cattolica, the victims of a tyrant’s treachery;

between the isles of Cyprus and Mallorca so great a crime Neptune never witnessed among the deeds of pirates or the Argives.

That traitor, who sees only with one eye and rules the land that someone with me here wishes he’d never fed his eyes upon,

will have them come to join him in a parley, then see to it they do not waste their breath on vows or prayers to escape Focara’s wind. ”

And I to him: “If you want me to bring back to those on earth your message—who is the one sated with the bitter sight? Show him to me. ”

At once he grabbed the jaws of a companion standing near by, and squeezed his mouth half open, announcing, “Here he is, and he is mute.

This man, in exile, drowned all Caesar’s doubts and helped him cast the die, when he insisted: ’A man prepared, who hesitates, is lost. ’ “

How helpless and bewildered he appeared, his tongue hacked off as far down as the throat, this Curio, once so bold and quick to speak!

And one who had both arms but had no hands, raising the gory stumps in the filthy air so that the blood dripped down and smeared his face,

cried: “You, no doubt, also remember Mosca, who said, alas, ‘What’s done is over with, ’ and sowed the seed of discord for the Tuscans. ”

“And of death for all your clan, ” I quickly said, and he, this fresh wound added to his wound, turned and went off like one gone mad from pain.

But I remained to watch the multitude, and saw a thing that I would be afraid to tell about without more evidence,

were I not reassured by my own conscience— that good companion enheartening a man beneath the breastplate of its purity.

I saw it, I’m sure, and I seem to see it still: a body with no head that moved along, moving no differently from all the rest;