Valley of the Dead (14 page)

Chapter
24

Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour,

Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled,

Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison.

Dante,
Inferno
, 13.4-6

They hadn’t gone far before Dante heard the sound of falling water, and soon after, they came to the waterfall the man had described. To their right was a trickle of water, which fell over a cliff and down into the ravine they’d been following up the valley. The stones at the top of the falls were a rusty red. Dante thought they must contain iron, or the leavings of a mine had been dumped into the stream. The water itself looked a foul pink near the banks, with a thin border of yellowish slime. The stream was small enough they easily forded it and climbed the trail on the other side.

The forest on the other side of the stream continued to get thinner as they went. They were up high enough that most of the trees were pines, and most of these appeared diseased and twisted, many of them dead. The forest floor was covered in what Dante imagined to be a millennium’s accumulation of needles, filling the whole space with a caustic, smothering scent. Both the needles on the trees and those on the ground were the color of slate. Once the sound of the waterfall had disappeared behind them, there was silence and stillness, without any breeze, without the call or movement of birds or any other animals. The whole place stung the senses in every way, either by starving, overwhelming, or seeming to deceive them.

The trail bent more or less north, so Dante looked to his left to see where the sun weakly illuminated the blanket of grey clouds filling the sky. The brighter spot in the cloud cover moved closer to the mountains in the west.

Adam must have noticed where Dante was looking, and seemed to guess his thoughts. “We will stop soon,” he said. “We should try to make it as far as we can. There are two steep ascents before the final, hidden trail to the pass. It is too late in the day to make it up the first of those, but we should get as far as we can in this forest and find a clearing to make camp. We will need to rest if we are to have the strength to overcome the final obstacles of this valley.”

Dante saw movement in the trees above them, and looked up to see dozens of vultures perched there. He did not remember such birds being as large as the ones he now saw, spreading then refolding their enormous wings. The motion set the branches swaying up and down, making the whole canopy above them an undulating mass of dark shapes. Dante could make out some of the birds’ faces, and they were horrible to behold, especially for a man with an imagination like his. In the birds’ tiny, shining eyes, he fancied he saw an inhuman intelligence to match their bestial hunger, as though the animals did not just crave dead flesh, but also understood something about death that they would never divulge to mere humans, some piece of knowledge as simple and terrible as their black eyes. Dante could even imagine such birds laughing at their eternal secret with their croaking, tortured call. He imagined the sound so vividly he did not jump like the others when the creatures screeched. More and more of the birds joined in, the sound rising till it was a frenzied cacophony of choked, grating sounds, as though something were strangling all the birds at once. As the four of them passed under the noisy, seething mass of feathers, Dante thought perhaps the former silence was preferable after all.

When they’d gotten some distance from the hideous birds, they stopped and looked back at them.

“Do you believe in omens?” Adam asked.

“Yes,” Radovan said. “Though they change nothing. We must go on anyway in life, even if we know we are doomed.”

“That’s true,” Dante answered. “Even if the signs are real, we still have free will, and our responsibilities are not changed at all. But often I wonder if the signs are true, or if they’re just superstition and they come from ignorance. Other times I’m not so sure, and I wonder if they could be a kind of revelation.”

“I don’t think superstition always comes from ignorance,” Bogdana said quietly. “Sometimes it’s a kind of knowledge, like a kind of respect. People call it ‘superstition’ when they’re arrogant and don’t want to obey, when they don’t want to have respect or follow tradition. People think they’re so smart, but they almost never are.”

Dante glanced sideways at her face. In profile, with her full cheeks and upturned nose, she looked especially girlish. Most of her hair was pulled behind her ear, but one long curl hung down next to her eye, spiraling below her jaw to end just above her right breast. Such unadorned, youthful beauty made her sober words all the more captivating to him, even if they contained a gentle reprimand.

“I think you’re right. But what does this omen mean?” he asked as he gestured at the birds.

