Limbo (31 page)

“My father was always wrong,” I surprised him by saying. “He did everything wrong, absolutely everything. At twenty he was the national racewalking champion, but his father told him he couldn't make a living off sports, and had to find himself a job. At twenty-one he started at the electric power plant in Civitavecchia and gave up racing. Then he got a worker at the local fish factory pregnant; he'd been seeing her for all of three days, and, to please his father, who told him that if he was a man he'd do his duty, he married her. Their marriage was hell. I never saw him laugh. I think he hated all three of us, my mother, my sister, and me, even though it wasn't our fault he was so unhappy. At forty he realized that sports were the only thing that made him happy, but at that point he couldn't racewalk anymore, because his tendons had gotten inflamed from working at the electric plant, so he got interested in windsurfing. He already had cancer, though, and the doctors discouraged him from taking up such a demanding sport. My mother sold his board when he was admitted to the hospital. I think it was that stupid surfboard that gave him the courage to leave her. He took up with another woman and I didn't see him for ten years. He'd still go windsurfing even when he was exhausted from the chemo and couldn't stand up anymore, because he wanted to die on the water, with the wind in his face. He died in a hospital bed instead, in a room with five other patients, all of them screaming in pain, and his new wife couldn't even open the window to let him feel the breeze because the other patients' relatives wouldn't let her. My father wasted his life. He has been a negative example for me. All I learned from him was what not to do.”

I toweled off my face, which was dripping with sweat. I never talked about Tiberio Paris. He was a mistake, a dark blot on my life, and I was ashamed of him. Yet in that moment I realized that in the end, a negative example—because it would have been unfair to call him a bad example—can still be instructive. Growing up amid the noxious fumes of mediocrity and failure had helped me understand what to avoid. I was struck with the desire to hear my father's voice—sandy, coarse, scratchy, like his old car. But I had to make do with that of my brother. His voice was changing, and when I talked with Traian on the phone, I sometimes had the sensation I was talking with my father. I'm sorry, Papa, I would have liked to say to him. I'm not mad at you anymore. I'm sorry.

“I do everything wrong, too,” Lorenzo said, stopping suddenly, his barbell in midair. “I'm different from you all, I don't think the same way. Do you know who the hero of my village is? A broke anarchist who emigrated, became a miner, and then came back because he dreamed of liberating Italy from tyranny. His name was Angelo Sbardellotto. He went to Rome to kill Mussolini, and had three chances, but he never went through with it because he didn't want to accidentally kill innocent people, too. He was arrested, and sentenced to death. He didn't ask for mercy, and they shot him in the back. He died for his ideals; he was only twenty-five. They dedicated a plaque to him in my village, but they didn't have the courage to put it in the piazza, only in the park, because they said he fell in a private war, not wearing an army uniform. The plaque is still there, though, and I would see it when I went to the park with my girlfriend, and I would think about that kid—he was only a little older than me—who gave his life for liberty. I wasn't born to drive a tank, I don't believe we're here to bring liberty to these people, because liberty has to be earned, not imposed, even your own liberty, especially your own, this place doesn't mean shit to me, and if it weren't for you, the Spaniard, Owl, and Angkor, for my brothers in Pegasus and Lambda, I would have already left.”

“Sollum's not a hotel, Nail,” I said to him, “it's not like you pay your bill and leave.” “It wouldn't take much to get myself sent home,” he objected ironically. “I could act crazy, fake a nervous breakdown, insult the skinny Buddha, tell the first reporter who happens to show up that this mission is a mistake. That it was a huge mistake sending soldiers to Afghanistan, that we should have withdrawn a long time ago. Sure, we're doing some good things, and I grant you that we do them with the kind of fairness that's worthy of a better cause, but in reality we're here to cover up other people's motivations, we're spending damn near five million euros a year to unfurl our flag in the desert, money we could be using to build hospitals back home. I could say these things, Manuela, and I really think them. I'd be dishonorably discharged, but I wouldn't care in the least—in fact, I'd be free. The reason I don't do it is because I took an oath. I gave my word. This time I'm going to stick it out. I've always started things and then dropped them when I got bored. The only thing I never gave up on was music. I'm a lousy soldier, but I was a really good guitar player. Maybe right now, instead of eating sand and living like a celibate Trappist monk, I could have been on tour in Holland, in Spain, who knows, with a different girl every night. Don't hate your father. If anything, you should love him more. It's awful to live your life wrong.”

