The Human Body (4 page)

Di Salvo and his family turn to watch them, and out of the corner of his eye Ietri notes that even Cederna has turned around.

He doesn't know what's gotten into him.

Two teardrops well up in his mother's eyes. Her mouth is open, the upper lip trailing a resilient strand of saliva, and her lower lip is trembling a little. “I'm sorry,” the woman whispers.

Before now she's never apologized to him. Ietri is torn between wanting to shout at her that she's a stupid imbecile and the urge to bend down and pick up the slivers of candy one by one and piece them back together. He feels his troop mates' eyes on him, judging him.

I'm a man now, and I'm going to war
.

Later he won't remember if he actually said it or if he just thought it. He grabs his backpack and throws it over his shoulder. He kisses his mother briefly on the cheek, one side only. “I'll be back soon,” he says.

S
ecurely stored in Lieutenant Egitto's cabinet, though with the key handy in the lock, is a personal stockpile of medications, the only ones in the dispensary not recorded in the inventory register. Besides a few over-the-counter drugs for short-lived ailments and some totally ineffective ointments for flaking skin, there are three bottles of yellow-and-blue antianxiety capsules. The bottles are not labeled and one is just about empty. Egitto takes sixty milligrams of duloxetine in the evening before going to the mess hall, as he has for almost a year; it seemed to him that most of the unwanted side effects were worked off during sleep that way, starting with sleep itself, which hit him like a ton of bricks and rarely allowed him to stay up later than ten o'clock. When he first started taking the pills, he had experienced just about all the side effects mentioned in the explanatory leaflet for antidepressants, from acute headaches to loss of appetite, from intestinal bloating to intermittent nausea. The most bizarre of all was a severe numbness of the jaw, like when you yawn too wide. He's past all that, however. Just as he's past showing any trace of the shame he felt at the beginning, when he felt like a loser for taking the capsules, like a drug addict, the same shame that led him to slip the pills out of the blister packs and transfer them into unlabeled bottles. For some time now, Egitto has accepted his defeat. He's discovered that hidden within him is a vast, soothing amiability.

The serotonergic drug performs to perfection the task for which it was created, which is to keep any kind of anxiety and emotional involvement at bay. The turbulent angst of the period following his father's death—with all the psychosomatic reactions and dark, seductive thoughts that the leaflet generically described as “suicidal tendencies”
—
floats somewhere above it all, held in check the way a reservoir is by a retaining wall. The lieutenant is satisfied with his level of peacefulness. He wouldn't trade that serenity for anything. Sometimes his mouth gets parched and he still hears a sudden, high-pitched whistling in his ear, followed by a roar that's slow to fade. And there's that other little drawback, of course: he hasn't had a proper erection in months and the few times he did he wasn't able to make the most of it, even on his own. But what does he care about sex at a military base in the middle of the desert, populated almost exclusively by male specimens?

He's been in Afghanistan for 191 days and at Forward Operating Base Ice for almost four months; the FOB is at the northern entrance of the Gulistan Valley, not far from Helmand Province, where U.S. troops have been fighting every day to cleanse the villages of insurgents. The marines consider their work in Gulistan concluded, after building a scant ten-acre outpost in a strategic area and reclaiming several surrounding villages, including Qal'a-i-Kuhna, where the bazaar is. In truth, like all operations since the start of the conflict, the mop-up operation in the area has been incomplete: the security bubble extends for a radius of just a few miles around the base. Inside there are still insidious pockets of guerrillas and outside is hell.

After a period in which the FOB was occupied by the Georgians, the territory came under Italian command. In mid-May, a convoy of ninety vehicles left Herat, following the Ring Road south, as far as Farah, and from there cut east, vainly pursuing some Taliban caught off guard. Lieutenant Egitto had participated in the mission as head of—and sole component of—the medical unit.

The base they'd found was in appalling condition: a few huts full of cracks, some deep holes in the ground of dubious utility, garbage, coils of barbed wire and vehicle parts scattered everywhere; showers—nylon bags riddled with holes and hanging from a hook—lined up out in the open, without partitions. There was no sign of toilets. The only structure in decent condition was the armory, which said a lot about their predecessors' order of priorities. Egitto's regiment chose it to house the command center. During the first weeks, efforts had focused on providing the camp with a minimum of basic amenities and strengthening the defense of the main entrance by building a long, zigzagged row of fortifications.

