The Human Body (21 page)

René regroups the column and they set out again, but the severed convoy doesn't get very far. By now the sun is gone. Moreover, through his binoculars René can see a village. Lartay. He can't make up his mind whether it frightens him or not. Captain Masiero got past it unscathed with his troops and is now awaiting the stragglers in an area with better visibility, beyond the group of settlements. Ending up so far apart wasn't part of the plan—the captain, completely ignoring his own error of judgment and skipping over any apology of course, had muttered into the transmitter that there was no suitable place to spend the night until they reached Buji Pass, so he'd pressed on down there, end of story. René is tempted to try to join him, but he can't run the risk of being trapped in a village in the dark.

This is the first time he's heading a mission with any real danger, the first time he has to make such a difficult decision. If he'd been handed the prospect of such an opportunity, even just that morning, he would have been dazed with excitement, but now he doesn't feel the sense of achievement he expected. He's definitely more worried than proud.

He gives the order to encamp. Although Lieutenant Egitto is the highest-ranking officer now that Masiero has left them on their own, the marshal is a more experienced strategist and the doc supports him.

René keeps the vehicles lined up in a row—in case of an ambush they could start moving more quickly—then establishes the shifts for guard duty. He feels drained. He hadn't really noticed it until the minute he turned off the ignition key and the seat under his butt stopped vibrating. His neck has tensed up, his limbs are stiff, and his back aches, especially his lower back. Not to mention he itches all over. He's not one to complain, but this time he admits: “I couldn't take it anymore.”

“You're telling me, Marshal,” Mattioli agrees.

But René doesn't believe the others find themselves in the same condition as he does. No one else has carried the burden of command on his shoulders.

He unfastens the seat belt, which isn't just an ordinary seat belt, but an infernal contraption composed of a metal ring on which four very taut straps converge: two of them have been squeezing his testicles the entire time. He removes his helmet, the sunglasses that made him think it was later in the evening than it was—could they have gone a little farther? hell, it's time for some rest!—and his gloves as well, then leans over the steering wheel to perform the most complicated operation: taking off his bulletproof vest. He yanks open the velcro on each side, then ducks his head like a turtle and struggles to pull it off. As soon as the vest is tugged off his body, he feels an intense burning in his abdomen, as if he'd ripped a piece of flesh off along with it. Cramps? He has no idea what's going on anymore; the pain is all one big ache. He tosses the protective vest over the steering wheel, pulls his cotton T-shirt out of his pants, and rolls it up over his belly.

When he sees the bruise he's speechless. The purplish, nearly black streak runs across his stomach from one side to the other, where the lead plate rested. It's an inch wide and in some spots vivid scrapes and clots of dried pus can be seen. Mattioli provides the audio commentary: “Holy shit, René.”

The others lean forward to see, even Torsu bends his knees and sticks his head into the cab; he's white as a sheet and almost relieved that someone is as bad off as him. They all start undressing feverishly to check what's under their vests, and to anyone watching them squirm around that way, they'd look pretty comical, because it's not easy to take off that paraphernalia sitting down, squeezed in like that. They each have some redness, but no one is as skinned as René.

“You have to go see the doc,” Mattioli says.

“What for?”

“You need some ointment.”

“It's just a bruise.”

“It's bleeding. There. And there too.”

“It looks like you've had a C-section,” Mitrano says.

“A C-section isn't that long, you asshole!” Simoncelli says.

“What do I know? Who's ever seen one!”

René gives in and agrees to trade places temporarily with Camporesi. Even a maneuver as trivial as that requires a degree of diligence. You can't just get out and walk the fifteen yards that separate you—there might be snipers posted right there, at eight o'clock, along the cleft in the rock face. You first need to create a security corridor with the tanks.

Finally the marshal climbs into the ambulance, in place of the driver, Camporesi. The doc has him lie down on a stretcher in the rear compartment. The medication he applies burns like pure alcohol, and maybe it is. René has crescent-shaped swellings under his armpits as well and another large one on his back. A few seconds after the doc has swabbed a wound with a cotton ball soaked in disinfectant, the burning eases, leaving a cool feeling in its place.

“Breathe, Marshal.”

“Huh?”

“You're holding your breath. It's all right to breathe.”

“Oh. Okay.”

René closes his eyes. He's lying down. He stretches his back muscles. Relaxing his limbs triggers a kind of orgasm that spreads throughout his body.

The doc begins massaging his shoulder muscles; his hands are warm. It's certainly the most intimate contact René has ever had with a man. At first he's embarrassed, but then he relaxes. He wishes it would never end.

He's struck by the prospect of spending the night in the ambulance, stretched out, rather than cramped in the driver's seat in the overcrowded Lince, with the steering wheel preventing him from even turning on his side. However, the stretcher he's occupying belongs to Camporesi by all rights. He drove that vehicle all day; René himself assigned him that role: changing places now would be a shitty thing to do. Yet the marshal is totally wiped out. For the first time in his career, self-interest engages in a violent struggle with what's right.

