Dante's Inferno

by Philip Terry

In your voice tells me that you were once from Belfast.

  Know then, that I was Bobby Sands, and this

  Here is Maggie Bloody Thatcher – now let me

  Tell you why I am so unneighbourly.

  Maybe I’ve no need to tell youse that it was her

  Government that locked us up with common criminals,

  Denying us political status

  When there was a war on. But the cruelty of

  My imprisonment you can not imagine.

  When they took away our fucking clothes, we went

  On the blanket; when they emptied our chamber pots

  All over our fucking beds, only then did we

  Start our dirty protest. The stench was appalling,

  The cells were literally covered in shite,

  And everywhere you looked there were flies and maggots.

  It was like something out of Dante, like,

  Only this was really happening, in 1979.

  Through the thick pane of frosted glass

  I’d gazed on many passing moons, when I

  Woke to the banging of truncheons on perspex.

  Before you could say “Up the IRA!”

  We were ripped from our cells and dragged along

  The corridor by our legs, then we ran the gauntlet

  Of the ranked riot police who hit us with

  Truncheons as we passed; we were kicked and

  Pushed to the floor, where they pinned us down,

  Then sheared us like sheep, scrubbing us

  With floor mops, before they tossed us back inside

  Our cells. They had done their best to break us,

  And had failed, when at last they seemed to give in

  To our demands – but it was a lousy trick,

  The clothes they offered were not our own.

  We trashed the place screaming blue murder,

  Vowing revenge on the whole pack of them.

  The next day we sat in silence, and the

  Day after that as well.

  It was around the time they brought our food

  That the idea came to me, it had

  Worked in the past, so why not try it again?

  Hunger Strike. But this one would be to the death,

  Each striker starting at intervals, and each time one

  Of us died, another man would step into his shoes.

  It’s no joke watching yourself die like that,

  The pain is indescribable

  As you start digesting your own innards –

  Anyone but the immovable Thatcher

  Would have compromised before ten men died,

  But all she said was “A crime is a crime is a crime.”’

  When he had spoken these words he rolled his eyes

  Like a famine victim, then seized the miserable

  Skull with his teeth, which as a dog’s were

  Strong upon the bone. Oh Long Kesh, blot

  Upon the landscape of that fair country

  Where the sound of ‘aye’ is heard!

  So what if Bobby Sands bombed the

  Balmoral Furnishing Company,

  Did that give you the right to make him

  And nine others die before letting the

  Politicals wear their own shirts?

  The greatest betrayal in politics is retrenchment,

  And the British Government’s inflexibility,

  Matched only by the inflexibility of the hunger strikers

  Themselves, prolonged the conflict by 20 years.

  We made tracks to where the frost encases

  Another pack of shades, not bent downwards

  But fixed gazing up.

  Here the very weeping puts an end to tears,

  And the grief, which cannot find release through their eyes,

  Turns inwards like desire in hysteria,

  For their first tears formed a frozen knot

  And, like freezing eye-packs, filled up

  All the cavity beneath their eyebrows.

  It was so cold that all feeling had been driven from

  My face, my lips were numb, like skin that has

  Hardened to form a callus,

  Yet even so, it seemed to me I felt

  A wind getting up, so I asked Berrigan:

  ‘What’s the cause of such a wind,

  I thought no heat could reach these depths?’

  And Berrigan replied: ‘Just be patient, soon

  Enough you’ll see for yourself the cause of this blast.’

  They must have heard us talking, for one of the shades

  With their eyes buried beneath the crust

  Cried out as we passed: ‘You wretched sinners,

  Sunk so low that you’ve been given the last post!

  Remove the hard veils from my eyes,

  That I may give vent to my grief a wee bit,

  Before the tears ice up again.’

  Then I told him: ‘If you want me to give you

  Some first aid, first tell me who you are,

  And if I don’t help you afterwards

  May I be sunk forever beneath the ice.’

  He answered then:

  ‘I am Gerald Barry, I was given life

  For murdering Manuela Riedo, a Swiss student

  On vacation in Galway, in 2007,

  Then they gave me life again, even though I

  Pleaded guilty, for the rape of a French student

  A couple of months earlier.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and you’re already dead?

  Didn’t you serve your sentence?’

