The Last Man Standing

by Davide Longo

  In the old house I used to spend hours in a room I called “the book room.” A place where I had collected thousands of novels, essays, treatises, and books on art. I had read many of them more than once, underlining, annotating, and dissecting them to extract instruction for myself and my students. Some had become bastions to shore up the walls of my city, and others had served as passports to my far-off lands. Syllogisms of what life was or should have been.

  I haven’t the slightest wish to know what has happened to them. Unless someone has burned down the house I assume they are still there feeding mold and mice. I have infinite love for those stories, although I know they have been to blame for what I am: an inadequate man.

  January 22

  Lucia and I have divided the food and clothes between my backpack, Sebastiano’s knapsack, and a small bag the children will take turns carrying. We have made an omelet with four eggs and some polenta. When we have eaten that, we will still have the soups, the powdered milk, the muesli, some cans, and the fruit in syrup we found in Adele’s larder. These will last us for a week at least.

  When we had finished getting ready we sat down at the table. Alberto and Sebastiano had gone to their rooms, and the gentle breath of the wind that had been pushing around the tops of the trees all day could be heard from beyond the windows. There were no animals around: I presume the chickens, geese, and rabbits that had once lived in the yard had been eaten, while the dogs must have gone off in search of food. The donkey could have met with either fate.

  I asked Lucia if she was sleepy. She said no. So I put another piece of wood in the stove. It could have been nine o’clock. The church clock no longer strikes, and we’ve grown used to telling the time by the course of the sun. In any case, once the sun has gone down the time is not very important since all we can do is to find a place to retire, light a fire, and sleep.

  Lucia told me she and Alberto had quarreled while I was in the village and said some very ugly things to each other. Hearing this, Sebastiano had taken refuge in his room and they hadn’t seen him all morning.

  “I went up to see how he was,” she said. “I wanted to apologize to him, but he put his hand on my head in that way priests do.”

  “Were you afraid?”

  “No. It felt like being inside an egg, then I got sleepy.”

  I am surprised anew, every day, by how she manages to live through all this without losing her grip. By the fact that her first impulse is always to create order, to heal and to work for the best. Despite appearances, there is nothing fragile or dreamy about her. Lucia’s a soldier: her sweetness is pugnacious and her gentle eyes have more of justice than charity in them. She’s a Joan of Arc without visions or armor. A delicate asphodel protected by spiky leaves that not even starving animals can manage to devour.

  When I asked her why she had quarreled with Alberto, she told me he would rather not have gone away again. I asked her if she felt the same. She said no. When I asked her if anything else had been involved, she shook her head, got up, and planted a kiss on my forehead and went off to bed.

  January 23

  It very soon became clear that walking through the vineyards and woods, as we had planned to do, was impossible and cost us the whole morning. In fact, the snow was already above our knees, and an hour after starting out we had to stop, light a fire, and wait until our shoes and pants dried out. When we set off again it was after midday and we decided to take the main road. The snow has almost completely gone from it and even where it remained we saw no trace of tires. The houses along the road are empty and the few shops already stripped bare, and we saw no smoke or anything else that might indicate human presence. Only toward dusk did I think I saw two figures in the woods but by the time I asked the others whether they could see them, they had already vanished around the corner of the hillside. Apart from that, the mantle of white is marked by many animal tracks but no human ones.

  When the light began to fade we looked for somewhere to spend the night and light another fire; there is plenty of wood, and we have matches, paper, and a certain expertise. Lucia is better at lighting fires than I am. She doesn’t use so much paper, and she lays the twigs in a way that encourages the flames to leap up quickly. In this, too, she shows her aptitude for learning and her love of things well done.

  It only took us a few minutes to devour the omelet and some of the polenta. We’ll reheat the rest tomorrow morning before we leave. I showed the children the map. It should take us two days to reach the pass leading down to the sea. I’ve calculated five days’ walk altogether. When Alberto asked why are we going to the sea, I said with a bit of luck we might find a ship, or else we can follow the coast to France. To tell the truth, I don’t know how many opportunities we have to leave the country in one way or another.

  Alberto took my answer with indifference, going back to where he’d left his cover and lying down to sleep. In any case these were the first words I’d heard him speak since the morning. During the day he walks without complaining or asking questions. When he raises his eyes and looks ahead, he does it as if he has already made the journey any number of times. Sometimes he seems like an old man. Times when the young body that contains him seems nothing but a joke in bad taste.

  Today, seeing him sitting with his head between his knees, I felt tempted to reach out and stroke his hair but, as if he knew what I had in mind, he looked up and glared fiercely at me for so long that I thought he would never stop. His eyes were two mirrors of restful brown water that seemed to have something terrible in them. At night I feel he must be awake and staring at me, but if I wake with a start I see him wrapped in his blanket, breathing deeply in his sleep, his eyes sealed by little yellow crusts.

  Sometimes the silence around us is so profound I find myself longing to meet someone to rescue us in some way from our solitude and uncertainty. Often I move away with the excuse of needing to attend to my physical needs and spend a few minutes weeping, crouched among the trees. Sebastiano can’t help me. I’m not even sure he’s fully aware of our situation.

