“Maybe,” Adam said. “We’ve seen fewer dead this far up the valley, so perhaps if the army relents or doesn’t come this far, then you’ll survive.”
“I hope so, sir. Please pray for us, and we’ll do the same for you.”
“Of course we will,” Adam said.
Hearing one of the people in the valley mention prayer and hope shocked Dante much more than many of the horrors he’d seen in the last couple days. There again was that terrible quality of familiarity. In just two days he’d grown so used to brutality and blasphemy of every kind that the invocation of God or faith or goodness sounded to his poisoned ears like something grating, harsh, inappropriate, and embarrassing. He had expected the man to curse them or make threats, and this gentler, more civilized exchange did not comfort or encourage Dante, but only confused and disoriented him, almost as if the man had begun speaking in a language unknown to him – or worse, forgotten by him.
Having heard an unexpected expression of piety, Dante then noticed a wooden icon among the items in the cart. It was a painting, mostly in brown and gold, of an elderly, bearded man, holding up his right hand, his thumb bending his ring finger down, with the other three fingers extended. The painting was situated in an odd way, right at the front of the cargo, facing forward, so that it almost appeared like a third passenger on the driver’s bench between the man and his wife. Its placement and seeming ostentation only perplexed Dante more, though at least it helped make some sense of the man’s earlier expression of religious sentiment.
As Dante contemplated the icon and the odd exchange, the man’s wife shot out her left arm to give her husband a solid blow on the side of his head. From the way he didn’t flinch or move, it seemed it was as uninteresting and ordinary to him as it was to Dante. Things had returned to normal in this environment, which was further confirmed when the woman swung her right hand around to slap her husband in the face.
“Why do you talk so?” she growled after the attack. “Why do you continue to utter such useless horseshit?” As if on cue, one of the mules picked that exact moment to drop three round balls of dung into the dust in front of them. The woman laughed, though it wasn’t a happy or healthy sound, but seemed even more forced and out of place than her husband’s religiosity. “See, even a dumb brute knows what you’re saying is shit! What makes you think I’ll pray for these people? And don’t say that you and the children will pray for them: I couldn’t care less what you do, and I’ll be damned if I let my children waste their time on your foolishness! What makes you think these people would even care? We haven’t seen anyone as senseless as you in days, and perhaps these ones aren’t as foolish as you, either!” She leaned forward so she could look at Dante and the others. “Are you as crazed and foolish as this wreck of a man? Then tell you what. He’ll pray for you, but I don’t want something as useless as that.” She leaned back and swatted her husband once more; the blow was backhanded and casual this time. “Ask for something useful next time, why don’t you?”
“What do you want?” Radovan asked. Dante thought the younger man looked a little more shocked at the woman’s words and actions than Dante felt, and he took some comfort in this. “We have a bit of food and water and can share those.”
She waved them off. “Why prolong the agony? Unless you have a way out of this mess, I don’t really want anything of yours.”
“Please, dear,” the man said. “I meant no harm. I thought perhaps these people still had hope, and I wanted to share it with them. Let them know there were still others who cared and prayed for them.”
“Oh, I know you care,” the woman said. “And I couldn’t care less if you do. It’s just how that really bothers me. But really, why argue with these people? I got myself into this. I had to marry this dolt and get myself dragged to this wretched valley. But you were too much of a coward to go further up the valley, where the real riches were. So you stayed here and chopped down tiny, twisted trees, like the stunted gnome of a man you are. You dragged them into town and sold them. Probably for less than they were worth, I’ll wager. And now you want to hide in the trees while we all wait around to die. Lovely.”
“Please, dear.” Dante heard the man’s voice quiver. “Don’t talk like that. Saint Andrew helped you find me. You said so yourself, once.” He gestured to the icon between them. “And he blessed our union. We have three children. Many other people can’t have them, or their children die, and they’re very sad. I know things are hard, but don’t talk like that.”
