Page 71 of Katabasis

Professor Grimes had always liked his little tests.

But John Gradus only hmmed and asked, “What’s that?”

No, he couldn’t be Professor Grimes. Professor Grimes hardly cared so much about the world outside his office.

He would never have asked her about Talking Heads.

Fashions changed; Professor Grimes stayed the same.

He lived in a castle in the clouds. All that mattered was his ideas, and how far they could take him.

At least John Gradus gave as well as he got, so long as she did not inquire much about personal identity.

On the topic of Hell he was very forthcoming, if not always helpful.

Most of what he said left her with a million more questions.

She asked him what those pieces of writing were, and he explained, “Why, dissertations, of course. That much should be obvious.”

“Dissertations about what?”

“Whatever we’re in for.”

“Does everyone write them?”

“We all must write them.”

“Who reads them?”

“Whoever is in charge. The Furies. Lord Yama himself. Who knows? I’ve yet to witness anyone read them, mind, but then it’s a rare dissertation that passes muster.

They say to write until you’ve done your best work, and when you’ve done your best work, the ships will come to bring you across the Lethe. ”

“What’s the point of them?”

“Entertainment, I’m sure. I certainly enjoy reading others’ drafts. I came upon a whole stack subtitled My Lolita the other day. Now, that one was really fun!”

“I mean, what makes a good dissertation?”

“Bugger if I know. That’s the whole puzzle, isn’t it?”

She couldn’t tell if he was being flippant on purpose or if he truly did not know. “Is that how you’re being punished, then? You don’t get out until you’ve thoroughly understood your own crime?”

“Some think that.”

“Then how do you pass?”

This made Gradus hem and haw. After a pause he said, “The only thing anyone knows for sure is that they say you have to tell the truth. That’s all.”

“Is it very hard to tell the truth?”

“It must be. Never seen anyone get out.”

“It must drive them crazy,” Alice mused.

She knew her fair share of dissertating students.

At Cambridge it seemed the standard for a good dissertation was asymptotic.

The closer you got, the more obvious it became that you would never hit the limit.

Eventually what decided things were the restrictions of time—you turned work in on the deadline, perfect or not.

But there were no deadlines in Hell. You had an eternity for mistakes. “I bet it’s agonizing.”

“Probably,” said Gradus. “I don’t try.”

“Why not?”

“No more questions,” he said. “Our deal is that you entertain me.”

“Oh, fine.”

“What about this man you’re looking for? What’s he dissertating on?”

“Oh—well, I don’t really know.” Alice paused a moment.

What was the worst sin Professor Grimes had ever committed?

When she put her mind to it, she couldn’t come up with anything but the vaguest descriptors, and none of them rang true.

He stole (but for good reason). He was cruel (with good purpose, to those who deserved it).

“We both had our theories, but I don’t think there’s any way to know. ”

Gradus’s voice sharpened, a hook finding purchase. “You both?”

“Oh,” said Alice.

Gradus’s footsteps slowed. His essence billowed out like a pleased, squatting cat. “Now, this is interesting.”

Her pain delighted him. He kept rubbing his smoky hands together, like a child in glee over a bedtime story.

Then what? He kept asking this. Then what?

Then what? Like a child demanding more sweets, relishing all the droplets of living affect he could wring from her.

She told him about the Weaver Girl but kept vague about Elspeth; she described the bog in Wrath, and the Escher trap, the cuckoo clock, Peter’s sacrifice.

The screech of metal. The Kripkes’ delight.

“Hold on.” Gradus stopped walking then. His aura changed. The swishy, indifferent whirl of gray stilled to something human—a chill Alice recognized well. The clammy chill of fear. “The Kripkes are after you?”

“Why would you be afraid of the Kripkes?”

“They are fiends,” said Gradus. “They are the worst things to haunt this land.”

“But you’re already dead, you—” But then Alice remembered Elspeth’s words. I’ve seen the Kripkes murder a soul. “Well. I suppose we’d better walk faster.”

“But now this is exciting !” Gradus spread his hands, palms open. “A tragedy, a revenge story, a rescue, a race against time. Will you escape the Kripkes? Or will they hunt you down, before you can finish your fallen comrade’s quest?”

“I suppose.”

“What do you mean, you suppose ?”

“I mean, that sounds like a fine script.” Alice felt very tired. “I suppose I’ll follow it.”

“What do you mean, you’ll follow it?” Somehow she had agitated Gradus. His coat started whipping around both their heels, as if he could encircle her in a vortex of his irritation. “Aren’t you upset?” he demanded. “Aren’t you devastated ?”

“Sure, Gradus.”

“You sound as if you don’t even know what you’re doing here.”

“That’s just it.” His frustration was exhausting. She wanted to swat him away like a fly. “I don’t know. I’m just tired.”

“But don’t you care about anything?”

“I suppose I should.”

How could she explain to him this numbness?

It wasn’t that Alice didn’t care, it was that she had cared so much, and a thread had snapped.

