The Portable Dante (31 page)

No earthquake of the most outrageous force ever shook a tower with such violence as, suddenly, Ephialtes shook himself.

I never feared to die as much as then, and my fear might have been enough to kill me, if I had not already seen those chains.

We left him and continued moving on and came to where Antaeus stood, extending from the well a good five ells up to his head.

“O you who in the celebrated valley (that saw Scipio become the heir of glory, when Hannibal with all his men retreated)

once captured a thousand lions as your quarry (and with whose aid, had you chosen to take part in the great war with your brothers, the sons of earth

would, as many still think, have been the victors), do not disdain this modest wish: take us, and put us down where ice locks in Cocytus.

Don’t make us go to Tityus or Typhon; this man can give you what all long for here, and so bend down, and do not scowl at us.

He still can spread your legend in the world, for he yet lives, and long life lies before him, unless Grace summons him before his time. ”

Thus spoke my master, and the giant in haste stretched out the hands whose formidable grip great Hercules once felt, and took my guide.

And Virgil, when he felt the grasping hands, called out: “Now come and I’ll take hold of you. ” Clasped together, we made a single burden.

As the Garisenda looks from underneath its leaning side, at the moment when a cloud comes drifting over against the tower’s slant,

just so the bending giant Antaeus seemed as I looked up, expecting him to topple. I wished then I had gone another way.

But he, most carefully, handed us down to the pit that swallows Lucifer with Judas. And then, the leaning giant immediately

drew himself up as tall as a ship’s mast.

If I had words grating and crude enough that really could describe this horrid hole supporting the converging weight of Hell,

I could squeeze out the juice of my memories to the last drop. But I don’t have these words, and so I am reluctant to begin.

To talk about the bottom of the universe the way it truly is, is no child’s play, no task for tongues that gurgle baby-talk.

But may those heavenly ladies aid my verse who aided Amphion to wall-in Thebes, that my words may tell exactly what I saw.

O misbegotten rabble of all rabble, who crowd this realm, hard even to describe, it were better you had lived as sheep or goats!

When we reached a point of darkness in the well below the giant’s feet, farther down the slope, and I was gazing still at the high wall,

I heard somebody say: “Watch where you step! Be careful that you do not kick the heads of this brotherhood of miserable souls. ”

At that I turned around and saw before me a lake of ice stretching beneath my feet, more like a sheet of glass than frozen water.

In the depths of Austria’s wintertime, the Danube never in all its course showed ice so thick, nor did the Don beneath its frigid sky,

as this crust here; for if Mount Tambernic or Pietrapana would crash down upon it, not even at its edges would a crack creak.

The way the frogs (in the season when the harvest will often haunt the dreams of the peasant girl) sit croaking with their muzzles out of water,

so these frigid, livid shades were stuck in ice up to where a person’s shame appears; their teeth clicked notes like storks’ beaks snapping shut.

And each one kept his face bowed toward the ice: the mouth bore testimony to the cold, the eyes, to sadness welling in the heart.

I gazed around awhile and then looked down, and by my feet I saw two figures clasped so tight that one’s hair could have been the other’s.

“Tell me, you two, pressing your chests together, ” I asked them, “who are you?” Both stretched their necks and when they had their faces raised toward me,

their eyes, which had before been only glazed, dripped tears down to their lips, and the cold froze the tears between them, locking the pair more tightly.

Wood to wood with iron was never clamped so firm! And the two of them like billy-goats were butting at each other, mad with anger.

Another one with both ears frozen off, and head still bowed over his icy mirror, cried out: “What makes you look at us so hard?

If you’re interested to know who these two are: the valley where Bisenzio’s waters flow belonged to them and to their father, Albert;

the same womb bore them both, and if you scour all of Caïna, you will not turn up one who’s more deserving of this frozen aspic—

not him who had his breast and shadow pierced with one thrust of the lance from Arthur’s hand; not Focaccia; not even this one here,

whose head gets in my way and blocks my view, known in the world as Sassol Mascheroni, and if you’re Tuscan you must know who he was.

To save me from your asking for more news: I was Camicion de’ Pazzi, and I await Carlin, whose guilt will make my own seem less. ”

Farther on I saw a thousand doglike faces, purple from the cold. That’s why I shudder, and always will, when I see a frozen pond.

While we were getting closer to the center of the universe, where all weights must converge, and I was shivering in the eternal chill—

by fate or chance or willfully perhaps, I do not know—but stepping among the heads, my foot kicked hard against one of those faces.

Weeping, he screamed: “Why are you kicking me? You have not come to take revenge on me for Montaperti, have you? Why bother me?”

And I: “My master, please wait here for me, let me clear up a doubt concerning this one, then I shall be as rapid as you wish. ”

My leader stopped, and to that wretch, who still had not let up in his barrage of curses, I said: “Who are you, insulting other people?”

“And you, who are
you
who march through Antenora kicking other people in their faces? No living man could kick as hard!” he answered.

“I am a living man, ” was my reply, “and it might serve you well, if you seek fame, for me to put your name down in my notes. ”

And he said: “That’s the last thing I would want! That’s not the way to flatter in these lowlands! Stop pestering me like this—get out of here!”

At that I grabbed him by his hair in back and said: “You’d better tell me who you are or else I’ll not leave one hair on your head. ”

And he to me: “Go on and strip me bald and pound and stamp my head a thousand times, you’ll never hear my name or see my face. ”

I had my fingers twisted in his hair and already I’d pulled out more than one fistful, while he yelped like a cur with eyes shut tight,

when someone else yelled: “What’s the matter, Bocca? It’s bad enough to hear your shivering teeth; now you bark! What the devil’s wrong with you?”

“There’s no need now for you to speak, ” I said, “you vicious traitor! Now I know your name and I’ll bring back the shameful truth about you. ”

“Go away!” he answered. “Tell them what you want; but if you do get out of here, be sure you also tell about that blabbermouth,

who’s paying here what the French silver cost him: ’I saw, ’ you can tell the world, ‘the one from Duera stuck in with all the sinners keeping cool. ’

And if you should be asked: ‘Who else was there?’ Right by your side is the one from Beccheria whose head was chopped off by the Florentines.

As for Gianni Soldanier, I think you’ll find him farther along with Ganelon and Tibbald, who opened up Faenza while it slept. ”

Soon after leaving him I saw two souls frozen together in a single hole, so that one head used the other for a cap.

As a man with hungry teeth tears into bread, the soul with capping head had sunk his teeth into the other’s neck, just beneath the skull.