“Oh, don’t even remind me of this silly icon!” She spat on the painted wood before smacking her husband. “My family had money, you fool. Not a lot, but some. Otherwise you wouldn’t even have this decoration to heap all your silly hopes on – a stupid, little idol, as dumb and useless as you are.” Two more blows fell on her husband, one from each of her hands. “And as dead as we’re all going to be soon.” Another blow, this one a closed-fist punch that turned his head around and sent blood flying out the side of his mouth. “And what did you have? Hopes. Big dreams. Love. And worst of all, piety.” Dante shivered at how she said the word. It sounded like it caused her real, physical pain to make the sound.
Apparently the woman had gotten herself quite worked up, for she leaped down to the ground and kicked at the dust, sending a cloud billowing up around her till Dante could barely see her. He could only make out an occasional foot or hand, flailing out of the swirling storm of hate and rage. “All that belief and love for the Lord of all! The mighty King of creation! King of this… this… shit is more like it!” She must have snatched up the animal dung in her frenzy, for a crumbly, moist glob hit her husband in the face. “I believe in one shit, the shit almighty, maker of shit and more shit!” Saint Andrew’s serene, unchanging visage was the next to be defiled with a projectile. “I believe in the shit, the only begotten shit of the shit, true shit from true shit!” She’d started to cackle at her blasphemy at this point, when the third handful hit Dante, though he’d raised his arm in time to be spared the full, facial assault of the woman’s fury. “And I believe in the shit, the giver of shit, who proceeds from the other shit!”
The attack and the cursing stopped. Dante brushed himself off, and looked over to see the woman’s husband wiping his own face. The man cleaned up Saint Andrew, though the only way he had to do so was with his sleeve and some spit. Dante thought the man was muttering the whole time he cleaned the icon. Probably praying for forgiveness, because even his cleansing was dirty and profane, Dante thought.
The figure of the woman slowly emerged as more of the dust drifted off. She stood there, staring at all of them, fists clenched at her sides, panting. Her husband hung his head, seemingly waiting for her, though he said nothing. She raised her fists, very slowly and deliberately and with a terrible, lonely kind of grace. For a moment, the area around her seemed to brighten, almost imperceptibly, and Dante decided the woman had most definitely been very pretty at one time, perhaps not so long ago. She tilted her head and Dante thought she looked above her husband, past him, past Dante, past all of them, and into the silent, unmoved clouds above them. From where she faced, Dante supposed she might be looking at that brighter patch of cloud hiding the sun.
“I would do anything to shut you up!” she howled. “But you won’t! I’d kill you, but I can’t! You never leave me alone! You never shut up! But you’ll never change me. Never! I’ll always be what I am, and I’ll always hate you, deny you, curse you, spit on you! I’ll never come crawling, begging and cringing like a beaten dog! I’ll hit you and hurt you every chance I get! I’ll die, but everyone dies! It proves nothing! And that will be my revenge. That will be my triumph. To hurt and hate and ignore you and all your shit! Forever!”
Her pitch rose on the last two words, and she elongated the final syllable, making it into a shriek of rage and agony that tore through the valley with all the hideous strength of a doomed, proud race. Dante wondered if Joshua’s trumpet had sounded any different to the people huddled in Jericho
as they prayed to their little, stone idols. He wondered if the screams of those crushed under the Tower of Babel had any less outrage and anguish in them. And with an empty feeling in his chest, Dante wondered why such a cry did not bring the mountains’ stones crashing down on them, if such pillars were held up only by love and justice, and not by the kind of brute, soulless force that could noiselessly withstand the assault of so much power, passion, and pain.
All six of them stayed there, motionless, for some time. And the children, Dante presumed, were huddled somewhere in the cart, perhaps used to scenes like this, or perhaps learning a new and awful lesson about how the human heart worked. Then the woman slowly lowered her head and fists, and climbed up on to the cart next to her husband. The reins slapped the mules’ backs once, and the cart creaked into motion, sliding off to the south with its cargo of human misery. Dante watched them for a moment longer, until the dust engulfed them forever.
