Traveling in spacetime with Virgil - 13

 

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Second Scene

(the above said; Eleanor of Sardinia; his husband Brancaleone Doria )

As they come in there is a man playing launeddas, while a mature, nice woman is wearing  some coral pendants  earrings; the two people are dressed in Sardinian traditional suits and are very fashion. The furnishings are very simple: a mirror, four wooden chairs, a table, a stool, a cupboard. In the middle of the table some flowers and a faience jar of wine.

 

Eleanor (still looking herself in the mirror trying to fix the earrings) Come in!

Virgil: May we come in please?

Eleanor (like before): Of course you can! Come in and take a sit! I’ll be with you in a minute!!!

Virgil: Thank you madam!!!

(they seat around the table while the boys keeps on playing; after a short time Eleanor seats down with them)

Eleanor (while sitting): What wind of fortune brings you here? You look as foreigners to my eyes!

Virgil: You’re not wrong madam! We’re travelers and we come from very far!

Eleanor: Welcome to my house! Where are you from? There’s something familiar on you two but I can’t say more…May I ask your names?

Virgil: My name is Publius Vergilius Maro!

Eleanor: That’s why your acquaintance was so familiar to me…I’m honored to have in my house divine Virgil. What about your silent friend?

Virgil: His name is Durante Alighiero degli Alighieri…

Dante (shyly): Please, call me Dante…

Eleanor: Dante Alighieri!!! That’s unbelievable!!! Brancaleone, have you heard? We have Dante Alighieri, the Florentine at our desk!!!

Brancaleone (stops playing, puts the launeddas in the stool and goes closer, taking seat after shaking hands with Dante) It’s very nice to meet you!

Dante: It’s my pleasure!!!

Eleanor: There is Tuscan blood in our veins too! Though you might consider we are political rivals in some way!!! Please, my dear, take some glasses! We’re going to drink for celebrate this day!

Dante (confused and fascinated): Thank you very much;  but  please, don’t say I ‘m against you domina…

Eleanor (fiercely): I’m Eleanor Serra De  Bas from Sardinia, daughter to the King of Arborea, Mariano the Fourth; my mother was Timbora di Roccaberti daughter to the catalan Viscount Dalmazio.

Dante (standing up surprised, fall on his knees to kiss her hands): Let me pay the respect you deserve, queen of Arborea…

Brancaleone brings four glasses and smiles at Dante’s kneeling

Eleanor (helping him to stand up): Oh no, you are my guest, please. I know you are a great poet! Please have a drink (Dante, Brancaleone and Eleanor have a drink but Virgil doesn’t)

Dante (drying  his eyes off the tears of commotion and drinking some wine): I’ve known your great-grandfather Mariano the Third, in Pisa, in 1312; we were both there to pay respect to the great emperor Henry the Seventh of Luxenburg, the so called New Moses. His father was Chiano d’Arborea de Serra Bas, married with Giacomina della Gherardesca, daughter to the Count Ugolino della Gherardesca…

Eleanor: You know a lot of things of my family, Dante!!!

Dante: You belong to a great family! And Pisa is not so bad as I painted in my comedy…

Eleanor: Thank you Dante, though I must say that I feel to belong to Sardinia, more than to Pisa…

Dante: I was wrong and unfair to you country, beautiful queen Eleanor and I apologize for that. Could  you ever forgive me, you and your people?

Eleanor: So many people have been unfair to my country! And after all, who can say he has never mistaken?

Virgil: I think we need to go my son…

Dante (standing up and tendering the launeddas to Brancaleone) For the  love I promise to take to your country, please play for me once again!

While Brancaleone restarts playing Dante and Virgil will go away and the light will be off!

Traveling in spacetime with Virgil - 12

 

Second Act

First Scene

When the curtain is open again it’ll  be visible a luxuriant landscape with birdsongs, water’s gurgling  and brush’s rustles.

 

Dante: What a peaceful place, master!!! It seems a paradise!

Virgil: (laughing) Don’t mix up your senses! That’s a place of repentance, not of joy!!! Here people find another chance to deserve definitely the eternal joy!

Dante (surprised): Do you mean  they could yet get lost in hell?

Virgil: Yes, son, they actually could!

Dante. I’ve always thought that purgatory  was meant to deserve the paradise…

Virgil: There must be such a places, but not here!

Dante: But people here do pay for their blames?

