Limbo

by Melania G. Mazzucco

  But the idea of spending one hundred and eighty days in that desolate, alien landscape, as if on another planet, filled me with anxiety. I couldn’t wait to make contact with the locals. The ANA soldiers, the ANP officers, the interpreters and truck drivers aside, I hadn’t seen a single Afghani in two weeks. The forays outside Sollum—whether to patrol the territory or simply to escort convoys of trucks filled with fertilizer or saffron bulbs—turned out to be much more stressful than I could have imagined. The invisibility of the threat made it absolute, almost metaphysical. We had orders not to stop. We’d get off the paved road as soon as we could. It was a new road, surrounded by an almost surreal emptiness, but it was too exposed: we called it the Road to Hell. We’d head down poorly marked paths that petered out in yellow stubble, climb steep hills and cross riverbeds that were now merely muddy brooks slithering among the rocks, only to pick the road back up a few miles later, and then leave it again, entangling ourselves in laborious, exhausting itineraries. It’s called randomized activity: we followed different, unpredictable routes so as not to give the enemy any point of reference. In the evenings, we would spend hours in the shed that served as the operations room, planning itineraries. I had studied topography and cartography at Viterbo. It was one of the most dreaded exams. A third of the students failed, and since we had only two chances to pass it or be expelled, we studied like mad, even at night. I adored maps and charts, and by then I could read them like musical scores. I’d been practicing patrol activities, orienteering, and ground movements since my first year. I’d demonstrated a real spatial sense—I’d call it an instinct even—though Afghanistan was nothing like any of the places in Italy where I’d been dropped in order to test my capabilities. Afghanistan was an inhospitable labyrinth of sand and stones.

  Captain Paggiarin listened patiently to my ideas, but he never accepted my suggestions. Still, I felt up to taking on that responsibility. I wouldn’t have had my men take the wrong road, we wouldn’t have ended up off the map. “Tell me the truth,” I said to my counterpart Vinci, the Cerberus platoon leader, after swallowing the umpteenth “we’ll see.” “Are we supposed to plan itineraries so as to avoid running into any and all problems, or to reach our objective?” Sometimes, in the evening, I would fantasize about drawing insurgent fire, only to repel it, earning the attention of the captain and RC West. The incident might even make the papers, and we’d be awarded the merit cross. I longed for that stupid cross as much as I’d longed for command of a platoon. I beat back those fantasies as if they were some grave offense. I had to detach myself from my own self, from my interests and passions: I hadn’t come here for personal satisfaction. I had to forget Manuela and become my rank. “To minimize the risks,” Vinci said, a cunning smile fluttering across his lips. “We have six months to reach our objective.”

  D+15, one hundred and sixty-five days to go. We crossed the province of Farah, sealed in our Lince as if in a submarine, until we came upon a broken-down medical truck and had to stop. Aragorn, the code name for our onboard radio, ordered us not to get out of our armored vehicles, because an IED had been found in that village three days earlier, and it could be a trap. We sat there for roughly half an hour, doors locked, while the onboard computer connected to the cameras on the unmanned Predator aircraft that escorted us from the sky beamed back images of the village and surrounding hills to the small screen inside our vehicle: a cemetery of sand, not even the air was stirring. “When I was in Bosnia I got stuck in the mountains once,” Jodice started in. His voice came from the turret. “There wasn’t a damn thing there, only some cows. So I head out on foot to a mosque, it’s open. I stick my head inside, and there’s this old guy.” “That’s enough, Jodice,” I commanded, “concentrate.” The video cameras hadn’t picked up any hostile movement, and the truck radiator needed water. CIMIC was bringing medicine to a village not far from there: their first village medical outreach mission had been set for that day, they wanted to go, the village elders were waiting for them, it was important not to let them down like this, right from the start—we were new, we had to earn their trust, otherwise the regiment would lose face.

  I received orders via radio to get out so as to coordinate operations and repair the breakdown. I explained that Sergeant Serra and Zara, the bomb dog, weren’t with us; they’d stayed back at the FOB. The dog had worms and was really sick. They were waiting for a helicopter transfer to the veterinary hospital in Farah. We still hadn’t received a substitute dog. They authorized me to repair the breakdown. The gunners at the head of the column had verified that everything was under control. “Roger, received, here I go.” “Don’t be nervous,” Jodice joked. “It’s no great loss if you get blown up, noncommissioned officers are useless ballast, a corporal can handle just about everything.” “Don’t kid yourself, you’re going to have to put up with me till the end,” I answered. “Be careful, eyes on your feather,” Zandonà whispered. I was happy that he’d used that Alpino expression with me. “You, too,” I said as I got out. “Eyes open and asses tight.”

  Hindered by ten kilos of weapons, bulletproof vest, and helmet, I made my way toward the truck. I sensed a slight movement. Reaction time, a fraction of a second: I brought my rifle to firing position. But what appeared from behind the wall was only a group of children. Covered in dust, barefoot, filthy. Some blond, others with dark Tibetan hair. I looked at them, surprised but happy. And they looked at me. The littlest, probably five or so, stared at me as if I were from Mars. The older ones made a gesture that seemed decidedly obscene, but which I preferred not to decipher just then. They shouted something at me. I felt a pain in my calf. Then I realized they were throwing stones at me. That evening, when I took off my socks, I had a bruise the size of an apple.

