Purgatory: Canto 12;
When I opened my eyes, we were landing. People rose from their seats in silence, politely, they waited for those in front to leave and followed two by two. There was no sense of the excitement or dismay that sometimes fills the cabin of a plane on landing. The hiss of air conditioning could not conceal the murmuring we could hear just outside the cabin.
I could smell fresh air, a forest in the space between the plane and the corridor. Here, the people traveling slowed down and we passed them with ease. Through the crowded passageway, we moved like a breeze. At the end, tthe passage opened into a wide, high space where one overladen luggage carousel moved piled of heavy baggage, maybe even stones, I thought I saw carved stones, slowly grinding round in a circle at the center of the room.
She nudged me and said “look down” I did. We were walking on tombstones, or so I thought. “These likenesses, time carved, dates listed, faces remembered — all here to preserve some memory of their appearances, their lifetimes. Here, they become essence. I know you think it would be easy to release all the difficult parts of yourself, the way we swell out with the years, the waves of years graven on our faces but people know us by the passage of time and so these stones are here to give the comfort of imperfection to those who work to perfect their hearts.”
“I will always look my worst to me.” I thought. “Do I love that best? The hardest and the worst?” She answered my thoughts again, “flaws show we’ve struggled. Perfect beauty shows only that others have struggled on our behalf. Who do you want to be?”
The walls too were carved in relief and many of those we passed in hell figured there, not trapped forever but moving as we moved. “Everything,” she said, “is forever and everything lasts hardly any time at all.” There was Nimrod, looking with pride and concern at his tower as it grew toward the sky. There were the evangelists, a bull, an eagle, a winged man and a lion, telling their stories and knowing, as they spoke sometimes in chorus and sometimes cacophony, that they could never be exactly right.
There was a short, slight man dressed in draped robes, Ghandi at a hand loom, a very young woman at his side, and a handsome, worried man — Kennedy in an office with one hand on the phone.
On a bench near the carousel, a woman was weaving her fingers moved, spiderlike and she beamed at her work, another woman sat near a window. She wore a golden gown and in her hand a sword dripped blood. My Guide looked at her as though she were looking at a long lost sister. “Judith” she sighed, my muse.
“What brush could paint such courage? I tried and tried again, never captured her. See how graceful, regal without any stiffness, she is bravery incarnate. She has a right to be proud.” She turned away.
“Here is no place to pause. So easy to go slow among the slow. Look up, we’re going there.” At the top of the stairway out stood a woman in white, she glowed and from her poise and her beauty and the wide, white wings behind her, it was clear. She was an angel.
She was serene, as calm as dawn. She spread her arms and said softly, “Come. the stars are close to earth, the easy way is up the mountainside. So few come this far. Although the climb becomes easier here, humanity is quick to despair, quicker to give up. We see so few of you.”
Behind us the proud, lifted their burdens and began to climb the stair. I was humbled, their struggle was more worthy, their lives more meaningful than mine. I looked to them and then back at the angel.
“I know.” she said, “be graceful in your gratitude and know that your struggle is small, yes but every life has its own value. We each move through this place as individuals. We are all worthy and those who struggle mightily had much more to gain, more to win, more to regret. Justice is not yours to decide but it may be yours to accept. Will you have it?”
Of course I nodded, what else was there to say? She took a cool cloth and washed away one of the cuts on my arm and instantly, I felt lighter.
“When all the marks are gone, you will be ready to start outside again. This is the first, feel it.” I moved my hand along my arm and felt six remaining marks, there was not even a scar where the seventh had been. Maybe I had learned something.
So lightly, we went through the front doors and out into the light of the morning.
