But I couldn’t protest, I couldn’t point out I had indicated a preference for placement as an armorer or machine gunner—because a soldier must obey above all else. I wanted to prove that the men were wrong, but I didn’t know how. Lying in my bunk at night, in an enormous dormitory in the wing of my new barracks reserved for us women—privileged, protected, or simply pets, perhaps not even that; second-class soldiers in any case—I sensed I was in the wrong place. If this was all the army could offer me, if being a soldier meant saluting the flag and then counting down the hours behind a desk, answering the phone and scheduling appointments for the commander, I preferred to pack it in, request an honorable discharge, and go home. But I didn’t have the courage. The army was my dream. And I didn’t want to betray it.
* * *
The Americans came to Sollum. They had held the province until the year before and still ran the PRT at Farah. It seems they were satisfied with our work, and that made our commanders cocky. Paggiarin dreamed of a visit from General Petraeus, but he chose another base, and never made it to ours. The regular Afghan army generals came. The police chiefs came. Hours and hours spent exchanging information about regional commands, councils, cooperation with the civil components of government organizations and NGOs involved in the reconstruction of infrastructures—only a faint echo of which reached me. After flag salute, roll call, and the morning briefing, other than filling out paperwork, oiling my rifle and cleaning out the sand that threatened to jam the mechanism, other than making sure that my platoon was active—unrolling concertina wire or on guard duty in the towers—or supervising them on the firing range, I didn’t have much to do. I’d never expected to be bored in Afghanistan.
At dawn, as I inspected sleepy Pegasus faces, I’d repeat to myself the names of my classes at the NCO Academy. Leadership. Daring. Honor. Loyalty. Duty. Firmness. Will. Drive. Pride. Dignity. Tenacity. If I managed to represent—and communicate to my men—all those things, then I really deserved to be here. To be a leader means to be responsible—like a father. If even one of them made a mistake, the company captain would punish me. He didn’t seem to trust me yet. He kept me inside Sollum longer than all the other platoon leaders. On the list for patrol duty, he put Pegasus last. I was disappointed. But I was ready.
4
LIVE
The guest at the Bellavista Hotel does nothing but run, apparently. On Christmas Day he ran in the direction of the Tahiti, and on the morning of the twenty-sixth Manuela sees him running in the direction of the Piazza of the War Dead; he’s back on the beach again in the afternoon, but this time running toward the tower. He exits the hotel quickly, from the back door, in a blue tracksuit, wool cap, headphones, and sunglasses. Manuela notes that he never leaves at the same time and always goes in a different direction. As if he were deliberately randomizing his movements. It’s a professional deformation of hers: she has learned not to overlook the smallest detail.
She runs into him that same evening as, tired and slow, she finally reaches the Tahiti’s Polynesian hut. He’s coming toward her, still running at a good clip. He has taken off his wool cap and sweatshirt, and his T-shirt is wet with perspiration despite the cold. He has the lean physique of someone who exercises constantly. Manuela is pleasantly surprised. From a distance she had thought he was middle-aged. He sees her, too—there’s no one else on the beach—just the thin girl with the shorn head sitting on the cement wall, watch in hand. Manuela checks to see if it took her less time today than yesterday, if she shaved off a few minutes. Negative. He glides past her, slowing slightly. Manuela can hear his labored breath. About thirty years old. Nearly six feet two. Muscular. Wide shoulders. Rolex on his right wrist. Left-handed, like her. She follows him with her eyes as he heads back up the beach toward the hotel. An easy stride, a fast, steady pace, and he stops only when he gets to the glass door of the hotel. There, the guest at the Bellavista turns, hesitating for a second. Manuela can tell he’s looking at her.
Dinner at eight thirty at the restaurant, alone, always the same table. The waiter stops and talks to him whenever he brings him a dish. The guest listens distractedly, and responds only now and then. But the waiter’s chatter doesn’t bother him, in fact he smiles frequently. At nine twenty he goes up to his room, turns on the light, but doesn’t raise the shutters, which remain lowered, level with the balcony railing. “Are you playing, Aunt Manù?” Alessia tugs at her sleeve, rousing her from her reverie. “Of course I’m playing, what kind of holiday would it be without tombola?”
