Comedy, Divine

You’d find it funny. I did.

It’s the greatest comedy of all. The one where someone trips and falls, and the world laughs at him.

And he, as part of the world, will laugh at himself.

It started when I slipped and fell, presumably on the sidewalk; I couldn’t quite remember, but it was raining and I was walking to the office and for the most of it I was falling through the grey, cracked monochrome of the typical cement curb.

It seemed like I fell a long way, but it wasn’t painful or anywhere scary, so I wasn’t much inclined to scream, or shout, or flail helplessly. I did, however, wish that I could sit.

I suddenly just stopped falling. Or, maybe, I was simply just lying down on the star-decked blackness at the start, and nothing else had taken place, ever. Like I never lived, or birthed, or existed.

At any rate, it was blackness decked with stars. Some were quite close, burning quietly in brilliance that didn’t overwhelm, as though the blackness seem to shroud them in some sort of harmony. The stars far away merely glimmered and fall, sometimes, like they always did.

It seemed like a nice place to be, but I remembered that I was needed at the office in half an hour to pitch in the Blue-jay Project, my life’s Magnum Opus, as each life would allow one, so I really needed to get back. It struck me, then, that I’m at someplace that wasn’t New York, or even Manhattan.

“Ah, hello,” said someone. He sounded, if there’s anyway to describe it, archaic. I looked around, found the moon, and on top of it was someone in white robes.

“Hello,” I said. And, because he was on the moon and I wasn’t sure if this was the universe, where I was standing, I shouted again; “Hello!”

He took a tentative step backwards, and made a gentle leap from the moon and landed next to me.

He looked like Woody Allen. The enthusiastic nervousness of it, at least, shown on the wrinkles of his forehead and the way his mouth couldn’t make its mind to stay closed or opened.

“Hello,” he said again. “You are… I… think… presume, yes, from Earth?”

I didn’t quite understand what he was saying, so I just shrugged.

“Yes, well, you must be… nothing else would explain why you’re here suddenly.” He mumbled something else, and absently scratched his temples. He had white hair, thinning and rough, but well kept.

“I think I fell here,” I said. “I kinda slipped and fell. It was raining.”

“Yeah, it happens sometimes… stupid, really. This is quite an honest mistake, you being here. Happens sometimes.”

“So, I’m not supposed to be here?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Ok,” I said. It was a little embarrassing. It’s like walking into a Staff Only washroom and then having to apologise on the way out. “Well, I need to get out. I have a meeting to attend to.”

He ignored me, almost completely. He seemed to be thinking. And while I waited for his reply I looked around again. Behind the moon was a planet… Mercury, I think; it was small and it looked like what I read from the science textbooks. And behind Mercury was Venus, and behind it the Sun. The Sun. Someone didn’t do astronomy, obviously.

The man hadn’t replied, so I said; “Um, how do you get out of here.”

He breathed in, held it in his chest, and then let out. It whistled through his nose.

“I don’t get out of here. I am here, I remain here, and I cannot leave if I wanted to, unless I’m allowed, which I aren’t.” He seemed to grow increasingly flustered. “You, however, have to take the long way back, I’m afraid.”

“The long way?” I asked.

“Yes. The way it normally takes to get here. Your falling down here is simply a mistake.”

I sighed. I might just miss the meeting. I might have to call Collins and tell him I had an accident, slipping and falling on the sidewalk, and he can maybe get another meeting to come around, sorry if he had pulled enough strings for me already, but my Magnum Opus was a Magnum Opus and it just. Had. To . Be. Seen.

“Where am I, anyway?” I asked. I just noticed I didn’t know.

“Why,” he said. “You’re in Paradiso. Paradise.”

“Wow,” I said. That explains a lot. “That explains a lot.”

He didn’t say anything.

I looked around again, this time in amusement. “Can’t I stay here?”

“Obviously not,” he said. “You’re… you… don’t belong. Not yet, maybe. Well, it’s a huge mistake, you being here.”

I guess you can’t get everything in life.

“Ok, how do I get back ‘the long way’?”

“Ah…” he said, and then looked over his shoulder, as though checking out for eavesdroppers. “We have to be quick before Matelda comes with the procession. There’s a lot to remember, so you listen carefully, ok?”

“Yep.”

“Ok, firstly, you walk down there.” He pointed to my back. “Keep going until you see two rivers. Signs will say Lethe and Eunoë; you just walk past them and don’t drink anything. Ignore them and keep walking. You with me so far?”

“Yep.”

“Right. Keep walking and you’ll reach a mountain trail. Just follow it. It’ll wind downwards and you’ll reach a garden. There’re apples there, but don’t touch any. Got it? Then you exit through the gate and take the mountain trail down and you’ll reach a terrace.”

