Limbo (50 page)

At four she meets with the psychologist. She's nervous and her heart is beating too quickly—she fears this exam even more than the X-rays, the MRI, or CAT scan. She wants and needs to seem cured, capable, of sound mind. If the psychologist decides she's still suffering from PTSD, that it has become chronic, she can forget going back to active duty. No more in-country tours. Offices, orderly rooms, dying of boredom in some provincial barracks. A desk jockey, more or less. And not even twenty-eight years old. The best, the perfect age for a soldier. Not too young and not too old. The summer of one's life. She forces a smile. She looks for affirmation in the gray eyes of the mustached man sitting behind the desk, but finds only an inexpressive, impenetrable wall. The psychologist asks her how her insomnia is, if there have been any incidents of vomiting during the night. “I'm sleeping better,” she replies, “and the vomiting has decreased, only three or four times in twenty days.” (Honesty, she thinks, you're not being honest, Sergeant Paris. Nine times, you have vomited nine times.) “Medication?” “I'm taking the drops,” she explains, “but really more out of habit, out of fear, than necessity.” “Flashbacks? Numbing? Nightmares? Hyperarousal? Emotional anesthesia?”

“Pretty good,” she says, “numbing only once.” Some intrusive flashbacks, but she considers their effect positive because they have helped her overcome her amnesia and restored her memory. Stress is more or less under control, and she is no longer emotionally detached. She can't tell him about Mattia, or that perhaps—probably—she has fallen in love. In a certain sense for the first time. She has never experienced such powerful emotions. She feels an irresistible urge to say his name. To touch him. She blushes when Mattia looks at her. And she feels herself blossom like a rose when she looks at him. But a soldier keeps her emotions to herself, so she simply assures him that the resumption of old habits, going home, being in a familiar place, but one that is extraneous to her professional life, has been very good for her, just as he had predicted.

“And your aggression?” the psychologist asks without looking at her. “Colonel Minotto informed us about the unfortunate incident you were involved in.” “I'm pretty good at keeping it under control; unfortunately, that day I lost it. I made a mistake. I don't know why it happened. But I didn't try to hide it, I notified my superiors immediately, I called Captain Paggiarin that same evening. The captain, I mean the major, tried to reassure me. He helped a lot.” The psychologist jots down something on the piece of paper in front of him. The Torvaianica goalie's father appears before her eyes, cowering in the mud, all curled up in an attempt to escape the pain. She would curl up like that, too, in her hospital bed, when the painkillers wore off and her shattered bones seemed to want to pierce her skin and climb outside of her. “Nurse!” she would cry. “Nurse!” The nurse explained that she was trying to get into what is called an analgesic position, but that it was bad for her. She had to remain in traction. Finally they hung her leg from the ceiling with a pulley, and anchored her neck to the bed. They crucified her. “The victims still haven't filed against me,” she notes. “So it seems less serious to you if the people you attacked don't turn you in?” the psychologist insinuates. “No, it's very serious,” she whispers. “But it won't ever happen again, I know it, I'm absolutely certain, you have to allow me one mistake, just one.”

“And have you done your homework?” he interrupts her. “Did you bring me your self-monitoring diary?” “I haven't had much time to write,” she confesses. “But I've thought a lot about the things you told me, I've done the cognitive reconstruction exercises in my head. I've recognized my automatic thoughts, have focused on goals, I've practiced what you called exposure. You remember how I really didn't want to go to the baptism of Diego Jodice's baby? You told me I had to address my avoidant behavior and take advantage of an event like that to relive the trauma, that it could help me. Well, I went to the baptism, I saw the guys from my platoon, and it happened. I relived everything. It was incredibly painful, but it did me a lot of good. I'm definitely better now.” She repeats it several times, and it's true. He has to believe her.

The psychologist takes notes. Manuela cranes her neck but can't decipher the words he covers the paper with. His handwriting is tiny, cryptographic practically. “I feel freer now,” she explains, “it's been a while since I've had a crisis.” “How long is a while?” the psychologist asks. “Well, since I've been home,” she says with conviction, because the fainting spell in the Parco Leonardo dressing room seems so remote to her now. “I can talk about what happened to me. I've remembered a lot of things, even the sequence of the attack, I can handle the memory, I can live with it, accept it. It's a part of me now. I realize that I'll never be able to erase it, I'll carry it inside of me my whole life, but that doesn't scare me. I feel I'm a stronger person now.”