  6

  LIVE

  On the morning of December 28, Manuela brings her grandfather a sunflower. The florist suggested she choose something more appropriate—chrysanthemums, Gerbera daisies, carnations—but she couldn’t be convinced. Sunflowers are tall and straight and always follow the light, they only bow their heads when they’re ready to offer up their seeds and die. “That’s how he was, and that’s how I am. I couldn’t bring him any other flower.” Vittorio Paris rests in peace in the city cemetery, in the corner closest to the Aurelian Way, in a structure six stories tall that looks like a cross between an apartment building and a dovecote. He wouldn’t have liked it, but he never worried much about eternity, not being convinced of its existence, and didn’t leave enough money to be buried in the ground. His niche is way at the top, and in order to place the sunflower in the vase, Manuela has to drag a heavy cast-iron ladder down the hallway and carefully climb its rusty rungs all the way to the top. It’s quite an effort with her bum foot and fragile knee, held together with steel pins and titanium plates. And Alessia’s no help. She’s still sulking because her mother, on the one day she doesn’t have dance class, has dragged her to the cemetery instead of taking her to the amusement park. She stamps her feet against the cold and asks every five minutes when they can leave. Vanessa observes Manuela’s maneuvers, perplexed, and when Alessia brings the sunflower to the foot of the ladder, she slips out into the sun. She calls Lapo, to cancel their date for today, she doesn’t have anyone to leave Alessia with, her mother works until three, and she just found out that her sister is busy, unfortunately.

  Balanced precariously at the top of the ladder in front of the niche, Manuela fusses with a rag. Vanessa can’t stand this cold, damp edifice that smells of rot—dead flowers give off the same foul smell as dead animals, and dead humans. And anyway, she didn’t get along with her grandfather, a stern, overbearing, old-fashioned old man who ruined their father’s life and would have ruined hers as well, if he could have. When he died, her first thought was that his cottage at Passo Oscuro would be empty now, and she and Alessia could move in: she could finally stop being a daughter and a girl-mother and become an adult. And it would already have happened if only her father hadn’t had another child. Th
ey each inherited a third of the house, but couldn’t agree on what to do with it. Teodora wanted to sell Traian’s third, but Vanessa didn’t have the money to buy it, and Manuela preferred to sell, too, because by now her life was in Belluno and she wanted to buy a house near the barracks. So they ended up going to court, but they have no idea when the trial might be, since the case is still languishing in some courthouse filing cabinet. That empty cottage, exposed to the elements and left to crumble, is an insult—and a declaration of indifference.

  Vittorio Paris was tall and blond like a German, and maybe he really did have some German blood in him, because Vanessa seems to remember that the Parises were originally from a village in the Alps and came down to Ladispoli to grow artichokes after the marshes were reclaimed in the 1930s. He was as rigid and inflexible as a German at any rate. When he wasn’t barricaded in a nearly impenetrable silence, he would criticize her miniskirts, her nose ring, her boyfriends, her makeup, or hold forth on homeland, duty, justice, and dignity. Those sermons annoyed her so much that she finally told him—he was the one who had taught her not to lie—and, to her surprise, he didn’t take it well at all; he found it inconceivable that a young girl would allow herself to contradict her father’s father, sixty years her senior, a wireless operator who had fought in the war and had even received a medal of valor.

  But to Manuela, Vittorio had been like a father. She practically grew up with the old widower, such a solitary eccentric that everyone called him Badger, after the animal who lives crouched in its burrow. When she was little, on the weekends, while Vanessa was parked at her maternal grandmother’s, Manuela would go to Passo Oscuro. He didn’t have any grandsons, so he had to settle for this wild, sullen girl, skinny as a toothpick. He helped her with her homework, read the Iliad to her, taught her to swim and play briscola, even how to handle a knife. When his chicken got sick, he ordered her to wring its neck. Manuela did it, but with tears in her eyes, because that bird—everyone called her Pina—was like a person to her, maybe even something more. Vittorio lauded her Spartan determination. He told her that Pina had been put out of her misery and that she was a brave girl. Which made her worthy of his respect, since courage is the only thing that can’t be taught. Either you have it or you don’t. They buried the carcass at the foot of the pine tree and placed a stone over it to keep the stray cats from digging it up.