Christmas at the Parises’ is always the same. A fake tree with red, green, and white lights, a forest of spiral candles from the supermarket, the nativity scene on top of the TV cabinet, with brown hills made out of packing paper and the star of wonder Scotch-taped to the grotto. That nativity scene is at least of legal age, because ever since Manuela can remember, it would reappear every December 8, looking exactly the same, in the usual corner between the two windows. Even the little statues are still the same ones. Every year, before her father left, the whole family would go to Rome for the holiday of the Befana, and she and Vanessa would get to buy one new figurine at the stalls in Piazza Navona. It was absolute bedlam, a practically impenetrable swarm of people, and they had to worm their way around big people’s legs and backs, around spinning merry-go-rounds with music blasting, balls of pink cotton candy, colorful balloons in the most astonishing shapes, and Befana witches trying to convince the little ones to get their picture taken with them. They constantly risked losing sight of their parents—and when they did, they would burst into tears until someone handed them back to their mother, who was so happy to have found them that she forgot to spank them. They would squabble about which figurine to choose, Vanessa wanting the little shepherdess or washerwoman, and Manuela the shepherd, but in the end Manuela would win out, because when she wanted something it was impossible to make her change her mind, and Vanessa had learned to let her sister have her way when it came to little things so she could control the more important decisions.
Twenty years later, the shepherds in the Paris living room seem disheartened. The wise men are already lying in wait on the top shelf, even though it’s still ten days till Epiphany. There are only two of them, though, because black Baldassare, with his turban and red cape, is missing. “Did you do the nativity scene?” Manuela asks her niece, intercepting her as she drags the big tombola box to the table, huffing and puffing. “Who else was going to do it, Grandma Leda, who’s blind as a bat?” says Alessia the know-it-all. She has lost her two front teeth and is embarrassed about it, so puts her hand over her mouth when she talks, which makes her practically incomprehensible. Manuela hadn’t seen her in a year, and finds she has grown ungainly and as chubby as a sausage. It’s too bad she lacks Vanessa’s feline beauty. Maybe she takes after her father. The perfidy of nature is depressing. Alessia’s pointy profile and frizzy hair are the mark of an imbecile unworthy of leaving even the slightest trace in her sister’s life. Vanessa is a good soul, she didn’t deserve this kind of punishment. “On Epiphany I’ll take you to get a new figurine at Piazza Navona,” she promises her. “What’s that?” Alessia mumbles; she’s never been to Piazza Navona. Manuela can’t believe it. She respects traditions, in a family they’re everything—or almost everything. They’re like the mortar that binds the bricks and strengthens the walls. Otherwise, it’s like building on sand. At the first gust of wind, it all collapses.
Manuela would like to ask her what grade she’s in, if she likes geography, if she has an atlas or a globe, so she can show her where she’s been all this time and why she hasn’t been able to come see her, but she doesn’t remember how to talk to children so she doesn’t say anything. “Is it true you’re leaving after the holidays?” Alessia startles her by asking as she drops the box on the table and flings the cover onto the couch. “Are you sorry?” Manuela flatters herself, smiling. “No, then I can have my room back,” her niece responds sincerely. “All my toys are in there.”
&nb
sp; Alessia dumps the cards on the tablecloth. The old tombola game! The cards sticky with sugar, and orange peels for chips. Manuela’s eyes well up with tears at the sight of those cards, the grid of numbers and pictures. She’s annoyed that she’s become so emotional. She gets up, turns her back to the table, and pretends to adjust the curtains, fiddling with the cord, because she doesn’t want her mother to see her like this. Her mother tells everyone that she’ll be Italy’s first female general one day. And that Vanessa has to be there that day, even if she has a cesarean scheduled. Manuela has given up trying to dissuade her, even though she knows that the first female officers will have to serve twenty years before they can even be considered for promotion to brigade general. And she isn’t even an officer.
“I don’t feel like playing tombola,” Grandma Leda snaps. “It’s for Alessia,” Vanessa whispers, lifting her eyes to the skies, “to celebrate Christmas, she has fun, do it for her, Grandma, there’s no harm in it.” “Christmas is invented, and besides, it’s important to protect yourself from the wicked world,” Grandma insists, drumming on the table. Behind her thick lenses, her eyelids lower over her eyes, like a salamander. A sign of hostility. The guest at the Bellavista comes out onto the balcony to smoke, elbows resting on the railing, eyes peering into their living room, their tombola game, their life. Manuela goes back to the table but leaves the curtain open, aware that he’s watching her.
