Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

“Go back home.”

For a few seconds no one spoke.

“I don’t want to hitchhike,” Lucia said.

“We can walk along the railway.”

“It’ll take a hell of a long time,” Alberto said.

These were the first words he had spoken since the morning.

“Three or four days,” Leonardo said, “but with any luck we’ll get a lift with someone we can trust. Feeling cold? Sit between me and Lucia.”

“No.”

“Then call Bauschan and keep close to him. He’ll warm you up.”

Alberto did not move and Bauschan stayed curled between Leonardo’s legs. After a little they heard the boy’s breathing get slower, broken by little hisses, and knew he was asleep.

“Papa?”

“Yes?”

“Can’t you sleep?”

“Not at the moment. Are you cold?”

“My feet are.”

“Is there a sweater in your case?”

“Yes.”

“Then take off your shoes and wrap your feet in it, that’ll warm them up.”

He had read this in a story about gold prospectors in the far north.

“Better?”

“Yes, better now.”

Leonardo looked at the patch of sky above them. There were orange reflections in it, as if somewhere nearby a volcano was erupting, casting a glow of lava on the clouds. An occasional snowflake settled gently on parts of his cheek unprotected by his beard. He was fifty-three and had never slept in the open before.

“Papa?”

“Yes, Lucia.”

“You’ve been very brave,” she said, taking his hand.

Leonardo closed his eyes the better to feel the perfection of her fingers.

All the next morning they followed the railway track. They could sense the regular geometry of the rice fields all around them, but apart from this the countryside seemed to have thrown off all trace of humanity. The occasional farms in the distance seemed deserted, and the only thing that passed on the autostrada was a tanker escorted by two army vehicles. Only once, nearing a village, did they see a house burning and some men moving around it in an attempt either to put out the flames or feed them. Lucia made it clear she would not go near it in any circumstances, and Leonardo, convinced deep down that she was right, kept going.

At midday they sat down on the track and ate the last of the sweets. The snow they melted in the palms of their hands only made them thirstier, and the surrounding whiteness was starting to blind them. Alberto’s eyes were red and had begun to weep.

Leonardo promised he would go and look for something to eat at the first farmhouse they came to, leaving them to wait for him beside the railway. Neither Alberto nor Lucia raised any objection.

By the time they came reasonably near a farm it was late afternoon and the light was beginning to fail. The children watched Leonardo put the suitcase on the ground, climb down the railway embankment and set off across a field with Bauschan. They sat on the track with their hands in their pockets to protect them from the cold wind that had kicked up, and gazed after Leonardo until they could no longer distinguish the brown of his jacket from the blue of his trousers. Seen from a distance, with his long gray hair blending with the white ground, he looked as if he had no head, according to Alberto. Lucia told him he was talking nonsense, but secretly she was ashamed because she had thought the same.

The building dated from the early twentieth century when trains brought rice workers to the nearby stations from where they would be transported by cart to the farms. It was typical of the farms in the district, even if it must have later been converted by someone whose work had no relation to agriculture. The yard had been paved and there was no trace of the machinery and other odds and ends normally to be found on a working farm. The store had become a garage, while large glass windows had been added to the upper floor, revealing an interior of wood and brick. It looked like the home of a painter, sculptor, or art critic. This explained the statue in the courtyard, a work in concrete and fiberglass two meters high, which represented two embracing bodies but could equally well have been an enormous fossil shell or a DNA helix.

Leonardo could find nothing edible anywhere in the house.

He searched every drawer, box, and container; there was only one small tube of tomato paste that had already been nibbled by mice. Nothing else. Otherwise the house seemed in reasonable condition with its beds in place, its roof solid, and its windows intact. It was certainly very cold, but there was a large fireplace in the ground-floor living room, and when he found a cigarette lighter behind the radiator in the bathroom, he began to think that they might be able to sleep there for the night and light a fire.

Walking down the stairs he imagined that the person who lived there must have smoked secretly in the bathroom, perhaps an adolescent, or a sick person forbidden to smoke by his doctor. He tried to imagine the voices of the people who could have lived in the house. But they seemed remote and painful, and he decided to stop.

He was about to leave when he noticed the door to the cellar. Unlike the other doors it was blue and closed. His mind filled with images of salami, wine, preserves, and everything else that had to be kept in a cool place rather than close at hand.

He opened the door, throwing light on a downward staircase. He just had enough time to recognize dark streaks left by something that must have been dragged, before a powerful acid stench of decomposition hit him from below, forcing him to close his eyes and step back. When he opened his eyes again he was facing the blue door, which he had instinctively closed. Until then he had associated blue doors with Greece or Provence, but from now on for the rest of his life they would remind him of that stench and what it must conceal.

He had gotten most of the way back to the railway when he noticed Bauschan was not with him. His first thought was that he must have gone in through the blue door before he closed it. He imagined the dog imprisoned in the putrid darkness.

“Bauschan!” he called, his voice echoing across the fields like a blow from an ax. He was about to call again when in the semidarkness he saw a shape come running from the farm gate, disappear behind a hedge, and reappear in the field. Bauschan must have sensed a note of reproach in his master’s voice because he slowed down in the last few meters and would not allow himself to be touched until he had circled once or twice around Leonardo’s legs, with his ears down, as if to beg for an audience. His back was cold, but his throat was still throbbing from his race. He must have been eating something because his breath smelled of vinegar.

“Did you find anything?” Lucia asked from the top of the embankment.

Leonardo showed her the lighter.

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else,” he said, climbing up the embankment.

“You’re pale.”

“You too. Because we’re hungry. And it’s very cold. We must find somewhere before dark and light a fire. Now that we can do that.”

“Was that house not all right?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Leonardo said, picking up the suitcase.

Lucia must have understood because she took the bag of sanitary pants and headed down the track. She had only gone a few steps when she turned to her brother.

“I’ve found something,” Alberto said.

“What?”

“Come and see.”

They went toward the autostrada, which was now almost invisible in the dusk. Alberto was walking diagonally across a field. They could detect the rustle of granoturco stubble under the snow. When they reached a deep irrigation channel, Alberto stopped and pointed at something in the ditch. Leonardo climbed cautiously down the snow-covered bank and studied the few centimeters of frozen water covering the bottom: imprisoned in the ice were pieces of corncob flung to the edge of the field by the combine harvester.