Chapter CVIII: Malebolge Part II [Simoniacs and Astrologers]
9 April 1610
“When I was a child, my mother used to tell me about the old ways of this world. Our mathematicians could display for us our path, our flow through the universe and tell us precisely when this world would end and the next world would come. We would know everything to a certainty that made us believe that it was inevitable, that everything will happen just as they said it would. The Universe told this to us in the whispers of the night...
“We were a Pagan people who painted the world with blood for the Europeans to look at and scorn. Our Astrology was replaced by their science and our gods was replaced by the Trinity. We used to look to the heavens for an answer and saw it etched in the grooves of the firmament. We could tell when something was coming; we could tell when rain would come. My mother used to tell me about the old ways of this world. We had magic then, she would say...
“Our destinies were set and our doom was certain. Destiny... that word still makes me grin. Today, we know about free will and we've accepted a religion of paradoxes: the King of Kings amongst a poor and oppressed people, not in some palace of Caesar. Bread and Wine into Body and Blood. A Divine mission carried out by weak human instruments. A world destined for an end, but with free agents inhabiting it, molding it...
“I have no regrets... especially as I lay here dying...”
“Don't talk like that, Arturo!” José cried out in the darkness of the hut.
“He,” the elder next to the two young men spoke with the uneven meter of rarely used Castillian, “has lost. Much Blood. He speaks only from... his weakness.”
José bent his head lower towards the floor. The dark strands of his hair shifted in front of his eyes doubling the dark veil of the room to his sight and freely tickling the side of Arturo's arm close to where the bandages desperately held back any more blood from sapping away. In the coolness of the hut floor, the two waited for the one laying to recover.
“Thank you...” Arturo said quietly turning his head sideways. The elder whom he now addressed rested against a wooden stool dug into the earth as if it had experienced decades of inhabiting that same spot. A wooden rod maintained the old man's arms as his body arched forward contemplatively. He was like a clay statue sprouting from the ground itself. His feet, calloused from walking in the jungle since his youth, were planted into the dirt like rough roots tilling the earth with its vegetation. The rest of him was illuminated by a straining lamp-- the only Spanish innovation he kept inside the hut. “Thank you,” Arturo repeated to the man who merely gazed back into the young man's glazed eyes with a sober understanding.
It had been an easier job than José imagined when he went to retrieve Arturo. Somehow, most of the guards had been lethargic, almost incoherent when he snuck into the barracks. He had been nearly elated at the lounging sentries before he saw Arturo with head bent forward against one of the corners of the room trying to press his wrists into his chest to stop them from letting out any more blood to feed the growing puddle on the floor underneath him. The sight was morbid enough to still turn José white just thinking of it.
The Elder was eager to help them after all they had done for the village. He and his subordinates had replaced the makeshift bandages that José wrapped around Arturo with fresh cloth and medicinal herbs hoping to staunch any more loss of blood. It was still unclear for any of them if the young Arturo would make it, although the insistence by that young man to keep talking in his delirium was, according to the Elder, a good sign of his recovery.
“I'm sorry,” José whispered to his friend. “I should have...”
“It's amazing,” Arturo interrupted him while those empty eyes merely gazed up at the ceiling as if Arturo could read something etched at the top of the hut, “the way God allows each of us to make choices... choices that also affect each other and the world around us.”
José sighed at the slight madness of his friend and put a tired hand on Arturo's shoulder and looked at him as best as he could in the dim light. “You're going to be alright, Arturo...” he said quietly before starting to stand. As José turned his head, he felt a sudden grip on his wrist.
“They say, José,” Arturo was suddenly addressing him. José turned to find himself being accosted by desperate eyes, “that my ancestors bled themselves to see visions of the future-- to see more clearly-- I tell you now, José,” and here, Arturo's grip hardened enough that fresh blood stained the bandage, “before this is over, the Twins will finally meet and those who have eaten from the other fruit will come to take all of this away from us!”
---
“I still don't understand,” Zeren objected even while passing the remainder of the bought bread to Abdullah.
“The more you think about it, the more it will distract you from being able to find her and asking her yourself,” the older one replied soothingly before sinking his teeth into the food, “she's somewhere in this city. Now that we've caught up with her, it's only a matter of time...” Abdullah watched Zeren's face while attempting to calm him down, but the younger one was lost in his thoughts.
“Do you know much about what she used to do back in the capital?” Zeren asked Abdullah cautiously only glimpsing at the other's eyes.
