The Tank

by Nicola Lombardi

  An out of sight interviewer started asking some simple questions - undoubtedly agreed in advanced - regarding the dynamic of the Assault, to which Stevanich answered with calm and sureness born from preparation. Giovanni could live, through that report, the almost epic unfurling of the battle in the Center, the one could assist to only from afar. But when they said that the casualties in the ranks of the New Order had been five - while the fax he had received counted triple that number - he thought he should doubt everything they said. Then, when the general stated that all the rebels short of the ones that were killed had been arrested and imprisoned in Camp 9 waiting for a process, he understood it was a version he too should tell, in the future, when talking about what happened.

  The interview veered towards a question Giovanni didn’t expect: “General, is true that your son was leading the rebels?”

  Stevanich remained calmed. Why shouldn’t he after all? It sure as hell wasn’t a surprise question. He nodded and answered: “Marco was always against the ideas of the NMO and we never got along. I think family must take a step back in front of the political, social and moral ideals that inspire our Order. Marco is a traitor. He used confidential information to elude our security system, but he didn’t consider the immense defensive power we have. He was arrested and will share the fate of all those in his condition.”

  Giovanni unbuttoned the collar of his shirt.

  They are all underground now. Shot and charred. The kitchen was suddenly hot.

  Salutations and thanks followed, then the journalist appeared on the TV again to introduce the weather forecast. Giovanni turned it off.

  He tried to get up, but a sudden vertigo forced him into sitting again. Tiredness. Tiredness asking for immediate rest. What was that churning in his head? He sure wasn’t annoyed by the “revised” version the general had told to the spectators. It was natural, a part of the power plays. Had those rebels been imprisoned, then their fate would have been much worse. They would have only contributed to fill the Tank. How many deliveries would there have been? He whistled at the idea. No, the thought that kept annoying him was another. If that Marco Stevanich lead the operation, wasn’t it plausible that he was the first man who had to climb the ladder and shoot the lock? He would never know for sure; but the thought that the men he had shot was the general’s son upset him

  Be honest: would you have shot him, if you knew who he was?

  “Yes”, he answered out loud. “I would have, no doubt. He was there to kill me.”

  Had he some alcohol to drink, then there couldn’t have been a better moment to get drunk. But in the Tank alcohol was forbidden, like smoke and may more things. For his own good, of course.

  We inform you that the delivery operations will begin tomorrow.

  Right. The show must go on.

  To bed, Giovanni. March.

  He found the strength to go to the bathroom, brush his teeth, go to his bedroom, and crash on the bed. His mind went off like one of those ancient oil lamps when a small wheel was turned to shorten the wick.

  24 - Questions, More Questions

  The last Cleansing of the year, the one scheduled for the end of October, was moved up a couple of weeks. Recently there had been more deliveries than usual and the Tank needed the extra work.

  From the day of the great Assault on Camp 9 the NMO had intensified the investigations regarding the so-called risky environments, those suspected of being hostbeds for insurrections or dissidence. On the morning faxes Giovanni found “Revolutionary” way more often. He expected things to be that way.

  And so, halfway through October a new wave of acid cancelled once more the layers of compressed, deformed, torn, stiffened, annihilated in postures no one could ever see, but only imagine. From the tucker to the anaconda, to the Tank, to the Crown, to the tissues, flesh, organs, bones...

  He wondered what he would think, what he would feel, if he was there, among the others, alive but unable to escape his doom, buried in the dark under the tonnes of corpses, listening to the sizzle of that liquid caressing his skin and piercing him little by little, get inside him, reach the deepest, most inaccessible layers of his body, of his soul...

  His own scream of terror woke him from his daydreaming. And when he realized he was simply inside the lift, back from the Cleansing, he sighed as if his lungs had been squeezed.

  He entered the Ring almost stumbling and entered his flat with a hand on his mouth and the that on his stomach.

  ***

  He had thought that the last months would flow away with haste; that the days would pass one after the other painlessly. He was wrong.

  Time had taken a new form. The obsessive repetition of gestures and words seemed to generate a slow vortex enlarging at each turn in an hideous kaleidoscope of pictures and feelings. Whatever he did, he spontaneously wondered if he was doing it in that moment, or if he was remembering, dreaming, imagining, all very vividly, something he had done hundreds of times.

  He tried picking up the book he had left off, but Dostoevskij kept pushing him out of his novel; eventually The Idiot went back to his bookshelf. Making an effort to maintain a good physical shape didn’t seem so important to him, in that moment his mind needed his attention way more.

  It was true that mens sana in corpore sano, but he didn’t feel sick or thought he needed therapy. He knew that everything would ho back to its place once that experience was over, once he could go back to the world he had abandoned.

  (Does that world still exists, Giovanni?)

  There was an island. Somewhere. And the money, too, yes.

  All the things he had always wanted.

  ***

  The deliveries went on, but November saw them lessen sensibly. Some Escort Guard stopped showing up and Giovanni wanted to believe they were transferred, or that the temporary decrease in workload made their presence superfluous. Bags, Glutton, Wrinkles, Steve...he never really befriended any of them in particular, but he would rather imagine them ready to work in the Tank, the tenth, the one that would maybe be operative who-knows-where in the beginning of the new year...

