Chapter 25

I heard on all sides lamentations uttered,

And person none beheld I who might make them,

Whence, utterly bewildered, I stood still.

Dante, Inferno, 13.22-24

Shortly after seeing the vultures, Dante noticed movement in the trees ahead of them. This time, however, it was not high up in the branches. Radovan looked back and gestured toward the motion, so all of them were aware of the possible attackers. He and Dante drew their swords as they continued to make their way along the path.

As they approached the movement, Dante heard the moan of the dead, though it seemed softer and more labored than usual. More like an exhausted whisper of despair, rather than the gnawing drone of hunger Dante had grown used to in the last two days. The moving shapes were clearly two dead people, but by this time in the day, the forest had grown quite dark, so Dante still could not make out what these corpses were doing. They weren’t approaching them, but seemed to remain where they were, though their arms and legs were moving. The dead people’s movements increased as Dante and his companions got closer to them.

They emerged in a small clearing, where they could finally discern the situation of the two figures. On the other side of the clearing there were two human forms hanging from a branch of one of the trees. They were suspended from the tree limb by ropes around their necks, with their arms and legs free. There were two small logs on the ground near their feet. They must’ve climbed up on those and then kicked them away, Dante thought. They appeared to be a young man and woman. The man was bigger, though neither of them had been very large. They were both thin and pale, with black hair, and dressed in simple, peasant clothes. Both had torn clothes, with their sleeves soaked in blood, and the young woman had a gaping wound on her neck as well. As he got closer, Dante could see the two were quite young, probably a bit younger than Bogdana.

Dante and the others dismounted and came closer to the unfortunate couple. As the living approached, the two dead people grew more agitated. The ropes around their necks kept their moan from rising to the kind of hungry, enraged roar Dante had heard before. Instead, it remained a steady and despondent wheeze drawn and expelled through their clenched teeth. Their limbs flailed about, which set their bodies to swinging, causing them to bump into one another. Sometimes it almost appeared they were trying to embrace each other, but the illusion quickly passed, for in the next moment, their movements would pass from groping and pulling on one another, to something more like slapping and clawing. The man, being affixed to the branch at a point closer to the trunk, occasionally bounced off the tree, his hands reaching for the trunk for a moment, but in the next instant he’d kick at the tree and send his body swinging back away from it. In a better, saner world, with tiny figures made of wood instead of human corpses, the whole spectacle would’ve sent Dante into fits of laughter.

“Why have I lived long enough to see this?” he asked in a low voice, as they watched the grotesque show before them. “I used to love puppet shows when I was a boy. I’d beg to go see them. I would beg God to keep me from seeing this, except I think somehow it must be His will that I look.”

“You watched the puppet shows to learn something?” Adam asked. “They were probably fables, with a moral?”

Dante looked at him. As always, everything was compacted and distilled by Adam, as if the sickening, overwhelming human degradation and despair in front of them could be sterilized and boiled down to a lesson. He gestured to the two wriggling corpses with his left hand. “This has a moral? This? What? That all is death, and never-ending pain? The hopeless, tortured existence of a beast caught in a trap? The pointless gibbering and contortions of an idiot beggar left to die on the street?” Dante’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “I don’t think such a lesson is from God. It must be from somewhere else.”

Adam seemed to know it would be better now to lower his gaze, out of respect for Dante’s righteous anger, and for the suffering of the dead in front of them. “Yes,” he said quietly, “the lesson is from somewhere else. It is from this hellish hole we have been driven into. But God is even here, friend. I know you know that.”

There was a pause as Dante considered what to do.

“How did they even get like this?” Radovan said.

“They must’ve been bitten and didn’t want to turn into the undead,” Adam said. “They thought killing themselves would stop it, but they were wrong.” He glanced over at Dante.

Dante returned the glance. “Death solves nothing. Death changes nothing,” he said, barely opening his mouth. His words felt very cold on his lips. Adam looked away, nodding slightly.

Radovan did not appear to notice the exchange between Dante and Adam. He shook his head. “They should’ve known better. Everyone knows you’ll turn once you’re bitten, even if something else kills you before the plague does.”

Bogdana finally moved from the group, going to the saddle of her horse to retrieve the hatchet. “They were young,” she said as she returned. “They didn’t know. At least they did it in such a way that they couldn’t hurt others.” She looked up at the contorted faces as the dead twisted in their madness and frustration. Their movements appeared one moment like a tragic, graceful dance, and the next like the spasms of a sick and mortally wounded animal. “They probably helped each other to do it. Maybe they were lovers. Maybe each of them only wanted to help the other avoid more pain and shame and guilt. They were scared, confused, in agony. Look at them. They still are.” She turned back to Dante and the others. “I’ve seen enough yesterday and today to know which people to condemn and despise, and which to pity and help. I’m beginning to wonder when you three are going to catch on.”

Dante blushed, not quite understanding how he deserved the sting of her reprimand, but knowing nonetheless it must somehow be right and for his good. Even as her speech wounded and embarrassed him, it gave him much more strength and resolve than was offered by the coldly rational words that had dropped from his lips a moment ago.