Chapter 28
A greater fear I do not think there was
What time abandoned Phaeton the reins,
Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched.
Dante, Inferno, 17.106-108
They rode on in silence after their encounter with the unhappy family, until the land rose up before them in a high, rocky bluff. It extended across the valley, north to south, so if they were to proceed further west, they would have to climb it. It looked far too steep for the horses.
“Is there a trail somewhere?” Dante asked, as he unwrapped his face and brushed himself off.
Adam looked north and south, then at the peaks that loomed above the bluff, further to the west. “To the south there is.”
They proceeded to the south a short ways, staying close to the base of the cliff. They stopped when they saw the line of a trail snaking back and forth across the cliff face. The trail was a very steep switchback, and it was so narrow it was barely discernible from where they were. Although it was more navigable than the bare cliff face, it was clearly impassable for horses.
“This?” Dante asked.
Adam dismounted and the others followed. “Yes,” he said. “This is the trail to the next plateau. The one to the final plateau is even steeper, though it’s not as high.”
“I thought you said people live up there?” Dante asked as he got down. “How can this be the only way up?”
“There aren’t many this far up, and they live very simply, if wickedly,” Adam replied. “We must learn simplicity from them, and avoid their wickedness. Take only necessities – water skins and a little food. Eat what you can now. We only need to survive until tonight. We will decide our fate by then, as the people here have decided theirs.”
Dante slung two water skins over his shoulders and filled his pockets with food. He rolled the blanket up into a small bundle with a few other items, like flint and knives. Tearing a piece of bread off with his teeth, he handed the rest of the loaf to Bogdana.
“But you said there were mines up here,” Dante said. “How can they bring their goods down and sell them?”
“They mine for jewels, so they can carry their gains on their own backs,” Adam said. “It would be different if they mined iron or copper – useful, substantial things. But with such small expensive cargo, they don’t even need pack animals to help them in their existence, like normal men would. Just their own intellects and desires are enough to drive them on. And men who are totally impervious to beauty are perfect for plucking such tiny fragments of it from the darkness.”
Bogdana patted the neck of her black horse. “What will happen to the horses?” she asked.
Radovan and Adam were already starting up the trail. “The two from our monastery are trained to return to it. Without us to burden them, they should be there before we reach our goal,” Adam answered. “I suspect the other two will know to follow them. Animals are better about that.”
Bogdana followed the other two up the trail, and Dante fell in line behind her. He looked over his shoulder. The horses were already churning up a cloud of dust to the east, heading back the way they had come. He looked up the trail, at the height they had to scale, and felt fairly sure the animals had a better chance on their journey. The trail was little more than an irregular ledge, slightly wider than a person’s foot. One had to lean toward the cliff face to keep from falling over, or hold on to rocks. Sometimes there were gnarled trees and shrubs that grew there, many of them dead, and their roots and stems offered some handholds.
After toiling up the bluff for some time, they stopped for water. All of them were panting from the exertion. Dante looked down, and the height made him feel sick and dizzy. He’d never been especially afraid of heights, but balconies or frequently-used trails were one thing--those were made by civilized people to minimize a person’s fear. Hanging on to a dead tree root over a plain of ash several miles wide, with ominously described horrors above them and shambling hordes of the dead below them, that was something else entirely. That was a situation to kindle a mind like Dante’s to the most horrible flights of speculation – to thoughts of avalanches, earthquakes, and volcanoes, as well as swooping attacks from giant birds of prey, screeching ghouls tumbling down the slope, or even tree roots coming to life and wrapping around his wrist and neck, then tightening and leaving his strangled body forever on that desolate, cursed mount of slaughter. Dante closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The only sound he heard was the faint whispering of the wind. He looked to Bogdana, and the sparkle in her eyes when she glanced back at him was enough to banish his terrors for now.
