Davide Longo - The Last Man Standing

“I often came to your concerts.”

“Mine or Leonard’s?”

“Yours.”

“I read your books. Do you remember the lecture on Bolaño you gave in the theater in Nantes? I came to hear it and nearly asked your agent how I could meet you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I thought if you came to one of my performances you would never have done that.”

“But how did you recognize me?”

“Do you think you’ve changed much?”

“Yes.”

“Quite wrong, I knew who you were at once. But how did you recognize me? I’ve lost all my hair.”

“I knew your voice. What was that song I was listening to?”

“Provençal, very old, great fun. It’s about a bailiff who tells his wife he’s being tormented by a mosquito buzzing in his stomach. She sends him to the doctor at Cavaillon. The doctor agrees it’s a mosquito and suggests a natural remedy: the frog is the sworn enemy of the mosquito so all the man has to do is to eat a live frog to hunt it down. The bailiff does this because he’s afraid of what people will say if they hear the mosquito buzzing, and after a few days the buzzing does indeed stop, but now he can’t sleep because of the frog croaking. So his wife sends him back to the doctor, who this time makes him eat a live pike because the pike is the sworn enemy of the frog. Returning home, the bailiff is happy because the croaking stops, but now the pike is turning his stomach upside down. Then his wife says there’s no point in going to the doctor again because the sworn enemy of the pike is the fisherman, so all her husband needs to do is to lower a hook and line into his stomach. The bailiff agrees and his wife is able to lead him around the village by the hook and line for days. The last verse reveals that she is the lover of the doctor at Cavaillon and had sewn the mosquito into the border of her husband’s pants.”

“A good story.”

“The two women you saw with me have lost their children and husbands. They need songs to distract their thoughts. They have never sung before, but now we do an hour or two every day. They’ve become very good at it.”

“Are you the only people in the village now?”

“Yes, only us.”

“Why don’t you go down to the sea?”

“This is where our homes are, and even if we no longer have our men and children, we still like to sleep in the beds we used to share with them. We saved enough food to get us through the winter, and now we have the kitchen gardens and orchards.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Why should we be? We’ve already lost everything.”

Leonardo pushed back the hair the gentle wind had blown into his eyes.

“Are they with you?” the woman asked.

Leonardo turned to see Salomon and the animals standing in front of the church, and Lucia sitting a little way off on the edge of the fountain. Salomon was looking at Leonardo but pretending not to, as though afraid of getting into trouble. Leonardo raised a hand in greeting. The boy said ciao . David and Circe were standing meekly to his left and right as if in a bizarre Nativity scene. Lucia was staring at the rectangle of water into which the jet of the fountain was falling with a hypnotic gurgling sound.

“Are these your children?” the woman asked.

“Only Lucia. The boy’s been with us for several months.”

The woman nodded.

“May I ask what happened to your hand?”

“I had to renounce it.”

“In exchange for something important, presumably?”

“Something extremely important.”

They watched the young people. The leaves of a lime tree were still glowing in the last of the setting sun. The cat had moved to a window ledge higher up, from where it was presiding over this unusual movement of humans and animals.

“When is your daughter due to give birth?” the woman asked.

“At the end of the summer.”

They spent four days in the village. On the first night he caressed Lucia’s feet, then he left the house, and, as Clarisse had asked him to, he went to the house where the youngest of the women was waiting for him. On the second night he went to the other.

In the morning he got some sleep in the shade of a sycamore, while the young people supervised David and Circe grazing among the olive trees. In the afternoon he went back to the house with the Japanese persimmon in the garden and studied the ash pictures on the walls, holding a long conversation with the man who had created them. The man was very old, and when he said he was tired they sat in silence at a little table in front of the fireplace. On these occasions Leonardo still had his left hand and used it to hold the stones the man showed him, stones he had collected over the years for their shape or color.

During these days Leonardo ate the polenta, vegetables, and fruit that Clarisse prepared for them, and he never set the snare. Toward evening he would sit with the youngsters in the room on the upper floor and listen to the women singing. Clarisse had washed Lucia’s hair, and she now had an ample yellow dress that left her shoulders bare. Her breasts had developed and there was something new and lively in her eyes.

On the last night, after seeing Salomon and Lucia to bed, Leonardo went down to the kitchen where Clarisse was waiting for him by the light of the oil lamp. David and Circe were moving around in the garden under the window, between the slide and the swings. They could hear the branches rustling as the elephant pulled them within reach with his trunk.

“That time at Nantes,” Clarisse said, “you said that in the Kabbalah, unlike Genesis, God initially fails by creating other worlds that are soon extinguished like sparks. Do you remember?”

“He fails because he only uses the feminine principle, the principle of will and determination. When he also brings in the masculine principle of compassion and mercy, he creates a spark that is able to survive, and that spark is the world we’re living in now.”

She smiled. Her teeth were white, her eyes like black leather.

“But what if this too is just another attempt on his part? That he’s still learning and that the successful world is still to come? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“It would be, but I don’t think that’s how it is.”

They were drinking an infusion Clarisse had made from mint, hawthorn, and dried medlar leaves, and then with an imperceptible movement of her hips she shifted her chair closer to the table.

“The others are still young and with a bit of luck they may still have children. I’m not well, and in any case I’m too old for pregnancy. But I’d like to ask you something.”

Leonardo waited in silence.

“I’ve engraved some lines of Rilke on my husband’s gravestone, and one of Leonard’s songs on my son’s. I’d like you to advise me what to put on my own.”

Leonardo looked at Clarisse’s smile, her perfect nose, and the hands around her cup, and he knew for certain that her hands had touched tears, seed, earth, and blood and never hesitated to respond to the feelings that had moved them.

“A little while ago I tried to start writing again,” he said, “but I know now I shall never be able to.”

She took his hand. The light from the lamp began to flicker; the oil was running out.

“You’ve read so many stories,” she said. “Find one that would do for me. It doesn’t matter if it’s not one of yours.”

Leonardo stared at the surface of the table. From the dark marks of tears on the wood he realized he was weeping, and understood that his eyes like every other part of him now belonged to the outside world, and that he would never be their master again. This caused him no regret. The draft from the window was bringing in the smell of the animals and the cold scent of flowers at night.