Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

“All right,” Leonardo said.

Lucia tucked some loose hair behind her ear.

“I’m going in now,” she said.

“Fine.”

“And you?”

“I’d like to finish my book.”

“You don’t have to, if you don’t like it.”

“But I do like it.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

“OK.”

For supper they boiled three eggs and half a red cabbage and heated some leftover soup on the stove, to which they added a little fine pasta, and then, when it was all ready, Lucia filled a plate, took a spoon and fork, and disappeared into the corridor. She came back a minute later without the plate or cutlery. Then she picked a CD from the many available, put it on the stereo, and joined Leonardo at the table.

“Where’s this music from?” she asked, putting the first forkful of cabbage into her mouth.

“Mali.”

“Where’s that?”

“Northwest Africa.”

“Did you go there before it was closed?”

“No.”

“And to Africa?”

“Once.”

“Mamma’s been there many times.”

“Yes. She’s been to lots of places.”

Bauschan let out a sigh from the rug next to the stove where he was dozing. For a couple of weeks now he had started leaving the house to patrol the environs. He ranged further afield every day, and Leonardo was sure that that afternoon he had seen him trotting among the beeches on the hillside at the front of the house.

“The apples smell good,” Leonardo said.

Lucia looked at the pan on the stove where they were cooking.

“I put in a little of Adele’s honey. The sugar’s nearly finished.”

“That was a good idea.”

After Elio’s orchard had been plundered, the only fruit they had been able to find had been these bitter wild apples.

“Why does Adele’s son dress in that cowhide?” Lucia asked.

Leonardo said he did not know, but that it was a recent development. To her next question he answered that Sebastiano wasn’t dumb but had just decided not to speak. They heard Alberto leave his room for the bathroom. Neither of them made any comment. Soon they heard the toilet flush and the steps of the child going back to his room.

“Did you go to Africa because of your books?” Lucia asked.

“No, for a demonstration.”

“What sort of demonstration?”

Leonardo looked at the egg he had just cut open. It had boiled too long and the yolk had a greenish tinge.

“At the time of the closing down, a singer organized a meeting in the Congo, a sort of sit-in protest, and he invited directors, musicians, painters, and other such people. Flights were forbidden, but those who had private planes made them available. We chartered a plane from Italy.”

“Cool!”

“It wasn’t bad.”

“And what did you all do?”

“The program was made up of a series of meetings, concerts, processions, and documentaries, which everyone would have later found some way to project in his own country, but I only attended the first session, after which I fell ill with fever and had to stay in the hotel.”

“For how long?”

“A couple of weeks. The others left because their governments were threatening not to let them back in, but I had a high temperature and wasn’t allowed on the flight. They were terrified I’d caught some tropical illness. Your mother wrote to the papers and moved heaven and earth, or I’d have been stuck there.”

“What a crazy story!”

Leonardo nodded.

“The person playing on this recording was my doctor. He gave me the CD as a present before I left.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But what language did you speak with him?”

“Colin spoke both English and French extremely well.”

Lucia moved her fork automatically from the left to the right of her plate, keeping her eyes fixed on Leonardo’s face.

“And you’ve never seen him since?”

“No. We wrote to each other for a time, but then the net was blocked. The last I heard was that he had moved to South Africa.”

Lucia put a forkful of cabbage into her mouth.

“My literature teacher had lots of books by African writers. He used to photocopy parts of them and we would read them, but some of the parents didn’t like it. He could have lost his job.”

“That would have been a pity.”

“One of the stories was by a woman. I think she was called Jasmina.”

“Jiasmina Tofi.”

“It was about a boy who was desperate to have a pair of sunglasses, so while his mother was visiting her sick sister, he sold the well in the courtyard to a wandering peddler in exchange for a pair of Ray-Bans. By the time the mother got home, the man had put up a tent near the well and wanted to be paid for the water. In the end the boy died in a brawl in a disco and his mother married the peddler, who wasn’t as bad as he’d seemed to be.”

Leonardo nodded. “She’s a good writer. Do you want some more?”

Lucia shook her head.

Leonardo went to pour what was left of the soup into Bauschan’s bowl. The dog watched but did not move. When Leonardo started clearing the table, Lucia vanished into the corridor, reappearing soon afterward with Alberto’s plate.

“Has he eaten anything?”

“The egg. He’s left all his greens.”

Leonardo shook the tablecloth out of the window even though there had never been any crumbs on it since they had run out of bread, then poured hot water from the water heater into the sink and started washing the plates. Lucia sat down on the sofa. The CD had finished.

“Is there any more African music?”

“Yes, put on anything you like.”

Lucia calmly studied the CDs arranged by geographical origin, period, and type: there were up to a thousand of them, mostly classical, and she chose one with a green cover. Then she went back to sit down with her knees drawn up to her chest. The light from the only lamp lit up the kitchen leaving the area of the sofa and stove in shadow.

“That’s from Senegal,” Leonardo said. “Do you like it?”

Lucia stared at a point in the floor where the floorboards changed color. Years earlier there had been a leak and an area of the parquet had been soaked with water, but in the deceptive light of the lamp it looked more as if the room was on two different levels separated by a small stair. Bauschan had gone to his bowl and was eating peacefully.

“What’s the time?” Lucia asked.

“After nine.”

“Then I’ll be off to bed.”

“Yes.”

When the girl had left the room, Leonardo finished the dishes then he moved to the studio, where he put on a cashmere pullover. Since the children had come he had been keeping his things there, thus freeing the chest of drawers and wardrobe. Then he picked up the pillow, his toiletry bag, sheets, blanket, and pajamas piled on the desk and went back into the living room.

He brushed his teeth and washed his face in the sink, opened the sofa, and prepared his bed. When his sleeping place was ready, he sat down and studied the night through the window: everything lit by the moon looked mute, magnificent, and cold. The CD had finished and the crackling of the stove was the only sound dividing him from the silence. It seemed that to get up and put on more music would be a huge undertaking. He scratched his shoulder, then his ear, then his shoulder again.

He had no idea what might be passing through the head of that ten-year-old boy barricaded in his room all day. He had never seen him wash, weep, shout, be afraid, sleep, or even look sleepy. He had never heard him ask about his father or wonder aloud what would happen if Alessandra did not come back. Leonardo knew nothing of the boy’s likes and dislikes. Of what upset him or comforted him. Whether he slept on his stomach or whether his hair had always been the same length.