Nicola Lombardi - The Tank

He went to his bedroom’s window. Over there, in the distance, where the Operative Center was, there was movement. Men, vehicles of all kinds, tow trucks, tuckers…

The fire had been put off during the night and some buildings now showed the black, zig-zagged crusts of their roofs and the big smears of the same color coming out from the windows and crawling up the walls. A small crane was already working on the gate and fence. One day. One day would be enough, he was sure. Then Camp 9 would go back to work.

He wondered how many things he wanted to know and many he didn’t care about. The emotional state in which he was could be represented by an almost horizontal diagram. He was supposed to feel proud of what he did the evening before. He was supposed to feel like a hero , somehow. But…

He was just tired, no doubt. He needed time to refresh his body and mind. That chaos would go on inside him for days, the reverb debilitating him psychologically less and less destructively, before disappearing in the healthy detachment of a memory. Until then, he would behave at his best. Forging ahead and adapting to what would come.

The 11:30 A.M. news talked about the attack for a couple of minutes. The information provided were very generic, everything had of course been filtered by the NMO’s chiefs who worked in media relations. No camera had been let near the Camp and in the video only the low-quality image of faraway fire could be seen.

“S udden attack by a group of revolutionaries” , said the speaker, “ to the penal structure named Camp 9. One or more infiltrators have supposedly used their position inside the structure to give information to the rioters and grant them the so-called surprise advantage . Few casualties in the ranks of the New Moral Order, while the attackers have been neutralized and delivered to justice.”

Giovanni listened with his elbows on the table, his head on his extended fingers. The text the journalist was reading needed a few adjustments for truth’s sake, but not always is truth needed nor useful. Neutralized and delivered to justice is just another way to say massacred and charred. Details. What happened couldn’t be changed. But the part about infiltrators had kindled his interest.

What the speaker said before the end of the news was a true hammer blow. “ Unofficial sources state that the rioters were led by the thirty-two year-old son of one of the generals founders on the New Moral Order. It seems the attack on Camp 9 was possible, despite the massive security measures, because of the information given by the traitor, whose name still hasn’t been disclosed.”

The son of a general…Giovanni wondered who he could ask to know who he was. To know all the details needed for organizing an all-in-all successful plan, at least in its first phase, there was only one possible General for all things regarding Camp 9.

He turned off the TV and sat in front of the Well. Barbed wire was rolling in his stomach. The big, blind, silent amoeba was twisting, turning and twitching because of the thousands of limbs surfacing and disappearing in a sort of crazy choreography.

“How are things in there? If it’s any consolation, it’s a mess out here, too.”

He went to his booskshelf and for the umpteenth time he looked at the well-aligned books. It was a purely mechanical gesture, as he had no intention of choosing something to read. He had to change his mind about needing new books. How long had that copy on The Idiot been on his bedside table, with a bookmark at the beginning of the second chapter? Thing is he didn’t really feel like reading. Or exercising.

It’s all accumulated tiredness, he told himself. That’s what it was.

He crashed on the bed, but immediately got up, disgusted. He wanted to change the pillow, wet with the night’s regurgitations, but he had forgotten. Wit no rush, he fixed that shameful inconvenience.

In the early afternoon two of the workers that had taken away the Escape’s lock the night before came and fixed everything in about half an hour. They also gave him a new copy of the key.

“Yours melted.” They explained.

He tried to ask some questions about the casualties and that son of a general he had heard about on TV. But their reaction was the one he expected, literally: a double “No, haven’y heard anything.”

At about 3:30 P.M. a technician came, a guy in his thirties, in a white lab coat, who worked for some minutes behind the Control’s console until the Postman’s screen lit up again.

“All done.” he announced, rubbing his hands together. “It should work now.”

Giovanni tried asking him: “Did you watch the news?”

The man quickly grabbed his tool case with a force smile. “Nope, I’ve been working all morning to fix everything that was broken. The damage at the Center is pretty serious. They will probably have to move everything to the new tank, as soon as possible. The fire has burnt a lot of stuff.”

“The new Tank?”

“Oh, well, I’ve heard some voice. I don’t even know where it is. They say it will be ready next year…” He faked looking at his watch. “If I don’t go back fast I won’t hear the end of it… farewell.”

“Thanks. You too.”

And the man exited the apartment at a fast pace. He maybe realized one second too late he had said too much. Right. It was always like that. And the Keeper couldn’t ask any questions. He had no right to know. He lived in a circle he couldn’t step out of.

He remembered the first selection for the following year’s Keeper should have started by then. A little more than a trimester was left before the changing of the guard. And who knows how many young men were dreaming that exciting and profitable adventure like he had.

The thought of the money prize surfaced again, but it was with a certain unease that he found out, even if for a moment, he couldn’t remember the amount. And it had been some time since he had last thought of his island. That sunny island, with endless beaches, the one he saw himself lying on, with no thoughts on his mind…

I found something vaguely sinister in imagining that absolute tranquillity, bathed in a light blinding your eyes even when they are closed, a warmth stinging your skin, making it darker every day. HE could smell a faint brackish reek coming the ocean, which wasn’t blue as he remembered it. And there was another smell. Of dying, decaying fish.

He opened his eyes and, looking at his distressed face, he groaned, scared. How did he end up in front of the mirror? He had wandered around the house lost in his thought. It had happened before. Nothing special.

He went to his bedroom and lay on his bed, drawing dark shapes on the ceiling with his eyes.

When he heard the well known acoustic signal – the Postman’s beep – the first thing he did was to look at the alarm clock. 5:22 P.M.. Almost one hour had passed since he went to bed. He didn’t think he would fall asleep, but apparently he did. Did he dream about something? No, he didn’t remember anything. Inside his head, while he rose from the bed, his brain started oscillating from one side to the other, first right, then left. Like a bell. He grimaced, moving to fingers to his temples.

Here we go again.

First stop, the bathroom. He put a couple of painkillers on his tongue and forced them to go down his throat drowning them with a bitter, coppery tasting glass of water. He grimaced, went in front of the mirror, lowering his eyelid with a fingertip, and looked at his sclera. He thought it was a horrible vision.

( Stop with all this nonsense worthy of a drunk psychopath, Giovanni. You aren’t like that. Go read what they wrote you and get a hang of yourself.)