Chapter 33

Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine,

Was boiling down below there a dense pitch

Which upon every side the bank belimed.

Dante, Inferno, 21.16-18

After a while, they had left the tent city and were again following a trail northwards through the sick, stunted woods. As they marched on, Dante felt it getting warmer around them, though it had been much cooler in general since they climbed the cliff. At the same time he was hit by a heavy, burning smell, tinged with a sour, sulfurous scent. Not like the assault on their senses they had experienced earlier, but a steady, permeating atmosphere, still and oppressive because of the lack of wind. He also saw movement ahead of them, and heard sounds, including the moan of the dead.

They emerged out into an open area. Ahead of them there was a wide ditch full of steaming tar across their path. The acidic stench was not as bad as the putrid latrine, but it stung Dante more the closer they got to the source. Across the pit there was a rickety-looking bridge made of ropes and wooden planks. To the right and left some bleached, dead trees were partly submerged and leaning over into the simmering, black pool. Apparently the pit had expanded, swallowing up more of the forest. Dante noticed his feet felt warmer, as though the ground under them was heated; it even felt soft and spongy as they stepped forward into the clearing.

The motion came from five men standing nearer to the pool of pitch. They were whooping and waving their arms. Four of them were large men, wearing armor and carrying pole arms. The fifth wore what looked like a military uniform, and had a sword at his belt. All of them were waving at three dead men on the other side of the tar pit. As Dante and the others watched, the dead lurched forward, sinking into the pitch, oblivious either to the danger or to the bridge right next to them. The men luring them on laughed and continued to yell to them. The steps of the dead men became pitifully slow as they struggled against the viscous liquid. With each step they dragged their feet up, now covered with a clinging blanket of the thick, black substance, then moved them slightly forward, where they would sink in further than before. On the next step, their feet would not come as far out of the steaming soup. The stench assailing Dante increased as the dead began to roast, stewing themselves in their insane march toward the living flesh they desired so much. Their faces grimaced, their lips drew back to reveal their teeth, but their narrowed eyes remained fixed on the five men. Their moans did not vary in tone or volume.

When the three dead men were up past their knees, and not making much more forward progress, the five armed men turned away from them, noticing Dante and his companions.

“Beats going over there and hacking them apart, doesn’t it?” said the man with the sword, apparently their leader, as the five men approached Dante’s group. “Now they’ll just sink in, and we’ll be rid of three more of them.” He looked back at the trio. Their moans did seem to be rising in volume and tone as the boiling liquid reached their waists. Dante could even imagine he heard a note of agony in it, a slight screeching quality. “Of course, you have to listen to them for a long time. Sometimes it takes them hours to sink all the way.” He shrugged.

“Yes, that’s quite resourceful,” Adam said in an even, non-committal tone. He pointed with his staff at the bridge. “Is that the way to continue further up the valley?”

The man with the sword looked at the bridge, then back to Adam. “Why yes, it is,” he said. “But I’m afraid we’ve been told not to let anyone across. Have to contain the plague, you know. Perhaps if you came back in a few days, everything would be cleared up by then.”

Dante stepped forward. This man seemed somewhat closer to the kind he was used to dealing with in Italy. “Sir, my name is Dante,” he began. “And you are?”

“Malok,” the man said with a slight nod of his head.

“Very good, Malok,” Dante continued. “It’s our pleasure to meet someone like you, out here in the wilderness. I’m sure we can come to some understanding in this situation. My friends and I are in something of a hurry. And, as I’m sure you know, time is money.”

Malok raised an eyebrow. “Yes, well, it’s always good to find someone who knows how the world works, especially out here in such a backward, uncivilized place.”

“Oh yes, it is. I know.” Dante smiled, just a little.

Malok turned to his companions with the pole arms. “Could you four go wait by the bridge?” The four of them left, talking amongst themselves.

Malok turned back to Dante. He put his arm around Dante’s shoulder and led him away from the others. “Please, let us take a walk over here.”

Dante again noticed the disturbing sponginess of the ground, but let himself be led, nodding his approval. “Yes. It’s good to have privacy when talking to another man of the world.” Dante lowered his voice. “The others are nice enough, especially the girl, if you know what I mean.” His stomach heaved as he gave a sideways, conspiratorial look to Malok, and accompanied it with a leer, but he played his part. They both chuckled. “But they’re not so sophisticated. They might not understand how exceptions can be made. How they should be made for the right people. For the right price.”