“Terrace?”

“Yes. Like a porch. A platform. There’ll be a sign that says ‘The Seventh Terrace.’”

“Ok.”

“Go into it and follow the path there. You can’t miss it. You’ll reach a stairwell. Take it down. You’ll be in another terrace. Just ignore everything and walk to the end of the terrace to find another stairwell. You know what? From the Seventh Terrace onwards you’ll have to keep going down these stairwells until you’re in the First Terrace. Just follow the path in each one. There’s a lot of smoke in the Third Terrace, but if you feel around the ground you’ll find the path.”

“Ok.”

“Anyway, once you’re in the First Terrace, you’ll find a gate. There’s a guard there and he’ll ask to check your forehead. Just show it to him and say that there’s a mistake and… wait, scratch that. Tell him you came in but he forgot the give the mark. No, wait. Yeah, just show him your forehead and tell him your story and he’ll probably let you through.”

“Probably?”

“Once you’re out, you’re in this ante chamber. Lots of people are there, so just ignore them and find the exit. You’ll be in another ante chamber. Exit. You’ll then find this… um, wall of fur. Just climb it.”

“…fur?”

“Still with me? Keep climbing, and um… you’re in this place. Nothing to see really, though there’s something there… ah, well, just run once you’re out. You’ll find some stairs going up. Take it, and you’re in um… this round… um, zones. Well, they sort of work in a circular way and if you just follow it you’ll keep going up. Once you’re out, call for Antaeus, and he’ll help you up. If he refuses, say you know about him and Heracles.”

“Ok.” At this point, I was wondering if I remembered what he had said earlier.

“So. You’ll be in this place with flinty steps. Just climb. And ignore whatever you see. You’ll keep seeing signs that point elsewhere saying Bolgia 8 or 7 and so. Just ignore and keep heading up. Alright? You’ll see this three rings. Gigantic rings, I mean, sort of circular paths… just follow them through and find the exit. Keep taking the stairs upwards, ok? Right, Sixth Circle… you’ll be in a graveyard and the tombstones are on fire, so try not to touch anything.”

He cleared his throat.

“Exit. You’ll see a swampy river. Talk to Charon and he’ll take you across. He’ll refuse. Just say to him, ‘So it is wanted there where the power lies,’ and he’ll ferry you. Got it? ‘So it is wanted there where the power lies.’”

“So it is wanted there where the power lies,” I repeated.

“Good. Keep heading up. Forth Circle… nothing here, just keep going and you’ll find the way up. And um, the floor above, nothing there, keep going… ah, the next one, well, be careful; crazy winds blow there and you wouldn’t want to be swept away. Just keep heads down and don’t think about anything, well, related to women.”

“Ok…”

“Aha, and then you’ll be out, and all you have to do is find an officer and tell him your story. I’m sure he’ll be glad to lead you out the rest of your way, and you’ll be where you belong in no time.” He breathed a sigh of relief, and shook his head slightly.

It sounded like a really long way to me, and I was sure then that I wouldn’t be able to attend my meeting then, and I’d really hate to call Collin and trouble him, and even so my Magnum Opus might not see the green-light of approval, being late and all, but I figured that there wouldn’t be any other way but to take the ‘long way out.’

“You alright? You got everything I said?” he said, rather more nervously.

I thought for a bit, and then said, “From here, keep going down. Touch nothing. Talk to the guard. Climb the fur. Run. From there, keep going up. Ignore everything. Call for Antaeus. He has something with Heracles. Reach river. So it is wanted there where the power lies. Keep going. Don’t think of girls. Find officer.” Even I amaze myself sometimes.

“Good. Excellent.” He looked around again, seeming out of breath. “Right. Off you go now. It’s a long journey.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m David.”

“Dante. Pleased to meet you. Not in quite good circumstances but… ah well. Off you go. Take care.”

“Will do. Thank you.”

He smiled. It was a Woody Allen smile. I turned around and walked, and there it was - I must’ve missed it earlier - a path of silvery white that went out into a white nothingness. I turned to wave goodbye but Dante wasn’t there anymore, perhaps gone back to the moon.

So I turned, faced the white nothingness, and started walking.

It was straightforward, the path. For a moment it seemed that I might have just walked blindly in a place too vast and too white, probably drifting left without really knowing, until I came across the rivers. True enough, there were signs on brass fashioned as vines, saying;

Lethe
- To forget past sins -

Eunoë
- To remember good deeds-

The water looked like crystals that flow. It could’ve put any mountain stream to shame, or if bottled, topple Evian off the charts. But Dante said not to drink, so I left them, and walk along.
I reached the garden. It reminded me of an old painting, a Victorian masterpiece printed too many times in the encyclopaedias, but I couldn’t remember which. True enough, there was a tree with apples so tempting I could’ve picked them just for the sake of it. But as Dante said, leave them, so I left.

