The redbrick station was in the middle of the countryside—it looked like an idyllic English countryside, all right, with Jersey cows and lots of green. I picked the awaiting Defender at once because he was watching us from a distance and didn’t move forward. He stood next to a brick pylon, a cigarette dangling from his lips, waiting for us to go over to him like a gaggle of anxious geese waddling up to their feed.
“Welcome. My name’s Keith,” he said with an accent that sounded coarse to me as he crushed the cigarette butt under his shoe—although my ear was untrained to the endless nuance of English class pronunciation. “Defender” was written on his jacket in light blue against a yellow background. He looked around fifty, albeit a pretty trashed fifty; burly with the gravelly voice of a smoker and the watery gaze of someone who drinks a lot of beer.
“Come on, let’s get a move on. The first lesson starts at nine.” Then he looked at my bags.
“No, it’s just that”—the urge to justify myself rose like a wave—“as soon as I’m done with the course I’m flying straight to Kabul. There are cameras in it and…”
“You’re free to bring whatever you want.”
Keith’s eyelids lowered slowly and he shrugged.
“Your whole wardrobe if you like,” he said, turning his back on me.
In the small conference room of the country inn—fluorescent lights, folding chairs, gray carpet and a screen for slides—the Defenders turned up in full force, with the spirit of a soccer team at a photo shoot. They showed no interest in being liked, had no time for formalities or pleasantries. There were about ten of them, all wearing identical blue Defender T-shirts. They had a weathered look, scoured by the elements and by late nights at the pub. In fact, as I walked past them, my nostrils caught a blend of beer notes mixed with toothpaste and pine shower gel, the same sharp scent that wafts through every subway in the world around eight a.m.
They were standing in front of the slide screen with their arms crossed over their mighty stomachs, biceps on display, legs apart, in a menacing bouncer stance. I noticed how one of them—a sort of Celtic mountain who looked like Obelix, the gigantic Gallic cartoon character with braids and horns on his helmet, ready to uproot a tree—wore his thin blond hair in a ponytail, despite being well over fifty, which struck me as sad. A couple of them were younger, not as bulky but scary nevertheless. These had the sinewy, diabolical look of martial arts champions, ice-colored eyes and tattoos on their forearms. They introduced themselves one by one, mumbling their names under their breath: “I’m Roger, I’ll be giving you the first-aid course.” “I’m Alan, together we’ll take a look at weapons, munitions and land mines.” “Hi, I’m Toby, with me you’ll be doing outdoor war games, we’ll be simulating emergency situations together.”
They surveyed us with an air of polite superiority. It was obvious we didn’t arouse the least curiosity in them. There we were, a bunch of middle-class civilians shrouded in expensive layers of polypropylene with BlackBerrys stuffed in our pockets, who had only ever seen war on television. I could detect it in their eyes, the tedium of having to put up with us for a whole week.
At that point, the one who appeared to be the oldest, Tim—a mild-faced man with sky-blue eyes and a King Kong physique—invited us to introduce ourselves and name the organization we worked for.
“Please state your destination as well,” he added.
Nobody moved, eyes met all round.
One after another, my course mates stood up and declaimed their personal details as if they were introducing themselves at an AA meeting.
“Hi, I’m Bob Sheldon, I work for Reuters in Sydney and next month I’m going to Indonesia to cover the elections.”
“Um…My name is Monika Schluss, I come from Bonn and I will travel to Belize to work with Christian Aid.”
“Hi, I’m Liz Reading, I’m from London and in six months I’m going to the Congo to…well…” The sexy brunette hesitated, then giggled. “I’m with an NGO that helps local people make cheese,” and there were nervous titters all round to break the tension. The Defenders did not laugh.
“Hi, my name’s Jonathan Kirk. I work for AP. I’m American, but I live and work in Bogotá. I’m not going anywhere. I just need to survive my own neighborhood.”
“Hi, my name’s Nkosi Mkele, I work in Johannesburg. Like Jonathan, I’m not going to any hot spots because I already live in one that’s at boiling point.”
More titters of approval, zero reaction from the Defenders.
When I stood up, I stammered my name and said I was a freelance photographer.
“On Monday I’m going to Kabul,” I added before sitting down again. All my course buddies whipped their heads around to look at me, and I noticed, or perhaps I just thought I noticed, more respect in their eyes than I had seen before. Tim wound up, addressing me.
“Well, Maria, keep your ears open in the coming days, because everything you’ll learn could turn out to be very useful to you. And with that, thank you, everybody. We’ve finished here and we can begin.”
By ten I had already fainted.
I came to in a sort of slow fade-in. The utter darkness discolored into different textures of gray, then blotches of color began to emerge and separate themselves from the rest and more distinct sounds surfaced from the background hum. I realized those colored blurs were faces leaning over me; then the muffled sounds turned into voices and familiar sentences. “Water, get her some water. There, now she’s coming round. Hey, everything’s okay. There, drink, good girl, that’s the way.”
Water doesn’t do a thing. I know because I’m prone to fainting and there’s always someone who thinks that making me drink will get me back on my feet.
