The Last Man Standing (24 page)

January 21

The village looks as if it has been hit by a retreating army blinded by hunger and defeat. Everything that could not be carried out of the houses has been smashed or burned. A lot of furniture has been thrown out of the windows into the street, and on the outer walls are graffiti in spray paint or charcoal.
IT’S US / YOU CAN’T AVOID / EVEN IF YOU WANT TO / OR ELSE LOOK OUT. I CAN’T SLEEP, I CAN’T SLEEP, I CAN’T SLEEP AND I’M IN GRIEF. WINGS, NEEDLES, IDEALS AND BONFIRES. SUPREMACY. NOTHING COMES OF NOTHING.
They were like lines written by someone who has glanced through Nietzsche and then decided he’s too much trouble. The writing is in large shaky capitals, with errors of grammar and syntax. Some are slogans in basic English, as if written on a school excursion that got out of hand. I also came across syringes, empty bottles of strong alcohol, and nylon bags into which someone had poured what looked like glue. In the church the pews have been piled up and set on fire and windows broken.

There’s no trace of the inhabitants or even of their bodies. All I found was a cat feeding four kittens. I heard them mewing from the road and went into what used to be the hairdresser’s salon. Jars of cosmetics had been overturned and an enormous penis drawn on the mirror. The cat was sitting in the armchair where customers once waited their turn. When she saw Bauschan she hissed without moving so as not to disturb the kittens’ feeding. Bauschan pressed himself against my leg. He seemed sorry to have caused any distress. I picked up a bottle of what looked like shampoo and we left.

At the chemist’s house I found eye drops but no food. Whoever had turned the house upside down can have had no interest in medicine because these had been left all over the cellar and attic. I helped myself to some preparations for the relief of influenza and inflammation as well as some vitamins. In the car in the garage was a map of the Côte d’Azur, which also included this part of Italy.

When we passed back through the square, Bauschan stopped in front of Elio’s house and looked at me. The note on which we had written that we were leaving for Basel was still on the door. When I saw it I was moved to pity, as if for something from my earliest childhood. I stroked Bauschan and told him it was no longer our house; then I turned to go where I had wanted to go from the start.

The gate had been torn off its hinges, though one of its uprights was still chained to the post that had been uprooted with it. The door of the house had suffered the same fate.

What a lot of trouble they’ve gone to, I thought.

The table where we had talked over tea about Glenn Gould, Marin Marais, and early eighteenth-century painting was lying sawn in two among books, pots, and pieces of foam rubber. Flour had been strewn on the floor, but there was a smell of game in the air as if a large wild boar had been living there. Two cushions had been ripped apart and were hanging from the chandelier.

Climbing the stairs to the upper floor, I noticed my heart beating fast and realized I had never listened to it closely before. The bedrooms were a mess and an item of clothing or curtain had been burned in the bathtub but, as I had hoped when I went into the house, there was no trace of either Elvira or her mother.

I picked one of Bernhard’s books up from the floor then, before leaving, I went into the garage, sat down in the red car, lowered the seat, and closed my eyes. On the back seat was a dressing-gown belt. I dozed for a few minutes and dreamed I was stroking the prominent vertebrae of Elvira’s naked back. My dreaming hand moved clumsily, not like caressing a woman, more as if running along a railing. Yet what I was doing gave me great pleasure and I knew it was the same for her. The nape of her neck was moving gently. I felt sexual excitement. Something I had not expected from my body for a long time.

Then I walked through the village streets. The children and Sebastiano were waiting for me, but all I wanted was to feel the weight of Bernhard’s book against my leg as I walked.

In the old house I used to spend hours in a room I called “the book room.” A place where I had collected thousands of novels, essays, treatises, and books on art. I had read many of them more than once, underlining, annotating, and dissecting them to extract instruction for myself and my students. Some had become bastions to shore up the walls of my city, and others had served as passports to my far-off lands. Syllogisms of what life was or should have been.

I haven’t the slightest wish to know what has happened to them. Unless someone has burned down the house I assume they are still there feeding mold and mice. I have infinite love for those stories, although I know they have been to blame for what I am: an inadequate man.