The mountain trail lay on the other side, and I took it down.

The Seventh Terrace had the sign, ’The Seventh Terrace’ emblazoned on top of it, and below it was a mat that said; “From where you’re coming, you sure you want to leave?”. I had to. I have a person I probably took for granted to call, so that I can beg an audience to my architectural chef d'oeuvre.

I entered. There was a wall of flame there. It was, however, room temperature, and the path led right into it. Perhaps it was some sort of hologram. I walked through it. It was like walking past a waterfall going upwards. Weird. And sensual. When I came out I was already facing the stairway down. I didn’t read the sign, or the mat.

On the other terrace there were buffet tables lined up at the side of the walls, separated by a thick wall of glass. These weren’t the 55 dollars++ buffet from the typical hotel. These were the ones at the king’s royal feast, the ones you can only see on TV and probably drool after. To top it off, the scent were sort of ventilated into the terrace. Since there wasn’t anyway I could eat them, I walked on.

The next terrace had a couple of people lying faced down on the ground. They looked dead, only that the dead would’ve been more active. They weren’t doing anything at all. I nudged one, and he woke up, saying, “Time already?”. And then, groaning, he said, “Aw man…”. Then he just disappeared. I sidestepped everyone else lying on the ground, and then walked downwards.

Terrace four had a roomful of people running in circles. All of them, however, were fat. They huffed and puffed and looked like they were going to puke. There was no way to get to the other side without being stampeded, so I cut into the circle and joined them. Some glanced at me and smiled awkwardly. I grinned, then ran ahead.

Like Dante said, the next terrace was full of smoke, and a lot of coughing. I couldn’t see anything, but when I bent down and touched the ground I found the path, which felt like a tarmac curb, rising a little above the floor, and I followed it, crawling at spots. A couple of times I bumped into someone, all who said sorry, and in a few minutes I was at the stairway, going down.

The next terrace had several people, all with their eyes sewn shut, and wearing clothes that were gray like the floor and wall. Hence, if I just stood and looked, it was like staring at a room were faces were floating in the gray. It was really sombre and disheartening, so I walked quickly and left.

The First Terrace had people walking around carrying boulders on their backs. Big, heavy ones. They looked like a parade of hunchbacks. Or Egyptian slaves. And they all looked at me as though I was the luckiest man on earth. In the room, I was probably. I left.

There was a man with wings at the gate, holding a sword. He was halting someone entering, and after a few questions, held up his sword and starting carving seven P’s on the person’s forehead. After that person left I approached him. He crossed his arms and cocked his head. I told him what happened to me. He nodded, moved me to one side, made me sign a piece of paper (procedure, I suppose) and then opened the gate for me.

I walked on.

Both ante rooms were full of people, standing around. They looked, above all things, really, really bored. A couple of old men were at the corner playing yo-yos, and pretty much most of them were moving around playing cards. Others simply sat, or stood, or slept. Like in a hospital room. Waiting.

There really was a wall of fur. It was easy to climb, but there were things hopping around, which I later found out to be really big fleas. The fur led upwards and to a gaping hole on the ceiling, where there were shadows dancing on fiery light.

Past the hole, it was like a flame-themed pub. All red, fiery and shadowy. Some shouting and wailing, and an occasional growl. On one side of the wall is a full, obviously CGI display of a head with three faces (that’s 3 eyes, 3 mouths and six eyes for you), chewing up three people with their legs flaying about. It looked almost real. There were fire everywhere. I’d call that place tasteless. Moving on.

Whatever Dante meant by round zones were corridors that move in a circle, with several doors leading into rooms that were completely darkened.

When I was out in the open, I called for Antaeus. He was a giant simply by being very big (very damn big). He looked infuriated when I said I knew what happened between him and Heracles. “Cheated!” he cried, taking me across a wall of ice. “And don’t you tell anyone, you hear me? Don’t you dare tell…”.

Up flinty steps, and ignoring the signs that say Bolgia 8 to 1.

The rings were like the seats on a circular stadium, and at every round there was a bridge to the other, and at the exit (or entrance) was a minotaur, which I figure to be a guard, but he was sleeping, so I just walked.

The graveyard did indeed have fiery tombstones. It was also downright hot.

At the swampy river, I said to the boatman, “So it is wanted there where the power lies.” “Whatever,” he replied, and ferried me across.

I came to a circular room where people were playing an odd game; one group would push heavy bags (which chinked and chimed like bagfuls of coins) into the middle of the room, and another group would carry them back. It repeats, like watching clockwork.

There was a three headed dog, and a bunch of people lying in what looks like vomit and garbage.

