The Portable Dante (20 page)

“And now, behold the beast with pointed tail that passes mountains, annulling walls and weapons, behold the one that makes the whole world stink!”

These were the words I heard my master say as he signaled for the beast to come ashore, up close to where the rocky levee ends.

And that repulsive spectacle of fraud floated close, maneuvering head and chest on to the shore, but his tail he let hang free.

His face was the face of any honest man, it shone with such a look of benediction; and all the rest of him was serpentine;

his two clawed paws were hairy to the armpits, his back and all his belly and both flanks were painted arabesques and curlicues:

the Turks and Tartars never made a fabric with richer colors intricately woven, nor were such complex webs spun by Arachne.

As sometimes fishing boats are seen ashore, part fixed in sand and part still in the water; and as the beaver, living in the land

of drunken Germans, squats to catch his prey, just so that beast, the worst of beasts, hung waiting on the bank that bounds the stretch of sand in stone.

In the void beyond he exercised his tail, twitching and twisting-up the venomed fork that armed its tip just like a scorpion’s stinger.

My leader said: “Now we must turn aside a little from our path, in the direction of that malignant beast that lies in wait. ”

Then we stepped off our path down to the right and moved ten paces straight across the brink to keep the sand and flames at a safe distance.

And when we stood by Geryon’s side, I noticed, a little farther on, some people crouched in the sand quite close to the edge of emptiness.

Just then my master spoke: “So you may have a knowledge of this round that is complete, ” he said, “go and see their torment for yourself.

But let your conversation there be brief; while you are gone I shall speak to this one and ask him for the loan of his strong back. ”

So I continued walking, all alone, along the seventh circle’s outer edge to where the group of sufferers were sitting.

The pain was bursting from their eyes; their hands went scurrying up and down to give protection here from the flames, there from the burning sands.

They were, in fact, like a dog in summertime busy, now with his paw, now with his snout, tormented by the fleas and flies that bite him.

I carefully examined several faces among this group caught in the raining flames and did not know a soul, but I observed

that around each sinner’s neck a pouch was hung, each of a different color, with a coat of arms, and fixed on these they seemed to feast their eyes.

And while I looked about among the crowd, I saw something in blue on a yellow purse that had the face and bearing of a lion;

and while my eyes continued their inspection I saw another purse as red as blood exhibiting a goose more white than butter.

And one who had a blue sow, pregnant-looking, stamped on the whiteness of his moneybag asked me: “What are you doing in this pit?

Get out of here! And since you’re still alive, I’ll tell you that my neighbor Vitaliano will come to take his seat on my left side.

Among these Florentines I sit, one Paduan: time after time they fill my ears with blasts of shouting: ‘Send us down the sovereign knight

who will come bearing three goats on his pouch. ’ “ As final comment he stuck out his tongue— as far out as an ox licking its nose.

And I, afraid my staying there much longer might anger the one who warned me to be brief, turned my back on these frustrated sinners.

I found my guide already sitting high upon the back of that fierce animal; he said: “And now, take courage and be strong.

From now on we descend by stairs like these. Get on up front. I want to ride behind, to be between you and the dangerous tail. ”

A man who feels the shivers of a fever coming on, his nails already dead of color, will tremble at the mere sight of cool shade;

I was that man when I had heard his words. But then I felt those stabs of shame that make a servant brave before his valorous master.

As I squirmed around on those enormous shoulders, I wanted to cry out, “Hold on to me, ” but I had no voice to second my desire.

Then he who once before had helped me out when I was threatened put his arms around me as soon as I was settled, and held me tight;

and then he cried: “Now Geryon, start moving, descend with gentle motion, circling wide: remember you are carrying living weight. ”

Just as a boat slips back away from shore, back slowly, more and more, he left that pier; and when he felt himself all clear in space,

to where his breast had been he swung his tail and stretched it undulating like an eel, as with his paws he gathered in the air.

I doubt if Phaëthon feared more—that time he dropped the sun-reins of his father’s chariot and burned the streak of sky we see today—

or if poor Icarus did—feeling his sides unfeathering as the wax began to melt, his father shouting: “Wrong, your course is wrong”—

than I had when I felt myself in air and saw on every side nothing but air; only the beast I sat upon was there.

He moves along slowly, and swimming slowly, descends a spiral path—but I know this only from a breeze ahead and one below;

I hear now on my right the whirlpool roar with hideous sound beneath us on the ground; at this I stretch my neck to look below,

but leaning out soon made me more afraid, for I heard moaning there and saw the flames; trembling, I cowered back, tightening my legs,

and I saw then what I had not before: the spiral path of our descent to torment closing in on us, it seemed, from every side.

As the falcon on the wing for many hours, having found no prey, and having seen no signal (so that his falconer sighs: “Oh, he falls already”),

descends, worn out, circling a hundred times (instead of swooping down), settling at some distance from his master, perched in anger and disdain,

so Geryon brought us down to the bottom at the foot of the jagged cliff, almost against it, and once he got our bodies off his back, he shot off like a shaft shot from a bowstring.

There is a place in Hell called Malebolge, cut out of stone the color of iron ore, just like the circling cliff that walls it in.

Right at the center of this evil plain there yawns a very wide, deep well, whose structure I will talk of when the place itself is reached.

That belt of land remaining, then, runs round between the well and cliff, and all this space is divided into ten descending valleys,

just like a ground-plan for successive moats that in concentric circles bind their center and serve to protect the ramparts of the castle.

This was the surface image they presented; and as bridges from a castle’s portal stretch from moat to moat to reach the farthest bank,

so, from the great cliff’s base, jut spokes of rock, crossing from bank to bank, intersecting ditches until the pit’s hub cuts them off from meeting.

This is the place in which we found ourselves, once shaken from the back of Geryon. The poet turned to the left, I walked behind him.

There, on our right, I saw new suffering souls, new means of torture, and new torturers, crammed into the depths of the first ditch.

Two files of naked souls walked on the bottom, the ones on our side faced us as they passed, the others moved as we did but more quickly.

The Romans, too, in the year of the Jubilee took measures to accommodate the throngs that had to come and go across their bridge:

they fixed it so on one side all were looking at the castle, and were walking to St. Peter’s; on the other, they were moving toward the mount.

On both sides, up along the deadly rock, I saw horned devils with enormous whips lashing the backs of shades with cruel delight.

Ah, how they made them skip and lift their heels at the very first crack of the whip! Not one of them dared pause to take a second or a third!

As I walked on my eyes met with the glance of one down there; I murmured to myself: “I know this face from somewhere, I am sure. ”

And so I stopped to study him more closely; my leader also stopped, and was so kind as to allow me to retrace my steps;

and that whipped soul thought he would hide from me by lowering his face—which did no good. I said, “O you, there, with your head bent low,

if the features of your shade do not deceive me, you are Venedico Caccianemico, I’m sure. How did you get yourself in such a pickle?”

“I’m not so keen on answering, ” he said, “but I feel I must; your plain talk is compelling, it makes me think of old times in the world.

I was the one who coaxed Ghisolabelia to serve the lusty wishes of the Marquis, no matter how the sordid tale is told;