The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs

by Michael Ciardi

As my journey continued, I ventured into a chasm that rivaled the blackness of Nature’s womb itself. Yet I eventually penetrated this sable sheath, leaving me to distinguish a line of crestfallen souls roaming about the terrain as forlornly as I. It soon became evident to me that these people assembled here for a cruel fate that awaited them. They sidled on either side of my position, seemingly oblivious to any gesture I proposed for their eyes. Since the landscape’s funneled passageway permitted progress in only one direction, I followed the others until our movement became hampered by an impediment almost too hideous to look upon.

  A prodigious beast stationed itself at a gateway into a yet unknown realm. It snarled despicably at these listless beings. They congregated in front of its slithering tail, which unfolded like the entrails of a disemboweled creature. It hissed with the malice of a thousand vexed serpents. The people shuffled like blind lemmings, migrating into range of the vile guardian’s tentacle-like appendage. In turn, its tail coiled around each one sentenced to eternal damnation. With some, the tail wound up to nine times around their writhing torsos, while others received a far kinder encirclement of two.

  The mystery summoning me to my next destination ended on this plot of unholy soil. Dante’s vision of Minos guarded the Second Circle of Hell, and these souls were systematically consigned to their compartments of agony. The screams of those condemned rebounded in my skull, but the unfeasibly merciless monster revealed no clemency to their cries. I watched in sheer dismay as each person was commissioned to his or her cabinet of misery. Since I viewed myself as one who was still alive, Minos hadn’t yet acquired the power to cast a punishment upon me. But when I approached the entry into the mouth of the Inferno itself, my progress was stalled by the foreboding words it unleashed.

  “Seek not a passage through this funneled tomb,

  For now, I have no permit to entwine thy wretched soul,

  And position ye for His minions to at last consume

  “Until thy spirit howls and bleeds, as it is my Master’s goal

  To relish the unuttered sins that despoils verdant Earth,

  For it is beyond my stance all ye fears shall unfold.

  “It should also be noted that never lies a dearth

  Of vile creations that stain all things deemed divine,

  So proceed with this knowledge: brief shall be thy mirth.”

  The magnitude of Minos’s sloth-like form kept me at bay, but its ominous words sealed my choice to flee as far from this hellish region as my legs might’ve carried me. Despite my cowardly intentions, I managed to plant only three paces between us before I encountered another man. This elder seemed impervious to the creature’s verdict. His flesh was as gray as stone and swathed in a burgundy robe. He must’ve detected the perplexity teeming from my eyes, but he showed no evidence of curtailing his intentions.

  When the viscous air parted between us, I recognized this figure as the Roman poet Virgil. He walked alone to greet me, which indicated that he hadn’t yet escorted Dante into purgatory’s spiraled passageway. As it was only proper, the Teacher and creator of the epic Aeneid loaned his stoic voice to my ears.

  “O, sullen traveler of the all too human kind

  What summons ye to a province of such torment?

  For on primrose pathways better soil ye shall find.

  “But, alas, weary eyes tell of thy grave lament,

  As one from the Dark Wood with a she-wolf at heel

  To cross Acheron, and descend where pagans ferment.

  “And here onto circle two doth thou aim to kneel

  At the mercy of Minos whose tail, like a whip,

  Enwraps the bodies of all the sinners sealed.”

  I presently understood that Hell’s second tier, as outlined by Dante, housed those tainted spirits whose appetites for carnality whirled as interchangeably as a tempest’s winds. Perhaps it was a fitting punishment for them to be tossed in an interminable storm, where the rain and wind churned like the lust that once raged within their loins. My place among these beings now required a closer examination. With Virgil as my escort, I entered the turbulent zone. Minos opened the passageway into a cyclone of fury that reeked with an acrid scent of bodily fluids. My eyes were immediately besieged by a vision of an untold number of naked malefactors screaming in anguish. Their battered figures twisted within the storm’s tornado. As I walked beneath the unforgiving gale, I felt pity for those consigned to such an impious fate.

  At Virgil’s command, I tilted my head toward the frothing mass of clouds spinning overhead. Within the pockets of wind I distinguished the faces of those who fell prey to erotic fantasies. Just as Dante had described, the figures of Achilles, Cleopatra, Tristan, Paris, and Helen kept company here, but none of them acknowledged me. At a loss for understanding my place among these fornicators, I begged Virgil to offer me some guidance.

  “Answer me, Great Poet, why have you taken me to this region? I am not the one who surrendered my hand to lust. What words can any of these people offer me?”

  Virgil extended his arms overhead as if he possessed a power to manipulate the wriggling souls at will. From the deepest conduits within the storm clouds, an unclad female’s shape cast a pitiful stare upon me. The tears in her eyes mixed with the cold sleet pelting her skin. Virgil then spoke again to convey the purpose of this visitation.

  “Behold this visage of a fair lady who sinfully tripped

  Into the arms of her deformed husband’s brother,

  And it was from Romantic lure that they soon sipped

  “So deeply and devoutly that they discarded the other,

  For Arthurian Legend brought into ardent motion

  A whirlwind of lust that soon sought to smother.

  “The love, by proxy, of Giovanni’s devotion

  Proved fatal to both in a volley of stones,

  And so now you see Francesca’s commotion.”

 

  Indeed, I witnessed the tormented face of Francesca da Rimini, who died for a forbidden taste of passion from the lips of the handsome tempter Paolo. From all the windblown spirits within this realm, she alone descended from the air, as she would again duplicate for Dante on his appointment. When I looked upon this woman, I saw my own wife suffering the same fate as this beleaguered spirit.

  “What do you expect from me now?” I cried to Virgil. “Do you want me to look upon this woman and feel remorse for her? You must know that my own heart still aches. I can’t see her as a victim now. Her own selfish desire has spawned this unrest. I have no sympathy to offer her.”