Abdullah shook his head. “All I know is that she's an assassin working for that perfidious and treacherous Shahim.” He almost spat at the name.
“Did you know anything about the people she was sent to kill?” Zeren asked next. He watched as Abdullah's expression visibly changed.
“No...”
Zeren nodded slowly before rising to his feet. The room they had acquired was only one step away from being a prison cell. With only one small rectangle allowing any light inside, it was the perfect place to house foreigners hoping to be unnoticed by the Magyar population that was incensed by the recent conflict with the turks like a disturbed beehive. Zeren's footsteps echoed as he paced the floor towards the window creating a kind of eerie eclipse as he moved towards it. The closer he approached the light, the harder it was for Abdullah to see.
“In any case, tonight we'll find her... I can sense it,” Zeren said while clasping the bottom sil of the window. Abdullah gazed at the square halo around Zeren's head.
---
“I'm afraid we don't have time to wait for Geryon to take us all down, Doctor de Fronsac,” the German chortled a little to himself as they finished trailing the edge of the stone partition of the 7th circle.
“How do you expect your men to get all the way down the barrier then?” de Fronsac huffed back at Gehirn.
The ticking of metal upon metal answered Renault's question as rope and hook began to form a mechanism along the edge of the great abyss. “I will allow your wife to ride on Geryon-- don't worry,” here Gehirn anticipated Renault's uneasiness, “we already know about your scorpion's trap. No harm will come to them if they stay near the front of the machine, right?”
The smile that Gehirn perpetually displayed seriously began to annoy Renault's sensibilities. How did the smug German know about this place? “That's fine with me... I'm assuming your men will take the rest of us down with your ropes? I have to warn you that it's a very long drop.”
“Of course,” Gehirn answered as he adjusted a line around himself, “naturally, it would have been very difficult for your people to do such a feat, but we've come prepared to bypass this impressive piece of geological earthwork. It was very ingenious of you to use an evacuated magma chamber for your work, Dr. de Fronsac. Not to mention the residual lava flow to heat up Phlegethon, the city of Dis, the Sands, and to provide the hot air necessary to make those hurricane force gusts in the second circle.”
“You seem to know a lot about my work,” Renault complimented sarcastically as one of the soldiers strapped him to the rope.
“Oh, quite naturally!” Gehirn replied back before dropping from the edge. Renault was similarly tugged off by the soldier on his back. Heavy boots began to negotiate the craggy surface perpendicularly. Renault's rather hefty form found it awkward as his back pressed against the metal cage of the soldier carrying him. Looking to his left, he saw Gehirn confidently crossing his arms as his mule repelled him down the side of the rock.
Looking to his other direction was the sight of his machine Geryon carrying down a silent Carmen. His eyes also wandered to the box that occupied Geryon's back with two soldiers tending to it carefully. “What do you have in the box, Gehirn?” Renault asked despite the roughness of the descent.
“A miracle of science, Dr. de Fronsac,” the German replied to him with his eyes closed-- it was almost like he was enjoying the trip down. Renault rolled his eyes. “I'm impressed, however, that despite our speed, we have not yet caught up with those children you sent down here,” was the probing statement by Gehirn.
“You shouldn't underestimate them,” Renault found his turn to be a little smug.
“I'm sure we'll catch up to them before the end. Either way, they won't be able to escape.” Gehirn returned without even opening those lids.
Renault stole a glance to his wife barely illuminated by the little lights the soldiers brought them with. He could only make out the frown on her face. The rest of the trip was spent in the metallic dirge of boots against rock mixed with the beat of Geryon's tale ringing against its back. After unhooking from the ropes, a gun barrel moved Renault forward.
“I took Dante as well in the university,” Gehirn was the first to speak, “his methods of punishment always appealed to me.”
“I'm sure I'd be happy to arrange some time for you and the tortures here, if you'd like,” Renault grinned at the German. “Let me guess, Minos would have sent you to spend some time in the boiling river?”
“You're very amusing, Dr. de Fronsac,” Herr Gehirn shook his head as he took off one of his gloves. “Though you've guessed wrong,” he added holding up his palm against a light so that Renault could see, “I'm sure he would have put me where I got this.”
