Hell's Gate

by Laurent Gaudé

  They were six dusty bottles of a Neapolitan wine as thick as buffalo blood and black as the tears that flow down the cheeks of the porcelain Madonna of Castelfiorito on every 24 April.

  ‘How will I be able to go to work after drinking all that?’ asked Grace, pretending to be outraged. ‘Even those kinky Albanian sailors will be scared off!’ she added and everyone laughed heartily.

  ‘Tonight,’ replied the priest, ‘is not about working, it’s about learning.’ And he added with the glee of an old man who takes pleasure in being scandalous, ‘You can get up to your dirty stuff tomorrow. And don’t worry about the Albanian sailors, they’ll find other mouths to empty themselves into!’

  The little group was momentarily taken aback, astonished to hear a man of the church speak so crudely. But Grace, who was a bit drunk, giggled, and the others followed suit, laughing along at the salacious words of this priest who was old enough to be pope but talked like a lowlife from the northern districts of Naples.

  ‘If you will permit me, there is better yet,’ said the professor, delighted to have won over his audience, who were now ready to let him talk for hours. ‘Do you know the Fayum portraits?’

  Only Garibaldo nodded. So the professor tried to describe to the others the strange intensity of the faces from the first or second century ad. Noblemen, peasants, women and young shepherds, all gazing directly out of the portraits with round eyes, for all eternity.

  ‘There have been numerous theories about the meaning of these portraits,’ he said. ‘Some say they are mortuary portraits intended to be placed on catafalques. And that the faces have been looking at us since their deaths. That is both true and false. It is more complicated than that. In ad 55 the Nile flooded badly. A few days before, a young shepherd had predicted that the river would burst its banks and he had tried, in vain, to warn the villagers nearby. He was only believed by a group of young people his age, who left the area to seek shelter. The day of the catastrophe, everything was swept away in minutes. The river swallowed everything. An enormous wave of mud devoured the houses, the animals and the people. Everything was wiped out. When the survivors returned to their villages a few days later, the river had gone down to its normal level but there was nothing else left. Where houses had been, there was now nothing but mud. That very evening great funeral celebrations took place. And that was when something incredible happened: the dead came back, slowly walking out of the waters. They took their place amongst the living, sang with them, danced with them. All around there were tears and reunions. Later in the night when the moon had disappeared behind clouds, the dead copulated with the living. They stole a last embrace from fate that had separated them with such violence. Widows found their husbands. Young dead men embraced the young farm girls they had promised to marry when they were alive. Children were born of that improbable night. And they were strange beings – pale shadows who did not speak. And they are the ones who are represented in the Fayum portraits. They were painted so that the world would know what had happened on the banks of the Nile. So that the world would know that, here, men had vanquished death and the anger of the river.’

  No one around the little table moved. Grace and the priest sat like children drinking in the professor’s words. Matteo was in turmoil, overcome by emotion. His jaw was clenched and his eyes lowered. The professor’s story had plunged him back into his personal grief. It was all there again. He had a sad feeling of powerlessness and horrible resignation. As though he had just put on a big stinking overcoat and everything around him was once again unbearable and nauseating. His face darkened. He downed his glass of wine, but it did not help. The wine had a bitter taste, which made him regret finishing it. He was overwhelmed by visions of his son. He saw Pippo lying in the ambulance; Pippo running behind him trying not to be late; Pippo moaning because his father was hurting his wrist.

  ‘So nowadays how would you make the dead rise again?’ he asked quietly.

  The others looked embarrassed. They all knew what he was referring to. They were worried he would break down and wail like a madman or cry into his glass.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the professor replied calmly.

  Matteo smiled sardonically. So everything the professor had said before was just words.

  ‘You made it all up,’ said Matteo, staring at the floor. ‘The dead do not rise again, professore.’

  ‘No, indeed, they don’t,’ he replied, still very calm. ‘But you can descend.’

  Matteo looked at him, stupefied. He was going to ask ‘Descend where?’ But he did not. Because he knew that he had understood. The professor had meant descend down there. Into the Underworld. That was what the professor was saying. So why did he not burst out laughing or get annoyed at this unkind joke? Why was he still sitting there, turning the words over in his mind as if they were worth taking seriously? The three men with him were similarly still. None of them were the least surprised, or trying to suppress laughter. None of them seemed to consider it an idiotic proposition. Why? Had they all gone mad, hypnotised by the storyteller who was still looking seriously at them, awaiting their reply?

  Then, into the semi-darkness, Matteo spoke. He did not speak to express shock at what the professor had suggested, nor to make fun of him. He did not smile sadly and say goodbye to them all; he did not tell the professor to shut up; he did not simply shrug wearily. No, instead he heard himself ask: ‘How?’ As if it were perfectly possible – as if they could seriously think of such an undertaking, and the only impediment to the project would be finding the means to carry it out.

  He saw from the way the professor looked at him that he had been expecting that question. He had barely spoken when the professor got up to fetch an old leather satchel from the table. He opened it in front of the expectant group and brought out a pile of notes yellowed by time and entirely covered with frantic black handwriting. It all looked like some notebooks that had been torn apart by a mad person. Ten years of notes scribbled feverishly in dim libraries all over southern Italy. He meticulously unpacked a massive jumble of scribbled-on papers, torn pages and annotated cards and showed them to his companions with the manic look of someone unveiling his secrets.