Her smile looked a little sly to Dante, perhaps mocking, though he knew even if it were it wouldn’t bother him in the least. “You strive to know so much, and it hurts you so, whether you get an answer or not. If I said I knew what this sign means that would be more arrogant than saying it’s only superstition.”

“Just knowing it means something – without knowing what that something is – is enough for you, daughter?” Adam asked.

“Yes,” she said simply, as Radovan moved forward, and she pulled her horse in line behind his.

Adam watched her, then turned to Dante. He lowered his voice. “I see now what you meant about how women could affect you, friend. There is the clearest spark of the divine wisdom in her, like I have seen in our students who have trained at the monastery for years. Another thing I have noticed is how the wicked often see something that others do not, although they cannot understand or appreciate it. That man back at the barn, the one who mocked you, he was like that. He knew of your love for her as soon as he saw you, but I was too busy and distracted by other things to notice.”

“Yes, I suppose he did,” Dante agreed. “He knew the outer signs of love, without the substance.” He looked toward Bogdana. “I know I do not always understand her, but I do appreciate her. And I will strive to be worthy of her.”

Adam nodded. “Now I see better how such a vow is good for a man, especially in such a wretched, lonesome place as this, surrounded by every kind of ugliness and filth. It reminds him of purity, of perfection, of nobility. Otherwise he might lose hope and fall victim to all the evilness around him.”

Dante kicked his horse lightly, taking his place behind Bogdana as they resumed their march through the woods. Dante took his gaze from her small, powerful frame and looked at the trees above them. Although they were as lifeless as before, and the pine scent in his nostrils as pungently nasty as before, everything seemed somehow less threatening or maddening to him, less like an experience of real evil and pain and more like a picture of such a scene. Dante had been reminded that the reality of these things lay elsewhere, and he muttered his thanks for this small, indistinct revelation.

Chapter
25

I heard on all sides lamentations uttered,

And person none beheld I who might make them,

Whence, utterly bewildered, I stood still.

Dante,
Inferno
, 13.22-24

Shortly after seeing the vultures, Dante noticed movement in the trees ahead of them. This time, however, it was not high up in the branches. Radovan looked back and gestured toward the motion, so all of them were aware of the possible attackers. He and Dante drew their swords as they continued to make their way along the path.

As they approached the movement, Dante heard the moan of the dead, though it seemed softer and more labored than usual. More like an exhausted whisper of despair, rather than the gnawing drone of hunger Dante had grown used to in the last two days. The moving shapes were clearly two dead people, but by this time in the day, the forest had grown quite dark, so Dante still could not make out what these corpses were doing. They weren’t approaching them, but seemed to remain where they were, though their arms and legs were moving. The dead people’s movements increased as Dante and his companions got closer to them.

They emerged in a small clearing, where they could finally discern the situation of the two figures. On the other side of the clearing there were two human forms hanging from a branch of one of the trees. They were suspended from the tree limb by ropes around their necks, with their arms and legs free. There were two small logs on the ground near their feet. They must’ve climbed up on those and then kicked them away, Dante thought. They appeared to be a young man and woman. The man was bigger, though neither of them had been very large. They were both thin and pale, with black hair, and dressed in simple, peasant clothes. Both had torn clothes, with their sleeves soaked in blood, and the young woman had a gaping wound on her neck as well. As he got closer, Dante could see the two were quite young, probably a bit younger than Bogdana.

Dante and the others dismounted and came closer to the unfortunate couple. As the living approached, the two dead people grew more agitated. The ropes around their necks kept their moan from rising to the kind of hungry, enraged roar Dante had heard before. Instead, it remained a steady and despondent wheeze drawn and expelled through their clenched teeth. Their limbs flailed about, which set their bodies to swinging, causing them to bump into one another. Sometimes it almost appeared they were trying to embrace each other, but the illusion quickly passed, for in the next moment, their movements would pass from groping and pulling on one another, to something more like slapping and clawing. The man, being affixed to the branch at a point closer to the trunk, occasionally bounced off the tree, his hands reaching for the trunk for a moment, but in the next instant he’d kick at the tree and send his body swinging back away from it. In a better, saner world, with tiny figures made of wood instead of human corpses, the whole spectacle would’ve sent Dante into fits of laughter.

