Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

Leonardo thanked Rovitti and went for a stroll around the warehouse. He took care not to tread on the many objects by the beds. There were no wardrobes or cupboards, and everyone had arranged their possessions under and around their beds as best they could. Some were asleep, some reading, and some playing cards, but they all seemed to be keeping conversation to a minimum, as if afraid of reading something embarrassing or shameful in the looks or words of others.

At about seven, Poli came back with the men who were to guard them. One was a young man whose shaven head he had noticed the day before, while the other was a very tall man of about forty with a thick neck and a tattoo on the back of his right hand.

Leonardo joined the line in front of the Land Rover and was given the clothes he had asked for. The jeans were padded and warm, but the sweater was threadbare and shapeless. He asked if next time they could have chamomile teabags. The answer was yes. He paid and went back into the warehouse, where he put on his clean clothes. Lucia said they looked good on him.

Supper was potatoes and cheese, and once the tables had been cleared, some people started playing bridge. The match went on for two hours during which neither the players nor those watching said a word. At eleven Signor Rovitti announced lights out in five minutes, and everyone retired to bed.

Leonardo was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of footsteps. He assumed someone was going to the bathroom, but in the weak moonlight filtering through the skylights he saw two male figures circulating among the beds. He recognized the guards and thought they must be looking for something to steal, but they stopped beside a pallet and woke the person sleeping there. It was a woman, and she got to her feet without saying anything and moved toward the exit escorted by the two men. Leonardo heard the door slide on its rail and close again. Someone coughed somewhere in the warehouse.

Leonardo got out of bed and put on his shoes. Bauschan raised his head, but Leonardo quietly told him not to follow and the dog obeyed.

Outside there was no more than a very slender sickle of moon, but the sky was clear and the snow reflected what light there was. There was no trace of the clouds he had seen in the afternoon or of the wind that had brought them.

He moved stealthily toward the van parked a few meters from the warehouse, but there was no one in the driver’s seat, and even when he put his ear to it he could hear no sound from the interior. He walked on along the wall with the intention of going the entire way around the building. He did not know exactly what he was doing or why. The countryside was peaceful and still, so much so that he could hear his footsteps squeaking on the snow, a sound at once reassuring but worrying. He felt like a bird that knows it must break the shell of the egg that has been its only home, even though it has no wish to do so.

Walking along one side of the shed, he heard a noise from around the next corner. A mechanical sound, like something rubbing or scraping. Putting his head around the corner, he saw them.

The woman was on her feet, leaning with her hands on a pile of railway ties stacked against the wall, her pants around her ankles. The older guard, his pants around his knees, was penetrating her from behind. The young baldheaded one was sitting on a tie watching the scene and smoking, his own gun and his colleague’s beside him.

Leonardo felt cold in the pit of his stomach and wished he had never left the warehouse.

The man extracted his penis, which appeared enormous and livid in the shadows, and tried to insert it higher up, but the woman pulled away. He placed a hand on her chest to pull her toward him, but she twisted away, saying no. Then the young bald man got up, calmly took out a knife with a blade no longer than his index finger, and slowly drew it across the woman’s cheek. She screamed and put her hands over her face, and in doing so she lost her balance and fell against the ties.

The older guard continued to stand there in the night, his large penis pointing at the woman like a grotesque inquisitorial finger, while the one with the knife waited a moment, perhaps to give the woman time to feel the cut and the blood running warm through her fingers, then he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to her feet. While the other sodomized her, the young one held the knife to her throat, but with his gaze on the countryside, as if nothing interested him except the steepling mountains far away and the livid blue painted on them by the moon.

Leonardo felt weak in every part of his body and wanted to fall on his knees and call out a familiar name, but he did none of this.

When the older guard had finished, the young one handed over the knife and took his turn. Leonardo drew back, and walking as if on pieces of broken glass, reached the door and went inside.

Back in bed, he listened to his heart beating at a crazy rate, wishing he could have been dead or crippled rather than proving himself incapable of stopping what he had just seen. He desperately wanted to wake Lucia and hold her close to himself, or at least to watch her sleeping, but felt unworthy of it. He was sure the shame would be with him forever, night and day, and with the same intensity, because he would never be able to stifle it or sleep again.

When he woke in the morning his heartbeat was normal, but he felt great acidity in his stomach and realized that during the night a little urine had escaped him. He had no change of underpants, but waited his turn for the bathroom and washed carefully. During breakfast he kept his eyes on his cup. Lucia and Alberto were discussing Alberto’s claim that his eyes were feeling better and that he would no longer need the compresses; an irritatingly strident note had returned to his voice.

The woman came in when everyone else had left the table. She could not have been much more than thirty and had long, smoky-blond hair. She had covered the wound on her face by tying a handkerchief around her head like someone with toothache. She sat down cautiously and with reddened eyes studied the crockery and cutlery on the table, the bread, and the margarine, but she had trouble concentrating on anything for more than a moment. In contrast, her hands when she poured tea into her cup were firm and steady. Unlike Leonardo’s hands when she asked him to pass the sugar.

“But why?”

“Because I think it’s best.”

“So you’ve already said, but why?”

“We’ll have to go in a few days anyway. Better to keep the money. We may need it.”

“But we have nowhere to go.”

“We can go home.”

“But it’s not our home. And anyway, how long will it take us to get there? And we haven’t even got any food.”

“I’ve had a word with Barbero. They’ll sell us a little of their own supplies.”

“When did you speak to him?”

“After breakfast.”

“So you made up your mind before talking to me!”

Leonardo looked at the bottom of the basin Lucia was leaning against. The bathroom had seemed to him the only place private enough for this inevitable discussion. Bauschan watched with his head around the door. He knew he must not come in.

“Please trust me when I say it’s best for us to leave at once.”

“No, not unless you tell me why you’ve changed your mind.”

Lucia’s blue sweater neatly fit the outline of her shoulders and small breasts. She could have been an actress in a French film. Leonardo gave her a long look. He was afraid he could not find the words to tell her what he had seen the previous night, but nonetheless he did manage it, though in a partial and hesitant manner. Lucia listened in silence. As he went on her mouth took on an increasingly bitter twist, but her eyes never left his.