Now he’s disoriented and miserable. He has cold sweats. Shortness of breath. He won’t go to Abib anymore. For the whole rest of the mission he won’t touch a pipe ever again. He mentally utters a vow to God: If you let me make it to the toilet, if you save me from this stuff, I swear I won’t go to Abib’s to smoke anymore. He’s about to go further, to promise that he won’t smoke even once he’s back home, but then he remembers the pleasure of sitting on the terrace in Ricadi, with his feet on the railing, slowly inhaling a joint as he contemplates the oily sea, and he thinks twice about it. Six months without drugs may be enough of a commitment.
Another violent cramp makes him cough and lean forward. For a moment Di Salvo loses control of his sphincter; he feels it dilate suddenly. He’s soiled himself, he’s almost certain of it. He taps Cederna on the shoulder. “I’ll give you ten euros if you let me go ahead.”
The senior corporal major turns his head slightly. “Fifty.”
“You’re a bastard, Cederna! So it’s true you’re not as bad off.”
“Fifty euros.”
“Up yours. I’ll give you twenty.”
“Forty and that’s as far as I’ll go.”
“Thirty. You’re a bastard.”
“I said I won’t take less than forty.”
Di Salvo feels the animal in his bowels rebelling. He has rhythmic, involuntary contractions in his anus. There’s something alive in there, with its own beating heart. “Okay, I’ll give you forty—forty,” he says. “Now get the fuck out of the way.”
Cederna gestures with his arm as if to say, By all means, go ahead. He snickers. He’s probably not sick at all; he’s just there to annoy the others. The first guy in line has gone in, so now there are only two more ahead of Di Salvo. It won’t take much longer. He stares at his wristwatch as three minutes go by, excruciatingly slow, second by second; then the door of a toilet opens for him, like an invitation to paradise.
There are steps on both sides to enter the walkway with the latrines. Di Salvo rushes forward, but before he can get into the toilet an officer from the engineer corps comes up on the other side and beats him to it.
“Get out of there!” Di Salvo yells.
The second lieutenant points to the stripes on his jacket, but Di Salvo has forgotten all about rank. He waited all that time on line and gave forty euros to that scumbag Cederna and no one is going to swipe his place now, not even General Petraeus himself.
“Get out of there!” he repeats. “We’re all sick here.”
The second lieutenant doesn’t appear threatening; rather he has an imploring look, as if he too has just shit his pants a little. He’s a guy with a square head, not very tall but more solidly built than Di Salvo. The name on his insignia says Puglisi. Di Salvo instinctively notices those details. He takes in the parameters that a fighter must consider before confronting an opponent: height, circumference of the biceps, bulk. His brain informs the muscles that he should fight.
“Please,” the engineer begs, pulling the door toward him so he can close it. Di Salvo sticks his foot against the jamb and forces the door open.
“Not on your life. It’s my turn.” He drags the second lieutenant out by his jacket collar.
“Hands off me, soldier!”
“Or what?”
“Don’t tick me off. I’m from Catania, you know,” the officer says, as if it meant anything.
“Oh, yeah? And I’m from Lamezia and I’m gonna shit all over you!”
Before you know it, Puglisi delivers a not very forceful but well-aimed punch to his jaw, which goes cra-a-a-ck. Di Salvo is stunned.
A few seconds later they’re scuffling on the walkway, little more than a foot wide, blocking the entrance and access to two of the toilets. Amid the shouts of the guys on line—a line that, at this point, has turned riotous—Di Salvo ends up on the ground with his face pressed against a grate; under it flows a liquid whose origin he doesn’t want to know. He’s wiped out. He ineffectively knees the second lieutenant’s calf; he can’t move otherwise because the guy is straddling him and immobilizing his free arm. His other arm is pinned under his own body. Puglisi keeps pummeling his ribs, weak but steadily repeated punches, always in the same spot, like an expert boxer.
