Chapter 18

And I, who stood intent upon beholding,

Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon,

All of them naked and with angry look.

Dante, Inferno, 7.109-111

They came within sight of the wall. The gate, as the man at the cart had said, looked small – wide enough for a horse and rider, perhaps for two animals or people, if they were pushed right up against one another. They saw no one near it, but before they got too close to it, they heard voices from one of the houses.

Many of the larger houses in the town were built in a way Dante was familiar with, having two or three storeys surrounding a central courtyard. A sort of tunnel passed through the ground floor, under the upper storeys, thereby connecting the courtyard directly to the street. The voices seemed to be coming from the courtyard of one of these buildings. The door to the tunnel was open, and inside it was dark, though they could see the grey light of the courtyard beyond it.

Radovan looked into the tunnel. “It’s too narrow and low for the horses,” he said. “And we can’t leave them alone out here. Maybe we should just keep going.”

“There are people in there,” Adam said. “Bogdana and I can stay here. You two go in and warn them and come right back out. Unless one of you wants to stay out here and I’ll go in.”

Radovan and Dante looked at each other. Dante was not at all sure which was really the more dangerous assignment: staying out here in the street, visible and exposed to attack from any direction, or going in to greet more citizens of this town, when all they had met so far were less than welcoming. But he was sure, from the way the offer had been presented, to refuse or modify it would seem craven, dishonorable, and unworthy. He climbed down from his horse at the same time Radovan did.

The two of them proceeded to the door, and Radovan shouted down the tunnel. “Hello? Do you need help?”

The voices stopped for a second, then one replied, “Help? No, but come in, if you want. It’s safe.”

Radovan and Dante looked at each other, drew their swords, and proceeded down the tunnel. The tunnel was short enough that it was not too dark inside it, so they could see where they were stepping. As dank and frightening as it was there, nothing menaced them as they walked through to the courtyard.

In the courtyard were six big men, standing around two large tables in the middle of the area. A ladder leaned against one of the walls, thereby connecting the courtyard to a window on the second floor. The men were all dressed in the coarse clothes of those who worked with their hands – laborers, smiths, miners, masons. The inside of the courtyard – both the walls and ground – were spattered everywhere with blood, as were the men. The place reeked of blood, with a tinge of alcohol rising above the metallic, slightly sweet smell of mortality. In one corner was a pile of motionless bodies. In several other places, indistinct to Dante at first, other bodies writhed and moaned. They appeared to be chained to the walls or ground. Dante kept his focus on these more than on the men, as he and Radovan approached the tables.

The tables were not set for the kind of debauchery Dante had just seen, but for more simmering, malignant entertainment. What food there was set on it was simple – large loaves of dark bread mostly, with a few scraps of cheese. There were wine skins and bottles too, but the smell was not of wine or beer, but of distilled liquor. It was the strange, smoky, bracing smell of brandy or the like, not the acidic and cloying smell of wine, nor the stale and yeasty smell of beer. Scattered among these provisions of animal necessities there were tools and weapons – knives, hatchets, pliers, awls, hammers. Most all of these had blood on them.

Dante looked at the men. They were not the red-faced, wide-eyed drunks he had seen at the bear-baiting spectacle. The faces here were dark and grizzled, with dirt, soot, and blood filling every crease, and their eyes squinted slightly. These men didn’t loll about and laugh like drunks. They stood there as erect and solid as tombstones, their huge fists waiting at their sides. These were not the kind of men who drank to forget and to lose control. These men drank just enough to gain control and direct their fury more potently and destructively. These were the kind of men who could come home every night and beat their wives nearly to death, or who could come home and pummel the neighbor to death, because he had been beating his wife or children. Or because his dog was barking. Or because it was Tuesday. Or they might go their whole lives without ever striking anyone in anger, though the thought had been with them every waking moment of their lives, as well as filling their every dream, and they had restrained such violence with an inhuman denial and discipline, never vanquishing or exorcising it. These men were not dissipated. Instead, their animal essence was too tightly packed within their huge frames. They were not brash and loud, but that made them all the more dangerous.

The six men seemed to sense their visitors’ unease. They stayed on the other side of the table and did not make any moves to approach Dante and Radovan, which was just fine with Dante.

One of the men, with a bushy, red beard and hair, addressed the two newcomers. “You are right, strangers, to be on your guard. But please, we mean you no harm. We have everything we need here to vent our anger and keep ourselves content with our lot. Perhaps you would join us for a moment? Surely you too are sick at what is happening all around us, and need the blessed release that comes from roaring out your anger against all this madness and pain?”