Her mother takes the chart and the bag full of numbers. Grandma flings the card that Alessia has placed in front of her onto the floor. “I’m not playing, I’m not playing!” she repeats obstinately, crossing her arms. “I could kill her when she acts like this,” Cinzia sighs. “What an awful thing old age is. Please God, let me die with all my teeth in my mouth and my brain still working…” “My brain works better than yours,” Grandma cuts in. “I’m not playing, because games are a tool of the devil.” Manuela tries to remember how old Grandma Leda is. Eighty-five, maybe. And she looks it. She never saw a woman that old in Afghanistan, where female life expectancy is no higher than forty-four. Life doesn’t become a habit there. Cinzia took her mother in when Manuela enlisted, saying she wouldn’t be coming back, because a soldier’s home is her barracks. Her mother was convinced the apartment was big enough, four spacious bedrooms, all with windows, two with balconies even, and that sooner or later Vanessa and her daughter would find a way to get their own place. But you forgive things in a daughter that you don’t in an elderly mother, and their cohabitation quickly degenerated: Manuela’s mother and grandmother fought constantly, viciously, and it didn’t any get better when Manuela returned. Grandma Leda repeats stubbornly that she doesn’t want to celebrate Christmas, a blasphemous, pagan holiday. “Fine, Mamma, do as you like,” Cinzia gives up. “We’re going to play tombola.”
She shakes the bag noisily, the numbers rattling around inside. Then, after a strategic pause, she extracts the first one. “Fear!” she announces with a kind of solemnity. “I got it!” Alessia rejoices, placing an orange peel on number 90. “Seventy-six, ladies’ legs,” Cinzia says, ignoring Grandma’s furtive movements; she gets up, scraping her chair legs on the waxed floor, gives her daughter, her granddaughters, and her great-granddaughter a disgusted look, and then, wobbly yet proud, head held high, exits the room without turning around, without saying goodbye. “Death that speaks, forty-seven.” “Two in a row!” Alessia shouts, incredulous, snatching the coins from the pot. Then, with increasing avidity, she pockets the prizes for four and five in a row as well. “Don’t forget about us when you’re rich!” Manuela says sweetly and then winks at her mother. Cinzia always lets the kids win. She can tell the numbers with her fingers, so she feels around in the bag for ones on their cards. She must have done the same for Manuela once, too, though she never realized it.
Alessia’s pile of coins grows, and every once in a while she hides one under her card, so she won’t have to give it back if her luck turns. Alessia doesn’t know it, but Manuela has left her half her treasure: the earnings she had set aside for a future that might never have arrived had she not returned from Afghanistan. It’s not a lot, but it’s all she has. Before she deployed, Manuela had both her funeral arrangements and her will notarized. She had written it all out by hand, block letters on a sheet of legal paper, because Sergeant Piscopo of S4—logistics—had told her, who knows if he was right, that handwritten wills are considered more valid. “I leave my savings (9,750 euros in my account at the Banca Popolare of Verona, Branch 52) and the indemnity owed me if I die during my tour of duty to my brother, Paris Traian, and my niece, Paris Alessia. I leave my jewelry to my mother, Colella Cinzia. It’s in a safe deposit box in my bank. I leave my Honda CBR 1000 motorcycle to my sister, Paris Vanessa; it’s in the parking lot at the Salsa barracks in Belluno. I leave the white gold and sapphire ring that Giovanni gave me to Gogean Teodora; she knows which one it is. To Paris Traian I leave his grandfather Paris Vittorio’s medal and photographs, they’re in box n. 1 in the attic at Via Garibaldi. I’d also like him to have my army things, if he wants them. Bocca Giovanni can have my computer. I would like Vanessa to give something of mine to my friend Scianna Angelica, but she’s not required to do so. If it’s legal, sprinkle my ashes in the sea in front of the tower.”
The guest at the Bellavista stays on his balcony all evening, watching the four Paris women play tombola. Evidently he has nothing better to do.
* * *
The local TV reporter shows up behind the wheel of a Mercedes 1800 and takes them to the countryside, to a farmhouse near Cerveteri, perched on a hill above the Etruscan necropolises, with stables and a pool. Vanessa agreed to go out with him as long as he chose somewhere relaxing, no crowds or commotion. Manuela’s nerves are frayed. “I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about posttraumatic stress disorder, but she has a meltdown at every loud or sudden noise.” “It’s peaceful there,” Lapo swore.