  The only thing that cheers me is that for the moment the cold has stopped tormenting us. The sky is overcast and even at night the temperature doesn’t fall below freezing. The sun may warm us for an hour or two, but once it has set, we have to face much more severe nights.

  The place where we are camping now is an old road-maintenance building. Its facade is the color of burgundy, divided in two by a broad, white stripe that separates the lower floor from the upper. It has a sharply sloping roof, in the Nordic style. None of its windows face the valley, which means it cannot be easily seen, and what windows it has are covered by wooden shutters that prevent the glow of our fire filtering through to the outside world. Features I’ve learned to value.

  January 24

  On the first afternoon we were walking halfway up the woods that entirely cover these hills, following a path formerly used by shepherds and mushroom hunters, keeping one eye on the road a hundred meters or so below us, when a voice from behind us ordered us to raise our arms above our heads. We did as we were told. I heard a rustle of dry leaves as the man approached, until he came into sight on my right, a meter or two above us. In the cold shadow his face looked severe. He might have been thirty-five years old, with long untidy hair. He placed himself in such a way that he could keep all four of us within range of his rifle, and then he asked us what we were doing there.

  I said we were heading for the pass and our plan was to go down from there into Liguria. The man looked closely at the baggage on our shoulders and asked the children if they were with me of their own free will. Lucia said yes.

  “You too?” the man asked Alberto.

  The boy must have nodded because the man slightly lowered the rifle, which up to then he had been pointing at my chest.

  “Have you any medicine?”

  “What sort of medicine?” I asked.

  “Something for fever.”

  “I think so.”

  “Please
check.”

  I took off the backpack and opened the side pocket where I had stored the medications. While I checked the instruction leaflets, Bauschan went over to sniff at his feet. The man let him do this.

  “I’ve got an antibiotic here, and this is some kind of aspirin.”

  “They’ll do. Throw them over to me.”

  I did as he asked. He picked them up and stowed them in one of the many pockets of his hunter’s jacket. He had mountaineering boots on his feet. He seemed well fed and equipped.

  “Now go,” he said.

  We stood looking at him in uncertainty.

  “Which way?”

  “Leave the path and go down to the road,” he said, indicating the way for us with his rifle, “It’s not far to G.”

  We began going down through the forest. Brambles and brushwood sometimes forced us to change direction and climb back up. On one of these occasions I looked up and saw the man still standing where we’d left him. He had lowered his gun but was still watching us, as though pondering what he might have done but hadn’t done, or the other way around.

  Once we reached the road we walked on in silence until the trees behind us formed a thick curtain. Then I announced that we could stop. I pulled out one of the two bottles of water we carry and passed it to the children. They drank, their eyes still on the forest. I told them that if that man meant us any harm he would already have done it. Lucia nodded, but just as she did so I saw him reappear among the acacias at the end of the field.

  We stayed sitting motionless on the safety barrier, staring at him as he approached. When he was about ten meters away he stopped, put his rifle over his shoulder, and looked toward the sun, which was disappearing behind the hills. I noticed his face was sunburned and clean-shaven. His eyes were a peaceful hazel color.

  “I can offer you food and shelter for tonight,” he said.

  During the half hour we walked behind him he never spoke or turned to check if we were following. When he got to the top of the hill he went down the other side, crossed a stream, and made his way to a house in the middle of a small clearing. A woman was waiting on the terrace. When she saw us she lifted her hand to her brow as though the sun was in her eyes. The man greeted her. She did not respond but went back into the house.

  “That’s Manon,” the man said.

  “I’m Leonardo.”

  “I know.”

  Manon had cooked a piece of deer and greens for supper. These seemed to be the herbs we had seen her washing earlier in the sink. There was homemade bread, too, and a dessert made with milk and cocoa. Manon’s fair hair had been given a basic cut. She is of Dutch origin and at first sight her beauty looks banally Nordic, but once you take in the exact color of her eyes and their almond shape one feels one is in the presence of something religious. She and Sergio live in this house with their two sons. The elder, Salomon, is eight and has his mother’s fair hair and his father’s taciturn nature. The younger is named Paul, but he is out of sight upstairs with a fever.

  Their house is half Alpine hut and half farm. Its walls are stone and the lintels of the doors and windows are made of wood, but the rooms have high ceilings and are well lit. The house uses solar panels to produce electricity and has a wood-burning boiler, and the rooms are well heated. Before supper we were able to take a shower and rest in the room where we will spend the night.

  In the bathroom I was afflicted by another fit of weeping. I had not seen myself naked in a mirror for a long time: in the last few weeks my body has become leaner, my shoulders broader and my back straighter. My leg muscles are again like when I used to run ten kilometers or so every day as a student. The whole effect is of a tired man who has grown several years younger. A tense, nervous man, such as I have never been before. Lucia heard me sobbing from our room and asked if I was all right; I said fine, I’m just singing.

