The Human Body

by Paolo Giordano

  • • •

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten past midnight.”

  “We should go out and see what’s up.”

  “Bravo, you go.”

  “I’m going.”

  But no one moves.

  • • •

  Cederna hasn’t been thinking about Mitrano for some time, but his earlier thoughts have left him in something of a bad mood. He doesn’t see any sense in sitting cooped up in here while the enemy intermittently bombards the base. They should get out there and waste them, every one of them, go ferret them out, drop cluster bombs on their stinking hidey-holes—that’s what those who fight like cowards deserve. If only he were already in the special forces: awakened in the dead of night, parachuted from nearly ten thousand feet into the middle of a red zone to sift through a village, flush out the terrorists, put hoods on them, and tie their hands and feet. If a shot is fired by mistake and blows one of them away, so much the better.

  It’s hot in the bunker and his leg muscles are stiff. He thinks about his upcoming leave, about Agnese; he’s going to snatch her away right after she graduates and take her to the shore, to San Vito. In October, with a little luck, you can still swim, but even if the weather is bad they’ll have a great time just the same, having sex on his aunt’s rickety bed, with the curtains open to let the neighbors peer in at them. The house in San Vito smells of his childhood, his vacations as a boy; even sex has a different pleasure when they do it there. The rusty aviary where his aunt kept her two tropical parrots still stands in the courtyard. The cage was too small and the birds constantly tormented each other with their wings and beaks. Cederna had given them names, but he doesn’t remember them anymore—for the others in the family they were only “Zia Mariella’s parrots.” The birds had disappointed everyone because they never learned a single word; all they did was utter harsh shrieks. They spent their time fighting and littering the cage with excrement, yet he’d been fond of them and had cried when they died within a few days of each other. Cederna closes his eyes. He tries to remember.

  • • •

  The siren wails again at four in the morning. Three short bursts, spaced apart, to signal the all clear. At that point, many of the guys in the bunkers are asleep; they’ve lost touch with hunger and their countless joint pains. Their numbness makes the return to the tents slow and fretful.

  For Lieutenant Egitto it’s not over yet, however. He’s awakened just when he’s managed to get to sleep, or so it seems to him (actually he’s slept for more than an hour).

  “Doc, we need you.”

  “Yeah, okay.” But he can’t seem to get up and for a moment he drops off to sleep again.

  A hand shakes him. “Doc!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come with me.”

  The soldier shoves him off the cot. Egitto isn’t quick enough to make out his features or rank. He rubs his hands vigorously over his face, causing bits of skin to flake off. He grabs his pants from the chair. “What’s happened?”

  “One of our men doesn’t want to leave the bunker, Doc.”

  “Is he hurt?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  The soldier hesitates. “Nothing. But he doesn’t want to come out.”

  Egitto pulls on a sock. It’s full of sand; the gritty particles scratch his foot. “So why did you call me?”

  “We didn’t know who else to call.”

  “Which company are you in?”

  “Charlie, sir.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The storm is still going on, but its intensity has decreased; now it’s little more than a grimy wind. They press ahead, heads bent forward, protecting their eyes with their hands.

  The boy is huddled halfway down the bunker. Around him are a couple of soldiers and it’s clear they’re trying to talk him into something: when they see Egitto duck into the tunnel, they salute and hastily go out through the other side.

  The young man looks like a rather limp rag doll, as if someone has pulled out the stuffing and sewn him back up again, empty. His shoulders are sagging, his head is slumped over his chest. Egitto sits down in front of him. When they left, the soldiers took their flashlights with them, so Egitto has to turn his own on. He leans it against the concrete wall. “What’s wrong?”

  The soldier remains silent.

  “I asked you a question. Answer your superior. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “You don’t want to leave?”

  The soldier shakes his head. Egitto reads the name on his insignia. “Your name is Mitrano?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Full name?”

  “Mitrano, Vincenzo, sir.”

  The boy is breathing through his mouth. He must have perspired a lot because his cheeks are flushed. Egitto imagines the bunker crammed full. A strong smell of sweat still lingers, mixed with another, less recognizable odor, the smell produced by lots of bodies pressed against one another. Vagal crisis, he thinks. Panic attack, hypoxemia. He asks the soldier if he’s ever experienced anything like this before, but he doesn’t say the word panic, or attack, better to use claustrophobia—it sounds more impersonal and doesn’t suggest debility. The soldier says no, he doesn’t have claustrophobia.

  “Do you feel dizzy right now?”

  “No.”

  “Are you nauseous, light-headed?”

  “No.”

  A thought occurs to Egitto. “You haven’t . . .” He points to the soldier’s groin.

  The boy stares at him, appalled. “No, sir!”

  “There would be nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I know.”

  “It can happen to anyone.”

  “It didn’t happen to me!”

  “All right.”

  Egitto finds himself in a quandary. He needs symptoms to work with. Medical history, diagnosis, treatment: that’s how a doctor does his job; he doesn’t know of any other reliable method. Maybe the soldier felt scared, that’s all. He tries to reassure him: “They won’t fire anymore tonight, Giuseppe.”