Roger—one of the ones with the ice-colored eyes and raven hair who looked scary—had asked before starting the slide show if anyone in the room was likely to be affected by the sight of blood. No arm was raised and I didn’t move.
“Always better to ask,” Roger had said. “People have passed out before.”
My companions had giggled. I had kept quiet, hoping that I wouldn’t, this one time.
We had been sitting on the folding chairs, each with our own notepad with Defenders letterhead, complete with pen with the same logo, while Roger went through the slides, illustrating the basics of extreme first aid.
He had just started on the subject of hemorrhages and, in particular, arterial bleeding when I began to feel strange. The description of blood pressure, but mostly the use of the word “gush” caused a sort of softening in my stomach. I tried to stay focused as Roger called Tim over to act as a guinea pig and went on to show where to tie the tourniquet on the thigh, higher than the wound, and how to exert pressure on the artery by pushing a fist into the groin with as much force as possible. When he started to demonstrate how to push to stem the blood flow, emphasizing the speed with which the victim can bleed to death, I started to get that languid feeling I know so well. Monika Schluss, the German from Christian Aid—a Louise Brooks haircut dyed red, oval glasses—was diligently taking notes next to me, unperturbed, whereas I could not stop the image of spurting blood, of lips turning whiter every second and most of all of the pool of thick red liquid spreading on the floor.
How can everyone listen to these sounds, I asked myself—firearm, severed vein, gushes, squirts, puddle, blood—and not feel the same atrocious chill that is slowly taking hold of me?
Everybody looked perfectly calm, interested, some actually even amused. My body instead started to simulate the same process Roger was describing. I could actually feel life flowing away from me like river water, the blood streaming away from my wrists, down my legs, away from my heart and lungs, emptying my body, leaving me dry. I pointed my toes to ward off that familiar somnolence, that desire to be elsewhere. It’s the first warning that my body has decided to give up on me. There’s nothing I can do. My body seems to possess a personality of its own, like a difficult friend who will walk out of a scary movie without a word of warning.
A split second before I passed out, a last thought flashed through my mind. It is truly unbearable to accept the idea of how vulnerable our bodies are in the face of elements, accidents, attacks. How can we possibly walk around our whole lives carrying this tangle of veins, organs, tubes, valves, glands, air chambers, filters, juices, membranes, protected by only two millimeters of epidermis? Madness, I thought, that such a delicate load—doesn’t our life depend entirely on its correct functioning after all?—should be wrapped in tissue paper…Then I was out.
At dinner I had decided to join Nkosi, the South African journalist and the only black person in the group, precisely because I noticed he was sitting by himself. The others had already formed small cliques all around, and I got the impression that he might be feeling out of place as well, in this wet and wintry English countryside.
“Of course you can sit here.” He smiled. “Maria, right? You’re the one who’s going to Kabul, isn’t it?”
He was wearing a pair of dazzling yellow glasses and a black-and-orange-striped sweater, which made him look like a bee. You could tell he came from a country where there was plenty of sunshine. He wasn’t scared of bright colors. With old-fashioned charming manners he had moved a chair for me to sit on.
Just then Liz Reading crept up behind me. She had been heading toward a table of journalists rigged out in black and gray Patagonia gear when, as if on an afterthought, she approached my table with the false concern whose sole purpose I knew was to humiliate me. She leaned in towards me.
“Roger told me tomorrow’s class will be on amputated limbs. I just thought I’d let you know, in case you…you know…might faint again. There may be lots of blood on the slides, so…”
“So what?” I asked abruptly.
“Nothing. But he suggested I tell you, in case you prefer to leave the room,” she advised in a mellifluous tone.
“I’m not scared of blood. It’s just that it freaks me out how easy it is to die,” I said, coldly glaring at her and stressing every syllable like a mad person. She hastily withdrew, holding her overflowing plate of roast beef and potatoes close to her chest, as if she’d run into a Jehovah’s Witness on her doorstep, ready and eager to discuss the Last Judgment.
When she was gone, Nkosi was gracious enough to pick up the conversation where we had left it and ignored my fainting spell as if it had never happened. He asked what I was going to do in Kabul. I muttered something about arranged marriages and diverted the conversation to him and the situation in South Africa. I wasn’t really listening, just nodding occasionally whenever I heard the familiar names, like Soweto, Mbeki, Mandela, Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As Nkosi mentioned how one of his best friends had been shot by the police back in the eighties and how he himself had been to jail, I lost myself gazing at the roast with mashed potatoes and baked carrots sitting on my plate. I began to nudge it imperceptibly with my fork, imitating the way Nori assembles the food for a shot, creating neat symmetrical mounds of vegetables next to the entrée.
The Defenders were all sitting together at a long table at the back of the room, hunched over their plates, their heavy shoulders caved in, elbows resting on the table. They were gnawing meat from bones like characters in a medieval painting. They were taciturn and gloomy, doubtless not looking forward to another interminable week of lessons repeated all over again to a bunch of fools who passed out at the mention of blood.
I had the impression I could actually hear their teeth grinding the bones.
“I’ve had dinner with this very nice South African journalist,” I said on the phone to my father, who called me that evening.
