Dante's Inferno (11 page)

Who could, even in the goriest movie,

Tell the tale of blood and guts

That I saw now – no matter how he filmed it!

I guarantee you every effect would fail,

Our minds cannot deal with such terror

Beside which all representation must pale.

If one could pile up all the wounded

Who once on Vinegar Hill

Mourned their blood, spilled by the Brits,

And those from that long siege,

Fed on a diet of ‘dogs, mice

                      and candles’, as Kee writes,

And pile them with the ranks mown down

On the banks of the Boyne,

And with all the bodies left sliced apart

In heaps by Cú Chulainn, and add those

Torn apart by car bombs or letter bombs,

Conquered, weaponless, on the way to work –

If all these dismembered and maimed were brought

Together, the scene would be nothing to

Compare to Zone 8, Area I’s bloody sight.

No wine cask with its staves all ripped apart

Gaped wider than this man I saw split

From his chin                        to where we fart.

His guts hung out,

       I saw his lungs, his liver,

          and the coiled tube that turns all to shit.

While I stared at his inner organs

He caught my eye and with both hands

Opened     his chest: ‘See how I tear myself!

See how the Reverend Ian Paisley is

Ripped asunder by his own bare hands!

And look over there, where my wee boy is,

He’s not a pretty sight, not with his

Face cut up from his chin to the crown.

The sinners that you see here

Are all the same – we’re the ones

Who in life tore everything apart with schism,

And so in death you see us torn apart.

A surgeon stands back there who trims us all

In this cruel way, and each of these wicked souls

Feels anew the sting of his scalpel

Every time we make the round of this sad road,

For our wounds have all healed up again

By the time we get back to his surgery.

But who the Hell are you, hovering by the bridge

Trying to wriggle out of the

                             sentence passed on you?’

‘Death doesn’t have him yet, he’s not here

To suffer for his sins,’ answered Berrigan,

‘I, who am dead, lead him from gyre to gyre

So he may see how it is in Hell.’

More than a hundred in that place stopped

Short, when they heard these words,

Forgetting, in their amazement, what they

Suffered, to gaze at me          a living freak.

‘Well then, you who will see the sun,

Tell that Gerry Adams that he’d better

Get the Fenians to stop stockpiling arms,

Or he might just fall victim to a stray bullet.’

With the heel of one boot raised, as if to go,

Paisley spoke these words,

                                          then was off.

Another, with no legs, and his throat slit,

And his nose torn off

                               to where his eyebrows met,

Who had stopped to gawp like all the rest,

Stepped out of the group and opened up

His throat to speak:

‘You there, who walk this path uncondemned,

Remember the face of Seamus Twomey

Who planted the car bomb in Donegal Street,

Killing six, and maiming more than the

Souls you see here. And tell those

Dealers from Bogside, Martin and Shaun,

That if our foresight here is no deception,

They’ll be turfed off a yacht in Lough Neagh,

To feed the fishes, by a double-dealing crook.’

‘If you want me to tell your story up above,’

I said, ‘tell me now, who is that one without

Lips or tongue, who hides at your side?’

At that, he laid his fist on this one’s hair,

Dragging him up for us to see, and cried:

‘Here he is, and he is mute.

This civil servant stood at Thatcher’s arm

And drowned her doubts: he swore that men who

Are prepared to fast should be prepared to die.’

How helpless and confused he looked,

His tongue lopped off as far down as the throat,

This curio who once spoke with such assurance.

Then one who had both arms, but no hands,

And no ears,

                     raised his stumps in the air

And cried: ‘No doubt you remember

Michael McKevitt, who refused to

Give up the bloody struggle, and took

It to the streets of Omagh!’

‘A botched job,’ I replied, ‘which spelled

The end of you and your thugs.’

And he, this fresh wound added to the others,

Went off like one gone mad from pain.

But I remained, to watch the crowd,

And saw a sight I could hardly credit,

A body with no head that shuffled along,

Moving no different from the rest.

He held his severed head up by its hair,

Wielding it like a lamp,

And as it opened its eyes it spoke:

‘See my despair!’ When he arrived

Below the bridge on which we trod,

Halfway to the Data Archive,

He held the head up high, to let it

Speak from nearer by. ‘Examine

Close my monstrous punishment,

And see if you find suffering to equal

Mine. I am Oliver Cromwell, who

Showed the Irish my hard steel,

And severed the head of King Charles.

For this I carry my own head

Forever cut from its life-source.

In me you see the punishment fit the crime.’

The many souls and their crippling mutilations

Had made my eyes so drunk with horror

That they longed only to stay, and weep,

But Berrigan said: ‘What are you gawping at?

Are you going to stand there all day ogling

These wretched mutilated shadows?

You weren’t like this in the other Zones.

Now hold on, if you want to count them, one by one,

Remember, the Essex coastline

Is 350 miles long.

We haven’t got that much time to play with,

And you’ve still got plenty to see.

