Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

“We’ve found something to eat,” Leonardo said, then interrupted himself and looked at Lucia, who was fast asleep, with her mouth half open and one hand under her cheek. Her breathing was calm and regular.

“Let her sleep,” the woman said. “That’s what she needs at the moment.”

They sat down at the table and the woman peeled the potatoes. She had on a man’s sweater they had found in the wardrobe and a pair of pants rolled above her ankles, but Leonardo noticed that she had not taken off the torn and dirty dress in which she had come. She told them her name was Silvia and asked Salomon his name. The child told her; then they ate in silence.

Salomon occasionally looked at the rope marks on the woman’s wrists and the cold sores on her face. He seemed less impressed by the way her hair had grown back in tufts over her shaved head. Their meal only took a few minutes, and they left two potatoes on a plate for Lucia when she woke up.

“Do you know what I’d like now?” the woman said.

Leonardo shook his head. She smiled, her teeth shaded by an opaque film.

“Some coffee.”

They sat in silence, watching the flame of the lamp bending toward the empty side of the table in the draft from the door. From time to time Salomon closed his eyes and his chin fell on his chest.

“Go to bed now,” Leonardo told him.

The child looked at the stairs; then started playing with a piece of potato peel, shaping it so that it looked like a whale. Leonardo wrapped the base of the lamp in the towel and offered it to Salomon.

“You take it,” he said. “I’ll blow it out when I come up.”

Salomon said goodnight and climbed the stairs to the upper floor. The light he was taking away surrounded him like a cloak. Left in the dark, Leonardo went to open the door of the stove; the fire inside cast light on the walls. He began clearing the table, carrying the plates one at a time to the sink.

“No, I’ll do that,” the woman said, getting up. “You sit down, we haven’t done much to help you today.”

She rinsed the plates and glasses in the sink, then she poured a little of the water used for boiling the potatoes into the two cups and sat down again. Anyone walking in at that moment would have seen a man with thick gray hair and a woman with a badly shaved head sitting facing one another by the weak light of the fire with two cups in front of them, as if about to embark on an existential conversation. But on closer inspection, he would have seen that the man’s face was deeply scarred and that the woman’s hands were damaged and incapable of keeping still for more than a few seconds at a time.

“How old is your daughter?”

“Seventeen.”

The woman stared at her cup.

“Now I’m going to tell you something you might think rather impersonal and insensitive, but it’s the only way I can be useful to you. Would you like to hear it?”

Leonardo nodded.

“I worked as a psychologist with an international organization and traveled in a war zone where rape was used as a weapon for ethnic cleansing. My job was to convince the women to report the rapes and to help organize assistance for them. So I know what I’m talking about.”

The woman took a sip of hot water and put the cup down over a small mark on the table.

“Lucia’s in a state of shock. It often happens to girls who suffer violence, especially if they are young and their ordeal goes on for a long time. The fact that she doesn’t speak or react to external stimuli is part of the picture, but don’t be misled into thinking she isn’t feeling anything: there is certain to be enormous anger inside her. She feels responsible in some way for what has happened to her and hates herself for not having been able to extract herself from it. She has suffered very deep humiliation.”

Leonardo met her eyes without moving a muscle in his face.

“It may take a long time before she emerges from the shell inside which she has closed herself, and it’s even possible she may never emerge from it, or not entirely. All you can do is keep close to her without trying to hurry things on. Act as if you are waiting for her to return from a journey and in the meantime are looking after her home for her. Talk to her, even if she seems not to listen. Touch her hands and feet but not any other part of her body and never hug her however much you want to, because that could make her feel imprisoned. It could even make her unconsciously superimpose you on the image of that man. In any case, it’s likely she can remember little or nothing of what you have been to her and done for her in the past. You mustn’t feel hurt by that; it’s only a defense mechanism. I know you love her very much and that you will know how to do what is right for her.”

“How old are you?”

“Twice your daughter’s age.”

“Have you anyone yourself?”

“No, not any longer.”

Leonardo looked out of the window; the moon had turned the trees to stone.

“We’ll wait until the snow melts, then make for the coast. You could come too.”

The woman got up and put another piece of wood in the stove and then filled a pan with water at the sink and placed it on the hot cast-iron cooking surface.

“Now we’ll have a little warm water to wash in tomorrow morning,” she said.

Leonardo realized his thoughts would stop functioning long before dawn and that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“Until tomorrow, then,” the woman said.

“Until tomorrow.”

When she withdrew to the other room, Leonardo went to take a little hay to Circe and David, and he talked to them for a long time about what he was afraid might happen.

The elephant and the donkey gave him their full attention, chewing great handfuls of dried grass. A full moon lit the valley and in the silence of the night Leonardo sensed life quivering under the snow as the earth softened and opened.

He urinated.

Then he went up to the bedroom, extinguished the lamp Salomon had placed on the floor well clear of the bed, and lay down beside the little boy who was wheezing lightly like a sleeping rodent. In the dark he felt Salomon’s forehead; it was warm with exhaustion, but he had no fever. On the other hand Leonardo felt himself to be burning hot. He closed his eyes but tried to stay awake so as not to miss any sounds from the floor below.

A few minutes, or perhaps a few hours later, he was awoken by hearing steps. He made his way downstairs without lighting the lamp, but the kitchen was empty and silent. Nor was there any sound from the room where Lucia and Silvia were. He went back to bed and slept.

When he woke again it was light. The room had a small window that was reflected in a mirror on the wall, making it look as if two suns were rising from opposite points of the compass.

Salomon was sleeping curled against him. It was the first time for a very long time that he had smelled a good smell, and he lay staring at the cloudless sky and the outline of the mountains beyond the faded curtains, reflecting that the scent, the color, and the shape were all one. When he delicately extracted his arm from beneath the child’s head he realized it was completely numb from the shoulder down, so he massaged it until he could feel the blood beginning to circulate again and his wound starting to throb inside the bandage. Only then did he get up and head for the stairs.

The first thing he saw when he got down was that the pan was no longer on the stove.

He found it in the bathroom with the woman’s dress and pants. He could smell the cake of soap, which was still on the basin. He picked up the clothes, threw them into the stove, lit it, and went out.

It did not take him long to find her. She had chosen an out-of-the-way spot that Leonardo was certain to find. A solitary holm oak in the middle of a pasture.