When they crossed over and reached the first reservation, it was like being on a little island, in the midst of the two lanes of traffic, fast-moving at this time of day.
‘That’s it! That’s it!’ the professor kept repeating, pointing at the tower.
Garibaldo and Matteo went over and immediately tried to clear a way through the wild grasses, brambles and hollyhocks clogging up the entrance. Then they pushed the door, which yielded with just a tired creaking of rotten wood. Cold air came up the stairs as though from a grotto or sarcophagus.
‘Let’s go,’ said Mazerotti, without the slightest hesitation and with an energy no one had thought he had in him.
‘We’ll wait here,’ said Garibaldo.
So the old priest, to show that he was well aware of the risks he was running by undertaking a descent like this at his age and that he was under no illusions about his chances of surviving the adventure, took them in his arms one by one. He murmured ‘Farewell’ to each of them – first Grace, then Garibaldo, then the professor – in a voice full of emotion. To Grace, he added with a return to his feisty self, ‘Don’t let them put a cretin in my church when I’ve gone.’
Then it was Matteo’s turn to say goodbye to his friends one by one. He was about to ask Garibaldo to let his wife Giuliana know what he was doing, but it would have sounded insane to her, so he did not. But it was her he was thinking of as he looked for one last time at the city around him. As he lowered his head to begin the descent, and when he passed in front of the old priest to enter the tower, it was her voice he heard in his head. Giuliana had asked what no other woman would have dared ask, ‘Bring me back my son.’ Giuliana, who was the main reason he was here, but would never know anything about it. Giuliana, his one true love, whom life had slapped in the face. Giuliana, whose features had been obliterated by grief, but whose eyes blazed with anger. Giuliana, who said so often, wringing her hands, ‘Why?’ But not the way most women would have said it, in a long, useless moan. Giuliana really meant it and cursed everyone who could not reply. Giuliana, who was in him and for whom his spirit yearned.
XIV
The Gate of the Ghouls
(November 1980)
Matteo and Don Mazerotti went very carefully down the steep, irregular stairs. They hesitated at each step because there was no light. Matteo went first. He groped his way along the rocky wall, turning back regularly to make sure the priest was following him. The old man was feeling more and more ill, but did not say anything. The blood was throbbing at his temples. He had vertigo and had to cling to the rock to stop himself from falling, praying that his malaise was fleeting and that he would be able to make it down. His strength was leaving him. A new weakness was taking hold of him. He saw it as a sign that death was approaching, but he wanted to keep going to the end, to follow Matteo, to fight against the heaviness of his body and struggle on. He would die afterwards, he thought, when he had seen what there was at the end of this stairway.
After half an hour of walking down in the darkness, Matteo at last felt that he had reached the bottom, which seemed to be a cavern. A pale light floated everywhere. Not enough to see exactly where they were but enough to make out certain aspects of the space.
The two men paused to draw breath. Neither of them had any desire to talk. They did not know where they were, or what lay ahead of them, or even if they had definitely decided to continue … They were overawed. The priest took some time to get his breath back – and, for a long while, the sound of his breathing was all that could be heard, punctuated only by the crystalline ring of a drop of water landing on the floor.
They began to walk forward into what very quickly revealed itself to be a sort of labyrinth. The chambers – very small and low – all led off each other. There were numerous paths. Each chamber had two or three exits. They felt they should not try to make sense of the succession of chambers but just keep moving forward. They decided that chance would be their guide. It was possible that they would get lost, just as it was possible that they would end up in the same place whichever path they took.
Mazerotti’s condition seemed to worsen. Several times Matteo had to stop to collect some of the icy water running down the walls and bring it to the old man’s lips. That did refresh him for a moment but very soon his throat was on fire again and the whistling in his breathing returned.
After some hours of difficult walking, Matteo stopped dead. He put his head through one more doorway, expecting to enter a new chamber just like the ones before, but what he was now looking at left him open-mouthed with wonder. He called the priest to show him. They had come to the threshold of a room so vast they could not see the walls, nor how high it was. The immense grotto stretched out in front of them. It was covered with a sort of dense scrub. Thick bushes as tall as a man had grown up out of the rock floor.
‘It’s the Wailing Wood,’ murmured Don Mazerotti, taken aback by his own words. He did not know how he was so certain. He knew he had never read anything about this wood, nor seen any illustration representing it, but he had spoken without a shadow of doubt, and he went on to explain to Matteo things that moments before he had known nothing about.
‘This is the last obstacle designed to deter or frighten unwelcome visitors.’ Then, shaken by a fit of trembling which left him pale and exhausted, he said, ‘I’m not sure I can continue.’
Matteo said nothing, but he pulled the priest towards him, holding him tightly. There was no question of him continuing on his own. He would not be separated from the priest. They set off again, hobbling along slowly, and approached the wood.
Up close the trees were even more sinister than from afar. They had knotty branches with thousands of thorns, and grey flowers like thistles. They were all intertwined, which made it impossible to pass between them.