  Rather than respond to my rant, the exalted poet maneuvered to one side and called forth the raven-haired adulteress from the twister’s swath. Francesca clasped her hands in front of her body as one melded gesture of prayer while stating her appeal.

  “Through this wild and wanton wind my body is blown,

  And my bare limbs are frayed from the ceaseless rain,

  But should I expect any sorrow for this seed I’ve sewn?

  “Now I must bear this burden of eternal strife and pain

  Betwixt the carnal currents that mark a serpent’s path

  Through the lecherous passages that I tried in vain

  “To halt with my dejected cries in a merciless wrath

  That shall never stop from echoing in the rank air.

  Tis far more than a peccadillo in the aftermath.”

  On this matter, as Virgil fully comprehended, my opinion became nothing more than a fruitless vibration in a throng of other abandoned mutes. In this place of affliction, the time for repentance had already expired. Even if I sought to alter Francesca’s fate, I was powerless to do so. Virgil, however, brought me here to observe lust’s hurtfulness from both sides of the act. As hellish as my misery now appeared, far more torturous circles of despair existed in the bowels this Inferno. Virgil’s admonition left little else for me to debate.

  “Listen, traveler, as others have done both far and near.

  This woman’s shame besmirche
s all the good she’s done,

  But doth one act of love render her closer to Satan’s lair?

  “Mind ye, seven more descents follow this very one.

  Greed, Gluttony, and Anger are next in turn.

  How low dost thou wish to sink from the golden sun?

  “Couldst it be still farther, where the heretics all burn?

  Or doth a spiral of violence quicken thy beating heart?

  If not, Fraud and Treachery shall be the last lessons learn’d.”

  Virgil already realized that I knew of the terrors that lurked beneath the ledge we now stood upon. The Teacher’s silence compelled me to set my eyes on Francesca’s melancholic expression again. But even with the knowledge of my own soul enduring a far more regrettable judgment than her own, I couldn’t discount the deception she thrust upon her faithful husband Giovanni.

  “If you didn’t really love your husband,” I scolded her, “then you had an obligation to relay your feelings honestly to him. But instead, you let the fanciful visions of Lancelot and Guinevere persuade you to deceive him. Maybe it’s never enough to say you’re sorry after the deed is done.”

  Francesca continued to look at me as if my thoughts regarding her mattered for reasons I didn’t yet know about. She kept her palms clasped against one another, still entreating for the Paradise that was forever beyond her grasp.

  “Unsettled one, let not ye pride guide thou as a aimless dart

  Toward the caverns of chaos beneath my naked toes,

  For the scorned lover often knows it from the start,

  “Because pure affection withheld always doth show

  The withered petals of Love’s neglected flowers

  Never settles amidst a woeful wind that blows.

  “And so mark thy memory upon this very hour

  If ye love her still, reveal it until thy bitter end.

  In this selfless gesture lies the cherish’d power.”

  And with those parting words Francesca’s doomed spirit returned to the turbulent squall to resume its punishment. Virgil still maintained his stance beside me, perhaps monitoring my expression as I pondered my wife’s own licentiousness. I felt as though he blamed me for what I couldn’t have controlled.

  “What would you have me do?” I implored the reposed poet. “Am I expected to endure this shame with no retaliation whatsoever? What recourse do I have if I ignore the filthy deeds she’s done with her lover?”

  Virgil held forth his wizened hand and cupped it tenderly on my shoulder. He then delivered a stare onto me that I’m sure he used to dissolve the rancor from many other betrayed hearts. I had no choice other than to listen to his advice.

  “To seek an untainted woman is a quest that doth bend

  The fabric of thy ties to a thousand tattered seams.

  And from all this hardship thy goodness shall ne’er mend

  “A woven fortress where two true creations gleam.

  Love can neither answer all thy questions wondered,

  Nor supply the stitches for a cloak that’s deemed

  “Impenetrable by the vices mankind often ponders.

  So rely on a faith purer than thou own feelings

  Or succumb to this Inferno with all the dead asunder.”

  I didn’t wish to learn anything else from Virgil on this matter. If I had the fortitude to scratch deeper into Hell’s sandbox, I might’ve been remembered as courageous as Dante himself. But only a shadow of that man flickered within me, for he had secured divine love in a lady already ensconced in Paradise. But Dante’s Beatrice couldn’t be my salvation. Whatever imperfections existed in my own marriage, I had to confront them in a manner that made sense to us both.

  My frozen stance indicated to Virgil that I had ventured far enough into this dismal abyss. Virgil agreed to accompany me back from Hell and stayed at my side until I reached the Ante-Inferno, where all who entered abandoned any hope they had attained in life. The Teacher’s glum expression hinted to his disappointment in my efforts. Perhaps he believed that I hadn’t observed enough of Satan’s playground to dissuade me from acting upon the wicked notions filtering through my brain.

  “You’ve shown me more than I ever hoped to see,” I informed the poet. Virgil nodded his head, but I still detected a reservation in his eyes. “If I should need you again,” I continued, “I will come back and try to find you.”

  Virgil touched me again, this time with both his hands tracing across my shoulders simultaneously. A benevolence projected from the poet’s fingertips as his voice supplied a final message to my ears.

  “Go forth in thy campaign, but avoid the Devil’s dealings,

  For heroes of the past and future truly dost contest

  To the blunders of hubris that surely hath them reeling

  “Into the pits of ice and fire where they’ll find no rest.

  If gauntlets mar thy heart, ye must forever endure

  And settle beside a lake that ye oft relished best.

  “Stare upon thy image with notions clean and pure,

  Because beheld within this water ye soon shall see

  That peace within thyself is where humane spirits soar.”

  Chapter 51

  1:48 P.M.