The Human Body (9 page)

Nini was sitting next to me; each time she took my hand and squeezed it. She too was nervous. Silently she studied what the other young pianists were wearing, gauging if by chance she had overdone it with Marianna. She responded politely to the smiles of other mothers seeking complicity, but as though to say: Wonderful, of course, but I can't wait for it to be over. She'd much rather her daughter's music practice take place in the living room as usual, in a safe place, because being there that night required a display of emotions well above what she could stand. I was dying to tell her Marianna was the most talented, but I knew what I would have to face. Nini would look all around, terrified, before admonishing me:
Alessandro, for the love of God! We mustn't make comparisons!

One seat over, much of Ernesto's face was covered by a scarf. He also wore a raw-wool hat with earmuffs and various layers under his coat. It was the second day of his Absolute Fast (nothing but quarts and quarts of water at room temperature), a self-imposed purification that would free him from a series of mysterious toxins present in every type of food. During the Absolute Fasts, which would last for three years and occurred at six-month intervals, Ernesto took time off from the hospital and spent whole days lying on the couch, surrounded by half-empty plastic bottles, wheezing in distress. On the third and final day he would rave deliriously, asking whoever was around what time it was (the Fast ended at ten p.m.) while Nini kept dabbing his forehead with moist cloths. On the evening of the recital he was still in his right mind, but in that drafty church he felt colder than all the others. Before leaving home Nini had beseeched him to have at least a few tablespoons of broth: “It's just water, Ernesto. It will make you feel better.”

“Oh, sure, water laced with animal fats. And salt. You have a strange concept of ‘just water.'”

If he were to pass out in front of everyone, collapsing over the seats in front of them, Nini would be quick to explain it by citing his numerous night shifts as the cause: Sometimes six or seven a month, truly too many, but when someone asks him for a favor he just can't say no
.

Ernesto did not faint, however, and sat through the evening with his arms crossed, his breathing labored under the scarf from the lack of nourishment. When Marianna stood up from the front row and approached the piano, he was the first to clap his hands to encourage her. He straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat, as if to underscore, That's my daughter, the beautiful young girl up on the dais, my daughter
.
I thought of the descending scale that had entangled Marianna during the lengthy preparation period, and repeated to myself in silence, Don't let her stumble, don't let her stumble.

My wish was granted. Marianna did not stumble over the scale. It went much worse. Her performance was a disaster from the first cluster of notes. It wasn't that the sequence was inaccurate—I'd have noticed any false note, that's how well I knew the piece—but the execution was heavy-handed, wooden, to the point of being irritating, especially in the initial arpeggio, which required suppleness and spontaneity. Marianna's fingers had suddenly stiffened and were producing staccato-like sounds disconnected from one another, like fitful sobs. Her tenseness made her contract her shoulders and she was hunched over the piano, almost as if she were fighting it, almost as if it hurt her wrists to play it. Nini and Ernesto didn't move a muscle, they were holding their breath like I was, and now there were three of us who hoped it would all be over as quickly as possible. The Sigh,
Un sospiro
, had become a Heartache.

When she had finished, Marianna stood up, red-faced, made a slight bow, and returned to her seat. I saw Dorothy go over and whisper something in her ear, rubbing her back, while the applause around us was already dwindling uncertainly. I could barely contain myself from standing up and shouting,
Wait! That wasn't how she was supposed to play it—I swear she can do much better, I've listened to her every afternoon and that piece is breathtaking, believe me, it was the stress, let her try again, let her try just one more time . . .
But another girl had already taken her place at the piano and was beginning a Brahms rhapsody with shameless audacity.

On the way home, we spoke little. Ernesto said a few kind words, complimenting the evening as a whole rather than my sister's performance, and Nini concluded by saying: “Oh, how exhausting! But now we'll go home to our nice warm house and tomorrow everything will be back to normal.”

