The Human Body (22 page)

The blaze spreads from the vehicle to the brush, radiating a few yards.

How many sheep must have been killed by the explosion? Maybe fifty, but it might be more, a gory carpet of fleece overhung with dense smoke billowing up from the flaming chassis.

Salvatore Camporesi, Cesare Mattioli, Arturo Simoncelli, and Vincenzo Mitrano no longer exist. They've been vaporized.

Angelo Torsu, after an acrobatic fight, lies faceup thirty paces from the demolished vehicle. He lost consciousness, but came to almost immediately. He can't feel any of his limbs, he's blind, and he can barely breathe. Rather than worrying about anything more important, he's concerned that a sheep might come and lick him; he dreads the idea of a rough tongue passing over him in the dark. He's bleeding a little everywhere and he knows it.

Marshal René has completed his mental roll call. He was slower than usual, but the result he's come up with is accurate. He's missing Camporesi, Mattioli, Mitrano, and Simoncelli. Torsu is out there, unmoving, most likely to be counted among the lost, he thinks. The marshal's eyes fill with tears—something new for him.

Being heroic is not enough to be a hero
.

The enemy had stopped firing, but has resumed almost immediately, seemingly only made bolder. Cederna is the only one who has the presence of mind to return the fire. He shoots, reloads, shoots, reloads, shoots, reloads, not stopping to catch his breath.

One of the last incidents that Roberto Ietri remembers about his father is the night he woke him up to take him to see the wheat stubble burning. The countryside was all in flames, the entire Daunia on fire, the hills red against the black.

Zampieri makes out bizarre shapes in the plumes of smoke: a tree, a hand, a gigantic dragon.
None of this can be real
.

Torsu's diaphragm shudders as he comes to. He also regains his sight (not entirely; his left eye is swollen and the eyelid partly shut). All Torsu can see is a portion of sky. Wherever he is, he has to let the others know that he's alive. Assuming that there still are any others. Gathering up whatever energy he has left in his body, he directs it to his right arm and with an immense effort raises it.

“He's alive! Torsu is alive!” someone yells.

René has also noticed the raised arm. The request to take action and rescue their comrade comes to him by radio from all the vehicles. But whoever goes out there without cover is likely to stay there. Once again, he has to make a difficult decision because of Torsu. God damn that Sardinian! Marshal René, a man of sterling character, the NCO who would like to be captain, the intrepid soldier, doesn't know what to do.

“Charlie Three One to Med. Charlie Three One to Med. Request permission to retrieve the wounded man, over.”

René turns to Lieutenant Egitto. He's in charge after all. “What should we do, Doc?”

Di Salvo has to let up on the Browning if he doesn't want to melt the barrel. He shoulders his rifle and goes on firing.

The whirring of the blades of an approaching helicopter. No, there are two. Two helicopters! Here they come!

Egitto replies to René: “Let's wait.”

Torsu's arm drops to the ground. He starts to cry.

Recklessness is a miraculous quality of young men and Ietri is the youngest of all. He's just twenty years old. He sees Torsu's arm rise and then fall back. I'm a soldier, he tells himself. I'm a man. Zampieri's kiss is still burning on his lips and gives him courage. Shit, I'm a soldier! I'm a man! “I'm going to get him,” he says. “Don't you move from there,” Cederna barks. He's higher in rank, but who does he think he is, giving him orders? After what he did. Ietri opens the door and jumps out of the vehicle. He sprints, dodging the dead sheep and his companions' body parts, and in an instant is beside his buddy. “I'll get you out of here now,” he promises. But then he doesn't know what to do, whether he should drag him by the hands or feet, or hoist him up and carry him on his back. But what if he has a broken spine? He's come that far and now he's uncertain. “Hang on,” he says, but more than anything it's a way of telling himself: Move it!

The enemy has plenty of time to take aim. The shots come from multiple directions at once, roughly the same number of bullets in front and in back. For that reason, though jolted, the body of Roberto Ietri remains standing for an exceptionally long time. The autopsy will reveal that the fatal bullet is the one that veers improbably from his scapula and becomes lodged in his heart, in the right ventricle. In the end Ietri sags and collapses on top of Torsu.