Virgil: They also do that; but they must show another attitude to the meaning of life!

Dante: But people do reincarnate? Or do they play the same role they had in the earth?

Virgil: There are other places for reincarnation my son. Here  you find the same characters of the earth. Only they have other opportunities. In some way this place recalls the way the earth must have been before the man became so complex and adulterated…

Before Dante might interact a sound of cane flute (better if it comes from Sardinian threecaneflutes launeddas) is heard coming behind an half open door…

Dante (ecstatically): What a celestial sound? Who is playing it there?

Virgil: ( after bending to see) Have a look yourself…

Dante: Who is that  wonderful lady?

Virgil: Would you like to talk to her?

Dante: Please, master! It would be great if I could!

Virgil (knocking at the door): May I come in?

to be continued...

Traveling in spacetime with Virgil - 11

 

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Thirtieth – second  Scene

(The second Ante Hell: the guests are damned to gain money during the day and loose it at the end of the day; that’s forever, each and every day. The scene is occupied by  a Stock Exchange’s Hall (alternatively a video may be sent on); Virgil and Dante will observe, from a hidden point of view, lot of people, suited in a very fashion way, shouting and making signs each others;  some of them will be talking very busily, through small mobile phones very trendy and, from time to time, they stop talking in order to pass signs orders for selling and buying stocks).

 

1st man (making signs with his fingers)

            - I'll buy fifteen hundred!

2nd man

            - I'm  selling  three thousand of them!

3rd man

            - I need ten thousand quid!

4th man

            - Put twenty thousand a part for me!

5^th man

            - Swap them with the General Electrical, mate!

Dante (in an embarrassed tone of voice)

               - I can’t really understand what’s  going on over there, master?

Virgil (sighing)

                - They are making money...

Dante (a bit perplexed)

                - Do you mean, they are sort of landlords bankers???

Virgil

                - I didn't say that my son! They are actually mostly inventing money than producing it. They produce nothingness as matter of fact… I mean: not material stuffs…

Dante

                - I beg your pardon, sir, but I'm afraid I can't get the meaning of it!

 

Virgil

                - Of course you can't, my son!! It's not easy for anybody to understand. Listen to me, I'll try to explain to you the difference between production and speculation, real creation and virtual richness!  If you write a good book, for instance, and you sell it to a firm to be published and then the book is  sold in the shops: the buyers have a book in their hands; you, the editors ,the book sellers and all the people involved in the business share the profits; is that clear up to now?

Dante

                - Very clear indeed, master!

Virgil

                - That's right! Let's suppose  now  that your publisher hasn't got the  money  to publish your book!

How can he get it?

Dante

                - He goes to a Bank, I might suppose!

Virgil

                -And so do I, my son! But what happens if the banker hasn't got enough money himself?

Dante

                - I suppose my book won't see the light yet!!

Virgil

- It might be right, my son! Unless you don't consider the role played by those guys up there (he shows the stocks changers)

Dante (perplexed)

                - I'm sorry, master, but I'm still blind...

Virgil

                - Never mind it! Just follow me for a little more! The banker goes to those guys (he points out the stocks changers again) and asks them to sell the idea of publishing your book to the savers! 'You know what savers are, don't you my son?

Dante (readily)

                - Well, they are people who have more money than they need to live through!

Virgil

                - Correct, my son!

Dante

                - And of course they want their money to be safe for future needs!!

Virgil

                - That's still correct, my son!!! Put it like that: the savers trust the bankers and the stocks exchangers;  they even trust you and  your writing's skills! But this would not be a problem: financial investors have more instruments to convince savers in order to reach their targets! I'll show you later how a magic box  can wash people's brains just staying at home!!!

Dante (trying to understand)

                - So the banker asks the stocks changer to ask the savers to buy the idea of publishing my books...

Virgil

                - Yes, that's it!!! There are plenty of instruments: the publisher might have emitted some titles to guarantee the credits and the savers will buy those titles; or they can buy the future profits which are expected from the selling  of your books; they can even just lend their money on the promise of an interest to be paid...

Dante

                - And this money is given to the banker and borrowed by my publisher...

Virgil

                ... who publishes and distributes your books all over the world!!!

Dante

- All over the world,  master?

Virgil

                - Of course! Can't you write a Latin book to be sold all over the world?

Dante

                - Well, I suppose I can do it, master!!

