The Last Man Standing (40 page)

“A good story.”

“The two women you saw with me have lost their children and husbands. They need songs to distract their thoughts. They have never sung before, but now we do an hour or two every day. They’ve become very good at it.”

“Are you the only people in the village now?”

“Yes, only us.”

“Why don’t you go down to the sea?”

“This is where our homes are, and even if we no longer have our men and children, we still like to sleep in the beds we used to share with them. We saved enough food to get us through the winter, and now we have the kitchen gardens and orchards.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Why should we be? We’ve already lost everything.”

Leonardo pushed back the hair the gentle wind had blown into his eyes.

“Are they with you?” the woman asked.

Leonardo turned to see Salomon and the animals standing in front of the church, and Lucia sitting a little way off on the edge of the fountain. Salomon was looking at Leonardo but pretending not to, as though afraid of getting into trouble. Leonardo raised a hand in greeting. The boy said
ciao
. David and Circe were standing meekly to his left and right as if in a bizarre Nativity scene. Lucia was staring at the rectangle of water into which the jet of the fountain was falling with a hypnotic gurgling sound.

“Are these your children?” the woman asked.

“Only Lucia. The boy’s been with us for several months.”

The woman nodded.

“May I ask what happened to your hand?”

“I had to renounce it.”

“In exchange for something important, presumably?”

“Something extremely important.”

They watched the young people. The leaves of a lime tree were still glowing in the last of the setting sun. The cat had moved to a window ledge higher up, from where it was presiding over this unusual movement of humans and animals.

“When is your daughter due to give birth?” the woman asked.

“At the end of the summer.”

They spent four days in the village. On the first night he caressed Lucia’s feet, then he left the house, and, as Clarisse had asked him to, he went to the house where the youngest of the women was waiting for him. On the second night he went to the other.

In the morning he got some sleep in the shade of a sycamore, while the young people supervised David and Circe grazing among the olive trees. In the afternoon he went back to the house with the Japanese persimmon in the garden and studied the ash pictures on the walls, holding a long conversation with the man who had created them. The man was very old, and when he said he was tired they sat in silence at a little table in front of the fireplace. On these occasions Leonardo still had his left hand and used it to hold the stones the man showed him, stones he had collected over the years for their shape or color.

During these days Leonardo ate the polenta, vegetables, and fruit that Clarisse prepared for them, and he never set the snare. Toward evening he would sit with the youngsters in the room on the upper floor and listen to the women singing. Clarisse had washed Lucia’s hair, and she now had an ample yellow dress that left her shoulders bare. Her breasts had developed and there was something new and lively in her eyes.

On the last night, after seeing Salomon and Lucia to bed, Leonardo went down to the kitchen where Clarisse was waiting for him by the light of the oil lamp. David and Circe were moving around in the garden under the window, between the slide and the swings. They could hear the branches rustling as the elephant pulled them within reach with his trunk.

“That time at Nantes,” Clarisse said, “you said that in the Kabbalah, unlike Genesis, God initially fails by creating other worlds that are soon extinguished like sparks. Do you remember?”

“He fails because he only uses the feminine principle, the principle of will and determination. When he also brings in the masculine principle of compassion and mercy, he creates a spark that is able to survive, and that spark is the world we’re living in now.”

She smiled. Her teeth were white, her eyes like black leather.

“But what if this too is just another attempt on his part? That he’s still learning and that the successful world is still to come? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“It would be, but I don’t think that’s how it is.”

They were drinking an infusion Clarisse had made from mint, hawthorn, and dried medlar leaves, and then with an imperceptible movement of her hips she shifted her chair closer to the table.

“The others are still young and with a bit of luck they may still have children. I’m not well, and in any case I’m too old for pregnancy. But I’d like to ask you something.”

Leonardo waited in silence.

“I’ve engraved some lines of Rilke on my husband’s gravestone, and one of Leonard’s songs on my son’s. I’d like you to advise me what to put on my own.”

Leonardo looked at Clarisse’s smile, her perfect nose, and the hands around her cup, and he knew for certain that her hands had touched tears, seed, earth, and blood and never hesitated to respond to the feelings that had moved them.

“A little while ago I tried to start writing again,” he said, “but I know now I shall never be able to.”

She took his hand. The light from the lamp began to flicker; the oil was running out.

“You’ve read so many stories,” she said. “Find one that would do for me. It doesn’t matter if it’s not one of yours.”

Leonardo stared at the surface of the table. From the dark marks of tears on the wood he realized he was weeping, and understood that his eyes like every other part of him now belonged to the outside world, and that he would never be their master again. This caused him no regret. The draft from the window was bringing in the smell of the animals and the cold scent of flowers at night.

“When I see minds that have no pride,” he said, “no anger, no passion, finding nothing to give them pleasure; when the absentminded and careworn never venture under the sign of fire; when I see sluggish brows, empty spirits, and promises of love weakly sustained, and voices and eyes that hold nothing of the universe in them; then what good fortune that I have made all of you, who have known me, a present of the whole world including the stars, just because you have known me!”

“That’s so beautiful. Who wrote it?”

“A woman,” Leonardo said. “A century and a half ago.”

“Say it again slowly, I want to learn it by heart.”

Leonardo recited it again more slowly.

“Thank you,” Clarisse said. Then she got up and moved toward the stairs. At that moment the lamp went out.

“I’ve got some food ready for your journey and a couple of dresses for Lucia,” she said. “Soon the one she’s wearing won’t fit anymore.”

