The Last Man Standing (31 page)

“Fuel for the cars,” the doctor said, “and for the generators.”

“Only that?”

“And prisoners, especially women and children. Richard wants them educated according to the new law.”

Leonardo tried to understand whether the man believed what he was saying or was just repeating it automatically, but the doctor’s face was expressionless, his eyes like cold ash.

“What are those bullet holes on the cars?”

“An airplane machine-gunned us. We’d gone too close to the frontier.”

“Is that where Richard’s trying to go? To France?”

The man did not answer. The camp, with its recumbent bodies and stream of coarse smoke from the bonfire, was reflected in his glasses. The wind had begun to shift it to the west.

“What if we run into another gang?”

The man stuck his hands into his jacket pockets.

“If it’s smaller we attack it. If it’s bigger we keep our distance or try to twin with it.”

“Twin with it?”

“Exchange prisoners.”

Leonardo studied the man’s face. The strengthening light was tingeing their faces blue.

“You say you don’t know where your son is. Which means he may be alive. Why don’t you go and look for him? You may find him again.”

The doctor shook his head.

“Do you care about anything at all except David?”

The man took his time before answering.

Finally he said, “No,” then turned and slipped into a pocket of darkness among the trees where the morning light had not yet reached.

He recognized the field beyond the ditch and the safety barrier where they had sat down for a drink and Sergio had met them again. During those two weeks the snow had melted, but the ground was still hard and wintry with a thin layer of ice.

As soon as he heard the squeaking of brakes on the truck, he understood. It took them about ten minutes to get situated, after which the cripple and some twenty youths cut quickly through the field and disappeared into the forest. The music had already been off for a couple of hours. Leonardo had thought the generator must have run out of fuel. Now he knew that was not what had happened.

The first shots rang out an hour later. At first few and far between, then more frequent.

David, hearing them, began to move nervously around the cage. He never did this when the youths went out on a normal hunt, but now, for many hours, explosions could be heard echoing from the hills. He called to the elephant, who came to rest his head against Leonardo’s chest. He scratched under his ears and talked to him for a long time, asking him many questions about his past to distract him and chase away the black images passing through their minds. David curled his trunk around Leonardo and held him close. Neither moved until Leonardo heard the animal’s huge heart slow down so that it was beating in time with his own. Then they sat together with their eyes turned to the hills and waited. The afternoon slipped away and, as the sun sank, darkness emerged from the woods and besieged the road. An opaline mist lifted from the fields.

When the first raiders reappeared, it was already night and they headed for the bonfire at the head of the convoy, which was normally led by a couple of cars used by scouts, the van where the guns were kept, and Richard’s trailer. They were carrying two chests full of cans on their shoulders. The next to arrive had a can of gasoline and another full of a dark liquid that might have been wine or kerosene. A roar of shouts and shots greeted their arrival, but Leonardo did not lean out to see what was happening at the head of the column; he kept his eyes on the forest, from where the cripple and the main party had not yet appeared. He did not have to wait long. They were somewhat spread out, each carrying something: one had an animal that had already been skinned, some had weapons, and some a box or large piece of dried meat. Four of the boys who had originally left the trailer were missing. The cripple was gripping the arm of Salomon, the elder son. There was no sign of Manon or Sergio or their younger son.

Leonardo heard the cries of excitement at the head of the column get louder, followed by a chorus of “Alberto, Alberto, Alberto . . .”; then the usual music started up again, drowning everything else.

He knelt down, took a piece of David’s dry dung and some straw and mixed them together to make two small balls that he stuffed into his ears, then lay down on the floor and, with the muffled noise filling his head, looked inside himself. He found himself in an empty church, stripped of all trace of the thousands who had once prayed there so earnestly. Vetch had climbed the pillars and water dripping from the roof had formed stalactites of red lime that hung down like scraps of ulcerated flesh. A wooden candelabrum was the only altar fitting. There were no pictures on the walls, only shirts, pants, and dresses tacked up with old nails. There was a door into the sacristy from the aisle to the right. It was open, and a rocking sound emanated from the room.

