The Last Man Standing

by Davide Longo

  In the rapidly falling dusk, a dozen kids had collected branches and dry wood in the place where the big bonfire had been. They doused them with gas and kerosene and soon a new fire was lighting up the encampment.

  Leonardo started counting the young people. There are about a hundred, he told himself, without any clear idea of why it could be of any use to him to know this.

  There was a group of small boys beside the fire, staring at the flames and at the bigger boys he had seen dancing around the earlier fire. One of these was Alberto.

  Leonardo dreamed he was having sex on the sofa in the middle of the book room with a woman in vulgar makeup, who was insulting him for his impotence. In the dream, his rage grew, feeding on thoughts related to his childhood and his mother, until he began to slap the woman, whom he finally discovered to be Alessandra. So he apologized and went to have tea in a bar under the house, where he was called professor by the elderly proprietor whose walls were papered in photographs of the celebrated Torino soccer team, whose club doctor had been his grandfather.

  He was woken by the cold and by his feet, which had begun to throb and send stabs of pain up beyond his knees. His arm had gone to sleep, leaving him no feeling in his fingers. He thought he should move it, but the moment he touched his shoulder he was torn by a lacerating spasm. His throat was dry, but he was not hungry. The elephant was standing at the other side of the cage. The cart under the cage may have been six meters long, not more than seven. The animal was gazing at the flames in the clearing, its trunk hanging outside between the bars.

  Leonardo had no idea of the time. The animals impaled on the stakes had been eaten and the youngsters were writhing in time to the tiresome music. The smoke and glare from the fire was giving a rusty tinge to the sky, and neither moon nor stars could be seen. There was a light on in the window of the trailer.

  He dragged himself to the bars and looked right and left. Several of the young people had detached themselves from the throng and lain down not far from the cart. They were smoking and staring at the sky as if waiting contentedly for some explanation. One of them, sitting up, inhaled a couple of times from a pouch; then let himself fall back among the others, who laughed. Two bodies clasped together inside a car were knocking against each another.

  He tried to find Alberto in the crowd. For a moment he thought he recognized him, but the boy was too tall and his hair too short.

  He needed to urinate. He unbuttoned his trousers and lay down against the bars in such a way that the urine would fall outside the cart. This operation took him at least ten minutes because his feet were not only unable to support him but were so heavy that he had to move first one leg and then the other with his only good hand. Maybe I should have drunk it, he thought, as the urine fell to the ground in a small shower.

  Once, long ago, he had heard of a man stuck for two weeks in a rubber dinghy without food or water at the mercy of the ocean and who had survived by drinking his own urine. He looked at the elephant, on whose eye the yellow flames were reflected like the corolla of a flower.

  It took him a long time to get back to the other side of the cage and settle himself again with his back against the bars. He put on the sweater but was shaken by shivers, apparently of cold, and his trousers, hardened by dried blood, were no comfort to him. Behind him were only the night and the forest and the wind they generated. The shoes and socks taken from him were probably burning in the fire.

  “Lucia,” he called, just to hear the sound of his own voice.

  For a long time he watched the young people dancing, drinking, and drugging themselves by inhaling from the small pouches. He saw some of them mate on the ground like dogs and others sit in a circle reapplying the colors on their faces. At one point a brawl broke out between two girls. One was captured and carried bodily into one of the cars and three boys shut themselves in with her. As the night went on the young people began to collapse one after the other, covering themselves with blankets or sheets taken from the cars. The last to stay awake sat around the fire half naked, their bodies shining with sweat, their heads swinging to the beat of the music. They did not speak but gazed at the dying embers and at the darkness advancing over the camp and cars and their recumbent companions. Their faces were full of grief and pain, as if at the extinction of life throughout the entire universe. Then they too lay down huddled close together against the cold and nothing moved anymore. After a while even the music stopped. Perhaps the generator had run out of fuel. Everything was buried in darkness and silence.

  This was the hardest moment for Leonardo. He was shivering with cold and pain, but worse still, was tormented by thirst, which stopped him giving way to fatigue. The elephant was lying down. It had let itself crash heavily and gracelessly to the floor, tormented like Leonardo by the need to eat and drink.

  Dawn was breaking when he heard steps approaching. Afraid to look around, he simply listened to the rustling of branches behind him and the abrupt blows with which they were being hacked off. After a while a man came up to the cage and began pushing branches through the bars. He had gray hair and round spectacles on a round face. He was small and plump and could have been sixty or even much younger. He went on with his work for a few minutes, completely ignoring Leonardo, until the cage was half full of shrubs and leafy branches and smelled of resin. Afraid he would go away again, Leonardo called to him.

  “What do you want?” the man asked.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  The man stared at him for a moment then turned without speaking and vanished.

  Leonardo was overcome by discouragement, but the man came back. Leonardo leaned one side against the bars to see him better. He was wearing a blue blazer with a crest on the pocket. A blazer that in any other situation would have looked elegant but which now seemed to have been put on specially to mock Leonardo. The man offered him a half-liter plastic bottle.

  “Drink and give me the bottle back,” he said.