As soon as the two men approached and tried to go through, the trees moved imperceptibly, as if shivering with surprise or shaken by a light wind. Matteo and Mazerotti walked where they could, protecting their faces from the thousands of little thorn cuts that resulted when they tried to force their way through. There were narrow paths to follow but as the trees moved, they scratched their legs. It grew very dark. Soon the vegetation had formed a roof of thorns over their heads. They were at the heart of a forest that seemed to be alive.
That was when the first cries rang out, at first far off like the groans of the dying, then closer and more menacing. The forest now moved like a sea swelling at the approach of a squall. The movement of the trees was more marked, and more turbulent as well. They could feel them coming. Instinctively they ducked, but it was no use. Shadows swooped down on them. Some buzzed about their ears like carnivorous flies, others struck them on the head like angry birds. As they brushed past they took on the appearance of terrible ghouls, gargoyles wizened by time, then they took on their vaporous form again, turning in the air before swooping on the visitors once more. Their cries hurt the men’s eardrums. They were animal cries, like the sound of a lowing cow mixed with a shrieking hyena. They tried to bite and scratch, circling them endlessly. They had no body and could not inflict any wounds but their throbbing hatred was terrifying. Soon, there were hundreds of shadows pressing about Matteo and the priest like a swarm of bees, coming and going and never letting go of their prey.
The priest stumbled. He had run out of energy. The harassment of the shadows had exhausted him. Matteo yelled at him in rage, trying to be heard over the humming that was all around, ‘We must see it through to the end, Don Mazerotti. Right to the end!’ They struggled on, leaning against each other like two blind men in a crowd.
Gradually the ghouls lessened in number and their cries grew weaker. They were letting go and it was as if the sheer determination to carry on finally freed Matteo and Mazerotti from their clutches.
They did not stop to rest immediately, certain that, if they did so, they would never find the strength to set off again. Walking on with the dragging footsteps of the wounded, they finally emerged from the for
est. They fell to the ground, exhausted, feeling relieved but terrified. In front of them giant double doors rose up. They were more than thirty feet high, black and heavy as time. On both bronze doors hundreds of faces disfigured by suffering and horror had been sculpted. The sculptures resembled the shadows who had chased them. As if the bronze had taken them captive, their toothless mouths forever laughing, dribbling, shrieking with rage and pain. One-eyed faces and twisted jaws. Horned skulls and snake tongues. All these heads, piled one on top of the other in a horrible jumble of teeth and scales, seemed to eye up the visitor, warning him not to come a step closer. These were the doors not to be opened, the doors to the Underworld, which only the dead can access. Matteo and Mazerotti had arrived at the threshold of the two worlds and their exhausted bodies seemed powerless in the face of the monstrous bronze barrier.
Suddenly Mazerotti slid to the ground. He had got up to look at the door more closely, to put his hands on the sculptures in order to admire the handiwork and to try and see if there was a lock or a way of opening the doors, but he had failed. Now he lay on the ground, his hand on his chest. He was fighting with all his strength against the pain that was stiffening his limbs and preventing him from breathing, but he understood that it was time to give in. Matteo hurried over to him and took Mazerotti’s head in his hands. First, he talked to him gently, then, seeing that the old man was barely listening to him, he spoke louder. Don Mazerotti’s face was grey and his lips white. He could no longer feel Matteo’s hands nor hear his words. His eyes stared into the void as if he saw the shadows dancing. He murmured something so quietly that, even bending over him, Matteo could not make out if he was praying or giving last instructions. There seemed to be frost in the air. Matteo desperately sought a way to help his companion, to give him his strength back – but he did not know what to do. So he talked. He begged the old man to hold on. He demanded it fiercely. ‘You have to get up, Don Mazerotti. Come on! Do you hear me?’ His voice was lost in the icy air. ‘Don Mazerotti, hold on. I’m going to stay here. Look at me. You must hold on.’ And the old man winked to show that he could hear but was too weak to reply. ‘Don Mazerotti, we’re going to start walking again. We have to go in,’ Matteo continued but, suddenly, a strange smile passed over the lips of the priest and, gathering all his strength, he clenched his fists, saying, in a hollow voice, ‘Follow me,’ then he threw his head back in a death rattle and died. Matteo froze. He saw the priest’s body sag as if death were pressing down on it to extract the last drop of life and bowed his head, like a man defeated.
That was when everything began to move. A shadow hovered a few inches above the old man’s body. It went over to the doors and there was the heavy sound of rusty hinges moving. Hell’s gate opened. Matteo stood open-mouthed. The doors parted very slowly. The sculpted monsters seemed to come to life. They appeared to moan and gnash their teeth, greedy for the life that had just been extinguished and was soon to be presented to them.
Matteo stood up. He wasn’t thinking of anything any more. He simply knew that this was the moment and he must seize it. He followed the shadow and entered, leaving behind the body of Don Mazerotti with the strange smile still on his lips.
XV
The Land of the Dead
(November 1980)
The doors closed again. Matteo found himself looking over a huge open expanse. He was standing on a plain covered in black grass. It looked like those fields that Tuscan farmers burn in summer to fertilise them. Nothing else was growing as far as the eye could see except for that short grass, black and dry, that crackled underfoot. He could see clearly, but that was strange because there was no moon or stars to explain the luminosity.
