Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

He tried to raise himself up on his good arm with his back against the bars. The floor was wood and had been covered with straw. He looked out through the bars into the clearing. The young people, sitting, squatting, or lying down, were enjoying the evening sun. Many, in dark glasses, were chatting in small groups as if in a public park. Then he saw them.

They were sitting some way off, behind the big cappuccino-colored trailer. The blond youth was on his back with his hands behind his head and his legs crossed, one foot swinging. The thickset one seemed to be dozing, propped up with one hand supporting his head. No guns could be seen. Lucia was sitting between them, staring at the ground with a vacant expression. Alberto was beside her. It looked to Leonardo as if his cheeks had been marked with black.

He tried to stand up, but when he put weight on his feet it felt as if someone, for a joke, must have fastened them in a block of concrete while he was unconscious. He looked down and saw two enormous pieces of dark, livid meat. He told himself he would never walk again, and his left eye filled with tears. For a while he could see nothing. In the darkness inside him he struggled to reassemble his thoughts, to keep them separate from the despair that, despite himself, was overwhelming him. When his tears had dried and he could see again, the young people were still there.

“They’re alive,” he said, and saying this with his toothless mouth seemed to make the words more real. For a moment he forgot his feet and his shoulder and all the other parts of his body that were no longer what they used to be. He had to wait. To stay alive and wait.

The floor vibrated as if someone had started the engine of the van to which the cage was attached, but neither the trees nor the young people nor anything else around him was moving. Turning to the right he saw a huge dark wrinkly mass on the floor of the cage. When his eye got used to the dark he realized it was an elephant. The animal was sleeping curled against the wall like a great hairless and wrinkled cat.

Cries from the young people drew his attention to the clearing. They had all gotten to their feet and were shouting excitedly at a man who had just come out of the trailer. The blond youth and the thickset one hurriedly made Alberto and Lucia get to their feet, and when the man, advancing slowly toward the middle of the clearing, passed close to them, they threw themselves on their knees and bowed their heads. The man stopped and gazed at the necks of the two penitents with a benevolent smile. Leonardo realized this must Richard.

It’s Christ, he thought, or someone doing his level best to seem like Christ.

The man had a light-colored cowl of unbleached cotton and high tight-fitting leather boots. His long light-brown hair and his several days’ worth of beard completed the priest-like effect.

Richard took his hands out of his pockets, moved forward, and knelt down between the two youths like a confidant, an informer, or a father about to play with his children. Leonardo saw his lips pronounce some word with his eyes fixed on the dusty ground, then rest his chin on the shoulder of the thickset youth to listen. The youth took a little time to react; then he turned his head and spoke to the man as if kissing him on the neck. The kids in the clearing watched the scene in silence.

The confession took only a few seconds, after which the man got up and placed a hand on Alberto’s shoulder. He asked him something, perhaps what his name was, and nodded at the answer. Then he moved to one side and took a long look at Lucia’s face before pushing her hair slowly behind her ear like a lover. Returning to the two youths who were still on their knees, he placed a hand on the head of each to impart a silent benediction, then he held up all ten fingers, twisting to the left and right so that everyone could see. For a time the savage cries that greeted this even managed to drown the thumping of the canned music.

The two youths took off their waistcoat and T-shirt respectively, and the cripple took up position behind them, in his hand a short whip with many tails. As the first blow struck between the shoulder blades of the blond youth everyone cheered and shouted “One.” The man in the cowl smiled and embraced the whole scene with a benevolent gaze, and then he took Lucia by the hand and led her to the trailer, turning his back on the flogging he had ordered. Alberto, seeing them go, took a few steps forward but, as if he had a third eye in the back of his neck, the man raised a hand without turning and, with a complicated movement of his fingers, made him understand that he must stay where he was and carefully watch what was happening, because it would be extremely useful to him.

Leonardo watched the man who looked like Christ enter the trailer, followed by Lucia, and shut the door.

The cripple’s whip came down twenty times on the backs of the two youths, who did not flinch or emit the slightest protest. The blond one, before the last three blows, merely put his hands behind his neck to assure himself that the blows had not disordered his hair. When the youths got up, their backs were marked with red stripes but not bleeding. Several of the other young people ran forward to congratulate them. Leonardo imagined that the booty they had brought home and the whipping they had received must have made up for some fault and sanctioned their readmission to the clan.

Beer was brought and, while the two youths drank, a girl passed a wet rag over their backs. Alberto was swallowed up in the celebrations and Leonardo could no longer see him. The sun was sinking and soon it would be night, and night would bring him dark, silent hours for thinking.

He moved his weight to his left buttock because his right one was going numb. The music formed a constant background, but he no longer noticed it. Turning, he became aware of a black shiny point no bigger than a button, staring at him in the twilight. The elephant was scrutinizing him sadly, perhaps sorry to no longer be alone.

It can crush me whenever it likes, he thought, as if this were an everyday observation. Nothing to do with life or death in general. Still less his own.

The animal struggled to its feet; it was like being backstage in a theater and watching weights and counterweights rising and falling to raise the curtain. A complex operation, completed by the elephant with a long sigh. He had never seen an elephant so close before; it took up as much space as a large motorcycle but was twice as high. It was presumably Indian rather than African because its ears were small and its tusks barely visible, and a bump on its forehead gave it a worried look.

It moved toward him making the floor of the cage shake, touched him lightly with its trunk, then turned its face to one side and regarded him with compassion through the little eye in its wrinkled socket. Leonardo could feel the hot breath from its mouth and a smell like bark being steeped in water.

When the elephant had finished inspecting him, it drew back. Leonardo watched its little tail swinging artfully as it moved away. Returning to its place, the beast fixed its gaze on his eye and bent its back legs to assume a position that seemed both comic and painful before discharging from its anus a huge mass of dung that spread across the floor. Leonardo smiled, supposing himself to be mad.

In the rapidly falling dusk, a dozen kids had collected branches and dry wood in the place where the big bonfire had been. They doused them with gas and kerosene and soon a new fire was lighting up the encampment.

Leonardo started counting the young people. There are about a hundred, he told himself, without any clear idea of why it could be of any use to him to know this.

There was a group of small boys beside the fire, staring at the flames and at the bigger boys he had seen dancing around the earlier fire. One of these was Alberto.