The night the fields burned he had fallen asleep in his father's arms as they walked back to the car. He'd hardly ever stayed up so late, but in the morning he dragged himself out of bed so he could tell his mother all about it. She'd listened patiently, even the third and fourth time. Maybe this wasn't the final thought the corporal had planned on before dying, the one he'd prepared, but it's fine just the same. It wasn't so bad after all. Life hadn't been so bad.

Torsu finds it hard to breathe again, his sternum squashed by his companion. He's shivering now and he's afraid he's going to die. His face feels strange, as if someone has put ice on it. He whimpers. He didn't think this would happen, that he would die leaving everything hanging. He feels stupid for what he did, for the way he acted, in general and more particularly for the way he treated Tersicore89. What good was all that truth? What difference did it make? She loved him, she understood him. He should have been satisfied with that. Now look where he is: crushed under the dead body of a comrade with no one to miss him, no one to cry out to. Just to feel less alone, First Corporal Major Angelo Torsu hugs the lifeless body of Roberto Ietri. He holds him tight. The body still retains a little of its human warmth.

C
olonel Ballesio dismissed everyone except her. When the subordinates left, he pushed his chair back with his pelvis and leaned his forehead on his folded arms. He hasn't moved again. Could he be sleeping? Is there something she should do? She could go over and rest a hand on his shoulder, for example. No, it's unthinkable. Their familiarity hasn't nearly developed to that point.

And she, Irene, how does she feel? Relieved for one thing, because Alessandro's name isn't listed among the dead. She's stunned, of course, but it's as if the real shock were slow to hit her.
You're sending people to die, Irene.
I want you to realize that before it happens, because afterward there can be no excuses for you
.

A short while ago Ballesio had delivered a concise report of the battle to the soldiers assembled at the base and read the list of fallen comrades with exaggerated pauses: “Senior Corporal Major Simoncelli. Senior Corporal Major Camporesi. First Corporal Major Mattioli. Corporal Mitrano. They were on the Lince. Corporal Ietri was struck by small arms fire. The wounded man is First Corporal Major Torsu. The survivors are still under enemy fire. Now get the hell out, all of you.”

Each name was greeted by sighs, moans, curses: an effective way to measure how well the victims were liked.

Irene gets up, fills a plastic cup from the water tank, and takes small sips. Then she fills one for the commander. She places it on the desk, near his head. Ballesio heaves himself up. He has a red mark on his forehead from the pressure of his arms. He gulps down the water all at once and then stops to contemplate the translucent molded plastic.

“You know what, Sammartino? I wish I had something personal to say about those guys. The men expect me to talk about their comrades tonight, to pay tribute to them, like a kind of father”; he says “father” scornfully. “Every good commander is able to. How decent he was, how brave he was, how handy he was with engines. A fucking story for each of them. And they're right. But you want to know the truth? I can't think of anything. I'm not their father. If I had kids like my soldiers, I'd spend my time kicking their asses.” He crumples the sheet of paper with the names of the fallen in his hand. Then, repentant, he smoothes it out with his palm. “I don't remember the face of any one of them. Arturo Simoncelli. Who the hell is that? Vincenzo Mitrano. Him, yeah. Vaguely. I think I can picture this one too: Salvatore Camporesi. A tall guy. Does that seem to you like something I could say? ‘We mourn the loss of our friend Salvatore, he was a very tall guy
.
' And these two? Ietri and Mattioli. I haven't the foggiest idea who they were. Maybe I never even set eyes on them. There are 190 soldiers here at the FOB, Sammartino, 190 human beings who depend on me and the mood I'm in when I get up in the morning, and I didn't bother to take the time to distinguish them from one another. What do you think of that? It's interesting, isn't it? I find it very interesting. You want to report that information to your superiors? Go right ahead and report it—I don't really give a shit.”

“Commander, please.”

“They're all indistinguishable. Tell them that too. Colonel Giacomo Ballesio says of his men, colon, quote, ‘For me they're all indistinguishable.' This one died instead of that one, so what? It makes no difference. Tell that to your goddamn superiors. It makes no difference. They were just kids who didn't know what they were doing.”

He's livid. Irene is willing to tolerate the outburst up to a certain point, as long as it isn't directed against her. She wonders what would happen if she really did decide to report the commander's words. What he's saying to her is a declaration, dictated by his grief but still a declaration, and therefore could legitimately be reported. Would she have the courage to do it? When they ask her for a detailed report on the FOB—and they will ask; after what's happened they'll want to be informed about everything—will she tell them this as well? Who would benefit from it, other than her professional integrity? She'd rather not go head-to-head with her own moral principles over such a question. The commander would be better off saying no more. She tries to interrupt, but there's no way.

