The Last Man Standing (27 page)

For a while Sebastiano and Leonardo followed the path, keeping at a distance of about fifty yards, then passed a bridge and found themselves on the road. They walked for an hour, perhaps much less, losing sight of the group around sharp curves and seeing them in front again on the straight sections. Leonardo knew perfectly well that they could have hidden around a bend and shot at him, but the danger was nothing compared to his need to not lose sight of Lucia’s white sweater and black hair.

As the valley grew narrower Leonardo heard distant music that gradually got louder. It seemed to come from some kind of industrial machine, like a press with a regular beat. The four left the road for a lane with a sign pointing to a camping site. Following, Sebastiano and Leonardo found themselves on the other side of the river. The trees here formed a thick roof through which light filtered, depicting bizarre animal forms on the asphalt. The further they went the louder the music grew, drowning the noise of the river, until the path opened on a grassy clearing. Then they saw the camp.

Cars, trucks, and trailers were arranged in a circle like wagons in the old Wild West. A motor coach, a truck bearing the logo of a removal firm, and a large cage on wheels completed the circle. In the center was a large fire at least partly formed from tires. The smoke from it was black and rose very high before dispersing. Impaled on stakes around this bonfire were whole headless animals: roe deer, foxes, possibly dogs.

Leonardo studied the few figures hanging around inside the circle. They were confused-looking and half-naked, moving slowly without any obvious purpose, climbing over the bodies of others still lying on the ground. The incessant musical racket was coming from amplifiers and loudspeakers on the roof of the coach.

“Take Bauschan with you,” Leonardo said. “Go by road and you’ll be in A. before evening.”

Sebastiano looked him attentively in the eye, then took off the backpack and offered it to Leonardo.

“Best you keep it,” Leonardo said.

Sebastiano put the backpack on the ground, took off his cloak and draped it around Leonardo’s shoulders, lacing it up carefully, and then he took Bauschan in his arms and walked off. When Leonardo turned they had already passed the bridge. Bauschan was staring back at him, his snout over Sebastiano’s shoulder. He barked, but the din of the music drowned everything.

Leonardo looked at the encampment. He realized he was face to face with the heart of the new world, one of those places where madness was first created and then spread around. He was conscious of its presence and its attraction.

When he took a step he felt about to collapse, but he stiffened his back and stayed on his feet. This is nothing, he told himself as he moved on, nothing compared to what you are going to see.

For a long time he sat with his back propped against one of the great wheels of the truck without anyone noticing him. Every now and then one of the youngsters got up, climbed over the hood of a car, and, without deigning to look at him, went into the forest, presumably to urinate or vomit among the trees. They had all lost their eyebrows and had colored signs on their cheeks. Some, when they came back, opened the door of a white van and took out a beer, which they drank standing up before going back to lie down under their covers or letting themselves drop to the ground wherever they happened to be. Others did not come back. Leonardo imagined Alberto and Lucia must be somewhere in the forest; he imagined the two youths with them, the blond one and the thickset one, waiting for the camp to wake up before making their entry. He told himself there was no point in going to look for them and that it was better to wait where he was and where sooner or later they would come. Using his left hand, he tightened the knot on his bandage. His face was still swollen and painful, but his arm worried him more; he had to find some way of setting his shoulder, or he would stiffen with ankylosis.

He was very thirsty but had no water and could see none anywhere near him. The fire that had been burning fiercely when he arrived was now just a great patch of smoking embers. The sun had climbed up into a contourless sky. It must have been halfway through the morning.

A figure rose from the ground and took a few steps toward a cappuccino-colored trailer, and then suddenly it changed direction and came toward the truck. It was a girl. Leonardo thought she had seen him; then he realized her eyes were closed. She was about Lucia’s age, wearing army trousers and a flannel shirt. She dragged herself on another few meters, then tripped over a cover with two kids sleeping under it and fell down in the dust. On the ground she simply cuddled up to the other two bodies and fell asleep again.

