Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

They listened in silence to the slow, steady breathing of the sleeping elephant.

“I think I’ve got a broken shoulder too,” Leonardo said.

The doctor looked at him with dull eyes, then stretched out a tired hand to it.

“It’s dislocated,” he said.

Leonardo, who had held his breath because of the pain, breathed again.

“Can you fix it?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Can’t you do anything now?”

The man turned and disappeared behind one of the wooden walls that closed off the two ends of the cart. Leonardo thought he had gone, but the door opened and he came in, dressed in his ridiculous crested blue blazer. He was wearing moccasins with a little tassel at the back of each foot. He grimaced as he approached, perhaps because of the smell Leonardo was giving off.

“You mustn’t cry out,” he said. “Not for any reason at all.”

“I promise I won’t.”

The man looked toward Richard’s trailer: the light was off and everything in and around it was silent.

“Put something in your mouth.”

“What?”

The doctor broke a piece off a branch and gave it to Leonardo, who put it between his teeth, then, untying the bandage and using his foot as a lever under Leonardo’s armpit, he pulled his arm upward with a sharp jerk that made a sound like a nut being split. Leonardo collapsed whimpering.

“Quiet!”

Leonardo, his face squashed against the floor, nodded. He had clenched his teeth so hard that his mouth had begun bleeding again. The doctor left the cage and reappeared outside the bars. Leonardo was still lying on the floor, his good eye full of tears.

“Put the bandage on again. You can take it off tomorrow and pretend the arm has cured itself. Now I must go.”

But the man stayed, gazing at the dark bulk of the elephant asleep at the other side of the cage.

“Don’t be afraid of David,” he said. “He’s the only decent thing in this place.”

Leonardo struggled to a sitting position.

“You’ll help me?”

The man looked impersonally at him.

“I’ve already helped you. I can’t do anything more.”

“Then help my daughter.”

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”

Leonardo heard him going away. He turned on his back and looked up at the wooden ceiling. It was painted blue, with the words CIRCO BALTO written in gold letters inside an oval border. The faces of an elephant, a hippopotamus, and a clown had been drawn inside the O.

I’m cold, Leonardo thought, I’ve never been so cold in my life.

He crawled as far as the pile of branches, lifted some, and crept underneath. Closing his eyes, he inhaled the smell of resin hoping it might stupefy him, but when he opened his eyes again he was still there, in the dark, in a newly prepared wooden coffin.

They stayed in the clearing another four more days during which no one except the doctor came near the cage or said a word to Leonardo. In his solitude he studied the rhythms and habits of what he was beginning to think of as a clan or tribe.

When the young people woke after midday, they spent a couple of hours wandering around the camp or going down to the river in an attempt to work off the effects of drugs and alcohol. After this, the cripple would distribute the weapons, which were kept locked up in one of the vans, to the older boys, most of whom went out in groups of two or three to hunt or carry out raids. They left behind in the camp a dozen armed youths, the children (including Alberto), the cripple, and the girls. When the groups returned from the hunt, they would place on a great blue cloth in front of Richard’s trailer not only deer, foxes, dogs, and cats but also the clothes, tools, weapons and everything else they had managed to find in the surrounding area. They would all be home by dark, when the bonfire was lit and the captured animals were skinned and stuck on the stakes to roast. Apart from the animals, the booty would not be touched until Richard came out of his trailer. This happened in the evening, after nightfall, when the bonfire had been lit. He would open the trailer door and raise his hand to acknowledge the ovation with which the young people would greet his appearance. Then he would come down among them and speak intimately to each as if he knew all about their hearts and their secret thoughts.

One evening Leonardo saw him take Alberto by the hand and go for a long walk with him but without ever going outside the circle of the camp. Alberto listened to him and answered his questions. Finally Richard embraced him and kissed him on the cheek, and Leonardo had the impression that, beneath its black markings, Alberto’s face swelled with pride. It was the first time since they had come there that the child’s eyes had searched behind the bars for his own. Only a moment, but enough to make it clear to Leonardo that Alberto would not return from the world he was now in and where perhaps he was destined to stay forever.

After Richard had exchanged a word with everyone, he would inspect what had been brought in. If there was not much booty, or if it was of little value, his face took on a bitter expression, but Leonardo never heard him reprove anyone or show any sign of anger. More often he would clap his hands to arouse the enthusiasm of the young people. Then he would address them with a few words that Leonardo, deafened by the music, never managed to hear, give the cripple a little urn containing the substance the youngsters inhaled, and withdraw into his trailer.

During those four days Leonardo never saw him eat or drink or join in the partying, which always went on in the same way until first light. He would spend all day in the trailer with Lucia, whom Leonardo never managed to glimpse despite keeping his eye fixed on the vehicle’s two windows.

The only person he had any contact with was the doctor, who came each morning at dawn with food for him and David. In his own case this would nearly always be potatoes cooked in the embers and very tough meat which, with his broken teeth, he could not ingest until he had sucked it for a long time. During his second visit the man sprinkled his feet with a yellowish powder before binding them up with care—to prevent infection, he said. Leonardo decided he must have been told to do this by Richard, and when he asked about this, the man confirmed it. But when he asked about Lucia the man would only say that she was well.

“Why does she never come out of the trailer?”

“She can’t.”

“Is she tied up?”

“No.”

Before leaving, the doctor would sweep the cage clean of both Leonardo’s excrement and the elephant’s, after which he would go to David, who was nearly always lying stretched out in his corner, and spend a long time stroking his head and whispering in the animal’s large ears words like those he must once have spoken to his wife and to his daughter before she went to sleep.

Leonardo, too, as the days passed, became fond of the animal. Sometimes, in moments of depression or loneliness, he would call to him by name and the elephant would come over to be stroked.

At night, on the other hand, it would be his turn to crawl on all fours to the end of the cage to seek shelter from the cold next to the animal. David’s skin was rough and his stomach noisy, but his huge body gave enough warmth to help Leonardo fall asleep quickly. At first he was afraid of being crushed, until he realized that David, even when asleep, was extremely careful of the fragile companion whom he had found sharing his cage. Sometimes, when David’s little eyes lit up and his trunk began swinging left and right and turning over backward, it seemed the elephant was laughing. This would happen when Leonardo squatted in a corner to attend to his physical needs. David seemed amused by the bizarre position his human companion had to adopt to perform this function.