The Last Man Standing (25 page)

“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.

This evening, after the children had gone to sleep, I talked at length to Sebastiano about Clara. While I talked he looked steadily into my eyes without nodding or shaking his head. When he saw I had finished, he lifted one of his great hands and laid it on my head. I felt my ankles and knees and my other joints stop hurting and melt with warmth.

Then he withdrew his hand and lay down under the cowhide he uses as a cloak by day and as a blanket at night, and his breathing told me almost at once that he was asleep. I settled a branch on the fire. A mass of sparks rose to skim the ceiling of the stall where we have taken refuge. Watching them fall back and go out, I ask myself whether I am being subjected to an act of purification. Or whether sentence has already been passed and a bizarre judge has placed the scaffold a long way from the cell.

January 26

A day of full sunlight. The snow has been thawing and we have had to leave the fields to walk on the road.

We had been walking on the asphalt for about an hour when a car appeared from nowhere. We were aware of it at the last moment and dived for cover as it rounded the corner behind us. The youth who was driving it looked at the clump of birches where we had thrown ourselves. He didn’t slow down and I’m not sure he saw us, but I can’t be sure he didn’t see us either. I got the impression of a painted face and blond hair. The car was a little urban two-seater painted yellow in an amateurish manner with flames on the hood. The bass notes of a stereo could be heard from behind its closed windows.

Afraid the youngster might come back, we left the road. I was pretty sure we weren’t far from the pass, but it was dark when we reached the hillside. A slice of moon lit the last stretch of the climb.

Where the road descends the hill into Liguria we found a hotel, a bar, a children’s summer camp, and a few houses, all these places abandoned. Even so it seemed risky to stop there for the night because anyone coming over the pass would be able to see or smell the smoke from our fire. Of course we could do without a fire, but we need to eat something hot and dry our shoes. So I told the children and Sebastiano to shelter from the wind, and I set off by myself along the crest of the hill where great revolving wind turbines stand. After a kilometer I came across a small building with two floors. I think it must have been a base for the installation engineers. On the ground floor it has a kitchen and a room with a computer and other instruments, and on the upper floor two small bedrooms.

I went back for the children and we settled in. We lit our fire in the most sheltered room, the laboratory, and Sebastiano went to look for wood. Some of the equipment seems to be in working order, and two red indicators go on and off intermittently on one of the consoles. We ate some cured meat and then, while the soup heated, I told the children the road would be downhill the next day and within two days we’d be at the sea. Lucia said she had been to A. on vacation with her mother. For a few minutes the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the chomping of Bauschan’s jaws.

“I want to go to Switzerland,” Alberto said.

He spoke with none of the usual arrogance; it was the voice of a terrified child I had not heard before.

“Perhaps we’ll be able to get there from France,” I answered.

He looked at me across the flames of the fire. It seemed to me his mind must still be working on one of those decisive questions I have only read about in books, never experienced in real life, like crossroads crucial to a man’s destiny. His eyes were gentle and full of grace; for the first time, they were like Lucia’s eyes. Then suddenly his mouth hardened and he looked away. I understood he had made his choice.

When everyone was asleep I went out to urinate. Tonight the sky is covered with a thin gauze that magnifies the moonlight. The wind is cold but carries the smell of trees and of something unfolding.

I sat on a stone and searched the sky for some deficiency or excess that might explain what is happening. But the sky was the same as it always is, offering no signs. The powerful steel turbines were turning with a sound like enormous bicycles struggling uphill. I could see the red lights on their towers delineate the watershed between two valleys. I imagined this land after our own time, with the turbines still revolving and filling the silence with their powerful humming, cradling sleeping animals and driving them to mate as the sound of water does.

I am writing these last lines by the weak light of the dying fire. This act of writing that I had put behind me has returned to be part of me again, emerging from the dark place into which it had slipped. Before pulling my cover over me I kissed Lucia’s brow. I have a daughter, the night outside is deep and indifferent and everything seems destined to last longer than us. Yet I see beauty.

January 27

The snow has gone. The vegetation has changed. We haven’t yet seen the sea, but we’ve come across the first olives and can already feel the warm and pleasant wind rising from the coast. We walked all day at a good pace and after lunch allowed ourselves an hour’s sleep with our faces turned to the warm sun. There are no villages in the valley, only an occasional group of abandoned houses along the constant curves and hairpin bends of the winding road. No problems to report except that Bauschan has trodden on a tin can or a piece of broken glass and cut his paw. It was Lucia who told me he was limping and leaving bloodstains on the leaves. I disinfected the wound and tried to put a Band-Aid over it, but as soon as we began walking again it came off. I’ve tried a handkerchief, but he rips it with his teeth. This evening I repeated the medication. But it doesn’t seem to be anything serious. For the first time we’ve decided to sleep in the open. The
marin
, the wind rising from the sea, warms the air, and inside a ruin or other building it would be colder.

We’ve lit a small fire, screening it with stones. We’re tired but calm. It’s been a good day. I don’t know what we’ll find tomorrow when we reach the coast, maybe only other people like ourselves who have gotten so far and hope to be able to leave the country. Even if they haven’t yet succeeded, they will probably have organized themselves somehow and will be able to accept us. And if some have succeeded, it means it must be possible for us to find a ship and leave too; we do have a little money. If not, we’ll walk to France. I’ve copied the address Elio left me into this exercise book.