Mosca

In the canto one with both hands lopped off lifts the stumps through the murky air, so that the blood fouls his face, and shouts to be remembered too: he is the one who said «Capo ha cosa fatta», the bad seed of the Tuscan people. In the game he stands past the line of the blade, on the outer half of the floor, away from the way to the climb out, and his hands are taken off the body at the wrist. He calls only whoever has already got across: before that, his voice would have covered the beat of the sword.

Promise to remember him and he lowers his stumps and falls silent, like one who has had what he asked for: his name goes into the book as promised. Or answer him the way Dante does, «E morte di tua schiatta», and death to your kin, and he goes off heaping grief on grief like a person sad and crazed, four metres along the round: it is a name torn out with a single line, and it weighs like a name taken by force. Walk past in silence and he stays with his stumps raised in the murky air, shouting at no one.