  Leonardo had difficulty opening his lips, and some of the water ended up on his sweater.

  “Can I have some more?” he asked, giving the bottle back to the man.

  “Not now.”

  Leonardo stared at his little gray expressionless eyes. Clearly life had been lived behind those eyes, but now all that was left of it was a weak reflection. To Leonardo, he looked like an old two-story house that had somehow survived among skyscrapers.

  “My name’s Leonardo,” he said.

  The man nodded but did not introduce himself. He rested his hands on the edge of the cage. He was holding a small hatchet in his right hand and had lost three fingers from his left: little finger, index, and middle.

  “My daughter’s here. Have you seen her? Is there a young boy with her too?”

  “The boy’s in the truck with the others,” the man said. “He’s fine.”

  “And Lucia?”

  The man went on staring at the clearing where the light of dawn was getting stronger, giving everything a livid tinge and covering it with a patina of frost.

  “Your daughter’s with Richard,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “That she’ll stay with Richard until he gets tired of her.”

  “And then?”

  The man looked at his shoes. He seemed to be drawing something in the dust with the toe of one foot.

  “Then she’ll be common property, like the other girls you see around.”

  Leonardo began sobbing. The man did nothing to comfort him. He just remained silent and watched.

  “Who are you?” Leonardo said.

  “A doctor.”

  “Were you captured?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your family too?”

  “No. My wife and daughter are dead. I don’t know where my son is.”

  “Why don’t you escape?”

  “Where would I go? At least I’m safe here and get fed.”

  Leonardo studied the calm face and closed eyes before him. He realized fear and des
pair were so deep inside the man that nothing and nobody could reach them and pull them back to the surface.

  “Tomorrow,” the doctor said, “if Richard allows it, I’ll give you something to stop your feet from getting infected. But it all depends on Richard and what he has in mind for you.”

  They listened in silence to the slow, steady breathing of the sleeping elephant.

  “I think I’ve got a broken shoulder too,” Leonardo said.

  The doctor looked at him with dull eyes, then stretched out a tired hand to it.

  “It’s dislocated,” he said.

  Leonardo, who had held his breath because of the pain, breathed again.

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Can’t you do anything now?”

  The man turned and disappeared behind one of the wooden walls that closed off the two ends of the cart. Leonardo thought he had gone, but the door opened and he came in, dressed in his ridiculous crested blue blazer. He was wearing moccasins with a little tassel at the back of each foot. He grimaced as he approached, perhaps because of the smell Leonardo was giving off.

  “You mustn’t cry out,” he said. “Not for any reason at all.”

  “I promise I won’t.”

  The man looked toward Richard’s trailer: the light was off and everything in and around it was silent.

  “Put something in your mouth.”

  “What?”

  The doctor broke a piece off a branch and gave it to Leonardo, who put it between his teeth, then, untying the bandage and using his foot as a lever under Leonardo’s armpit, he pulled his arm upward with a sharp jerk that made a sound like a nut being split. Leonardo collapsed whimpering.

  “Quiet!”

  Leonardo, his face squashed against the floor, nodded. He had clenched his teeth so hard that his mouth had begun bleeding again. The doctor left the cage and reappeared outside the bars. Leonardo was still lying on the floor, his good eye full of tears.

  “Put the bandage on again. You can take it off tomorrow and pretend the arm has cured itself. Now I must go.”

  But the man stayed, gazing at the dark bulk of the elephant asleep at the other side of the cage.

  “Don’t be afraid of David,” he said. “He’s the only decent thing in this place.”

  Leonardo struggled to a sitting position.

  “You’ll help me?”

  The man looked impersonally at him.

  “I’ve already helped you. I can’t do anything more.”

  “Then help my daughter.”

  “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”

  Leonardo heard him going away. He turned on his back and looked up at the wooden ceiling. It was painted blue, with the words CIRCO BALTO written in gold letters inside an oval border. The faces of an elephant, a hippopotamus, and a clown had been drawn inside the O.

  I’m cold, Leonardo thought, I’ve never been so cold in my life.

  He crawled as far as the pile of branches, lifted some, and crept underneath. Closing his eyes, he inhaled the smell of resin hoping it might stupefy him, but when he opened his eyes again he was still there, in the dark, in a newly prepared wooden coffin.

  They stayed in the clearing another four more days during which no one except the doctor came near the cage or said a word to Leonardo. In his solitude he studied the rhythms and habits of what he was beginning to think of as a clan or tribe.

  When the young people woke after midday, they spent a couple of hours wandering around the camp or going down to the river in an attempt to work off the effects of drugs and alcohol. After this, the cripple would distribute the weapons, which were kept locked up in one of the vans, to the older boys, most of whom went out in groups of two or three to hunt or carry out raids. They left behind in the camp a dozen armed youths, the children (including Alberto), the cripple, and the girls. When the groups returned from the hunt, they would place on a great blue cloth in front of Richard’s trailer not only deer, foxes, dogs, and cats but also the clothes, tools, weapons and everything else they had managed to find in the surrounding area. They would all be home by dark, when the bonfire was lit and the captured animals were skinned and stuck on the stakes to roast. Apart from the animals, the booty would not be touched until Richard came out of his trailer. This happened in the evening, after nightfall, when the bonfire had been lit. He would open the trailer door and raise his hand to acknowledge the ovation with which the young people would greet his appearance. Then he would come down among them and speak intimately to each as if he knew all about their hearts and their secret thoughts.