I could just picture him, sitting on the checkered sofa in front of the mute TV screen tuned to the satellite news channel, cigarette in hand, eager to hear my report.
“Which paper does he write for?” he asked, as if he read the Johannesburg dailies regularly and knew the names.
“Um…I didn’t ask. He’s very smart. I think he was an activist during the apartheid years.” I sighed, realizing that I hadn’t listened to Nkosi with enough concentration to appease my father’s insatiable curiosity.
“How’s the weather?” I asked.
“November weather. The same as you left. What do you care about the weather, anyway?” He sounded impatient now. “Tell me more about this South African journalist.”
“What do you want to know? He seems bright, he’s nice, he’s…I don’t know. It’s not as if he told me his life story.”
“Va bene. What is it like over there? What about the marines? What kind of place is it? Allora? Do you think you could give me some kind of description?”
By now he would’ve had his plate of pasta and the one glass of red the doctor allowed him for dinner. He had probably saved this phone call till the end of the day, in order to savor it with his last cigarette. I could feel his excitement buzz through the phone line.
“All right. What would you like me to tell you? It’s like, let’s see—there are all these aid workers and journalists, the food’s terrible, the hotel is like a badly refurbished manor house they rent out for weddings, with fluorescent lights and blue carpeting on all the floors; it looks like a rest home. Actually it’s almost funny. The Defenders are…I don’t know, kind of impenetrable. They look like a herd of bison. Quiet and dangerous. How does that sound?”
“A pretty caustic description.”
I heard him chuckle. I had succeeded in amusing him. Now—I knew it—he would put down the phone and repeat all I had said verbatim to Leo.
The next day I woke up at five. Outside it was pitch-dark and rainy.
My room was tiny, not much bigger than a closet, and I was feeling claustrophobic and unhappy. Another source of anxiety was the lesson on firearms that was scheduled to open the day. I certainly didn’t want to pass out again.
I started surfing the satellite channels and suddenly came across the images of one of the English hostages in Iraq—a middle-aged, kind-looking man in an Day-Glo orange jacket—pleading with his government to help and listen to the kidnappers’ requests. I immediately switched to the next station, where a family was pouring breakfast cereals in slow motion and smiling at one another. In the background I could hear a cheerful jingle.
“Right, this morning we’re going to learn something about weapons,” Alan announced with a grin. His hair was still damp from the shower and combed back like a schoolboy’s. Despite the freshness of his cologne, the withered look of someone fighting a fierce hangover was still plastered all over his face. Laid out in front of him on two long, narrow tables was an array of guns, automatic weapons, machine guns and bazookas, like a window display of a spooky toy store.
“Now, on this table we have various types of weapons, those we call low and high velocity. Some of these can pass through the body without significant soft tissue damage, some can shoot up to four hundred rounds in three seconds, others will cause extensive crushing in the wound. On the other table we have more of the nasty stuff. M-16s, rocket launchers, grenades. Naturally, it’s important you know how to distinguish one weapon from another, because in case you find yourself under fire, there are vital choices you’ll need to make rapidly. For example, some of these weapons can penetrate even concrete, so hiding behind a wall wouldn’t do you much good. But let’s look at them one by one and learn to recognize them by their shape first.”
I had been the last to come in, and Alan had greeted me with a little cough and motioned to me to take a seat in the back. Liz Reading was sitting in the front row and was already taking notes. Nkosi was busy talking to the Australian Reuters journalist. He waved at me, but I didn’t want to seem clingy, so I sat at the very back, next to a guy named Mike—a balding, short fortysomething who didn’t wear gear and looked just plain and old-fashioned, more like a priest than an adventurous reporter.
Alan showed the class one gun after another, running his fingertips over the barrels, triggers, levers and mechanisms with the same expertise and adm
iration that mechanics have for engines. He described caliber to us, power, wound volume, kinetic energy theory, entrance and exit holes. Then he proceeded to hand the bullet corresponding to each weapon in question to Liz Reading, who was sitting in the first row right next to him, so she could pass it on to the rest of the class. Liz examined the cartridge for a while, ruminating on its shape and weight as if it could disclose precious information, then reluctantly passed it to the person next to her, so that after a lap of the room the bullet finally reached me.
Two hours later we had covered only the weapons of table number one and we had handled about twenty bullets of various sizes. My companions were growing excited, they kept asking questions and took notes. The women especially, I noticed.
Mike, the silent guy in gray sitting next to me, had begun to give almost imperceptible signs of impatience. I seemed to remember he belonged to a Catholic organization that worked in the Amazon. As I passed the shells to him I noticed he didn’t even bother to turn them over in his fingers, feigning interest like the others (some actually knitted their brows as if the object presented unexpected characteristics); Mike instead passed each bullet straight on to the person next to him without even bothering to look at it, as if he found the whole thing silly and didn’t want to be part of it. I tried to intercept his attention. I wanted him to know I too was beginning to feel that the whole thing was ridiculous. We started handing our bullets incrementally faster, as if they were getting hotter by the second, averting our eyes from them with identical disparaging expressions.
End of Manners Page 4