The Last Man Standing

by Davide Longo

  “You can go back to sleep. You can’t have two bad dreams in one night.”

  “Can I sleep here?”

  “Of course you can. Are you cold?”

  “Yes, very cold. Will David be good?”

  “Of course he will.”

  The child lay down beside Leonardo, both with their backs against the elephant’s belly. Leonardo slipped his left arm around Salomon’s shoulders.

  “Warmer?”

  “Yes, but David has a bad smell.”

  “That’s probably me. I haven’t changed my clothes for such a long time.”

  “And I haven’t washed for three days. If Mamma knew all hell would break loose.”

  “Your mother would understand the situation.”

  They fell silent, feeling the bass notes of the music thump against their ribs.

  “What have you done to your feet? Why are they black?”

  “I’m a dancer. A dancer who sometimes dances on hot coals, but one evening I didn’t concentrate properly and burned myself. But they’re getting better now.”

  “Sure?”

  “It’s normal for people who dance on hot coals to have black feet. It’s a professional risk, like a tennis player having one arm more muscular than the other.”

  “What’s tennis?”

  “Have you never seen a tennis match?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “You will one day, and maybe you’ll even be able to play. Let’s get some sleep now. In a few hours the doctor will be here and bring us something to eat.”

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Where’s your daughter?”

  Leonardo looked into the child’s eyes, which were fixed on him.

  “When they brought you here, did you talk to a man with long hair and a beard? A man in a long robe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I ask you what he said to you?”

  “That I was one of his sons and he would teach me many useful things. That I must love all the people around me because they were my brothers and sisters and apart from that I could do what I liked.”

  “Was there a girl with a shaved head with him?”

  “You mean bald?”

  “Yes, a bald girl.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s my daughter.”

  “Is she his fiancée?”

  “No, she’s not his fiancée.”

  The child closed his eyes as though he had decided to go to sleep. Leonardo knew this was not the case and continued to watch him. In the darkness his skin was pearly white, the profile of his nose a work of art.

  “Salomon?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to say something very important to you. Something you must remember. Will you be able to do that?”

  “All right.”

  “In a little while they’ll let you join the others. There are some things you must promise me not to do.”

  “All right.”

  “The first thing is don’t try to escape; if they catch you doing that they could hurt you, and even if you got away you’d have nowhere to go. There are lots of bad people around. OK?”

  The boy looked uncertainly at him.

  “OK, Salomon?”

  “OK.”

  “Good. Once you’re out of here they’ll paint your face and shave off your eyebrows with a razor. That will mean you’ve joined the tribe. Let them do it but remember you don’t belong in their tribe. The family you had before, even if it doesn’t exist anymore, will always be your tribe. These people here will make you breathe in from a pouch and give you something to drink, you must pretend to do it but really not do it. Those things can harm you. If you touch them you’ll forget your mamma and your papa and your little brother, and if you forget them there won’t be anyone left to remember them.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  Leonardo hugged him.

  “Don’t be scared. Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, but stop scaring me.”

  “I don’t want to scare you. But listen to and remember what I’m telling you: they’ll put you with other children. One of them is named Alberto. He was the child with me the day we came to your house. He’s two years older than you and has reddish hair. Don’t listen to what he tells you, OK? He and the others do very nasty things and will want you to join in . . .”

  “What kind of nasty things?”

  “Nasty things to people and animals. You love animals very much and people too, and you know things like that mustn’t be done. You know your mamma and your papa would never have done such things, and I know you won’t do them either. But don’t run away from the camp, OK? Here you’ll get food and drink and be safe. You must do like people in the theater, you must act.”

  “What’s the theater?”

  “Never mind, it’s not important. Just pretend to be like the others. You and I and David know you’re not really like the others at all. OK? Shall I repeat what you have to remember?”

  “No. Are you pretending too?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Is it difficult?”

  “It is at the beginning, but it gets easier. Now let’s get some sleep, OK?”

  “OK.”

  Leonardo closed his eyes and felt the child snuggle against him. He could hear something moving inside David’s stomach.

  “Leonardo?”

  He felt his eyes grow moist and kept them shut. Weeks had passed since anyone had called him by name.

  “Yes?”

  “Are teeth also a professional risk?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You said black feet are a professional risk. But must a dancer on hot coals also have broken teeth like you?”

  Leonardo smiled.

  “It’s not essential, but it helps. Now go to sleep, OK?”

  “OK.”

  At midday, the cripple came to retrieve the boy and not long after that the whole procession moved off. For several days they drove at walking pace along secondary roads, not stopping until nightfall; the provisions found in Salomon’s homemade hunting expeditions were unnecessary. Sometimes the car sent ahead on reconnaissance came back to warn them they were getting near a village or group of houses. The column would then halt and the music turned off, and a band of about twenty youths would break away to take the place by surprise. They would nearly always come back empty-handed or with garbage that would have to be left behind. The land they were passing through seemed to have been already stripped of everything. Here and there, in the fields, they would come upon the rubble of past harvests, or find some item of agricultural machinery like a relic of a now extinct civilization. Fallow deer, red deer, and wild boar fled from the fields and roadside ditches to seek refuge in the thickets. No thread of smoke cut across the continuous gray of the sky.