With this strange speech, Dante began to rethink his estimate of how much the men drank. “What do you mean?” he asked. “What are you doing here? Are those people dead?” He gestured with his free hand at the chained bodies, writhing in various postures around the courtyard.

“Of course,” the man responded. “We only chain them up if they are. What do you take us for?”

“Men who have lost much,” Dante said.

“Then you are right.” The man gestured to his friends. “You all stay here, by the tables. Take a rest, while I explain to our visitors. Will that be all right?”

“All right,” Dante said.

The man led them to where a dead man was chained to the wall by a thick collar around his neck. His mouth was gagged with cloths and a leather belt, and his hands were tied behind his back. He was bloody all over his face and torso. The dead man grew more agitated as they came closer, straining at the end of his chain and roaring into the gag, though all that came out was a sort of huffing, snorting sound. His eyes went wide with rage at them, with seething jealousy that they were alive, and overwhelming frustration that he could not make them dead.

Dante and Radovan stopped about ten feet from the furthest reach of the dead man’s tether, but their guide took another couple steps, raised his gigantic right fist, and smashed it into the dead man’s left eye. The blow turned the dead man slightly and drove him down to one knee, but he was almost immediately back up, still huffing into his gag, and looking more at Dante than at his attacker. The undead creature appeared almost plaintive now, it seemed to Dante, though he might have imagined it in the toxic swirl of emotions in the dead man’s eyes.

“Good afternoon, Filip,” his attacker said then punched him in the stomach, and then in the face again. The one blow bent him down, while the other straightened him back up.

The big man stepped back to where Dante and Radovan watched silently, mouths slightly open. “This is Filip,” he said. “He was my neighbor. He must’ve turned into one of them while I was away from my home, working at the forge. He killed my wife. She’s locked up, down in the basement. I found him eating her heart. He might as well have eaten mine, since I stopped feeling anything at that moment.” He held up his two enormous, calloused hands. “Perhaps I should’ve crushed his head at once, but I had this better idea: to keep him here, so my anger and grief would never have to go away.” He gestured to the other men, in the center of the courtyard around the tables. “I found some of my friends, and they liked the idea, too. It would give us something to do. It would give us some relief. So we brought some of these things here, the ones we didn’t kill outright, the ones who’d caused us some special pain and loss, and now we know they’ll always suffer. Our revenge against them never needs to end. Never.”

Radovan shook his head. “Where is the honor in that?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “He’s chained up. He can’t fight back. He’s not even alive or responsible anymore. It’s over. End it.”

The man smiled. His teeth seemed larger than normal, and they looked exceptionally white against his dirty face. “Honor? Oh, I know there’s no honor here. But where is there any honor anymore? Men say they kill other men for honor, but I don’t believe them. They kill animals for food, I suppose. But this is better than honor or food. These things aren’t even human anymore. That’s what makes it right! I can hit these things over and over and never kill them. I can spit on them, piss on them if I want to, and no one will dare stop me or tell me I’m doing something wrong, exactly because these things aren’t human, and because they hurt all of us so badly. I can do anything I want, just for spite and revenge. Come, let me show you another.”

“No, really, that’s not necessary,” Dante stammered.

The man was not smiling now. “I will show you another,” he said slowly. “And then you can go.”

Dante tried to keep himself from looking at the man’s fists, so as not to show fear, but it was all he could do to stop from shaking, either at the idea of this giant losing his temper, or at the prospect of what further torture and inhumanity they were going to be forced to witness.

“Another,” he said quietly. “And then we’ll go.”

The man led them to where a thin man was chained to the wall by his wrists, his arms straight out from his sides, parallel to the ground, his body leaning forward slightly, bending his arms behind himself. The man was older, with a long, grey beard almost down to his waist. He wore a robe, and both it and his beard were soaked in blood. He wore no muzzle, and his lips fell inward to his mouth, the way someone’s lips do when they have no teeth. If he only imagined the other dead man looked plaintive, Dante could not say the same about this one. Both his moan and his wet, exhausted-looking eyes could only be described as mournful and pathetic, like a beaten dog’s.

“This is my favorite,” the man said. “This is our dear priest. This is the all-licensed fool who told us every week about peace and brotherhood and a kind, loving, sky Daddy who’d make everything all right! A Father? My real father never brought me much joy, and you promised me yet another one to punish me? But this one would be even more powerful, more terrible? Is this your Kingdom of God? This is hell on earth. It’s not heaven, but I can enjoy it in my own way.” He bent down to pick up a pair of pliers off the ground. It was then Dante noticed all the teeth scattered around. The old priest hadn’t been toothless when they bound him to the wall. “‘If your eye offends you, pluck it out!’ Didn’t I hear you preach that shit once? But eyes come later. I want you to see what I’m doing, see what’s coming, a little longer, I think. So we’ll go with, ‘If your hand offends you, cut it off, and cast it from you.’”