The psychologist asks her if she considers herself capable of handling a new situation. “New in what sense?” she asks suspiciously. “A radical change,” the psychologist explains. Manuela thinks about Mattia. But the psychologist probably means something completely different. “Yes,” she says, “I think so.”

*   *   *

“When are you coming back?” Mattia asks her when she's finally able to call him. It's 8:53 p.m. Her meeting with the psychologist lasted nearly five hours. “Tomorrow afternoon, I hope,” she says to him, “I still have one more appointment, and then I have to get my leave stamped. It expires tomorrow, you know, but they'll give me an extension. I still can't return to active duty.” Her voice echoes too loudly in the silence of the hospital. Darkness sticks to the buildings. In the pavilion across the street only one light is on, and the solitary window looks like a lantern in the night. “I'll pick you up at the airport,” Mattia says. “Let me know which plane you're on.” “So you found your driver's license?” she asks. Jokingly, because it seemed funny to her that a forty-year-old man would go out without any form of ID. “I don't have a license,” Mattia says. “I mean, I have one, but they have to issue me a new one, it's a bit complicated to explain, but what's the worst that could happen? At most they'll give me a ticket, and I'd have to be really unlucky to run into the cops, it's only a few miles to Fiumicino from here. I want to come get you, it means a lot to me.”

“Who is Marco?” she asks, gesturing to Nurse Scilito to leave her dinner tray on the table. “Why?” he asks after a second's pause. “The other night while you were sleeping, you called out to him.” “I don't remember,” he glosses over her question. “I've told you everything and you haven't told me anything about yourself,” Manuela says. “Sometimes I feel like I'm with no one and it scares me.”

No reaction. Silence. For a few seconds all she hears are the nurses laughing in the hallway, and Thom Yorke's voice in the distance, singing I'm lost at sea, don't bother me, I've lost my way, I've lost my way. She really hit home. “Who are you?” she asks. “You know how to transform fear into energy, Manuela,” Mattia tells her. “So you're also capable of facing a man without a shadow. Because that's what happened to me, more or less. I don't cast a shadow, I lack substance, I'm empty, there's nothing inside me.”

“So you've been bit by the camel spider,” Manuela says. “Did I tell you I killed dozens of them in Bala Bayak? They would hide in our helmets and shower shoes. They're real scary-looking, a cross between a spider and a scorpion. They're afraid of the light and are always looking for dark spots. They follow you, to hide in your shadow. An Afghani I knew—the only Afghani I knew, the interpreter, his name was Ghaznavi—said that according to legend, if a camel spider bites you, it steals your shadow, in other words your soul.” “That must be what happened,” Mattia allows. “We'll talk about it tomorrow,” Manuela says, changing her tone, “it's too important to talk about over the phone, when we're three hundred miles apart.” Mattia says that in truth there's really not much else to talk about. When she hangs up, she's sorry she didn't say something a little more intimate. I miss you, too, I think about you all the time, I think I love you, something along those lines. But she has never been able to talk like that.

*   *   *

General Ercoli doesn't waste any time on formalities. Sitting in a swivel chair, stiff in his ribbon-covered uniform, he tells her that someone spoke to him about her—but he's careful not to say who. Manuela Paris's human qualities and professional competence have not passed unobserved. In the highly likely event that she is declared permanently unfit for military service and discharged, she will still have an opportunity to serve her country. “But I don't want to be in the reserves!” she says impulsively, then immediately falls silent, turning red in the face at the incredible lack of discipline she has just shown in interrupting a general. It's just that she is shocked. Is this mellifluous dinosaur telling her they've already thrown her out? Without even awaiting her test results and the board's recommendation? Or does he already know what they are thinking? Have they already made up their minds? “In the highly likely event that you are discharged,” General Ercoli continues, pretending not to have noticed her outburst, “you still have the opportunity to serve your country. Might you be interested?”