Egitto concentrated on setting up the infirmary, in a tent not far from the command center. In one half he arranged a gurney and a table, with two cabinets full of drugs and a small field refrigerator to store the perishable ones. Separated by a tarp with a mottled camouflage pattern is his personal area. The waiting room is a bench outside, fashioned out of bent wire mesh.

Once the tent became, in his opinion, sufficiently presentable, his efforts definitely slowed down. Now that he might make a number of improvements—hang some anatomical prints on the walls, see to it that patients who are waiting might enjoy a little shade, unpack the last cartons, and consider a more appropriate place for his surgical instruments—he doesn't feel like it. Instead, he wastes a lot of time reproaching himself. It doesn't matter much; by now he's about to go home. His six-month tour of duty is up and the rest of his brigade has abandoned the outpost. Some of them are already back in Italy, frantically enjoying their twenty-five days of leave and renewing intimate relationships, which at a distance had taken on the appearance of pure fantasy. The last to leave was Colonel Caracciolo, whose words, as he climbed into the helicopter and looked over the barren landscape, said it all: “Another shitty place I won't miss.” Colonel Ballesio's confident, well-rested division took over the place and it will be a good number of days before the base is operating normally. Just in time for the new rotation.

Seated at his desk, Egitto is dozing—undoubtedly the work he's been best at for some time—when a soldier sticks his head into the infirmary.

“Doctor?”

Egitto jumps. “What is it?”

“The colonel informs you that the relief medic will arrive tomorrow. A helicopter will take you back to Herat.”

The young man is still half in and half out, his face indistinct in the shadows.

“Has Sergeant Anselmo recovered?”

“Who?”

“Sergeant Anselmo. He's the one assigned to replace me.”

As far as he'd been told, the sergeant had the flu with respiratory complications; until a few days ago he'd been in the field hospital in Herat with his nose and mouth squeezed into a soft oxygen mask.

The soldier raises his hands, intimidated. “I don't know, sir. They just told me to inform you that the relief medic will be here and that the helicopter—”

“Will take me to Herat. Right, I got it.”

“Exactly, sir. The day after tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

The soldier lingers in the doorway.

“Anything else?”

“Congratulations, Lieutenant.”

“For what?”

“You're going home.”

He disappears; the tent's flap swings back and forth a few seconds, alternately exposing and obscuring the harsh light outside. Egitto leans his forehead on his folded arms and tries to go back to sleep. Before the week is over, if all goes as it should, he'll be in Torino. Thinking about it, he experiences a sudden sense of suffocation.

His nap ruined, he decides to get up and go out. He walks along the east fence and across the fortified area of the corps of engineers, where the tents are placed so close together you have to hunch your shoulders to get through them. He climbs a ladder leaning against the fortification. The man stationed on guard duty salutes, then steps aside to make room for him.

“Are you the doc?”

“Yep, that's me.”

Egitto puts a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes from the light.

“Want my binoculars?”

“No, that's okay.”

“No, here—take my binoculars. You can see better.” The soldier slips the glasses off his neck. He's very young and eager to be of service. “They have a manual focus. You have to turn the little wheel. Here, I'll do it.”

Egitto lets him focus them; then he slowly explores the flat, open expanse that lies exposed to the early afternoon sun. In the distance the light creates mirages of small shimmering pools. The mountain is scorching hot and seems determined to display its innocence at all costs: hard to believe that it harbors a myriad of caves and ravines from which the enemy constantly watches the FOB, even at this very moment. But Egitto knows it too well to let himself be fooled or to forget.

He aims the binoculars in the direction of the Afghan truck drivers' encampment. He spots them sitting in the shade of the tarpaulins they've carelessly hung between the vehicles, crouched with their backs against the wheels, knees to their chests. They're capable of staying in that position for hours, sipping hot tea. They transported matériel from Herat to the FOB and now they don't dare head back for fear of reprisals. They're confined to that one area they consider safe: they can't leave but they can't stay there forever either. As far as the lieutenant knows, they've never washed. They survive on a few jerry cans of water a day, enough to quench their thirst. They accept the food offered to them from the mess hall without saying thanks, but not seeming to demand it either.

