The Last Man Standing

by Davide Longo

  “Come on, we’ll get in the car now,” Lucia said.

  The boy allowed himself to be helped up and walked toward the car with his sister.

  Leonardo and Bauschan, left behind, looked back at the she-goat. She was exploring the ground with her snout. She could probably tell the field had once been sown with granoturco or maize and hoped to find traces of a cob or two under the mud.

  People think it’s a plant the Turks brought us, Leonard mused as he tried to untie the knot restricting the animal, but the name is simply the result of linguistic confusion. In fact granoturco reached us from the Americas, where the English called it “turkey wheat,” i.e., grain suitable for turkeys to eat, but assonance caused the term to be translated into Italian as grano di Turchia, “grain from Turkey.”

  This reflection occupied him for the five minutes he needed to untie the tangle of wet cord, then, fingers numb with cold, he returned to the car.

  Alberto was stretched on the rear seat; he had changed his trousers and seemed to be asleep. Before starting the car, Leonardo looked once more at the goat; she was exactly where he had left her and seemed to be gazing at the gray sky above the mountains as if waiting for a signal. Her leash was hanging loosely from her neck, like a permanent umbilical cord linking her to the earth.

  They filled the car at a service station on the bypass.

  Even though there were only two cars in the line, this operation took more than an hour. The cars had to wait in a parking area at the side of the enclosure until a siren and an announcement by a man with a megaphone stationed on top of a small tower called them to the gate.

  When it was their turn, the gate opened and they drove into a narrow space closed on three sides. Then the gate shut behind them and the man on the tower ordered them to get out of the car, place their money on the hood, open both hood and trunk, and move back several paces.

  Lucia gave Leonardo the banknotes; the man checked them through a telescope, then told the children to stay where they were. Lucia and Alberto put on their jackets. Once they reached an area marked by four yellow stripes, a second gate opened and the Polar was allowed through.

  The sum that Leonardo had to pay to fill the tank up would have been enough, a few years before, to buy a low-powered car, but it was obvious that in the last few months the money must have lost a great deal of its value. The man who served Leonardo had a pistol in a shoulder holster. Despite the fact that the right side of his face was missing, his look was alert and sharp. Even the men on the tower were armed. One pointed his rifle at Leonardo, while his colleague with the megaphone controlled the children in the narrow enclosed space.

  Behind the corrugated iron hut, where the man operated the pump, Leonardo could see a full clothes line and behind that two toy cars and a plastic tractor. A family business, he thought.

  “We’re on our way to Switzerland,” he said. “Have you any information that may be useful for us?”

  The man looked as if he had been asked for details of his sexual habits.

  “No one knows anything,” he answered.

  Ten minutes later they were back on the bypass. They drove alongside several cars, but all eventually exited to the city and when they reached the entrance to the autostrada they found themselves alone again. The barriers to the tollbooths were open and there were several empty cars at the side of the road. One was a spray-painted Audi and Leonardo saw a body in it when he slowed down.

  After a couple of kilometers he pulled over. It must have been about two o’clock, but no one had a watch that still worked.

  “Let’s have something to eat,” he said.

  Lucia divided the cheese in three and Alberto, who normally bolted down everything as quickly as he could, began chewing with exasperating slowness. He seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes open. On the other hand, Lucia seemed completely calm. The crackers were stale and insipid, but the cheese had a strong flavor. When they had finished eating, they went off one by one to urinate behind a container with German words on it; then they resumed their journey.

  They covered about eighty kilometers without seeing a human soul up to the exit to N., after which a barrier blocked the road and Leonardo was forced to slow down.

  “What’s going on?” Lucia asked.

  “Just a checkpoint, don’t worry.”

  Behind the barrier were three men in the uniform of the National Guard. Two of them were armed. When the Polar stopped, the tallest man approached, in an air force pilot’s helmet. Leonardo had to open the door because the nylon “window” was opaque.

  “All get out, please,” said the soldier.

  He had several days of beard growth and yellow stains on his uniform.

  “Our papers are in order.”

  “All get out, please,” the man repeated.

  While the man in the helmet opened the trunk and rummaged about inside the car, Leonardo, Bauschan, and the children formed up on a white line and were guarded by the second man, who looked about thirty and had a large tommy gun on his shoulder and his eyes fixed on the asphalt. A cigarette rolled from maize paper was hanging from his chapped lips. The third man, hardly more than a boy, had stayed behind the barrier. He had no hat or helmet, and his hair was a dazzling blond.

  “Have you any money with you?” the man in the helmet asked after he had finished searching the car.

  “Not much, we’ve just filled up with gasoline.”

  “Bring it out.”

  Leonardo took out his wallet and asked Lucia for the permits. She held them out to him and he passed them to the guard. Meanwhile the young boy had moved the barrier and had gone to sit in the rear seat of the Polar. He was not armed.

  “I have to take these children to Switzerland,” Leonardo said. “Their relatives are waiting for them.”

  The man stuck the money into the pocket of his camouflage jacket and dropped the wallet and permits on the ground.

  “Have the kids got anything?”

  “No,” Lucia said.