“All right,” he said. “What do we need to do now? Why do you think we are here, now, in this horrible place?”

“Why, to get them down, of course” she answered. “To finish what they started. To do what they wanted to do, rather than what they foolishly tried to do the wrong way at the wrong time.”

Adam nodded. “She is right. Judgment is not the point here. Mercy should be our only concern.”

“So there is mercy, even in this hell?” Dante asked.

“Perhaps here most of all,” Adam said.

“You already said God is here,” Bogdana said. “So love and mercy must be here. But God does not often do merciful acts on His own. That is our job.” She turned to Radovan. “Can you do what needs to be done, while they’re still hanging? Can you reach high enough?”

Radovan appeared to consider it. “It would help if someone held their feet. If they would stop swinging back and forth, it’d be easy enough. Up under the chin. It’d be over in a second. If they even feel pain.”

Bogdana offered the handle of the hatchet to Dante. “I can’t very well climb the tree. Take this and cut the branch they’re hanging from when he’s done.”

Dante sheathed his sword so he could take the hatchet with his right hand. He looked at the grim piece of iron and nodded.

He hadn’t climbed a tree since he was a boy. It was much harder than he remembered. His hands and feet kept slipping, especially his feet, since there were no branches close enough to the ground for him to step up onto. As he struggled up the tree, he noticed he did not hear the pathetic sound of the dead anymore, and the branch had stopped swaying around from their exertions. Dante glanced over his shoulder to confirm the others were finished with what they needed to do, and, seeing that they were, he hacked at the branch. Hanging on to another branch with his left hand was an awkward position, and he couldn’t get much force behind the blows. After a few minutes of hard work, he was panting and both his arms ached, but he had done enough damage to the branch that it no longer supported the weight of the bodies. Dante looked over his shoulder again, and saw the branch’s burden rested on the earth. Bogdana was cutting through their nooses with a knife.

Dante dropped to the ground and joined the others. Radovan broke the branch from which the bodies had hung into smaller pieces, while Bogdana and Adam kicked piles of pine needles on top of the corpses. The layer of needles on the forest floor was almost as unbelievable and monstrous as Dante had imagined. It was nearly up to their ankles, so in just a minute they’d created a huge pile by clearing a circle around the bier.

Radovan tossed the two logs the people had used in their final act on top of the pile, then knelt down to start the fire. “Should we say something?” he asked softly. “I know some people believe suicide is a very grave sin.”

“Despair is a very grave sin and a disease,” Adam said. “Suicide is some people’s ineffectual treatment of that disease. As you have reminded us, daughter, we only know what bodily disease these people suffered from. We do not know whether their souls were sick. We have freed them from their bodily torment. We can only have faith God will save them from any spiritual anguish.”

“I remember a story. I don’t know where it is in the Bible,” Bogdana said as she stepped closer to the bier. “I heard it a few times in church, and I liked it because it seemed so simple, even a little funny. A widow keeps asking a wicked judge to help her, and he does not. But finally she wears him out, and he helps her. The story ends by saying if an unjust man will act this way, how much more can we expect from our righteous God? I think that’s true. He is strong, and we are weak. He is perfect, and we are not. If we have done what little we can, we know He can do so much more. That isn’t even faith. It’s just common sense.”

The tiny woman knelt down, her hands on her thighs, palms up. Though her enormous belly made her movements more difficult and slower, Dante thought she moved with an exceptional grace and confidence, as though what she were doing was both necessary and beautiful. As he watched her, Dante had the strangest notion that the Blessed Virgin must’ve looked like this when she prayed during her pregnancy, when God Himself was inside her, giving her terrible strength and unutterable wisdom. The thought was rendered more fascinating and vivid to him as he remembered the frescoes of the Virgin he had seen in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, shortly after they had been painted in 1306. They had included one of a pregnant Mary visiting her pregnant cousin Elizabeth. Dazzlingly beautiful, the paintings were nothing like the captivating reality before him. Now such images seemed to him stilted and artificial, whereas here was the breathing reality of a peasant girl who was filled with the Spirit of God. The paintings were merely human products, no matter how talented their artist. Now he beheld an icon fashioned by the one, true Divine Artist. Dante had to blink and shake his head. The vision was so intoxicating and incongruous, there in that foul, polluted clearing, with nothing but disease and death for miles and miles around them.

Bogdana leaned her head back. “We do not know their names, Lord,” she prayed, “but You do, as You know their hearts. They died, but You can never die. Their bodies failed them, but You can never fail any of Your servants, who call on You night and day from this pit. We know You are their redeemer. Amen.” She lowered her head, as did Dante and the others, before Radovan sent the sparks into the bone-dry, ash-grey needles, which immediately took light.

They stayed a few moments as the pyre roared to life. Dante watched the plume of grey smoke as it cascaded up into the branches above. He wondered if the smoke would mingle with the clouds, which were exactly the same color, or if it would sneak past them to find the sun, which must still be shining somewhere, in some place that for now Dante could only imagine.