Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

Leonardo nodded. She must once have been attractive, but her body seemed to have suffered much more than her husband’s from recent events. Her double chin seemed unrelated to the rest of her tall, slender figure.

“Have you been here long?” Leonardo asked.

The man smiled. He was obviously well over fifty, but he still had a slim, athletic body. Seeing him approaching in his vest with his pullover tied around his waist, Leonardo had thought he might be a former tennis professional or yachtsman, but he had introduced himself as Dottore Barbero, a dermatologist.

“A couple of months already,” the doctor said, “but only a few days more. Signor Poli, who owns this place, is getting permits for us.”

“For Switzerland?”

The man and woman exchanged a smile.

“They won’t let anyone into Switzerland anymore,” the man said, “but Signor Poli has good contacts in France. His wife worked at the embassy.”

Leonardo put the first spoonful into his mouth.

“My compliments,” he said. “This is excellent.”

“Thank you, but I can’t claim any credit for it. It wasn’t my turn in the kitchen yesterday.”

For a few minutes they ate in silence, watched by the couple. The two were sitting on a little wooden bench they had carried out of the warehouse when they had gone in to fetch the food and the small stove. Leonardo and the children had freed several ties from the snow near the railway and were treating them like the lowest tiers of a stadium. Bauschan was sitting comfortably at their feet. Several of the people walking around the building were now going back into it. Leonardo had noticed that no one had gone more than about twenty meters from the building and that there were no old people among them. He had also noticed that some were smoking real cigarettes.

“Do you think it would be possible for us to spend tonight here?” he asked, putting down the spoon on his empty plate.

“I think it might be,” Barbero said, “but you’ll have to discuss it with Signor Poli. He comes at about six to bring food and whatever else we’ve ordered. He also leaves two armed men here for the night: security’s included in the price.”

“May I ask the price?”

“Five hundred per person,” the doctor said. “Chocolate, tuna, tea, and specialties extra. Gas canisters” the man indicated the little stove “are also extra. On the other hand, heat and water are included. There are two showers and they heat the water two days a week. Compared to the rest of life out there that’s a four-star hotel, don’t you agree?”

Leonardo smiled back, but he thought it odd the man had not said “five-star”; why had he not automatically pushed the hyperbole to the limit?

Rhetorical exaggeration had always fascinated him. Once he had flown to New York to attend a conference organized by a famous Jewish-American writer who was soon to die of a tumor. This man, who had always previously been known for his reserve and modesty, had asked his press agents to invite five hundred writers from all over the world, a list he personally drew up. He wanted to give a final conference for these five hundred colleagues, and admit no one else other than a journalist he played golf with once a week, a Peruvian girl working on a thesis about him, a boy from Cameroon doing the same, plus his barber, his present companion, and a class of children from an elementary school in New Jersey, where he had lived since childhood.

The conference was held in a Broadway theater that had long been closed but which the writer had reopened at his own expense. This had surprised many people, since one of the most reliable rumors about him was that he had been stingy to a maniacal degree. Before the keynote speech, fixed for 8 p.m., a small buffet was offered, so minimal that it was restricted to white wine in cartons, Mexican cheese, and pineapple. To administer these refreshments two middle-aged ladies, possibly the writer’s neighbors, had been recruited. One poured the wine into glasses while the other looked after a soup tureen containing a strawberry-colored liquid, which gave off balsamic fumes.

That night, in his room in the large cheap hotel where the writer had quartered his guests, Leonardo had grieved for the imminent death of this short, pockmarked, and unusually talented man. He had assumed that despite everything he had written, despite his hard-won style and the acuteness with which he had been able to thread words together making them resound like lines from Homer, that all this would be completely forgotten. The memories of those present at the conference would not be enough, and even the notes he had seen some people taking during his magnificent lecture on hyperbole, ranging from the lowest to the highest, like Glenn Gould playing Bach, would be lost in minds packed with their own stories and appointments, soon reduced to the condition of an aquarelle left out too long in bad weather.

“Would you like some more?” the woman asked.

“Thank you,” the children said.

Signora Barbero filled their plates again, then put her hand on her husband’s shoulder as she stood watching Lucia and Alberto beginning to eat again. She was wearing velvet trousers, a beige broad-stitch sweater, and red moon boots with white laces. Her husband had a check shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows and trekking trousers. Everyone Leonardo had seen there had been wearing warm, well-made clothes.

“Are many people staying here?” he asked.

“About sixty at the moment,” the man said. “But ten left last week. Their permits arrived just when they were about to run out of money.”

The woman noticed Leonardo had finished his soup, and so without saying anything she took his plate and filled it again with what was left in the pan. A couple of people were still leaning against the wall; the rest had gone in. The sun had set very quickly, as happens in winter.

After another spoonful or two, Leonardo put his plate on the ground and Bauschan quickly came to lick up what was left. The doctor touched his mustache without trying to hide mild disappointment, but his wife smiled and placed her hands on her heart.

“The little one,” she said, “he was hungry too.”

They spent a couple of hours resting on the camp beds of the doctor and his wife. These were military pallets, but after several nights on the floor they seemed very comfortable. As always, Alberto was the first to fall asleep, then Lucia, while Leonardo lay listening to the voices reverberating inside the warehouse roof. Some of the guests were lying on their beds, while others were in what Signora Barbero called the “daytime area,” that is to say the two tables where they ate their meals and could sit on a dirty sofa and a few armchairs, pretending they were in the hall of a great hotel or the waiting lounge of an airport or, more intimately, in their own homes. Everyone talked in a low voice so as not to disturb those resting or to save energy. There were also a couple of small children, one breastfeeding from his mother. The other, a three-year-old, seemed to be alone with his father.

“Papa?”

Leonardo turned. Lucia was looking at him from the next bed. She had one hand under her head and the other by her side. Apart from her eyes, she now seemed in every respect a full-grown woman.

“Do you think we’ll be able to stay here for a while?”

“Maybe tonight, but tomorrow we’ll have to go on. We have no money.”

Lucia slipped a hand under the covers and pulled out a bundle of banknotes folded in two.

“Where did you hide those?”

“Same place as the others.”

“If they’d searched you…”

“Would I have had to hand them over?”

Leonardo looked at her without knowing quite what to say about the two possibilities that came to mind.