The Guide
By Eric Maroney
Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria . . . —Dante, The Inferno
“We must go up this steep slope to reach the opening, so please, pace yourself, Professor.”
He was not my customary guide. Aldo’s wife was ill, so I had no choice but to hire this man. He was too old for the strenuous climb. Sweat streamed in ripples down his bald head. His accent was thick and syrupy, but his English was precise. He continued to project his infirmities onto me.
“Are you well, Professor? You look flushed. Do you want to take a break? Just around the bend is a hiker’s hut. You can catch your air.”
Around the turn was the hut, which was little more than a lean-to. I agreed to stop so my guide wouldn’t die. He made a great fuss about the condition of the shelter. Several bottles were on the ground, along with tins of sardines crawling with ants. He kicked them outside with loathing, following to make certain they rolled down the incline into a clump of aloe. When he reached the plant, he snapped a spear, then came back and heavily sat next to me on the bench.
“God, it is hot as Hell,” he swiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Which is appropriate, as we are going to the mouth of Hell, yes?” He smiled, revealing a row of mottled teeth. He squeezed the aloe with a quaking hand and applied the salve to his sun burned face. “And we are getting scorched by its flames.” He sat back and sighed. A wave of exhaustion washed over him, and his face quickly dropped its pretense of professionalism. He was preparing himself to disclose a revelation.
“I have been to Hell too, Professor,” he began. “The real Hell. Not like the Hell on this island – an entrance to Hades! Ridiculous. But there is nothing preposterous about my Hell. You see, my son – he never came back from the war. Maybe he died. Perhaps he’s a prisoner, or wounded in some hospital, unable to speak. It’s been four years without word. The strain on my wife has been tremendous. She has lost her mind and just sits in a chair all day. She doesn’t wash or eat more than a few crumbs. I married a young woman, a former student. We can have another child, but she just sits there, as if we weren’t husband and wife. Of course, there’s more: I lost my job during the war, and it is gone forever. As you probably realize, this is not my true calling – a guide to false Hell. I was a professor, like you – only at the regional university, that is true, but I was someone of stature. I had a fine, strong son, an energetic, lovely wife, and a job where people respected my every word! But I must stop this. There is no greater pain than remembering a happy time when one is in misery. That is from Dante, you see...”
And indeed, he stopped. He was silently crying, and the tears mixed with the sweat and aloe smeared on his face like a poultice that not only failed to heal, but caused further pain. He took a deep breath, and then exhaled thinly.
“Come, Professor. I shouldn’t keep you. Hell awaits.”
We crested the peak, and on the other side every scrap of vegetation withdrew. The path down the slope coiled through a landscape of fractured, dusty rock. I watched him drag his drooping body before me, but he was no longer my guide. His confession had rendered him mute. At the bottom of a line of boulders, he halted. In front of us was the entrance to the underworld. The local tourist ministry added wooden steps and a railing. Altogether, for the entrance to Hades, it was a tame sight. I did not hear the moaning cries of the damned, or smell acrid smoke from the pits of seething flesh, or see the licking, snapping flames arising from the earth’s very bowels.
I stepped forward but my guide was as still as the surrounding stone. His expression was frozen, inscrutable, but I sensed what he was trying to hide. He would not follow me into Hades.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” he said in Italian, his voice shuddering in agony. “I won’t go in. I can’t. I know it is not really Hell. I know Hell’s real nature. Hell is remembering the sweet times when we are full of sorrow. I won’t go in... I am in Hell already. What more does God want from me? I draw the line here.”
I turned from my guide, a bent, reedy man in a black suit, baking in the noon sun, his very figure shimmering in the waves of heat like a tuning fork, as he stood by his inscrutable line, and I approached the entrance of the dark pit.
Eric Maroney is the author of two books of nonfiction, Religious Syncretism (2006) and The Other Zions (2010). His mixed genre book, The Torah Sutras, was published in 2019. His short fiction has appeared in over twenty literary journals and publications. He is a regular fiction and nonfiction reviewer for Colorado Review. He works at Cornell University, and lives in the hills outside of Ithaca, NY, with his wife and two children.
