Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

We’ve lit a small fire, screening it with stones. We’re tired but calm. It’s been a good day. I don’t know what we’ll find tomorrow when we reach the coast, maybe only other people like ourselves who have gotten so far and hope to be able to leave the country. Even if they haven’t yet succeeded, they will probably have organized themselves somehow and will be able to accept us. And if some have succeeded, it means it must be possible for us to find a ship and leave too; we do have a little money. If not, we’ll walk to France. I’ve copied the address Elio left me into this exercise book.

It was not the sharp pain that woke Leonardo, but the sound of his nose being broken: a clean snap without an echo, like a stick breaking. Stunned, he opened his eyes, but barely had time to recognize the leaden first light of daybreak between the branches before something hard and hollow hit him on the cheekbone. As he sank into darkness he heard Lucia cry out. Opening his left eye, he saw her on all fours being dragged along by a man with an antique-looking rifle in his free hand.

“Lucia!” he tried to yell, but blood filled his mouth and turned her name into an incomprehensible choking sound. Then someone grabbed him by the collar. He kicked out in an effort to break free, but with the speed of someone who has done nothing else all his life, the man tied his head against the tree behind him with two turns of wire, forced his arms behind his back, and bound his wrists together. Leonardo felt his shoulder pop out of joint. He shrieked. Someone kicked him in the mouth, breaking several teeth.

When he opened his eyes again, a youth with blond hair was crouching beside him, his face a few centimeters from Leonardo’s. His hair was divided by a central part, and he had the nut-colored eyes of a young dog. Two glossy black marks on his cheeks looked as if they had been made with pitch or tempera. He had no eyebrows.

Leonardo began to say something, but the boy was too quick for him.

“Take it easy,” he said in a friendly voice.

When the boy got up, Leonardo saw Sebastiano and Alberto still lying where they had fallen asleep the night before. Raised on their right elbows, they were looking at him in astonishment. Sebastiano was holding Bauschan firmly under his arm; the dog was barking but could not drown Lucia’s cries.

The blond youth went to sit near them in front of what was left of the fire. He rubbed the bare, nervous arms emerging from his green leather waistcoat, and then he took a plastic pouch from his pocket, opened it, and lifted it to his nose and inhaled violently, before looking without interest at Sebastiano and Alberto. Nor did Bauschan’s barking seem to bother him. The part dividing his hair continued down the back of his neck, giving his head the appearance of a fish cleft in two on a serving dish. He had a large pistol stuck in his jeans.

Leonardo spat out his loose teeth and watched them disappear in the pool of blood forming in his lap. His nose felt enormous and shapeless and his right eye was throbbing as if trying to expel the eyeball. He began praying. The first thing that came to mind was the Act of Contrition, and he recited it straight through without hesitation even though he had not heard it for at least forty years. When he reached the end he realized Lucia was not shouting anymore. He looked at Alberto, whose eyes were fixed in spellbound terror on the boy before him.

“That’s enough,” the blond youth said, indicating Bauschan. “If you don’t silence him, I’ll shoot him.”

Sebastiano covered Bauschan with the cowhide and he stopped barking. In the enormous silence this created, Leonardo heard a sound from his right, like the sound of a garment being rubbed on a washboard. Weeping, he tried to turn his head, but the wire around his neck stopped him. He looked down. The grass around him was dark with his blood.

The noise stopped and footsteps could be heard among the dry leaves. A thickset dark-skinned youth went to sit next to the blond one. Leonardo recognized him as the man who had dragged Lucia away. He had the sawn-off antique rifle in his left hand.

“Have you left her on her own?” the blond youth asked.

“She’s passed out, and in any case I’ve tied her up. And the others?”

The blond boy looked at Alberto, who was staring at him without moving.

“Push off! Move! Get lost!”

Everyone stayed exactly where they were.

“See? He’s not moving. He’s shitting himself. And the one with the dog is bonkers.”

“Have you looked if they’ve got any food?”

“No.”

“So what have you done?”

The blond youth turned to glance briefly at Leonardo. He said nothing. On the other hand the dark thickset youth went on staring at the tall man before him, the child without shoes, and the dog under the cowhide. He seemed little enthused by what he saw. At the base of his skull was a round tattoo representing the Tao.

“Do you want to fuck the girl?”

“ ’Course I do.”

“Take her from behind then, that’s what I did. She could be a virgin.”

“Who cares if she’s a virgin or not?”

“But if we bring Richard a virgin, he’ll maybe take us back again.”

The blond youth got up decisively, but once on his feet, stopped to stare at the tattoo on the neck of the other. The thickset youth, still sitting on the ground, reached for Sebastiano’s bag, pulled it over, and began rummaging through it. The blond one spent a moment in thought; then thrust his hands in the pockets of his jeans and moved away. Leonardo heard his steps getting more distant. He counted to ten, realizing Lucia could not be far away. The light had changed: a pale sun had risen and the trees were beginning to produce vague shadows.

With a furious jerk he tried to get up, but the wire smacked into his Adam’s apple, threatening to make a shelled bean of it and taking his breath away. He began weeping or at least thought he was weeping, since all he seemed to have left for a face was a shapeless mass of flesh.

The dark youth, hearing his struggles, stopped inspecting their luggage and turned. His forehead sloped down in steps like that of a primate, and his gestures were graceless, but his little black eyes were evidence of an intelligence that was far from crude.

Leonardo wanted to kill him, kill him and then walk over to the blond boy and kill him too. It was a wonderful sensation, a revelation that lifted him and freed him from pain. Despite his dislocated shoulder and his smashed nose and eye, he knew his hands would have no difficulty in squeezing the necks of those two youths until they were dead. And he knew it would bring him joy and satisfaction. Guilt seemed something for others but not for him. Everything he had thought, done, written, and loved up to that moment meant nothing compared to this naked urge to kill.

The shaven-headed youth gave the other a smile as if welcoming someone who from now on will be a member of the family.

“What have you found?” the blond youth asked, fastening his trousers as he returned.

The dark one showed a package he had found in Sebastiano’s bag.

“What’s that?”

“Dried meat.”

“And the other one?”

“Coffee, I think.”

“Is it coffee or do you just think it is?”

“It is coffee.”

“Where did they get it?”

“How do I know?”

“Let’s ask them.”

“OK, let’s ask them.”

The thickset youth picked up the rifle and pointed it at Alberto.

“Where did you get this stuff?”

Alberto and Sebastiano stared at him in silence.

“Well?”

“In a house,” Alberto said.

“What’s this mumbling? Get up and speak up properly!”