“The body stays with us.”
“That’s not possible, Lieutenant,” the voice on the radio replies, somewhat irritated.
“I said it stays with us. Or do you want to come and retrieve it in person?”
For a few seconds the transmitter crackles wordlessly; then the voice says: “Roger that, Lieutenant Egitto. Wait for the signal.”
Judging by the way he looks, René’s emotional state is not optimal. His lips are ashen, his complexion sallow, his head swaying back and forth. Egitto hands him a bottle of water and orders him to drink, and then Egitto takes a drink himself—it’s important to stay hydrated, to not stop doing what’s necessary.
It’s up to him to plan the next steps as well. He explains to the marshal: “You and I will go out there, along with one of your men, just one. The fewer we are out there, the better for everyone. We’ll take care of the bodies that are in one piece. First we’ll move the body of that kid. What’s his name?”
“Ietri. Roberto Ietri.”
“Okay. Then we’ll see about stabilizing the wounded one and put him on the helicopter stretcher. Can you stand the sight of blood, Marshal, of wounds and exposed bones?”
“Of course.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of if you don’t feel up to it—a lot of people are upset by it, but if that were the case I’d have to call on someone else. I need you conscious.”
“I’ll hold up.”
“Your man’s job is to pick up the other pieces.” He pauses, his throat dry again. He produces a little saliva in his mouth, swallows. How do you find the right words to say what he has to say? “Tell him to equip himself with some plastic bags.”
• • •
There it is, then, the moment Lieutenant Egitto will remember more clearly than any other, the image that will first come to mind when he thinks about what happened in the valley, or when he doesn’t think about it but is surprised by a vision that flashes before him: the Black Hawk lifting off the ground, kicking up a swirl of dust that engulfs the soldiers.
Torsu is already safely inside the helicopter, his head immobilized in a polyethylene collar, his body tightly secured by elastic bands, and a bottle of saline solution dripping into his forearm—the IV drip that Egitto himself had put in. He’d swabbed the wound and wrapped it with gauze, made sure the spine hadn’t suffered any injury. Torsu gnashed his teeth, kept groaning, “It hurts, Doc, it hurts—please, I can’t see anything, Doc,” and he’d reassured him, “You’ll be okay—we’re getting you out of here, you’re all right.” Strange, the same words that the voice on the radio had said to him a few minutes ago, which he hadn’t believed at all. Why should Torsu have greater confidence? He’d managed to remove Torsu’s bulletproof vest and examined his body for additional bleeding; there were only scratches. But he hadn’t known what to do about the burns on his face, or the flesh torn off his cheek and eyes. He’s an orthopedist. He knows how to apply casts. Hundreds of university lectures, training sessions, books, refresher courses—nothing came to his aid, not even if he concentrated; only his hands remembered what had to be done and the order in which to do it. Egitto should have injected him with morphine, but at the time he’d thought he could stand the pain. Maybe the soldier was just in shock. How do you measure the suffering of another human being? He should have given him morphine—he was burned, damn it! But it’s too late now. Before disappearing from view, Torsu moves his hand one last time, to say good-bye to his buddies or as a final message for him: I’m still alive, Doc.
Torsu ascends to the heavens; René turns his back and looks out toward the mountaintops. Cederna is stepping around the charred Lince with a garbage bag in his hands, like a mushroom hunter. Shortly before, he’d angrily sent René and Egitto away and insisted on carrying Ietri’s body all by himself. He’d picked him up in his arms like a child. (An awkward detail that Egitto would prefer not to think about: Ietri was too long for the stretcher, so they’d had to bend his knees; when the time comes to move him, hours later, he’ll have stiffened in that position and to stretch him back out they’ll have to shatter his joints. The sound of cold cartilage breaking will remain part and parcel of the memory.) Once in the ambulance, Cederna wiped Ietri’s face clean with water from the canteen and spoke softly in his ear. A waste of time, which the lieutenant didn’t have the heart to object to.