It was past midday when a small individual, older than any he had seen so far, came out of the cab of the truck and, descending the three steps from the platform, trod on Leonardo’s lap. As soon as he regained his balance, the man looked at him with lively little metallic-gray eyes. Unlike the others he had no colored signs on his face and seemed to be in full and conscious control of himself. Leonardo noticed a hump under his jacket. Although his face looked no more than thirty he was bald at the temples, and what was left of his hair shone with brilliantine and hung down to his shoulders.

Leonardo raised his hand in sign of peace, but the man leaped back as though threatened and started jumping around, crying out, and waving his arms. A sharp continuous scream issued from his mouth, which reminded Leonardo of one he had heard many years before from an Arab woman when her bag had been stolen in a market in Marrakesh. The scream was louder than the din of the music and within a few seconds Leonardo found himself surrounded by dozens of youngsters kicking him and covering him with spit. He took what cover he could and protested his innocence, but someone grabbed him by the hair and began dragging him toward the middle of the clearing, where thin coils of smoke were rising from the patch of ashes. Other young people, woken by the noise, emerged from the cars and coach and other vehicles. Realizing what was about to happen, he dug his feet in. A lock of his hair was ripped out and for a moment he lay face down in the dust before other hands grabbed him, pulled off his shoes and socks, and pushed him on to the embers.

Feeling the soles of his feet begin to burn, he tried to turn back but the kids surrounding the fire closed off every escape route. He ran to the other side, but was again hemmed in. Then he hurriedly took off the cowhide cloak, threw it down, and stood on it. The kids, who until then had been laughing and shouting, were struck dumb, until a tall young man with a square face and big tattooed arms uprooted one of the stakes on which meat had been roasting, shook off the scorched corpse of a dog, and began to goad Leonardo with it, trying to drive him off the cowhide.

While he was trying to evade the blows, the hunchbacked cripple suddenly leaped through the circle and pulled the cloak from under him so that he fell. The kids greeted this with thunderous applause. Leonardo quickly got up again and tried to push away the hot charcoal with his feet to reach the ground beneath, but the soles of his feet, smoking and giving off a nauseating smell like burned chicken, no longer had any feeling in them. He howled and wept and hurled himself at the wall of children, who kicked and punched him. Forced back into the fire, he began leaping about.

“A dancer!” a girl screamed. “
Ballerino
!”

Someone started a chant: “
Bal-le-ri-no, bal-le-ri-no, bal-le-ri-no
,” and Leonardo found himself shifting the weight of his body from one foot to the other to the steady rhythm of a chorus. He could no longer feel any pain, aware only of a smell of roasting fat. He assumed his feet must have melted and that the fire would gradually climb his legs until it reached his balls and belly, and then he would be dead. The last thing he knew before losing consciousness was a refreshing liquid heat running down his legs.

The next thing he knew he was in a cage. Opening his left eye, he could see the sky through rusty bars with the leafy branches of a tree waving gently above him. The sky was a pale blue and the sun was sinking. He touched his face. By now the deformity of his nose and eye had become familiar, and it was reassuring to recognize them under his fingers. The monotonous deafening music was still thumping the air, its bass notes vibrating inside his chest like a shout in a closed fist.

He tried to raise himself up on his good arm with his back against the bars. The floor was wood and had been covered with straw. He looked out through the bars into the clearing. The young people, sitting, squatting, or lying down, were enjoying the evening sun. Many, in dark glasses, were chatting in small groups as if in a public park. Then he saw them.

They were sitting some way off, behind the big cappuccino-colored trailer. The blond youth was on his back with his hands behind his head and his legs crossed, one foot swinging. The thickset one seemed to be dozing, propped up with one hand supporting his head. No guns could be seen. Lucia was sitting between them, staring at the ground with a vacant expression. Alberto was beside her. It looked to Leonardo as if his cheeks had been marked with black.