By Matteo’s side stood the shade of Don Mazerotti. He looked exactly like the priest – the same height, the same girth and the same features – but with no substance. Mazerotti’s body had stayed on the other side of the gate, and it was the shade that was going where the spirits of the dead go. There was nothing else for Matteo to do but follow him. The shade would show the way and lead him into the heart of the kingdom.
They began to move forward and soon heard a distant noise like the crashing of a waterfall. Matteo advanced fearfully, looking suspiciously at everything around him. He did not want to make any noise, fearing that at any moment he would be taken by death, which he could feel everywhere, or that hideous creatures would come to scratch his face and eat the life out of him.
Suddenly the noise was deafening. They had come to the banks of an enormous river. Matteo stopped and looked at the waters roiling in front of him. They were black like thick tar and topped with a grey foam that spurted in great tumultuous fountains several feet high. Whirlpools went by at great speed. The water swelled and spat, stirred up as if it would burst its banks, which seemed too narrow to contain its rage.
‘What’s that?’ asked Matteo.
‘The River of Tears,’ replied the shadow of the priest in a voice without intonation. ‘This is the place where souls are tortured. They are tossed about in all directions and they groan.’
Matteo looked more closely. In the waters, he could now indeed distinguish a multitude of shadows waving like drowning men, fighting in vain against the current. At first he had confused them with the river water, but, now that he was looking carefully, he understood that the river was in fact mainly shades: millions of them, one on top of the other, carried along by the current, continually toppled and whipped by the waters. A river of shrieking souls.
‘What should we do?’ asked Matteo, terrified. And Mazerotti’s shade answered as Matteo feared he would, ‘We have to cross.’ Then as Matteo did not move, he added, ‘Don’t be frightened, the river will have no use for you.’ So they approached, until they were right beside the river. And without a word the priest slipped into the water. Matteo heard a long groan escape the shadow of his friend. He tried to keep him in sight – like watching a piece of driftwood that a stormy sea repeatedly swallows and spits out again – but he lost him. He was already too far away. Matteo waited a little longer, then he had to force himself to get slowly into the water. Then he was bemused. The water only came up to his shoulders, but it was black and violent and spurted in great bubbles as if very angry. The rest of the river was made up of shades buffeted by the current. They were what had given the impression from afar of a river leaping to a great height. It was they who formed the whirlpools and groaned. Now that he had plunged in amongst them, he understood what they were enduring. Their cries reached him, their pleas, their pitiful complaints. During the descent in the River of Tears, the dead souls saw their whole lives pass by. Not their lives as they believed they had lived them, but their lives made ugly by the malevolence of the waters. The water kept beating them, and throwing them against rocks, and pushing their heads under the water and offering them a vision of their existence that both dismayed and perturbed them. Usually the picture it held up to them was neither totally good nor really bad, but marred by a thousand moments of doubt and meanness. Faced with these images, the souls moaned. Where they remembered having been generous, they saw themselves being petty. Moments of beauty were stained with small-mindedness. Everything became grey. The river tortured them. It didn’t invent anything; it just accentuated what had been. He who, at the moment of fighting, had had a second’s hesitation became a coward. He who had daydreamed about the wife of a friend saw himself as a lecherous pig. The river made their lives ugly so that the souls could leave them behind without regret. What the souls had loved became reprehensible. What they remembered with happiness now made them ashamed. Bright moments of their life became tarnished. When they got out of the river, battered by the waters, the souls were ready never to return to life again. From now on, they would be going where death took them, slowly and with their heads bowed.
As he crossed the river, Matteo could not help weeping. He cried for all these honest joyous lives, which were, all of a sudden, found to be ugly and despicable. He cried for these beings who now believe
d they had been vicious when they had actually been loyal. He cried for this river of torment which stole from the dead their most beautiful memories – so that they would become dull and obedient, shadows who would desire nothing and never make a fuss, who would join the immense crowd of those who were nothing any more. He cried for the cruelty of death, which deceived the souls in this way to assert its power, and to ensure there would be nothing in its endless kingdom except, as there had always been, the resigned silence of those who did not know desire, or tears or rage or light any more, and who walked without knowing where they were going, as hollow as dead trees for the wind to whistle through.
When Matteo reached the other bank, he found the shadow of Mazerotti. He seemed more delicate, afflicted by a profound sadness. The river had worked its devastating power and now the shadow gazed at the ground like a tired dog.
Suddenly, Matteo raised his head. A noise was growing louder and closer.
‘Quickly,’ breathed Mazerotti’s shadow, ‘hide,’ and he dragged Matteo away from the riverbank. They hurriedly climbed a sort of little black hill made of scoria which gave way beneath their feet. Then once they were at the top, Matteo dropped to the ground to avoid being seen and looked back at the river he had just crossed.
‘Take a good look,’ murmured Mazerotti, in a whistling voice. ‘Those are the shades who want to return to life at all costs. The ones who have resolved not to die. They run like mad to cross the river in the other direction, they charge and scream, but the soldiers of death always force them back.’
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