Nicola Lombardi - The Tank

He opened the reinforced door and left the key in the lock. The small metal tetragram clinked for a few seconds, then stopped.

The engine, tie-rods and wheels loudly made an effort to pull up the elevator cabin. If the NMO ever wanted to use it again, it would probably need some serious maintenance. But since it was probably it’s penultimate run, all those creaks would give them no more trouble.

Giovanni moved next to the Shutter, where for hundreds of times he had waited the arrival of new convicts. He stood in the typical position of a soldier at ease, his legs slightly spread and his hands behind his back

( Do you really want to do this? )

When the cabin reached the floor and the two shutters opened, he wasn’t surprised to see the two sergeants – yes, it’s them, I knew it! – with the same martial pace, the same by the book expressions. Until he would get to know his names, he would call them Thick and Thin. They hadn’t changed at all in a year’s time. Maybe things don’t really change out there, despite the appearances. The Tank was different. To him, in a year, everything had changed. He had lost everything . Once he could see an island, far on the horizon. But the route had changed. Too many storms during the journey. Too many tears on the sails, on the hull, on the heart. And now, after months of wandering with no map whatsoever, drifting, there came the immense vortex…

“Good to see you again, Keeper Corte.” Thick said.

“Good to see you too, friends. Are you here to… help me with the furlough operation, I suppose.”

The two soldiers exchanged an oblique look and Giovanni thought that if they had been fat, wore top hats and had long knives in their hands, they would be exactly like the two executioners who took away mister K to execute him in the final scene of The Process.

(Do you really want to do this, Giovanni?)

“I have no choice.”

“What did you say, Keeper?”

Thick and Thin were standing side by side, a couple of meters away from him. Giovanni showed his hands, which up to that moment were hidden behind his back, relishing the sight of the grimaces deforming their faces as soon as they saw the Beretta. But the surprise lasted for just a couple of seconds: they immediately extracted their weapons and aimed them at him with ferocious determination.

“Put it down, Keeper.” Thick growled.

Thin didn’t say anything. He clenched his teeth so much that they started creaking.

“I’m not the Keeper anymore. My name is Giovanni.”

He kept hanging on to his Beretta without aiming it on the two soldiers. He had no intention of shooting.

“Ok, Giovanni. Now put it down. Don’t force us to…”

“To do what?”

The two looked at each other again.

“Never mind”, Giovanni added. “It doesn’t matter.”

Right. Nothing had anymore.

With precise movements he holstered the Beretta, then he unfastened the holster from his belt and, bending slightly, made it slide on the linoleum towards Thin’s feet. The two sergeants sighed in unison. And the weapons disappeared.

The neon lamps embracing the Ring crackled and the light dimmed sensibly. Half of the white tubes went off and the soldier’s and Giovanni’s still shapes faded suddenly, losing consistency and depth. From the Center, they were already de-activating some of the Tank’s electrical lines. The end was nigh. He could hear the vortex drawing near…

It was Thick who talked first. But now that the initial tension had reduced, he had to clear his throat before speaking. “Keep… Giovanni, we are here in the name of the New Moral Order…”

“I know.”

“…and it’s out duty to inform you that we can’t let you go.”

Maybe, after that statement, the officers were used to complaints, protests, pitiful scenes, crying, screams, escape attempts…

But Giovanni didn’t move, he just kept staring at the soldier with no recognizable emotion in his eyes.

Thick glanced at his partner, disoriented, the went on: “Do you… understand what I just said?”

Giovanni nodded. “Yes, I do. I did a while ago.”

Thin coughed, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Thick squeezed his eyes as to focus on the shape in front of him. “Good”, he said. “And… so?”

“So what ?”

“Are you going to give us problems, or?”

Giovanni felt his soul invaded by an endless tiredness. And he also felt nauseated by all those empty words, all those sounds creating a useless dialogue between ghosts. He breathed in deeply and gathered thee strength to speak again. “Did you bring the band?”

Thick hesitated, evidently disconcerted by that demonstration of coldness. “Yes, but if you prefer…”

In answer Giovanni turned around and put his hands behind his back. He heard the two sergeants approach and in a few seconds the plastic band was tightened around his waists.

“He also have a pill”, Thin said, talking for the first time. “If you want.”

“No, I don’t. Do what you have yo do, now. And do it quick, please.”

Thick moved to the panel, while the neon lights wavered again.

Giovanni stood in front of the Shutter and it wasn’t easy for him to see his reflection on the glass. It was the light’s fault, it was too dim. Or maybe he wasn’t there anymore. It could very well be a dream. Another one. The last one. He closed his eyes asked: “Can you tell something to general Stevanich on my behalf?”

Thick was busy inputting the right sequence, so it was Thin (no more that a voice behind his back, in the half-light) who answered. “Ok.”

“Tell him he was right about the need of facing one’s fear sooner or later. And tell him that I am not afraid anymore.”

He wondered if it was really true, but he couldn’t answer. He was looking at his greatest fear dead in the eye. The one that would never let him go on with his life if he hadn’t indulged it, loved it. The Tank – with its sorrowful shadow of horror, death, and despair – would always darken his life, had he turned his back on it.

There can be no Heaven if there is Hell.

Now!

The door slipped away with an exhausted puff. Giovanni breathed in deep, driving away the tears. Then he took a step into the Shutter.

Don’t think, Giovanni. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think…

He heard the two soldiers speak under their breath. Then Thin said: “We could shoot you in the head with your gun, say you killed yourself.”

Giovanni’s heart shrunk. It was a powerful temptation. He would cross the abyss in a moment, without suffering… but he would never really get rid of it. He would never be redeemed .

“I told you”, he answered without opening his eyes, “that I’m not afraid.”

Another handful of silent grains fell down inside the hourglass, then Thick’s broken voice put an end to everything. “Goodbye, then.”

A puff, and the Shutter’s door cut the world away.

Giovanni opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness. His lips moved to ask his mother and father for forgiveness. He felt a fire in his heart, like a small star burning in its stead.

Every single fiber of his body trebled when he heard that noise ( clang! ), louder and neared than he had ever heard it. It was the Suffering’s voice calling him opening its arms of glass and metal. The reek of blood and decomposing beasts filled his nostrils, but what really left him breathless was the silence. He had imagined that from the bottomless pit before him a wave of screams and laments would rise, but he heard nothing more than the cry of his own soul. He thought that in his whole life he had never known a fear so great.