On Earth as It Is in Heaven (12 page)

Then it was Rosario's turn. He found himself standing before a little girl, twelve, maybe thirteen years old. She was black, stretched out on her back on a cot, spread-eagled. By that point, she couldn't even close her legs; she'd held them wide for five hours in a row. On the floor, next to a tin pail, was a sponge to wash off blood and sperm. Rosario stopped looking, dropped his pants, and fucked the whore.

Iallorenzi and Marangola walked in, together with Melluso. They'd decided to go in as a trio, eighteen minutes instead of twenty-one, sacrificing a minute each of their allotted time in exchange for a longer if more crowded stay. “Boys, you'll get in three minutes early.” But something went wrong, and Iallorenzi came rushing out and dragged the medical officer back into the tent with him, while what remained of the line was rerouted to the only tent still in service. They answered the medical officer's questions by insisting that it had been an accident, just a prank turned serious, they definitely hadn't meant for it to happen.

They got back to camp three hours after sunset, just in time for the ten o'clock allied bombing raid.

“The moon in Africa is bigger than the sun in Palermo, Davidù.”

When there was a bombing raid, the airplanes glittered in the moonlight, as if they were made of silver. And above the enemy planes: so many stars that it was was impossible to count them. You could sketch any image you had in your head up there in the firmament: an orange tree, a horse-drawn carriage, Nenè smiling. The starlight was interrupted only when a bomb exploded on the earth in a flash of light.

“What were you thinking about during those air raids?”

“About water.”

“About water what?”

“Maybe a bomb—I don't know—might make water pour out of the ground.”

“Like a spring?”

“Yeah.”

“Did it ever happen?”

“No.”

Nicola Randazzo was weeping. Rosario got out of his cot and got into bed beside him, watching him silently. The patience of the open door. Randazzo noticed him, dried his tears, and told him everything. Rosario's silence was free of judgment. When Randazzo was done with his story, he turned over and tried to get to sleep, but that was easier said than done. Nicola went on emitting a faint and broken whimper.

A short time earlier, outside the latrines, Melluso had said to him: “Randazzo, will you come around back with me?”

He'd slammed his face into the wall.

He'd hit him over and over again in the temple with a fist wrapped in a wet washcloth, to make sure he left no marks.

“So you didn't want to go in to see the whore with me.”

He slammed his knee into Randazzo's kidneys.

When Randazzo collapsed to the ground, breathless, head spinning, Melluso screwed him from behind.

The orders arrived in the middle of the night, and they brooked no objections. Make preparations to evacuate the encampment, enemy forces had broken through the front. Three minutes after six in the morning, the withdrawal got under way. They set out on foot, shouldering their rucksacks, avoiding the beaten paths, moving out along the rocky wilderness. They were expected to cover forty miles of ground in the shortest time possible, and the temperature in direct sunlight was hovering at just under 120 degrees. Water rations were distributed before they began their march, half a canteen apiece. The line moved forward in silence. The soldiers had learned the importance of economizing on effort, and talking demanded greater salivation, and saliva spelled thirst. By twelve noon, the situation was desperate. Five men had passed out, Iallorenzi had vomited from exhaustion, and Randazzo was losing blood from his asshole. Francesco D'Arpa stopped to help both men. He helped Iallorenzi get back on his feet and he offered his right shoulder to Nicola for support. All around them, in every direction, stretched the desert. Rosario could feel his upper lip cracking from dehydration, but not a drop of blood emerged. Hands held out to shield his eyes, he turned just as Melluso unstoppered his canteen. They crashed into each other. The canteen dropped out of his hands and the water sank into the sand. Melluso hurled himself at Rosario. He managed to land a punch to his ear. D'Arpa pulled them apart.

“Melluso, what the fuck are you doing?”

“He made me drop my water.”

Rosario had gotten back to his feet. He was brushing himself clean of sand.

Melluso leveled his forefinger straight at him.

“I'll murder you, you worthless piece of crap.”

La Nèglia
was back.