‘If you knew the reason I was sticking around,’

I said, ‘then maybe you’d understand,

And let me stay a little longer.’

But already Berrigan was making tracks.

I followed close behind him, trying to

Get him to listen: ‘Look,’ I said,

‘In that pit where I kept my eyes so fixed,

There’s a dear shade belonging to my own family,

Who was stabbed in the chest by a shithead dealer.’

Then Berrigan spoke: ‘There’s no point dwelling

On past wrongs, what’s done is done.

I saw the one you speak of, he was standing

Beneath the bridge, dressed in sportswear,

With blood all over his chest, and seemed to

Beckon you, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father.

I even heard the other shades calling him:

Finn Western Davey – but you were staring at

Cromwell all the while, and he went off.’

‘Bollocks,’ I said, ‘his violent death, aged 23,

Which is still fresh, has yet to be atoned for,

The shits who were involved got off lightly,

And are unrepentant. I guess that’s why

He went off without addressing me,

And that only makes my sorrow the more.’

We chatted on about this until we reached

The other end of the bridge, by the Data Archive,

Digital double of Al’s Bulge,

And its last outpost,

From where we saw into the final pit,

And with more light could have seen to the bottom.

Wild shrieks and lamentations pierced me,

Like arrows whose tips had been barbed with pity,

So that I put my hands over my ears.

Imagine all the diseased in the hospitals

Of Baghdad, Tripoli and Kaboul,

Between the months of July and August,

All flung together in one ditch;

Such was the misery here; and the stench

That came out was that of rotting flesh.

We passed the bridge’s end to where a solitary

Bench stood, at the top of a grassy bank,

From which viewing point

One could see quite clearly into the depths.

I doubt the misery of the Indians

Who died in their hundreds

During the siege of Fort Pitt,

When Trent gave the Delawares

Two blankets and a handkerchief from the

Pittsburgh smallpox hospital, as a gift,

Was greater than the sorrow I beheld of the

Souls languishing in heaps in that dim valley.

One used a corpsed belly for a bolster,

One lay with his head crushed into another’s

Shoulder, while others crawled aimlessly

Along the tarmac track. Step by step we went,

Without speech, examining the sick

Who could not raise their bodies.

I saw two sit leaning against each other,

Like book-ends in a library closed down by

The cuts, covered from head to toe with scabs.

I never saw a chisel applied by

A porter, who has been called to

Break into an office with a broken lock,

Struck with more force than those two used,

Clawing themselves with their bare nails

To find release from the terrible itching.

They worked their nails down under the scabs

The way Keith Floyd used to wield a knife

To de-scale a bream for a fish supper.

‘You there,’ began Berrigan, ‘scraping off

Your mail shirts with your fingers’ ends,

Like Edward Scissorhands,

Tell us, are there any Americans

Hanging about in this ditch?’

‘We’re Americans,’ one of them spoke back,

Through eyes that wept salt tears.

‘But who the Hell are you, walking tall

Amongst these dudes you see disfigured here?’

And Berrigan replied: ‘I’m a shade, like you,

Who, with this living man, goes from pit to pit,

And I mean to show him all of Hell.’

At that, they sat up straight, and turned

To stare at us wide-eyed, and the heads

Of many another in the ditch looked up too.

Berrigan came up beside me and whispered

In my ear: ‘Now it’s your turn to speak.’

Then, since he wanted me to take over,

I said: ‘Tell us who you are, and where

You’re from, so that your stories may

Live on in the world you have left behind.’

‘I’m from Kansas,’ one of them replied,

‘I got blown out of the air by friendly fire

Patrolling the no-fly zone over Iraq.

We were out on a mission,

Flying above the cloud layer, high on

Adrenaline, Napalm Death on the headphones;

The two of us you see here

Thought we might put the wind up our

Squadron leader, we were just goofing around,

Like we were in
Top Gun
; so, we dived on him,

Like we would if we were hostile,

Meaning to pull off at the last minute,

And I guess we kind of left it a little

Bit late, so he opens fire with two Exocets,

Blows us right out of the skies,
kppowww!’

And I said to the poet: ‘They don’t come

Dumber than the Americans. Even the

Irish are no match for them.’

‘Watch your lip, dude, or I might just crawl out

Of this ditch,’ the other one snapped,

‘You’ve obviously never metten an Iraqi.’

Then, as if to prove his point, he began

To reel off a string of jokes:

‘Question: What should Iraq get for its air

Defence system? Answer: A refund.

Question: Why doesn’t Saddam go out drinking?

Answer: Because he can get bombed at home.’

Berrigan was looking more and more pissed off

With his countryman, as one gag followed another

In an endless stream. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ he said,

Swinging a boot at him. ‘It’s you and your

Kind who have dragged our flag through the mud.

We’re out of here.’ At that he turned,

And began to climb once more up the bank.

