The Portable Dante (30 page)

“Oh, ” I answered, “so may that other shade never sink its teeth in you—if you don’t mind, please tell me who it is before it’s gone. ”

And he to me: “That is the ancient shade of Myrrha, the depraved one, who became, against love’s laws, too much her father’s friend.

She went to him, and there she sinned in love, pretending that her body was another’s— just as the other there fleeing in the distance,

contrived to make his own the ‘queen of studs, ’ pretending that he was Buoso Donati, making his will and giving it due form. ”

Now that the rabid pair had come and gone (from whom I never took my eyes away), I turned to watch the other evil shades.

And there I saw a soul shaped like a lute, if only he’d been cut off from his legs below the belly, where they divide in two.

The bloating dropsy, disproportioning the body’s parts with unconverted humors, so that the face, matched with the paunch, was puny,

forced him to keep his parched lips wide apart, as a man who suffers thirst from raging fever has one lip curling up, the other sagging.

“O you who bear no punishment at all (I can’t think why) within this world of sorrow, ” he said to us, “pause here and look upon

the misery of one Master Adamo: in life I had all that I could desire, and now, alas, I crave a drop of water.

The little streams that flow from the green hills of Casentino, descending to the Arno, keeping their banks so cool and soft with moisture,

forever flow before me, haunting me; and the image of them leaves me far more parched than the sickness that has dried my shriveled face.

Relentless Justice, tantalizing me, exploits the countryside that knew my sin, to draw from me ever new sighs of pain:

I still can see Romena, where I learned to falsify the coin stamped with the Baptist, for which I paid with my burned body there;

but if I could see down here the wretched souls of Guido or Alexander or their brother, I would not exchange the sight for Branda’s fountain.

One is here already, if those maniacs running around this place have told the truth, but what good is it, with my useless legs?

If only I were lighter, just enough to move one inch in every hundred years, I would have started on my way by now

to find him somewhere in this gruesome lot, although this ditch winds round eleven miles and is at least a half a mile across.

It’s their fault I am here with this choice family:
they
encouraged me to turn out florins whose gold contained three carats’ worth of alloy. ”

And I to him: “Who are those two poor souls lying to the right, close to your body’s boundary, steaming like wet hands in wintertime?”

“When I poured into this ditch, I found them here, ” he answered, “and they haven’t budged since then, and I doubt they’ll move through all eternity.

One is the false accuser of young Joseph; the other is false Sinon, the Greek in Troy: it’s their burning fever makes them smell so bad. ”

And one of them, perhaps somewhat offended at the kind of introduction he received, with his fist struck out at the distended belly,

which responded like a drum reverberating; and Master Adam struck him in the face with an arm as strong as the fist he had received,

and he said to him: “Although I am not free to move around, with swollen legs like these, I have a ready arm for such occasions. ”

“But
it was
not
as free and ready, was it, ” the other answered, “when you went to the stake? Of course, when you were coining, it was readier!”

And he with the dropsy:
“Now
you tell the truth, but you were not as full of truth that time when you were asked to tell the truth at Troy!”

“My words were false—so were the coins you made, ” said Sinon, “and
I
am here for one false act but
you
for more than any fiend in hell!”

“The horse, recall the horse, you falsifier, ” the bloated paunch was quick to answer back, “may it burn your guts that all the world remembers!”

“May your guts burn with thirst that cracks your tongue, ” the Greek said, “may they burn with rotting humors that swell your hedge of a paunch to block your eyes!”

And then the money-man: “So there you go, your evil mouth pours out its filth as usual; for if
I
thirst, and humors swell me up,

you
burn more, and your head is fit to split, and it wouldn’t take much coaxing to convince you to lap the mirror of Narcissus dry!”

I was listening, all absorbed in this debate, when the master said to me: “Keep right on looking, a little more, and I shall lose my patience. ”

I heard the note of anger in his voice and turned to him; I was so full of shame that it still haunts my memory today.

Like one asleep who dreams himself in trouble and in his dream he wishes he were dreaming, longing for that which is, as if it were not,

just so I found myself: unable to speak, longing to beg for pardon and already begging for pardon, not knowing that I did.

