On Earth as It Is in Heaven (11 page)

Iallorenzi greeted the suggestion with a smile; he'd give that some serious thought—damn if D'Arpa didn't have a powerful brain.

Carmine Marangola had pulled the tea tin out of the embers and poured himself a glassful.

“What the hell kinda problems are these? Let's not kid around here.”

He was from Posillipo. Born into a family of fishermen, he talked about the sea, fish traps, boats, different ways of cutting up tuna, hooks, riptides, currents, shifts in the wind, sails, herbs and spices for cooking fish. He was missing the fourth toe on his right foot. Two years previous, during a December storm at sea, he'd fallen overboard into waters so cold they were icy. He'd managed to clamber back aboard the launch, but he was so absorbed in navigating his craft through waves, tides, and whirlpools that he hadn't had a second to take off his waterlogged shoes. The storm had lasted for three days and the toe had simply rotted away. When he got back to port, they amputated the toe; he'd sunk his teeth into a length of hawser to fight the pain.

“Whores are whores. You, Iallorenzi, are you a whore or are you a man?”

“I'm a man, Marangola, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Then act like a man: you walk in, you fuck her, and you pay your money, in total silence.”

“In total silence?”

Francesco D'Arpa had taken the floor again.

“The dick doesn't want to think about things.”

And yet there were thoughts, and then some. The fear of catching some nasty disease, the amount of money required to pay for the whore's services, how much time was available for fucking. The last time, a brawl had erupted when a soldier from Rome insisted on staying with the whore until he had a chance to come. There was an unwritten rule, and everyone adhered to it: ten minutes max; if you manage to come, so much the better and everyone's happy, if not, amen, make your peace with it and make room for the next in line. The important thing wasn't finishing, it was getting your dick wet. It's good for morale, according to the higher-ups in the army. The rule was annoying but necessary: the last time there had been a hundred and eight soldiers and only four black whores. Three soldiers had marched into the tent, lifted the Roman from between the whore's thighs, and hauled him away by force. The Roman not only slid into a state of hysteria, he started saying things he shouldn't. He shouted for all to hear that he was the only real man there and that everyone else was a queer who took it up the ass. A couple of vigorous kicks in the mouth restored calm to the situation. A few new gaps in the Roman's teeth served as a salutary reminder to one and all how dangerous it could be to linger in the tent even one second past the prescribed time limit.

Iallorenzi was watching as sparks flew up from the brazier, fluttering and then vanishing, as if the night were swallowing them up.

“Let's at least hope that this time the whores aren't black,” said Melluso.

“How do you want yours?”

“White.”

“And right you are,” chimed in Marangola.

“Of course I'm right, our whores are the best there are.”

Rosario couldn't really agree. The first time he'd gone to a whore he was thirteen and he was with his friend Nenè. They'd stolen the money from a Capuchin priest, a total fraud who'd more than deserved the theft. They'd crept into the crypt of the monastery, pried open the offering box, and taken to their heels. They were so eager to lose their virginity that they'd rushed over to the first whore they could find, in an alley behind the Albergo delle Povere, the poorhouse for women.

The whore was fat and missing a front tooth; her legs were covered with bruises.

Nenè was firm: “Rosà, we decided we'd fuck the first one we found, and this is the first one, so let's go.”

“Who fucks first?”

“You.”

Rosario had walked into the bedroom. The whore had been anything but motherly with him. She'd greeted him with a tired smile, she'd demanded his money, she'd counted it and stowed it in the nightstand drawer, she'd told him to undress, she'd washed his dick in a basin of water, she'd hiked up her skirts, lain down on the bed, and let him mount her, then she'd told him to get up and get dressed, she'd lowered her dress, opened the door, and ushered him out into the hall, then she'd welcomed his friend Nenè into the room, she'd demanded his money, she'd counted it, told him to undress, washed his dick in the same basin with the same water, hiked her skirts, and so yet another virginity ended between her thighs.

