Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

One night, while he was asleep, they threw a live trout at him. When the youngsters stopped laughing and went back to dance, he watched the fish struggling on the floor, opening and shutting its gills, until he was sure it was dead; he then spent a long time rubbing it on the bars to remove its scales before eating it.

His feet hardly hurt him at all which, according to the doctor who had treated them again and bound them up, was not a good sign. In fact, an extremely hard, black calloused crust had formed under the soles, which allowed him to move about the cage as if in rubber-soled shoes and to cross easily from the side he used as a toilet to the side where he ate and slept beside David.

During the days they spent on the hillside and those passed in a new encampment some thirty kilometers into the valley, Leonardo was able to assemble a more detailed picture of the tribe whose jester he had become. Most of the young people were between fifteen and thirty years old, leaving aside the cripple who was evidently Richard’s trusted right-hand man, and there seemed no hierarchy in the group. All the males had equal access to weapons, drugs, and alcohol, while the females were excluded from the distribution of weapons and never left the camp. There were no fixed relationships, and the females coupled with anyone without preference or exclusion. This could happen in public or in the cars or coach at any time of the day or night. The group of children that Alberto had joined was held in high esteem, especially by Richard, and Leonardo never saw anyone mistreat them or make fun of them. They were involved in the partying and were given alcohol and drugs, but when the older males went out to hunt, they stayed in camp with the girls. One of the youths who had captured them, the dark thickset one, busied himself with skinning the animals after hanging them from a hook that stuck out of the cab of one of the smaller vans. Then the skin and entrails were thrown away and the rest of the animal was impaled on a stake to cook by the fire. A small fiberglass cistern had been installed on another truck for water. This was kept at a certain level by a pump that drew from the river running beside the road or from the streams that carried quantities of water down the hillsides. Even so, Leonardo never saw any of the youngsters drinking from the cistern or using water to wash in. Their only form of bodily care concerned their hair and eyebrows, which the boys shaved every two or three days. Some of the young people had longer hair than others and wore rings and earrings or had metal pins in their ears or other parts of their faces, but this seemed to be a matter for individual choice. The only things that clearly identified members of the tribe were their shaved eyebrows and the colored markings on their cheeks and foreheads. There were no uniforms; they all dressed as they liked and sometimes the boys returned wearing garments they must have found while out plundering. None of them had anywhere to keep their clothes. What they had taken was either left lying around or thrown on the fire, and despite the severity of the weather no one possessed a jacket or any heavy clothing.

The scraps of conversation Leonardo could catch above the thumping beat of the music were nearly always connected with challenges, squabbles, songs, or direct invitations to sex. Their vocabulary was basic, approximate, and stuffed with expletives. Even so, it revealed presence of mind and alertness. It would not be accurate to say they lacked intelligence, but it was as if the electricity had left some parts of their brains to concentrate on areas related to aggressiveness and the pure pursuit of pleasure. There was no distinction for them between wanting to do something and actually doing it; the inconvenient processes of thought had dissolved to make way for untrammeled need.

Leonardo noticed they were incapable of feeling remorse or regret for anything they did, or of remembering what had happened the day before or wondering what would happen the next day. He even began to doubt whether or not they could remember anything of their past or of other people who had once been close to them or of the places they had come from.

Richard seemed to be their only law. Every evening when the hunters laid out their haul of dead animals and knick-knacks on the cloth, he would emerge from his trailer and walk among the young people, talking to them like a father, confessor, or servant.

As the days passed, Leonardo noticed that Richard was beginning to look increasingly disappointed when it was time to examine the booty. On one occasion he went back into the trailer without imparting his usual benediction or handing the cripple the urn with the drug in it. This caused an icy silence to fall over the tribe, and once he was out of sight the youngsters stared in astonishment at the door that had swallowed him up. This made it clear to Leonardo that what Richard really wanted from the raids was not the sort of food and trinkets the boys regularly brought back but gasoline, women, and other prisoners, and he decided that until the boys found him a new girl, Lucia would be safe from the fate of the woman with the shaved head.

The evening the drug was withheld, a brawl broke out and one youth was wounded in the stomach by a knife. The dancing continued but someone went for the doctor, who examined the boy, spread a sheet on the ground, and stitched the wound by the flickering light of the bonfire. It looked to Leonardo as though the boy was weeping during the operation.

That night he asked the doctor where he had been captured.

“Near M.”

“You were living there?”

“No, I was on my way to Austria.”

“With your family?”

“My wife and daughter were already dead. I was on my own.”

The man continued going back and forth to the thicket where he was cutting branches for David.

“Where do they come from?” Leonardo asked.

“Who?”

“These kids.”

“When I first saw them they were wearing swimsuits; I think they must be from the Adriatic coast.”

“And now? Where are we going?”

“Why are you asking these questions?”

“Don’t you want to know yourself?”

“I know where I stand. I won the finger-cutting. I have my place in the group, no one will hurt me. Also, I’m a doctor, and they need a doctor.”

Leonardo looked at the man, with the yellow light of the last flames of the bonfire dancing on him; as always his face was expressionless, yet infinitely sad.

“What’s the finger-cutting?”

The doctor walked off. It seemed to Leonardo that he was away for hours, but it was only a few minutes later when he came back and the morning light had grown no brighter. He threw a last handful of twigs into the cage, then looked at Leonardo.

“I could give you an injection. You won’t feel a thing and tomorrow they’ll find you dead.”

Leonardo shook his head.

“I can’t leave Lucia.”

“Then keep dancing and try to stay alive. There’s nothing else for you.”

“What do you know about Richard?”

“You’re asking meaningless questions.”

“Who was he before he started this madness? That I want to know.”

“You’re not in a position to want anything. You’re full of resentment, drawing conclusions from what you see. But what you’re seeing and judging is only a facade, a necessary evil. Richard is above all this. Respect him. He’s bringing up his children far better than you would have been able to. You would have made them into victims destined for suffering and nothing more. I know because I did the same. Just now they are being tested by fire; they’ll get burned, but it’ll make them stronger. I used to not believe it either, but there’s a logic in it all, a new logic. Your son has understood it, children understand much more quickly than we do. Richard has read this in him, which is why he wants to keep him close. The only person for you to worry about is yourself. It’s not easy for people like you and me to change our skin. We are too old and too firmly locked into what we used to think was right.”