Canto 8: Purgatory. Lassitude and Negligence

Sunsets open you up, they let you dream. In a sunset we see the beauty of our earth but also the beauty of possibility, at least, that’s my theory. That’s why we seek out rooftop bars, beaches or snowy hilltops at that time of day. It’s only human to feel the pull of sunset, hard on your heart. In the city, that burnished light falls between two buildings, casts reflections from the windows onto stone walls and pavement and suddenly everything changes, everything seems more charged with emotion.

The curtain falls on another day and we pivot to face forward. Not quite ready to move on to what’s ahead and all too acutely aware that what’s passed is never coming back.

The sunset brings you up to the surface of your life to have a look around at the world. Someone told me the Coast Salish people, who have always lived around the waters between Canada and the U.S., in the area where I was born, believe when we die we become a spark of light in the sunset. Maybe we do.

Maybe when we die we become a spark of light that circles the globe making people look up and notice how beautiful an ordinary thing can be and how very quickly it goes way. Maybe it’s the gravity of all those remembered souls that makes a sunset so remarkable, impossible to ignore, the poignancy of the everyday. Maybe they’re all talking and laughing about the past, maybe there’s a whole world of life there and maybe it goes on forever. Someday, we’ll know.

As we walked through the terminus, I looked out and over the runways, over the fields to the setting sun and thought about it. Were we a spark in someone else’s sunset right now? Did my buried longing mix something real into the melancholy light that makes a person sigh when they see it through the car window as they set off for home? Maybe.

The place was quiet, silent actually. When I realized how quickly it had fallen into stillness, I looked around for a cause and then heard voices begin, quietly, to sing. To me it sounded almost like strings, I could not make out the words. The music swelled and flowed through the open space, echoing as more joined in. Some of the people who had been sweeping, cleaning or otherwise attending to the needs of the crowd, put their pens and clipboards down, rested their brooms against the wall and standing still, singing, they transformed.

Angels seemed to grow in their midst, mist formed at their core and their outer shapes fell away. They became beings of symbol and spirit. One held a sword, snapped off at its base, another, a green bough, and one more, a gourd. Some of the singers seemed drawn to them and soon a small crowd gathered. When a sizeable group had assembled they turned in silence and followed the angels through one of the gates to a plane, they took the glow with them.

As the last light of day stretched low across the fields, their plane lifted off and flew toward the sunset. They were gone.

“I thought you said nobody travels by night?” I asked my Guide, “”They are not traveling. They are going home.” she sighed.

“And anyway,” she said, turning to me, “It’s not night yet. It’s dusk.”

Conversation resumed and in a moment, the hum of the place was fully re-established. It was as though nothing had happened. And we continued our walk.

We reached a glass door set into a glass wall, they were both opaque. Jean Paul held the door open, clearly pleased with himself. I had seen many such places in airports all over the world and had been so sure I would never see the inside of one I really had no idea what to expect.

The floors were creamy marble, runners and area carpets, tastefully beige and taupe. One wall was entirely glass, there was a clear view of the runways, the fields and the low, rolling mountains beyond. The deep blue of twilight filled the room with a sense of calm, but it was a busy place and I noticed it was filled, mostly, with men.

Maybe it is rare for an ordinary person to travel in these places, I don’t know but although I recognized some faces in this place I am sure none recognized me. We passed among them and while Jean Paul nodded, smiled and made conversation, I only looked and waited.

Velvety soft, overstuffed sofas, backs tufted like expensive headboards, were available to everyone who needed to rest. Some of them were upholstered in silk, some in deep plush velvet. My fingers slid across the top of one, smooth, water-cool silk. It reminded me of some time I spent amongst the wealthy. That part of my life didn’t last long of course, they could tell I did not belong with them but while I was there, I tasted some of the luxuries that framed their everyday lives, the things they took for granted.

Every Christmas season my boyfriend and I attend seasonal parties at the homes of his wealthy friends. They were the children of families who “settled” B.C. Their ancestors arrived when the land was still “wild” and beat it, and the people they found living there, into submission.

These families had made their money selling cars, selling land, stripping mountains for lumber, starting fish farms or digging for oil, gold or other commodities important to their way of life, valuable — salable.