Rosario never saw his best friend, Nenè, again after the end of that summer. A landowner in a town near Enna needed laborers, Nenè's family needed cash, and the two friends were separated: Rosario living just outside Palermo, Nenè lost in the island's hinterlands. When Rosario thought about whores, he remembered that first time and what Nenè had said, then and there, as they walked out of that bedroom: “Oh, hey, that whore was so ugly that I wouldn't fuck her again even with your dick.” They both burst out laughing so hard that their sides started hurting. On their way home that night, they made up their minds that the very next day they'd get busy trying to pick up two pretty young girls and they'd fuck them even faster than immediately, after all, whatever there was to know about it, they already knew it.

“Because anyway, Rosà, if we've managed to fuck such an ugly whore, two things are clear: first of all, we ain't virgins no more, and second, our dicks just work too damn well.”

“No, our whores aren't the best,” Rosario replied aloud without deigning to look in Melluso's direction. No one had anything to say about that. When a mute finally speaks, you check the exact weight of every word that comes out of his mouth.

Sitting between Moreno Santin and Nicola Randazzo on the right side of the army truck, Rosario looked out over the infinite expanse of Africa. Marangola was whistling a tune, Melluso was sleeping, Iallorenzi was slapping the mosquitoes that had targeted his legs, and D'Arpa was counting out loud the Africans that they passed along the way.

“Seven, eight, nine. Nine Africans in ten kilometers. For sure, things look different in this Africa, Rosario. You can see that the world is less curved here, you see a tree, you tell yourself, ‘I'm going to go over there and get in the shade,' and you walk and you walk and you walk, and the tree is still all the way out there, still in the distance. There are no obstacles, here the eye can take in everything even at great distances.”

Nicola Randazzo asked Lieutenant D'Arpa the names of a number of the animals they passed. Sometimes, not even D'Arpa knew the answer.

Iallorenzi was the only one to say out loud what everyone else had been thinking for days.

“Let's hope that today at least there are fewer of us soldiers than last time, and that there are a lot more of the whores.”

There were one hundred eighty-one soldiers and three whores.

It would be very late by the time they got a chance to fuck.

There was even an official communiqué announcing that the minutes allotted were being reduced from ten to seven. Disgruntlement was widespread.

“No self-respecting man can hope to come in less than seven minutes, chief.”

Melluso suggested the group split up, a few soldiers in each of the three lines.

“That way, afterward, we can report back on the details.”

After an hour, one of the lines was eliminated. Something had happened. It never became clear exactly what it was, but a stretcher was carried into the tent and emerged shortly thereafter, carrying the whore. She seemed to be sleeping but maybe she'd only fainted. Now there were two lines. Iallorenzi, Marangola, Melluso, and Randazzo in the first line, everyone else in the second. The wait was grueling, they had run out of water, the soldiers put on a show of confidence but deep down they were dying of anxiety. Fear had begun to seep into the crowd, with growing insistency: the fear that when all was said and done, just when anticipation was reaching a crescendo, they might not get their dicks wet after all. They passed the time by putting on a show of nonchalance that was as contrived as it was essential. Amid the most complete indifference, a third line formed: those who had been forced to abandon their efforts midstream had decided to finish off here, in broad daylight, the work they'd been unable to complete in the tent.

Only one fight broke out: a guy from Favara miscalculated and a spurt of sperm wound up on the tip of Santin's shoe.

“Now clean it up.”

Before the Favarese had a chance to say a word, his head was already on the ground, clamped between Santin's hands, inches from the sperm-stained tip of Santin's shoe.

“Now lick it off.”

A fellow Favarese tried to build a groundswell in his townsman's defense, but he soon realized just how massively uninterested everyone else was in pitching in. Without remorse, he decided to say to hell with it, there were still twelve soldiers in line ahead of him, better to just save his strength for a fine fuck just as the Gospel says.

“Melluso, Randazzo,” said Iallorenzi, “listen, Marangola and I have just had a great idea. Seven minutes is less than no time at all. Why don't we go in two at a time? That gives us twice as much time. Marangola and I are going in together, you do the same and you'll get twice as much time, too.”