As he’s being beaten, it slowly dawns on Di Salvo that he’s just assaulted an officer. Or was he the one who was assaulted? It’s irrelevant. He’s fighting with a superior—that’s what matters. There are serious consequences for such behavior. Solitary. Expulsion. Court martial. Prison.
A blow to the head, unexpected, makes him spit something out. He’s afraid it’s a tooth. He’s short of breath. That toilet belonged to him. He forked over forty euros to that greedy asshole Cederna, who is now yelling things at him that he can’t understand because one ear is squashed against the grate and the other is under Puglisi’s hand. The cramps have backed off or else they’ve merged with the agony of the punches. He absolutely has to get out of that hold. He’s wheezing. With a forceful lunge he manages to arch his spine and free his arm from under his back. He lands a blow on the engineer’s face. “Now you’ll change your tune, you ugly bastard!”
He’s all worked up, ready to give it back to him with interest, but the lieutenant stands up and takes his hands off him. He steps back. Di Salvo, stunned, looks up at him. “Coward!” he yells, outraged. He’s pleased to see that he’s at least managed to give him a bloody nose and cut his eyebrow. “Get back here!”
But his opponent is looking away. In fact, all the soldiers have turned their attention elsewhere. Di Salvo follows their gaze and sees Colonel Ballesio making his way through the crowd, clutching his belly.
“Come on, move—let me through!”
Just before losing consciousness, Di Salvo sees the commander’s stubby legs step over him as he closes himself inside the contested toilet. He just has time to hear an animal gasp from inside the cubicle, then nothing.
• • •
It’s in that state of distress that Egitto meets the guys from Third Platoon, Charlie, for the first time. The food poisoning has kept him busy all afternoon, administering Imodium tablets two at a time and massive doses of intestinal antibiotics; supplies are now starting to run low, so he’s had to cut the dosage in half. He’s repeatedly inspected the condition of the toilets, which minute by minute testified to the worsening of the situation: at the moment, three toilets are unusable for hygienic reasons, one is stopped up by a wad of wet wipes, and another by a flashlight stuck in the waste pipe (miraculously it’s remained lit, projecting intermittent flashes of light on the metallic walls and on the washbasin).
Inside the Third Platoon’s tent, the air is hot and smelly, but the lieutenant pays no attention, just as he pays no attention to the eerie silence. Going in there is no different from going into any of the tents he’s already visited: the camps all look alike, the soldiers too, they’re trained to look alike, and now they’re suffering from the same spasms and the same dehydration. Nothing suggests to Lieutenant Egitto that his fate will soon be bound to that platoon in a special way. Looking back, later on, he will find that indifference ominous.
“Who’s in charge here?” he asks.
A shirtless soldier, drenched in sweat, struggles to a seated position on his cot. “Marshal René. Sir!”
“As you were,” Egitto orders. He asks those who are experiencing the staph symptoms to raise their hands, and counts them. Then he turns to the only man not affected: “Your name?”
“Salvatore Camporesi.”
“You didn’t eat the meat?”
Camporesi shrugs: “You bet I ate it. Two nice big helpings.”
The lieutenant orders him to go to the command center and cover the guards’ night shifts.
“But I was on guard duty yesterday,” Camporesi protests.
The lieutenant shrugs in turn. “What can I tell you? It’s an
emergency.”
“Have a good night, Campo,” a soldier mouths off. “If you see a shooting star make a wish for me, honeybunch.”
Camporesi expresses aloud the wish that his colleague drown in his own excrement, then pulls on his boots and struts to the door while the others target him with balled-up T-shirts, dirty tissues, and plastic spoons.
Egitto prepares the syringes and the guys get in position, lying on their side, undershorts lowered halfway down their butts. A fart escapes, or maybe someone did it on purpose; in any case it’s applauded. Complete freedom, almost obscene, reigns among them; for each of them the other soldiers’ bodies are no less familiar than their own, even for the only female in the group, who displays her bare hip indifferently.
