All things considered, apart from my sister, Vanessa, my only real friend in twenty-seven years was Angelica Scianna. The day she left for training at the Modena Academy, we promised each other eternal devotion. Wherever you are, I’ll be there, too, we said, sobbing uncontrollably while she emptied her locker; kissing and crying all over each other, we swore we would do everything possible to be assigned to the same regiment one day, confident that nothing could keep us apart, that we were destined to be reunited, like the two halves of the gold-plated brass heart we gave each other as a pledge. I wore that pendant for years, even in Afghanistan. When I came out of the coma, in the hospital in Farah, I realized I didn’t have it anymore. They didn’t return it to me with the rest of my personal belongings. It must have been destroyed during the explosion; perhaps it was just as well.
Because something happened to me there at the ends of the earth, on the base and in that mountain gorge. I bonded with those Pegasus guys, some in particular, in a way I never could have imagined possible with someone who wasn’t a relative or a lover, wasn’t a father, a son, or a brother. There wasn’t much to do during downtime at Bala Bayak. We couldn’t leave the base. The soldiers loitered at the PX—a miserable little shop that sold razor blades, shaving cream, phone cards, and cigarettes—or challenged each other to pool. Venier would kick a soccer ball around, juggling it on the top of his foot three hundred times in a row. Jodice played Nintendo or chatted with his girlfriend (he was supposed to give up his post at the computer to anyone who outranked him or was older, but because of Imma’s pregnancy he was often allowed the first shift). Lorenzo picked at the strings of the rubab he’d bought from an Afghani police officer, eager to learn how to play it before being shipped home, trying to compose songs on it. Angkor dried her long black hair—which she washed every evening because the dust dyed it gray—in the wind and, admiring those silky tresses, the only sign of a woman for hundreds of miles, no one dared protest the pointless waste of water. First Lieutenant Russo listened to Radiohead—“Everything in Its Right Place,” “Exit Music,” and “In Limbo”—and the other officers read or phoned home. They all had families, as did some of the older enlisted men.
The platoon sergeants played cards in the logistics shed. I never liked playing cards, and after the first few weeks, when I joined in because I didn’t want to give the impression of being antisocial or arrogant or who knows what, I preferred to keep to myself. Sitting on a wooden bench in the empty mess hall, I read books about journalists, photographers, doctors, spies, and pacifists who, during or just before 1939, had traveled by car, on horseback, or even on foot across Afghanistan, the country on the other side of the barbed wire, the country from which I was barred. And every time the sun sank into the haze and the shadows slid down the mountains, slowly enveloping the tents, the Hesco bastions, and the watchtowers of the base, it seemed like nothing out there existed anymore. Only us, just as we were: imperfect, hateful, and wrong. Even though the darkness erased every shape, I was aware of the nearness of my platoon mates. And that nearness was a guarantee and a promise. I knew all their habits, and it reassured me to know they wouldn’t change. When icy winds kicked up the sand and lashed the open space of the base, the guys holed up in their tents like nomads. They piled on Lorenzo’s cot, which was always the messiest, even though no one pointed it out to him anymore. I could hear them laughing, strumming the guitar, and singing Vasco Rossi songs. Sometimes they squatted in the dust and smoked, holding their cigarettes in their fists to hide the incandescent red of the embers. Orders stipulated total blackout after sunset. The night was our ally, the invisible shield of Achilles that settled over us. And then I’d have to go over, identify myself, and order them to put out their cigarettes—because they’re like lightbulbs in the dark, it’s like hanging out a sign and saying to the mortar shooters in the hills, hey, aim right here! But I would have liked to share in that familiarity. I felt alone. Neither officer nor soldier, neither a mind nor a body, neither part of the elite nor one of the troops.
When we first deployed, they were all strangers to me. But then, day after day—at mess, in the tent, in the bunker, on the shooting range, in the Lince, on watch—invisible bonds formed among us, which grew stronger and stronger, and in the end proved unbreakable. We had a word to express all this. Fortunately it’s obsolete, out of fashion. No one ever uses it. I wouldn’t be able to hear it without falling apart.