  XIII

  The Forgotten Gate of Naples

  (November 1980)

  ‘I know exactly what you are thinking, I really do; I’ve often encountered that look in the eyes of those who listen to me … believe me,’ said the professor with a grin. ‘I know. I’m mad. Making things up. Everyone tells me that. But you are wrong … I’m not inventing what I’m about to tell you. Not at all. I have simply unearthed it. We no longer believe in anything. And in order not to depress ourselves we call that progress. The Ancients left us traces of what they found. Maps. Texts. Objects. Representations. Researchers and university professors study and translate them, they analyse and comment on them, but, deep down, none of them believe what the papers tell us.’

  Matteo and Garibaldo lowered their eyes. They wondered whether the professor was about to embark on a tale of woe. He must have felt that because he stopped dead, looked at his friends and when he began to speak again, it was to explain more clearly: ‘There are several entrances to the Underworld.’

  Now the men around the table were more attentive.

  ‘They have always been there,’ the old man went on. ‘Particularly here, in the south of Italy. In ancient times everyone knew about them and no one found it incongruous. Here. Look at this map. It dates from the Greek period. Lake Avernus, a few miles from Naples, was a designated gate. For centuries, birds who flew over it died of asphyxiation from the gas emanating from the water. The lake was an entrance, then it seems death decided to seal it up and to open another one elsewhere. The same goes for Solfatara. I have been there. There is still a strong odour of sulphur and yellow earth which stinks of rotten eggs and takes you by the throat. These are undeniable signs that this was once an entrance to the world down below. And there are others. I have them all listed. Càlena Abbey. The catacom
bs at Palermo, before the Sicilians stored an entire population of skeletons dressed in fine clothes there. The mysterious underground caverns in Malta. The Sassi di Matera. There are many. It took me two years to draw up my map of the gates to the Underworld. I have it here. Look.’

  The friends were staggered at this but leant forward to look at the sheet the old man was holding out. It was a map of southern Italy, dotted here and there with little marks around certain place names.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Matteo, pointing a finger at a little black circle on the map at the port of Naples.

  ‘That’s a gate,’ the professor replied seriously.

  ‘Here? In Naples?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘That’s the one we should try. No one knows it’s there. There is a chance that it is still open. The others, on the other hand, must have been sealed up long ago.’

  ‘But …’ Garibaldo looked up at the professor warily as if he now did fear the man was mad. He couldn’t finish his sentence and none of the others would ever know what it was he wanted to say because he was interrupted by Mazerotti, who straightened up suddenly with the solemn air of someone in command. They all jumped. Mazerotti had remained silent for most of the evening, his eyes half closed, leaning back slightly in his chair, which made everyone think he had fallen asleep, unsurprisingly considering his age and the alcohol they had consumed. They were wrong. The priest had not missed a word of what had been said. And, if he had remained quiet and still, it was because what the professor said had thrown him into deep confusion. The more the scholar spoke, the more the feeling grew in the priest that he been waiting his whole life for this moment. For years now he had been sceptical of Christian iconography and he no longer believed in the three-way division of the Hereafter. He had stopped talking about his flock in paradise or in purgatory and his heart had filled with a bored weariness. That evening, the professor’s account rekindled his desire to believe.

  Now he was sitting up in his chair, his face determined, his demeanour commanding, and he said in a voice that made the others tremble: ‘I am old, ravaged for years by a malignant cancer which makes me shit blood. I’m going to die one day soon in that church I have had to barricade like a fortress because those dogs at the Vatican don’t like the look of my parishioners. I can’t bear the idea of waiting for my illness finally to consume me. I’m going to go down. I think that makes sense. And someone has to go and see what’s down there.’

  ‘Then two of us will go,’ said Matteo.

  Matteo could not stop thinking about what Giuliana had told him that fateful day: ‘Bring Pippo back to me, or, if you can’t, at least bring me the head of the man who killed him.’ He had immediately opted for vengeance, believing that was the only course open to him, but this evening, in the company of these strange people, it seemed possible to envisage the other option. ‘Bring Pippo back to me,’ she had said. He had decided he would. He would descend to the Underworld. To see Pippo and bring him back. Or, at least, to ask his forgiveness and hold him again.

  ‘If we go down,’ said the priest, pouring himself more wine, ‘it has to be this evening. I’m so far gone, I’m not sure I’ll survive the night. With all I’ve drunk I wouldn’t be surprised if my arteries exploded one by one. It’s this evening or never.’

  ‘What about us?’ asked Grace, sounding anxious.

  ‘You’ll come with us as far as the gate and wait,’ replied the priest.

  ‘It’s no use everyone going down,’ added the professor, who could see that Grace was torn between her fear and the desire to show solidarity. ‘In any case we’ll probably be driven back …’

  ‘Why?’ asked Garibaldo, intrigued by this new information.

  ‘If there is too much life in us, the door won’t open. You have to have enough death inside you to pass through.’

