The Tank

by Nicola Lombardi

  Giovanni turned around towards the corpse-stinking shadows and, walking like a robot, reached the elevator. He felt empty. Every bit of energy, every ember of that beastly fury energizing him until few minutes before had cooled down, dying in a diffused malaise. He would take some pills. Then he would cry. He needed to. Later. He had orders.

  He pulled the chair away, letting the invisible ray of the photocell reach his destination, and watched the doors close. A few seconds later the elevator was called downstairs. He stepped backwards and leant against the wall, waiting.

  22 - After the Storm

  Lots of people went upstairs several times.

  Giovanni saw them, talked to the, listened to what they wanted to say or ask him...always walking with the utmost attention on the edge of the cliff. He was physically exhausted, and more than once he felt like could see himself talking and moving from one place to the other, as if he was but a spectator of that sad play.

  He was questioned for about half and hour by lieutenant Raggi (the same soldier superintending the Cleansings, and whose name he had learnt only then), to write as many details as possible in the report. He talked without omitting anything, save for what had happened only in his mind.

  Trying to make the most of that exceptional circumstance, so favorable to talking, he tried asking: “Have there been many dead? In our ranks, I mean...”

  The officer looked at him from above the frame of the spectacles he had worn for writing. “No, Corte. Not many.”

  “Somebody I knew?”

  Raggi, sitting at kitchen table with a big memo book, kept on writing, and didn’t look up. But he answered. “Probably. Escort Guards.”

  Giovanni looked down at his knuckles. He knew there was no way he could get to know the names and surnames, at least not in that moment. But he surely would sooner or later. There was another question he wanted to ask. “And...general Stevanich?”

  Raggi mumbled something unintelligible with a sigh that could be a sign of impatience. Then - maybe because of what Giovanni had done to defend the Tank, decisively slowing down the revolutionaries’ assault - he decided to grant him at least a half-answer. “He wasn’t here. He is out for institutional business. But he knows everything. And I think he will have more than one reason to be unhappy.” Giovanni kept staring at him, hoping to receive more information. But the lieutenant cut him with a “you will know everything in due time, Corte.”

  ***

  Three men he had never seen before, wearing blue jumpsuits with red tetragrams on their chests, checked the state of the security door. Giovanni watched them, despite the smell of burnt flesh permeating the Ring, and felt compelled to describe then the dynamic of what happened; they didn’t look really interested, though. They unscrewed the deformed lock and took it of the door using hammers and pliers. They took some measures, talked among themselves, then left.

  ***

  Doctor Nicastro came too, giving him a physical and asking him with fake ease some questions aimed to asses whether that experience had damaged his mental balance. Giovanni answered with extreme calm, trying to sound reassuring. And in all frankness, now that he had time to put the events in order following the logic of a report and put it into words - he was sure to be emotionally stable. Of course he couldn’t evaluate himself: if his psyche was somehow distorted, so were his judgement.

  A madman can’t know he is, right?

  The visit ended with handshake. The doctor smiled, but Giovanni couldn’t understand if he was truly satisfied or if he just wanted to appease and calm him. He decided it didn’t matter. He was very grateful for the box of sleep pills he left on the table with calculated nonchalance.

  ***

  Once alone Giovanni took a warm shower (there had to be a leak somewhere as pressure was much lower than usual). There was no chance he would eat. He felt like there was rock where his stomach should have been. He opened the fridge and grabbed a half-empty can of orange juice. Then he opened the little box Nicastro had given him and wasn’t surprised to find a single laminated blister from which most of the pills and been removed. Almost all of them. Out of eight, only one was left. Logical. Such drugs had to be given with extreme parsimony.

  “There’s no such thing as too much caution, eh doctor?”

  He pressed with his thumb to pierce the thin layer of aluminum foil and observe the yellow sphere that had fallen on the palm of his hand; he then literally threw it in his throat, than drank as many sips of orange juice as needed to empty the can.

  ***

  He slowly sunk into darkness, escorted by terrible thoughts made lights as feathers by the chemicals in his brain. The smell of death came in from the violated Escape and crept like a phantom along the Ring. Even in the apartment, even in his bedroom...

  He thought about the sentinels who had been assigned to extra guard turns at the bottom of the ladder until the door would be replaced. They probably wore masks in order to not get intoxicated.

  He turned on one side, dreaming of lying on a mass of bodies, half soft and half sharp from the bony asperities. He thought about the man he had shot (I killed him!), a man who believed in his ideals so much he exposed himself so much. He didn’t see his face, but he looked young...

  It was the first time he had ever killed anyone (Are you sure? But how many have you killed pressing a simple button?) No, no...the convicts he had unloaded had already been killed by a sentence of the NMO. He was just the executor, he didn’t have homicidal tendencies...he...he didn’t...

  The pillow smelled horribly of the burning bodies’ stink and the thoughts dripping from his head. He fell asleep and an acid spurt of what he had drunk came out of his mouth.

  23 - The Day After

  There were no deliveries the following day, of course.

  Giovanni could only imagine that the unforeseen assault to the Center also entailed the escape of all the convicts waiting to be Eliminated, included those whose Unloading was scheduled for that afternoon. He had no doubt they would be back.