Whenever he had time, squatting in the shade, undone by the heat that became more asphyxiating every day, Owl would work on the practice quizzes—multiple choice—for getting into the NCO Academy. He was hoping to apply in September. He’d ask my advice sometimes, and I’d gladly give it to him, because that dog-eared booklet reminded me of my own hopes and fears many years earlier. And I preferred responding to his questions to chatting with my peers in the sergeants’ shed. After Goat 4 the divide between me and the other sergeants had become unbridgeable. The other NCOs were envious, so they said that Colonel Minotto, the regiment commander, who had written some very positive character notes on my performance in Kosovo, who gave me the “excellent” that had paved my way for Afghanistan, shamelessly favored me. They tried for a few months to find some weak spot in me, but I didn’t offer them any opening. They found one anyway. My intimacy with the troops, they said, was excessive. Someone complained to the commander about my behavior—which was disrespectful of hierarchy—and Paggiarin asked the officers who knew me best if it was true. First Lieutenant Russo had warned me. Women walked a fine line, he had said. If they keep to themselves, they lack group spirit; if they’re easygoing, they lack authority. If they’re reserved, they’re incapable of camaraderie, if they’re indulgent, they’re too emotional and destroy the group’s cohesiveness. “I know your behavior is exemplary, Manuela, but be careful.” That chat made me even more reserved around my colleagues. And made me hope that a good kid like Puddu, eager and tenacious, would take their place one day.
So the unsolved mysteries of the NCO entrance exam booklet became a torment for the whole platoon. What is the past participle of the verb “to fly”? A) flew; B) flied; C) flowed; D) flown. Who is the author of the poem Ginestra? A) Petrarch; B) Leopardi; C) Pirandello; D) Pascoli. Who guards the gates to hell in Dante’s Inferno? A) Cerberus; B) Virgil; C) Hydra; D) Limbo. What is the Constitution? A) a code; B) a source of the law; C) an organization; D) a document. What does each point in the Hubble diagram represent? On a map with a scale of 1:500,000, three centimeters correspond to how many kilometers? 0.0003, 1,500,000, 15, 150 … What is a deciduous forest? Which of these fruits is an achene? A pear, an orange, a fig, or fennel?
“What’s the synonym of epigone, Spaniard?” Owl asked as we were in line for the toilets. They were all occupied. We must have eaten some rotten chickpeas at mess the day before, because the next day the entire company was tormented by diarrhea. The stench of shit spread from the chemical toilets through the still, sultry air. “The choices are: polygon, polyhedron, follower, friend.” “D, friend,” Diego answered immediately. But Lorenzo was flabbergasted. He stopped suddenly, at the door to the john, butted into the conversation, and assured him he was wrong. “Bullshit, Spaniard, the correct answer is A, polygon. An epigone is a polygon, it even rhymes, it’s the same thing, a synthesis.” “You’re a beast, Baby,” Diego replied, “an ignoramus. It’s synonym, not synthesis, and epigone means ‘friend.’ You and I are epigones,” he affirmed, pushing the dubious Owl into the john, which reeked of rotten chickpeas. “Are we epigones, Manuela?” Diego asked me that evening, when he saluted me before taking his shift in the tower. “Yes,” I said, before quickly drawing the mosquito net between myself and his enthusiasm.
