Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

Leonardo studied his friend’s profile, and then he went back to watching the plain: a sea on which few lights were moving. Now that there were no vehicles passing it was hard to believe there had ever been a road there at all.

“Have you nothing to say?”

Leonardo placed a hand on the parapet.

“When you’re young you can do fine things or terrible things. Either can easily happen.”

Elio closed his lips around his filter.

“They’ll make us pay for everything we’ve done to them,” he said.

Four people passed through the square sheltering under two jackets and an umbrella. One was Don Piero. The jackets vanished into a doorway in the square. The umbrella accompanied Don Piero as far as the sacristy, and then it went on alone.

“Last month I was nearly lynched by a gang of boys,” Leonardo said.

Elio looked at him.

“Why?”

Leonardo shook his head. All that existed for him at that moment were the square, the church, the bell tower, the houses, and a wet street leading nowhere.

“Perhaps we went wrong much sooner than we think,” he said.

Elio took two more pulls at his cigarette and then threw it over the parapet; it drew a brief glowing arc, landed, and went out. With the hand not holding the umbrella he searched his jacket pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys.

“In the store you’ll find some tools and kerosene and two gas stoves, though the cylinders are finished. Take anything you can use.”

Leonardo pocketed the keys.

“I’ll leave you a can of gas, too. But don’t let it stay there too long; I wouldn’t like it to disappear. Here’s the address of our cousins in Marseilles. The telephone number, too.”

Leonardo put the slip of paper in his pocket with the keys. The church clock struck one. The light in one window went out and the night crept forward a few meters, stopping at the first rows of vines. Beyond that point there could have been anything.

“I’ll be going now,” Elio said.

“Say hi to Gabri for me.”

“Shall I leave you the umbrella?”

“I’ve got my hat, thanks.”

“Take care then.”

“You too.”

On the road home Leonardo noticed the rain getting heavier. He began walking faster. The night was closed, leaving no crack for escape, and no smell was rising from the asphalt. Rounding the last bend, he recognized the lighted window of his kitchen. That had not happened since he was a child.

“Papa?”

“Yes.”

“Have I woken you?”

“No, just resting my eyes a bit.”

“Have you finished your book?”

“Nearly. It’s excellent.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“Yes, I really think it is. What have you been doing?”

“Translating a bit of Latin, but I need a walk now. Would you like to come?”

“Alberto?”

“He’s in his room. Shall I ask him?”

“Yes. See what he says.”

He heard the door slide back and Lucia’s footsteps moving through the house. The sky was a ragged white, and puffs of mist were floating over the forest, just touching the tops of the trees. He stretched his legs, trying to shake off the sluggishness that had come over him immediately after lunch. A bird was still singing in the clump of acacias behind the storehouse. He had always admired writers who understood flying creatures and trees, not to mention those who were capable of writing knowledgeably about trails of animal droppings, but he had never managed to master such knowledge himself, and for his own books he had trusted the series Know Your Plants, Know Your Herbs, and Know Your Animals . The last one was divided into three volumes and was dedicated to large mammals, small mammals, and insects, which in the end turned out not to be animals at all. It had been enough for most of his readers to think of him as a wise man profoundly symbiotic with nature.

He heard the door behind him open, then close. Lucia passed him and went to lean against one of the roof supports.

“Did you tell him he can stop and play at the river?” Leonardo asked her.

“Yes, but he’d rather stay in his room with his game.”

They gazed at the river, swollen by the rain of the last few weeks. It was flowing slowly toward the valley, carrying on its brown waters large branches and stains of scum. The unknown bird had stopped singing either because it was tired or because it was satisfied.

“Did I like having a bath when I was little?” Lucia asked.

Leonardo looked at her back: under her cream-colored top it formed a perfect triangle, divided into two exactly equal halves by her long tail of hair. Her grandmother, Leonardo’s mother, had had the same shining black hair and clear skin. It was not unusual in those hills, and someone said it was a result of the Arab invasions. Lucia nearly always kept her hair gathered into a ponytail by a red rubber band. The only times Leonardo had ever seen it loose was when she had washed it and was sitting by the stove to let it dry. As she did so, she read a novel written a few years before by an American folk musician who had been a baseball player and a tireless traveler. Someone had called him the heir of Bob Dylan just as the young Bob Dylan had been the heir of Woody Guthrie, and several coincidences made it clear this was no meaningless idea.

Bob Dylan as a boy had gone to see Guthrie in the sanatorium during the last days of his life and had sung his own songs to him, and in the same way the young Isaiah Jones had been to Bob’s house several times in the months before Dylan’s death. Many claimed those meetings had ensured the passing on of the great popular American narrative message. This had struck Leonardo at the time, and he had written about it in a daily paper. He had admitted in his article that what had most attracted him in Isaiah’s songs, as in Dylan’s and earlier in Guthrie’s, had been a sense of wonder he did not understand but intuited. Like seeing a perfect naked body through frosted glass. A vision full of promise for the future. When he listened to their songs he understood how the first readers of the Bible must have felt, when there was a kingdom to be conquered and still the chance of spending long nights forging the swords for the battles ahead. The songs of those three gave hope.

“You had some rubber dolphins you liked to have in your bath,” he answered. “I used to sit on the floor and read out their names: there was the bottlenose dolphin, Hector’s dolphin, and the spinner dolphin, the common one. You used to look at the pictures in the book and divide them into families on the edge of the bath. The one you liked best was the beluga.”

“What’s that?”

“A white dolphin from the northern seas. Did Alberto enjoy having his bath at home?”

Lucia shook her head. Leonardo moved the book that had been lying open on his stomach while he was asleep to the little table; for a moment its silvered cover reflected the sky. A few drops landed on a metal sheet in the ruins of the store. In the vineyard fallen leaves had formed a mush the color and consistency of polenta.

“One day I’d like to talk about it,” Lucia said.

“About what?”

“About what you’ve done.”

Now the rain was beginning to fall in a tired manner, almost as if engaged in work it no longer felt up to.

Leonardo looked at the mountains: a blue deprived of light, as if painted by someone who has just lost a war. Lucia’s gaze passed over her father’s pants, his patched pullover, and the long gray hair that reached to his shoulders.

“We could do it this evening,” she said, smiling weakly, “after Alberto’s asleep.”

His face was open and full of gentleness. There were no hidden reasons why this should be so, just as there are no reasons on a windless day for the lake facing you to be completely still. Something uncommon but hiding no secrets.