Their grown children had never known want. They did not need jobs and, as far as I could tell, had no intention of ever finding a profession. They were in their mid-twenties and spent most of their time playing at various hobbies or decorating the homes their parents had given them. Some were contemplating marriage and children. Very few had any thought for an education and they were proud of that. When one of them found a career, typically, they fell away from the group and stopped attending the parties.

In the front hall of the house where one particular party was held, there was a tree that reached three stories high. It was cut from the family’s country home acreage and brought to the house on a flatbed truck by their construction crew. This family built houses, made suburbs and sold them to increase their wealth.

The tree rose so high we could decorate the top from the staircase that encircled the third floor landing but the center section required ladders to reach it. The whole situation made me uneasy.

A great fire burned in a massive fireplace. Wingback armchairs, clad in worn leather, were arranged around the periphery of the room. Young men sat in them, their girlfriends perched on the arms nearby and watched while the “boys” talked about politics.

All the sons of all the powerful families in our province were there, and none of the daughters. At the time, I assumed there were no daughters. Later in my life, I would find traces of them, I would even meet one or two but they were not the focus of their family’s ambition and as such were largely left to go their own way. I was envious of that. They could choose careers, their lives opened out ahead of them. One went to school and went into advertising for a major soft drink label, another disappeared into the deserts of the American Southwest and became a an artist and potter, like a modern-day Georgia O’Keefe. They didn’t like the girlfriends of their brothers and in retrospect, I don’t blame them.

My only task, in this social circle, was to be pretty and to laugh politely but not too loud. I was not to speak. Women didn’t weigh in on serious conversations then and I have heard, in this particular place, they still don’t.

For these occasions, typically I would put on a dress and impractical shoes, apply a lot of makeup and go to smile at the other girls.

I wanted to matter. I knew I didn’t. One year, after my first semester at university, I decided to talk to one of “the boys.” He sat in one of the leather wingbacks in front of the fireplace. We had all gathered around for a toast and I was perched on the arm of his chair, being friendly and familiar as befitted the situation, I thought. After all, this was my fourth or fifth time as a guest at this particular social ritual.

This young man, now closing in on 30 and gaining more weight every year, liked movies. He could no longer participate in the activities that took the attention of the others, he could not play tennis, he was too fat to ski, snowboarding was out of the question and his girth made sailing and riding all but impossible. I thought I had found the ideal topic of conversation. I thought I could make him feel vital and included.

So I told him I had learned a lot about movies at school and I thought he’d find it all really interesting. In a loud bored, voice he announced I had more education than anyone there and should, therefore, restrict my conversation to the food or the weather.

My boyfriend, my live-in partner at that time, shot me a withering look and I removed myself to the third floor, glass in hand, to rejoin the other “girls” and continue decorating the tree.

Later on, in the summer of the following year, I was home for a break and had settled in the Victoria apartment belonging to the boyfriend in question. His plan for us was that I would spend my time away getting an education and exercising my mind to my heart’s content, then, when I was done, I would return, take a position as a teacher at a local private school and behave myself in social settings as we increased our social status and waited to inherit real estate from his family. This seemed reasonable to me at the time.

Like Persephone, I lived half the year in the world above the surface, engaging in work, in learning, speaking as an individual — being free. The other half, I spent in my place, in Victoria, a proper Victorian lady, attending the required social events, sitting quietly at the opera, keeping my thoughts to myself.

We were arguing about a luncheon. I did not wish to attend it. It was a gathering of the women involved with his friends and I knew the conversation would be limited to gossip, the men and clothes. The idea of it was unbearable. Lunch with “the girls.”

I opened the refrigerator, absent mindedly as we argued. And there, I saw it, a bottle of vodka left over from a dinner part a few nights previous.

It was icy cold and very tempting. This thought, in these words, passed through my mind, “If I took a couple of shots of that, I might find this girl’s lunch out, bearable, even fun.”

Something snapped in the back of my head. I closed the refrigerator door and, without the shots, attended the lunch. That September, when I left to return for school, I took every single cherished thing I could carry with me because I knew I could never go back. And, as far as living was concerned, I never did.

I kept in touch and sometimes visited during the holidays, I saw enough of “the boys” to observe their trajectory. The man I had spoken to on that evening by the fire eventually married and had children himself. Gradually, over the course of a decade, he became unable to travel. Then he became afraid to leave the house.