  In the evening, the procession would be arranged in a circle in a clearing or dry field, and a fire would be laid and lit. Richard would emerge to inspect the booty and talk to his people. He was always alone and Leonardo never managed to see Lucia even through the open door of the trailer.

  After he had walked around and listened to each of the young people, Richard would give the cripple the drug to distribute and go back inside. The only people he never looked at, or spoke to, were Leonardo and the bald woman huddled against the ancient Opel, to which she was now tied by a rope a couple of meters long. When they were on the move, she had to walk barefoot on the asphalt, struggling to keep up so as not to be dragged along, while at night she huddled against the trunk of the car for warmth. As the days passed she had lost a lot of weight and her skin had taken on the malarial color of dried clay. When pieces of meat or other food were thrown in her direction she pushed them away with her foot and asked for water, which was almost always brought to her.

  Leonardo was not allowed out of the cage, but the youngsters started going near it again to torment him and scoff at him.

  At firs
t, he reacted as before by hiding in the most inaccessible corner, but realizing that this merely attracted more and more spectators, he began jumping around, dancing and writhing to the music every time he was asked to. The young people would be amused and egg him on for a few minutes by clapping their hands, and then they would go away after throwing him something to eat as a reward. This is how he got two cans of sardines and one of tuna, which he ate at night, using the oil to massage his feet and face where he was deeply scarred.

  When no one was disturbing him, he tried to concentrate on the roads and signposts so as to be able to memorize their movements; it was clear they were heading for the mountains, perhaps in the hope of finding a pass and reaching France, but at the same time they were taking the greatest care to avoid main roads, cities, and towns. At first, Leonardo thought there might be troops of the National Guard around, but he eventually came to the conclusion that Richard was well aware that the main centers of population had already been looted, and so he wanted to search isolated areas in the hope of finding people and fuel, like at the home of Sergio and Manon.

  The temperature had dropped and each morning powdery flakes that never quite became snow floated down from the sky. The mountains, when the clouds lifted to reveal them, seemed coated with snow and misery. The cold hit Leonardo hardest during the daytime, when there was no fire to give a little heat and David had eaten the branches he liked to use for shelter. So he pressed himself close against the elephant, and when David defecated, hurried to push his hands and feet into the feces to seek out a little warmth. His sweater had grown stiff with blood and dirt and the seat of his trousers had come apart from so much sitting. He asked the doctor for a blanket but was told no one could bring him anything without orders from Richard.

  One day the children came near; there were about ten of them, including Alberto and Salomon. It was the first time he had seen Salomon since he left the cage. Now he was only centimeters away, his face painted green and his eyebrows shaved off, his eyes like ceramic fragments.

  The children collected mud from the edge of the road and began throwing it at him in handfuls. Leonardo, as usual, started dancing. Alberto laughed and ran with the others to find more ammunition in the ditch. But Salomon stayed close to the wagon, staring at him.

  Leonardo signed to him to go with the others, but he shook his head.

  The others came back and continued their attack. He was hit in the throat and wiped himself clean before the mud could slip down inside his sweater. The floorboards creaked as he leaped around.

  “Theater, theater, theater,” Leonardo chanted. The children laughed. He winked at Salomon, who unwillingly went to pick up a piece of turf and throw it in Leonardo’s direction without hitting him. The game went on a little longer, then the procession halted and the music was turned off. Knowing what this meant, the children ran excitedly to the head of the column. Salomon stayed a moment longer by the cage, then he ran away too.

  Camp was set up nearby, on the asphalted area in front of a sanctuary chapel that must once have been the object of Sunday pilgrimages. On one side were the remains of a hut with a sign saying SOUVENIRS AND PANINI and a powerful jet of water pouring into a basin lined with red tiles. The chapel was white and very small.

  The usual fire was laid on the asphalt, but the wood was damp and slow to catch and had to be sprinkled with kerosene. A cold drizzle had started to fall, while the mountain peaks were hidden by amorphous clouds.

  The older youths left in the camp collected more wood, inspected the chapel, and wandered around a bit in the open space; then they shut themselves up in the cars and coach with the girls. Two untied the woman with the shaved head. She offered no resistance, and they led her into the cab of the van where the cans of gasoline were kept. The children, left on their own, pulled blazing branches from the bonfire and began fencing with each other, raising showers of sparks that leaped impetuously up into the sky only to be suddenly extinguished like faithless prayers. One or two of the children went up to the cars to watch the bodies cavorting inside on the seats, then ran away laughing. Salomon every so often turned his eyes toward Leonardo. His hair, wet from the rain, was stuck to his head. He looked as if he had just emerged from his mother’s womb. Leonardo put a hand to his lips and smiled at him. He ran off with the rest when Alberto called them to destroy their enemies hidden in the chapel.

  The raiding expedition returned at nightfall. Leonardo, who had stuck his hands and feet out of the cage to get them nearer to the fire, first heard a confused sound of shouting, then saw the group appear from the ramp leading up to the space before the chapel.

