Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

Alessandra walked toward him. She was slim and looked hardly any older, yet many things about her, starting with her hairdo, spoke of a woman who had made radical alterations to her scale of personal values. For all Leonardo knew this could have happened as soon as they separated, or only yesterday. But the decisive air with which she climbed the steps and stopped a few paces from him made it clear that this would not be a subject for discussion.

“ Ciao , Leonardo.”

Leonardo got up and took a step toward her but stopped, hampered by the cover, which had slipped down between his feet. In the car were a girl, and a boy of about ten. The pair were watching them through the blue-tinted windshield. It was a high-powered car and extremely elegant. But its hubcaps had been taken off, as had its front grill and mirrors.

Leonardo looked at the girl and her long smooth hair.

“Is that Lucia?” he asked.

As he spoke he realized he had not pronounced her name for many years. The little girl he had taken to the movies and the puppet theater and spent the hottest summer months with in a little house in the Ligurian hinterland, the two of them alone, making up stories in rhyme, going for long walks in the morning and bathing only after four.

“Yes,” Alessandra said. “But first I need to talk to you. Can we come in?”

Leonardo made his way to the kitchen, where everything smelled of smoke. The tanker that usually passed in October to fill the cistern with methane gas had not come and, in any case, Leonardo no longer had the money to pay for it. So he had pulled an old stove out of the cellar and collected some firewood in the forest. His first attempts to light it had been pathetic, but for a few days now he had been able to heat at least this part of the house.

They sat down facing each other at the table.

“Do you have a dog?” she said, noticing the bowls under the sink.

“A puppy.”

She moved her hands on the table as if drawing something that would help her say what she had come to say. Thinking it might require summing up many years in a few words, Leonardo kept silent.

“I remarried four years ago.”

“I didn’t know.”

She said that was just how it was.

“I met Riccardo a few months after we separated. We dated for a year; then after our marriage Lucia and I moved to C. We have a villa by the lake. Riccardo’s a communications engineer. The boy in the car is Riccardo’s son. His name’s Alberto.”

Leonardo studied the woman who had once been his wife and now was another man’s wife. Her expression, her shoulders, and her small breasts still had the attractive nervousness of the days when she had worked and talked and been ironical and spent many hours flying to see exhibitions by painters desperate to impress her. Even so, Leonardo could not help noticing that the old warmth had gone from her body. She was much sharper now, like a poker kept beside the fireplace to stir up the fire.

“Last year Riccardo was called up,” she went on. “The army was working with new communications systems, and his expertise was indispensable. At first he came home every two weeks, then less often. Now I’ve heard nothing from him for four months.”

Alessandra spread her hands on the table. In addition to her wedding ring, she was wearing several rings set with small stones, none of which Leonardo recognized.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

“A glass of water would be great, thanks.”

He went to the sink, filled two glasses from the tap, and returned to the table.

“I want to go look for Riccardo,” Alessandra said, “and in the meantime I’d like the children to stay with you. Riccardo’s mother is very old and I have no one else; most of our friends are abroad. If I don’t find him within a week, I’ll come back and get the kids. We have a pass for Switzerland. The last thing Riccardo sent us.”

Leonardo wiped a drop of water that was running down the outside of his glass.

“Tell me about Lucia,” he said.

Alessandra stared at him expressionlessly.

“What exactly do you want to know?”

Leonardo smiled. His back was still hurting.

“Does she get along well with her friends, what subjects does she like best, has she thought yet what she might like to study at university?”

Alessandra tucked some hair behind her ear. She must have had it dyed blonde, but now it was returning to its natural brown. Her eyelids were vibrating with tiny electric shocks entirely unrelated to tears.

“In September,” she said, “in front of your daughter’s school, they hanged a Pakistani couple, a husband and wife, who had worked for a family we knew. Our friends had been found dead two days earlier and it seems the Pakistanis had been seized in revenge. They were left hanging for a week, in the hope of discouraging other criminals. But it didn’t work like that. The assaults continued. Gangs of stray kids, goodness knows from where. No one can say how many there are of them. They do horrible things then vanish, and no one knows where they’ve gone until they come back, they or others like them.”

Alessandra touched the water in her glass and massaged a temple with her wet fingers. Her lips were marked with small cracks.

“All people can think of is getting out. They abandon everything they can’t get into their cars, including old people and animals. I know what I’m saying is hard to believe, but I have no reason to tell you lies. I just want to find Riccardo and take the children away. The only reason I haven’t already gone is that once I’ve left the country they won’t let me back in.”

A shuffling sound distracted them. Turning, they saw Bauschan staring at them from the door. They heard a car door opening in the yard. Alessandra jumped to her feet, made her way around the dog, and went out onto the veranda. Her black crew-neck sweater perfectly matched the gray sky. She was also wearing a pair of claret-colored pants. Her head stood proudly on the long neck she had inherited from her horse-riding ancestors, but he noticed her breasts were lower than before.

“Get back in the car, Alberto.”

“But there’s a dog!”

“I know, but get back in the car.”

“I want to touch it.”

“Later, now get back in the car. I’ll tell you when you can come out.”

“But I’m thirsty!”

“There’s a bottle of water in the bag. Tell Lucia to give it to you. I’m coming in a minute.”

Leonardo heard the door shut again. Alessandra stepped over Bauschan as if he were nothing more than a pair of slippers someone had left on the floor, and sat down again.

“OK if I smoke?” she asked.

Leonardo grabbed a saucer from the dresser. Alessandra took a pack of Marlboro and a lighter from her bag. Bauschan followed their movements with apprehension. Alessandra lit up and blew smoke from the side of her mouth. Before turning back to Leonardo, she stared for some time at the volume of Lorca’s poems next to a plate of boiled zucchini on the dresser.

“Alberto’s not an easy child,” she said. “He’s suffered during this last year from the absence of his father, but I’ve talked to him and he’s old enough to understand. And Lucia knows how to deal with him, she’ll take care of that.”

Leonardo understood from the way her fingers were working with a fragment of ash that had fallen on the table, that no matter what happened she was determined to be somewhere else before dark.

“Has Lucia ever asked about me?” he asked.

Alessandra quickly raised the cigarette to her lips.

“There was a time, during her first year in upper school, when she asked me a lot of questions. Maybe she’d found an old newspaper or someone had talked about it at school. I told her what had happened without hiding anything. Since then she hasn’t asked. I know that she’s found your books in the library and read them, but she has never asked to see you or talk to you.”