Virgil

                - Well! And that's your first book, is n't it?

Dante

                - Yes, master! Though I don't see nothing wrong on it...

 

Virgil

         - But this is only the beginning, my son!!!

Dante

                - What do you mean , master?

Virgil

                - I mean that now, those guys (indicates the stokes changers like before) can ask the savers to buy your next book...

Dante

               - But I have just written my first one!

Virgil

                - It doesn't really matter my son!!! They will sell all the goods not yet produced like the wheat just seeded and all the events on the future to come!

Dante (very surprised)

                - Will they?

Virgil

                - And that's still nothing! If a firm is worth one million they can increase its value, just up there (shows the busy guys in the stocks exchange once again) up to ten millions or up to  hundred  millions, though its real value is still just only one million!! And that's thanks to the trust of people, 'till the game goes on!!!

Dante

                - Now I know master, what you meant, when you told me the guys over there make money from nothing!!!

Virgil

                - I'm glad you did it, my son!!! Come on, now, let's leave these incontinent people and go to the higher  states!!!

Dante

-          I’m feeling a sort of repentance master…

Virgil

-          Why? What Are you feeling guilty for ?

Dante:

-          For I was too scared to see the secret meanders of hell…

Virgil: Do you think so? I don’t agree you, my son… On my opinion we have seen more than enough of iniquities and desperation!

Dante

-          Didn’t we miss  Mao-Tse-Tung, Jossip Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini? And more: Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Kelbold, Ariel Castro, Marc Lépin, Rodney Glen King, Sang Huj Cho, Benne Gunness, Irma Grese and other horrible females…

Virgil:

-          (stopping him) Believe me my son: the hell is like  the universe… he expands to infinity. You cannot really visit the hell all around. It’s impossible!!!

Dante (only half persuaded)

-          I see… What about Zwingli, Calvin and Luther?

Virgil (with a mischievous smile and pointing up with his right forefinger)

-          All three upstairs!!!

Dante (admitting his fears)

-          Why am I so doubtful and suspicious when I have to move to a new place?

Virgil (laughing)

-          Come on Dante!!! We’re leaving the bloody hell for a surely better place!

Dante (reassured)

-          You’re right, master! So we’ll face now the upper lighting cone?

Virgil: Oh no, my son!!! We’re not allowed to travel in the future!!! We’ll cut the the walls of the upper cone instead!!!

Dante: How is named our next destination?

Virgil: We are going to visit   the nearest of the forty billions of habitable planets astronomers estimate existing in the Milky Way!

Dante: Gosh! I thought such a nearest place was Alpha Centaury!

Virgil: Update your astronomical knowledge my son! Have you ever heard of Trappist Systems?

Dante: Please tell me what are them, master!

Virgil: Well, I’ll tell you of them in the way to Purgatory. Let’s go!

Exeunt.

Endo of the Forst Act

to be continued...

 

Traveling in the spacetime with Virgil - 10

 

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Thirtieth Scene

(Finally Virgil and Dante get in to The first Ante Hell. The guests are damned to fall suddenly asleep while playing; so they can never take rest. As a matter of fact in the Ante Hell it’s  is always day time,   the lights are on all the time and the night never comes.)

Virgil and Dante are sitting in a café. Some kind of music is on. The café is quite crowded; in the middle of the scene there is an upper leveled table where a couple is staying in a bed waiting for someone to make love with; two very dressy men are discussing some important business; two other men  are playing dice and four  more are playing cards; other people are smoking and drinking;  they seem  all to be  enjoying themselves. The two poets are sitting at a table waiting for the waitress to come for their order.

First man (getting close to Virgil and Dante, with a low voice)

            - Chocolate, speed, coke, brown sugar, mushrooms! Do you want any?  Everything  is cheap and first quality!!!

Dante (to Virgil)

            - Master, How do they cook mushrooms in this café? Are them tasteful and safe?

Virgil (smiling to Dante but sending away  the man and calling thereafter  the waitress with a lift arm)

            - No, thanks, man! We don't need any!!!

Waitress (very nice, possibly topless, anyway with a lascivious smile and a note book in the hand)

            - Something from the kitchen, please?

Virgil

            - We would like two pizzas, please!!! (to Dante) Is it all right also for you a pizza, my son?

Dante

            - Oh, yes ! It is!! Can mine can be served with onions and tuna or you just serve them with mushrooms??