When he opened his eyes, Leonardo could see shadows projected against the wall of trees that marked the edge of the forest.

“Once people used to read your books, and now you dance for kids and suck bones like a dog.”

“That’s how it is.”

“But why do that?”

“For her.”

“She’s not here.”

“She’ll come back.”

“Are you so sure?”

“I shall dance and suck bones until she comes back, and I shall be here for her.”

He turned his back on the dancing shadows and closed his eyes. The church was dark and he could hear footsteps wandering in the aisles; the footsteps of Manon and Sergio and their child. “I’m here,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”

In the morning, when everyone was asleep, the cripple opened the door and ushered the little boy into the cage.

“You’ll stay here for a bit,” he said, then went away without a glance at Leonardo or the sleeping elephant. Leonardo looked at the child: he had some sort of soft encrustation in his hair but did not seem to have been injured. But he was clearly very tired. Tired and dirty. Infinitely tired, dirty, and depressed.

“Do you recognize me?”

The boy’s eyes ran over him, but he said nothing.

“I’ve been in your house. With me there was a girl, a boy your age, and a dog. Also a tall gentleman.”

He noticed that Salomon was looking at David. The elephant was sleeping with his head propped on his front feet. He looked like a pious person mumbling prayers into cupped hands.

“Don’t be afraid of him,” he said to reassure the boy. “Sit down, you must be tired.”

The child did not move.

“You can sit by the door. I’ll stay here. Are you thirsty?”

Salomon nodded. Leonardo, without moving from the branches he was leaning against, sent the bottle rolling in his direction. Salomon grabbed it before it stopped. After drinking he stood it on the floor and stared at it with his hands hanging by his sides. He was wearing a pair of jeans, a light pullover with horizontal stripes, and felt slippers. The color of his eyes reminded him of the water of a fjord seen from the top of a Nordic cliff. They were the same shade of blue as his mother’s and required the same strength of character to sustain it. For a couple of hours now a crystalline silence had rested over the whole trailer. The croaking of a crow was deafening.

“Do you really not remember me?”

No answer.

“We had a meal together and you asked me the name of my dog.”

Salomon stepped two paces back until he came up against the wooden wall and let himself slide to the ground. Leonardo realized he would soon be asleep. So as not to disturb him, he turned away to look at the forest. A tired sun was struggling from behind a thick blanket of clouds, as the darkness grudgingly retreated to leave the grass veiled with mother-of-pearl.

“That’s an Indian elephant,” the child said.

Leonardo looked at him. His face was very pale and his hair had been cut pageboy style.

“Are you an expert on elephants?”

“Not really, but I’ve got a book that tells all about them.”

“It must be a book with lots of photographs.”

“Yes, but it has drawings too and a sort of puzzle.”

“His name’s David.”

The child nodded.

“Does he eat those leaves?”

“Yes.”

“It says in my book that elephants are always on the move because they have to eat so much. They have intestines thirty-seven meters long.”

“He doesn’t eat much.”

Salomon studied the animal. In the cold, troubled air the elephant looked as if it were made of slate.

“Is he also here because he tried to escape?” the boy said.

Leonardo touched his nose: the break had healed leaving it crooked and hooked.

“Have you tried to escape?” he asked.

“Yes, but I twisted my ankle.”

“That was very brave of you. But now you should rest.”

The child rubbed his hands together. It looked as if he hoped he might create fire or light that way.

“I’m afraid to fall asleep in case the elephant tramples on me.” He interrupted himself: “Elephants can be aggressive.”

“This one’s very docile.”

“What does ‘docile’ mean?”

“That he’s gentle.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t know me.”

Leonardo studied his hands.

“I’ll stay awake and keep an eye on him, and when he wakes up I’ll tell him who you are.”