Marianna continued the private piano lessons every Tuesday and Thursday for a total of thirteen years, with waning dedication, until she failed the entrance examination for her seventh year at the conservatory, a disappointment that was passed over in silence in our house and soon forgotten. By then Nini and Ernesto had bitterly opened their eyes to how greatly their daughter's true inclinations differed from what they had earlier imagined for her. After that, Marianna never again raised the lid of the Schimmel grand, not even once; when walking through the living room she stayed away from it, as if the beast had tormented her far too long and, even though now dormant, was able to arouse fear and loathing in her. The piano is still there, silent and gleaming. On the inside, the steel strings are no longer taut and have lost their pitch.

“H
ow long have we been here?”

“Twenty-five days.”

“What the hell! A lot longer than that.”

“Twenty-five, I'm telling you.”

“Still, it seems like an eternity.”

 • • • 

O
n the twenty-fifth day after the Alpines' arrival in Gulistan, the thirty-sixth day since they'd landed in Afghanistan, FOB Ice is attacked for the first time.

A sandstorm has been raging since nightfall, the air is thick with particles, and a dense orange fog obscures the sky. To go the few dozen yards to reach the mess hall or the toilets, the soldiers have to walk with their head down, eyes narrowed and mouth closed, while their exposed cheeks are scraped raw. The tents quake like shivering animals and wind gusts shriek with a frightening
whooosh
. The grains of sand whirling crazily in the squall at top speed have electrically charged every obstacle in their path—it's as if the entire base were suspended over a low-voltage pylon. The molecules' frenzy has even permeated the mood of the soldiers, who seem more garrulous than usual. Inside the Wreck, the guys of the Third Platoon are talking loudly, over one another. From time to time someone gets up from the benches to approach the only window in the place and contemplate the churning cloud of sand and the twisters writhing in the square outside, like ghosts. “Look at that,” he mutters, or maybe, “Shit.”

The shouting is especially annoying to Marshal René, who is struggling to write an e-mail to Rosanna Vitale that he can't seem to find a way to formulate. In his head he's organized his thoughts systematically, as he usually does, but as soon as he transfers them to words, the logic that holds them together suddenly proves shaky, equivocal. He had begun with a long account of his military venture—the exhausting trip from Italy, the inertia of the days in Herat, the transfer to the FOB—and he even allowed himself a detailed description, poetic in its way, of what he saw during the excursion to Qal'a-i-Kuhna and of the storm currently raging. Only afterward did he get around to the real reason for the message, in a paragraph that began, “I've thought a lot about what we talked about the last time,” and continued with increasingly foolish verbal gymnastics just to avoid the word
baby
at all costs, replacing it with circumlocutions such as “what happened,” “the accident,” or even “you know what.” Reading it over, however, he realized that the initial digression was somewhat offensive, the key issue relegated to just one of several topics, as if it were of little or no importance to him, whereas it
is
important to him, and he wants it to be clear, so he deleted everything and started over again. He's now on his fourth attempt and, despite his lexical efforts, despite the fact that he thinks he's tried every opening to approach what he's concerned about, he's failed to arrive at a solution. He's wondering if there really is a way to say what he wants to say without sounding brutal or vile, or both. In a fit of irritation, he composes the lapidary message:

Dear Rosanna,

I think you should have an abortion

and clicks the send button. The storm has slowed down the connection, however, and René has time to discard the e-mail before it's sent into cyberspace.

A small, smelly pile of cigarette butts and ashes has formed at his feet, the smoke hangs in the air in velvety layers, but René lights another cigarette. A child would ruin his life—at the very least it would mess it up considerably. Besides, what sense does it make to have one with a woman he barely knows, or rather whom he doesn't know at all, a woman fifteen years older than him who pays him for the pleasure of his body? A child is a serious matter, it's no joke, it requires certain conditions, it should be planned. The doc said it just takes a minute to get rid of it, that neither the mother nor the baby is aware of it . . . He has to stop using that word,
baby
, stop it! It's little more than a mosquito, that's what it is, it's sucked out through a tube and that's that. There's only one way to get out of this bad situation: Rosanna has to have an abortion, period. Unfortunately he can't be with her because he's tied up on the mission, and he's sorry about that, but when the time comes he'll have flowers sent to her in the hospital, or directly to her house. What kind of flowers are suitable for an abortion?

