from high school and college teachers
that Dante's trilogy, The Divine Comedy,
which trio encompasses, The Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, was a masterpiece,
I could never bring myself to the state of rapture
that all of them had for what was certain to happen
when I came to my eternal reward,
which reward was almost certain
not to get past The Inferno.
Once upon a dim and distant past,
I did read The Inferno which, it seemed to me,
to be a recitation of what was going to happen
to Dante Alighieri's enemies when they died,
beginning with the lightest savagery Dante could imagine,
and funneling down, something like fire in a toilet bowl,
to where Satan lay, not in fire, because Dante ran out of fire,
but (as I recall) in ice.
I have very little confidence that I shall spend eternity
singing second tenor in a heavenly choir, forever and ever,
nor that when I die I shall find myself in high school,
young and hormonal forever: anyway, that would be hell.
But I do believe in hell. I have been there;
at least to the first couple of layers near the top of the funnel.
The first layer of hell is a waiting room in an auto repair shop.
That far up in the spiral of descending eternal punishment,
there is still television reception.
One of the sets is turned to a fascinating endless description
of how buying a new car might hurt less
than driving the heap I already have,
while a ticker tape display scrolls across the bottom
showing how well automobile stocks are doing,
like an obituary.
The other TV set is turned to Fox News,
but to demonstrate that it could be worse,
the sound is turned off.
There is a German word for it: schadenfreude.
It is a sad pleasure. It is, after all,
the best that hell can offer.
All the furniture is covered in naugahyde, and has chrome legs.
To give the impression that hell is a group effort,
half of the kitchen-style chairs have life-sized plaster people
wearing clothes from a 1930s thrift shop. They don't move.
The second layer of hell is like the first, but deeper down.
It is a windowless waiting room at a tire and brake shop.
There is only one television set, and the privilege of tuning it
belongs to the customer with the Buick
who is most familiar with daytime TV.
There is a coffee pot,
keeping recycled brake fluid warm.
There are five chairs, snugly side-by-side,
and all the residents are wider than the chairs.
They manage to convey that they are surly,
even though they have lost their language skills.
I dread to try to imagine deeper layers of divine revenge,
but I have no doubt they are there.
I have, for instance, spent two or three years
in weekly catechetical classes,
trying to memorize my duties and failures and redemption,
but nothing from that era is really clear,
since I had to cheat my way through the memorization.
Rote may be, in the last analysis, easier than crafty rationality,
but at the time there seemed to be no choice.
I am sure that somewhere deep down in The Inferno,
there will be something similar,
and even more gruesome than mere reason can imagine.
I know you think I am simply depressed
by having had to repair two pickup tires recently,
but it is much more than that.
I have come to realize that life is a proving ground,
and that neither Michelin nor I are perfect.
I do not know how much tread I have left,
but recent experience seems to suggest it doesn't matter.
All it takes is a crack in the sidewall,
or a loose screw.
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