“Why have I lived long enough to see this?” he asked in a low voice, as they watched the grotesque show before them. “I used to love puppet shows when I was a boy. I’d beg to go see them. I would beg God to keep me from seeing this, except I think somehow it must be His will that I look.”

“You watched the puppet shows to learn something?” Adam asked. “They were probably fables, with a moral?”

Dante looked at him. As always, everything was compacted and distilled by Adam, as if the sickening, overwhelming human degradation and despair in front of them could be sterilized and boiled down to a lesson. He gestured to the two wriggling corpses with his left hand. “This has a moral? This? What? That all is death, and never-ending pain? The hopeless, tortured existence of a beast caught in a trap? The pointless gibbering and contortions of an idiot beggar left to die on the street?” Dante’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “I don’t think such a lesson is from God. It must be from somewhere else.”

Adam seemed to know it would be better now to lower his gaze, out of respect for Dante’s righteous anger, and for the suffering of the dead in front of them. “Yes,” he said quietly, “the lesson is from somewhere else. It is from this hellish hole we have been driven into. But God is even here, friend. I know you know that.”

There was a pause as Dante considered what to do.

“How did they even get like this?” Radovan said.

“They must’ve been bitten and didn’t want to turn into the undead,” Adam said. “They thought killing themselves would stop it, but they were wrong.” He glanced over at Dante.

Dante returned the glance. “Death solves nothing. Death changes nothing,” he said, barely opening his mouth. His words felt very cold on his lips. Adam looked away, nodding slightly.

Radovan did not appear to notice the exchange between Dante and Adam. He shook his head. “They should’ve known better. Everyone knows you’ll turn once you’re bitten, even if something else kills you before the plague does.”

Bogdana finally moved from the group, going to the saddle of her horse to retrieve the hatchet. “They were young,” she said as she returned. “They didn’t know. At least they did it in such a way that they couldn’t hurt others.” She looked up at the contorted faces as the dead twisted in their madness and frustration. Their movements appeared one moment like a tragic, graceful dance, and the next like the spasms of a sick and mortally wounded animal. “They probably helped each other to do it. Maybe they were lovers. Maybe each of them only wanted to help the other avoid more pain and shame and guilt. They were scared, confused, in agony. Look at them. They still are.” She turned back to Dante and the others. “I’ve seen enough yesterday and today to know which people to condemn and despise, and which to pity and help. I’m beginning to wonder when you three are going to catch on.”

Dante blushed, not quite understanding how he deserved the sting of her reprimand, but knowing nonetheless it must somehow be right and for his good. Even as her speech wounded and embarrassed him, it gave him much more strength and resolve than was offered by the coldly rational words that had dropped from his lips a moment ago.

“All right,” he said. “What do we need to do now? Why do
you
think we are here, now, in this horrible place?”

“Why, to get them down, of course” she answered. “To finish what they started. To do what they wanted to do, rather than what they foolishly tried to do the wrong way at the wrong time.”

Adam nodded. “She is right. Judgment is not the point here. Mercy should be our only concern.”

“So there is mercy, even in this hell?” Dante asked.

“Perhaps here most of all,” Adam said.

“You already said God is here,” Bogdana said. “So love and mercy must be here. But God does not often do merciful acts on His own. That is our job.” She turned to Radovan. “Can you do what needs to be done, while they’re still hanging? Can you reach high enough?”

Radovan appeared to consider it. “It would help if someone held their feet. If they would stop swinging back and forth, it’d be easy enough. Up under the chin. It’d be over in a second. If they even feel pain.”

Bogdana offered the handle of the hatchet to Dante. “I can’t very well climb the tree. Take this and cut the branch they’re hanging from when he’s done.”

