Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

When the clock struck eleven, Leonardo, who had expressed no opinion and had not even been asked for one, said he must go home. The others, too, agreed they were all too tired to reach a decision: for the moment the two men must stay in the little room, and over the next few days there would be time to decide calmly what should be done with them. But by now it was clear to everyone that the only solution would be to expel them from the district.

The destiny of the two men changed course on the last day of the month, when Cesare Gallo was found on his back on the floor of his sitting room with his head smashed in. The chemist said that he must already have been dead three or four days, since his blood had been completely absorbed by the parquet and his body, despite the cold, had begun to decompose. Jewelry, money, and clothes had disappeared from the house, and the corpse had been stripped of its boots. The killers had come on foot, and, after killing Gallo, had searched the house and eaten in the basement dining room. The mechanical bull was stained with blood, a sign that they had set it going for a while. The footprints suggested two or three people.

Because of the body’s condition, the funeral was held the same evening, and next morning the two outsiders were shot against the wall of the handball court.

Three men volunteered for the firing squad, and three others were chosen by lot from the twenty-five who had voted for the death sentence. The assembly had contained thirty members, none of them women, and Leonardo took no part in it. Execution by firing squad was chosen because no one had any experience in preparing a noose, and hanging could have caused problems. It was reported that the assembly had proposed loading two of the rifles with blanks so that everyone could think it might not have been him to fire the fatal shots, but no one in the village had any blank cartridges so the suggestion came to nothing.

Leonardo heard the shots from his book room and stayed staring for a long time at the same page without thinking of the book or of what had just happened only a kilometer away. When he went back into the house he found Lucia sitting on the sofa. She was wearing a sweat suit and looked as if she was listening intently to music, but the stereo was not on.

“Something ugly has happened in the village, hasn’t it?” she asked, watching him slipping off his jacket.

“Yes, very ugly.”

“Like what happened to the Pakistanis where we were?”

“Something like that.”

Lucia pulled her knees up to her chest, freeing half the sofa. Leonardo, on his way to the table, hesitated and then sat down. He touched the palm of his right hand with a finger, as if looking for a spot where he had hidden something under his skin.

“What did you tell Alberto?”

“That they’re hunting wild boars.”

“Did he believe you?”

“I think so. He wanted to know how much a wild boar weighs and how you go about skinning it.”

Lucia stretched her legs and put her feet in his lap. Leonardo took them in his hands. It seemed to him the first such beautiful thing he had done for many years.

As Christmas approached it got colder and the earth froze. In the morning the sky would be clear, but in the afternoon slow clouds without distinct outlines would be drawn down from the north by the dusk. By nightfall they would have taken over the sky. This raised the temperature a few degrees, making it possible to sit on the veranda and watch a great, unbroken black cloth descend beyond the fence. During the night, though, no wind could be felt; the clouds would disappear and by morning the ground would be covered with frost. The sky, before the sun had fully risen, would reflect this pure white as flocks of large birds headed south.

Leonardo would be the first to wake. Putting on his slippers he would take Bauschan as far as the edge of the vineyard and bend to study the tiny crystals that looked as if they had been set there by an army of watchmakers. While the dog raised his leg against the fence, Leonardo thought of cathedrals, illuminated books, and other products of limitless and patient intelligence, asking himself whether anyone would ever again be able to devote himself to such laborious but inessential work. There had been a time when he had felt himself to be one of those who believed in art for art’s sake. Only such people would ever understand such things: a simple piece of wood cannot know why nails and hairpins leap toward a magnet.

When Bauschan had finished his patrol they would go back into the house and Leonardo would return to the book he had fallen asleep over the evening before. He would be able to read for a good two hours or so before Lucia emerged from her room. It was good that she and Alberto both slept late at this time when there was nothing special to do. Sometimes they managed to get Alberto to the river before lunch, where he would play with pieces of wood carried on the flooding river, throwing them back into the icy water in the hope that Bauschan would retrieve them. But the dog would not listen to the boy and never came nearer to him than a meter or so, as if by some form of intuition or foresight.

Alberto was tall for his age, but even so his head seemed exceptionally large.

His face was pale and covered with small freckles, and, like his gray adult eyes, was in no sense naïve. His whole personality seemed constructed around his eyes, as if to protect and mask them. His auburn hair had grown in the weeks since he had arrived and was now down to his shoulders. He had long bones, to which his flesh seemed to stick like paper, and it was easy to guess that he would be a tall man. But at the moment his walk and his hands were awkward and clumsy.

Lucia often threatened to leave him on his own and take away his video game if he didn’t come with them to the little church. Alberto said he did not care and that he would either stay where he was or go home. Leonardo stood aside to let them argue it out. The thrust and parry would last about ten minutes; a conflict whose rules, controls, and counterbalances were well tested. Usually Lucia had the best of it and Alberto would follow them along the lane in resentful silence.

When they got to the church, Leonardo and Lucia would lean against the low wall and watch the hills disappearing all around while Alberto would wander among the graves in the little cemetery. When it was time to go they would usually find him staring at the tombs of those who had died in Russia. Leonardo had told him about that interminable retreat in the snow and how so many had died of cold and hunger, while Alberto, impressed by the size of the massacre, constantly demanded more details. It was the only time he would ever approach Leonardo; otherwise he kept himself to himself and avoided close contact even with his sister. He had never once had a bath since his arrival. Sometimes the other two heard him running the water and apparently having a shower, but they both doubted it was really happening. There was a shadow around his neck and his hair had become dark with dirt. He always wore the same clothes and boots. Despite the fact that Alessandra had left two suitcases full of suits, socks, shoes, shampoo, bubble bath, bathrobes, slippers, tubes of toothpaste, soap, and a leather briefcase that Leonardo had not seen again, but which presumably contained their permits and some money.

They would spend the rest of the day at home. Sometimes Leonardo would go out to look for firewood, or to exchange a few words with Adele and buy some honey from her. At such times he would leave the children on their own but never for more than an hour.

Once a week he would go into the village to buy bread, a couple of small cans of food, and some pasta and tomato sauce. Apart from milk and cheese this was all that was available; meat had become very expensive and fish could not be found at all, even frozen. The only shops still open were Norina’s grocery store and the bar. The pharmacist had moved all his medicine to his home, where he was available to customers every morning between ten and midday. The proprietors of the shoe shop and the hairdresser had done the same. The village streets were fragrant with the smell of burned wood and even though the dustcart no longer operated, the garbage cans were empty. Cars were hardly ever heard and the only voices came from the church during services or from the bar, where the circle of regulars had grown since hardly anyone now had any work, agricultural or otherwise. Conversations tended to be brief and nearly always ended in silences full of questions. Only ersatz coffee was now served; the real thing had run out. And despite the fact that it was nearly Christmas, no one had put up decorations.