“What if the whore has something to say about it?”

“Randazzo, let me tell you the way the world works: in the first place, she's a whore, in the second place, she's black, and in the third place, I don't give a damn, I'm walking in there, I'm paying my money, and I'm going to fuck her the way I say,” Melluso broke in angrily.

Nicola Randazzo looked around and tried to catch Rosario's or D'Arpa's eye in the next line over, but he couldn't attract their attention. They were watching a soldier lick the toe of a shoe.

Nenè often said that he wished he could be a sailor, so that he could touch every corner of the world.

“I trust my hands more than I trust my eyes,” he used to say.

They smoked their first cigarette together, at age eight. Rosario won that cigarette in a footrace against Michele, the son of Don Salomone, the pharmacist. Michele had filched a whole pack of cigarettes from his father's bedroom and he boasted about it openly, showing the pack to his friends: look at what fine cigarettes I have; look at how many I have; here, smell them, what a fine odor. Rosario proposed a bet: his glass filled with fishing worms, fresh from the ground, just caught, still alive and squirming, against the pack of cigarettes.

“Race all the way to the church wall, what do you say?”

Rosario was slender, narrow-shouldered, skinny-legged. Michele Salomone, from the full height of his ten years of age, evaluated the offer, sized up his opponent, and calculated accordingly. He'd grind him to dust. Leaning forward, waiting for the starting signal, Michele Salomone looked Rosario in the face and uttered his prediction.

“You know why you can't possibly win? Because you're a
nèglia
.”

The first taste of tobacco is harsh and sour; the tongue becomes acquainted with new realms of bitterness, the eyes fill with tears, and the ears echo with coughing. But how good that first cigarette remains in one's memory.

“Rosà, why on earth did you challenge him?”

“I'm faster than you, Nenè.”

“That's an eyeful of horseshit.”

“You saying you could beat me?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“And the winner?”

“The winner takes all the cigarettes.”

“Fine. From here to there.”

“On three?”

“Yes.”

They counted together, one two three. They shot off at top speed. They ran, breathless, as fast as they could go, from here to there, pushing past their personal best. Nenè won.

“Okay, then we're in agreement, Marangola.”

“Yes, one in front, and one behind.”

“Where are you going to be?”

“I can be anywhere, Melluso, as long as I'm a long way from your balls.”

Randazzo had decided to move to the other line, he wasn't interested in sharing his whore with another man. It was his fault that Melluso wouldn't be enjoying twice as much time. Melluso swore he'd make him pay for it.

The minutes crept by; it was if they weren't passing at all. The soldiers maintained their positions, standing or on the ground, sweating, flies and mosquitoes everywhere, nothing to drink. This isn't how it should be when someone goes to have a fuck. Santin had asked the other soldiers as they emerged what the whore on his line was like. He received a lapidary, terse, and unanimous response: “The minute you go in, you'll see for yourself.”

Randazzo sat down on the ground, his head between his hands: “D'Arpa, I don't really know if I feel like it, if you want, you can have my time, if that's something that can be done.”

“Nicola, stop talking nonsense. You go in before me and you fuck before I do.”

“But—”

“No buts, now you shut up and get some rest.”

Two hours later, their turn had almost come. There was an enlisted man inside the tent, and after him, Santin was next in line, followed by Rosario, Randazzo, and last of all, D'Arpa. In the other line, Melluso, Iallorenzi, and Marangola still had three people ahead of them. Only a few minutes before the Venetian was due to enter the tent a scream suddenly exploded from the whore. The enlisted man must have tried something bad, fucked up. Santin grabbed the man as he rushed frantically out of the tent, knocked him to the ground, and set on him with a hailstorm of fists.

“You bastard, I can't stand guys who try to hurt my whore.”

A few men went in to check on the whore's physical condition. The medical officer restored calm to the ranks by announcing that everything was fine, there had been an unsuccessful attempt at sodomy, nothing serious, next man in line step forward, please.