It's what every one of my men would do. Not one of them would sacrifice himself for me.

That's not so, and you know it.

In the end, they're all selfish. We're all selfish. Why do I always have to act like I'm better than them? Why should I be the better man this time too, if they won't repay me later on? I worked harder than all of them. Tomorrow I have to be rested, to lead them past the village.

No, no, no! It's not right. This place belongs to Campo.

René knows that if he gives in to the stretcher's temptation, his self-esteem will be damaged forever. He'd be taking advantage of his rank to be a little more comfortable. He won't be any different from many of the higher-ups he's always despised.

Everyone takes advantage. We're all bastards, in one way or another. Besides, it's only for tonight.

He sits up. The doc objects, telling him to lie still until the painkiller has taken effect. “Only a minute,” René says.

He leans toward the radio in the front of the vehicle and contacts the Lince in front of them, asks to speak to Camporesi.

“Camporesi here, René,” the soldier answers.

“We're trading places. Tonight I'm staying in the ambulance.”

There's a long silence on the other end.

René presses his thumb on the button. “I'm staying in the ambulance. Over.”

More silence.

“Campo, do you read me?”

“Roger that. Over and out.”

When René lies back on the stretcher, however, he finds it less comfortable than before. All of a sudden he notices how rigid it is and that his arms hang down over the sides, so that he has to keep his hands clasped together on his chest like a corpse in a coffin. Maybe it wasn't worth dirtying his conscience for a little bit more space, but what's done is done. He's surprised that his remorse isn't greater after all.

Lieutenant Egitto, after cleaning his teeth with a plastic swab, without water, lies down on the adjacent stretcher. He and René are the two highest-ranking soldiers in what's left of the convoy and they will spend the night better than all the others. It's shameful and unfair, but that's how the world works. Maybe it's time René learned to come to terms with it. He inhales the stale air.

It's the evening of the first day and they've covered a little over nine miles.

A
ngelo Torsu and Enrico Di Salvo's heads stick out of the turrets of the armored vehicles, in the valley's chill, rosy dawn. The two gunners are bleary eyed and their legs are stiff. The barrels of the Browning automatics protrude oddly from the wool blankets wrapped around their necks.

“Hey,” Torsu says.

“Hey.”

They whisper.

“I need to go.”

“You can't. You have to hold it in.”

“No, I
really
need to go.”

“If René catches you, you're done for.”

“He's sleeping. I can see him from here. Cover me.”

Torsu's head disappears for a few seconds, a duck diving under to fish in a pond. When he resurfaces he has a roll of toilet paper clamped between his teeth. He pushes himself out of the turret. He walks along the hood, keeping his balance with open arms, then places a foot on the running board and jumps down.

“Hurry up!” Di Salvo whispers.

Torsu has already picked out the right spot for his needs, a huge rock planted in the middle of the riverbed, which probably split the stream and created eddies back when the river flowed. The outcropping was illuminated by the full moon and he'd gazed longingly at it throughout the night between bouts of drowsiness that could only be likened to sleep.

As for what might hit him from above, an accurate shot in the back of his neck, for instance, he wasn't worried about that. If the enemy had wanted to shoot him, he would have done so already. He's more afraid of what might be hidden under the soil. It must be about forty steps from the Lince to the rock. Forty chances to put his foot in the wrong place and be wiped off the face of the earth. The explosion you don't hear is the one that's already killed you, Masiero had said in his course.

Torsu covers the distance with as wide a stride as he can, forcing himself to set his foot down gently (though he knows it's pointless: if there's a detonator and he steps on it, that's it—
boom
). At first he's hesitant and turns to Di Salvo every two or three steps, as if looking for reassurance. His buddy signals him to go on, move it; René might wake up at any moment and the punishment would fall on him too for keeping his mouth shut while the Sardinian committed an infraction.

Another step. It makes no difference whether he zigzags or goes straight ahead; he might as well choose the shortest path.

He's halfway there. He's gaining confidence, moving more quickly now. His gut is looking forward to the privacy and knots up even more tightly. Torsu speeds up. He runs the last few yards. Before going around the rock he bends down, picks up a stone, and throws it a little ways ahead, to scare away any poisonous snakes, scorpions, spiders, and who knows what else.

Finally he's alone. He drops his pants. The cold nips pleasantly at his bare thighs. His pecker has withdrawn, shriveled up—it looks like a filbert. Torsu waggles it with his fingers, but the little guy, recalcitrant, sputters out a miserable trickle of very dark piss.

How humiliating! He'd stood all that time on the turret, exhausted and filthy. If only he hadn't gotten it into his head to join the mission. He'd had a right to remain at the FOB. Why did he do it, then? To prove his worth, to show how great his loyalty is. Loyalty
to whom
?

