Hell's Gate

by Laurent Gaudé

  Straight away Matteo saw shades streaming everywhere, like a chaotic army giving charge. They advanced, impatient to plunge into the river, to cross it and to walk again in the land of the living. But silhouettes as black as quartz stood in their way. These skeletal giants threw out their arms and intercepted the fleeing shades. They caught them like you catch leaves, in great armfuls, and pushed them back without difficulty.

  ‘There are two sorts of dead who keep trying to get back across the river,’ commented the priest in a low voice. ‘The first are the shadows of stillborn babies. They haven’t had any life, have passed directly from their mother’s womb to the parched lands of the Underworld. They congregate on the banks of the river like insects drawn to the light. They want to live, if only for a few hours. But the soldiers of death continually push them away from the river.’

  ‘And the other kind?’ asked Matteo.

  ‘They are the ones who have suffered a violent death, snatched from life in a second because of an accident or a crime when they still had so much to accomplish. These are the most courageous, and the most determined. They never give up and eternally try their luck. They are intent on finishing what they left behind and picking up their life from the moment it was taken from them. They left without being able to say goodbye to those they loved, and they burn with rage for all eternity.’

  ‘So,’ said Matteo, his throat tight, ‘Pippo must be among them.’

  ‘No,’ replied Mazerotti, ‘your son did die in an accident, but he had not yet decided what his life would be like.’

  ‘So he’s with the stillborn souls?’ asked Matteo.

  ‘He’s not there either,’ Mazerotti answered.

  Matteo looked in the direction of the hill of stillborn souls. He saw a crest covered with shadows, little fearful shadows, huddling together as if to keep warm. As he looked more closely he saw that the children’s eyes were sealed and their mouths sewn shut. They could not see anything and did not cry out. Some had died in the warmth of their mothers’ wombs, victims of a ruptured placenta or poisoning, or strangled by a twisted umbilical cord. Others had had time to feel the body that housed them moan, and for the light of life to pierce their eyelids; they had cried, waved their arms, and then the flame of life had suddenly gone out and they had become still and pale like dead kittens.

  On their hill they were piled on top of each other, did not understand where they were and were only dimly aware of the presence of others like them – and that was the only comfort available to them in their world of obscure terrors.

  Matteo turned away. He couldn’t bear to look. The fate of these beings who would never know life, who would never have the chance to love or to hate, who were dead before they were fully formed, broke his heart. Life had aborted them and no one could look at them without trembling because how could it possibly make any sense?

  ‘If you want to find your son,’ said Don Mazerotti – his voice jolting Matteo from his sadness – ‘you have to go into the heart of the kingdom, where the dead are packed together.’

  ‘I’ll follow you,’ replied Matteo. And they set off, leaving behind them the horrible game of the shades who were always trying to flee, and the guards who always succeeded in thwarting them – without a single shade ever, since the beginning of time, having succeeded in escaping from the Underworld.

  Mazerotti’s shadow led Matteo as far as a tall rocky outcrop. A massive entrance had been dug like the door to a mine or the opening to a troglodyte cave. In front of the mountain, all around the door, a wall of tall thorny bushes blocked their path.

  ‘We have to go through,’ said the shadow.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Matteo.

  ‘The Bleeding Bushes,’ replied the priest.

  Matteo had now managed to get so close to the bushes that he could plainly see the tangle of thorns and knotty trunks. He stepped forward to find a way in and the branches scratched his skin. His face, legs and chest were covered in tiny cuts. He tried twisting his body to avoid injury but it was impossible to pass through without getting scratched. Here and there strips of red flesh hung down, still dripping blood onto the ground. Matteo looked at them, horrified.

  ‘They are scraps of flesh from the living,’ Mazerotti’s shadow told him.

  ‘Other living people have been here before me?’ asked Matteo.