One year, instead of going to the annual party, he stayed home with his own bottle of vodka. He swallowed a lot of pills and his wife had to call an ambulance to take him away.

That was the last I heard of him. He had become very fat, completely immobile, his hair was almost gone. His elbows and forearms were covered in thick, snow-white scaly patches of skin, like armour. They cracked when he bent his arms. His children were afraid of him. His wife divorced him.

Back in the airport, walking with my guide, my attention turned to the world around us. Outside, two brilliant lights descended from the sky and illuminated the fields near the runways. The place was held in an envelope of light even after the sun descended. I looked at my Guide. “We are living a metaphor.” she said, “try to remember.”

I did try but it seemed very real to me. The food smelled real and delicious. People looked comfortable, the lamps glowed warmly. There was a lap pool in a far corner of the room and massage tables were awaiting clients around it. The place was designed to make waiting as easy as possible.

I wondered who stayed here. “These people are leaders too lazy or too distracted to do the things they should have done.” Jean Paul explained, “It’s easy to land here. Most of us know we could have done much more. Maybe it would be easy to leave but they are waiting to be picked up. They don’t move themselves.”

I saw a man in a corner by himself. He was middle aged and slender, he needed a haircut. His greying brown hair drooped into his eyes from time to time and he pushed it aside and continued his work. pouring over papers, reading polls and figures. He looked busy enough but I remembered his time on earth. He was a leader of the country of my birth.

In this country he delayed, he learned to manipulate the data and he waited until his time was ripe but time passed and things changed and the people of the country suffered. They waited for their government to resume its work. They waited for money to be spent as promised and all the while they gave this man the means to do these things and he waited.

Dante had found people to admire in these places. Maybe it was small of me, but I could not see any redeemable features. I headed for the buffet, it had been days since we arrived, and I suddenly realized, I was ravenous. My Guide took my arm and pulled me back. “You do not eat in this realm. Remember? Remember what happened to the woman who did.”

I was surprised to hear her mentioned. Of course I remembered her, that ancient Queen. Persephone in the dark. Just six seeds was all it took to seal her fate. She ate only six pomegranate seeds and was doomed for eternity for that little slip. But that was Hades, I thought, he didn’t live in Purgatory, he was in hell and we we were through that gate. I looked at my Guide and she just shook her head. “No.”

Eating is communion, it’s commitment. But still, the habit of ignoring what was good for me, a lifetime in the making, was hard to break. “Just one piece of fruit, one pastry — how could it harm anything.” I thought. I knew what Persephone had learned even though it seemed extreme. Sometimes, it is a matter of action not intention — not a matter of degrees. There are some absolutes.

Eating is communion. Communion is community. No eating in the land of the dead. (unless you plan to stay there.)

The windows began to rattle and shake, I was startled but everyone else simply carried on as though it were normal. I looked outside and saw a train on a track dug deep into the ground, it roared by at a frightening speed and circled round the back of the terminal, out of sight.

My Guide spoke in my ear, “There is the serpent. Every night it circles and its driver tries, every night to crash it. It is their guard and would be their destruction. They hardly recognize it anymore. Most know not to try to leave that way, those that do go down.”

Sitting in the corner of a sofa I saw a face I thought I knew. It was a teacher, one of the leaders of my school and my home town eventually. Mr. Malaspina was a good man. I went to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

“Hello!” he said “how are you here?!” I explained I was a traveler and told him I was sorry to see him here. When I was young, he loved my singing voice. He was a kind man, encouraging me at every turn. He passed me in my science class although we knew I did not deserve it. He told me I should avoid the sciences ever after and I listened. It was a big mistake but meant kindly, I didn’t begrudge him that.

“I am here for a while, I think” he said, “I am here to purify the love I had for those around me — you were one. I’m sorry, will you forgive me? I should have been harder on you when it seemed harder for me. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that wasn’t your fault.” I said, “You meant well. I knew your kindness.” “Kindness must be used wisely,” he said, “even so, I thank you. How is my home? How are things there?”

I told him everything was fine, as far as I knew. The earthquakes that had seemed to shake half the world had not come to his island. People remembered him, life continued as it always had. He thanked me and said “Go, catch your friends. I see you have your own work to do here. “ He looked at my forehead. I had no idea why. I reached down and hugged him, and then went to join my Guide again.