“But you're so young,” I said to him, “you don't even need to shave yet, you have plenty of time to do something different. If you're really convinced you're a musician, when you get back to Italy, ask to join the brass band or to be discharged. Okay, so you gave your word, but it's okay to change your mind. You can't crucify yourself over an oath.” Lorenzo got up, surprised that I of all people would speak to him like that. He had always considered me an unyielding champion, incapable of deviations, doubts, or compromises. “It can't just end like this,” he said, “we can't lose track of each other, we're too tight now.”

*   *   *

Sometimes after dinner we'd gorge ourselves on talk—stupid arguments—until exhaustion closed our eyes. We would talk about soccer and motorcycles (Owl would do motocross on the Gennargentu when he went back to Sardinia on leave). We would list the most beautiful places we'd ever been (I kept quiet, because I'd never been anywhere). We'd make lists of our favorite foods: for the Spaniard the number one spot went to his mother's schiaffoni with ragú sauce; for Puddu it was
bottarga
, salted mullet roe from Cabras; for Angkor,
fegatazzi
, liver sausages from Ortona; for Zandonà,
casunziei
, ravioli with pumpkin, prosciutto, and cinnamon. Other times we'd ask those big questions you have the courage to ponder only when you're young and then prefer to avoid for the rest of your life. What is evil, what's the difference between execution and assassination, is there really life after death, why does God tolerate, and sometimes even seem to approve of, injustice? Diego was very Catholic and we expected him to have an answer for everything. But other than a few recycled bits of catechism, he wasn't very up on theology; all he said was that God keeps track of the good and evil you do in life, and the wicked will be punished. He believed in Heaven, but he never thought about Hell. I once said to him that I found the idea of God as accountant ridiculous—God with a grade book in his hand. He was offended, and now I'm sorry.

We recounted childhood memories, anecdotes from when we were recruits, episodes that in that far distant place suddenly assumed an unprecedented importance. Jodice, who usually boasted to us about his tours of duty in the Balkans, once, who knows how, ended up talking about an accident he hadn't thought about in years. It was in some secluded valley in Wardak, a place of turbans and goats, filled with happy, festive people who greeted them with a smile when they went by and loved them because the war had just ended, or so they thought.

He was in a jeep with his captain, they were racing to the Kabul airport because they had to pick up some minister or undersecretary, he couldn't remember exactly who anymore, but anyway, some important politician. But there'd been some sort of hitch and they were late. So they were flying, the wind whirling through the open window. It had been a really good tour, he felt satisfied both professionally and personally. And at a certain point the lamb appeared. A tiny ball of white wool gamboling on the edge of the road. Hey, they both thought, there must be a flock beyond that hill. They were happy, because it meant that the people who lived in the valley had returned and were going back to their lives. The whole area was mined, there were still red marks on the rocks along the road and in the surrounding fields to highlight the danger.

The kid ran across the road without looking, hurling himself after the lamb. There wasn't even time to brake. They were going too fast. The impact was tremendous. The jeep came to a stop a hundred yards farther on. The kid had been flung into the minefield on the side of the road. Diego and the captain looked each other in the eye and then, without asking permission, Diego ventured into the field. Step by step, trying to weigh less than a lamb, to be all but immaterial. The kid was still breathing, but he had lost consciousness and blood trickled from his ear. He had brown hair and golden skin, his feet were bare. Diego took him in his arms.