  ‘No, but everyone who dies brings with them little pieces of the people who were closest to them. The father who has lost his son, the widowed wife, the person who has outlived all his friends. The dead person advances into the Underworld dragging bits of them behind him. But these little pieces of living people, these bloody scraps, are not permitted to penetrate any further into the kingdom of the dead. The barrier of bushes catches hold of them and they stay here for all eternity.’

  Matteo looked around him. The bushes surrounding them were full of little pieces of meat. They hung pathetically, like offerings for a cannibal god or the stinking remains of a slaughter. So this was where the parts of people overcome by grief ended up. There must be parts of him here, and of Giuliana. The parts of them that had followed Pippo into death. He had to make a great effort not to throw up, and to stay strong. Then, having decided to press on regardless, he crossed angrily through the thorny barrier, letting the brambles gash his skin. When he had broken free of the dense vegetation, he gave a cry of relief and entered a vast chamber carved out of the rock.

  He was surprised by the silence that reigned there. It felt as if a strange force had extinguished all noise. Not a creak, not a step, not even the sound of an insect could be heard. Little by little Matteo felt tingling in his fingers. His stomach knotted and he began to sweat. He was frightened. A visceral fear rose in him. His limbs trembled uncontrollably. A cold sweat broke out on his brow and he began to have difficulty breathing. Finally he murmured to the shadow, ‘I have to get out of here or I’ll scream.’

  The shadow came close, and spoke into his ear so that gradually his fear left him.

  ‘We are crossing the empty rooms that await the dead still to come. That’s why you are frightened. The walls feel our presence and are seething with impatience. These enormous chambers will soon be full. Here is where the generation that was born in your lifetime will come. The territory of the Underworld is always increasing. There are more and more rooms. Huge deep chambers to cram in the corpses of tomorrow. The silence around us that fills you with fear is the silence of waiting. The stone is anxious to welcome its visitors.’

  Matteo looked into the distance. There was light coming from the back of the immense hall. He felt relieved to see light and started walking.

  ‘What is that over there?’ he asked. And, since the priest did not reply, he quickened his pace to get to the back of the room. When he was nearer, he realised the room extended into a sort of terrace. Matteo approached. The terrace overlooked a huge valley in semi-darkness. He went forward to look out over the valley. The landscape was hideous. The ground seemed ravaged as if it had a skin disease. It was grey and mottled. Although dry and cracked in parts, it also spewed out putrid mud in other places. Nothing was growing except for twisted leafless trees. Matteo saw two streams which appeared to pour down the steep slopes before petering out in the valley. The first was infested with hundreds of millions of insects which formed a throbbing cloud on its surface. In the other one, despite the slope, the water was motionless. With no current, and not the tiniest wave, the water simply stagnated there for millions of years amid the stench of sludge.

  Far off in the centre of the valley, on a promontory that seemed to be a mountain of coal, stood a town. It had the austere air of a citadel that time had forgotten. There were no inhabitants and no noise came from it. Tall palaces as dark as soot could be seen. There were streets, squares, terraces and gardens, but all were empty. Even the wind did not venture down the maze of little streets.

  ‘It’s the Citadel of the Dead,’ said the priest’s shadow.

  ‘But where is it?’ asked
Matteo, a new curiosity in his voice.

  ‘Where is what?’

  ‘Death.’

  ‘All around you,’ was the reply. ‘In every dark recess and corner. Under every stone laid here millennia ago. In the dust that flies and in the cold that grips us. It is everywhere.’

  Matteo said nothing. He was observing everything around him and what the shadow said seemed to be true. He was at the centre of death. He was breathing it, he was walking on it, he was enveloped in it. Suddenly the shadow moved and indicated that Matteo should follow him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Matteo asked.

  ‘Can’t you hear that?’ replied the priest.

  Matteo listened. And then he did hear, coming from far in the distance, a muffled clamour growing louder. ‘What is it?’ he asked the shadow, who did not reply. Mazerotti hurried towards the noise and Matteo had to follow. He was almost sorry to leave behind the spectacle of the Citadel of the Dead, because he had found it strangely beautiful. He would long remember the sight of that city where the black marble groaned sometimes as if from the pain of an old wound or out of sheer weariness.

