Chapter 2 · The Gate and the Antehellone of the damnedPlayable

Meo di Lapo, Dyer

One of the file waiting for the ferry, the last person you speak to before the boat.

The body the game gives to the damned, turning on itself: sixteen views rendered from the game itself. — Not a portrait of this one. The game gives almost every damned soul the same body, and this is it: what tells them apart is where they stand and what they do.

Uno della fila che aspetta: «e dietro le venìa sì lunga tratta di gente» (III, 55-56). Nel poema questi non parlano, bestemmiano: «bestemmiavano Dio e i lor parenti, l’umana spezie e ’l loco e ’l tempo e ’l seme di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti» (III, 103-105). Nel gioco uno di loro apre bocca, perché il libro dei nomi vuole una riga anche quaggiù. Dice di essere di Corso dei Tintori, la strada da cui vieni: è l’unico che ti nomini un posto di sopra. Non è ancora giudicato. Minosse sta di là dall’acqua, e il cerchio glielo darà lui.

What the game says

Revealswho the last soul to speak before the water is, and what he warns you about.

In the poem the ones in the file do not speak, they curse: «bestemmiavano Dio e i lor parenti, l’umana spezie e ’l loco e ’l tempo e ’l seme di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti» (Inf. III 103-105). In the game one of them opens his mouth, because the book of names wants a line down here too, and until recently it filled up in exactly one place in the whole game: a whole chapter without its own currency is a chapter about something else.

He stands on the slope and not on the shore, and that is deliberate: there are already forty four motionless bodies on the shore, and one man talking among forty who are silent does not stand out. He says he is from Corso dei Tintori, the street you come from, and he is the only soul who names you a place from up above. He has not been judged yet: Minos is on the far side of the water, and his circle will be given to him there.

What he gives is not goods. To whoever promises to carry his name out he gives the name in full and the one thing somebody about to step aboard really lacks, which is knowing what happens once the boat moves; to whoever lies and says they are staying he gives one thing and nothing else; to whoever walks past without speaking he gives nothing, and goes back to watching the black water like everybody else along the slope.

Meo di Lapo, Dyer

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