  “If they have, they must give it to me,” the man said, still addressing Leonardo; then he pointed the barrel of his gun at Bauschan. “If not, I’ll start with the dog.”

  There was no anger or resentment in his words, even if he clearly must have experienced both in equal measure in the past. But his eyes were now like parched earth where grass had difficulty growing. Two large veins ran below his temples.

  When Leonardo touched Lucia’s shoulder, she pushed a hand inside her trousers and pulled out a roll of banknotes. The man added them to the rest of the money in his pocket. His reddened eyes softened for a moment, perhaps remembering something, but quickly returned to their earlier blankness.

  “We need your car,” he said in the same expressionless tone he had used from the start.

  Leonardo told him the keys were in the ignition.

  Without another glance the men got into the car and started the engine. The man in the helmet said something to the one with the tommy gun, probably that it was an old car without automatic gears.

  Leonardo took advantage of this by walking up to the Polar and knocking on the window with his knuckles.

  “What do you want?” the man with the tommy gun said. His eyes were an intense cinematic blue, but his teeth were those of a man from the Middle Ages.

  “I’d like to ask a favor.”

  The man suddenly grabbed Leonardo by the ear and pulled it, simultaneously raising the window. When the glass hit Leonardo’s neck, the man let go of his ear and smiled. Leonardo could smell alcohol on his breath.

  “We haven’t raped your daughter or killed your son. That’s what you can expect these days, you know.” Leonardo tried to nod but the edge of the window made it impossible. Behind him, Bauschan let out little yelps of distress.

  “Please,” Leonardo mumbled.

  The man in the driver’s seat signed to the other to lower the window. Released from the pressure, Leonardo put a hand to his throat and gave a long sigh but stood his groun
d.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You must be stupid. What do you want?”

  “There are things in the trunk of no use to you but very precious to us.”

  The two men looked at each other and then back at Leonardo, who nodded as if to confirm his own words. The man in the helmet half turned to the boy behind him.

  “Check what the bastard takes,” he said.

  The boy got out and tried to open the trunk but failed. Leonardo asked if he could do it and the boy moved aside.

  “It’s defective,” Leonardo apologized, raising the door of the trunk and showing the boy the bag with Lucia’s sanitary napkins. The boy nodded that he could keep it.

  “Can I take the clothes too?”

  “Can he take the clothes?” the boy asked his colleagues.

  “Only those for the children.”

  Leonardo took the children’s suitcase, then removed the box of letters from his own case and opened it to show what was inside.

  “Keep them.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to use the food.”

  The boy said yes without asking the others.

  “That leaves the jackets.”

  The boy took them from the back seat and gave them to Leonardo, closed the trunk, and was about to get back into the car but stopped. His face, despite his frozen nose now reduced to a black lump, still had gentle Teutonic features. The skin of his cheeks was peeling under his faint trace of beard.

  “At the border they shoot at everyone,” he said.

  Leonardo smiled.

  “We have our permits.”

  The boy shook his head and was about to say something more, but one of the others called him by name: “Victor.”

  Shortly afterward the car vanished at the point where the gray of the autostrada met the more luminous gray of the sky. Leonardo looked at the children. Lucia was crying. Alberto had crossed his hands on his chest and was staring at the permits being blown open by the wind on the wet tarmac.

  “Put these on,” he said, holding out their jackets to them. “We’ll make it.”

  They walked until evening along the autostrada toward T. in the hope of a lift, but in three hours or so only two cars passed. The first had only one person in it but didn’t stop; the second, a white delivery van with blackened windows, slowed down and pulled up about fifty meters further on. Two men got out and beckoned to them.

  “No, Papa,” Lucia said.

  The two men continued to indicate that they should come nearer. One, very fat, had a cowboy hat on his head. The other, taller, was in fur with black gloves.

  “I don’t like them, Papa. Let’s not go.”

  Leonardo raised an arm to indicate they had changed their minds, but one of the two, the one in the hat, started toward them. It only took them a second to vault over the safety barrier and start running across the snow-covered field beside the autostrada, with their bags and the suitcase banging against their legs. They did not stop until they were sure the man was not following. Turning, they saw the van put on its lights and move forward again. A moment later it had vanished.

  They spent the night in a nearby ruin, a house abandoned long ago when none of what had happened since was even imaginable. Maybe for this reason the desolation of this building was of a very different quality from the one they had most recently been concerned with: it had more the atmosphere of an ancient Roman temple, and the children were happy to go in without making a fuss.

  It had wooden floors and a falling tree had broken through the roof and its branches reached into a couple of the rooms. But they had left their matches in the car and had nothing to light a fire with, so they ate three sweets from the pocket of Alberto’s jacket and crouched in a dry corner, out of reach of the snow that had gently begun to fall again.

  “What are we going to do?” Lucia said.

  “Go back home.”

  For a few seconds no one spoke.

  “I don’t want to hitchhike,” Lucia said.

  “We can walk along the railway.”

  “It’ll take a hell of a long time,” Alberto said.

  These were the first words he had spoken since the morning.

