Valley of the Dead (17 page)

Chapter
28

A greater fear I do not think there was

What time abandoned Phaeton the reins,

Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched.

Dante,
Inferno
, 17.106-108

They rode on in silence after their encounter with the unhappy family, until the land rose up before them in a high, rocky bluff. It extended across the valley, north to south, so if they were to proceed further west, they would have to climb it. It looked far too steep for the horses.

“Is there a trail somewhere?” Dante asked, as he unwrapped his face and brushed himself off.

Adam looked north and south, then at the peaks that loomed above the bluff, further to the west. “To the south there is.”

They proceeded to the south a short ways, staying close to the base of the cliff. They stopped when they saw the line of a trail snaking back and forth across the cliff face. The trail was a very steep switchback, and it was so narrow it was barely discernible from where they were. Although it was more navigable than the bare cliff face, it was clearly impassable for horses.

“This?” Dante asked.

Adam dismounted and the others followed. “Yes,” he said. “This is the trail to the next plateau. The one to the final plateau is even steeper, though it’s not as high.”

“I thought you said people live up there?” Dante asked as he got down. “How can this be the only way up?”

“There aren’t many this far up, and they live very simply, if wickedly,” Adam replied. “We must learn simplicity from them, and avoid their wickedness. Take only necessities – water skins and a little food. Eat what you can now. We only need to survive until tonight. We will decide our fate by then, as the people here have decided theirs.”

Dante slung two water skins over his shoulders and filled his pockets with food. He rolled the blanket up into a small bundle with a few other items, like flint and knives. Tearing a piece of bread off with his teeth, he handed the rest of the loaf to Bogdana.

“But you said there were mines up here,” Dante said. “How can they bring their goods down and sell them?”

“They mine for jewels, so they can carry their gains on their own backs,” Adam said. “It would be different if they mined iron or copper – useful, substantial things. But with such small expensive cargo, they don’t even need pack animals to help them in their existence, like normal men would. Just their own intellects and desires are enough to drive them on. And men who are totally impervious to beauty are perfect for plucking such tiny fragments of it from the darkness.”

Bogdana patted the neck of her black horse. “What will happen to the horses?” she asked.

Radovan and Adam were already starting up the trail. “The two from our monastery are trained to return to it. Without us to burden them, they should be there before we reach our goal,” Adam answered. “I suspect the other two will know to follow them. Animals are better about that.”

Bogdana followed the other two up the trail, and Dante fell in line behind her. He looked over his shoulder. The horses were already churning up a cloud of dust to the east, heading back the way they had come. He looked up the trail, at the height they had to scale, and felt fairly sure the animals had a better chance on their journey. The trail was little more than an irregular ledge, slightly wider than a person’s foot. One had to lean toward the cliff face to keep from falling over, or hold on to rocks. Sometimes there were gnarled trees and shrubs that grew there, many of them dead, and their roots and stems offered some handholds.

After toiling up the bluff for some time, they stopped for water. All of them were panting from the exertion. Dante looked down, and the height made him feel sick and dizzy. He’d never been especially afraid of heights, but balconies or frequently-used trails were one thing--those were made by civilized people to minimize a person’s fear. Hanging on to a dead tree root over a plain of ash several miles wide, with ominously described horrors above them and shambling hordes of the dead below them, that was something else entirely. That was a situation to kindle a mind like Dante’s to the most horrible flights of speculation – to thoughts of avalanches, earthquakes, and volcanoes, as well as swooping attacks from giant birds of prey, screeching ghouls tumbling down the slope, or even tree roots coming to life and wrapping around his wrist and neck, then tightening and leaving his strangled body forever on that desolate, cursed mount of slaughter. Dante closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The only sound he heard was the faint whispering of the wind. He looked to Bogdana, and the sparkle in her eyes when she glanced back at him was enough to banish his terrors for now.

They had only gone a short ways after their water break when they again stopped. “Look there,” Adam said as he pointed up. “What are they doing?”

