Limbo (21 page)

“I can take you there, to the Kingdom Hall, if you want, the meetings are open to the public, first they sing, then they explain the Bible, then they pray,” Vanessa says, ignoring her sister's meditation on ballistics. “It makes you feel at peace. Their God, Jehovah I mean, is omnipotent but he's human, too, I don't know if I'm explaining this well.” The glass doors open and they are expelled from the supermarket. The smell of tar and carbon monoxide rises from the asphalt. Vanessa wedges her pear-shaped cart into the last cart in the line, and the little device on the handle returns her coin. Vanessa automatically drops the coin in the empty can that the pregnant gypsy girl with a newborn in her arms holds; she's begging next to the row of shopping carts. The girl has stationed herself at the point of convergence. Excellent choice. “You have to hear them pray,” Vanessa insists. “You have to read their magazine, it's really simple and easy to understand, it explains all sorts of things. The most important is that God knows you, God knows your needs, God cares about you.”

Manuela isn't much of a help; her hands are busy holding her crutches. Vanessa staggers under the weight of the shopping bags, but she's used to it. No one has ever helped her. It doesn't even occur to her that someone might. “God isn't some abstract force,” she says, “but a person, with a personality and feelings, there are things he loves and things he doesn't. The other important thing is that Jehovah is happy. That's what Timothy writes, I don't remember where, because it's not like I've read the entire Bible. But I'm touched by the idea of a happy God, what can I say. I got chills when I read it, because I understood that the difference between God and us is just that, happiness. Only God can be happy. I don't know if I'm explaining this well. I have the magazines at home, all this year's issues, I hide them in my underwear drawer because Mamma doesn't know about this thing with the Jehovah's Witnesses, I don't know if I told you. Chance has nothing to do with it, you'll see. It means something that you were saved. It's a message.”

I'm alive because the 120-day winds quieted down and there wasn't a sandstorm and the helicopter was able to land, Manuela wants to say. And because the surgeon at Role 2, the American camp hospital at Farah, didn't have too many wounded in action that day, and so he wasn't tired and his hands were steady and he removed the shrapnel before it sliced my brain. But she can't find the courage to tell Vanessa. Vanessa doesn't know a thing about probability computations and divergence theories. That's all soldier talk. Ravings caused by nostalgia, solitude, and fear. Nonsense invented during night guard duty, at the outpost on the hill, buried in a trench, watching burning fireballs sweep across the sky; they looked like tracers, rockets, or searchlights, but they were actually stars. Gigantic stars. Meteors, planets, celestial bodies dressed in fire, crisscrossing the horizon and sinking into a sea of darkness.

During those 167 Afghani days, Manuela received word of the accidental death of an army engineers sergeant attached to the Alpini at a nearby base, crushed by a Buffalo during a maneuver, and of the death of a major, whose heart burst during a visit to an outpost near Badghis, in the north, perhaps because of the harsh February cold. There was a blizzard that day, and the helicopters couldn't take off; he might have survived if they'd been able to get him to the FOB. And of the wounding of an Alpino from a different regiment, shot in the head at close range by an Afghani police officer shouting “Allahu Akbar”: the bullet had merely grazed his scalp. Then there were 321 attacks without casualties and fifteen thwarted attempts. Explosive devices, sown along the very road she had to travel. Traps waiting for her. That hadn't exploded. Or that were detected in time. Reported by a peasant eager to collaborate in hopes of peace, or identified and neutralized by their jammer. Death didn't obey any rules. She knew it was absurd, her survival completely random. So she became convinced that every event was the result of a convergence of facts, an intersection of all the other infinite events scattered through time and space, distant and independent, yet somehow strung together like pearls on a necklace.

Every day each one of them performed a series of insignificant acts and irrelevant movements, what might be called the simple business of living. All without knowing that each one of those acts and movements was converging toward a center, a sort of black hole that swallows and annuls matter. That center is the focal point into which everything inescapably falls. It has nothing to do with probability computations. It's a point, a lightning flash, the climax of a lifetime, its end and perhaps its significance. Irrelevant, insignificant acts and movements performed a split second earlier or later can cause the divergence, prevent from happening what has been determined by logic and mathematics. A divergence of this kind must have occurred at Qal'a-i-Shakhrak, because, of the five of them who got out of the Lince, only she was spared. The others found themselves at the point of intersection—but not her. She must have carried out some insignificant act, some irrelevant movement that allowed her to deviate from the trajectory pointing to her death, and saved her. But that morning had been erased from her memory, leaving behind a crater no less deep than the one the plastic explosive made in the sand at Qal'a-i-Shakhrak.