  The Well was on as usual, while the Postman wasn’t. The fax was inactive, too. Probably the office department had been destroyed and they would probably need a few days to restore all the Camp’s function. After all, he was asked to wait, too. He would receive directions at the right time, depending on how events unfolded. So had Lieutenant Raggi told him the evening before while bidding him farewell: “Keep doing your job, Corte. We’ll let you know.”

  Yeah. We’ll let you know...as if it was an audition for the cast of some movie or play.

  ***

  The excavator and the bulldozer arrived at 8:00 A.M..

  Giovanni watched them work for a while, sitting on the Escape’s landing with a napkin on his mouth and nose. He couldn’t understand hear what the soldiers and workers were shouting, but the purpose of the whole operation was clear. A heavy claw dug a deep and wide pit twenty meters away from the tank and after that the other machine began its work. At that point Giovanni got up and went back to his apartment. He knew that in an hour’s time there would be no trace of the ash and coal colored corpses, just long, dark trails ending in a heap of dirt.

  He went to his bedroom’s window. Over there, in the distance, where the Operative Center was, there was movement. Men, vehicles of all kinds, tow trucks, tuckers...

  The fire had been put off during the night and some buildings now showed the black, zig-zagged crusts of their roofs and the big smears of the same color coming out from the windows and crawling up the walls. A small crane was already working on the gate and fence. One day. One day would be enough, he was sure. Then Camp 9 would go back to work.

  He wondered how many things he wanted to know and many he didn’t care about. The emotional state in which he was could be represented by an almost horizontal diagram. He was supposed to feel proud of what he did the evening before. He was supposed to feel like a hero, somehow. But...

  He was just tired, no doubt. He needed time to refresh his body and mind. That chao
s would go on inside him for days, the reverb debilitating him psychologically less and less destructively, before disappearing in the healthy detachment of a memory. Until then, he would behave at his best. Forging ahead and adapting to what would come.

  The 11:30 A.M. news talked about the attack for a couple of minutes. The information provided were very generic, everything had of course been filtered by the NMO’s chiefs who worked in media relations. No camera had been let near the Camp and in the video only the low-quality image of faraway fire could be seen.

  “Sudden attack by a group of revolutionaries”, said the speaker, “to the penal structure named Camp 9. One or more infiltrators have supposedly used their position inside the structure to give information to the rioters and grant them the so-called surprise advantage. Few casualties in the ranks of the New Moral Order, while the attackers have been neutralized and delivered to justice.”

  Giovanni listened with his elbows on the table, his head on his extended fingers. The text the journalist was reading needed a few adjustments for truth’s sake, but not always is truth needed nor useful. Neutralized and delivered to justice is just another way to say massacred and charred. Details. What happened couldn’t be changed. But the part about infiltrators had kindled his interest.

  What the speaker said before the end of the news was a true hammer blow. “Unofficial sources state that the rioters were led by the thirty-two year-old son of one of the generals founders on the New Moral Order. It seems the attack on Camp 9 was possible, despite the massive security measures, because of the information given by the traitor, whose name still hasn’t been disclosed.”

  The son of a general...Giovanni wondered who he could ask to know who he was. To know all the details needed for organizing an all-in-all successful plan, at least in its first phase, there was only one possible General for all things regarding Camp 9.

  He turned off the TV and sat in front of the Well. Barbed wire was rolling in his stomach. The big, blind, silent amoeba was twisting, turning and twitching because of the thousands of limbs surfacing and disappearing in a sort of crazy choreography.

  “How are things in there? If it’s any consolation, it’s a mess out here, too.”

  He went to his booskshelf and for the umpteenth time he looked at the well-aligned books. It was a purely mechanical gesture, as he had no intention of choosing something to read. He had to change his mind about needing new books. How long had that copy on The Idiot been on his bedside table, with a bookmark at the beginning of the second chapter? Thing is he didn’t really feel like reading. Or exercising.

  It’s all accumulated tiredness, he told himself. That’s what it was.

  He crashed on the bed, but immediately got up, disgusted. He wanted to change the pillow, wet with the night’s regurgitations, but he had forgotten. Wit no rush, he fixed that shameful inconvenience.

  ***

  In the early afternoon two of the workers that had taken away the Escape’s lock the night before came and fixed everything in about half an hour. They also gave him a new copy of the key.

  “Yours melted.” They explained.

  He tried to ask some questions about the casualties and that son of a general he had heard about on TV. But their reaction was the one he expected, literally: a double “No, haven’y heard anything.”

  At about 3:30 P.M. a technician came, a guy in his thirties, in a white lab coat, who worked for some minutes behind the Control’s console until the Postman’s screen lit up again.

  “All done.” he announced, rubbing his hands together. “It should work now.”

  Giovanni tried asking him: “Did you watch the news?”

  The man quickly grabbed his tool case with a force smile. “Nope, I’ve been working all morning to fix everything that was broken. The damage at the Center is pretty serious. They will probably have to move everything to the new tank, as soon as possible. The fire has burnt a lot of stuff.”