When he reaches this point, a doubt creeps into the marshal's thoughts: the suspicion that he's being selfish. What if he's wrong? What if what he's about to do is one of those crimes for which there is no forgiveness? Rosanna said it was her fault, one hundred percent hers, but what does René know about how the Almighty will assign blame when the time comes? He's riveted again, his vacant stare turned toward the window that's being buffeted by gusts of sand. René is unfamiliar with the treacherous spirals human reasoning can run up against; his brain is used to following a linear chain of logical steps. All of these back-and-forths, objections and counterobjections, are the most exhausting thing he's ever experienced.

“WAKE UP, MARSHAL!”

Passalacqua claps his hands under his nose. René flinches. Angry, he gives him a shove. Zampieri, from another table, comes to his defense: “Hey, leave him alone. Can't you see the marshal is writing a love letter?” She winks at him. René doesn't respond.

He shuts down the e-mail program and double clicks on the
WarCraft II
icon. Distraction, he needs a little distraction.

A few yards away, at a table kept from wobbling by half a roll of toilet paper flattened and wedged under one of its legs, Ietri, Camporesi, Cederna, and Mattioli are challenging one another at Risk. It's a typical game, showing Cederna to be the bullying braggart he is. He chose the black army and was defeated in multiple territories after less than an hour. Left with an army spottily deployed, he's decided to concentrate all his remaining forces in Brazil, doggedly taking aim at Ietri's soldiers entrenched in Venezuela. Each time it's his turn he renews the attack with maximum strength and Ietri is beginning to feel exasperated. He's sure his buddy's objective has nothing to do with the destruction of his army, nor with the conquest of the South American continent. Cederna's goal is pure and simple arrogance: he wants to irritate him, spoil his fun in the game because he's losing and can't stand the fact that things are going well for Ietri, who after conquering the North American continent is moving slowly southward.

“Brazil attacks Venezuela with three dice,” Cederna crows. “You can kiss your tanks good-bye,
verginella
.”

“I don't know why you're always picking on me,” Ietri whines, but he's immediately sorry. In fact, Mattioli smiles sarcastically.

Cederna mimics him: “
I don't know why you're always picking on me
 . . . Because Venezuelans are shitty communists and have to be punished. That's why.”

He rolls the dice on the board and clearly does it on purpose to scatter Ietri's troops, after he's taken the time to align them carefully. A five, a six, and a deuce. “
Booom!
”

Ietri reluctantly picks up the blue dice. His army, though great in number, now appears weak, caught up in a disorderly retreat. He throws the dice and scores lower with two out of three. Cederna is quick to remove the corresponding tanks, simulating the same number of explosions.

“Get your hands off. I'll do it.”

Ietri has had enough. If he were in Cederna's shoes, he wouldn't act like that. He would team up instead, probably against Mattioli, who has that greedy, silent way of playing, like someone who isn't enjoying it because he takes the competition too seriously. There are twenty euros in the kitty—it's not much, but it's still something. Ietri's desire to win it is so heated, it scares him. At times, more and more often, his thoughts are swept by forces that he can't control.

“Another attack! On Venezuela. Death to the communists!”

“Hey! That's enough!” Ietri blurts out.

“I'll decide when it's enough,
verginella
.”

Camporesi laughs. No one has the foggiest idea of how great Ietri's humiliation is at this point. He grips the dice in his fist.

This time he scores lower with all three—he's lost the territory. He doesn't get ruffled; he has many others left. He removes the tanks and puts them back in the box. If Cederna wants to act like a jerk, that's his problem. He certainly won't give him the satisfaction of getting upset.

It's Mattioli's turn now, and he's getting ready to apply one of the insidious strategies he's been hatching at length in silence, when they hear the first explosion. An ominous, reverberating thud, like an anvil striking the ground. The guys' hearing is trained to distinguish artillery sounds. But of them all, Marshal René is the first to utter the word
mortar
.

He says it quietly, to himself. Then he immediately yells: “Bunker!”

 • • • 

T
he boys spring to their feet and head for the door, swift and orderly. They know the evacuation plan—they've run through it a hundred times at least. For Senior Corporal Major Francesco Cederna, it's the first mortar strike he's heard outside of a training drill. He's amazed at how the sound is identical to the one he's familiar with, but, obviously, of course it is. He almost feels like thanking the enemy for interrupting his losing game of Risk.