They had only gone a short ways after their water break when they again stopped. “Look there,” Adam said as he pointed up. “What are they doing?”
Dante looked to where he indicated. Four birds were circling above them. The wheeling birds spiraled down toward them as they watched. They were not small birds, but they also weren’t big enough to be the kinds one would normally associate with this behavior, like eagles or vultures. If Dante’s fantasy of an aerial attack were coming true, it was not being launched by gigantic, mythological creatures. However, looking down to where his boots overhung the edge of the trail, then past them into the chasm below, Dante thought of how it wouldn’t take a harpy or a sphinx to knock him off this tiny ledge.
The four of them stayed still on the ledge and watched the birds as they descended. The animals made no sound as they came closer. Finally Dante could see that they were owls, as little sense as that made for a group of birds flying in the daytime. Dante thought how owls were the birds of Athena, but also how the Bible declared them unclean, and associated them with defeat, death, and desolation. But whether he took his symbols from Athens or Jerusalem, all such knowledge seemed pretentious and pointless to Dante right then, there on that silent, forlorn cliff. Warning, curse, blessing or prediction – none of those seemed certain, and all seemed possible.
The birds continued their descent, and Dante could see the creatures’ large, unblinking eyes looking at him. With their strange, unnatural bodies, they could even keep their eyes fixed on him throughout their spiraling flight. Their stare was neither chilling nor comforting; it wasn’t even penetrating, as though Dante were being searched or violated. He did feel as though the birds saw everything. It just didn’t bother him or reassure him, because it didn’t seem to matter to these beings what their all-encompassing gaze took in, and therefore it didn’t matter to Dante if they saw every detail of him and went on examining him forever. All-seeing eyes without judgment or approval behind them might as well be made of glass.
As the birds passed below them and tilted their heads to focus on some spot on the valley floor, Dante turned to the pair of eyes that most mattered to him in the world right now.
“Four of them, four of us,” Bogdana said.
“Yes, but we don’t know what that means, and you said just knowing that they mean something was enough for you,” Dante replied.
“Well, perhaps it is enough for me. But I don’t like it. Let’s get out
of here. Who knows what else is watching us?”
Dante felt sure, as he always did, that something was watching. But for the first time in his life, he was not sure what it was. Perhaps, as with Bogdana’s earlier evaluation of portents, it did not matter: they knew they were not alone, and perhaps that was enough.
Chapter 29
There is a place in Hell called Malebolge [Evil Ditches],
Wholly of stone and of an iron colour,
As is the circle that around it turns.
Dante, Inferno, 18.1-3
They were panting and sweating by the time they reached the top of the cliff, but after only a short rest, they started moving once more. The trail led back into a forest on the plateau. Most of the trees here looked less sickly than those they had seen before crossing the scar, but given how many trunks Dante saw fallen on the ground, he wondered if some strange disease made them topple over, dead, even while they appeared relatively robust. By now it had become commonplace to Dante that there were no sounds, no animals or birds, no movement other than their own steady footsteps. The air seemed cooler and less dry up here, but not necessarily healthier, and certainly not more vibrant. It could have been the dank, pestilence-filled vapors of a swamp. At least the trail here was wider, so Dante could walk next to Bogdana, with Adam and Radovan ahead of them. Although they kept looking all around, after a few minutes of walking, Dante felt a bit more relaxed.
“I’ve never been up high like that,” Bogdana said as they walked. “I didn’t think I’d be so frightened.”
Her weakness was as captivating to him as her strength and seeming invulnerability. “It’s hard if you’re not used to it,” Dante said. “I’ve been many places, but with the trail so narrow, and everything so strange and dangerous here, it was very frightening.”
“You were scared?” She must’ve been very frightened on the cliff, as he had never heard her voice like this, as though she actually expected or needed him to be strong.
Valley of the Dead (The Truth Behind Dante's Inferno) Page 16