Renault's mouth slackened slightly at the sight on the man's palm. “How--”
“I told you,” Herr Gehirn clucked his tongue against the inside of his mouth as he put his glove back on, “this isn't the first time I've been in this glorious little recreation of yours. For now, let's press on. The panderers and seducers should be easy enough as I recall. Since they deceived people into sexual actions, in Hell they are perpetually made to run in this first ditch of the 8th circle by horned demons and their whips symbolizing their malicious enslavement of people via exploiting sexual weakness. The second should not be too bad as well-- the Flatterers which are condemned to sink in a river of human excrement for all eternity. Because they loved spewing waste at others, so it is their home for all time. A clever way to poetically dispose of all that latrine waste you used during construction, I'm sure,” Gehirn laughed as they began to move forward, “and then we have...”
---
“The Simoniacs,” Madeleine explained while rubbing her shoulder. It had not been long since she had to reset the bone after her fall when first reaching the Malebolge, “these are the treacherous clergy who sold offices for money for their own gain.” Riku and Raul flanked her on either side as they surveyed the circle around them. Like a mosaic of eyes dotting the floor, wells and pits fanned out in either direction of the ring. “Here we have priests and bishops and popes shoved up-side-down in these mockeries of baptismal fonts with their feet aflame.”
“With their feet on fire?” Riku asked suddenly a bit curious while wiping some of the blood off of his face-- a remnant from their little trip through the first bolge where the whips had clipped his eyebrow.
“A reversal of the Holy Spirit giving the apostles power by coming to them as tongues of flame. These men abused the Church and their positions so the descent of the Holy Spirit is reversed on them and instead of anointing their heads with power and authority, flames burn their feet. This is one of Dante's most intricate punishments... inversion... just like this entire Hell is an inversion of the Holy mountain he saw in the beginning of his Poem as well as the mountain of Purgatory, is very prevalent here. The clergy who did these sins are up side down with their heads towards their true master-- Satan. You also have to realize what Dante has done... he placed the Simoniacs right after the pimps and flatterers. He is attempting to show how these men also 'pimped' out Holy Mother Church,” Madeleine had to pause at the distasteful imagery. “As more damned clergy die, each of these men get pushed into the earth and the next one is placed at the top of the hole... a grisly parody of Apostolic Succession.”
There was a moment of pause to reflect on Madeleine's explication of the poem as they wandered the ring. Each of the empty, narrow tombs was a chilling sight for each of them. “I don't see a doorway to the next bolge,” Riku said after they had walked for a good ten minutes or so covering most of the way around at a brisk pace.
“It could be that we have to...” Madeleine trailed off as she hovered her torch above one of the openings on the floor.
“But which one?” Raul asked crouching down next to her and surveying the edge of one of the tombs.
“I can't see down far enough...” Madeleine complained.
“There has to be a sign.. a trick to it to figure out which one to go into,” Riku offered.
“I'm sure there is... it's just--” Madeleine stopped herself. There was a voice approaching them from across the bend of the ring. A voice started to become audible:
“It's not much longer, Dr. de Fronsac, just be patient-- I promise that in the end, it will be a liberating experience.”
“It's liberating, isn't it?” the text message shone on Tom's cell phone, “it won't be much longer until you're with me again. And now that the good 'Dr. Sio-Pan' has shown you all the secrets of your lying friends, you can better understand why I've needed you all these years.”
Thomas Royce put his phone back into his pocket and leaned his head against the military plane. The cabin hummed against the back of his head with a rustic vibration. He shivered despite the heavy blanket that the crew had callously given him at the beginning of the trip. “It might be cold,” they had said to him as if the way he was given the words wouldn't have frozen him on the spot.
She'll give me what I've always wanted, Tom thought to himself.
I'm just tired of all this running... I have to believe her...
“We'll be arriving soon, Mr. Royce,” was the statement from the intercom. Tom didn't bother to look outside of the window-- it would be no doubt be the nothingness of a snow covered tundra or the bleak greyness of clouds. Thomas rubbed the back of his neck with a sigh and settled into his seat as comfortably as he could. He recalled the first time he heard about Marcus... a beautiful girl who seemed so perfect for him with the exception that... she wanted to be a boy.
“Do you want to have phone sex with me?” Tom remembered the line the first time they had spoken on the phone.
No! Tom cried out in his head as he lowered his face painfully and his fingers on his forehead and his palms across his eyes like some spider grappling with his temples.
She's the only way out for me, Tom said to himself as if he was pleading to someone outside of everyone's view.
You don't understand... I don't have a choice in the matter... this is what I was supposed to do... no! Destined to do... Thomas put his feet up on the edge of his seat and rested his cold cheek against his blanket covered knees.
I'm a good person... he assured himself...
I'm not like them... I'm not a hypocrite...
Chapter CVIX: Malebolge Pt. 3 [Grafters and Hypocrites] (coming soon)