“If they're dead it's because they made a mistake. They made a mistake. And I made a mistake sending them there. And you're about to make another one, writing a version in your report that won't even come close to the truth, to the complexity of the truth. Because you, Sammartino, let's be frank, don't know a damn thing about war.”

Here they come, the accusations.
There can be no excuses for you
. She'll let that pass as well; then she'll turn her back and walk away.

“And then there's an infinite chain of errors that precedes you and me, but that doesn't absolve us.” Ballesio's forehead is perspiring, but he holds his hands strangely still, palms down on the table, like a sphinx. “We're all guilty, Sammartino. All of us. But some of us . . . well, some of us much more so.”

 • • • 

V
iewed from above, from the perspective of a helicopter, the circle of vehicles down in the valley looks like a magic symbol, a ring to ward off evil spirits. It would be worth photographing it, but nobody does.

For the soldiers trapped in the armored vehicles the sight is less appealing: there's the carcass of the vehicle still burning in some places, the amputated, decapitated, and mangled sheep, and First Corporal Major Torsu with the corpse of Ietri on top of him.

They've arranged the vehicles in a circle, front ends pointed out, to ensure protection to the injured soldier. A distasteful maneuver—many of them had to crush the dead sheep with their wheels—as well as rash, since all or nearly all of them had to go outside the track, risking other IEDs.

As the minutes go by since the firing stopped, Lieutenant Egitto's eyes seize on new, less conspicuous details. His window is splattered with blood. Some of the animals, still wandering around disoriented, have string tied around their necks. And the dead soldiers' weapons are miraculously intact.

He'd shouted to Torsu to signal him with his arm every minute, to show that he's alive and conscious. If he were to stop signaling, then the lieutenant would have to come up with something, a quick rescue. Someone would have to risk his life with him. But Torsu raises his right hand and slaps the ground diligently. He does this seven times in all.

I'm still alive.

I'm still alive.

I'm still alive.

I'm still alive.

I'm still alive.

I'm still alive.

I'm still alive.

It's enough time for the helicopters to scatter the last of the enemy, make a couple of safety rounds, and attempt to land once, twice, three times, without success. The fourth time, a Black Hawk manages to touch down, so the others gain altitude again and continue to patrol from above, in large spirals.

Egitto is contacted by radio from who knows where, some outpost hundreds of miles away, in the middle of another rotten desert where the radio operators, nevertheless, have cups of steaming coffee sitting next to their computer keyboards. The voice gives him instructions in the soothing tone you'd use with a child lost in the outskirts of a city, a child who no longer recognizes his surroundings: “He's the doctor, right? Okay, it's a pleasure talking to him, everything will be all right, they'll get them out of there, they just have to follow instructions. Stay put for now, wait until they give them the go-ahead, once the area has been swept, you, Lieutenant— You're a lieutenant, right? What's your name, Lieutenant? Well, Lieutenant Egitto, choose some of your men, put them on the alert, and when we give you the signal, you'll go out there together to help the two wounded soldiers. You'll see that—”

“One of the two isn't wounded,” Egitto interrupts him. “I think he's . . .” But he can't say it. Could he still be alive after the number of bullets that hit him, after the way he crumpled? No, he couldn't be.

The voice on the radio resumes, phlegmatic: “The wounded man and the deceased, then. When you've done what needs to be done to stabilize the wounded man, you'll load both of them into the helicopter.”

Egitto feels a hand grab his arm. He turns to René. “The body stays with us,” the marshal says.

“But . . .”

“The men would never forgive me.”

Egitto does and doesn't understand René's insistence. Team spirit is something he's always observed as an outsider. Still, it's up to him to make the decision; he's in command. He's not familiar with the protocol in such a situation, but he has the impression that the marshal's request violates a series of rules. Who the hell cares?

“The body stays with us.”

“That's not possible, Lieutenant,” the voice on the radio replies, somewhat irritated.

“I said it stays with us. Or do you want to come and retrieve it in person?”

For a few seconds the transmitter crackles wordlessly; then the voice says: “Roger that, Lieutenant Egitto. Wait for the signal.”