  When they came to call us for supper I woke Alberto and Sebastiano, who had fallen asleep on mattresses on the floor. Sergio waited at the door for us to put on our shoes; then asked if we were doing anything for Alberto’s conjunctivitis. I said we had some eye drops and asked if he was a doctor. A vet, he said.

  During supper no one said very much. Sergio and Manon do not want to know where we have come from or where we are going and why. Nor did they ask us about the world around us in general, nor talk about what life was like before and what the future may hold now. Clearly, having guests is a new experience for them. This was obvious from the way Salomon studied the children during supper, as though until yesterday he had thought himself the last child left on earth.

  While Manon was washing up, Sergio whispered something in her ear to which she replied in the same manner, then he told me he wanted to talk to me and we went out on the pretext of taking something to eat to Bauschan. I had realized at once that they preferred to have the dog left outside, so this is what I had done. They keep no animals in their house or yard. Not far from the main building is a wooden shed that I think Sergio must have built. As we walked around it I noticed the humming of a freezer coming from it. I think it must be their larder. Its door is secured with two large locks.

  We sat down on the terrace steps. The air felt very cold, and one or two stars could be seen in the sky. It was only then that I noticed the windows were sealed so that no light filtered out from the inside. If I had moved a few meters away the only way I could have found the house again would have been by bumping into it. Hearing our footsteps, Bauschan came up to us. Sergio offered him the piece of meat we had saved for him.

  “Are you still teaching?” Sergio asked.

  “No, I left my job eight years ago.”

  “To concentrate on writing?”

  “Not entirely. I got caught up in something disagreeable. You probably heard about it.”

  “I’ve been living here for ten years. We have no television or radio and don’t read the papers, so I’ve no idea what you might have been up to.”

  “Were you one of my students?”

  “I was.”

  “What course were you on?”

  “The one specializing in Leopardi.”

  “But then you became a vet.”

  “It was the exam at the end of that course that made me want to change. Until then I saw myself as having a brilliant mind.”

  “I’m sure that was true. Exams can always get things wrong.”

  “No, no. The only reason I chose Leopardi was to annoy my father, who was a vet. Changing over was the best thing I ever did. Otherwise I’d never have met Manon.”

  I realized from the smell of tobacco that he must have lit a cigarette, but I could see no red glow. He was holding it in the hollow of his hand like soldiers and sailors do.

  “I’ve been trying to think of a polite way to say it but I couldn’t find one, so I’ll say it straight out: tomorrow you must continue your journey. We can’t keep four extra people.”

  “Of course. It’s been extremely kind of you to look after us this evening.”

  “It has nothing to do with kindness. When I let you go today I was afraid you might come back with someone else to rediscover the path and find our house. So I either had to shoot you or put you in our debt. At the university you seemed to me a decent sort of person. So I chose the second alternative.”

  “Are you always so honest?”

  “We have no choice. The only reason we’re still alive is that everyone else around here has either gone away or is dead, and no one even knows this house exists. If some stray person or one of the gangs were to find us, we’d be finished.”

  “Gangs of outsiders?”

  He shook his head and for an instant I caught a glimpse of the red glow of the cigarette.

  “Youngsters. A hundred, two hundred of them. Some my age, but younger too. With cars and trucks. I don’t know where they get the gas. Luckily they always play loud music and never leave the main road. If you hear them coming, keep clear.”

  “We will.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll
give you some salted meat for the journey and some coffee that you’ll be able to reheat.”

  “Thanks. We do have a little money.”

  “Money means nothing to us. It’ll be more useful to you on the road. Now I’m off to bed.”

  In some ways Sergio reminds me of Elio. The same control of himself and of everything around him. The same awkward determination. If I had to bet on anyone to survive all this, I’d bet on those two. If I had to trust anyone else with the children, it would be them.

  January 25

  Sergio walked a little way with us. He said he could help us avoid the main road by taking us a short cut through the forest, but I had the impression that what he really wanted was to disorientate us, to make it impossible for us to find the house again. When he took his leave he squeezed each one of us by the hand, after which we saw him retrace his steps and vanish into the forest. A little later we heard a rifle shot. He had told us he liked to hunt at some distance from the house so as not to attract attention to it with the sound of his gun. Bauschan was walking between my legs looking around cautiously. In the end I had to carry him in my arms so as not to trip over him. I had not done this for some time, and I became aware of how tough and elastic the skin under his gray-black coat had become. There is nothing left in him now of the puppy he was. He is like a flute cut from a cane. A strong hollow length of wood. Or one of those architectural creations of metal and glass I used to love so much.

  Skirting an unknown small village, we heard the church clock strike four. The time corresponded with the light. Smoke was rising from a couple of chimneys but we did not go near them.

  Following Sergio’s advice we have kept to the fields beside the road so as to be able to take refuge in the forest at the first sound of a car engine. In our bags we have cured meat, a bottle of coffee, and what’s left of our provisions. The sky is clearer than in recent days, though short gusts of cold wind hit us in the face and bring tears to our eyes. Despite the sunshine we have buttoned up our jackets and pulled scarves and caps from our pockets. Walking like this makes us sweat, but we can’t afford to risk falling ill.