Dante sheathed his sword so he could take the hatchet with his right hand. He looked at the grim piece of iron and nodded.

He hadn’t climbed a tree since he was a boy. It was much harder than he remembered. His hands and feet kept slipping, especially his feet, since there were no branches close enough to the ground for him to step up onto. As he struggled up the tree, he noticed he did not hear the pathetic sound of the dead anymore, and the branch had stopped swaying around from their exertions. Dante glanced over his shoulder to confirm the others were finished with what they needed to do, and, seeing that they were, he hacked at the branch. Hanging on to another branch with his left hand was an awkward position, and he couldn’t get much force behind the blows. After a few minutes of hard work, he was panting and both his arms ached, but he had done enough damage to the branch that it no longer supported the weight of the bodies. Dante looked over his shoulder again, and saw the branch’s burden rested on the earth. Bogdana was cutting through their nooses with a knife.

Dante dropped to the ground and joined the others. Radovan broke the branch from which the bodies had hung into smaller pieces, while Bogdana and Adam kicked piles of pine needles on top of the corpses. The layer of needles on the forest floor was almost as unbelievable and monstrous as Dante had imagined. It was nearly up to their ankles, so in just a minute they’d created a huge pile by clearing a circle around the bier.

Radovan tossed the two logs the people had used in their final act on top of the pile, then knelt down to start the fire. “Should we say something?” he asked softly. “I know some people believe suicide is a very grave sin.”

“Despair is a very grave sin and a disease,” Adam said. “Suicide is some people’s ineffectual treatment of that disease. As you have reminded us, daughter, we only know what bodily disease these people suffered from. We do not know whether their souls were sick. We have freed them from their bodily torment. We can only have faith God will save them from any spiritual anguish.”

“I remember a story. I don’t know where it is in the Bible,” Bogdana said as she stepped closer to the bier. “I heard it a few times in church, and I liked it because it seemed so simple, even a little funny. A widow keeps asking a wicked judge to help her, and he does not. But finally she wears him out, and he helps her. The story ends by saying if an unjust man will act this way, how much more can we expect from our righteous God? I think that’s true. He is strong, and we are weak. He is perfect, and we are not. If we have done what little we can, we know He can do so much more. That isn’t even faith. It’s just common sense.”

The tiny woman knelt down, her hands on her thighs, palms up. Though her enormous belly made her movements more difficult and slower, Dante thought she moved with an exceptional grace and confidence, as though what she were doing was both necessary and beautiful. As he watched her, Dante had the strangest notion that the Blessed Virgin must’ve looked like this when she prayed during her pregnancy, when God Himself was inside her, giving her terrible strength and unutterable wisdom. The thought was rendered more fascinating and vivid to him as he remembered the frescoes of the Virgin he had seen in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, shortly after they had been painted in 1306. They had included one of a pregnant Mary visiting her pregnant cousin Elizabeth. Dazzlingly beautiful, the paintings were nothing like the captivating reality before him. Now such images seemed to him stilted and artificial, whereas here was the breathing reality of a peasant girl who was filled with the Spirit of God. The paintings were merely human products, no matter how talented their artist. Now he beheld an icon fashioned by the one, true Divine Artist. Dante had to blink and shake his head. The vision was so intoxicating and incongruous, there in that foul, polluted clearing, with nothing but disease and death for miles and miles around them.

Bogdana leaned her head back. “We do not know their names, Lord,” she prayed, “but You do, as You know their hearts. They died, but You can never die. Their bodies failed them, but You can never fail any of Your servants, who call on You night and day from this pit. We know You are their redeemer. Amen.” She lowered her head, as did Dante and the others, before Radovan sent the sparks into the bone-dry, ash-grey needles, which immediately took light.

They stayed a few moments as the pyre roared to life. Dante watched the plume of grey smoke as it cascaded up into the branches above. He wondered if the smoke would mingle with the clouds, which were exactly the same color, or if it would sneak past them to find the sun, which must still be shining somewhere, in some place that for now Dante could only imagine.