*   *   *

Manuela finds a letter for her in the mailbox. No stamp, so it wasn't mailed. Written on hotel stationery—there's a stylized drawing of the Bellavista on the top left, with the address, phone number, and three stars. Only three. Manuela thought it had more. In the envelope there's a photograph Mattia took on his cell. The light is milky and the image blurry, but it's clearly of her—a close-up. Mattia hadn't yet cocooned her in his scarf. The water sparkles all around her, encircling her in a kind of halo. It's not easy to photograph a person. Everybody takes pictures, but in order for them to really say something about the subject, the person taking them has to know how to see beyond the subject's features and momentary smiles. He has to convey something of his own gaze. To capture the unique light that that person, and only that person, emits. To love, perhaps. Mattia's Manuela is wild, but not hidden. She offers him her bare face, her protruding ears, her nose red with cold, her lips folded into the beginning of a smile, her eyes glistening and wide with curiosity and trust. An ingenuous but determined Manuela, never before seen, even by herself. It's a pity to lose a man who looked at her like that.

On the back of the photo is written in black ink: “If every day were December 28, I would ask you to come up to my room. The things that have never been last forever. Don't look back.” He didn't even sign it.

She slips the photograph into the book that Colonel Minotto recommended she read, a manual on the psychophysical rebirth of the veteran, published by some American university. She gave up on it after the first chapter. Either because medical-psychological English is difficult, or because she doesn't like thinking of herself as a veteran when she's not even twenty-eight. She's too tired to think, or to do much of anything. She doesn't even know if Mattia's sibylline and hypocritical note has wounded or consoled her. Or what it really means. All she wants is to relive those few hours on the paddleboat, which are already fading, clouded by infinite distance. To feel that hypnotic rocking of the waves again and the heat of his body against her own, that dawning intimacy, timid yet brazen, the foolish way her heart leaped after such a long time. She dilutes her drops in a glass and falls asleep right away. The next morning her mother doesn't have the heart to tell Manuela she didn't sleep a wink because her daughter's anguished cries kept her up all night. No one in the house was able to sleep, in fact. Alessia climbed into Vanessa's bed, weeping. Even Grandma woke up. And when her daughter asks her, Cinzia lies and gives her a tired smile. “No, Manu, I didn't hear you screaming last night.”

9

HOMEWORK

On April 3, we were expecting a freelance reporter and photographer at Sollum. The brigade PIO had given his approval, and Pegasus was chosen to flank them for a story on Alpino activity in the province of Farah. The other noncommissioned officers resented this privilege. Rightly so, because I hadn't done anything to deserve it. But the explanation was simple: Captain Paggiarin knew the presence of a female platoon leader so deep in hostile territory, at such an exposed FOB, guaranteed visibility. Freelancers usually managed to sell their stories only to small magazines, or local papers where the regiment was stationed. I had no desire to waste time letting reporters who wouldn't even be on the base for twenty-four hours play war, but obviously I said, “Yes, sir.” When the reporter, wrapped in a blue shawl, climbed out of the helicopter and ran across the landing pad, we saw it was a woman.

She was blond, plump, and pretty. Not so young that she was just chasing after adventure but not so old that she'd lost her taste for it. The soldiers stared at her as if she were an apparition. They hadn't seen a woman who wasn't armed and bundled in camouflage for three months. The combination of no sex and a whole lot of masturbation was making them hallucinate. The captain cursed under his breath. He didn't want civilian women at the FOB, they only caused trouble. When, the year before, the ministry, hoping to raise morale on a less-exposed base, packaged up a show—complete with the requisite scantily clad dancers, TV entertainers of some kind, who were supposedly very popular but whom he'd never even heard of—he had refused, horrified. An Alpino regiment is not a circus. But this time they'd screwed him. “It's Daria Cormon!” First Lieutenant Russo exclaimed with a smile. “I know her, she's a good-luck charm, she's been traveling the front for years. When she's around no one dies.”