  “Three or four days,” Leonardo said, “but with any luck we’ll get a lift with someone we can trust. Feeling cold? Sit between me and Lucia.”

  “No.”

  “Then call Bauschan and keep close to him. He’ll warm you up.”

  Alberto did not move and Bauschan stayed curled between Leonardo’s legs. After a little they heard the boy’s breathing get slower, broken by little hisses, and knew he was asleep.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can’t you sleep?”

  “Not at the moment. Are you cold?”

  “My feet are.”

  “Is there a sweater in your case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take off your shoes and wrap your feet in it, that’ll warm them up.”

  He had read this in a story about gold prospectors in the far north.

  “Better?”

  “Yes, better now.”

  Leonardo looked at the patch of sky above them. There were orange reflections in it, as if somewhere nearby a volcano was erupting, casting a glow of lava on the clouds. An occasional snowflake settled gently on parts of his cheek unprotected by his beard. He was fifty-three and had never slept in the open before.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes, Lucia.”

  “You’ve been very brave,” she said, taking his hand.

  Leonardo closed his eyes the better to feel the perfection of her fingers.

  All the next morning they followed the railway track. They could sense the regular geometry of the rice fields all around them, but apart from this the countryside seemed to have thrown off all trace of humanity. The occasional farms in the distance seemed deserted, and the only thing that passed on the autostrada was a tanker escorted by two army vehicles. Only once, nearing a village, did they see a house burning and some men moving around it in an attempt either to put out the flames or feed them. Lucia made it clear she would not go near it in any circumstances, and Leonardo, convinced deep down that she was right, kept going.

  At midday they sat down on the track and ate the last of the sweets. The snow they melted in the palms of their hands only made them thirstier, and the surrounding whiteness was starting to blind them. Alberto’s eyes were red and had begun to weep.

  Leonardo promised he would go and look for something to eat at the first farmhouse they came to, leaving them to wait for him beside the railway. Neither Alberto nor Lucia raised any objection.

  By the time they came reasonably near a farm it was late afternoon and the light was beginning to fail. The children watched Leonardo put the suitcase on the ground, climb down the railway embankment and set off across a field with Bauschan. They sat on the track with their hands in their pockets to protect them from the cold wind that had kicked up, and gazed after Leonardo until they could no longer distinguish the brown of his jacket from the blue of his trousers. Seen from a distance, with his long gray hair blending with the white ground, he looked as if he had no head, according to Alberto. Lucia told him he was talking nonsense, but secretly she was ashamed because she had thought the same.

  The building dated from the early twentieth century when trains brought rice workers to the nearby stations from where they would be transported by cart to the farms. It was typical of the farms in the district, even if it must have later been converted by someone whose work had no relation to agriculture. The yard had been paved and there was no trace of the machinery and other odds and ends normally to be found on a working farm. The store had become a garage, while large glass windows had been added to the upper floor, revealing an interior of wood and brick. It looked like the home of a painter, sculptor, or art critic. This explained the statue in the courtyard, a work in concrete and fiberglass two meters high, which represented two embracing bodies but could equally we
ll have been an enormous fossil shell or a DNA helix.

  Leonardo could find nothing edible anywhere in the house.

  He searched every drawer, box, and container; there was only one small tube of tomato paste that had already been nibbled by mice. Nothing else. Otherwise the house seemed in reasonable condition with its beds in place, its roof solid, and its windows intact. It was certainly very cold, but there was a large fireplace in the ground-floor living room, and when he found a cigarette lighter behind the radiator in the bathroom, he began to think that they might be able to sleep there for the night and light a fire.

  Walking down the stairs he imagined that the person who lived there must have smoked secretly in the bathroom, perhaps an adolescent, or a sick person forbidden to smoke by his doctor. He tried to imagine the voices of the people who could have lived in the house. But they seemed remote and painful, and he decided to stop.

  He was about to leave when he noticed the door to the cellar. Unlike the other doors it was blue and closed. His mind filled with images of salami, wine, preserves, and everything else that had to be kept in a cool place rather than close at hand.

  He opened the door, throwing light on a downward staircase. He just had enough time to recognize dark streaks left by something that must have been dragged, before a powerful acid stench of decomposition hit him from below, forcing him to close his eyes and step back. When he opened his eyes again he was facing the blue door, which he had instinctively closed. Until then he had associated blue doors with Greece or Provence, but from now on for the rest of his life they would remind him of that stench and what it must conceal.

  He had gotten most of the way back to the railway when he noticed Bauschan was not with him. His first thought was that he must have gone in through the blue door before he closed it. He imagined the dog imprisoned in the putrid darkness.

  “Bauschan!” he called, his voice echoing across the fields like a blow from an ax. He was about to call again when in the semidarkness he saw a shape come running from the farm gate, disappear behind a hedge, and reappear in the field. Bauschan must have sensed a note of reproach in his master’s voice because he slowed down in the last few meters and would not allow himself to be touched until he had circled once or twice around Leonardo’s legs, with his ears down, as if to beg for an audience. His back was cold, but his throat was still throbbing from his race. He must have been eating something because his breath smelled of vinegar.