Dante looked to where he indicated. Four birds were circling above them. The wheeling birds spiraled down toward them as they watched. They were not small birds, but they also weren’t big enough to be the kinds one would normally associate with this behavior, like eagles or vultures. If Dante’s fantasy of an aerial attack were coming true, it was not being launched by gigantic, mythological creatures. However, looking down to where his boots overhung the edge of the trail, then past them into the chasm below, Dante thought of how it wouldn’t take a harpy or a sphinx to knock him off this tiny ledge.

The four of them stayed still on the ledge and watched the birds as they descended. The animals made no sound as they came closer. Finally Dante could see that they were owls, as little sense as that made for a group of birds flying in the daytime. Dante thought how owls were the birds of Athena, but also how the Bible declared them unclean, and associated them with defeat, death, and desolation. But whether he took his symbols from Athens or Jerusalem, all such knowledge seemed pretentious and pointless to Dante right then, there on that silent, forlorn cliff. Warning, curse, blessing or prediction – none of those seemed certain, and all seemed possible.

The birds continued their descent, and Dante could see the creatures’ large, unblinking eyes looking at him. With their strange, unnatural bodies, they could even keep their eyes fixed on him throughout their spiraling flight. Their stare was neither chilling nor comforting; it wasn’t even penetrating, as though Dante were being searched or violated. He did feel as though the birds saw everything. It just didn’t bother him or reassure him, because it didn’t seem to matter to these beings what their all-encompassing gaze took in, and therefore it didn’t matter to Dante if they saw every detail of him and went on examining him forever. All-seeing eyes without judgment or approval behind them might as well be made of glass.

As the birds passed below them and tilted their heads to focus on some spot on the valley floor, Dante turned to the pair of eyes that most mattered to him in the world right now.

“Four of them, four of us,” Bogdana said.

“Yes, but we don’t know what that means, and you said just knowing that they mean something was enough for you,” Dante replied.

“Well, perhaps it is enough for me. But I don’t like it. Let’s get out of here. Who knows what else is watching us?”

Dante felt sure, as he always did, that something was watching. But for the first time in his life, he was not sure what it was. Perhaps, as with Bogdana’s earlier evaluation of portents, it did not matter: they knew they were not alone, and perhaps that was enough.

Chapter
29

There is a place in Hell called Malebolge [Evil Ditches],

Wholly of stone and of an iron colour,

As is the circle that around it turns.

Dante,
Inferno
, 18.1-3

They were panting and sweating by the time they reached the top of the cliff, but after only a short rest, they started moving once more. The trail led back into a forest on the plateau. Most of the trees here looked less sickly than those they had seen before crossing the scar, but given how many trunks Dante saw fallen on the ground, he wondered if some strange disease made them topple over, dead, even while they appeared relatively robust. By now it had become commonplace to Dante that there were no sounds, no animals or birds, no movement other than their own steady footsteps. The air seemed cooler and less dry up here, but not necessarily healthier, and certainly not more vibrant. It could have been the dank, pestilence-filled vapors of a swamp. At least the trail here was wider, so Dante could walk next to Bogdana, with Adam and Radovan ahead of them. Although they kept looking all around, after a few minutes of walking, Dante felt a bit more relaxed.

“I’ve never been up high like that,” Bogdana said as they walked. “I didn’t think I’d be so frightened.”

Her weakness was as captivating to him as her strength and seeming invulnerability. “It’s hard if you’re not used to it,” Dante said. “I’ve been many places, but with the trail so narrow, and everything so strange and dangerous here, it was very frightening.”

“You were scared?” She must’ve been very frightened on the cliff, as he had never heard her voice like this, as though she actually expected or needed him to be strong.

“Well, not so much.” Or did she want him to express vulnerability? He cursed himself inwardly. Now he wasn’t sure which was the right response.

“But something bothered you. I can tell. If it wasn’t the cliff, what was it then?”