“Oh my yes. So true. Now, you were saying something about the value of time? Perhaps something about how much a few days’ wait might be worth to someone? Someone in a hurry?”

Dante still had some silver coins, though he hardly wanted to spend all of them on this rapacious weasel. He was glad he had his remaining money distributed throughout several bags and pockets. He brought out one handful, the one he thought would be enough to get them through this. “Let’s see… all four of us are in a hurry.” He counted out four coins into his right hand. “The woman’s in an extra hurry, and I do so want to keep her happy.” Again the leer, and Dante burned with shame that it didn’t make him feel as sick as the first time. “So she’ll keep me happy!” They chuckled as another coin dropped into the pile of four with a cheery clink. He looked over his shoulder, to where the three dead men could still be seen, their arms sometimes waving out in front of themselves, sometimes groping upwards toward the planks of the bridge. They had sunk quite close to it, and one of them could nearly reach it. “Those dead men should probably be gotten away from the bridge before we try to cross it. There are three of them, yes?”

“Yes, three.” Malok glanced back at them, but immediately returned his attention to the pile of coins in Dante’s hand. It clinked three more times.

“So, I think that’s a pretty good estimate of what a wait like that might be worth?” Dante said. “Don’t you? I mean hypothetically, of course.” He let the coins jingle a bit. “Not that anyone would ask for, or offer, something so crass. I mean it just as a discussion of how something like that might work. If it came up.”

“Yes, that discussion sounds about right,” Malok said in a soothing, affable tone. “Of course, the person might have to share with others. That would definitely make it more costly.”

Dante laughed. “Oh my, yes, but only if the person were foolish enough to discuss his arrangements in front of others! A really shrewd operator would know to go off in private for the negotiations, wouldn’t he?”

Malok joined him in the laughter. “Yes. Yes he would. That would make things go much better. No need to worry about whether the amount might divide evenly. Say, by five.” He paused, still looking at the coins. Dante could tell he’d watched carefully if Dante had any left in his other hand. “Still, a really shrewd man – not a greedy one, mind you, just a shrewd one, a man who knows what his time is worth – such a man might still want the total to come out divisible by five.”

Dante nodded. “Yes, a shrewd man might want that.” He let the last two coins drop from his left hand to the pile in his right. He made a flourish of showing his left hand was empty. “An even ten is such a nice, hefty amount, isn’t it? My, they’re getting quite heavy in my hand.” Dante dropped his hand slightly to the side, and quite dexterously let the ten coins slide off and into Malok’s pocket. “Oh, there, that’s much better. Doesn’t that seem much better to you?”

Malok clapped Dante on the shoulder and turned him back toward the others. “Oh yes it does. Now let’s get to work on that valuable time we’ve been discussing.” He parted from Dante and approached his men standing by the bridge. “Hey you lazy dogs! I have a job for you. Get to the edge and poke those crazy bags of bones till they get down in the muck where they belong. Get to it!”

The four men with pole arms grumbled at these instructions but followed them. They stabbed at the three dead men, sometimes digging into their lifeless chests, sometimes hacking at their flailing arms. As they did so, Dante moved his friends closer to the bridge.

“Come on,” he said. “We should be ready to cross as soon as possible. God knows if these creatures will honor the agreement I bargained for.”

As they edged closer to the tar pit, one of the dead men managed to grab the head of one of the pole arms and pull on it. Though the blade sliced into his hands, the smile on his face seemed not to show pain but some triumph and pride at accomplishing something to harm his tormentor. The man wielding the pole arm was pulled off balance and fell forward into the hot muck. He was able to catch himself with his right foot, but that sunk in nearly up to the knee, so now he was caught in the pit. He screamed in pain and let go of the weapon, waving his arms to try to keep his balance so he didn’t fall further into the deadly mire. His back foot slid into the pitch as well, though only up to the ankle, making his screams redouble.