  One evening Leonardo saw him take Alberto by the hand and go for a long walk with him but without ever going outside the circle of the camp. Alberto listened to him and answered his questions. Finally Richard embraced him and kissed him on the cheek, and Leonardo had the impression that, beneath its black markings, Alberto’s face swelled with pride. It was the first time since they had come there that the child’s eyes had searched behind the bars for his own. Only a moment, but enough to make it clear to Leonardo that Alberto would not return from the world he was now in and where perhaps he was destined to stay forever.

  After Richard had exchanged a word with everyone, he would inspect what had been brought in. If there was not much booty, or if it was of little value, his face took on a bitter expression, but Leonardo never heard him reprove anyone or show any sign of anger. More often he would clap his hands to arouse the enthusiasm of the young people. Then he would address them with a few words that Leonardo, deafened by the music, never managed to hear, give the cripple a little urn containing the substance the youngsters inhaled, and withdraw into his trailer.

  During those four days Leonardo never saw him eat or drink or join in the partying, which always went on in the same way until first light. He would spend all day in the trailer with Lucia, whom Leonardo never managed to glimpse despite keeping his eye fixed on the vehicle’s two windows.

  The only person he had any contact with was the doctor, who came each morning at dawn with food for him and David. In his own case this would nearly always be potatoes cooked in the embers and very tough meat which, with his broken teeth, he could not ingest until he had sucked it for a long time. During his second visit the man sprinkled his feet with a yellowish powder before binding them up with care—to prevent infection, he said. Leonardo decided he must have been told to do this by Richard, and when he asked about this, the man confirmed it. But when he asked about Lucia the man would only say that she was well.

  “Why does she never come out of the trailer?”

  “She can’t.”

  “Is she tied up?”

  “No.”

  Before leaving, the doctor would sweep the cage clean of both Leonardo’s excrement and the elephant’s, after which he would go to David, who was nearly always lying stretched out in his corner, and spend a long time stroking his head and whispering in the animal’s large ears words like those he must once have spoken to his wife and to his daughter before she went to sleep.

  Leonardo, too, as the days passed, became fond of the animal. Sometimes, in moments of depression or loneliness, he would call to him by name and the elephant would come over to be stroked.

  At night, on the other hand, it would be his turn to crawl on all fours to the end of the cage to seek shelter from the cold next to the animal. David’s skin was rough and his stomach noisy, but his huge body gave enough warmth to help Leonardo fall asleep quickly. At first he was afraid of being crushed, until he realized that David, even when asleep, was extremely careful of the fragile companion whom he had found sharing his cage. Sometimes, when David’s little eyes lit up and his trunk began swinging left and right and turning over backward, it seemed the elephant was laughing. This would happen when Leonardo squatted in a corner to attend to his physical needs. David seemed amused by the bizarre position his human companion had to adopt to perform this function.

  On the morning of the fifth
day Leonardo woke to find the youngsters sitting in two lines facing the trailer. There was no music and an unreal silence reigned over the camp, broken only by birdsong. He shuffled on his knees to the bars to look for Alberto, who was sitting with the others with his face painted and his dirty hair tied in little bunches.

  They waited an hour, perhaps two; Leonardo no longer had any sense of time and was even uncertain about the rising and setting of the sun. Finally the door of the trailer opened and Richard came out accompanied by a young woman. It was immediately clear to Leonardo that this was not Lucia, because she was shorter than her and several years older. She had a very beautiful face and was wearing a ball gown with a wide belt. Her hair had been completely shaved off.

  Richard led her to face the youngsters, who were watching in silence.

  Then he called “Enrico!”

  It was the first time Leonardo had heard Richard’s voice; it was deep and, to Leonardo, full of mysterious overtones.

  The cripple got up from the front row and ran forward, took a sheet of paper Richard held out to him, tore it into little pieces, wrote something on each piece, then screwed them into little balls before distributing them among the young people.

  When this operation had been completed, Richard said something in the ear of the woman at his side, after which he kissed her forehead and turned to go back into the trailer. She looked astonished, like a bride abandoned at the altar. She watched the door close behind Richard, and when a youth with curly hair got to his feet in the second row, she understood and began weeping.

  The curly-haired youth handed the cripple his scrap of paper, then he went up to the woman.

  Without looking her in the face he took hold of one arm and pulled her, but she shook herself free violently. He then grabbed her with both hands, but she threw herself on the ground and dug in her heels. The boy seemed discouraged; he was thin with very small bones. His eyes must be the same black as his hair, Leonardo thought.

  The boy kicked the woman in the side; she gave a shrill scream but still resisted. Then he started slapping her, but his hands were small and weak and she managed to kick him in the groin. He collapsed, swearing.