  But a part of him knew they were dead, that their names and surnames were in that damn list. He never asked the other EGs. They wouldn’t answer. But their silence would be enough.

  Then came a day, about halfway through the month, when Scalp came alone, escorting a young foreigner who had killed his girlfriend. Once he had unloaded that scum, Giovanni took advantage of the situation task what was happening out there. “Excuse, can I ask you...”

  Scalp looked at him as if he had just tossed a cake on his face, but he pretended not to notice. “...how come the deliveries have decreased so much lately? Has it something to do with the new Tank?”

  Scalp stared at him for a few seconds, just enough time for him to evaluate whether he would lose something by answering him. He came to the conclusion that the question was acceptable. “It is possible, yes.”

  It was a start. Giovanni felt authorized to ask another question. “But...isn’t the alternation between male and female Tanks valid anymore? After this, they should...”

  “The next won’t be after, but in place of this one.”

  Giovanni opened his mouth, but did so more to let the information get in his head better that to talk.

  Scalp interrupted any possible comment. “But you are done here at the end of the year. Why do you care?”

  “No, of course...nothing. I was just asking.”

  Scalp snorted through his nostrils, shaking his head and smiling tiredly. “How many questions have you asked since coming here?”

  Giovanni shrugged, catching that shard of levity. “I’ve lost count.”

  “And how many answers did you get?”

  “Let’s see...” He pretended to think about it, frowning, then: “Two? Three?”

  “What’s that, another question?”

  It was impossible to choke the laughter overwhelming them both. A short, warm, honest laugh. The silence that follow
ed ate its echo along the Ring.

  “That’s how thing go around here, Keeper. You have to make do with what you are given and ask for nothing more. Do you think you can do it?”

  Giovanni felt a clump of infinite bitterness in his throat. He had already forgotten he was laughing just a few seconds earlier.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Scalp nodded, simulating a serious and meditating expression, then went back to the elevator. “See you, Keeper. If we don’t, I wish you good luck.” He saluted. But he wasn't smiling, not even with his eyes.

  Giovanni imitated him immediately. “you too!”

  It was the last time they saw each other.

  25 - Death, Probably

  Catching and sewing together small parts of the news Giovanni managed to get a pretty clear picture. Tank 9 and the whole Camp would be abandoned at the beginning of the new year, when the wonderful Tank 10 (bigger, more secure, more everything) would be the star of the New Moral Order. A huge building with every technological comfort, in a Camp that would be officially inaugurated by general Aurelio Stevanich himself. Well, hearing that the stern general, despite the recent loss, continued to be the man he had always been reassured him. A speaker had underlined, while talking about Stevanich, that his strength of character was the one supporting the NMO and, as long as there would be a man of such nerves in the system the Country would never have reasons to fear the weak, destructive wave of restoration.

  Giovanni tasted those affirmations between tongue and palate. Once, those words would be like a kindle to fire up his spirit; now he felt them slip away leaving only a faint smell of dust. His mood was the season’s fault. Together with the perception of the end of a cycle.

  (And don’t forget the tiredness. You are tired, Giovanni.)

  Yes, yes, he really was tired. But of what? All that death, probably. He had lived with dying people, corpses and ghosts for more than eleven months. He could easily calculate the exact number of people he had thrown beyond the barrier, but what would the use be? To compare it with the sum he would get once out of that dying, grey tower?

  It had already been some nights, now that the first ten days of December were fading behind his back, that he really struggled to fall asleep. He had tried asking, using the Postman, if it was possible to receive some drugs, without referring to Nicastro and the sleep pills he had given his that time, maybe not in a completely official way. But no answer was given to him. What Scalp had told him had then come back to his mind: “You have to make do with what you are given and ask for nothing more. Do you think you can do it?”

  He would, he had no choice.

  Thinking back to Scalp and the fact that he hadn’t seen him since the day they even got to laugh together, he had come to two conclusions: either he had been transferred to the new, wonderful (and hideous) Tank, or he had received some kind of punishment for staying there with him longer than it was allowed for a single delivery without a convincing reason. Everything was possible. Despite Giovanni had been inside there for almost a year, he couldn’t say he had understood the mechanism regulating the gigantic structure of the NMO. He didn’t even know who was sitting behind the desks, there, at the Center. Who wrote him, who answered him, who sent him faxes, who managed the laundry and food services, every little thing he had to deal with for months. He knew it could very well be the same person every time and that for him the interlocutor was always the NMO, as if it was an autonomous, sentient superior entity. Of which he (I am the NMO) would be a part for a few more days.

  Beyond the windowpane, from the bedroom, he contemplated the long, pale strokes with which the wind painted the sky, silently unraveling old, cloudy blankets. In the distance, flocks of birds united and disbanded in the air, while tired sunlight fell over the world.

  He could stare at that landscape for hours, hearing it drip into his soul. It comforted him. It gave him tranquillity. All that December greyness inspired indolence and resignation. It help him watch with the right emotional detachment the vans that day after day left the parking lot of the Center to disappear in the mist. After the fog and mournful rigor of winter, nature would explode with life, the splendor of an inevitable new birth, in an endless cycle. But not there. Not at Camp 9. Not for Tank 9.