They looked at each other for a while in the silence of the new dawn, and then the child closed his eyes and let his chin fall on his chest.

For three days, the shouts and music of partying, lasting until dawn, reached them from the head of the procession of vehicles. During those two days no one, except the doctor, came near the wagon to see how the child was or to annoy Leonardo. Salomon, when not asleep, was content to watch the youngsters coming back from the forest carrying the food, bottles, pans, furniture, and other objects that had once been part of the only home he had ever known.

Watching him, Leonardo wondered where the boy could be hiding what must be a desperate need to be alone and his grief over what had happened. In fact, he never mentioned his parents or brother or referred to their fate. He never asked any questions about the future or showed any sign of missing all the things he had had until the previous day. It was as though nothing had come to him as a surprise.

At dawn, when the doctor came, he woke and ate the food the man brought. Leonardo left the tenderest pieces of meat for Salomon and waited until he had had enough before eating the rest himself. Then Salomon would sit with his back to the wall in silence, except when he suddenly began to talk about animals he knew about, particularly his favorites, which were horses and foxes.

One afternoon he told Leonardo about the leafcutter ants of South America; and how they built nests eight meters deep with a room in the middle big enough for a man to stand upright. He explained that these ants got their name not because they ate leaves but because they cut them and carried them into their nest, where they made them into a bed on which they could grow mushrooms. In fact, they had such a passion for their favorite mushrooms that they not only ate them, but they used their own shit to sow the spores in the nest where they would grow and could then be eaten in comfort and fed to their larvae.

At dawn, with the child still asleep, Leonardo asked the doctor what had happened to his parents. For a while they listened in silence to Salomon’s breathing as he snored through a blocked nose in the way small children do. Then the doctor told Leonardo they had barricaded themselves in their house and the father had killed four youths before he was hit in the neck. Only then had they been able to break down the door. The woman and the younger child had fled to the attic where, judging all was lost, she had shot her son and then herself. When Leonardo asked where Salomon had been at the time, the doctor said he had been found hiding under the trap door to the secret room his father had dug beneath the house as a place for provisions.

In those two days, Salomon came to trust David, though he never went near him except when Leonardo was at his side. The elephant showed himself even more gentle with Salomon, giving short moans of pleasure when the boy’s small hand touched his thick hide, and turning away when the child retired into the corner to attend to his physical needs.

On their last night together in the cage, the child woke Leonardo to say he had had a bad dream.

“A very bad one?”

“The worst I’ve ever had.”

“I expect you’d rather not tell me about it.”

“Better not.”

“Yes, perhaps that’s best.”

Leonardo felt his forehead to see if he was feverish. It was the first time the boy had let himself be touched. His forehead was cool.

“You can go back to sleep. You can’t have two bad dreams in one night.”

“Can I sleep here?”

“Of course you can. Are you cold?”

“Yes, very cold. Will David be good?”

“Of course he will.”

The child lay down beside Leonardo, both with their backs against the elephant’s belly. Leonardo slipped his left arm around Salomon’s shoulders.

“Warmer?”

“Yes, but David has a bad smell.”

“That’s probably me. I haven’t changed my clothes for such a long time.”

“And I haven’t washed for three days. If Mamma knew all hell would break loose.”

“Your mother would understand the situation.”

They fell silent, feeling the bass notes of the music thump against their ribs.

“What have you done to your feet? Why are they black?”

“I’m a dancer. A dancer who sometimes dances on hot coals, but one evening I didn’t concentrate properly and burned myself. But they’re getting better now.”

“Sure?”

“It’s normal for people who dance on hot coals to have black feet. It’s a professional risk, like a tennis player having one arm more muscular than the other.”

“What’s tennis?”

“Have you never seen a tennis match?”

The boy shook his head.

“You will one day, and maybe you’ll even be able to play. Let’s get some sleep now. In a few hours the doctor will be here and bring us something to eat.”

“Can I ask you something else?”