“I didn't see him, sir,” the driver babbled. The captain took the boy's pulse: it was faint, but still there. He called for medics, and for twenty interminable minutes, stopped on the side of the road, next to a minefield, they waited in a primordial silence for another vehicle to arrive. The mountains all around spread a cold shadow over them. But then they had to race to the airport, because in the meantime the minister or undersecretary or whoever it was had landed, and there was no one to welcome him, and he was furious, and headquarters was bombarding them with phone calls, threatening retaliation: the driver could forget about reenlisting, and the captain would be sent to the middle of nowhere, to some barracks in Friuli, to count stones on the Carso. Neither the driver nor the captain ever found out what happened to the boy. When, that evening, they asked for news, they were assured that he'd been taken to the American hospital, that everything was fine. Neither driver nor captain were held responsible for the unfortunate accident. But the heart doesn't let itself be fooled, and his heart said right away that the boy couldn't possibly have survived.

They waited on the edge of that road, and little by little the boy's face turned to chalk, his lips drained of blood. As he told the story, the Gladiator's eyes glistened. At the time his assignment was driver. He was the driver of that damn jeep. “It wasn't your fault, man,” Lorenzo said, slapping him on the shoulder. “I know,” Diego replied, “but I'll carry that boy in my heart forever. I came back to settle my debt,” he whispered. And then he started to cry. He collapsed all of a sudden, sobbing. If something is too hard, in the end it will break. Lorenzo and I, sitting at the entrance to the tent, enveloped Diego in a hug that tasted of dust. “Thank you, brothers,” he stammered, “thank you.”

*   *   *

When the helicopter lifted off and took the guys destined for Dubai away, I presented myself in the captain's office and placed myself at the company's disposal for the time Pegasus was off duty. Paggiarin grumbled that he intended to assign me to CIMIC duty for those ninety-six hours. I could fill out forms for First Lieutenant Russo. Among other things, Russo was overseeing the reconstruction of the girls' school in Qal'a-i-Shakhrak. He had to check on suppliers and manpower, like a contractor. His work was nothing like mine. But I could expedite the mass of bureaucratic paper he was buried under. At that particular moment, everyone was indispensable; there was a lot to do. Patrols were going out day and night, searching one village after another. But the tumult and hostile activity were increasing: the Afghan police had suffered two attacks, and a checkpoint our combat engineers had just built had been blown up the night before. Operations were behind schedule, meetings with village chiefs turned into tea-drinking sessions, filled with smiles and enervating chats that concealed increasingly unreasonable requests and complaints that the promised electricity had not arrived, that the well water was contaminated by sewage, that the bridge had not been built, and Paggiarin, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, shuddered, trying in vain to decipher his interlocutors' actual intentions while they fingered their prayer beads, their expressions impenetrable. He would make promises. And then when PSYOPS would call from Herat, to ask what good news regarding the Italians' activities they should print on the flyers to be distributed to the local population, it was all he could do to keep from swearing.

Furthermore, an assailant dressed as a police officer had killed the police superintendent of Jawza, whom the captain trusted more than all the others put together. He was his mediator, his ear, and—in practice—his best ally. He was the one who had tipped intelligence off about Mullah Wallid; he was the one who gathered reports on IEDs that were supposed to blow us up. When I reported to Paggiarin, he had just returned from paying his last respects to his unfortunate colleague. The police station was deserted, the agents had disappeared. The commissary's body, burned and horribly lacerated, had not even been removed: it lay in a puddle of blood in front of what remained of the building. “He protected you! Shit, shit, shit!” Paggiarin started yelling in his perfect English. There weren't any Afghanis there, only the soldiers who escorted him.

Work languished. Hardly a quick win. Operation Reawakening was very far from reaching its objective, and they couldn't afford to lose a single day. Failure was unthinkable. “Ninth Company will not return to Italy without extending that damn bubble to twenty kilometers by the middle of June,” Paggiarin declared. “And it will inaugurate the girls' school at Qal'a-i-Shakhrak even if I have to make the Alpini lay the bricks themselves.” “They're all positive signs,” I pointed out. “They attack us because they recognize our successes, because our activities have complicated things for them, because they feel defeated.” Paggiarin gave me a glazed-over look. Yet all I had done was say what he'd been repeating to me every morning for almost five months. The men called Paggiarin the Skinny Buddha because he always wore an angelic smile and he never lost his cool. But he'd lost it that morning. He'd even let slip a four-letter word. The situation had to be more complicated than he was willing to admit.