He tried to stand up, but when he put weight on his feet it felt as if someone, for a joke, must have fastened them in a block of concrete while he was unconscious. He looked down and saw two enormous pieces of dark, livid meat. He told himself he would never walk again, and his left eye filled with tears. For a while he could see nothing. In the darkness inside him he struggled to reassemble his thoughts, to keep them separate from the despair that, despite himself, was overwhelming him. When his tears had dried and he could see again, the young people were still there.

“They’re alive,” he said, and saying this with his toothless mouth seemed to make the words more real. For a moment he forgot his feet and his shoulder and all the other parts of his body that were no longer what they used to be. He had to wait. To stay alive and wait.

The floor vibrated as if someone had started the engine of the van to which the cage was attached, but neither the trees nor the young people nor anything else around him was moving. Turning to the right he saw a huge dark wrinkly mass on the floor of the cage. When his eye got used to the dark he realized it was an elephant. The animal was sleeping curled against the wall like a great hairless and wrinkled cat.

Cries from the young people drew his attention to the clearing. They had all gotten to their feet and were shouting excitedly at a man who had just come out of the trailer. The blond youth and the thickset one hurriedly made Alberto and Lucia get to their feet, and when the man, advancing slowly toward the middle of the clearing, passed close to them, they threw themselves on their knees and bowed their heads. The man stopped and gazed at the necks of the two penitents with a benevolent smile. Leonardo realized this must Richard.

It’s Christ, he thought, or someone doing his level best to seem like Christ.

The man had a light-colored cowl of unbleached cotton and high tight-fitting leather boots. His long light-brown hair and his several days’ worth of beard completed the priest-like effect.

Richard took his hands out of his pockets, moved forward, and knelt down between the two youths like a confidant, an informer, or a father about to play with his children. Leonardo saw his lips pronounce some word with his eyes fixed on the dusty ground, then rest his chin on the shoulder of the thickset youth to listen. The youth took a little time to react; then he turned his head and spoke to the man as if kissing him on the neck. The kids in the clearing watched the scene in silence.

The confession took only a few seconds, after which the man got up and placed a hand on Alberto’s shoulder. He asked him something, perhaps what his name was, and nodded at the answer. Then he moved to one side and took a long look at Lucia’s face before pushing her hair slowly behind her ear like a lover. Returning to the two youths who were still on their knees, he placed a hand on the head of each to impart a silent benediction, then he held up all ten fingers, twisting to the left and right so that everyone could see. For a time the savage cries that greeted this even managed to drown the thumping of the canned music.

The two youths took off their waistcoat and T-shirt respectively, and the cripple took up position behind them, in his hand a short whip with many tails. As the first blow struck between the shoulder blades of the blond youth everyone cheered and shouted “One.” The man in the cowl smiled and embraced the whole scene with a benevolent gaze, and then he took Lucia by the hand and led her to the trailer, turning his back on the flogging he had ordered. Alberto, seeing them go, took a few steps forward but, as if he had a third eye in the back of his neck, the man raised a hand without turning and, with a complicated movement of his fingers, made him understand that he must stay where he was and carefully watch what was happening, because it would be extremely useful to him.

Leonardo watched the man who looked like Christ enter the trailer, followed by Lucia, and shut the door.

The cripple’s whip came down twenty times on the backs of the two youths, who did not flinch or emit the slightest protest. The blond one, before the last three blows, merely put his hands behind his neck to assure himself that the blows had not disordered his hair. When the youths got up, their backs were marked with red stripes but not bleeding. Several of the other young people ran forward to congratulate them. Leonardo imagined that the booty they had brought home and the whipping they had received must have made up for some fault and sanctioned their readmission to the clan.

Beer was brought and, while the two youths drank, a girl passed a wet rag over their backs. Alberto was swallowed up in the celebrations and Leonardo could no longer see him. The sun was sinking and soon it would be night, and night would bring him dark, silent hours for thinking.

He moved his weight to his left buttock because his right one was going numb. The music formed a constant background, but he no longer noticed it. Turning, he became aware of a black shiny point no bigger than a button, staring at him in the twilight. The elephant was scrutinizing him sadly, perhaps sorry to no longer be alone.