  The young people left in the camp, hearing the shouts, leaped out of the vehicles. The two who had been using the bald girl tied her back to the fender with her trousers still around her ankles and ran to meet the others. Even Richard emerged from his trailer, helped Lucia down the steps, and moved without hurrying toward the raiders who were approaching in a compact group. It was days since Leonardo had seen her; she seemed neither thinner nor suffering, just infinitely distant. He called her name twice, but she continued to follow Richard with tiny steps, as if unsure whether the earth could hold her weight. She was wearing the same blue dress as the last time he saw her and had small and livid round marks on her neck.

  The youths came into the open space. In their midst Leonardo could see two men; their faces swollen and bloodstained; he guessed one must be about forty and the other about twenty years older. The older one, thin and curved, was looking around himself with imploring eyes. Leonardo was reminded of a watchmaker, a printer or a manufacturer of dental prostheses; someone who had spent most of his life bent over work that required great patience and love of detail. He could imagine him with a cup of caffé americano permanently on the workbench beside him and a cigarette on the edge of a saucer, reduced to a precarious tube of ash.

  But the other man advanced confidently, grimacing with contempt. Three lines tattooed on his shoulder represented a man with a shield in one hand and some terrible weapon in the other. He also had several tribal markings, some letters and a stylized mouse. Both men were in tank tops and underpants, the elder with a red sock on his left foot. Leonardo felt sorry for them, but also felt he must not waste on others pity he would need for himself.

  Once in the open space, the group fell back and the two men found themselves face to face with Richard. The elder dropped to his knees and began sobbing softly, but the other smiled when Richard traced the sign of the cross in the air.

  “Give them something to drink,” Richard said.

  The youths went quiet and one ran to fetch a bottle. He was back in a few seconds, but in the meantime the kneeling man seemed to have aged by ten years. He took the bottle, drank a mouthful, and gave it back, nodding thanks. He had a huge hematoma under his armpit, and his hair, when not stained with blood, was a dull white. In contrast, the tattooed man had a nervous body and recently cut black hair. He was losing a lot of blood from wounds on his face and wrists but seemed completely in control of himself. When the boy offered him the bottle he did not even deign to glance at him.

  “A path is decreed for each one of us,” Richard said. “God has brought you on to our path to make clear the direction of your own. His hand can sometimes be harsh; he is a shepherd not afraid to strike his sheep when they depart from the way, but . . .”

  “Just kill us, you bastard, and get it over with,” the tattooed man said, then spat, smearing Richard’s tunic with a red stain.

  One of the youths lifted his rifle to hit him with the butt, but Richard gestured to him to stop, and he stared without resentment at the man who had insulted him.

  “I see your point,” he said, “but you’ll be surprised what the Lord has chosen for you.” For a moment nothing could be heard but the crackling of the fire and the jet of water striking the basin of the fountain. The youths watched the scene without moving, mouths half open and their breath rising in a cloud toward the gray sky. Lucia, at Rich
ard’s side, stared at the bowed head of the kneeling man. The rain grew heavier.

  “Enrico!” Richard called.

  The cripple came forward. The prisoners looked at him; the rain gluing his clothes to his stunted body gave him the appearance of a child with a very large head. But his face was that of an adult, keen and ruthless.

  “Would you be good enough to read the rules?” Richard asked him.

  The cripple pulled a black wallet from his jacket pocket and took out a piece of paper.

  “You will sit down at a table,” he read, “facing each other with a knife. One of you will be given two minutes to cut off one of his own fingers. If he fails, he will be killed. If he succeeds, the other will then have two minutes to do the same. The survivor will be the one who cuts off one finger more than the other. If you both cut off all ten of your fingers, you will both live.”

  The cripple folded the paper, put it back into his wallet, and slipped the wallet back into his inside pocket. The older man looked up at Richard. He was weeping; Richard smiled at him.

  “Have you understood the rules?”

  “You filthy fanatic,” the man with black hair said.

  Richard nodded benevolently and gave the sign to begin. Three youths unloaded from one of the trucks a table that must have come from a restaurant or some other business premises. Its Formica surface was marked by deep cuts and was stained black. They set it a couple of meters from the bonfire. Night had surrounded the camp, dividing each figure into light and shadow: the brightness of the fire danced warmly on each face, while each back merged with the darkness of the forest.

  The two prisoners were untied and made to sit facing each other at the table. The young people settled cross-legged in a circle. Leonardo could see Alberto and Salomon. He could also see the two youths who had captured them. The blond one had his arm around the shoulders of a very thin girl with an aquiline nose and long hair, while the thickset one, who had been involved in the capture of these two new prisoners, was now staring at them with curiosity. The bald girl was huddled under the car out of the rain. Richard blessed the two men one more time, and then, taking Lucia by the hand, went back into the trailer. The cripple had set a small hourglass in the middle of the table beside a knife with a wooden handle. The hourglass was the kind once used for parlor games. Leonardo remembered having one when playing Latin Scrabble with a fellow student. The knife had a curved blade ending in a double point, the type often used for cheese.