Pegasus didn't leave the FOB. Intelligence had issued a car bomb warning—a Toyota Corolla station wagon—on the S17 heading toward the village, so the captain canceled the outreach mission. The situation was too dangerous. Cormon, who hadn't been told why there was a change in the program, begged, insisted, implored. She was prepared to sign a release form. “I'm visiting the village at my own risk, if they kill me, it's my own fault. Just let me go.” “Absolutely not,” Paggiarin repeated. “I'm not risking my men for some newspaper article.” “Of course,” Cormon sighed, “I understand.” It was only noon.

The distressed reporter ate combat rations with First Lieutenant Russo, Lance Sergeant Spina, and me. Russo asked her if it was true that in Kabul they called her the Blue Fairy. “I don't know,” Cormon said, “but I wouldn't mind if they did. I'm not a vampire looking for blood, I'm not here to make a name for myself on your backs.” The disheartened photographer took some pictures of the bomb dog, and then of Angkor: she was without a doubt the most photogenic member of the company. “A quartermaster who doesn't even know what a machine gun is,” Jodice lamented. “They've never done a story on me. What kind of fucking image are they spreading of Italian soldiers, we're not nurses here to hand out candy.”

But the guests didn't have time to get bored, because they got to experience an antitank missile attack. Cormon had been in Sierra Leone, Pakistan, and Rwanda; she didn't scare easily. She followed us into the bunker, not frightened in the least. Civilians usually panic at the first explosion. I don't know why, maybe some kind of gender solidarity, but I was glad that everyone at Sollum agreed: that blonde had balls. She had to interview me for her story. She told me so flat out. “I cover all my expenses up front,” she said. “If I sell a piece, I get paid, if not, I'm out that money. I'm thirty-nine, it's not an easy or comfortable life. But I'm free, you know what I mean? No one tells me what to write.” “No one tells you what to write, but you can't choose what you get to know,” I observed. Cormon smiled. “Okay,” I conceded, “but let's not waste too much time. The situation's critical, as I'm sure you noticed. I'm very busy.”

We got off to a bad start. “Why did you join the military?” I was dismissive: “Everyone always asks the same thing, as if it were a weird choice. To me, that's a sign of a country's cultural backwardness. No one asks a female judge why she decided to become a judge, yet until forty years ago even the judiciary was off limits to women. I don't have to explain or justify anything. It's my profession.” “I know,” Cormon said, “and I agree. I asked because that's what people want to know.” “I don't discuss my personal life,” I specified. “But I think it was an encounter with a colonel that really changed my life. He treated me so badly that I wanted the ground to swallow me up. But what he said stuck with me. In a certain sense I'm here today because of him.”

“Your mentor?” Cormon was curious. “No,” I answered, “it was at a party thrown by the army, I was still in school, he wouldn't even remember me. The girls from tourism management and the kids in their last year of high school at Ladispoli had been invited to some patriotic event—a November 4 victory celebration. To be honest, I couldn't remember which victory we were supposed to be celebrating, but I was curious to see some soldiers up close, so I went. There was a band playing the national anthem and a flag unfurled on the wall. I didn't know then that the flag is a symbol, like the body of a nation, and that soldiers salute it every day. I felt like I was at a soccer stadium. They'd set up a buffet on the other side of the hall, but the snacks, pizza, and drinks were covered with a tablecloth, and you couldn't go near it until the speech was over. The officers explained to the group of kids how the Italian Armed Forces are organized, that the army is made up of six branches—infantry, cavalry, artillery, combat engineers, communication, transport and materials—and three corps—administration and commissariat, health, and engineers. When the kids heard the word
cavalry
, they sneered and stopped paying attention because they couldn't believe soldiers still rode horses in our Internet age. I listened attentively, even though I pretended to be as indifferent as the others. Because of the ruckus I couldn't understand the difference between the light and armored cavalry, or what the connection was between the railroaders, pontoniers, sappers, pioneers, and the dog unit. I was hypnotized by all those specialized terms. The speaker concluded by reminding us that mandatory service would soon be abolished and that Italy, too, would then have an army of professionals. Volunteers would be dynamic, responsible young people ready to face new challenges and experiences, build character, and discover whether they were fit for military life. He wanted us to know that being a soldier in the twenty-first century would mean taking part in a good, modern profession that would offer an interesting and economically rewarding life of service to the community, or rather to the homeland—in other words, Italy. ‘Be proud to be Italian.' When he finished they distributed fliers and brochures.