  “My name is Vincenzo.”

  “Vincenzo, sorry.”

  “I told you a minute ago. Vincenzo Mitrano.”

  “You’re right. Vincenzo. Tonight they won’t fire anymore.”

  “I know.”

  “We can go back out. It’s safe.”

  The soldier hugs his knees to his chest. His pose is that of a child, but not his eyes. The eyes are those of an adult.

  “Anyway, there wasn’t any real danger,” Egitto persists. “No mortars fell within the base.”

  “They came close.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “I heard them. They were close.”

  Egitto is beginning to grow impatient. Consoling people is unknown territory for him; he lacks the proper words. Mitrano sighs. “They left me outside, Doc.”

  “Who left you outside?”

  The soldier makes a vague gesture with his head, then closes his eyes. Soft murmuring can be heard a few steps from the bunker; his companions are waiting for him. Egitto makes out the words “a bit of a wimp” and is certain the boy heard them too. In fact, he says: “They’re still out there.”

  “Want me to send them away?”

  Mitrano looks toward the exit. He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m sure it was by accident.”

  “No. They left me outside. I was sitting there and they set a trap for me, to kick me out. They did it on purpose.”

  “You can talk to Captain Masiero about it. If you think you should.”

  “No. You mustn’t tell anyone, Doc.”

  “All right.”

  “Swear?”

  “Sure, I swear.�
��

  The silence lasts for three, maybe four minutes. An eternity in a situation like this, half asleep in a dark burrow.

  “How old are you, Vincenzo?”

  “Twenty-one, sir.”

  “Isn’t there someone you’d like to talk to? A girl maybe? It would make you feel better.”

  “I don’t have a girl.”

  “Your mother, then.”

  Mitrano clenches his fists. “Not now,” he says shortly. After a moment he adds: “I have a dog, you know, Doc?”

  Egitto reacts with excessive enthusiasm: “Oh, yeah? What kind of dog?”

  “A pinscher.”

  “Are they the ones with the pug nose?”

  “No, those are bulldogs. Pinschers have a long snout and pricked ears.”

  The lieutenant would like to milk the subject to distract the soldier, but he doesn’t know a thing about dogs. He vaguely recalls having wished for a puppy at one point in his life, or maybe not, maybe it was Marianna who wanted one and he wished it for her—in any case nothing ever came of it. Ernesto viewed animals kept in apartments as carriers of deadly germs, and for Nini another presence would have meant adding complexity to an already demanding network of domestic relations. Egitto wonders whether he was deprived of something. Even if it were so, that deprivation hasn’t mattered to him for some time.

  “Doc?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll come out of here. At some point I’ll feel like leaving and I will.”

  “Not now, though.”

  “No, not now. If that’s okay with you.”

  “It’s okay with me.”

  “I’m sorry they made you come.”

  “No problem. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  Egitto gets up, using his arms. He brushes the dirt off his pants. He’s done there. His head grazes the top of the bunker.

  “Doc?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Could you stay here one more minute?”

  “Sure.”

  He sits back down, bumps the flashlight with his elbow. The beam of light ends up skimming the ground, revealing boot prints in the sand: each one partially erases the others, the fossil remains of a struggle. It’s at that point that the soldier starts to cry, softly at first, then louder. “Fuck,” he says through clenched teeth. Then he repeats: “Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” as if the toxin he wants to release were lurking in that word.

  Egitto doesn’t try to stop him, but for some reason he chooses to turn his gaze to the chink of sky visible between the wall and the outer fortification—it’s almost light. He listens to the boy’s weeping; he breaks it down into its elements: the shuddering diaphragm, the nasal passages filling up with mucus, the breathing that accelerates to maximum intensity and then suddenly subsides. Mitrano is quiet again. Egitto hands him a tissue. “Feel better?”

  “I think so.”

  “We’re not in any hurry, though.”

  Actually, he’s wiped out. He’d like to lie down on the ground right there and fall asleep. He closes his eyes for a moment, his head drops forward.

  “Doc?”

  A second is all it takes for him to find himself in a confused dream, in the middle of a firefight.

  “Doc!”

  “What is it?”

  Women

  The sandstorm is over. The morning’s clarity holds no trace of the confusion of the strike. The men are still shaken, however, exhausted and nervous as one by one they drift over to breakfast. Despite the general anxiety, activities take place as on any other day: at exactly eight o’clock trainers arrive at the garrison where the Afghan police forces are stationed and teach them how to search a van and rough up the suspects on board; a patrol ventures out to an unexplored settlement near Maydan Jabha; others engage in domestic chores that under different circumstances would be considered unmanly—doing the laundry, sweeping sand out of the tents, washing down the latrines with buckets of water.

