The Portable Dante (32 page)

Tydeus in his fury did not gnaw the head of Menalippus with more relish than this one chewed that head of meat and bones.

“O you who show with every bestial bite your hatred for the head you are devouring, ” I said, “tell me your reason, and I promise,

if you are justified in your revenge, once I know who you are and this one’s sin, I’ll repay your confidence in the world above

unless my tongue dry up before I die. ”

Lifting his mouth from his horrendous meal, this sinner first wiped off his messy lips in the hair remaining on the chewed-up skull,

then spoke: “You want me to renew a grief so desperate that just the thought of it, much less the telling, grips my heart with pain;

but if my words can be the seed to bear the fruit of infamy for this betrayer, who feeds my hunger, then I shall speak—in tears.

I do not know your name, nor do I know how you have come down here, but Florentine you surely seem to be, to hear you speak.

First you should know I was Count Ugolino and my neighbor here, Ruggieri the Archbishop; now I’ll tell you why I’m so unneighborly.

That I, trusting in him, was put in prison through his evil machinations, where I died, this much I surely do not have to tell you.

What you could not have known, however, is the inhuman circumstances of my death. Now listen, then decide if he has wronged me!

Through a narrow slit of window high in that mew (which is called the tower of hunger, after me, and I’ll not be the last to know that place)

I had watched moon after moon after moon go by, when finally I dreamed the evil dream which ripped away the veil that hid my future.

I dreamed of this one here as lord and huntsman, pursuing the wolf and the wolf cubs up the mountain(which blocks the sight of Lucca from the Pisans)

with skinny bitches, well trained and obedient; he had out front as leaders of the pack Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfranchi.

A short run, and the father with his sons seemed to grow tired, and then I thought I saw long fangs sunk deep into their sides, ripped open.

When I awoke before the light of dawn, I heard my children sobbing in their sleep (you see they, too, were there), asking for bread.

If the thought of what my heart was telling me does not fill you with grief, how cruel you are! If you are not weeping now—do you ever weep?

And then they awoke. It was around the time they usually brought our food to us. But now each one of us was full of dread from dreaming;

then from below I heard them driving nails into the dreadful tower’s door; with that, I stared in silence at my flesh and blood.

I did not weep, I turned to stone inside; they wept, and my little Anselmuccio spoke: ’What is it, father? Why do you look that way?’

For them I held my tears back, saying nothing, all of that day, and then all of that night, until another sun shone on the world.

A meager ray of sunlight found its way to the misery of our cell, and I could see myself reflected four times in their faces;

I bit my hands in anguish. And my children, who thought that hunger made me bite my hands, were quick to draw up closer to me, saying:

’O father, you would make us suffer less, if you would feed on us: you were the one who gave us this sad flesh; you take it from us!’

I calmed myself to make them less unhappy. That day we sat in silence, and the next day. O pitiless earth! You should have swallowed us!

The fourth day came, and it was on that day my Gaddo fell prostrate before my feet, crying: ‘Why don’t you help me? Why, my father?’

There he died. Just as you see me here, I saw the other three fall one by one, as the fifth day and the sixth day passed. And I,

by then gone blind, groped over their dead bodies. Though they were dead, two days I called their names. Then hunger proved more powerful than grief. ”

He spoke these words; then, glaring down in rage, attacked again the wretched skull with his teeth sharp as a dog’s, and as fit for grinding bones.

O Pisa, blot of shame upon the people of that fair land where the sound of “sì” is heard! Since your neighbors hesitate to punish you,

let Capraia and Gorgona move and join, damming up the River Arno at its mouth, and let every Pisan perish in its flood!

For if Count Ugolino was accused of turning traitor, trading-in your castles, you had no right to make his children suffer.

Their newborn years (O newborn Thebes!) made them all innocents: Brigata, Uguiccione, and the other two soft names my canto sings.

We moved ahead to where the frozen water wraps in harsh wrinkles another sinful race, with faces not turned down but looking up.

Here, the weeping puts an end to weeping, and the grief that finds no outlet from the eyes turns inward to intensify the anguish:

for the tears they first wept knotted in a cluster and like a visor made for them in crystal, filled all the hollow part around their eyes.

Although the bitter coldness of the dark had driven all sensation from my face, as though it were not tender skin but callous,

I thought I felt the air begin to blow, and I: “What causes such a wind, my master? I thought no heat could reach into these depths. ”

And he to me: “Before long you will be where your own eyes can answer for themselves, when they will see what keeps this wind in motion. ”

And one of the wretches with the frozen crust screamed out at us: “O wicked souls, so wicked that you have been assigned the ultimate post,

break off these hard veils covering my eyes and give relief from the pain that swells my heart— at least until the new tears freeze again. ”

I answered him: “If this is what you want, tell me your name; and if I do not help you, may I be forced to drop beneath this ice!”

He answered then: “I am Friar Alberigo, I am he who offered fruit from the evil orchard: here dates are served me for the figs I gave. ”

“Oh, then!” I said. “Are you already dead?” And he to me: “Just how my body is in the world above, I have no way of knowing.

This zone of Tolomea is very special, for it often happens that a soul falls here before the time that Atropos should send it.

And that you may more willingly scrape off my cluster of glass tears, let me tell you: whenever a soul betrays the way I did,

a demon takes possession of the body, controlling its maneuvers from then on, for all the years it has to live up there,

while the soul falls straight into this cistern here; and the shade in winter quarters just behind me may well have left his body up on earth.

But you should know, if you’ve just come from there: he is Ser Branca D’Oria; and many years have passed since he first joined us here, icebound. ”

“I think you’re telling me a lie, ” I said, “for Branca D’Oria is not dead at all; he eats and drinks, he sleeps and wears out clothes. ”

“The ditch the Malebranche watch above, ” he said, “the ditch of clinging, boiling pitch, had not yet caught the soul of Michel Zanche,

when Branca left a devil in his body to take his place, and so did his close kinsman, his accomplice in this act of treachery.

But now, at last, give me the hand you promised. Open my eyes. ” I did not open them. To be mean to him was a generous reward.

O all you Genovese, you men estranged from every good, at home with every vice, why can’t the world be wiped clean of your race?

For in company with Romagna’s rankest soul I found one of your men, whose deeds were such that his soul bathes already in Cocytus

but his body seems alive and walks among you.