Now his body has nothing left to expel, futile spasms more than anything, but it's nice to crouch there and let it go. During his illness the first corporal major got into the habit of talking to his digestive system, as if it were a creature separate from himself. He scolds it when the pain is too intense and says, “Good boy, you're behaving well,” when things go better. Now he tries to calm it down: “We still have a long way to go. If you don't settle down today, Simoncelli will shoot me for real.”

As he converses with his bowels, he plays marbles with the pebbles scattered on the ground and scratches the soil with his nails. To stay crouched without tearing the tendons in his heels, he rocks back and forth like a Buddhist monk. He feels like whistling, but maybe that's going too far.

Looking up, he's able to catch a glimpse of the day's first ray of light, which shines directly in his face. It's pale, tenuous, and doesn't convey any heat. The sun is clinging to the mountain so that he thinks he can see it being born. Then the fiery ball peeps out, gigantic, as if it were about to come toppling down any moment and set everything ablaze. The sky all around is veined with orange, yellow, and pink, the streaks drifting off into the extinguished blue. Torsu has never seen a sunrise so crisp and majestic, not even from the beach at Coaquaddus, when he would stay up until dawn in the summer with his friends.

“Fucking awesome!” he exclaims.

Tersicore89 should be there. Naturally, she'd find more appropriate words than his: she's a poet. But Tersicore89 doesn't want him anymore. She's angry because he doubted her. Torsu feels sad.

When his interest in the rising sun has evaporated, he attempts to clean himself off using water from the canteen.

No enemies around, or so it seems. No one has taken aim at them. If you don't count the IED found yesterday—which could very well have been there for days—if you ignore that little obstacle, there's absolutely no evidence of any hostile presence. For the first time, Torsu thinks they're making a mountain out of a molehill and that everything is likely to go smoothly the rest of the way.

“Dumb-asses,” he says under his breath as he hops confidently back to the Lince, his step breezy, hands in his pockets even (but still careful to go the exact same way he came).

“What did you say?” Di Salvo whispers.

Torsu shakes his head, forget it. He's clean, feeling good, at peace. Ready to go.

 • • • 

B
y half past six they're on the move. Masiero has promised that he won't move from where he is until they reach him. Lieutenant Egitto has slept fitfully, mainly because of the cold. During the night the temperature dropped sharply and he shivered, half asleep, huddled in his waterproof poncho. Every quarter of an hour Marshal René got up from the stretcher, crept into the driving compartment, and started the engine to run the heater, then had to turn it off to conserve fuel. Finally, tired of going back and forth, he stayed behind the wheel, awake, staring out at the night. Egitto admires the marshal's remarkable tenacity. He feels a little ridiculous at deriving such reassurance from a younger man. The vacant space on the stretcher was immediately occupied by Abib, who is still snoring; even asleep he has a cocky attitude, legs spread wide, an arm behind his head.

Egitto has to manually stimulate his numb facial muscles. He has the symptoms of a cold: nose stuffed with mucus, achy bones, head like a lead balloon, maybe even a fever? Uncertain, he crunches a thousand-milligram tablet of Tylenol, then rinses his mouth. He's aware of the liver damage that can be caused by an overdose of acetaminophen, but this is no time to be overly fastidious.

René drives more smoothly than Camporesi; he knows how to deal with the holes to minimize the stress on the shock absorbers. Now that they're the third vehicle in the column, there's less dust in front of them and you can see everything. The marshal murmurs good morning, then falls silent again, as if to respect the lieutenant's slow awakening; he himself shows no signs of giving out, despite the nearly sleepless night and the wound on his stomach.

In a few minutes they're out of Lartay, all in one piece.

“One down,” René says, exhaling forcefully through his mouth.

Egitto hands him an energy bar, and the marshal takes it. They celebrate like that while Abib loudly clears his nasal passages. The acetaminophen is reaching its peak effectiveness. The velvety serenity of drugs—that's one thing the lieutenant can always count on.

They leave Pusta behind them, and avoid Saydal by clambering up the slope of the mountain. These are not strategic choices made by the marshal: all they can (and must) do is follow the tracks of the vehicles that preceded them. Wherever Masiero's tire marks can be seen on the ground, they're guaranteed to find no surprises.

At half past seven they catch sight of the cluster of dwellings that make up Terikhay, which is little more than a mountain pasture, though it seemed more significant than that on the map. They climb farther and continue along the mountainside. Then they descend to the dry riverbed. They find themselves in a spot where the valley suddenly narrows like an hourglass and that's where they come upon the spectacle.

A sizable flock of reddish sheep is blocking their way, while more come rushing in from both sides. They tear down the hillside, hooves slipping and sliding: two streams of animals converge in their path, forming a whirlpool of undulating fleece. The sheep rub against each other and sniff one another's butts; occasionally one raises its head to the sky and utters a harsh, grating bleat.