  But best of all, when he put her to bed at night, he would tell her stories about the war. He was sent to North Africa in 1940. He told her how his platoon, shoulder to shoulder with Libyan troops, defended an outpost four miles from the nearest oasis, how they held out against an entire enemy division, the front crumbling all around them, how they were surrounded but stood their ground, defending the desert, the Libyans wanting to go home and protect their families, and the lieutenant repeating “nobody gets through here, hold out till the bitter end, fight to the death.” Vittorio defended that frontier garrison, convinced that he, too, was defending his family in his homeland far away. Artillery fire by day, bayonet attacks by night, disembowelings and desperate raids in the dark, it just kept getting bloodier and more horrible. A hundred and twenty degrees in the shade, no provisions coming, nothing to eat but a donkey’s hoof crawling with worms and a heart of palm knocked out of a tree with a hand grenade. Hunger, brackish water, dysentery, bodies mummified in the desert sand, water bottles filled with piss like hot tea, the shinbones of less fortunate comrades used as hoes to fortify the lines of defense. Minefields all around them, grenades, bombs falling from the sky, ripping off hands and heads, a soldier’s brains splatter his face, and after an explosion an officer turns to him and says, “Did something happen to me, Sergeant? I can’t see anymore,” and he answers, “You’ve been wounded slightly, sir,” and the officer feels his face while his eye dangles from its socket, bobbing as if on a rubber band. And then the Australians raid the garrison, tanks appearing like monsters in the night, crushing, shattering, smashing everything, vehicles, sandbags, weapons, bones, bodies. And afterward a dreadful silence, the attack has been repelled but the order is confirmed, fight to the death. And then the radio tank he’s in is hit by a 47 mm antitank gun and bursts into flames, his friends are burned alive, and he—how, God only knows—manages to drag himself free, and, his clothes on fire, roll around in the sand like a human torch, a hole in his heart.

  Manuela made him tell her those blood-curdling stories a thousand times, and she listened to them as attentively as other children listen to fairy tales of princesses and dwarfs, always demanding the same stories, the same actions, the same deeds—and her grandfather would repeat them, exactly the same, but each time more exaggerated. One dead soldier became a heap of cadavers, and the defense of his garrison became a matter of national importance. In the end, it seemed as if Vittorio Paris had singlehandedly fought off the enemies at Garet el Barud, like Hector at the walls of Troy. Burned and broken as he was, he was evacuated on the last plane out, just before the siege cut them off, and repatriated. Months later, back in Italy, he learned that his comrades really had held out till the end, but in vain: Libya was lost, and they were all dead or taken prisoner. He was still in the hospital, but he and his comrades were talked about on the radio, and even in the movie theaters. But the celebrations disgusted him, something had snapped inside him, and after the September 8 Armistice he joined the partisans fighting alongside the Allies, those same Australians and New Zealanders who had massacred the Italians at Garet el Barud and who respected him precisely because he’d been there. He fought his way up the peninsula as far as Bologna, and only returned home in 1946. “I gave six years of my life to my country,” he would say. “When I left I was a student, and when I came back I was already too old for everything. I couldn’t finish college, I didn’t have the head for it anymore, my nerves were shot, I started picking fights with everyone who hadn’t been in the war and thought they could order me around, and by then we were too poor, we had nothing, so I drove trains, even though I would have been a Greek professor if it hadn’t been for the war. No one can give me back those years, they were stolen from me and from my family, too, but I’m glad I experienced them. I did something for my country. Life’s not worth a thing if you’re not prepared to lose it.”

  Manuela would gaze endlessly at the rare photographs of him in uniform, in the desert. A twenty-year-old kid, with a blond forelock falling rebelliously over his forehead, and crafty eyes. She knew his eyes were a cold, clear blue, but in the black-and-white prints they looked dark and mischievous, like those of a Neapolitan urchin, like hers.

  Manuela balances on the ladder and reaches out to dust off his photograph, stamped on porcelain, removing the dark crust of spiderwebs, dead bugs, flower petals, and dirty water. The photo had been taken a few months before he died, at eighty-six. Shrunken, bald, his scalp speckled with warts, enormous, fleshy ears, and a big beak of a nose, yet that shadow of a man was identical to the twenty-year-old soldier with urchin eyes. Manuela had never loved anyone with the same tenderness, admiration, and innocence with which she had loved her grandfather. For many years, he was the only adult—and the only man—she had any respect for. He never expected anything of her, never scolded her, let her do whatever she wanted. He didn’t explain right and wrong to her, insisting instead that it was better to make a lot of mistakes than none at all. “But you have to take responsibility for your actions,” he would say. “It’s a fact of life, you can’t grow up without making mistakes. But when you do, you have to pay. That’s what it means to be human. You can fix your mistakes, though, and turn them into opportunities.” It had taken her far too long, but in the end she finally understood what he was trying to teach her. Grandfather knew it, and was glad, even though he never told her so. For her, his death was a threshold; her true entry into adulthood. And even though almost three years have passed since the day he died, she thinks about him often and talks to him as if he were still alive. The first time she set foot on the rocky crust of the desert, she felt his
presence, like a protective shadow, shielding her from sun and danger.

  Grandfather would have understood. She wouldn’t have had to tell him anything. They would have sat in silence and she would have shown him her scar. Once, when she was ten, he took off his undershirt and showed her his. Manuela stretched out her hand. A raised seam, like a thick thread, ran across his burned and shriveled skin, from his kidney to his armpit. “Cannon shrapnel.” It had gone in one side and out the other, right through his lung. It missed his heart by two inches. “If I’d been a little shorter, you never would have existed, Manù. Life’s a miracle. One inch can be the difference between life and death, between everything and nothing.” But even half an inch is enough. The shrapnel Manuela took stopped half an inch from her brain.