Hard Margins

Short Story on Dante for Macabre Monday

Ora cen porta l'un de' duri margini;

 e 'l fummo del ruscel di sopra aduggia,

 sì che dal foco salva l'acqua e li argini.

Dante Inferno XV.1-3

I slopped through the mireless muck with the dirty pool leaking through my boots. Looking down I saw the smallest hole had gotten larger and that meant there was more mud to come. I looked over at my companion’s sandals and saw that he was walking on the water, and not for the first or last time I realized there was some advantage to being in the afterlife. As the comedian said: “So it goes.”

“Virgil, what is this place?”

“It is between the wood of the suicides and lower down where punishments are more painful.”

“One small step.” I looked down at the sulphur-soaked water.

“Indeed.”

I looked over the rancid ocean and saw barnacles on the rocks. I almost went down but the tide swept over the wall, and I could see steam rising from the rocks. After that, I stood very straight so as not to plunge myself into the flaming water.

Then I looked up and saw a cold border of land and beyond that, I could see the onrushing tide as if between Bruges and the sea. I have to admit it frightened me, as the real part frightened the Flemings, because it came so suddenly, so starkly, so eruptively. But we were not on the surface in Europe but in the steaming parts of the Satan-infested underworld. And that meant that the tide was more pernicious, more pugnacious, and somehow more paradisal in that it cleansed more than any natural tide could be. It was roaring towards us like the speed of sound intent upon washing us away.

 I scrambled to get to the highest point of the barnacle-laden rocks, while my companion simply stepped lightly over them.

“That’s a neat trick, you ought to teach me sometime.”

Virgil merely replied: “It is easy, you just need to die first.”

At this, I grunted. “Every trick you have comes with a wallop to get it started.”

“I’m an open book.” He shrugged and went back to leading.

I was up on the rocks when I could see a group of souls running from the suicide woods that we had just encountered. They too were rushing to get loose of the foamy ocean, but they were of one in purpose. So, I ran to catch up with one that I think I knew from his life. “Burnetto, is this you?”

The soul only looked at me for a moment and then hastily answered: “It is me but kindly step out of my way because if I stop fire will burn me. The fire which burns and never stops.”

Of course, I couldn’t stay in his way with a confession like that but kept running because I wanted to know what sin brought him to this place.

“Burnetto, I knew you in life and you seemed quite honest and not fit for this hellish landscape.” Though I stared at his face the fact that he was moving continually streamed the muscles all over the body.  He looked as if he was going to faint from the exertion.

“It’s true that in most dealings I was above board. But in my bookkeeping, I took money and moved the hard edges. Work that was done in England was moved to Ireland.”  He then redoubled his efforts because the water was quite close.

“It still the same work.”

I must have looked puzzled because he looked at me for just an instant and then explained: “But taxed differently. And gradually this became known as one of the things that gained the holders of stock sufficient money that they changed accounts to me.”

I stood there on the rocks and turned to Virgil.

Virgil explained: “So a man can be virtuous to a fault in speech but pernicious in writing.”  He explained this as simply a way as he could,  believing me to be an idiot.  And he may well have been right. The simplicity of what he did turned my mind to stone for I was dumbfounded.

Then the soul tripled his efforts and blew by me as if I was standing still.  He caught up with the rest of the souls trying to get out of a thundercloud that zapped souls as it went.

Virgil said to me: “Often it is with one hand that sends us down here to hell when the rest of the body longs for heaven.”

“But why?”

“Morality is how we treat the people who we know. Ethics is how we treat the people who do not know. Yet is easy to change wrongs from morals to ethics, because with ethical behavior comes no twang of guilt.

We watched them speed away but one tripped over a rock and into the sea. We watched as his leg was consumed by fire and burned down to the bone. He managed to pull his leg though it was more skeleton than leg at that point. He tripped away swaying from side to side as flecks of burning soot covered his hair and face, burning away small pieces of flesh and sinew.

I looked out at the sea and realized that its burning brined was a trap for anyone who thinks of themself as moral but does not consider whether they are ethical as well.

And I in the air skeletal vultures came down on any soul who tripped and tour out funiculars of flesh.