Egitto is amazed at this burst of vitality. “How many can there be?” he asks.

René doesn't answer. The marshal has realized something that the lieutenant, distracted by the sheep or by the free flow of serotonin in the hippocampus, has missed. René is leaning over the wheel, biting his upper lip. “There's no shepherd,” he says, then grabs the binoculars hanging on the seat. He scours the area.

It's true—there's no shepherd, there's not a soul, aside from the sheep that seem to be spewing right out of the mountain, hurtling down by the hundreds, terrified by something that the soldiers can't see.

“We have to get out of here,” René says.

Egitto registers the change of color on the marshal's face. “How?” he asks. “We're boxed in.”

“We'll shoot.”

“Shoot the sheep?”

Torsu, standing on the Browning's turret a few yards from them, looks like he's enjoying it all. He keeps ducking in and out of the cupola, pointing at the sheep.

René grabs the radio and calls to Cederna, who is at the head of the column, but his colleague's ironic response—a bleat—is drowned out by the RPG strike that thunders behind them. The lieutenant sees the flash out of the corner of his eye through the rearview mirror. Afterward, there's just black smoke rising from one of the vehicles. Egitto holds his breath as he tries to figure out which one it is. He feels relieved when he realizes that it's one of the civilian trucks. Only much later will he be able to reflect on that momentary lack of humanity.

 • • • 

W
hat follows next, until the time the Lince driven by Salvatore Camporesi blows up on twenty kilograms of explosives, blasting the passengers on board to bits—all except one, who has the good fortune to be thrown several yards away among the sheep—lasts three or four minutes at most.

Torsu, Di Salvo, Rovere, and the other gunners in the column hammer away with the Brownings. They fire at an enemy they can't see, somewhat hit or miss and mostly pointing upward.

Mattioli shoots.

Mitrano shoots.

No one has had time to figure out which direction the RPG rocket came from, so they take aim at the sheep rushing down the hill, as if they were the threat. Things become clear soon enough, however, because the enemy starts hitting them with everything they have, from all sides. Mortar shells erupt from the villages of Terikhay and Khanjak; clearly the artillerymen have had time to plan, because the strikes land a few dozen yards away. Small arms fire converges on the column from every direction, then more rockets, and shrapnel that shatters in the sky and hails down on their heads. An inferno, hell on earth.

Pecone, Passalacqua, and Simoncelli shoot.

Cederna makes out two armed shadows up above, at nine o'clock, and doesn't stop firing until he's neutralized them both. The satisfaction he feels when the first one jerks back isn't anything like what he'd imagined; it happens too quickly and from too far away—it's almost more gratifying to put a hole in the center of the silhouette at the firing range.

Ruffinatti shoots.

Ietri performs his job zealously, though it's not much: he hands Di Salvo the ammunition belts and in between dealing them out he tries to pinpoint the enemy with binoculars, so he can then give the location to Cederna. He's very calm. It's almost as if he doesn't realize what's happening. A sheep rubs up against the hot metal of the door, then looks at him intently; Ietri stands there in a daze, watching it, until Di Salvo yells: “Ammo, asshole!”

Allais, Candela, Vercellin, and Anfossi shoot.

René shouts over the radio: “Move forward—go, go, go!”

Zampieri is the one who should move because she's first in the column, but she's frozen. Her mind is a blank; all she sees is those sheep and she wonders what they're doing there, although the more pertinent question would be what is
she
doing there.

Camporesi honks the horn to rouse Zampieri. No one hears it; there's too much noise.

An RPG blows up another truck.

Egitto is blinded for a few seconds by the flash of a mortar bomb that kills a dozen sheep in one strike. The ambulance shudders.

“Move, move, move!”

The sheep are running wild. They do an about-face to clamber back up the mountain, collide with those that are racing down, and tumble along together for a few yards without ever falling.

“Move, damn it, move!”

Camporesi floors the accelerator, steers to the right to get around Zampieri's vehicle, and passes her, tires squealing. Some sheep move aside to let him through; others are ruthlessly mowed down. He makes it to the front of the column, cuts through the bleating flock, runs over a pressure plate made of two stolen graphite strips and 1.5-volt alkaline batteries with his left front wheel, sets off the charge placed under the plate, and the Lince blows up.

 • • • 

T
he charred pieces of the Lince lie scattered over the dry grass. Ietri stares at them from behind the mud-spattered window. He could rub the glass with his forearm to see better, but a part of him knows that the dirt is mostly on the outside and it wouldn't do any good. Peering more closely, he realizes that some of the burnt remains on the ground, the smaller ones, aren't mechanical but anatomical. For example, there's a boot still attached to its sole, upright, with something sticking out of it. He's not sure what the others are. So that's how a human body is blown apart, he thinks.