And so that word became our secret code. I told my epigones things I hadn’t even told myself. And they did the same with me. We gave ourselves over to each other completely. “Know why I’m here?” Lorenzo said one evening as we were lifting weights in the tent that had generously been rebaptized as a gym, the
only recreational space on the base. “Because you’re from the Tenth, and when you found out your regiment was being deployed, you didn’t hesitate,” I replied. “Come on,” Lorenzo laughed, loading another weight on his barbell. “I’m an unwilling volunteer, a contradiction. My father mailed in my application. I didn’t know anything about it, I certainly didn’t want to enlist. He practically forced me to, he drove me to the barracks himself. He was afraid I’d fuck up and end up in jail sooner or later,” he added with a snort. “And was he right?” I asked, stunned. “What do you think?” Lorenzo laughed. “I left high school when I was fourteen, I started a thousand jobs without learning any of them. I wanted to be an extreme ski champion, like Kammerlander, but I tore the ligaments in my knee. So my uncle got me a job in an eyeglass factory, but the work was so repetitive that I quit. I would have liked to buy a truck, but you can imagine my parents, a truck driver son seemed like a failure to them, a public humiliation—my mom’s a teacher and my father manages a hotel. Meanwhile, I started an alternative rock band, we called ourselves the Puking Dogs, I played guitar and wrote lyrics. To see me now you wouldn’t believe it, but we were pretty famous, they booked us for a summer tour, we played in soccer stadiums. We even opened for Pearl Jam once, at the Jammin’ Festival in Venice. I was convinced I could live off my music, everything was going good. I was playing music, having fun, even making some money. But we were heading home after a concert in Pordenone one night when a patrol car pulled us over. It was a Saturday, you know those damned checkpoints, looking for drunk drivers. The singer was a real cojòn, he had three hundred grams of cocaine in the glove compartment. They took us to headquarters. The police chief knew my father, and he told him to make me enlist, the Alpini would straighten me out, instill some values in me. So my father sent in the application. I wasn’t even eighteen. I was the best rock guitar player in eastern Italy. I curse him every time I think about it. But my father is always right.”
“My father was always wrong,” I surprised him by saying. “He did everything wrong, absolutely everything. At twenty he was the national racewalking champion, but his father told him he couldn’t make a living off sports, and had to find himself a job. At twenty-one he started at the electric power plant in Civitavecchia and gave up racing. Then he got a worker at the local fish factory pregnant; he’d been seeing her for all of three days, and, to please his father, who told him that if he was a man he’d do his duty, he married her. Their marriage was hell. I never saw him laugh. I think he hated all three of us, my mother, my sister, and me, even though it wasn’t our fault he was so unhappy. At forty he realized that sports were the only thing that made him happy, but at that point he couldn’t racewalk anymore, because his tendons had gotten inflamed from working at the electric plant, so he got interested in windsurfing. He already had cancer, though, and the doctors discouraged him from taking up such a demanding sport. My mother sold his board when he was admitted to the hospital. I think it was that stupid surfboard that gave him the courage to leave her. He took up with another woman and I didn’t see him for ten years. He’d still go windsurfing even when he was exhausted from the chemo and couldn’t stand up anymore, because he wanted to die on the water, with the wind in his face. He died in a hospital bed instead, in a room with five other patients, all of them screaming in pain, and his new wife couldn’t even open the window to let him feel the breeze because the other patients’ relatives wouldn’t let her. My father wasted his life. He has been a negative example for me. All I learned from him was what not to do.”
I toweled off my face, which was dripping with sweat. I never talked about Tiberio Paris. He was a mistake, a dark blot on my life, and I was ashamed of him. Yet in that moment I realized that in the end, a negative example—because it would have been unfair to call him a bad example—can still be instructive. Growing up amid the noxious fumes of mediocrity and failure had helped me understand what to avoid. I was struck with the desire to hear my father’s voice—sandy, coarse, scratchy, like his old car. But I had to make do with that of my brother. His voice was changing, and when I talked with Traian on the phone, I sometimes had the sensation I was talking with my father. I’m sorry, Papa, I would have liked to say to him. I’m not mad at you anymore. I’m sorry.
“I do everything wrong, too,” Lorenzo said, stopping suddenly, his barbell in midair. “I’m different from you all, I don’t think the same way. Do you know who the hero of my village is? A broke anarchist who emigrated, became a miner, and then came back because he dreamed of liberating Italy from tyranny. His name was Angelo Sbardellotto. He went to Rome to kill Mussolini, and had three chances, but he never went through with it because he didn’t want to accidentally kill innocent people, too. He was arrested, and sentenced to death. He didn’t ask for mercy, and they shot him in the back. He died for his ideals; he was only twenty-five. They dedicated a plaque to him in my village, but they didn’t have the courage to put it in the piazza, only in the park, because they said he fell in a private war, not wearing an army uniform. The plaque is still there, though, and I would see it when I went to the park with my girlfriend, and I would think about that kid—he was only a little older than me—who gave his life for liberty. I wasn’t born to drive a tank, I don’t believe we’re here to bring liberty to these people, because liberty has to be earned, not imposed, even your own liberty, especially your own, this place doesn’t mean shit to me, and if it weren’t for you, the Spaniard, Owl, and Angkor, for my brothers in Pegasus and Lambda, I would have already left.”