Some fundamental capacity was broken. She felt hurled out of the world of meaning, feeling, attachment.

She couldn’t bleed anymore. She was drained already.

Scripts were all she had now, and they were enough to keep her walking, but not enough for her heart to start beating.

“But you’re alive ,” said Gradus, as if this were the answer to everything.

“Against all my desires. Yes.”

Gradus said nothing. She walked and waited, hoping he would change the subject, but he remained silent.

She sensed she had upset him, but how, she could not say.

Gradus had not seemed the sensitive type.

Until now she’d been comfortable in their callous rapport.

At one point she had insinuated he was Jack the Ripper, and he had only laughed.

But he asked no more questions. For the rest of the morning they walked in silence.

Once or twice he muttered to himself, but she could not make out what he said.

She sensed only his resentment, a bitter and hostile wave, as abrupt as it was confusing.

And Alice, well accustomed to placating volatile men, knew only to await her punishment.

“ So.” Gradus spoke at last. “There it is.”

For the past hour they had climbed up a steep and rocky hill. Alice was nearly bent over with exhaustion, hands over her knees. Her eyes had rarely left the ground in front of her. Now she lifted her head, straightened up, and gasped.

There lay the city of Dis. It was so much more marvelous than she had ever imagined: a gleaming white castle, three rings thronged at the bottom by snaking inlets of water that churned against its foundations, black waves smashing so furiously against stone, bone, brick, that Alice could hear the distant roar where she stood.

She had read much literature about Dis. The Land of the Damned.

The Doleful City. For Virgil’s Aeneid , Dis was the name for all of Hell itself, and, within its realm, a fortress ringed by three walls, surrounded by a river of fire.

For Dante, Dis was only the city for the sixth through ninth circles of Hell, a great fortress in a land littered with broken sepulchers.

Others said the city of Dis and Pandemonium were one and the same; the realm of Lucifer and the demons.

They said Dis was a foul and evil place, forsaken by God.

No one had prepared her for the city’s beauty.

Dante mentioned only that the city had high walls.

He did not describe how those walls were the perfect mirror image of the sacred places its inhabitants had scorned; how Dis’s architecture was a clear rebuke to the Vatican.

No; in truth, it put the Vatican to shame.

Michelangelo and Raphael had had only one lifetime to praise their God, but the inhabitants of Dis had eons.

Dis was the extremes of human perfection.

Dis was faultless marble, balustrades and domes, tiled courtyards lined with columns.

Borges had written that the city was horrific, so horrific that the mere fact of its existence polluted the past and future, and compromised the stars; but had Alice and Borges witnessed the same city?

Where Borges had found a perversion, Alice found a miracle.

Dis was a millennium of effort, a haven constructed by those without salvation.

Alice could see so clearly what it was trying to be, and what it could never be.

But even in that fundamental lack there was something lovely, transcendent, a testament to human will.

The city of Dis was defiant to the idea of an afterworld itself.

They had left the campus behind now; this was a temple.

Damn us , it said, and we will make Hell shine .

Gradus’s voice had a funny lilt to it. “Suppose your man’s in there.”

Alice felt a prickle across her skin. “Is it dangerous?”

“Hardly,” said Gradus. “Those in Dis are no threat to you. You’ll see. They are very particular sinners.”

“What do you mean? Who’s in there?”

“Traitors. Oath-breakers. Those who made a promise and failed to keep it.”

This answer disappointed her. She had always assumed Dante was exaggerating. “That doesn’t seem so bad.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Well, I mean, everyone breaks promises.”

“There are trivial promises,” agreed Gradus. “And then there are declarations. Promises that say, This is what you mean to me, and this is what I owe to you . The kinds of promises a husband makes to a wife. That which a parent makes to a child. That which a teacher makes to a student.”

A chill ran over Alice’s spine.

Staring at Dis, she felt as if a shard of ice were pressing against her bosom.

That beauty took on a vicious gleam. She sensed its inner sin—a biting, evil thing; that force that poisoned bonds, turned friend against friend and kin against kin.

She could only describe that feeling as a violation; the sharpest, severest pain, that which pierced in her inner depths where she felt most safe.

“So what did you do, Gradus?” she asked. “Who did you betray?”

Some part of her wanted to get back at him, though she couldn’t say for what.

His silence? His sudden coldness? She felt judged and shamed by him, and now that he was speaking again, she wanted to make him hurt.

Anyhow, he’d been so callous with his own questions, and she felt she could now be callous in return.

“You didn’t ask that,” said Gradus.

“Yes I did. What did you do? Why aren’t you writing?”

“Never ask that.”

Come on , she nearly said, but realized he was serious. There was no laughter in his face.

“I am warning you, Alice Law.” Gradus’s eyes were stone.

He can’t be from this century , Alice thought suddenly, no one from this century has such time-deadened eyes.

He has been here for lifetimes. “You may take confessions if freely offered. That is permitted. But if you wish to survive, remember this one rule about Dis. Never ask.”