Judging by the way he looks, René's emotional state is not optimal. His lips are ashen, his complexion sallow, his head swaying back and forth. Egitto hands him a bottle of water and orders him to drink, and then Egitto takes a drink himself—it's important to stay hydrated, to not stop doing what's necessary.

It's up to him to plan the next steps as well. He explains to the marshal: “You and I will go out there, along with one of your men, just one. The fewer we are out there, the better for everyone. We'll take care of the bodies that are in one piece. First we'll move the body of that kid. What's his name?”

“Ietri. Roberto Ietri.”

“Okay. Then we'll see about stabilizing the wounded one and put him on the helicopter stretcher. Can you stand the sight of blood, Marshal, of wounds and exposed bones?”

“Of course.”

“There's nothing to be ashamed of if you don't feel up to it—a lot of people are upset by it, but if that were the case I'd have to call on someone else. I need you conscious.”

“I'll hold up.”

“Your man's job is to pick up the other pieces.” He pauses, his throat dry again. He produces a little saliva in his mouth, swallows. How do you find the right words to say what he has to say? “Tell him to equip himself with some plastic bags.”

 • • • 

T
here it is, then, the moment Lieutenant Egitto will remember more clearly than any other, the image that will first come to mind when he thinks about what happened in the valley, or when he doesn't think about it but is surprised by a vision that flashes before him: the Black Hawk lifting off the ground, kicking up a swirl of dust that engulfs the soldiers.

Torsu is already safely inside the helicopter, his head immobilized in a polyethylene collar, his body tightly secured by elastic bands, and a bottle of saline solution dripping into his forearm—the IV drip that Egitto himself had put in. He'd swabbed the wound and wrapped it with gauze, made sure the spine hadn't suffered any injury. Torsu gnashed his teeth, kept groaning, “It hurts, Doc, it hurts—please, I can't see anything, Doc,” and he'd reassured him, “You'll be okay—we're getting you out of here, you're all right.” Strange, the same words that the voice on the radio had said to him a few minutes ago, which he hadn't believed at all. Why should Torsu have greater confidence? He'd managed to remove Torsu's bulletproof vest and examined his body for additional bleeding; there were only scratches. But he hadn't known what to do about the burns on his face, or the flesh torn off his cheek and eyes. He's an orthopedist. He knows how to apply casts. Hundreds of university lectures, training sessions, books, refresher courses—nothing came to his aid, not even if he concentrated; only his hands remembered what had to be done and the order in which to do it. Egitto should have injected him with morphine, but at the time he'd thought he could stand the pain. Maybe the soldier was just in shock. How do you measure the suffering of another human being? He should have given him morphine—he was burned, damn it! But it's too late now. Before disappearing from view, Torsu moves his hand one last time, to say good-bye to his buddies or as a final message for him: I'm still alive, Doc.

Torsu ascends to the heavens; René turns his back and looks out toward the mountaintops. Cederna is stepping around the charred Lince with a garbage bag in his hands, like a mushroom hunter. Shortly before, he'd angrily sent René and Egitto away and insisted on carrying Ietri's body all by himself. He'd picked him up in his arms like a child. (An awkward detail that Egitto would prefer not to think about: Ietri was too long for the stretcher, so they'd had to bend his knees; when the time comes to move him, hours later, he'll have stiffened in that position and to stretch him back out they'll have to shatter his joints. The sound of cold cartilage breaking will remain part and parcel of the memory.) Once in the ambulance, Cederna wiped Ietri's face clean with water from the canteen and spoke softly in his ear. A waste of time, which the lieutenant didn't have the heart to object to.

The valley is silent, the engines turned off. A number of minutes go by like that. Every so often Cederna stoops, picks something up, and puts it in the black bag or discards it.

Then there's Marshal René who, without turning around, says out of the blue: “I've made up my mind, Lieutenant. I'm keeping that baby. I'm not even sure it's my kid, but I'm keeping it. Whatever happens happens. No matter what, it will still be a beautiful baby.”

Then there's Cederna in front of a pile of remains and shredded clothing. He covers his face with his hands and begins to sob. “How the fuck am I supposed to recognize them, huh? They're all burned, don't you see? They're all burned—shit!”

Then a sensible and monstrous guideline is established, and Egitto is the one who proposes it: “We'll make sure there's at least one whole part for each pile. It doesn't matter who it belongs to, as long as the piles bear some resemblance to the men. For the bigger guys we'll create bigger piles.”