Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

“You’ll never let anything like that happen to me, will you?” she said when he finished.

They packed the suitcase in a hurry and collected their things. They told Alberto they could not stay another night because their money was finished; he sat on his bed and followed their preparations without moving, after which Leonardo secretly got Lucia to pass him a banknote or two and went to join the Barberos outside the building.

When he told them they were about to leave, the woman said she was very sorry because she had grown so fond of the children. Leonardo explained the children wanted to get home because their mother could be there waiting for them, and Signor Barbero offered to sell them something to eat on the journey “at the same price they themselves had paid for it.” Leonardo accepted his offer and followed him into the warehouse, while his wife went to say good-bye to the children.

“Last night I saw a rape,” he said while Signor Barbero was extracting from under his bed the case in which he and his wife kept their canned food and biscuits.

The man looked at him with the half smile of someone who has not understood.

“That’s not possible,” he said, but something not quite frank distorted his mouth.

“Do things like that happen often?” Leonardo asked him.

Barbero looked down at the provisions, chose two cans of tuna and a packet of chickpeas and put them on the floor together with a box of grissini .

“We can’t give you more than this, I’m afraid,” he said. “We’ll need the rest for our journey to France.”

Leonardo stared at him. The vein pulsing below his temple was the only evidence that he was alive. Otherwise he face was waxen, his eyelids motionless.

“Do you really believe anyone who leaves this place ever gets to France?”

The man continued to stare at the contents of the suitcase. His lips were pressed hard against his teeth. Leonardo took the cans and packets and thrust them into the pockets of his jacket. He stood up and Barbero did the same.

“Will five hundred lire do?”

“More than enough.” Barbero took the banknote.

When they were about a hundred meters from the warehouse Leonardo and Lucia turned; Alberto, ahead of them, walked on. There stood the gray warehouse, dominating the flat white nothingness. The sun of the last few days had melted the snow on its corrugated iron roof. Only Signora Barbero was watching them.

“What’ll happen to that woman from last night?” Lucia said.

Before leaving, Leonardo had gone to the bed where the woman was resting.

“I saw what happened,” he said in a low voice. “If you like you can come with us.”

She merely shook her head, hiding her face in the pillow. The man sleeping in the next bed could have been her husband.

“Never mind,” Leonardo had said.

Signora Barbero raised her hand for one last good-bye, and then she turned and went into the warehouse. Leonardo and Lucia turned their backs on the building and resumed their walk. Twenty meters ahead, Alberto and Bauschan looked extraordinarily tall against the flat horizon of the rice fields. Leonardo’s feet felt wet and he noticed one side of his right shoe was coming unstitched. He transferred the suitcase to his other hand and tried to avoid the patches of snow between the railway lines. Many thoughts were passing through his mind. Thoughts of death, unworthiness, courage, and how far one could change one’s own nature. Not thoughts that could bring him any relief, but he knew he must think them through. Nevertheless in one small corner of his mind there was room for the small pleasure of being alone again with the children and Bauschan and of walking in the silence of a land that had never been walked on before. He tried to hang the portrait of his life on that fragile nail, a life that had never before seemed so miserable and inept.

I found this exercise book three days ago and took it because I’ve recently developed a habit of collecting everything I find. My priority is food, clothes, and anything to make our lives easier and safer. But sometimes I happen to go into a home and see a sofa, a chair in good condition, or a picture or a set of handpainted plates with cockerels in rustic style, and my first impulse is always to keep these objects. This is impossible, besides being pointless and dangerous, but when I leave them behind I feel real regret, as if they always belonged to me and I’ve been forced to abandon them.

As I was saying, I found this exercise book three days ago. My first thought was to give it to Lucia or Alberto or use its pages to light the fire. I wasn’t thinking of writing. Or perhaps I was. The fact is that, when it happened, I was confused and frightened because of what had taken me to that house, which is to say my shoes.

Recently I tried to repair them with Scotch tape, but they had become so worn out that they were coming open all around and my right foot was at risk of frostbite. They were not suitable for the long walks we are forced to make. I’ve calculated that during the last week we’ve covered almost thirty kilometers a day.

We keep well away from towns and paved roads. We know well enough that they are best for finding food, shelter, and perhaps some means of transport, but past experiences have made us mistrustful. It is the children who are most afraid. So we walk on cart tracks and over fields, in the snow, and along railway lines. My shoes haven’t stood the strain. A friendly woman warned me to find stronger ones, but I didn’t listen. I thought things would work out differently.

That is why, after a night spent in a hut in the forest three days ago, I left the children in a small clearing and took the dog with me into a village we had been able to see since the previous evening. The day before we ran across two cars parked in front of an abbey. As we approached, we saw a large bird inside one car and it began beating its wings against the windows. There were three bodies inside the car. They had been there a long time, but it was easy to see that they were a young couple and a small child. Lucia ran away in terror. When I caught up with her she was pale and trembling, and I thought she must have a fever because she was so hot. It was the first time I had seen her out of control in that way. Meanwhile Alberto had opened the door and the bird, perhaps a blackbird, had flown away. While I was hugging Lucia I saw him take a battery from the dashboard. I shouted at him not to touch anything. He obeyed, but as if he hadn’t heard me and it had been his own decision. I don’t know who or what may have been in the other car. We hurried away, almost running.

Next morning, the village seemed completely deserted; the closed houses showing no sign of having been raided, as if the people had simply gone away before anything happened. This was not necessarily a good sign, so I told the children to wait for me in the clearing.

When I reached the square I looked for an open door, and not finding one I forced one that had seemed more fragile than the others, using an iron bar I’d collected a few days earlier in a railway depot. Even now it’s in my jacket pocket. It’s the nearest thing to a weapon I’ve ever had. It makes me feel secure, though I know I could never bring myself to use it against anyone.

The place seemed to have been the home of an elderly woman, or of two elderly women, because there were two single beds in the same room. There was a bath with two handles and in the bathroom cupboard medicine for diabetes. The house had not been trashed, but everything else had been removed. Bauschan sniffed at a basket where a cat may have slept. I called him and we went to look for another door.

It is extraordinary how easy it can be to pull off a break-in, even for someone weakened by hunger, exhaustion, and with little aptitude for manual action, like me. This is one of the few resources I’ve managed to discover in myself at this time. A discovery that gives me little comfort compared to the irremediable losses that every day brings.