And then, when I left them, there was a rough wind, like a hurricane, and remembering Dante I walked on trying very hard not to think about girls.

And then I was in a plains of green grass, with trees in the distance, and mountains decked with castles and turrets. There was a cottage nearby, with a lot of people standing outside, looking gloom. I went in.

A man in white toga was ticking sheets of paper on a desk, and he looked pretty important, so I went up to him and said, “Hi, I need to get out of here.”

“No can do,” he said, barely looking up from his papers. “Once you’re in Limbo, you can’t leave. Unless you’re in the list. Go look it up at the message board.”

“I’m here by mistake,” I said. “I fell on a sidewalk and into Paradise.”

He looked up, and was very reminded of Alec Baldwin. With spectacles. He looked at me thoroughly. And then he said, “Gee, another one. Management is going to have a ball.”

Not really knowing what to say, I murmured, “Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s not your fault,” he said, stretching himself. “Have a seat. It’s the problem with the system, see. People fall into a coma and they label it wrongly as ‘death’. Happens when you computerise the system. Glitches everywhere. The management going bollocks. Obviously, it has more advantages over the cons. We’re all much freer, at any rate, and more of us gets transferred to Cupid.”

“Does that mean that dead people come here?” I asked.

“Yeah. The souls, actually. The body stays up. So if you’re here by mistake, you’re probably in coma and your soul just landed down here. You said you fell into Paradise?”

“Yeah.”

“Ho ho, the management’s not gonna like my report. The very place they didn’t want people landing in. At any rate, you’re the first. So you walked all the way here? Down Mount Purgatory and through the Nine Circles?”

“I suppose so, yeah.”

“Blimey, that’s a really long way. Well, time to send you back, if it’s a mistake. What’s your name? I need to look it up and set you back.”

“David Kingsley.”

“David Kingsley. Kingsley, D., aged 34, New York, born in Carolina, architect… let’s see,” he was saying all that while leafing through a stack of papers on the floor. “Found it. Right. Oh dear…”

“Oh dear?”

“Well, says here, you’re dead.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, an hour ago. From the blood clot bursting in your brain, after your fall on the sidewalk. Coma for two weeks. I’m sorry.” He put up a face of sympathy, which looks fake.

“So… I’m stuck here?”

“That depends.” He flipped through papers in his hand. “Tell me, David; are you a pagan?”

“A what?”

“Ah, yes, you are. Written here. Well, you died without being able to do anything, so that means you’re either in Ante-purgatory; Excommunicate or here at Limbo. Let’s go through your records.” He reached backwards and drew out a file.

“Ah,” he said. “You’re a heavy sinner.”

“I am?”

“Several accounts of sloth, various forms of envy, occasional gluttony, and immense amount of wrath, pride and lust. Particularly pride.”

“Whoa.”

“505, 788 accounts of lying, 78, 332 murder…”

“Wait, 78 thousand murders?”

“Ants and insects are all taken into account. At any rate, that’s a lot.” He cocked his eyebrows.

“Worked part-time as a pest-killer once.”

“6, 567, 992 times you cursed and/or insulted, stolen money of your mother’s purse 18 times, slept with your boss’s wife twice, slept with her sister once, slept with your best friend’s girlfriend four times. Beat up a hobo once. Do I need to go on?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, I’ll just tell it to you straight; with this record, and having being a pagan above it all, there’s no way you’re going to Ante-purgatory and you definitely don’t qualify for Limbo.”

“Oh.”

“That means you’re going to Hell.”

“Ah…”

He let out a long whistle. “Well, I’m going to have to read to you the whole hell program. All the 9 circles of it. Of course, you’ve seen it all coming here, so I guess I don’t have to go through all the details.”

He chuckled. I chuckled too, a little nervously, perhaps.

“Well, at least you can tell everyone down there that you’ve been to Paradise. Whoa, you’re probably the ONLY guy who’s been in both Paradise and Hell. Lucifer aside. You‘ve met him?”

I can only grin. And cry.

“Ah, well, I’m sorry, but you’re one heavy sinner and all you have to do now is just reflect on it.”

I nodded. I guess you can’t get everything in life. Life?

“Well, lets get started with Lust.”






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Some comedies aren't funny. This is one of them.

I guess sometimes I can relish in the fact that certain literature, dubbed as comedies by their respective authors, are far more than mere stories that try to tap on the ironic aspects of life. I'm talking about social commentators and literary geniuses, and the group of people that have nothing to do but churn out the Meet the Spartan or Superhero Movie movies.

Not all comedies are comedies.

This story is concocted from sleepiness and boredom of having to wait in a hospital room for three hours with nothing to do but watch Herbie: Fully Loaded.

For the record, I have not read The Divine Comedy. Wikipedia proves, once again, to be a good source for quick research.