Pier della Vigna

«Non fronde verdi, ma di color fosco; / non rami schietti, ma nodosi e ’nvolti» (Inf. XIII 4-5): whoever took their own life does not get a body back, they become a thorn tree, and they speak only from where they are broken. In the game the trunks are all identical on purpose; each one that breaks says a line and says how far you still are, and what stays visible at a distance is not a tree, it is the wound of a tree already broken, bleeding and giving light.

Pier della Vigna was Frederick II’s secretary and killed himself over the envy of others. Here he is the one who answers from where he stands, and his voice is the only real compass the wood has: every other break only tells you whether he is close by, a little further on, or right across the wood. When you find him he gives his name, which in this game is currency, and asks for the one thing he can be given: that you set his reputation back on its feet when you get out.

At his foot there is a rope, and in a wood of the hanged nothing could be more obvious. For one stretch there was a weapon here too, a spear that never really existed and has been taken out: the rope is now the only thing lying there, and the chapter’s step closes on the voice rather than on the object, because you carry a rope from the first day and it would close the step before you had even entered the wood.