The valley is silent, the engines turned off. A number of minutes go by like that. Every so often Cederna stoops, picks something up, and puts it in the black bag or discards it.
Then there’s Marshal René who, without turning around, says out of the blue: “I’ve made up my mind, Lieutenant. I’m keeping that baby. I’m not even sure it’s my kid, but I’m keeping it. Whatever happens happens. No matter what, it will still be a beautiful baby.”
Then there’s Cederna in front of a pile of remains and shredded clothing. He covers his face with his hands and begins to sob. “How the fuck am I supposed to recognize them, huh? They’re all burned, don’t you see? They’re all burned—shit!”
Then a sensible and monstrous guideline is established, and Egitto is the one who proposes it: “We’ll make sure there’s at least one whole part for each pile. It doesn’t matter who it belongs to, as long as the piles bear some resemblance to the men. For the bigger guys we’ll create bigger piles.”
Then all the soldiers get out of the vehicles without asking permission and start helping, and meanwhile the sheep have disappeared into thin air, the living ones and the dead ones, vanished like a collective hallucination.
Then there’s Egitto watching the men stare at the four piles. Cederna holds the bags open while the others fill them. When the bags are closed and tied with a knot, he writes the initials on them with a marker. Camporesi’s bag is heavier than the others. Egitto could have chatted with him a little yesterday. Maybe it would have changed something, or at least he wouldn’t be feeling so shitty now.
Then they travel more road, more desert, like sleepwalkers, and René sobs desperately without losing his grip on the steering wheel. The lieutenant doesn’t know what to say to him, so he remains silent.
Then it’s night and it’s cold and there are a billion remote white stars, competing to see which is the brightest. Shut up in the vehicles, the guys stare out at them bewildered, eyes wide with shock.
• • •
People have been coming and going throughout the afternoon. They heard the news on the radio or on television, and since then they’ve continued to show up at her door, in twos, fours, even whole families. Until Signora Ietri went down to the cellar, spilled the contents of the toolbox on the ground, grabbed the screwdriver, removed the cover of the entry phone, and severed the electrical wires with a pair of scissors. A woman like her, who’s lived without a husband for thirteen years, knows how to do certain things: she can change burned-out lightbulbs, even those in hard-to-reach places, and knows how to splice wires and therefore how to cut them as well. She lowered the roll-down shutters throughout the house, but the pests didn’t give up; instead they got on the phone. They didn’t quit until she answered. A siege. The last one was Colonel Ballesio, who’d seen her son alive two days ago. Was he thin? No, not too thin. Was he happy? He seemed happy, yes. Did you talk to him? I . . . well, not really, but I saw him. Signora Ietri asked all the questions she could think of. She was still unsatisfied by the time she’d finished.
But she’s proud of the fact that she didn’t shed a single tear. She wants to save her weeping for when she’s fit to be seen. She’s still a mess; she hasn’t even combed her hair. The officers had arrived hat in hand when she wasn’t yet ready to go out. Look at that awful hole in her pantyhose! They must have noticed it. She feels like she’ll never have the energy to make herself presentable anymore. She’ll have to stay like this forever, in her nightgown, with her big toe sticking out of her nylon stocking. Dear God! What did you do to him? She’s widow
ed twice now. But the old pain isn’t overshadowed by the new one. The new one climbs on the old one’s shoulders and from there looks farther ahead. My poor baby. He was only twenty years old. The nail polish on the big toe is chipped at the edge. What a disgraceful impression she made! What a dishonor for the mother of a soldier. Signora Ietri bursts into uncontrollable sobs. She trails after her son, in the desert.
• • •
René’s men are depleted and have lost comrades, but they have to keep going. It’s the third day and they’ve delayed so long that they’re in danger of running out of water before they reach their destination. Then they’d be in even more serious trouble.
Everyone draws on energies he didn’t know he had. This time, the helicopters accompany them from above, like guardian angels, and they don’t find any IEDs buried in the ground.