“I'm not sure I understand,” Manuela says, making an effort to stay calm. To control herself. She used to be able to do it. Interested in joining national intelligence? A position of great responsibility and much sought after. “We receive hundreds of letters every day, from aspiring volunteers. But you have to be recruited. Naturally the job demands total commitment. But you've always said you feel you were born for operational life and want to dedicate yourself to serving your country.” “Wow, I really haven't thought about this,” Manuela says. She doesn't know how to react. She certainly can't blow him off right away, on the spot, without knowing who sent him and why. Without knowing if they have already thrown her out of her life, without any hope, or if she's still a sergeant. She would like to explain that a soldier is the opposite of a spy. There was an intelligence guy in Sollum, the same rank as her, who for six months did nothing but spy on the officers and enlisted men, meet with shady characters, and act as if he owned the place. He didn't deign to speak to us and no one ever found out his name.

“You don't have to decide right away,” the general says. “Think it over. Sleep on it. We'll be in touch.” Manuela gets up. She wants to run away, but she forces herself to express her gratitude for the opportunity she has been offered. She handles it well, the general will never know what is going through her head. This is the way a soldier behaves. “Yes, sir,” she finally says, clicking her heels and bringing her hand to her hat in salute. I don't need to sleep on it, she should have said. I've already decided. The answer is never. I'm an Alpino, and always will be, even if I never go out on patrol with my men again, even if I never end up in some distant outpost that looks out over nothing. Alpini are in trenches and under fire. Alpini build roads and dig through rubble and even pick up trash. We don't serve politicians, we serve Italy. We don't have secrets and we do our duty in the light of day. We wear our past on our uniforms, and not merely in our ribbons and badges: and anyone can read it. Our names are sewn onto our uniforms, right over our hearts.

*   *   *

When she tries calling Mattia, a little after eight, there's no answer. She lets it ring for almost two minutes. Maybe he's still running on the beach, and he can't hear it over the sound of the waves. Or maybe he's in the shower. She tries again at nine, but at that point the voice mail picks up. “Hi, it's me,” she says, a bit uncertain, “where did you go? Good thing you were going to sit by your phone waiting to hear how things are going here … When the cat's away the mice will play, right? And to think that I'm all alone here, in a hospital room … It's freezing cold, dead silent, I'm the only one on the whole floor. Anyway, I wanted to say that we've spent so much time together that it feels strange not having you here. Okay, call me if you get this message, I'll leave my phone on, have a good night.” When she turns out the light two hours later, the display on her cell still emits an azure glow, like a little altar. But no calls.

That night, in her room on the second floor of the military hospital in Turin, she dreams of Mattia for the first time. He's sitting on her bed, naked, in a completely empty space. It's not room 302 of the Bellavista, or the mattress at Passo Oscuro, or any other place they've been together. The walls are gray and there's only one window, high up, a dull light coming through it. Mattia is looking in her direction, but he doesn't seem to be expecting her. “Mattia?” she calls. “Sorry I'm late, I got held up.” He stares without seeing her, as if she were talking to someone else. She calls him again but he doesn't answer. She starts to run, but the room seems to expand, it becomes a hallway with no way out, and the bed on which Mattia is sitting retreats into the distance, so that no matter how far she runs—light-footed, pushing with both legs, like before June 8, a feeling that fills her with an irrepressible joy—she can't seem to reach him. And then the gray walls disappear, she's on the beach in Ladispoli, the raging sea is pounding the shore, the tower is crumbling and she tries to hold it up with her shoulder. She hears a roar, and bricks and bones come crashing down all together.

*   *   *

At ten the doctor summons her. She's eager to know her test results and at the same time she never wants to know. There are moments that break a life in two, and this could be one of them. Her file is on his desk. The medical evaluation board has expressed a provisory opinion. Three noes, two maybes, and one yes. “No what?” Manuela asks. “Three of the specialists think there is no possibility that you will fully recover, either at the physical or psychological level. They've suggested another year of leave—the maximum allowable by law—after which you'll be declared permanently unfit for service. Two of them, thanks to your youth and force of character, think you have recovered surprisingly well, and they have suggested you be discharged, placed in the reserves, that is, as provided for by law, and assigned to office duties in the barracks of a nonoperational regiment.” “Is this a joke?” she asks. The blood drains from her face. In the reserves at twenty-eight? It's worse than death. “One thinks you need to continue your rehab and psychotherapy, because you might be able to recover, medicine's not an exact science, and you're very young, so, if no complications arise, he thinks you could be reassigned to your regiment, on regular duty, maintaining your rank and duties.”