January 22

Lucia and I have divided the food and clothes between my backpack, Sebastiano’s knapsack, and a small bag the children will take turns carrying. We have made an omelet with four eggs and some polenta. When we have eaten that, we will still have the soups, the powdered milk, the muesli, some cans, and the fruit in syrup we found in Adele’s larder. These will last us for a week at least.

When we had finished getting ready we sat down at the table. Alberto and Sebastiano had gone to their rooms, and the gentle breath of the wind that had been pushing around the tops of the trees all day could be heard from beyond the windows. There were no animals around: I presume the chickens, geese, and rabbits that had once lived in the yard had been eaten, while the dogs must have gone off in search of food. The donkey could have met with either fate.

I asked Lucia if she was sleepy. She said no. So I put another piece of wood in the stove. It could have been nine o’clock. The church clock no longer strikes, and we’ve grown used to telling the time by the course of the sun. In any case, once the sun has gone down the time is not very important since all we can do is to find a place to retire, light a fire, and sleep.

Lucia told me she and Alberto had quarreled while I was in the village and said some very ugly things to each other. Hearing this, Sebastiano had taken refuge in his room and they hadn’t seen him all morning.

“I went up to see how he was,” she said. “I wanted to apologize to him, but he put his hand on my head in that way priests do.”

“Were you afraid?”

“No. It felt like being inside an egg, then I got sleepy.”

I am surprised anew, every day, by how she manages to live through all this without losing her grip. By the fact that her first impulse is always to create order, to heal and to work for the best. Despite appearances, there is nothing fragile or dreamy about her. Lucia’s a soldier: her sweetness is pugnacious and her gentle eyes have more of justice than charity in them. She’s a Joan of Arc without visions or armor. A delicate asphodel protected by spiky leaves that not even starving animals can manage to devour.

When I asked her why she had quarreled with Alberto, she told me he would rather not have gone away again. I asked her if she felt the same. She said no. When I asked her if anything else had been involved, she shook her head, got up, and planted a kiss on my forehead and went off to bed.

January 23

It very soon became clear that walking through the vineyards and woods, as we had planned to do, was impossible and cost us the whole morning. In fact, the snow was already above our knees, and an hour after starting out we had to stop, light a fire, and wait until our shoes and pants dried out. When we set off again it was after midday and we decided to take the main road. The snow has almost completely gone from it and even where it remained we saw no trace of tires. The houses along the road are empty and the few shops already stripped bare, and we saw no smoke or anything else that might indicate human presence. Only toward dusk did I think I saw two figures in the woods but by the time I asked the others whether they could see them, they had already vanished around the corner of the hillside. Apart from that, the mantle of white is marked by many animal tracks but no human ones.

When the light began to fade we looked for somewhere to spend the night and light another fire; there is plenty of wood, and we have matches, paper, and a certain expertise. Lucia is better at lighting fires than I am. She doesn’t use so much paper, and she lays the twigs in a way that encourages the flames to leap up quickly. In this, too, she shows her aptitude for learning and her love of things well done.

It only took us a few minutes to devour the omelet and some of the polenta. We’ll reheat the rest tomorrow morning before we leave. I showed the children the map. It should take us two days to reach the pass leading down to the sea. I’ve calculated five days’ walk altogether. When Alberto asked why are we going to the sea, I said with a bit of luck we might find a ship, or else we can follow the coast to France. To tell the truth, I don’t know how many opportunities we have to leave the country in one way or another.

Alberto took my answer with indifference, going back to where he’d left his cover and lying down to sleep. In any case these were the first words I’d heard him speak since the morning. During the day he walks without complaining or asking questions. When he raises his eyes and looks ahead, he does it as if he has already made the journey any number of times. Sometimes he seems like an old man. Times when the young body that contains him seems nothing but a joke in bad taste.