The dead man who had disarmed him now considered his prize, and his expression looked more like a grin. He seemed to understand enough to move his hands from the blade, to avoid mutilating himself further. He didn’t think to turn the weapon around and hold it by the right end, however, or his attack that followed might have done much more damage. As it was, he started batting and poking the weaponless man with the hilt of the pole arm, causing him to howl and curse more, though the attacks did not do any real damage.

As the other three men dropped their weapons to help pull their fellow out of the pitch, and their leader cursed their incompetence, Dante pushed his friends forward. “Go, go,” he said in a low but urgent voice. “Go now, while they’re distracted. One at a time. Hurry! You first!” He pushed Bogdana toward the bridge.

She hesitated. “Now? On that?” She looked terrified. “I thought I was scared on the cliff! This looks much worse!”

“You and Adam are the lightest,” Dante said in as reassuring a tone as he could, though he hardly felt calm or confident. “You should go first. We’ll be right behind you.”

Bogdana took a deep breath and clambered up the couple of wooden steps and on to the planks of the bridge. A better-constructed rope bridge would have two ropes for the person crossing to hold on to, but this had only one. She held on to it with her right hand and extended her left for balance, trying to scamper across as quickly and nimbly as possible. Her weight made the whole structure sag dangerously close to the tar. It would have been a frightening crossing, even if there weren’t a dead man underneath the bridge, trying to grab at the nearest plank as it sank down closer to his reach. Bogdana gave a yelp as she skipped over the dead man’s clutching fingers, then scurried on to the other side. She turned back towards them; after looking pale and aghast for an instant, she smiled and waved them on.

Adam was the next across, followed by Radovan. As the bigger man bounded across, the bridge dipped down further than before, so that the dead man succeeded in getting a hold of one of the planks, holding the bridge stretched downward in the lowest position, even after Radovan reached the other side. He turned back and saw what had happened, looking as though he was going to return and try to get the dead man to let go.

Dante waved him off. He didn’t want to shout and draw attention, but there was no choice. They’d all be to safety in another moment anyway.

“No, no!” he said. “Stay there! I can make it!”

The commander now noticed their escape. “Hey! Where are you going so fast?” he called to them. For the moment, he remained by the other four, as they were still busy trying to extricate the wounded man, their work hampered by the clumsy blows of the dead man, and also by the fact that another of them had gotten stuck up to his ankles in the pitch as he tried to help.

Dante climbed the steps up to the bridge. The dead man’s struggles were making the whole thing shake. It sounded like the supports and ropes were straining from his efforts. Dante imagined being trapped on this side of the bridge, answering to the violent, dishonest men who had just seen two of their comrades injured because of him. He ducked his head and ran.

The dead man had gotten a hold of the bridge now with both hands. He couldn’t fit his head between the planks, but he stuck his mouth and nose through as Dante leaped over him and ran the rest of the way to the other side.

The four of them walked quickly from the tar pit, trying to make it to the nearby tree line without further incident, but the commander of the bridge guards again called to them.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you just walking away? Get back here! All this shit you caused should cost you extra!”

Dante looked over his shoulder to see both the men had been freed from the pitch, and now the two uninjured ones were menacing their commander.

“Extra?” one of them said. “They paid you? Where’s our share?” The two larger men began swatting and shoving their leader between them, as Dante turned and ran into the woods.

They moved at a fast pace, Dante looking over his shoulder for signs of pursuit, but eventually he calmed down and they walked more normally.

Adam was beside him. “You seemed quite skilled at negotiating with that man,” he said to Dante.

Dante frowned. “Bribery was one of the things I was accused of when they drove me from my city,” he answered. “It wasn’t true, but you pick up some of the skills and habits of people like that when you have to deal with them. And they seem the same all over, wherever I go – simple, ugly, petty. I’d feel better if I could just hit them, stab them, because they’re so vulgar, but sometimes it’s not possible, and you have to wallow in the filth just like them, if you are to survive.”

Adam nodded. “Yes, I think we should prefer violence, even though it is ugly and harmful, to their falsehoods. But you used their wickedness against them. I doubt any of the rest of us could’ve gotten past them. We were lucky to have you with us. Rejoice at that, my son. Now, let us make haste.”

They walked on in silence, the ground sloping upward slightly. It seemed to Dante to be turning even colder than it had been before.