  And he replied: ‘Just what my body’s doing

  Up in the world I couldn’t tell you,

  But I’ll let you in on a secret:

  This isn’t the only corner of the campus

  Where you’ll find a fellow who hasn’t yet

  Popped his clogs. And just so that you’ll be

  All the more wanting to peel the ice-flows

  Off my face, let me tell you, when a soul

  Behaves like I did, a demon takes over the

  Body, controlling it like a zombie

  For all its remaining days on the earth,

  While the soul drops straight into this cistern here;

  And that smarmy Baptist wintering out

  Behind me, he may well be up on earth still,

  For all I know, perhaps you could tell me,

  If you’ve just come from there: he’s the

  Baptist dentist, Colin Howell, who bumped off

  His wife and his mistress’s husband,

  Then staged their joint suicide in a car

  In Castlerock. He’s been down here so many years

  I’ve lost count.’ ‘But that can’t be so,’ I said,

  ‘I’ve heard about this case, it was only recently

  He confessed, after a crisis of conscience,

  He’s only just started serving time.’

  ‘That may well be,’ he said, ‘but believe me,

  The souls of Lesley Howell and Trevor

  Buchanan had not yet reached the muddy shore

  Where Dr May greets the freshers before

  The dentist left a zombie in his place

  At the surgery, and the same goes

  For his accomplice. I swear to you,

  That’s God’s own truth. But enough of that,

  Lend me a hand as you promised, open

  My eyes.’ I did not open them.

  To be rude to him was courtesy itself.

  Ah, Londonderry! You’ve bred so many

  Fucked-up fanatics it’s a wonder God

  Doesn’t wipe you off the map, for I found

  One of your men, consorting with Galway’s worst,

  Who for his foul deeds bathes already in Cocytus,

  But his body seems alive and is serving time amongst you.

  CANTO XXXIV

  ‘Now put your goggles on,’ said Berrigan,

  ‘We’re going into Zone 9, Area D,


  The Judas Precinct as they call it,

  You’ll see why soon enough.’ As he spoke

  I peered ahead through the freezing mist,

  Which now blew fiercely into our faces,

  And in the distance I could make out

  What looked like a huge underground wind-farm,

  Though the blades were spinning faster than

  Any I’d seen before. ‘What’s with the

  Wind-turbines,’ I said, ‘why would you put something

  Like that underground?’ ‘That,’ said Berrigan,

  ‘Is no wind-farm, it was developed by

  People in Computer Science to simulate

  Arctic weather conditions – the idea was

  To reverse global warming, and they thought

  The device might have military potential too,

  Like their Robotic Fish, you know, kind of

  If they won’t do what you want, put their whole

  Country into deep freeze. If it had worked, whatever

  The ethics, they’d have made a fortune, but they

  Couldn’t get it to function outside lab

  Conditions, too many variables in the end,

  Though it’s highly effective at creating

  The freezing conditions down here, which they

  Need to preserve the Biological Archive.’

  ‘The Biological Archive?’ I asked.

  Berrigan knelt down and began to scrape

  Away the layer of frost that covered

  The ice, and as he did so I saw that

  Beneath the surface were souls fixed in this

  Frozen element (I tremble as I write it in verse),

  They looked like flies trapped in an ice cube.

  Some of them were lying flat, some stood upright,

  Some were suspended upside-down, others,

  Like gymnasts, bent their heads towards their toes.

  ‘Look,’ said Berrigan, ‘that one standing on

  His head is Enoch Powell, who gave a talk

  Here in the sixties; beside him,

  In the military garb, is Dr Inch from

  Porton Down, an army research base which

  Had links with chemical warfare –

  It was his visit which sparked the student sit-in

  Which once made Essex notorious.

  If you look closely beneath the ice

  You can still see a few groups of students

  Sitting around – they’ll sit there till doomsday

  Waiting for their demands to be met.

  Further down still, though so far down you’d be

  Lucky to catch a glimpse of them, are the

  Politicians who made war on countries

  They’d previously been happy to sell arms to –

  Some of them you might recognise, like Blair and Bush,

  Others are buried so deep you’ll never spot them.’

  ‘Berrigan,’ I said, ‘why do all these people

  Suffer together here, I mean, what do they

  Have in common? The students’ cause was just,

  From what I know about it, they were fighting

  To stop one of their fellows from being expelled

  For heckling a fascist.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘like any archive, what’s

  Collected here, at the end of the day,

  Is a pretty mixed bag, but one thing that

  Links all these people together on a

  Technical level is the betrayal of

  Benefactors:

  Blair betrayed those who’d voted him into office

  By going to war with Iraq, the students,

  Whatever the rights and wrongs of their cause,

  Betrayed those who fought to get them a free

  Education, and ultimately put this

  Right in jeopardy; Powell,

  Whose crime is the worst of all,

  Betrayed a whole generation

  of immigrants.’