Fifteen minutes later, the soldiers were lined up, side by side, hands in the air. The enemy had caught up with them, in trucks, with machine guns. My grandfather's whole division surrendered without a single shot fired.

The line was falling apart. Pushed to the brink by exhaustion or dehydration, prisoners were hitting the ground here and there. The first request to get back on their feet took the form of a kick in the ribs. There was no second request. Those who failed to get up were killed. D'Arpa and Rosario helped Nicola Randazzo to walk, holding him up by the lapels of his uniform. The shivering was getting worse, sunstroke and collapse increasingly likely. After two hours, Santin, the one in the group least accustomed to the fierce lash of harsh sunlight, slammed to the dirt. He fell straight onto the rocks without stopping to teeter on his knees. An enemy officer shouted something, presumably an order to get back on his feet. No answer. A pistol shot confirmed, as if confirmation was needed, that there was no time to waste. The body was left where it had fallen, to be gnawed at by flies and insects. One of the soldiers asked to be allowed to give him a decent burial, none of the rest had the saliva to utter a word. During the march they lost three more comrades. They reached their destination in the middle of the night. An old oasis that had been refitted as a prison camp. There was no water, there were no beds, there were no latrines. An enclosure formed by a wall on one side and barbed-wire fencing on the other three, too tall and too dense for anyone to dream of breaking through. The prisoners were a herd of oxen, but without the luxury of a watering trough. That first night there was an escape attempt, a youngster from Crotone in Calabria, not even twenty. He was immediately caught and tossed back into the prison. For the first time, the guards spoke to the prisoners in Italian. They told them that escape was impossible, and that, moreover, every attempt would be punished by depriving the prisoners of water for two days. That punishment would begin immediately. D'Arpa went over to the young Calabrian and invited him to sit down next to him. Their jailers were trying to get them to turn on one another. No one raised a hand to the boy, no one upbraided him. On the second night, the Calabrian tried to escape again, but he was stopped by four prisoners. Three of them held him motionless, but it was D'Arpa who decked him with a powerful punch to the balls.

“If you try to escape again and they cut off our water for two more days, I will kill you with my own hands.”

“Nicola, cup your hands together and do me a favor, don't spill a drop. Then I'll do the same for you.”

D'Arpa was having Randazzo help him collect his own urine. If he was saying those words, if he was doing this thing, it wasn't because the sun had driven him mad. It must have a basis in fact. He was someone who'd been to school. Everyone watched the sequence of events carefully: examples help you to survive. When they saw that the lieutenant had urinated into their comrade's hands and then had drunk it without vomiting or fainting, all reluctance vanished. Some of them cupped their hands beneath their genitals and tried peeing into them, but it's already hard to control your flow under normal conditions, forget about trying to do it when you're delirious from thirst. And so for some of them the first gush of pee was lost on the rocks, evaporating in the blink of an eye. Watch, observe, learn: D'Arpa had peed into another man's hands. He couldn't afford to waste a single drop of potable liquid. All they had to do was find a fellow prisoner they could trust, someone who wouldn't try to take their piss and drink it themselves. Rosario peed into D'Arpa's hands, drank half of his urine, looked over at Randazzo, and gestured that he was welcome to finish it off himself. Nicola had a fever, he couldn't even get to his feet. His injured anus had developed an infection. Rosario and D'Arpa lifted him up and set him down next to the wall where there was a tiny patch of shadow, and made him a cushion with their shirts.

After two endless days, the water ration was brought to them. It was going to have to last for three days, the guards informed them. Francesco D'Arpa felt the eyes of the other prisoners focusing on him. The soldiers acknowledged in him, rank aside, sufficient authority to make decisions concerning their survival. When you're on your last legs, you entrust your survival to someone else, hoping that they are strong enough to keep from falling.

D'Arpa considered carefully and spoke: “A handful of water apiece.” His throat was on fire. He couldn't believe how painful it had become to emit a sound.

“What if there's some left over?” Iallorenzi asked, under his breath.