Waitress (always nicely)

            - Our Chef makes a very special tuna and onions pizza, if you like it!!!

Virgil

            - OK! And just a Napoli for me will be all right, please!!!

 

Waitress (writing down the note)

            - What about the drinks?

Virgil

            - Two pints of lager, please!!! Is that all right for you my son?

Dante

            - Oh yes, master!!! That will be all right also for me!!!

Waitress (after writing and before leaving)

            - OK! Ah, the couple in the bed told me that if you can join them, it will be great!!! I can join myself if you don't mind!!!

Virgil (smiling too)

            - No, thanks, my darling! Tell them we came just for a quick pizza! We are in a rush, you know?

Waitress (still smiling)

            - OK, boys! It will be for the next time, then!!!

Virgil

            - OK! That's it!! Be quick with those pizzas, will you???

 

Waitress (while leaving)

            - I will for sure!! ' See you later!!!!

 

    Thirtieth- first Scene

(Dante and Virgil)

 

Dante (very abashed after keeping his eyes on the waitress’ bottom)

 

            - I’m speechless my master… but doesn’t she has any sense of decency…?

 

Virgil (with a  hand’s gesture)

 

- I’m surprised my son, you’ve seen much worse than that in our trip…

 

Dante

            - Have I?

 

Virgil: Of course you have, my son! The world is quite changed since you left, ‘ you know?

 

Dante: I guess it did,  noble father, but women’s modesty… are so  innate… I would say…

 

Virgil: Forget about, my son. Look! In order to avoid any scandal on you I’ll tell you what it has gone through in the last centuries about sexual behavior; first of all women have left any shyness and hesitation to become venturing…

 

Dante:  (disappointed and displeased) Did they really?

 

Virgil: For sure! They acquired a great deal of initiative; a very sexual impetus, ‘ you know?

 

Dante (l.b.): They seem to have gone quite far from honesty and gentleness…

 

Virgil: Surely they have, my son!

 

Dante: And what about men?

 

Virgil: Well, they seem to be consequently quite afraid…

 

Dante: Men frightened by women? Am I hearing right?

 

Virgil: You are correct my son!!!

 

Dante: I can’t believe it!!!

 

Virgil: And it’s not all: they go sheltering on the other side…

 

Dante. The other side of what?

Virgil (loosing for a while his usual self control): The other side of the moon, what else?

 

Dante: (thoughtful): May be I see: they turn to buggers… I suppose we’ll find them in the bottom of the hell!

 

Virgil (reacquiring his calmness) Look my son: I’m sorry for you but the world, from that point of view, has really changed a lot. Love is no more meant to be only a male-female affair; also the family starts now to be recognized between two men or two women!

 

Dante (confused): It sounds unusual, not to say repulsive or disgusting!!!

 

Virgil: It’s a long and controversial achievement which lead such families even to the right of acquiring its own issue…

 

Dante (really piqued and upset): Besides to be against nature, that’s eventually impossible!!!!

 

Virgil (cutting straight): Well, we’ll have time to discuss it later on! Haven’t you notice that the sinners we met have not  been scheduled on the basis of their sexual habits; their sexual behavior, as a matter of fact, is not relevant anymore; the hell opens its jaws for more cruel rascals; be good and get over it my son; the social parameters have basically changed since you left; don’t you think, after all, that a man or a woman, are to be blamed or praised for what they do of good and bad?

 

Dante: I would never think that  lechery  and salaciousness  would become morally legal…

 

Virgil: Oh no, my son! Don’t mistake: malice and incontinence are still punishable but in fact of sex you can behavior as you like. Anyway, let’s finish now our visit to the ante hell;  you have already seen with your own eyes the really horrible sinners of these disgraceful centuries (the lights will be off)

 

Dante: What’s going on, master?

 

Virgil: Come here, son! Let’s find a stash for the next scene!!!

 

Dante

-          You told me father that after diner we’re going to a Stock Exchange…

Virgil

-          If you are not too tired, my son…

Dante

-          I’m not for sure! Furthermore it’s better not to go to bed soon after diner!!!

Virgil

-          I see… You need your time for digesting  pizza!

Dante

-          You don’t master?

Virgil

I’m really an old one!!!’ you see? My time has  gone for each and every thing, bad or nice,  it doesn’t matter anymore for me…

 

to be continued...