  “The new Tank?”

  “Oh, well, I’ve heard some voice. I don’t even know where it is. They say it will be ready next year...” He faked looking at his watch. “If I don’t go back fast I won’t hear the end of it...farewell.”

  “Thanks. You too.”

  And the man exited the apartment at a fast pace. He maybe realized one second too late he had said too much. Right. It was always like that. And the Keeper couldn’t ask any questions. He had no right to know. He lived in a circle he couldn’t step out of.

  He remembered the first selection for the following year’s Keeper should have started by then. A little more than a trimester was left before the changing of the guard. And who knows how many young men were dreaming that exciting and profitable adventure like he had.

  The thought of the money prize surfaced again, but it was with a certain unease that he found out, even if for a moment, he couldn’t remember the amount. And it had been some time since he had last thought of his island. That sunny island, with endless beaches, the one he saw himself lying on, with no thoughts on his mind...

  I found something vaguely sinister in imagining that absolute tranquillity, bathed in a light blinding your eyes even when they are closed, a warmth stinging your skin, making it darker every day. HE could smell a faint brackish reek coming the ocean, which wasn’t blue as he remembered it. And there was another smell. Of dying, decaying fish.

  He opened his eyes and, looking at his distressed face, he groaned, scared. How did he end up in front of the mirror? He had wandered around the house lost in his thought. It had happened before. Nothing special.

  He went to his bedroom and lay on his bed, drawing dark shapes on the ceiling with his eyes.

  ***

  When he heard the well known acoustic signal - the Postman’s beep - the first thing he did was to look at the alarm clock. 5:22 P.M.. Almost one hour had passed since he went to bed. He didn’t think he would fall asleep, but apparently he did. Did he dream about something? No, he didn’t remember anything. Inside his head, while he rose from the bed, his brain started oscillating from one side to the other, first right, then left. Like a bell. He grimaced, moving to fingers to his temples.

  Here we go again.

  First stop, the bathroom. He put a couple of painkillers on his tongue and forced them to go down his throat drowning them with a bitter, coppery tasting glass of water. He grimaced, went in front of the mirror, lowering his eyelid with a fingertip, and looked at his sclera. He thought it was a horrible vision.

  (Stop with all this nonsense worthy of a drunk psychopath, Giovanni. You aren’t like that. Go read what they wrote you and get a hang of yourself.)

  “Yes, master.”

  While moving away from the mirror he had the terrible impression that his reflection had moved after he had. Just a fraction of second; but it was enough to pierce his heart. And to make him lucid again, like a bucket of cold water to the face. He went to the Control rubbing his cheeks and chin, considering whether if it was appropriate to shave, when his hands would stop shaking.

  “Est. Keeper Corte.” The message said, “in renewing the expression of our esteem for your behavior during the critical moment, which came to a positive end also thanks to your resistance against the rebel horde, we inform you that the delivery operations will begin tomorrow.”

  Giovanni didn’t even feel like smiling, even if that pompous language didn’t really adapt to his state of mind. But he know that form always had priority in that context. Especially in trivial matters.

  He thought about the opportunity to answer appropriately, maybe with some highlights like “I’m proud of fulfilling my duty” or similar sentences. But he decided he could skip the hypocrisy phase and be straightforward.

  “Is it possible,” he wrote, “to know how many from the Center’s staff were killed and who they are? I also heard that the son of a general was head of the revolt. Is it Stevanich’s?”

  He checked it on the fly and sent it without thinking twice. What did he have to lose? He had alr
eady asked several people, who had no doubt already reported him for being so curious. It was like stirring once more an already stirred soup.

  It was for the conviction of throwing a stone into the void that the buzzing of the fax machine, after a minute or so, took him by surprise.

  He grabbed the still warm sheet of paper with a quick gesture, almost as if he in case he would wait, then the machine would eat it back. It was a list of names and surnames, fifteen total; no premise, no side note, no signature. It was an aseptic list, with no apparent context. But it was very important to Giovanni. It was the first precise and unequivocal answer he had ever received from the Center’s brain trust. He then realized that it was a pretty useless answer. Maybe he knew some of those people, but only by the nicknames he had given them. He look for a Lorenzo, which was Scalp, but he didn’t find him. Who he found was Giulio Lojodice. Good old Scar. May he rest in peace. And who knows the others...

  He lazily folded the sheet two, four, eight times, leaving it on the console.

  But about the general...

  Beep.

  (Don’t tell me you also have an answer for the other question, guys. I could cry...)

  On the Postman’s screen only one line of text appeared: “Watch the news at 8:00.”

  Good. He would.

  “Thanks”, he answered. “I won’t miss them.”

  ***

  Sitting in front of a tuna can and some slices of ham he turned the TV on precisely at 8:00, just in time for the jingle. He chewed, watched and listened without really following until 8:14, when the speaker closed his service about the inauguration of a high school and started the one the journalist had very cinematographically called Assault on Camp 9. Giovanni straightened his back and opened his ears; and when after a short introduction he saw general Stevanich appear on the screen, he let the cutlery fall on the dish with a loud noise and crossed his arms.