Today, seeing him sitting with his head between his knees, I felt tempted to reach out and stroke his hair but, as if he knew what I had in mind, he looked up and glared fiercely at me for so long that I thought he would never stop. His eyes were two mirrors of restful brown water that seemed to have something terrible in them. At night I feel he must be awake and staring at me, but if I wake with a start I see him wrapped in his blanket, breathing deeply in his sleep, his eyes sealed by little yellow crusts.

Sometimes the silence around us is so profound I find myself longing to meet someone to rescue us in some way from our solitude and uncertainty. Often I move away with the excuse of needing to attend to my physical needs and spend a few minutes weeping, crouched among the trees. Sebastiano can’t help me. I’m not even sure he’s fully aware of our situation.

The only thing that cheers me is that for the moment the cold has stopped tormenting us. The sky is overcast and even at night the temperature doesn’t fall below freezing. The sun may warm us for an hour or two, but once it has set, we have to face much more severe nights.

The place where we are camping now is an old road-maintenance building. Its facade is the color of burgundy, divided in two by a broad, white stripe that separates the lower floor from the upper. It has a sharply sloping roof, in the Nordic style. None of its windows face the valley, which means it cannot be easily seen, and what windows it has are covered by wooden shutters that prevent the glow of our fire filtering through to the outside world. Features I’ve learned to value.

January 24

On the first afternoon we were walking halfway up the woods that entirely cover these hills, following a path formerly used by shepherds and mushroom hunters, keeping one eye on the road a hundred meters or so below us, when a voice from behind us ordered us to raise our arms above our heads. We did as we were told. I heard a rustle of dry leaves as the man approached, until he came into sight on my right, a meter or two above us. In the cold shadow his face looked severe. He might have been thirty-five years old, with long untidy hair. He placed himself in such a way that he could keep all four of us within range of his rifle, and then he asked us what we were doing there.

I said we were heading for the pass and our plan was to go down from there into Liguria. The man looked closely at the baggage on our shoulders and asked the children if they were with me of their own free will. Lucia said yes.

“You too?” the man asked Alberto.

The boy must have nodded because the man slightly lowered the rifle, which up to then he had been pointing at my chest.

“Have you any medicine?”

“What sort of medicine?” I asked.

“Something for fever.”

“I think so.”

“Please check.”

I took off the backpack and opened the side pocket where I had stored the medications. While I checked the instruction leaflets, Bauschan went over to sniff at his feet. The man let him do this.

“I’ve got an antibiotic here, and this is some kind of aspirin.”

“They’ll do. Throw them over to me.”

I did as he asked. He picked them up and stowed them in one of the many pockets of his hunter’s jacket. He had mountaineering boots on his feet. He seemed well fed and equipped.

“Now go,” he said.

We stood looking at him in uncertainty.

“Which way?”

“Leave the path and go down to the road,” he said, indicating the way for us with his rifle, “It’s not far to G.”

We began going down through the forest. Brambles and brushwood sometimes forced us to change direction and climb back up. On one of these occasions I looked up and saw the man still standing where we’d left him. He had lowered his gun but was still watching us, as though pondering what he might have done but hadn’t done, or the other way around.

Once we reached the road we walked on in silence until the trees behind us formed a thick curtain. Then I announced that we could stop. I pulled out one of the two bottles of water we carry and passed it to the children. They drank, their eyes still on the forest. I told them that if that man meant us any harm he would already have done it. Lucia nodded, but just as she did so I saw him reappear among the acacias at the end of the field.

We stayed sitting motionless on the safety barrier, staring at him as he approached. When he was about ten meters away he stopped, put his rifle over his shoulder, and looked toward the sun, which was disappearing behind the hills. I noticed his face was sunburned and clean-shaven. His eyes were a peaceful hazel color.

“I can offer you food and shelter for tonight,” he said.

During the half hour we walked behind him he never spoke or turned to check if we were following. When he got to the top of the hill he went down the other side, crossed a stream, and made his way to a house in the middle of a small clearing. A woman was waiting on the terrace. When she saw us she lifted her hand to her brow as though the sun was in her eyes. The man greeted her. She did not respond but went back into the house.