Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

He recognized the place near the ruins of the kiln. He drew up and, while dust from the edge of the road enveloped the car, he went to the ditch. Lowering himself in, he slithered down it until he was lying on his face in the earth, a few centimeters from the dog’s carcass. Disgust forced an inarticulate sound from him, and when he touched his bare arms he realized they were dirty with yellow slime. He wiped them on his shirt, got up, and walked quickly to where the tunnel passed under the road.

No sound was coming from inside it; all he could hear was his own labored breathing and the rapid beating of his heart.

Bending down he looked inside. The tunnel was blocked by filth, stones, and refuse brought by the water. But nothing moved or made any sound. He smacked his lips. There was no response.

Leaping up again he checked the road: the pyre was no more than a couple of kilometers away, and he could not be certain the hunters would not follow him.

Kneeling down he stuck his head into the tunnel and thought he saw a movement. He reached in, and, as if he had been breaking a membrane, was struck full in the face by the smell of death. Suddenly what he was doing seemed just as incomprehensible to him as when, years before, after one of his books had just reached the bookstores, he had been unable to explain to himself how he had spent three years of his life writing a complicated poem in a difficult and antique verse form, which many of his readers, and most of his critics, had already dismissed as an affected minor work.

He lay face down on the ground in order to stretch out an arm, but also because his twisted position was making his head spin. His hand touched something soft and cold. Pulling it toward him, he saw it was a dead puppy covered with ants. He threw it behind him near to the body of its mother, and when he heard the thud as it hit the ground he retched, as if his gesture had validated the existence of a hidden part of himself that had now emerged into the light with pangs like childbirth.

Reaching into the tunnel again, he felt something tepid and let it slide across the palm of his hand like a baker collecting a loaf from the far end of the oven.

He pulled the puppy out. It instinctively hid its muzzle between his fingers. It must have been the first time it had seen the light. It was wet with urine, and yellow liquid had dried around its half-closed eyes. Leonardo climbed out of the ditch and sat down in the shadow of the car. Grabbing his water bottle from the seat he took a long drink, poured some water into his hand and tried to wash his arms and neck; he then tried to get the puppy to drink from his hand, but the animal seemed stunned by sleep or hunger and did not react. Even when he cleaned the incrustation from its eyes, the dog continued to keep them closed. It was black and its ears were hanging sideways, giving it an air of resignation.

He put it down long enough to take off his shirt and stretch it over the seat. He settled the dog on top and was about to get into the car when he was stopped by a sudden pain in the pit of his stomach. With long strides, his naked thin torso marked by large moles, he ran toward the edge of the road and was only just able to drop his pants in time before a gush of diarrhea emptied him.

Gasping for breath and bent double, he got back to the car door and took a roll of toilet paper from the inside compartment. He wiped himself carefully, wetting the paper with a little water.

Sitting down in the driving seat, he took a casual shirt with horizontal brown stripes from his bag and began searching on the map for a road that would help him avoid the crossroads where the pyre would certainly still be burning. He found one that would not take him too far off course: it was a case of going back about ten kilometers and crossing the river. His wristwatch said a quarter past three. To the north, blue mountains closed the horizon. By eight it would be dark, but if he couldn’t get home by then at least he would be on a familiar stretch of road.

He drove slowly, taking great care at corners as if his new passenger must not be disturbed. The dog never moved, and every now and then Leonardo reached out a hand to check its little heart, which beat rapidly under his fingers. Toward five it urinated, and when the light started to fail, it began lolling its head and emitting little blind whimpers. Leonardo stopped the car and cleaned its eyes, which were encrusted again, then he held a piece of the cheese he had eaten for lunch to its mouth, but the dog seemed not to recognize it as edible and turned away in irritation.

Leonardo went off to urinate in the shelter of a clump of acacias then got back into the car, put on his jacket because the air was getting cool, and took the dog in his arms.

He looked down at the plain from the height of the first foothills. With the dying of day the sky had cleared and now the sun was sinking behind the mountains, the vault of heaven a deep unshaded cobalt.

It won’t eat and tomorrow it’ll be dead, Leonardo thought, holding the dog close.

Far off the lights of A. and one or two other villages were shining softly, with the lights of some factory prominent among them. For several months now the minor roads had no longer been lit, the soccer league championship had been suspended, and the television closed down after the evening news at ten, not starting again until the news at ten the following morning.

He smiled at the swarm of lights and the beauty of several fires burning on a hillside to the east. The dog’s breathing had relaxed and the heat of its body through his shirt was warming his chest; it had the smell of things that are new to the world and still have no name. Like the smell of a birthing room or a cellar where cheeses ripen. Or a paper mill. A smell of transition.

“I won’t give you a name,” he said, stroking the puppy’s head with his finger.

When he arrived in the square, the church clock was striking eight.

He opened the door of the hardware shop. Elio looked up from a newspaper he must have salvaged from some packaging. The last newspaper had reached the village four months before. Leonardo went to the counter and put down the two cans he had brought in. He wiped his brow with his handkerchief.

“Only one more in the car,” he said.

Elio neither nodded nor shook his head. He and Leonardo were distant cousins, but their friendship had nothing to do with blood or books or with other passions that can link men, like hunting, the mountains, and sport. It was seven years now since Leonardo had come back to the village but he was still a city man, while Elio belonged as much to the hills as any man could. He spoke the dialect, he knew what was going on, he had tried the women, and played in the Sunday soccer matches against other villages. In the days when there were still summer tourists, he had spent long periods sitting with the other local twenty-year-old boys on the low wall that bordered the square, studying the German and Dutch girls at a distance before taking them in the evening to the vineyards, to the river, and up into the highest hills from where he had convinced them they would be able to look at the sea. When he was called up for the National Guard, he had done the usual thing and given a big party, then he disappeared for three days without anyone knowing where he was. He had served two years at the frontier until, in the winter of ’25, he had been hit by the bullet that now saved him from being called up again. As soon as he was discharged he took over the hardware business from his father and married the woman who had been his fiancée since he was nineteen: a woman with strong thighs and few frills; a type more likely to bore him than break his heart.

“What shall I say about the missing oil?” Elio said.