Camporesi and Mattioli have lined up to go out. Cederna is left across from Ietri's suddenly pale face. He sweeps the tanks off the board with his forearm: “What a shame,
verginella
. You were doing so well.” He grabs the euros and shoves them in his pocket. Ietri doesn't breathe a word. There's another explosion and this time they unmistakably feel the ground shudder under their feet. “Let's go. After you.”

Cederna is the last to plunge into the sandstorm. He wants to appear offhand and give the impression that he has everything under control. Another shell explodes somewhere to his left. Closer this time. It may have landed inside the base, but visibility is reduced to a few yards—it's impossible to know for sure. The shrill wail of the siren and the collective shouts of the men produce a deafening cacophony in stereophonic sound. Commands intended for soldiers on duty mingle with instructions urging the others to take shelter. Cederna regrets the fact that his platoon is off duty today; they'll have to stay in the kennel like dogs frightened by fireworks. Fucking shitty.

He hears the engines of the armored vehicles start up. Where do they think they're going? With a storm like this they're likely to cause more damage than a hail of shrapnel. He opens his mouth to shout to his companions to get a move on, but a spray of sand smacks him right in the throat; he's forced to slow down, stop, and spit it out on the ground, swallowing the urge to retch. The detonations are closer together now, pumping adrenaline into his bloodstream. It's not unpleasant; it makes him feel jacked up. They're on a rampage, the bastards!

He reaches the bunker. His eyes burn, especially the right one, which has a grain of sand stuck in it; as he pictures it, it feels as big as a rock. The concrete tunnel is crammed with soldiers. “Make some room for me,” he says.

The men try to shift, but the shelter is so packed and they're so jammed in that they don't free up even an inch. Cederna swears. “Squeeze in, damn it!”

René orders him to cut it out, to stay where he is; he can see for himself there's no room in the bunker.

“I'll go to the other bunker, then.”

“Don't talk bullshit. Stay there—you're covered.”

“I said I'm going to the other one. I'm not staying out here.”

“Stay there. That's an order.”

A HESCO Bastion wall made of sand protects his back, but the dirt-filled air filters into the passageway and lashes his face. Cederna's bravado dissolves and he starts feeling nervous. He begins shaking. If only he had his helmet and vest with him he could withdraw like a turtle, but he's exposed. His hair is caked with sand; it's seeped in everywhere—the collar of his jacket, inside his socks, in his nostrils. If a shell were to land close enough, a fragment could easily pierce his shoulder or, worse yet, his neck. He has no intention of taking a fragment—he's going on leave in a few days and he wants to get there all in one piece. Even that asshole Mitrano managed to make it into the bunker, at least halfway in; he's scraping the dried mud off the tip of his boot with his thumbnail.

Cederna has an idea. “Hey, Mitrano.”

“What do you want?”

“I think I see something out there. It could be a man on the ground. Come and look.”

Everyone turns around, suddenly tense. Cederna reassures them with a crafty look.

Mitrano remains on the defensive, however. “I don't believe it,” he says. He's learned the hard way that Cederna is not to be trusted. It's his fault that he's become the laughingstock of the FOB, especially after Cederna welcomed a helicopter full of visiting officers with a sign reading “Take Mitrano Back.” He teases him constantly; he steals food from his plate in the mess hall, chews it, and then spits it back in the dish, mashed to a pulp; he calls him a retard and a jerk-off. Just yesterday he took Mitrano's shaving foam, smeared it all over his waxed chest, and started running around the base half naked, raving deliriously.

“I'm telling you I see something, a dark shape. He might need help. Come on—take a look.”

“Stop it, Cederna,” Simoncelli speaks up. “You're not funny.”

“Yeah, it's another one of your little tricks,” Mitrano says.

“Forget it, then, chickenshit. I'll go by myself.” He starts to get up.

“Are you serious?”

“Of course.”

Mitrano hesitates a second; then he disentangles himself from Ruffinatti's legs, there in front of him, and crawls out of the bunker. Cederna points to a spot.