Dante breathed deeply. He had been thinking as though she were a Florentine woman and this was some game to test him, in which he had to give a right answer for the flirtation to continue. But she had just been trying to find out how he felt. He wondered how long it would take him to get used to such honesty and reply in kind. “I don’t know. I’ve felt like hell since we crossed that cursed desert of ash. Who knew there were such places on earth?”

She nodded. “It was awful. The dust got into my mouth and nose; it still burns. But you have seen many horrible things in these three days. Was it the woman who bothered you?”

Her intuition was as unnerving as it was enchanting. Or rather, it was enchanting because it was unnerving. “Yes, I suppose it was,” he said quietly.

“Why? We’ve seen many evil and sad people. Why did she upset you so?”

“It’s just what she said was so violent. Others said wicked or selfish things, but she was so out-of-control, so bursting with anger, lashing out at everything. I hadn’t seen or thought of someone being so enraged, so much like an animal.”

Bogdana shrugged. “Many people lose their tempers all the time. And many men are much more violent than she was. Perhaps it was because she was a woman. Is that what shocked you more?”

Dante had to concentrate to keep from missing a step or faltering. He knew this was as true as it was obvious, and unstated because it was both. Though perhaps he should’ve known better by now, Dante slipped back into treating her question as some kind of test, as though he was supposed to protest that no, he would never think such a thing. Or was he supposed to agree and explain how beautiful and gentle a woman was supposed to be, perhaps even state explicitly that Bogdana was such a lovely, demure creature who could never do and say such things? Dante was fairly sure that was the wrong answer, since the first thing the beautiful woman beside him had done when they met was to bash a man’s brains into the ground. He blushed and tried to hide his growing agitation and confusion at having to give an honest and unadorned answer.

“Well, yes, I suppose it was. It did seem worse and more shocking, since she was a woman.”

“You must know women can be angry. I know men get away with it more than we do, but you must’ve seen it before.”

“Well, yes, but it was all so vulgar, gross, so
ugly
with her. Women aren’t supposed to be like that.” He’d let the last part slip out. It was honest and it felt good to be unguarded, but he knew it sounded wrong and indefensible as soon as he said it.

Bogdana arched an eyebrow and gave a small smile. He only caught it out of the corner of his eye, avoiding her glance as much as possible. “You thought us too
pretty
to say and do such things?”

“No… yes… Stop twisting my words around!” He’d meant to sound plaintive, to make her stop, but it came out as petulant, even spiteful.

Her smile dropped immediately. “Don’t be angry,” she said very softly. They walked a few steps. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

He wanted to embrace her, to weep into her long, beautiful hair and beg her forgiveness, but he would’ve restrained himself even if they’d been alone, in some place where corpses didn’t walk about and women didn’t examine men’s feelings and thoughts in such uncomfortable ways. So he just walked. “No, no, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve never been so sad and confused as I’ve been here. It’s like going mad.”

They kept walking. “I didn’t mean to mock you. I just wanted to know why you were so upset. I’ve heard many women say such things as she did in the desert. But now I think about it, there were never men around when they would talk so. You weren’t used to it. It seemed as strange and frightening to you as the cliff did to me.”

“Yes. I suppose that’s what did it,” Dante said.

“Perhaps it is good, in a way, to see these secret sorts of wickedness we hide from other people all the time, out there, where people are normal. But I’m sorry it caused you pain.”

She slipped her hand in his and squeezed. She even let her hand stay in his for a few steps. Dante thought of how different this gesture would be in Florence. So fraught with conflicted meanings it would be empty, even painful, like eating tasty food when you knew it was going to make you ill later on. But in the silent forest of death, the gesture only signified what it made visible and concrete – that two people chose to be connected to one another, that they wanted to be one instead of two. It was both more and less than it would mean in an Italian city, and Dante thought how strange it was this dark, desolate place revealed more and concealed less than the sunny streets of Florence.