One of the soldiers is in particularly critical condition. Egitto records the name in the notebook he will refer to later to make a report to the commander, Angelo Torsu, first corporal major. The young man’s teeth are chattering inside the sleeping bag, under four layers of blankets. Egitto takes his temperature: 102.
“Earlier it was 104,” René puts in.
Egitto notices the marshal’s eyes on him. He’s a concerned, caring platoon leader; you can see it in his face. He set up his cot in the middle of the tent so he could keep an eye on them all.
“He can’t walk anymore. The last time he had to do his business in here.”
There’s no reproach in the way he says it and the others don’t comment. That body that’s so sick belongs to them as well and they treat it with respect. Egitto thinks about the fact that someone took the trouble to help the soldier with the bag, then sealed it and threw it in the garbage. When it was up to him to do the same for his father, he’d preferred to call a nurse. What kind of doctor feels disgust for a man who’s suffering? What child refuses to care for his father’s body?
“How many times?” he asks the soldier.
Torsu looks at the lieutenant from behind a veil of confusion and prostration. “Huh?” he murmurs.
“How many times did you empty your bowels?”
“I don’t know . . . ten. Or more.” His breath is rancid; his parched lips stick to each other. “What have I got, Doctor?” Egitto measures the pulse at his throat; the beats are weak but not alarmingly so. “It’s nothing serious,” he reassures him.
“They’re all looking down at me from heaven, Doc,” Torsu says, then rolls his eyes back.
“What?”
“He’s delirious,” René says.
Egitto gives the marshal some medication to be administered to the soldier and bottles of milk enzymes to dispense to the others. He directs him to keep Torsu’s mouth moist with a wet sponge, to take his temperature every hour, and to notify him if his condition worsens. He promises to return in the morning, the same promise he made to each of the units, though he certainly won’t be able to see them all.
“Doc, could I talk to you for a second?” René says.
“Of course.”
“Privately.”
Egitto closes up his medical kit, follows the marshal outside. René lights a cigarette and for half a second his face is illuminated by the lighter’s flame. “It’s about one of my boys,” he says. “He screwed up.” His voice trembles a little, because of the cold, the cramps, or something else. “With a woman, you know.”
“A disease?” The lieutenant takes a guess.
“No. That other thing.”
“An infection?”
“He got her pregnant. But it’s not his fault either.”
“How do you mean, if I may ask?”
“The woman is of a certain age. In theory, it wasn’t supposed to happen to her anymore.”
The tip of René’s cigarette glows. Egitto follows that one luminous spot because there’s nothing else to look at. He thinks that voices in the dark have more character, that he won’t easily forget the marshal’s. In fact, he won’t. “I see,” he says. “There are remedies, as you probably know.”
“That’s what I told him myself. That there are remedies. But he wants to know exactly what they do to it. To the baby, that is.”
“You mean when a pregnancy is terminated?”
“An abortion.”
“Normally, the fetus is sucked out through a very thin catheter.”
“And then?”
“And then it’s over.”
René takes a long drag. “Where do they put it?”
“It’s . . . disposed of, I think. We’re talking about something minuscule, which practically doesn’t exist.”
“Doesn’t exist?”
“It’s very tiny. Like a mosquito.” He is telling him only part of the truth.
“Do you think they’re aware of it?”
“The mother or the fetus?”
“The baby.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so or you’re sure of it?”
Egitto’s patience is running out. “I’m sure,” he says, just to cut it short.
“I’m a Catholic, Doc,” René confesses. He doesn’t even notice that he’s given himself away.
“That can complicate things. Or make them a lot simpler.”
“Not one of those Catholics who go to church. I believe in God, sure, but in my own way. I have my own faith. I mean, priests are people like you and me, right? They can’t know everything.”
“No, I don’t think they can.”
“Everyone believes in what he feels, if you ask me.”
