Chapter 3

“Her eyes were shining brighter than the Star;

And she began to say, gentle and low,

With voice angelical, in her own language…”

Dante, Inferno, 2.55-57

In a few hours they were far into the forest, embraced by its grim simplicity and, for the time being, insulated from all the madness of men and death. Before it got too dark, Dante stopped in a small clearing, tethering his horse and letting it graze on the grass. The woman helped him gather wood to build a fire. It was sure to be cold in the night, and the flames would keep wild animals at bay. She gathered mushrooms, some early berries, and nuts to help supplement their meager rations. There was a small stream nearby for water as well, its water icy, clear, and in some spots, deep.

While they were busy gathering wood, Dante studied her. Given their odd situation, he did so as discreetly as possible, out of respect. Even though she was of a much lower social class than he, Dante felt he had no right to judge or demean her. Dante’s eye for detail – especially details related to beautiful, young women – was refined and acute enough that a few glances at her told him a great deal, put her into a context that related her both to this unknown, barbaric land into which he’d fallen, and compared her to things more familiar to him.

She was exceptionally thin and lithe – a small framed woman carrying no extra weight except what her pregnancy had put on her. Her arms were sinewy and, through the rips in her blouse, Dante could see the taut muscles of her back. He shivered when he remembered her savagery as she had killed the man. There was no doubt of her physical strength, or her determination to use it. Her face, on the other hand, was cherubic, probably from being pregnant, and with girlish features – small, dark brown eyes and long, thick, brown hair. She had dimples in her cheeks and her chin, an upturned nose, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. She was clearly young, but Dante remembered she’d mentioned another son, so this wasn’t her first child. She was probably in her late teens or early twenties.

Dante felt chilled then flushed when he realized she was about the same age as Beatrice was the second time he saw her in Florence, the time she had actually spoken to him and thoroughly enthralled him. He allowed himself a small, grateful smile for being granted such glimpses of feminine perfection. This woman seemed so much more physical and primal than Beatrice had been on the sunny streets of Florence, while Beatrice had seemed completely spiritual and sublime, compared to this sweating peasant in a dark forest. But at that moment it made no difference to him, filling him with awe at them both. As different as the two women clearly were, Dante knew there was something in both that made him want to serve them, earn their respect and affection, live up to his potential as a man. They had within themselves not merely the object of a man’s desire, but the lure and hook that could draw him to desire something more, better, and higher than either them or himself, the same way the sun drew the tendrils of a plant upward, kept it alive, and filled it with the vital force to produce another of its kind.

The thought moved Dante from a small smile to a slight frown. He had never lived up to Beatrice, so why should today be any different? After seeing her a second time, he’d been inspired to write a poem about her. He’d called it The New Life, but his life had hardly been revived or improved by his writing it. In his mind he remained a weak, inconstant, and, most of all, petty and inconsequential man. The poem had only been a trifle, and he should have long ago exceeded it in beauty and depth, producing something worthy of Beatrice and the Lord she had served so much better and virtuously than he did. While he’d taken so long writing such a little, unimportant book, she had died, both of them already having married other, more suitable people. If in his comfortable, privileged, easy existence in Florence he had not been able to accomplish something great, beautiful, and heroic, how dare he think he might do something worthwhile for this poor woman here today, in this savage, deadly land? He could barely hope to save himself, let alone her.

Before they sat down by the fire they had built, Dante got a jacket out of the saddle bag and offered it to her. “Your blouse,” he said, “it’s torn. Put this on.” The coarse, woolen, reddish-brown frock he always wore would be adequate for him, but modesty and practicality both called for something more for the woman, especially in her condition.

Without the danger and urgency of the deadly attack when they had first met, she now seemed acutely aware of the awkwardness of their situation, and the difference in their social standing. She blushed and looked down as she took the jacket from him. “Thank you, sir.”

They sat down to eat the food she’d found, together with some bread and dried fruit he got out of the saddle bags. She didn’t make eye contact, and sat on the opposite side of the fire.

Dante realized he still didn’t know her name, so he asked her.

“Bogdana,” she said, still looking down.

Dante nodded and restrained his grimace at such an ugly name, in case she did look his way. It was surely a further indication of the barbarity of this place--that anyone could even think to place such a discordant, three-syllable monstrosity on to such a beautiful creature. Back in Italy they gave better, more mellifluous names to types of pasta, or rodents, or even insects. “Beatrice” sounded exactly like what the person so named really was – a blessed person, a blessing to others. “Bogdana” sounded like some curse spat out when one stubbed one’s toe or was gripped by an acute stomach cramp.

“What does this name mean?” he asked her.

“Gift of God, sir.”

Dante continued to nod. Why quibble with the sounds and limitations of fleshly tongues and ears, if the meaning were so right and true? After all, many blamed and mocked him for writing in Italian rather than Latin, for they thought his native language – even when it was the same as theirs! – was somehow low, vulgar, base. He would have to work on keeping that in mind when he spoke or thought of her.

“My name is Dante Alighieri.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please, enough with the ‘sir.’ It’s not necessary. We’re here, trying to survive. There’s no need to follow such rules. Is that all right?”

“Yes.” She faltered and left it at that.