On the way there, Lapo tries to impress the provincial Paris sisters by lecturing them on his fascinating profession, the world of TV news, communication in the Internet age, global information, et cetera. Manuela doesn’t even try to look interested. She hates reporters. There’s no military culture in Italy, reporters don’t understand soldiers, they’re interested in them only when they’re unloaded from a plane in caskets, and while they’re interviewing you they’re thinking to themselves that you’re an ass or a fanatic—in any case a fool who’s been dazzled by propaganda, while they, who know the whole truth about international politics, are superior, enlightened. Vanessa’s afraid her sister’s hostility will hurt her own chances. Which seems unfair. Lapo is cute, nice, and not a caveman at all, she doesn’t get to meet people like him very often. The guys she picks up online inevitably turn out to be inarticulate sex maniacs with brains the size of fly shit, she’s already gone out with the men in the weight room at her gym, and the ones who take her group dance class are either losers or have male menopause. And besides, it would go against her professional ethics, and she prefers to avoid complications. She interrupts Lapo’s monologue to ask him his sign. “Scorpio.” “Well, what do you know,” Vanessa rejoices, “I’m a Scorpio, too. Manuela’s a Gemini, though. You two wouldn’t get along even if you were the only two survivors of a nuclear holocaust.”
Lapo invited a friend along, just like she’d asked him to. He’s waiting for them at the farmhouse, flipping through a newsmagazine in front of the fireplace, and when they walk in he looks at his watch, as if in a hurry to get this over with. His name is Stefano, he works for an NGO in Mozambique. He’s a nurse, with a specialty in obstetrics. Single. As tall as a lamppost, bundled in an ugly braided wool sweater, corduroy pants, with a metal stud in his eyebrow, and features so anonymous, it’s as if they’d been partially erased. Vanessa sizes him up: morally rigid and boring. But he’s lived in war-torn places and so is perfect for Manuela. It seems like something arranged by a dating service, and Vanessa whispers in Lapo’s ear that she’ll give him a commission if it works out. Lapo re
plies that he’s trying to fix himself up, not Stefano. Vanessa laughs.
The farm organizes horseback riding in the hills. With docile horses and expert guides, so even beginners and children can go. They won’t need a guide, though, because Lapo swears he can lead them, he’s been riding since he was a kid, he’s practically a horse whisperer, like Robert Redford in that movie. The Paris sisters confer. Vanessa wants to go, even though she’s never been on a horse in her life, but Manuela is reluctant. “I can’t ride, and besides, I should ask Doctor Brazzi permission.” “What are you, a minor, you have to ask permission?” Vanessa snaps. “The army doesn’t own you. So call him, if you really need his okay.” Vanessa insists because she wants to have fun and do something different. Between her job, her daughter, and Youssef, she feels trapped, wilting like a rose without water. Lapo, on the other hand, is young, he doesn’t even look twenty-five. And Manuela’s funk is starting to get on her nerves. Afghanistan sent her back a sister she doesn’t recognize—standoffish, weak-kneed, a stranger. They’ve barely said a word to each other in nearly three days, and they used to share everything, absolutely everything, even the most intimate, secret things. Manuela locks herself in her room for hours, listening to twisted music—screaming heavy metal, bestial braying, an out-of-tune guitar and a paranoid drummer right out of the asylum. Or stands out on the balcony smoking cigarette after cigarette. She’s smoking, the girl who used to sniff your clothes, interrogate you if you smelled of smoke, who could spot a speck of ash on the bathroom floor … A guy called her, nice-sounding, with a northern accent, from the Dolomites, said he was from her platoon, in Rome on vacation with two friends from Pegasus, they wanted to come see their platoon leader. But Manuela didn’t even want to talk to him, screamed at her to tell him she wasn’t home. She’d even been cold to Alessia, whom she used to adore: when she came home on leave she’d smother her with presents. But now, nothing, not even a kiss. Indifferent, almost hostile. The change is so noticeable that last night, as soon as she went down for a walk on the beach, Alessia asked her if a bomb fragment had pierced Aunt Manuela’s heart, like the glass shard in Kai’s heart in Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen. Vanessa didn’t remember the story, but she said yes. There were so many shards in Manuela’s body, they couldn’t remove or even count them all. The doctor said they would bother her at first, hurt her even, but eventually they would be absorbed, they would become part of her flesh and bones.
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