Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

Norina’s husband lowered his rifle and studied the three bodies in the square; they were lying apart in different but equally bizarre positions, like three letters spelling a word. The fourth intruder had vanished, but a few seconds later shots were heard some distance away, then silence. Norina’s husband turned, leaving his wet slippers on the balcony, and went back into the house.

Leonardo looked at Lucia. A thread of saliva had appeared between her open lips and her eyes were still but without tension. He led her to the sofa and made her sit down, stroking her hair until she took a deep breath and started weeping.

“Wait here,” Leonardo said.

Leaving the room, he went toward Alberto’s room at the far end of the corridor. The boy was sitting on his bed staring at the whiteness outside. His window faced the back yard. He did not turn when he heard the door open.

Leonardo called him by name.

The child went on sitting with his back to him, his red shirt making his back look smaller. His hair was unkempt and his hands were resting with their palms upward on his knees. Leonardo looked around the room: covers and clothes in disorder all over the place. It was only then that he noticed Bauschan.

The dog was stretched under the table with a sweater over his head, the sleeves knotted around his neck to prevent him getting it off. Alberto had tied his paws to the legs of the table with string.

“What have you done?” Leonardo said.

No answer.

Leonardo knelt down by the dog and freed his head. No sooner did Bauschan see the light again than he yelped and tried to lick Leonardo’s hands. While untying the dog’s paws Leonardo looked at Alberto and for the first time saw him smile.

Norina’s funeral was delayed to give her husband time to find a coffin. The last one available in the village had been used for Achille Conterno and the only alternative was to make one from whatever wood could be found around the place. But her husband would not hear of it and set out early in the morning for A. in his off-road vehicle.

He came back late in the afternoon. Leonardo heard the car in the square, and getting up from the table where he was peeling potatoes, saw the Land Rover parked in front of the shop door. A large dark wood coffin was sticking out of the open trunk, secured with a couple of elastic cords. It looked big enough for two people.

The next morning the bells rang out and some seventy people gathered at the church to pay their last respects. Leonardo looked for Elvira among them, but she was not there.

Studying the faces, Leonardo realized no children were present. Then he realized he had not seen any for a long time. Where were the young people? It was as if they had disappeared gradually without anyone noticing. The sound of motor scooters, the voices when the coach unloaded them onto the square on their return from school, their crabwise walk, their satchels, their smart clothes, their earphones; all these seemed to be images as far off in time as his own childhood. He felt a small pain between his shoulders and felt he was very close to understanding something that required courage to accept and that offered no return to what had been before.

Realizing the distress it would have caused him to pursue this idea to the very end, he leaned back in the pew, vaguely sleepy. For a few minutes he drifted off into an innocuous beyond, an island in the middle of a river where holidaymakers and weekenders were picnicking in the fields, calling their children to come quickly and eat food they had spread out on checkered cloths. Several rowing boats were moving on the river, which at that point was as slow and still as a lake. The rowers were city men with sleeves rolled up to their elbows. Their companions and friends, female and male, were sitting in the bows looking at the vegetation on the banks and the peaceful activities of the holidaymakers. Several of the women were holding parasols. The voices that reached him were speaking French; French men directing French women and children playing French games. Through the leaves of a willow he glimpsed a car, one of the first, as elegant as an inkstand.

The smell of incense recalled him to the cold church and the seventy tired-looking mourners. Norina’s husband was standing in the front row in his National Guard uniform, with his garnet-red beret, well-polished shoes, and riding breeches, on his chest a medal as big as a breakfast cracker.

When Mass was over, Don Piero asked him to say a few words in memory of his wife. He walked with firm steps to the lectern and declared in a loud clear voice that his wife had been the best companion a man could ever have and he was proud of not having submitted to the crime with bowed head as most people did these days. Even when he lowered his voice to recall their habit of bathing their feet together in the same bowl each evening, he still glared disdainfully at the faces in front of him.

The coffin was so large it took eight men to carry it out of the church.

While the cortège was making its way to the cemetery behind Mariano’s pick-up truck, Leonardo looked up at the windows of their home and recognized Lucia’s pale face behind the curtains. He raised his hand and she waved back.

In the days after the shooting, a veil of silence descended on their gestures, expectations, and fears. They exchanged a few comments about food, about the books Lucia was reading, and about the shower in the bathroom that was about to give up the ghost, but only as a way to avoid talking about what they had seen. Leonardo said nothing about what Alberto had done to Bauschan. They spent most of their time in the kitchen with the stove and radio. They ate what little food they had without complaint, washed themselves and their clothes, kept the fire burning, and slept a little more than strictly necessary.

“We’re dying,” Leonardo told himself, replacing his hands in his pockets as they processed toward the cemetery.

On the way he heard that the evening after the murder there had been a long discussion among the parish priest, Norina’s husband, and the men who had killed the fourth bandit. Don Piero had maintained that the four intruders, though thieves and murderers, were not outsiders, and so a funeral should also be arranged for them; whether anyone attended it or not was another matter. But the others argued that the four should be treated the same as the outsiders shot in November.

Apparently the decisive opinion had been Mariano’s, who had said he was not willing to have his car used to transport the thieves to the cemetery, and if the priest wanted a funeral, then he must bury them in his own garden himself. Faced with this, Don Piero gave way and the four were taken out of the village and buried in the forest before the ground froze at night. Papers had been found in the pockets of one of the men and the woman. They had been husband and wife and from a small village near V. She had been a radiologist, he an artisan. The youngest carried no documents, but was probably their son since he had red hair like his mother. The third man may have been a relative or just someone who had joined their gang. He had no papers, and his face had been disfigured by bullets.

Not much time was spent over prayers at Norina’s interment. It was beginning to snow again and everyone seemed on the point of collapse from exhaustion and hunger. Three men, including her husband, placed a heavy slab of marble over her grave to close it, then her husband added a silver frame with a photograph of her and started walking back to the village followed by the others.

Leonardo spent the afternoon in the kitchen listening to old songs and ads for furniture manufacturers and car dealers on the radio. At about four he heard voices in the square and saw a dozen armed men gathered in front of the shop, all locals. When Norina’s husband came out, they went with him on the road leading to R. and while the light lasted shots could be heard, only ending when dark fell and the group returned. The men went up into the apartment over the shop, and Leonardo could hear drunken singing until late at night.