There really were too many of them to be able to rely on the honor system, and they were all so terribly thirsty. In that case, it was best to just recognize the state of things and try to hold out by drinking one's own urine.

“Second round for everyone.”

The potful of water was carried over to the wall. Without a word, without a quibble, a single line formed up.

For five days, they hadn't had a bite to eat. The enemy was undermining their resistance, systematically undernourishing and dehydrating them. They repeatedly asked for a doctor to examine the prisoners who had collapsed but their jailers ignored them. Seven of them had high fevers and the shakes. Nicola Randazzo was starting to become delirious. He talked about the festival of his village's patron saint and about Gigliola, daughter of Ina, with her long hair and delicate hands. When the doctor finally showed up, he spoke in a foreign tongue and no one could understand a word he said, so he turned and started to leave. Like a flash, Rosario lunged at his left foot and seized it with both hands. He kept his head bowed and his neck bent. The two soldiers who were escorting the doctor started kicking Rosario in the ribs and shoulders but he held tight to the doctor's foot, taking the blows the way an inanimate object might. The medical officer was surprised more than scared. He put an end to the beating with a command. At that exact moment, when the rain of combat boots ceased, without wasting so much as a fraction of a second, Rosario looked up, straight into the eyes of the physician, and threw his arm back to indicate a place along the wall. The doctor decided to go take a look, and that's how Nicola Randazzo was taken to the infirmary and my grandfather was put in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement meant an iron cube, just outside of the barbed-wire fence, with an air hole just big enough to stick your finger through. Rosario would be spending the next three days in there. Without water, without food. Three days in an oven. The soldiers lacked the strength to object, they'd never be able to shout encouragement to their comrade. Still, there he was, just a few yards away, the other side of the barbed wire. Perhaps a voice would help him. Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it would only make his suffering worse. No one could say. It was the first time one of them was being punished in that way.

“He's going to come out nicely roasted,” Melluso snickered.

There was no news about Nicola Randazzo.

There was a brawl, one man had tried to drink someone else's piss.

Five men passed out, and no one had the pity or the strength to help them to their feet.

Catching flies in midair to eat was becoming increasingly difficult. Their reflexes were delayed and the flies seemed to move ever faster. There were some who just kept their mouths open in the hope that an insect might happen to fly in. During the day, the thermometer registered a temperature of over 120 degrees. At night, the temperature dropped to 90 degrees or so. Twenty-four hours had passed, and Rosario was still inside that cube.

The next day, a new ration of water was brought in. The line formed up, everyone gulped down the sip of water to which they were entitled, and then something happened. D'Arpa had put a stop to the second round of dipping.

“It's for Rosario,” he said, pointing at the water.

“He's dead,” Melluso retorted, planting both feet on the ground and facing him down. Then he said, in a threatening voice: “Move, I need to drink.”

“No,” the lieutenant replied.

Vincenzo Melluso looked around, seeking moral support from the other soldiers, but no one was in the mood to back him up: they were all on D'Arpa's side. He turned his back to the wall and sat down in that tiny fissure of shadow. He stared at the iron box.

“Die, worthless thing.”

D'Arpa picked up the pot and carried it over to the shade of the wall. He was going to guard it himself.

That night, another fight. D'Arpa had dropped off into sleep. Melluso kicked him in the head and lunged for the pot of water. The water was warm but it was so wonderful to dip both hands into it. He lifted them to his mouth but never got a chance to drink. D'Arpa was already on top of him.

“This water.”

He hit him in the face with a right.

“Belongs.”

A left smashed down into his jaw.

“To.”

Another right.

“Rosario.”

A left, the last punch.

Vincenzo Melluso lay sprawled on the ground, arms thrown wide, legs stretched out. He looked like a Jesus on the cross. His mouth was a bloody mess. The other prisoners might not have understood exactly what happened, but they did know that their lieutenant packed a murderous punch. The pot of water hadn't been overturned, it was still full. D'Arpa turned toward the iron cube and shouted with all the force he could muster.