“Less shame than yours would wash away a fault greater than yours has been, ” my master said, “and so forget about it, do not be sad.

If ever again you should meet up with men engaging in this kind of futile wrangling, remember I am always at your side;

to have a taste for talk like this is vulgar!”

The very tongue that first spoke—stinging me, making the blood rush up to both my cheeks— then gave the remedy to ease the pain,

just as, so I have heard, Achilles’ lance, belonging to his father, was the source of pain, and then of balm, to him it struck.

Turning our backs on that trench of misery gaining the bank again that walls it in, we cut across, walking in dead silence.

Here it was less than night and less than day, so that my eyes could not see far ahead; but then I heard the blast of some high horn

which would have made a thunder-clap sound dim; it drew my eyes directly to one place, as they retraced the sound’s path to its source.

After the tragic rout when Charlemagne lost all his faithful, holy paladins, the sound of Roland’s horn was not as ominous.

Keeping my eyes still turned that way, I soon made out what seemed to be high, clustered towers. “Master, ” I said, “what city lies ahead?”

“Because you try to penetrate the shadows, ” he said to me, “from much too far away, you confuse the truth with your imagination.

You will see clearly when you reach that place how much the eyes may be deceived by distance, and so, just push ahead a little more. ”

Then lovingly he took me by the hand and said: “But now, before we go on farther, to prepare you for the truth that could seem strange,

I’ll tell you these aren’t towers, they are giants; they’re standing in the well around the bank— all of them hidden from their navels down. ”

As, when the fog begins to thin and clear, the sight can slowly make out more and more what is hidden in the mist that clogs the air,

so, as I pierced the thick and murky air, approaching slowly, closer to the well, confusion cleared and my fear took on more shape.

For just as Montereggion is crowned with towers soaring high above its curving ramparts, so, on the bank that runs around the well,

towering with only half their bodies out, stood the terrible giants, forever threatened by Jupiter in the heavens when he thunders.

And now I could make out one of the faces, the shoulders, the chest and a good part of the belly and, down along the sides, the two great arms.

Nature, when she cast away the mold for shaping beasts like these, without a doubt did well, depriving Mars of more such agents.

And if she never did repent of whales and elephants, we must consider her, on sober thought, all the more just and wary:

for when the faculty of intellect is joined with brute force and with evil will, no man can win against such an alliance.

His face, it seemed to me, was about as long and just as wide as St. Peter’s cone in Rome, and all his body’s bones were in proportion,

so that the bank which served to cover him from his waist down showed so much height above that three tall Frisians on each other’s shoulders

could never boast of stretching to his hair, for downward from the place men clasp their cloaks I saw a generous thirty hand-spans of him.

“Raphel may amech zabi almi!” He played these sputtering notes with prideful lips for which no sweeter psalm was suitable.

My guide called up to him: “Blathering idiot, stick to your horn and take it out on that when you feel a fit of anger coming on;

search round your neck and you will find the strap it’s tied to, you poor muddle-headed soul, and there’s the horn so pretty on your chest. ”

And then he turned to me: “His words accuse him. He is Nimrod, through whose infamous device the world no longer speaks a common language.

But let’s leave him alone and not waste breath, for he can no more understand our words than anyone can understand his language. ”

We had to walk still farther than before, continuing to the left, a full bow’s-shot, to find another giant, huger and more fierce.

What engineer it took to bind this brute I cannot say, but there he was, one arm pinned to his back, the other locked in front,

with a giant chain winding around him tight, which, starting from his neck, made five great coils— and that was counting only to his waist.

“This beast of pride decided he would try to pit his strength against almighty Jove, ” my leader said, “and he has won this prize.

He’s Ephialtes, who made his great attempt when the giants arose to fill the Gods with panic; the arms he lifted then, he moves no more. ”

And I to him: “If it were possible, I would really like to have the chance to see the fantastic figure of Briareus. ”

His answer was: “Not far from here you’ll see Antaeus, who can speak and is not chained; he will set us down in the very pit of sin.

The one you want to see is farther off; he too is bound and looks just like this one, except for his expression, which is fiercer. ”