  I don’t know how long we crouched, gazing into

  The ice, but by the time we stood up my

  Back was aching. ‘This way,’ said Berrigan,

  ‘There’s another part of the archive I want

  To show you.’ As we advanced into the cooler

  We reached a point where our path began to

  Descend, and on each side a wall of ice

  Rose up. When the path levelled out again

  We stopped for breath, for now the wind had dropped,

  And looking round I found myself in what

  Looked like a maze of corridors carved into

  The ice. ‘The Archive of Dreams,’ said Berrigan.

  He reached out his hand, touching the wall,

  And pulled out a vertical sheet of ice,

  Which slid out like a drawer. Looking closely

  I could see that it had a text carved

  Into its surface. ‘Read it,’ said Berrigan,

  ‘Or pick another one. This is where all the

  Dreams of staff and students who have been

  At Essex are stored, there are billions of them.’

  As he spoke I pulled out another sheet of ice

  On my left and, squinting, read out its contents:

  ‘In my dream I was racing with the VC down

  A long corridor. We both rode penny-farthings.

  The faster I pedalled the slower I went.

  At the end of the corridor lay my pension.

  As we approached it seemed to get further

  And further away. When we finally got

  To it there was nothing left except a

  Pre-decimalisation ten-shilling note.

  “I win,” said the VC. (Gender: Female.

  Member of: Staff. Age range: 36–45).’

  ‘OK,’ said Berrigan, ‘now we must go,

  We’ve seen it all.’ So saying he took my hand

  And led me down a corridor on the right

  Which was dark and endless. At last

  We came to the head of a metal staircase

  Which descended in a spiral, and as we went

  Down I grew dizzy. ‘Hold fast!’ said

  Berrigan, ‘For by such stairs must we depart

  From so much ill. The way is long, and difficult

  The road.’ I was hot and sticky by the time

  We reached the bottom. Berrigan kicked open

  The door and we stepped out into the stinking

  Service area once more, making our way

  Past the bins and the cars and the litter,

  Choking on the fumes which came from Hell’s kitchens,

  Till we came to a point from which we could

  Once more see the clear light of day.

  We took off our snow gear, throwing it

  In a skip, and crossed the road,

  Stepping straight onto a number 62.

  It was crowded with students going home

  From class, we couldn’t find a seat for us both.

  Then, as we pulled out, Berrigan began

  To tremble like a heatwave

  and vanished.

  The girl beside me was reading her stars.

  INDEX

  1984, 1

  20/20 vision, 1

  62 (bus), 1

  9/11, 1

  Abbey National, 1

  Aberfan, 1

  Achilles, 1, 2

  Act of Union, 1

  Adams, Gerry, 1

  Adès, Dawn, 1

  Aeneas, 1

  Aesop, 1, 2

  AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), 1, 2, 3, 4

  Alps, 1

  Al’s Bulge, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Alumni, 1

  Alverstoke, 1

  Amarillo, 1

  Amis, Kingsley, 1

  Amphion, 1

  Angry Brigade, 1

  Arab spring, 1

  Arbus, Diane, 1

  Archive of Dreams, 1

  Areas, 1

  Arethusa, 1
<
br />   Arias, Óscar, 1

  Aristotle, 1

  Arles, 1

  Art History, 1

  Arts Council, 1

  Ashbery, John, 1

  Auden, Wystan Hugh, 1

  Ayres, Pam, 1

  Baghdad, 1

  Bahia, 1

  Balkan Sobranie, 1

  Balmoral Furnishing Company, 1

  B&Q, 1, 2

  Bann, 1

  Barclays, 1

  Barry, Gerald, 1

  Bartle, Richard, 1

  Basildon, 1

  Bay of Biscay, 1

  Beckett, Samuel, 1

  Belfast, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Berlusconi, Silvio, 1

  Bercow, John, 1

  Big Issue, The, 1

  Big Meg, 1

  Bingo, 1

  Biological Archive, 1

  Biological Sciences, 1, 2

  Blackwater, 1

  Blair, Tony, 1

  Bloody Sunday, 1

  Bogside, 1

  Bonzo, 1

  Booker Prize, 1

  Book of Carthage, The, 1

  Bosch, Hieronymus, 1

  Botox, 1

  Bottomley, Virginia, 1

  Boudicca, 1, 2

  Boyne, 1

  Bradwell, 1

  Brainard, Joe, 1

  Brightlingsea, 1

  British Academy, 1

  British Library, 1

  Brooks, John, 1

  Broomfield, Nick, 1