“Sollum’s not a hotel, Nail,” I said to him, “it’s not like you pay your bill and leave.” “It wouldn’t take much to get myself sent home,” he objected ironically. “I could act crazy, fake a nervous breakdown, insult the skinny Buddha, tell the first reporter who happens to show up that this mission is a mistake. That it was a huge mistake sending soldiers to Afghanistan, that we should have withdrawn a long time ago. Sure, we’re doing some good things, and I grant you that we do them with the kind of fairness that’s worthy of a better cause, but in reality we’re here to cover up other people’s motivations, we’re spending damn near five million euros a year to unfurl our flag in the desert, money we could be using to build hospitals back home. I could say these things, Manuela, and I really think them. I’d be dishonorably discharged, but I wouldn’t care in the least—in fact, I’d be free. The reason I don’t do it is because I took an oath. I gave my word. This time I’m going to stick it out. I’ve always started things and then dropped them when I got bored. The only thing I never gave up on was music. I’m a lousy soldier, but I was a really good guitar player. Maybe right now, instead of eating sand and living like a celibate Trappist monk, I could have been on tour in Holland, in Spain, who knows, with a different girl every night. Don’t hate your father. If anything, you should love him more. It’s awful to live your life wrong.”
“But you’re so young,” I said to him, “you don’t even need to shave yet, you have plenty of time to do something different. If you’re really convinced you’re a musician, when you get back to Italy, ask to join the brass band or to be discharged. Okay, so you gave your word, but it’s okay to change your mind. You can’t crucify yourself over an oath.” Lorenzo got up, surprised that I of all people would speak to him like that. He had always considered me an unyielding champion, incapable of deviations, doubts, or compromises. “It can’t just end like this,” he said, “we can’t lose track of each other, we’re too tight now.”
* * *
Sometimes after dinner we’d gorge ourselves on talk—stupid arguments—until exhaustion closed our eyes. We would talk about soccer and motorcycles (Owl would do motocross on the Gennargentu when he went back to Sardinia on leave). We would list the most beautiful places we’d ever been (I kept quiet, because I’d never been anywhere). We’d make lists of our favorite foods: for the Spaniard the number one spot went to his mother’s schiaffoni with ragú sauce; for Puddu it was bottarga, salted mullet roe from
Cabras; for Angkor, fegatazzi, liver sausages from Ortona; for Zandonà, casunziei, ravioli with pumpkin, prosciutto, and cinnamon. Other times we’d ask those big questions you have the courage to ponder only when you’re young and then prefer to avoid for the rest of your life. What is evil, what’s the difference between execution and assassination, is there really life after death, why does God tolerate, and sometimes even seem to approve of, injustice? Diego was very Catholic and we expected him to have an answer for everything. But other than a few recycled bits of catechism, he wasn’t very up on theology; all he said was that God keeps track of the good and evil you do in life, and the wicked will be punished. He believed in Heaven, but he never thought about Hell. I once said to him that I found the idea of God as accountant ridiculous—God with a grade book in his hand. He was offended, and now I’m sorry.
We recounted childhood memories, anecdotes from when we were recruits, episodes that in that far distant place suddenly assumed an unprecedented importance. Jodice, who usually boasted to us about his tours of duty in the Balkans, once, who knows how, ended up talking about an accident he hadn’t thought about in years. It was in some secluded valley in Wardak, a place of turbans and goats, filled with happy, festive people who greeted them with a smile when they went by and loved them because the war had just ended, or so they thought.
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