They rejoin the rest of the convoy and pass Buji; at Gund they are again bombarded with mortar fire, but the enemy was waiting for them on the opposite side and the offensive is ineffective. Masiero’s unit returns the fire with excessive violence, while the guys of the Third are too drained even to load their rifles. They watch the clash apathetically, as if it didn’t concern them. The insurgents are quickly scattered; the column moves out of the valley and finds itself on the endless plain.
Inside the ambulance Ietri’s body is covered with a tarp that leaves his ankles hanging out. Abib is not at all put off by the corpse; in fact he placed his things on it while he sorted out his bag of odds and ends. Lieutenant Egitto smells a sickly sweet odor that’s growing increasingly strong in the vehicle. Is it possible that the body has already begun to decompose? Logically speaking, decomposition starts the instant a man dies, but not the stench—that shouldn’t come until later. It’s probably just a macabre power of suggestion.
“Doc?” René says.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think they’ll give us a medal of valor? For what we did.”
“I don’t know. Could be. If you want I can nominate you for a decoration. I saw how you acted out there.”
René had refused the tranquilizers Egitto offered him. He, less courageous, had swallowed a double dose of pills along with the bottle of grappa from the K ration. The lacerated reality had reassumed its soft hazy tints.
“If anyone pins a medal to my chest, I’ll use it to gouge out both his eyes, Doc.”
“Better not to, then.”
“Right. Better not to.”
They’re moving along more quickly now. The cloud of dust that envelops the column is dense again, and for all Egitto can see, they might very well be traveling alone. A drugged lieutenant, a distraught marshal, a cunning Afghan, and a dead man, in the midst of a swirl of yellow haze. “Were you serious about the baby?” he asks.
René pulls a cigarette out of the open pack on the dashboard. He lights it between his grimy fingers. “I want to teach him to ride a motorbike.” René is overcome by emotion again; Egitto watches him struggle to contain it. “They killed five of my men. Five out of twenty-seven. Do you realize?” The cigarette ash falls in the space between the two seats. The inside of the ambulance is a pigsty by now. “Maybe it’ll be a girl instead. I want so much for it to be a girl.”
• • •
At three in the afternoon they reach the Ring Road and clear the way for the Afghans’ trucks to move on. They’re thanked by a trumpeting of horns and that’s all the gratitude they’ll bring home. Go to hell.
The military convoy continues along the paved road to the base at Delaram. Colonel Ballesio has arranged for the men to be guests of the marines for a few days, enough time to get back in shape.
In a huge hangar, a Latino guy with a pitted face gives the soldiers a briefing in English. Then he distributes forms to fill out and copies of the base’s internal regulations. No alcohol. No shouting. No shooting. No photographs. The guys crumple the sheets of paper and stick them in their pockets.
Although the mess hall stays open an hour later than usual just for them and offers delicacies they’re no longer used to—an abundance of sugary drinks and cakes inches high topped with multicolored icing—few take advantage of it. For the most part the guys withdraw to the hot showers, in solitude. Lieutenant Egitto does the same. He lets the jet suffuse his face, then rubs himself hard, all over, with his nails. Dry skin, along with grime, slides down his legs, eddies around a couple of times, and finally disappears down the drain.
A helicopter flies Ietri’s body out and in exchange drops off a military psychologist, who shakes hands with everyone on the runway and smiles as if he’s arrived late at a party. His name is Finizio, he’s a lieutenant commander in the navy, and he gives the impression of being too young to delve into anyone’s mind, including his own. He has a slightly crooked eye, which gives him a spaced-out look, and he appears flabby to the touch. Although the newcomer is higher in rank, Captain Masiero makes sure his remark reaches his ears loud and clear: “Just what the fuck are we supposed to do with this guy?”
The marines’ offices are all occupied, so space for the psychologist to work is set up in a corner of the mess hall, near the hot beverage machines and a power generator that works intermittently, making it necessary to speak loudly when it turns on. The psychologist is available to receive the men starting an hour after meals until an hour before. Going tent to tent, he distributes a handwritten sheet with the sequence he’s established. To avoid any chance of misunderstanding, he makes it clear to the soldiers who promptly tear it up before his eyes that the psychological interview is not an optional opportunity but the order of a superior.