  The hubbub grew louder and louder and now the din was unbearable. It was so loud the ground trembled under Matteo’s feet. When they arrived at the top of the hill, Matteo stopped for a moment. He had never seen anything like it: down below, over a vast area, were millions and millions of shades. They were moving in spirals as if drawn by an invisible force to the centre of the space, but very, very gradually. They formed a giant procession but each shade moved so slowly that overall progress was barely perceptible. The din was from their wailing: they moaned, gnashed their teeth, called for help, screamed in terror and uttered curses.

  ‘It’s the Spiral of the Dead,’ murmured Mazerotti, and, seeing that Matteo was still stunned at the sight of them, he went on, ‘You asked me where the shades go. Look, this is where they all end up. When they arrive they cling to the others and take their place in the crowd. And then they advance imperceptibly to the centre. Once they reach it, they disappear for ever. The centre of the spiral is nothingness, their second death.’

  ‘But are they really going forward?’ asked Matteo, who was beginning to doubt he had actually seen them move, so completely immobile did the crowd sometimes appear.

  ‘It’s the march of the shades,’ replied the priest. ‘They’re not all moving at the same pace. It depends how much light they have in them.’

  Matteo had noticed that the spirits were of variable incandescence. Some shone like will-o’-the-wisps, others were so pale they seemed almost transparent.

  ‘It’s the rule of the land of the dead,’ continued Mazerotti. ‘The spirits who are still remembered in the land of the living, whose memory is honoured, and who are wept for, are luminous. They advance towards nothingness imperceptibly. The others, the forgotten dead, are tarnished and slip quickly towards the centre of the spiral.’

  Matteo looked more carefully. In the thick crowd of several million shades, he could now pick out thousands of distinctions. Some were crying and tearing at their eyes, others were smiling and kissing the ground in gratitude.

  ‘Look at that one,’ murmured the priest to Matteo, pointing at one shade. ‘Her cheeks are bathed in tears but she’s smiling. She has just sensed that someone living has thought of her and it’s someone she would never have imagined would think of her with so much affection. Look. Others are crying and pulling their hair out because they thought their memory would be celebrated and are furious to discover that no one ever thinks of them. Neither friends nor relatives. They are empty and dull. And they become paler and paler until they are totally translucent and hurry towards the void.’

  ‘How long does the march take?’ asked Matteo.

  ‘For the most fortunate, several lifetimes,’ replied the priest. ‘But some disappear in a few hours, forgotten as quickly as they died. There are hundreds of spirals like this in the Underworld. The only weapon the spirits have to slow down their progress to the void is the thoughts of the living. Each thought, however fleeting, however brief, gives them a little strength.’

  The priest broke off. Then in a quiet voice he added, ‘Your son is there.’

  Matteo jumped. Everything he had done had been for his son. But ever since he had entered these lands where the living did not venture, what he had seen had left him so dumbfounded and seemed so strange and frightening that he could not imagine seeing his son here.

  ‘Over there?’ he asked briskly as if jolted from a dream.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the old priest. ‘With the others. In the middle of the dead, pulled like them by the opposing forces of memory and oblivion. There. Right in front of you. In that crowd that is trying to resist moving forward and which fears the moment they will be nothing to anyone any more, when they will have no choice but to disappear. There, Matteo. This is what you have sought for so long. Your son, who feels your thoughts giving him strength …’

  Before Mazerotti’s shadow had finished speaking, Matteo hurried into the throng of shades. Nothing could possibly have held him back. His son was there, a few hundred feet away, his son who he longed to see and touch and free from this inert mass of souls condemned to oblivion.