  But a new awareness makes them tremble imperceptibly. The veterans, who are familiar with the feeling from other missions, accept it phlegmatically and respond to the recruits seeking reassurance: Where the hell did you think you were, at summer camp? Yet for the first time they, too—tough, experienced soldiers though they are—see the impregnable fortification they erected for what it really is: a sandpit exposed to danger.

  At eleven o’clock the Third Platoon assembles at the foot of the west tower for firing practice. The soldiers are waiting with their butts resting on the table where the gleaming artillery stands ready for use, or with their backs against the HESCO Bastion, in the shade. They’re doing their best to look relaxed, even bored. In reality they’re exhausted and a little depressed; no one has anything left to say, after they spent the rest of the night in the tent with the bare bulbs lit, some with their eyes closed trying to futilely catch a few hours’ sleep, some commenting over and over again on the dynamics of the attack (which no one really understood)—all of them, however, with their ears pricked, on the alert for any new explosions. Marshal René had racked his brains to come up with an encouraging speech for his men, but the words wouldn’t come to him and in the end all he said was, “We’re at war, we knew it,” as if it had been their fault.

  The rifle barrels glint in the sun and the two boxes of ammunition give more than one of the guys the urge to load his weapon, leave the base, and start shooting randomly at any Afghans who come within range. René knows that itch; he can feel it himself and it was predicted in the training courses (“a natural human reaction that must be kept under control”). Pecone somewhat awkwardly acts out how they all feel when he wields a rifle and points it toward the mountain and then at the sky, jerking around guardedly. “Come on out, you bastards! I’ll pick you off one by one. Bam! Bam!”

  “Put down the gun. Or you’re more likely to knock off one of us,” René says. It’s a joke, but no one laughs.

  When Captain Masiero appears at the edge of the square, the soldiers get to their feet and stand up straight. The colonel has ordered that the captain be in charge of the firing ranges during the stay at the FOB, though generally each platoon manages the matter internally. Needless to say René is not at all happy with the change; he feels passed over. He has a congenital dislike for Masiero, whom he bluntly considers an asshole and an ass licker of the worst kind. As far as he can see, the feeling is mutual.

  By the time the captain reaches the tower, the guys have formed a line. “Is the weapon in position?” Masiero asks.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then we’ll begin. Let’s go.”

  One at a time the soldiers clamber up the wooden ladder. René hands them a gold-plated ammo belt. Masiero stands behind each of them and repeats the same order in each one’s ear: “You see the hill? There are three barrels. Aim at the red one in the center. Short bursts and push forward. The MG is a bitch who wants to turn cartwheels, remember that. You have to hold her down—got it? Down. Load up and fire when ready. Use the plugs, unless you want to burst your eardrums.”

  René shoots first and is flawless. When hit, the barrel jumps and then falls back into place. The shots that miss kick up clouds of dust among the rocks and low scrub. Masiero, however, can’t resist a jab: “Pretty good, Marshal. Try to relax when you shoot. You’ll enjoy it more—you’ll see.”

  René imagines shoving his index and middle fingers up the man’s nostrils and poking them out through his eyes.

  He hates to admit it, but it’s important to him that they look sharp in front of the captain. He hopes his men will make him look good, too.

  It starts out promising. Most of the guys hit the target at least once. Camporesi, Biasco, Allais, and Rovere do extremely well; Cederna is complimented on the speed with which he loads and aims the weapon.

  Corporal Ietri is the first to disappoint him a little.
As usual, the ceiling of the watchtower is too low for him. He has to hunch over the machine gun. Maybe that’s the reason—or maybe it’s because the captain breathing down his neck makes him nervous—he holds the trigger down too long.

  “Don’t waste ammunition,” Masiero chides him.

  When Ietri passes René, looking grim, the marshal pats him on the shoulder. Ietri is still young; he takes offense at everything.

  Zampieri steps up last. René involuntarily looks at her breasts as she climbs the ladder, but has no explicit sexual thoughts toward her. He never has thought of her that way, maybe because she’s sort of a friend or because he’s seen her belch loudly after knocking back a can of beer, and certain things don’t go with his idea of femininity. He treats her like all the others, like a guy. Zampieri is a good soldier, she drives the Lince with full control and requisite boldness, she’s dogged and never backs away, even when Torsu puts porn movies on in the barracks. She stays and watches them, arms folded, until the end. From certain looks he’s caught, René would bet she’s had the hots for Cederna for a long while, though no one suspects it. They all think she’s a lesbian.

  Zampieri listens to the captain’s instructions, nodding. She fits the plugs in her ears and stretches her neck. She fumbles with the cover of the feed assembly to insert the cartridges, but her hand can’t quite reach it. Each time she tries to place the belt, the lid snaps back on her fingers. The gun stock slips out of the hollow of her shoulder. “I can’t reach it,” she says, and tries again to no avail.

  Masiero orders the men to bring a wooden footboard. Di Salvo finds one in the equipment shed and two of them hoist it up on the fortification. René arranges it on the platform and Zampieri climbs on it. “Better?” he asks warmly, to reassure her.