“Marshal, I’m not the right person to talk to about this. Maybe you’d be better off talking to the chaplain.”
René’s cigarette has burned down only halfway, but he crushes it out between his fingers. The ember falls to the ground and lies there smoldering. The glow slowly fades and turns black like everything around it. René throws the butt in the dumpster. He’s a man who cares about order, Egitto thinks, a proper soldier.
“How long does it take?”
“For what, Marshal?”
“To suck the baby out through the tube.”
“It’s not a baby yet, at that point.”
“But still, how long does it take?”
“Not long. Five minutes. Not even.”
“Anyway, he doesn’t suffer.”
“I don’t think so.”
Even in the dark Egitto can tell that the marshal would like to ask him again if he’s really sure. How do you make certain decisions if you don’t know the terms of the operation, the logistical details, the coordinates? A soldier demands clarity, a soldier likes to plan things out.
“What would you do if you were that guy, Doctor?”
“I don’t know, Marshal. I’m sorry.”
Later, as he crosses the square by himself, with the flashlight’s bluish beam lighting the way, Egitto wonders whether he shouldn’t have allowed himself to influence the marshal, to direct him toward the right choice. But how does he know what the right choice is? He’s not in the habit of interfering with the course of other people’s lives. What Alessandro Egitto does best is stand on the sidelines.
There are people prone to action, inclined to play leading roles—he’s just a cautious, meticulous observer: forevermore a second born.
Un Sospiro
She had always been their favorite. I realized it very early on, when I was still little enough for our parents to think that putting on a good act was all it took to disguise their biased feelings. Their gazes instinctively focused on Marianna, and only afterward, as though suddenly remembering they’d passed over me, would they turn to yours truly, making up for it with a broader smile than necessary.
It wasn’t blind obedience on their part to the order that nature had imposed when we came into the world, much less apathy or inattention. Nor was it true that they noticed Marianna first because she was taller, as I told myse
lf for a time. It was her girlish presence that beguiled them, whether sitting at the table with her hair held back by a headband, or in the tub hidden by foamy bubble bath, or bent over her desk doing homework; it was as though it caught them by surprise, time and time again. Their eyes widened simultaneously and a bright flash of satisfaction and awe exploded in the center of the pupils, the same spark that must have flared when they tremulously witnessed the miracle of her birth. “There she is!” they exclaimed in unison when she appeared, dropping to their knees to offset the matter of height. Then, noticing me, they added: “. . . and Alessandro,” their voices fading on the last syllable. The only thing in store for me, having arrived three years later via an emergency Caesarean section—Nini asleep and Ernesto overseeing his colleague’s performance in the operating room—was a stale, halfhearted rerun of the attentions my sister had received.
For instance: I knew that for her my father’s car had a name—La Musona, “Snout”—and that it spoke to her as it took her to school every morning. In the traffic along the riverside boulevard, as the mottled trunks of the plane trees regularly interrupted the eight a.m. light, La Musona came to life and took on animal features: the side mirrors were transformed into ears, the steering wheel into a navel, the wheels into hefty paws. Ernesto disguised his voice, chirping in falsetto with a distinct nasal twang. He hid his mouth behind the collar of his coat and uttered pompous phrases: “Where may I take you today, signorina?”
“To school, thank you,” Marianna replied with a queenly air.
“What do you say we go to the amusement park instead?”
“No, no, Musona. I have to go to school!”
“Oh, school—how boring!”
Years later, I found myself garnering clues to the radiant past that had preceded me in the episodes often evoked by Ernesto in order to regain, for a moment or two, his daughter’s affection, at one time manifest and now latent. The nostalgia that he betrayed on those occasions led me to imagine a brimming, matchless bliss, which mysteriously vanished after my arrival. At other times, I thought it was just one of the countless ways in which our father vaunted his flamboyant imagination: he seemed more concerned, in fact, with commemorating his actions as a parent than with reawakening my sister’s dormant joy.
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