Marshal René volunteers to go first. He wants to set a good example, but it’s not only that. He needs to pour it all out—he feels like a poisonous gas has spread through him, filling his head, his stomach, even settling under his nails. Three or four different thoughts are haunting him. He’d wanted to confess to an American cleric, and he’d followed him through the base to the entrance of the chapel, but the language barrier and a reluctance of a technical nature—wouldn’t it be a further sin to confess to a Protestant minister?—kept him from doing so. A psychologist won’t cleanse him of his guilt—that’s for sure—but at least it will give him a chance to unburden himself a little.
“I should let you know up front, sir, that I don’t believe in these methods,” he starts out after shaking Lieutenant Commander Finizio’s small hand for the second time.
“Don’t worry about it, Marshal. Have a seat. Make yourself at home.”
René sits down in the exact center of the bench, back straight and head sternly rigid.
“Get more comfortable, Marshal. As if you were alone. If you feel the need to, you can even lie down. You can close your eyes, put your feet up on the table, whatever you like. Whatever comes naturally.”
René has no intention of lying down or closing his eyes. He shifts his rear end back, just to show compliance, then resumes his earlier position. Put his feet up on the table in front of a superior—not a chance!
“I’m comfortable like this.”
Finizio, who, unlike him, has a proper chair, relaxes against the seat back. “I want you to know that this is a place where you can be free, Marshal. It’s just you and me here. No one else. No camera, no microphone. I won’t take notes, either now or later. Everything we say will remain confined to this space. So I’d like you to speak openly, without omitting or censoring anything.” He joins his small hands, tilting his head and staring at René fixedly. The psychologist remains silent for quite a few seconds.
“Do I have to start?” the marshal finally offers.
“Only if you feel the need.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that if you feel like saying something, you can say it. But you’re not obliged to speak.”
What the hell does that mean? Are they supposed to sit there and look at each other? “Couldn’t you ask me qu
estions?” René says.
“I’d rather follow your flow without influencing it.”
“What if I can’t?”
“We can wait.”
“In silence?”
“Even in silence. Why not? There’s nothing wrong with silence.”
They stay that way for another minute. Anxiety rises in the marshal’s chest. He mistakes it for the uneasiness of being silent with a man he doesn’t know, the sensation of having been caught red-handed at some offense. His brain nervously runs through the topics he could start with. There was something he wanted to say, something that was more important to him than anything else: how he stole Camporesi’s place in the ambulance and how a few hours later Camporesi was blown up along with his other men. He can’t manage to get that merciless association out of his head, but now that he should talk about it he can’t imagine a way to start that won’t put him in a bad light with this superior.
Most of all he’d like to make him understand that his intention was good, that there was a strategic plan behind his decision and that it wasn’t pure selfishness—that is, well, maybe he had been selfish, just a little, like any of them would have been, damn it! Besides, he hadn’t slept in two days—have you ever tried not sleeping for two days and driving nonstop on a road full of rocks and bombs with the lives of all those men on your shoulders? No, I bet you’ve never experienced it, no one has ever experienced it, and he had that gash on his stomach, burning as if the devil himself were blowing on it, burning like a muriatic acid compress. It wasn’t selfishness, believe me, not at all; it was just for a few hours and if he’d only known, if he could have predicted what would later happen, he would have gone back to the Lince himself, you can be sure of that, he would have sacrificed himself for Camporesi and he wouldn’t be there blabbering in front of him now, he’d be a pile of ash and remains now, or maybe he would have avoided the disaster. Of course he would have avoided it, because he’s a good leader who knows what he’s doing and he loves his men and would sacrifice himself for them; you can swear to it, I’ve always been willing to sacrifice myself for the other guy. It’s the only thing I know for sure about myself, that’s right, but then why am I here, now, why am I still alive, me, why me?