Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

The two men said nothing, their eyes fixed on the nearest patch of ground.

Someone repeated the questions in French, but the prisoners still said nothing. The rain had glued their clothes to their thin bodies, and their beards and shaggy hair shone as if they had low voltage bulbs inside their heads. On the way back the party was swollen by people who came out on to the road to see the two prisoners, then the procession climbed the street to the center of the village and the school. Reaching the red gate, they all realized there was no good reason for them to have come so far, and no one knew what to do next. So they sent for the priest.

While they were waiting for him, Fausto Conterno, who had worked as school caretaker for twenty-five years, suggested using the little room next to the gym as a cell: it had a window with iron bars and a door that could be locked from the outside. It was the nearest thing the village had to a prison, apart from the secret parts of the ancient castle, which no one dared to suggest, so the two men were taken to this lumber room and shut up there amid gymnastics mattresses and soccer balls.

When Don Piero arrived it was past two, and he was furious to find Pietro Viglietta guarding the door alone with nothing but his rifle and bandolier. Pietro explained that when they had not seen Don Piero coming, the others had gone to lunch and would be back at four o’clock. The priest, calming down, asked Pietro to explain what had happened; Pietro, who had not been on the expedition because of his bad hip, passed on what he had been told. Don Piero asked if any water had been left with the two men. Fausto said he thought so.

At four the party reassembled in the main hall of the school, some twenty meters from the cell.

Assuming it was certain that the two men had been responsible for thefts from the unprotected orchards and houses, the villagers were now faced with the problem of deciding what to do. They could not hold a trial without any lawyers or a judge or at least a representative of the Council. The three lawyers with homes in the district had all gone abroad, the deputy mayor had also gone, and none of those present had any wish to assume any such responsibility. Nor did anyone want to go to A. to pass the problem on to the police or the magistrates’ court; even if there still were offices capable of taking on such things, they must be up to their eyebrows in similar problems. Even worse was the fact that it was impossible to communicate with the prisoners and find out who they were, where they had come from, and whether there were others like them in the district. They were certainly not Romanians or Slavs or even Africans, but apart from this no one had the faintest idea of their origin. At this point someone thought of Leonardo.

When he heard the car come into the courtyard Leonardo jumped out of his armchair hoping it might be Alessandra, but when he opened the door the light of a torch shone straight into his eyes.

“I’m alone here!” he protested, terrified.

The three men confronting him restricted themselves to explaining why they had come. As soon as he recognized Norina’s husband, Leonardo calmed down.

“Someone must stay with the children,” he said.

The shortest of the men said not to worry, he would do that.

So Leonardo said, “Please come in,” and after going to tell Lucia he would be away for half an hour, he put on his raincoat and left.

When he came into the hall the twenty or so men who by this time had been there for six hours looked at him as though Leonardo was not exactly what they had had in mind. Even though the central heating was off, the air was warm and fragrant.

“We’ve tried French,” the pharmacist said, “but it was no good.”

He was the only one with his rifle on his shoulder. The rest had propped their weapons against the wall under the blackboard. The prisoners were sitting on two children’s chairs on the other side of the room. The voices of women waiting for the outcome of the interrogation could be heard from the entrance hall.

Leonardo spoke to the men in English, then German, and, finally, his very basic Russian, but the two continued to stare at their own feet. The older man could have been about thirty; the younger one not much more than twenty. They had black curly hair, which had been given an auburn gloss by a combination of dust and humidity. One could easily imagine them landing from a Phoenician ship that had been on the high seas for months, or descending from a mountain range perpetually covered with snow. Their eyes were vigilant yet expressionless, like the eyes of goats.

“Would someone please get an atlas from the library?” Leonardo said.

While they waited, time seemed suspended. The rain continued dripping silently on the windowsills. Further off, the roofs of a few houses could be seen, also a lamppost, and the tower of a church deconsecrated many years previously. When Fausto came back with the atlas, Leonardo opened it in front of the two outsiders. The older man looked at a map covering a double page, then at Leonardo, then back at the map and pointed to an area south of Russia.

“Where are they from?” someone asked.

“Azerbaijan.” Leonardo said.

The two men did not react in any way to the name of the country. The elder rearranged his hands on his knees. The younger never moved at all. They were wearing winter pants, in one case a women’s pair.

“How long has it been?” Leonardo asked them.

The two men looked at Leonardo; they had not understood. Leonardo pointed to his watch, which was still on his wrist even though its battery was dead. The elder lifted two fingers.

“Two years?”

“Perhaps he means two months,” someone said.

“Two years?” Leonardo persisted.

The man shook his head as if to say either he did not know or did not understand or it was not important. At that point Leonardo noticed the younger man was weeping, shedding great tears that slithered down his cheeks and fell to the floor. He wept, Leonardo thought, in a very feminine way, musical and full of dignity. The elder man, perhaps his relative or a person who was in some way responsible for him, touched his knee to encourage him to stop. There could have been ten years between them, but the skin of the younger man was very smooth and his teeth perfect, whereas the weathered face of the elder had creases that shifted when he opened his mouth, but were all bitter. He was wearing a red waistcoat over a green sweater. The other had only a roll-neck sweater whose sleeves were too long; and a wool cap hanging out of his pants pocket.

“Why did you come here?” the pharmacist asked.

The man slowly passed a hand over the atlas as if sweeping crumbs away from his own country and toward Europe.

“What does that mean?” Don Piero asked.

“I don’t know,” Leonardo said. “Perhaps they were forced to move.”

At a quarter past ten the two were taken back to the room with the soccer balls. Leonardo asked if they had had anything to eat and everyone looked at each other in silence. A man went into the hallway where the women were waiting, and before anyone could ask anything, told his wife to talk to the other women and arrange something to eat for them.

“But what do they eat?” Leonardo heard the woman ask. The man returned, shut the door, and went back to sit where he had been before. At this point there was an exchange of views on what should be done. Someone suggested taking the two men away and letting them go on the understanding they must not set foot in the district again, but it was explained to him that there could be no guarantee that they would do what they were told. They might just as well be given one of the abandoned houses and a piece of land to cultivate to stop them from thieving. But if news of this got about, it might attract other strays to the area.