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THE TRUE STORY OF A.D.
( Marco Milani ITA - La vera storia di A. D. - Translation by Davide Riccio )
He was asking to himself why he was ever so fool to be entered in that loathing cave, infested with bats and, besides, full of wet piercing into him deep in the bones.
- Stupid reckless conceited fellow - he kept on repeating to himself. Just for giving himself airs in front of those snobbish aristocrats, that he was not even used to consider as friends of him… They had money, for sure, but nothing more. Much money as well as ignorance and just a little was suffice for looking smart in such a sphere.
It was a sequence of tedious thoughts, his ones, while he was advancing slowly in the intricate passings in search of nothing of definite, except to prove he could face something that the others, for fear, couldn’t even dare to try. Thoughts, however, that were interrupted by an unexpected event… first an earthquake, then the collapse.
He really didn’t like the situation where he found himself, and on his own initiative in addition. To be entrapped in the heart of the mountain in consequence of a landslide was becoming lethal to his emotional stability.
- Claustrophobia? That’s for girls! - How many times he had said so for making sensation and to proud himself upon how he was strong, daring and brave.
A lump in his throat didn’t loose and melt, while chilly creeps, along the spine, recalled him how he was in a blue funk and cold.
The torch had just shed the last flash of light when, taking fresh heart, from a good knowledge, he became conscious of what felt claustrophobic people he laughed and sneered at because of the constrictive compelled seclusion. The longing for air, space, light, freedom. A great longing, absolute, of getting out of the strait imprisonment in a close spot. Such a longing to drive someone mad.
- What a madman should do in a situation like this? - he asked to himself seizing the collar of his shirt, and realized he was bathed in perspiration notwithstanding the low temperature. - A madman now should cry… - and tore his dress - cry and run away! -
In the complete darkness he started to gallop off at a full speed. He stumbled, and got on his feet again. He looked like a cat gone insane shut in a closet. He ran again and banged his head against an irregular and rough wall. - Hard as stone. - he thought, while the shooting pain in his temples faded to a tolerable pulse.
- Maybe I have not to run this way in the dark - he verified. Touched his forehead still stunned.
Something warm and dense was pouring slowly.
- Oh, my God! - he moaned surprised - The earthquake! Once again! - He was shaking with the horror inside for the impending catastrophe, he felt his bones creaking as if they were to cave in and pulverize. Everything was vibrating, associated with a persistent noise hollow and ominous, giving the idea of lasting too long.
Scared, he ran again and again, as if his body had decided to react self-governing. Animal instinct had perceived the danger and his subconscious made its choice for surviving, and ordered him to run.
He cried out all of a sudden when he lost the ground under his feet.
He was sliding under on a displaced and inclined plane, - too too inclined - he even managed to think not at random, trying in vain to find a grasp in the layer of soil and stones slipping under.
He suddenly began to roll for the increasing steep slope and to beat against the walls of something like a tunnel two metres large, calculated between a bang and another. His hands were burning for the friction on the rough wall, solid stone, and at every knock that his body received, a moaning in a choked voice came out of his mouth. The fetal position instinctively was assumed.
He kept on rolling. Curled up and with his hands on his head for protection, who knows how long. Time seemed infinite, as much as the endless falling.
Was he fainted with fear? Was he come to the end?
An easy answer for one who was finding himself laying, still, the last remembrance of him precipitating. He felt himself in pieces and the attempt of getting up again remained useless, just an attempt, painful moreover.
The fingers of the right hand were the first ones to respond under the impulse of a brain that seemed disconnected up to that moment.
It took time a lot to raise himself again and to stand up crawling on all fours; even so, his head swimming, he was staggering as if he found himself upon a boat on a river, at the mercy of the wind. - Along the Arno - he said, observing that he could talk without problems, and think about strange things.
- Dash it, my trousers are all torn… They costed me a mint of money! - he burst out sorry looking at his legs after he wearily erected himself at last.
- Gee! I see. - He was astonished, but taking courage again. - I see… There is light - and his latent curious nature began to go through his mental processes again. The provenance of luminosity was a little forward. It seemed to him the same cavity he had gone along before the falling, with the torch in his hands, and the same glow.
Now, the light was more flickering, just like a torch in motion - Is it anybody there? - he asked faintly in a shrill voice, and the demand resounded and vanished in many distorted echoes.
Out of the blue, an uncommon being sprang out from a shadow, and made him jump by surprise. To say best, he appeared on the one hand as from a door instead of a curve.
- “Oh my God… It’s the Devil!” - A complete change, he turned himself from inquisitive and curious brave man to an absolute fearful fellow, his shoulders curved and he bent down almost falling to his knees, maybe hoping to become smaller for not to be seen.
- It was true, then. The passage existed and that was Lucifer in person. - He was paralyzed with terror, thinking about dreadful ways of dying and awful eternal punishments and damnation up to him after that fatal encounter.
The creature moved towards him slowly coming out of the shadow. The torch he held in his hands lighted firstly a naked dark torax, powerful, supported by big hairy goatish legs; then, a slim and thin moustached face, with a pointed beard and an aquiline nose, he smiled affable.
- Are you a living one, aren’t you? - His voice was fine, calm, warm and tenor.
Our hero was too scared to be able to reply. Meanwhile, the creature put the torch on a bearing on the wall of stone.
- It is a long since I last met one of you alive, you know what I mean? Long since we were bored to death of having all those living human beings around, it was a great confusion, we were fed up with that. Always, always and always they were around… It seemed to be in a market-place. Then, suddenly, they have ceased to come here. No more for a long time. It seems that a strange Mr. what d’ye call him, Jeso… Jesus, not so much because of him as rather for some of his comrades or acquaintances, have been around talking behind my back and badly about me. Down here he was never seen but, you know, gossips go round, especially the bad ones. Well, you know, I began to be bored down here, always the same things! How are things up above? -
- All’s well - the boy replied in a very weak voice. He had not yet collected himself, overwhelmed by that avalanche of words said, fortunately, soothing, in a friendly way. He was more quiet now.
- Do you like to enter and visit the hell? Are you for this, aren’t you? Come in, so we can have a nice chat together as old friends do. There’s a lot of people I would like to introduce to you. -
- Oh, yea, of course. - The boy couldn’t dare to contradict him. That was the Devil! said within himself, although now he was looking pleasant, nay, very pleasant.
- See, there’s a fellow here who likes his cranium to be gnawed and he’s used to pay someone for the service, because he can’t do it by himself. Another one is there, rowing again and again, forwards and backwards on his little boat because, he sais, he must exercise himself for the Olympic games. According to my opinion, he’s not normal, but we could avail ouselves of the opportunity for a tour and then… by the way, what’s your name? Sorry, we failed to do the introducing, but I was so yearning for talking with someone alive, not a damned dead and mad soul, that I’ve forgotten the good manners. Well, they call me Lucifer. -
- Fancy that, Lucifer! - he already felt more to his ease.
- Just one thing - he pressed before the boy, now at his ease, could reply anything else - please, don’t call me Lucifer or the Devil. Call me Virgilio… I prefer. Hear how sweet it sounds… VIRGILIO. -
- Yes, as you like… Virgilio. - The boy saw him catching the torch from the bearing. Then the devil seized him gently by the arm, and arm-in-arm, they went to where he was appeared before.
- What’s your name, tell me? -
- Oh yea, I beg your perdon. Alighieri… Dante Alighieri. -