“I still don’t understand what language you’re speaking, why we can communicate, if you don’t know Italian?”

She looked up and shrugged. “I don’t know either. I speak what I’ve always spoken, what I learned as a child. I don’t know why it’s similar to your language.”

“What is this place called?”

She finally met his gaze fully and again shrugged. “To the west is Hungary. Some say we belong to their kingdom. Some say we are Moldavians and should unite with other nearby people. We have always called ourselves Romani. I do not know what you would call us.”

Dante thought perhaps “Romani” was a clue that the people here remembered, however inchoately and indistinctly, that they and their language were descended from Roman invaders, long ago. There was no way to check the theory. They would just have to accept that it made their present situation much easier, since they could communicate.

“But who is your king, your monarch? Who sent those troops that were attacking your village?”

“We have no king, if you mean someone who rules this whole land in all directions for many days’ journey. Here there are just local rulers, boyars, who rule their little parts of the country. The boyar must’ve sent troops to destroy our village, or perhaps the plague is so widespread that several boyars banded together to attack us.”

Just as Bogdana’s name seemed oddly incongruent, Dante thought that word, boyar, sounded a good deal more gentle and peaceful than what he had witnessed the boyar’s men doing back at the village.

“Some people must have fled our village when the strigoi attacked. They must’ve gone to the city and asked for help. But when the monsters attack, the only help is for troops to come in and wipe out the whole area. They should’ve known that and stayed with us to fight. We would’ve had a better chance than we do now, with both the army and the strigoi after us.”

“You keep saying that word--strigoi. It must be different between our languages, because the only word I can think of in my language that sounds like that means ‘witch,’ a person who uses bad magic.”

Bogdana smiled. “Yes, people used to think the strigoi were magic, some evil spirits or cursed, sinful people. But that’s just superstition and nonsense. They are a disease, a plague. They are simply the dead, who rise up and kill the living.” She lowered her voice. “And eat them.” She raised her eyebrows. “You have never heard of this before?”

Dante shook his head. “No, never. I have never heard of such a thing anywhere else I have traveled.”

She nodded. “Well, that is a good thing, I suppose. They are a curse only to us, and the rest of the world is spared. Well, good for you all. Not so good for us. And not so good for you and me today.”

“So the man you killed back at the village, you’re saying he was already dead?” Dante could not hide the relief in his voice. It was much more palpable than the shock and wonder at speaking of a dead man being killed a second time.

“Yes, he was my neighbor. I knew him. I could never do such a thing to a living man!” She lowered her eyebrows and a hint of a glare rose in her cheeks and eyes. “What kind of monster do you think I am?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean anything like that,” he stammered. “I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of walking dead people. I was just surprised.”

Bogdana’s eyebrows rose again and she looked less angry. “Well, I suppose, since you’d never seen the living dead before, you were confused. But, make no mistake, Romani are no different than you. We raise our children and tend our crops and, when we can, we bury our dead and mourn them. But when the plague strikes and the dead walk, we do the same as you would. We fight them any way we can in order to survive.”

“I understand.” He found himself saying that to her once more, and thought he did understand her, better than he had anyone for some time. She was simple and unadorned, unashamed and without guile. More than love or attraction, he felt mostly gratitude for being allowed to meet her. “You said your family was killed?”

She lowered her head. “My husband and son died. I am just grateful I did not have to take care of them when they passed, end their suffering. I don’t think I could have done that.” When she looked up, her gaze seemed more intense. “May I ask you something? A favor? It’s quite important.”

“Of course.”

“If I die, before you kill me again, please try to get my baby out of me. I think I’m far enough along that it might live. I don’t know. It’s always hard, even in a normal birth. I know it’ll be very messy and unpleasant, but someone needs to try. It’s just not fair, otherwise. When adults die, that’s one thing. It’s to be expected. They’ve lived, they’ve sinned, they understand what life is. But a baby that’s never seen the sun? That’s something else. It deserves a chance.”

Dante stared at her, as mesmerized and unblinking as when he’d watched her pound her neighbor’s head into a greasy, grey stain on the ground, for what she was suggesting was nearly as incredible and unearthly as that act of violence. She was coldly, rationally making preparations for a nearly complete stranger to butcher her, reach into her still warm guts, and pull out her baby. Dante now saw what real survival and real love were, and how all the sacrifices he’d made were as empty and shallow as the survival they’d secured for him – small, ghostly imitations of life and love and beauty. He felt embarrassment for his meager existence. This tiny woman knew the real depths of life, while he had always played safely at the edges, not risking or suffering enough.

“I don’t know if I’m able,” he said, “but I’ll do everything I can, as if he were another Caesar.”

She smiled more broadly than he’d seen her do before. “Oh, nothing so grand as that. Just a baby, but one that is meant to live, I think. And thank you for agreeing to such a thing. If you’ve never known this plague, I know it must be difficult.”

It was turning colder. Dante got a blanket from the horse. He and Bogdana sat at the base of a tree near the fire, leaning against the trunk and slightly against each other, with the blanket wrapped around them. Her breathing felt good to him, as her head and belly had earlier, when they rested against him with all their strength and reliability. Stealing a glance at her, then at the stars wheeling above, he fell into a strangely untroubled sleep.