  ‘In that case,’ replied Garibaldo, who had obviously decided not to go down, ‘we’ll wait until you come up again. But before you go, I’ll make you coffee …’

  And he hurried behind the counter.

  The friends sat down again patiently. They heard jars opening, and then drawers, and the coffee grinder being switched on, then grinding and mixing. It was like listening to an alchemist on the verge of finding the secret of the philosopher’s stone. Then, after a good ten minutes, Garibaldo reappeared with a little round tray bearing two cups of coffee. It smelt strange – a mixture of sweet liqueur and bitterness. Many different ingredients could be detected – jasmine, myrtle, lemon – but as if they had all been mixed with the smell of burning. Matteo looked into his cup – the coffee was red.

  ‘Coffee for death,’ said Garibaldo seriously. ‘To keep you awake until you’re in the Hereafter.’

  The two men downed their coffee in one. Matteo immediately felt that the effects of the alcohol had been swept away. His senses had been slightly dulled and his thinking clouded, but now a powerful heat coursed through his veins.

  ‘If I survive the coffee,’ said the old priest, getting his breath back, ‘it’s because the worms aren’t ready for me yet.’

  The friends stood up. Matteo was alert and prepared. He felt strong. And resolute. The fresh evening wind stinging his cheeks did him good. Nothing could make him change his mind. Not the slightly grotesque appearance of their little group, nor the incongruous sight of the professor, who had just unfolded a map to direct them through the little streets. The sea breeze carried a humidity that made their skin slightly sticky.

  ‘If I don’t come back,’ thought Matteo, ‘at least my life will end on a beautiful night.’

  The little group set off. Don Mazerotti moved slowly. Grace gave her arm to the old man so that he would not stumble on the dark cobblestones. Everything was silent and strange. Everywhere they went they disturbed large cats which ran off into the nearest heap of refuse or disappeared under cars. The pavements in the little backstreets of the city were strewn with rubbish. The people living in the neighbourhood piled it there in the evening without thinking about the overpowering, nauseating smell that it produced. The city slept in this stink of vomit and fried fish, like a guest who had fallen asleep at the table he was dining at, his cheek inches from his dirty plate.

  Soon they left behind the narrow streets of Spaccanapoli and started down the wide avenues which led to the port. There were no cars. Everywhere was empty. Matteo looked at the city in astonishment. He knew it by heart. He had so often driven around it at that late hour, but tonight everything seemed different and strange. They were on foot, going at the halting rhythm of pilgrims lost in a strange land. They were a tight little group of men feeling their way in the night, like blind men holding each other by the arm or the shoulder so as not to get lost. Or like madmen in a boat gliding silently through the water, wide-eyed at a world they did not understand.

  Soon they arrived at Castel Nuovo and turned left along Via Nuova Marina, the long avenue which bordered the sea. They walked on the left-hand pavement, with cars passing in both directions between them and the port. The professor was staggering a little and Garibaldo wondered if that was because he was weakened by his wounds or because of all the alcohol he had drunk.

  Finally they arrived at the square where the church of Santa Maria del Carmine was situated, a large, dark and melancholy place, which opened onto the sea on one side. During the day it was both a market and car park. But at this hour of night it was inhabited by the ugly and the lame. Famished and ghostly shadows seeking drunkenness or sex appeared from everywhere. It was here that Grace came to work most of the time. Transvestites and prostitutes shared the space, each in their own corner, welcoming the wrecks of humanity who went from one group to the other according to what they were after and how desperate they were. Here was the prostitution of the poor, a far cry from the traditional brothels of the Spanish Quarter, or the exotic establishments of the Vomero. Here the bodies touching each other were half aroused, half sickened, and the notes that they gave in exchange were as torn and dirty as the h
ands that took them.

  As soon as they appeared, the little group aroused malicious interest. Hoping for money, hunched, limping figures approached from all sides, wanting to feel them, sniff them, push them, steal from them, take everything from them, then leave them behind like emptied handbags abandoned on the pavement.

  But as soon as they recognised Grace, they stepped back and let them pass. She kept them at a distance, scolding them and addressing them by name. ‘Naza, you pig, get back, we’re almost suffocating from your smell! And you, Dino, let the gentlemen through. You’d make a rat vomit with those eyes of yours!’

  And when that was not enough, she went on to humiliate them by revealing their secrets. ‘Raf, you cretin, do you want me to tell everyone what you like me to do to you on summer evenings?’

  She spoke to them as if they were dogs, picking on them one by one, and that worked. They stayed at a distance long enough for them to reach the other side of the square.

  ‘Over there! Over there!’ said the professor, pointing at the sea.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ replied Garibaldo.

  It was true. Once across Via Nuova Marina there was nothing but a little central reservation littered with empty cans, broken syringes and slumped men and then the metal gates protecting the entrance to the port.

  ‘The towers!’ said the professor, signalling they should cross.

  On the central reservation which separated the two lanes of traffic there was indeed a truncated but wide little tower. Then beyond the second lane, at the foot of the gates to the harbour master’s office, there was another one. They were ugly. Probably from ancient times, but so patched up with brick that they looked totally ordinary. Like a pair of warts.