  He raced down the slope, his frenzy making him faster. He paid no attention to the fact that his footsteps were ringing out in the vast darkness, drowning out the wailing of the spirits. He was running, out of breath, looking everywhere for his son. He kept running. He did not notice that the shades, surprised at the noise, had all turned to look at him. They could not escape the force that was slowly pulling them, but their eyes opened wide, as if they wanted to consume him with their gaze. All the spirits sensed escape. A man was here who could perhaps lead them out. They wriggled with impatience and joy, like victims of a shipwreck catching sight of the ship come to save them. They held out their hands, moaning, begging and rolling their eyes, pleading to be taken from death’s clutches.

  Matteo stopped in his tracks. He was out of breath after running, but he was not trying to recover: in front of him, a short distance away, there was a ghost shining more brightly than the others. His back was turned, but there was no doubt at all, it was Pippo. Matteo shouted as loudly as he could. Pippo. The child turned round with the slowness of the dying. It was him. Matteo struggled not to stumble. He had not seen his son since the day of the accident. The features so dear to him – the cheeks he had so often kissed, the hair he had smelt at night as the child slept – were all there, before him again. The child was pale. A black stain still marked the wound on his abdomen that had killed him. Pippo hadn’t changed. He had neither aged nor withered.

  At the sight of his father he opened his mouth but no sound came out. He stretched his hand towards Matteo and this simple gesture seemed to involve a superhuman effort. He was struggling against the inertia of the dead.

  Matteo did not waste a second. He plunged into the crowd, sweeping aside the spirits with his arms, and made straight for his child. But, quickly, the shades regrouped around him and surrounded him. They were becoming enraged. They had a man of flesh and blood who breathed and sweated life in their midst; it was an unhoped-for opportunity to escape. They tried to hold on to him, to catch his hair, grab him by the legs and hinder his movements. They were like a crowd of beggars pleading to be taken away. It wasn’t difficult for him to push them back. They had neither weight nor substance and soon he had reached his son. The child raised his arms so that he could hug him – but that was when the spirits crowded round him again. They could not do anything against a real live man, but they could push Pippo away. They all tried to take Pippo’s place. He was assailed on all sides, grabbed by a thousand arms, scratched by avid nails. Matteo tried to make his body into a bulwark for the child, whom he held close to him, but the assault of the dead was never-ending and he was right in the middle of a raging crowd. He did not know what to do any more. If he lost Pippo, he was certain he would never see him again. He looked at his son’s frigh
tened face. For a second, time stood still. He was not in hell, being attacked by the dead. He had just found the son he had left behind on the pavement of that cursed street. The look of terror on the boy’s face now was the same as on that day. Everything was muddled. He felt as if he were reliving the accident. For the second time his son was looking at him pleadingly. For the second time he felt powerless to help him. That appalled him. He was choking with rage. His muscles tensed. He would not fail a second time and let events unfold with horrible inevitability. He tightened his hold on Pippo’s ghost, pressing him against his chest with such force that he could barely breathe and hoisted him up to his face. He could feel Pippo’s curious lightness on his cheeks. He put his lips to the child’s face, as if to kiss him, and slowly and delicately breathed all of him in. The ghost slipped inside him; it was like swallowing water. He had not thought about what he was doing; he had done it instinctively.

  He had taken back his son and he would protect him from now on with all his body, with all the weight of his living being and with passion.

  In the midst of the astounded spirits, he started running towards the hill he had come from, wildly waving his arms to part the dead. He was full of a strength he felt would never leave him. He ran and the shades chased him. They were surrounding him, buzzing about. Each one begged him to take them. They all wanted to see the light again. He ran on, concentrating on his breathing and deaf to their cries.

  The shade of the priest was there, by his side. It was he who guided him to the exit. He crossed the various landscapes of misery. Along the way Matteo left traces of his footsteps, the first sign of a human being in these underground worlds. He went on, no longer looking at his surroundings. He didn’t so much as glance at the interminable caves with their polluted air, nor at the thin, burnt-looking trees that grew out of the rock. He ran, convinced that he was about to escape and that his return to life was just around the corner.