  Everything was ending in there. Nothing would begin anew.

  What would happen to all the corpses that were amassed in there? Would another Cleansing be necessary, a definitive one? No, the time for great works was over. They would simply leave them there. Putrefying, rotting, stored in the greatness of that decaying mausoleum. Even while he would be lying in the sun, in his island, at the Bahamas, they would keep dying, in silence, in darkness. They wouldn’t stop disintegrating for a single moment, screaming the mute horror of their condition.

  ***

  In the morning of December 17th, at 5:45 P.M., he woke up with an idea nailed to his brain.

  He had dreamt of Lucas, the guest that had caused him so many problems when unloading him. Trapped in the Shutter, he kept repeating: “I’m waiting for you I’m waiting for you I’m waiting for you...” Nothing new. He had met him in his dreams many times before. But his face had started dripping with sweat and, after wiping it with his sleeve, it wasn’t Lucas anymore, but Alex. And he wouldn’t stop saying: “I’m waiting for you I’m waiting for you I’m waiting for you...”

  After that his faced had changed again, becoming a bearded man with wild eyes who kept on renewing that dark promise. In that moment, Giovanni was struck by the impression of having seen him before, but after waking up all he was left with was a vague feeling of familiarity. He knew that the craziest truths revealed during sleep by the psyche are like fresh water at the bottom of the well, with nothing more than a broken bucket to try and gathering it.

  But a tiny splinter of suspicion trapped in his mind made him do something that he would normally define hopeless, but that in that moment seemed to him as reasonable as going to the kitchen, heat up a cup of coffee and then go back to bed, waiting for the right moment to act.

  ***

  After receiving the fax announcing the two daily deliveries (they were always about the same amount), at 8:10 A.M. he wrote his curious request through the Postman: “Considering the upcoming end of my term, is it possible to receive some information on the Keeper that preceded me?”

  The beep came after nine seconds. “For what reason, Keeper Corte?”

  Ah, for what reason, the ask...well, let’s see...

  “If I should ever meet him one day, I would like to talk to him about the experience we have in common.”

  Could it be enough? It was impossible to say. But it was worth a try.

  He glanced at the well. The usual, desolate sight. It would miss it. It was incredible, totally crazy. Or maybe it was normal and inevitable. He would miss almost everything from the Tank. After a year even the darkest and most tormenting shadows, when they are about to fade forever, acquired soft, nostalgic tones. He kept looking at the amoeba made of many small phosphorescent specters, so familiar in its movements, so hypnotizing, so...

  The buzzing of the fax was a sudden stab to the heart.

  A sheet of paper crawled out of the fissure and Giovanni had to shake his head to get his thoughts back on track.

  What...?

  He saw the the console before him rotate slightly rightwards and at the same time he was under the impression that his chair for dragging him backwards. But it lasted for just one second.

  From the paper rectangle he had in his hands a bearded man was staring at him. It was a low-quality, black and white picture, probably obtained by zooming a passport photo, but it was enough to superimpose it on the memory of the face he had seen in his dream and remain widemouthed.

  Under the photo were written the same aseptic data one may find on an ID card. Name: Dino. Surname: Bastiani. Place and date of birth followed (he was merely two years older than him), address, hair and eye color, profession (student), marital status (unmarried). Giov
anni wondered whether the stupor in the form of dizziness was because he had recognized - or believed he had recognized - in that photo the man in his dream, or the fact they had answered him in such a thorough, almost flagrant way. He was so used to the silence and discretion that receiving such an answer to a useless question like that one made him cringe.

  He looked closer at that expressionless face.

  “And so you are...Dino, uh?” Until that moment, that guy had always been an unidentified predecessor, the one that for one hear had roamed through those same rooms, had the same nightmares and hopes, who had supposedly written a diary full of nonsense, but it wasn’t actually true...

  He stared at the picture he had received by fax, impressed on the paper by the toner, its lights and shadows, that varied spot of ink to whom he was talking and calling him Dino, and almost smiled.

  How could I dream of you if it’s the first time I see you?

  The answer came by itself that same night.

  It took him all day to slowly climb up from the depths of his memories, but eventually he surfaced like the body of a drowned men, blotted, awful to look at. And then Giovanni understood.

  It was 2:57 A.M. when he looked at the screen of his alarm clock. He couldn’t get to sleep since he went to bed a couple of hours earlier. He watched TV until late, pretending to follow an action movie full of stuntmen jumping off race cars, but he couldn’t prevent his mind from digging and digging...

  And finally, from a darkness only apparently impenetrable the spark of an answer came. He sat on the edge of his bed, breathing him deep the cold darkness enveloping him like a wet blanket. It wasn’t the first time he saw that men. That’s why he had dreamt of him...

  He could check, if he wanted to. He had but to sit at the Control, before the Well, turn on the playback mode and go backwards and backwards...

  But it wasn’t necessary. The certainty with which he had come to that conclusion made further investigation utterly futile. He knew he was right, just like when only one card remains unturned on the table: there’s no need to turn it to know its value.