According to myth, Juno was once so

Enraged against the Thebans over Semele,

That she made King Athamas go insane,

So insane, that when he saw his wife

Stepping towards him, with a child in each hand,

He cried out: ‘Spread the nets,

That I may trap the lioness and her cubs

At the pass!’ And then he spread out his

Crazy hands as if he were the net,

Grabbed one of his sons and battered his brains

Out against a rock. She drowned herself

                       with the other one.

And when Adam Ant, fresh out of the nuthouse,

Thought someone was threatening his daughter,

He lost it completely

Put a brick through the window of

The Dick Turpin, and pulled out a blunderbuss

(For he is a keen collector of antiques);

As the police dragged him off, now out of his mind,

They say he began to howl, like a dog.

The thought of going back inside snapped his mind.

But never in Thebes or London did you see

Crazies as ferocious as the two naked shades

I saw now as I looked back into the ditch:

They charged about madly like wild boar

When hunted, snarling and snapping

At anything in their path.

One, crashing into the comedian,

Fixed his incisors on his neck-joint, dragging

Him off so that his belly was flayed by the tarmac.

Trembling, where he now sat alone, the Kansan

Cried: ‘You see that crazed spirit? That’s Jonny Saatchi.

He used to do impressions in the SU Bar,

Then he earned a tidy sum sitting

Exams for the Chinese. He’s rabid!’

‘And what about the other one?’ I asked.

‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to know.

That dude came here as a mature student

To study Biological Sciences,

Under Professor Pretty. He was a

Hardened drinker who got so wasted one night

That he shagged his own step-daughter,

She was in Myth Studies, a girl half his age.’

When the rabid pair, on whom I had kept

My eyes fixed, had run off

I shifted my gaze to look on the other

Ill-born spirits;

I saw one, a woman, shaped like a lute,

Except that she still walked on legs,

Like some creature out of Hieronymus Bosch.

Bloated by booze

Her body’s parts were disproportioned

By unconverted toxins,

So that her face was all shrunken and petite,

While her belly stuck out like a wide shelf,

Or like the prow of a ship,

And her swollen lips were folded back,

Parched and wide apart,

As those of a creature suffering from

A raging fever, craving a drop to drink.

‘Hello,’ she said, ‘what are you doing here,

Do I know you? And why are you walking

Around without any affliction?

I can’t think why you should. Hey?

Look carefully, and see the misery

Of Elaine Jordan. When I was still living

I had enough of what I wished. Ah!

And I don’t regret it at all, not for

One moment. But look at me now –

I crave one drop of water!

The little streams that run through the fields

In Dedham Vale, towards Willy Lott’s Cottage,

I can’t get them out of my head, they haunt

Me, making me like one of those worried spectres

In Tennyson’s poetry. Do you read Tennyson?

Those waters, their memory makes me far

More parched than this wasting disease.

I can still see Wivenhoe, where I learned

To get up at the crack of dawn

To shuffle up to the Co-op – that hill! –

So as to feed my habit.

Ah! If I could find those wretched dons

That taught me, making me dream,

So that I stayed up all night.

The misery of it. If I could lay my hands

On them, they’re here somewhere, I’m sure of it,

But these legs of mine won’t go far.

If I could cover a couple of yards a day,

And thought they were ten miles away,

I’d be off. But I can’t even manage that.’

‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘who are those two spirits

Lying supine beside you,

Steaming like wet gloves in wintertime?’

‘These two? They were here already when I

Tumbled into this ditch, they haven’t stirred

Since and I doubt they ever will.

One of them is John Coombes, he’s so lazy

He never even bothered to turn up to

His own lectures. He was always

Finding some excuse to skive off work,

Leaving the poor students in the lurch,

Even in their final year. The other one

Was the Dean, a gifted linguist,

But not a real worker like me.’

Then one of the pair, perhaps disgruntled

By the introduction he was given,

Suddenly sat up and struck out with his fist

At the rigid belly. It sounded like a drum.

Then Elaine Jordan took a swing at him

With her arm, catching him on the jaw

With equal force, saying to him:

‘Though I can’t get about like I used to

I still have a steady arm when required!’

To which he snapped back: ‘But it wasn’t so steady

When you used to go out on the piss, was it?’

‘Get your hands off me, you old prophet!’

She yelled. ‘Go back to sleep!

You think yourself some grand academic,

But where are all those books you promised?

You’re nothing but a sham!’

I was engrossed in their wrangling

When Berrigan tugged me by the shoulder,

Saying: ‘Leave off,

You don’t want to get tied up in these old

Quarrels, you should know better.’

When I heard the anger in his voice

I turned scarlet through shame.

I felt like one in a dream,

Caught in a situation I wished to be out of,

Who, still dreaming, wishes it only a dream –

But I was not dreaming. ‘Forget it,’

Said Berrigan, ‘you don’t need to go there.

But if you meet up with this sort again,

Slagging each other off while Rome burns,

Just remember, I’m here for you. To develop

A taste for this kind of talk is dangerous.’