With the pliers he grabbed the pinkie of the dead man’s left hand. Dante was still not sure if the dead felt pain. He had seen them receive crippling wounds without flinching, but he didn’t know if this was because they didn’t feel them, or had the willpower to ignore them. But as the dead man’s moan rose to a piercing wail, and his whole body went rigid as he strained against his bonds, it seemed all too likely he was feeling the abuse, as well as the burning hate and rage that guided the torturer’s hand. There was a sick snapping sound, then the digit and the tool were flung to the ground.

“Well, at least part of a hand. We need to save some of it for tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.”

Dante watched the dead man go slack. His attention was drawn away by some clattering, moaning, and shrieking nearby. He looked to where there was some kind of animal pen that was built next to the wall of the courtyard, which formed one side of the enclosure. The gate at the front of it had been reinforced with metal bars, and there was a lattice work of metal bars across the top of it as well. This lattice work on top was rattling violently, and Dante could see small fingers poking up through it. Almost involuntarily, he took two steps towards the enclosure.

“I know I promised only one more thing to show you,” the man said. “But perhaps you’d look at these as well?”

Dante took another step and peered closer at the metal grate. He saw lips pressed up to it, along with mad, wild eyes. Some tongues snaked up through the gaps between the bars. The sounds subsided to grunts and growls.

“These are the children. We keep them safe here. They like being out in the fresh air, I think.”

“But why?” Radovan asked. “You keep the others to torture them, because you’re so angry at them. But what do you do with the children, if you say you’re keeping them safe?”

“Well, we don’t punish or hurt them!” The big man actually looked taken aback by the insinuation, if that were possible. “We’re not animals.”

“No, you are not animals,” Dante said quietly, still looking at the hungry eyes staring at him from behind the metal bars, the tongues licking the air like they could taste blood and fear.

“Sometimes, before we go to pay a visit to Filip or the good reverend or one of the others, we like to look at the children first, in case we need a reminder of how angry we are. We look at their poor, innocent faces, turned into ravening beasts, at their bloody necks and broken limbs, and then we can spend a much more satisfying few minutes with one of the monsters that made them this way. Sometimes our grief and rage subside, just a little. We find the children do a fine job of renewing it.”

Dante looked at the man. “We have seen what you wanted to show us. We will go now.”

“Of course.”

“You won’t come with us?”

“No, why would we? We have everything we need right here.” He gestured around the courtyard. “We will find more of the monsters to satisfy our wrath. And if there get to be too many of them, we can climb up to the second floor.” He pointed to the ladder. “We have a couple chained up there, too, in case.”

Dante nodded, then he and Radovan walked back to where Adam and Bogdana were waiting for them.

“We heard screaming,” Adam said. “We were about to come in and see if you needed help. Are you all right?”

“We’re fine,” Dante said. “Physically, we are fine.”

“Are there people in there? Did you warn them?”

“Yes,” Radovan answered, as he and Dante got back on their horses.

“Are they coming out?” Adam continued.

“No,” Radovan said.

“Why not?”

“They say they already have everything they want,” Dante said.

“That’s funny,” Bogdana said.

As usual, she had caught and interpreted his tone much more fully than Adam, as wise as he was. Dante lowered and turned his head away from her. He couldn’t stand for her to see his eyes filling with tears – both because of the shame it caused him at his own weakness, and out of fear it might cause her to lose courage. “In a way, I suppose it is,” he said very softly, so only she could hear it.

She leaned closer to him, till her shoulder touched his. “But you are not laughing.” Then even more softly she said, “I know when you are hurt, Dante. When what you’ve seen is almost too much for you.” It was the first time she’d said his name, and he felt quite certain she knew the power that would have over him. All women did. “And I know you are stronger than you think. I need you. I trust you.”

He wiped his eyes on his upper sleeve as briefly and discreetly as he could, so that he could turn back to her. Her face was serene – not happy or sad, not even concerned exactly, but placid, as he needed it to be at that moment. He dared to touch her cheek with the back of his hand, and she let him, briefly, before she withdrew just a little. She gave him the barest hint of a smile before she lightly kicked her horse’s flanks and moved on ahead of him.