“Not much to see, huh, Doc?”

“A little boring,” Egitto says, but he doesn't think so. The mountain changes shape every second; there are infinite nuances of the same yellow, but you have to be able to recognize them. It's a hostile landscape to which it was easy for him to grow attached.

“I didn't think it would be like this,” the soldier says. He seems forlorn.

When Egitto climbs down from the fortification, he heads for the phones, even though there aren't many people he can call, no one he has—or wants—to tell about his return. He calls Marianna. He enters the code on the prepaid card; a recorded message informs him of the remaining credit and asks him to please hold.

“Hello?”

Marianna always sounds abrupt when answering the phone, as if she's been interrupted doing something that requires her utmost concentration. As soon as she recognizes his voice, though, she softens.

“It's Alessandro.”

“Finally.”

“How are you?”

“I have a headache that just won't quit. And you? Did they leave you all by yourself in the end?”

“The new regiment arrived. It's strange—they treat me like an old wise man.”

“They don't know how wrong they are.”

“Yeah. They'll soon find out.”

There's a pause. Egitto listens to his sister's slightly labored breathing.

“I went back to the house yesterday.”

The last time they were there they'd gone together. Ernesto had been dead a few days and they were already wandering through the rooms, their eyes choosing which pieces of furniture to keep. In front of the mirror in the foyer, his sister had said, Could I take this? Take whatever you want, he'd replied; I'm not interested. But Marianna had been furious: Why do you do it, huh? Why do you try to make me feel guilty by saying, Take whatever you want, as if I were a selfish pig?

“How was it?” he asks.

“How do you think? Empty, dusty.
Sad
. I can't believe I lived in such a place. Just think, I found the washing machine with a load of wash in it. They hadn't even looked. The clothes were pasted together. I got a trash bag and threw them out. Then I opened the wardrobe and threw out the rest as well. Everything I happened to get my hands on.”

“You shouldn't have.”

“Why shouldn't I have?”

Egitto doesn't know why. He knows it's something that shouldn't have been done, not yet. “They might have been useful,” he says.

“Useful to whom? To you? That stuff is awful. And besides, I happen to be on my own here. You could at least have the decency not to tell me what I should or shouldn't do.”

“You're right. I'm sorry.”

“I contacted a couple of real estate agents. They say the house needs to be fixed up, we won't get much for it. The important thing is for us to get rid of it as soon as possible.”

Egitto would like to tell Marianna that the sale can wait, but he remains silent.

She presses him: “So when are you coming back?”

“Soon. I think.”

“Did they give you a
date
?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Maybe I really should make that phone call. I'm sure someone would take an interest in the matter.”

Marianna always shows a certain impetuosity toward his affairs, as if she claimed the right to preempt his decisions. Recently she's threatened several times to lodge a complaint with the Defense Administration no less. So far Egitto has managed to talk her out of it. “They'll get back at me. I've already explained it to you,” he says.

“I don't know how you can live like that, not knowing where you'll be in a week, or a month. Always at the mercy of other people's whims.”

“It's part of my job.”

“It's a stupid job and you
know
it.”

“Could be.”

“Getting involved in a place that has nothing to do with you.
Zilch
. Hiding among a bunch of fanatics. And don't try to tell me they're not, because I know
exactly
how they are.”

“Marianna . . .”

“There's a certain amount of stupidity in that.”

“Marianna, I have to go now.”

“Oh,
of course
. I thought so. Look, Alessandro, it's really urgent that we sell the house. The way prices are going in the area is appalling. Only
they
could have made the place seem idyllic. Ernesto was convinced he was an expert when it came to investments, remember? He was convinced he was an expert
in everything
.
In fact
, the apartment isn't worth anything anymore. I'm really worried.”

“I'll take care of it, I told you.”

“You have to do it
quickly
, Alessandro.”