The beach, at the point where they reached the sea, consisted of gray, blue, and white pebbles the size of eggs, but the winter storms had swallowed most of it, only stopping a few meters short of the embankment that carried the Aurelia
autostrada
.

They walked a little way along the deserted path that skirted the road. It was a stretch of coast in between two built-up areas and there were few buildings, only wooden structures facing the sea that had once been bars and bathing establishments. There were still a few abandoned deckchairs on the beach, among abraded pieces of wood and flotsam.

When they found a place with no steps to the water, they led the animals down. Faced by such a huge expanse of water David stopped dead, and they had to wait for many minutes for him to take in what he was seeing. The donkey on the other hand went off at once to nibble at the woodwork of a fence.

“Can I go in the water?” the child asked.

Leonardo looked at the deserted beach and a distant village.

“Can you swim?”

“Yes,” said the boy.

“All right then, but keep close to the shore.”

“OK,” the child said, taking off his pants.

Leonardo watched him go into the water. The elephant had followed him as far as the edge of the surf and stayed there to watch over him with his large feet immersed in the foam. Salomon splashed him and cried out with joy. Lucia, at Leonardo’s side, watched the sun sink beyond the promontory to the west.

“Let’s go and have a look inside there,” Leonardo said.

The restaurant had a large terrace, a kitchen, a bathroom with running water, and a storeroom whose shelves had been emptied and tipped over. There were no beds or electricity, but in a hut next to it Leonardo found a few lounge chairs and a solar-powered battery. He carried the chairs up one at a time then remembered Salomon.

By the time Leonardo got him out of the water, the boy was shivering. Leonardo wrapped him in the towel and took him in his arms. Salomon leaned his head on Leonardo’s shoulder and put his arms around his neck.

“Please can we stay here forever,” he said.

Sitting on the terrace they dined on Clarisse’s rice and carrots. The restaurant’s windows were still unbroken and even though they found nothing to eat in the place, no one else seemed to have stayed there before them. Salomon, what with all the excitement and exhaustion, ate little and asked Leonardo endless questions about the origin of waves, the depths of the sea, and how they could be reached. The lamp spread a labored, leaden light over the table, but the sky was clear and a fragment of moon lit the coast, sharply defining sea, beach, sky, and rocks.

It was very late when the child finally fell asleep; Leonardo crossed the road to cut some branches and grass for the animals and carry them back to the beach because he did not want to spend much time away from the restaurant; then he filled a bucket with water and gave it to them to drink while Lucia sat on a deckchair on the terrace.

“Do you like it here?” he asked, taking off one of her shoes. Her ankles were swollen and her skin had a new smell. He remembered how when she had come to him only a few months earlier she had smelled of new paper whereas now she smelled of milk and blood.

He answered his own question. “It’s a nice place,” he said, starting the massage.

Two days later, having finished the food Clarisse had given them, they set the snare in bushes by the road.

It was not necessary to go very far because hares, foxes, and badgers came near the road fearlessly. Usually in not more than half an hour Leonardo would hear the trap spring and the brief cries of the animal would fill the night. Then, to prevent dogs or other predators stripping it clean, he would get up and go and remove it from the metal jaws. In the morning, as soon as he woke, he would light a fire on the beach and cook the meat to prevent it from spoiling.

He and Salomon would spend all day in their underpants. Leonardo had persuaded the boy to stay on the veranda out of the sun during the hottest part of the day, but the skin of both had become tanned and their hair lighter, making them look like Nordic adventurers.

The boy spent a lot of time in the water throwing stones and retrieving them and trying unsuccessfully to get David to follow him. The elephant would watch over him from the beach like a timid granny, and when the waves threatened he would take a few clumsy steps backward but without turning away for fear of losing sight of the boy. Circe, in contrast, free of her large panniers, would spend the day sheltering in the shade between the thick concrete posts that supported the restaurant terrace.

In the evening Leonardo and the child would lead the animals over the main road to where there were plenty of bushes, and afterward they would have supper with Lucia before throwing the leftovers in the sea so as not to attract dogs.

One morning, after a couple of hours away, Leonardo brought back a fishing line and several hooks. Now that there were no bathers anymore, the fish had come back near the shore and could easily be enticed to take a bait of little bits of meat or small bones. As dusk fell, Leonardo and Salomon would sit on the beach near the fire while the child recounted his dreams, which were populated by the animals and fish he had killed, creatures who knew he had only killed them out of necessity.

“Sometimes I feel we must be waiting for someone,” he said one evening.

His hair reflected the yellow of the fire, like a crocus in the night.

Leonardo stroked his hair.

“If we do leave here,” he said, “it will be to go somewhere better.”

“There can’t be a better place than this,” Salomon said.

“Then we stay here.”

Next morning, while cooking an octopus, Leonardo saw the far-off figure of a very tall man coming along the beach with a dog, his silhouette vibrating in the heat of the air.

He took the octopus off the fire, put it on a plate so it would not get too hard, and knelt down and waited for the dog to run into his arms.

When he felt Bauschan’s hot body against his chest, he buried his face and fingers in the dog’s hair while the animal licked his ears and face and whimpered with joy. His scent had become that of an adult dog and his physique more compact, but with his long legs and patchy coat there was still something of the puppy about him. Then Leonardo stood up to meet Sebastiano.

During the last months his head had grown a covering of light-colored hair, making him look like a folksinger-songwriter from the 1930s. His body was still slender though his shoulders and arms had grown more substantial. The two men embraced the way children do, turning their heads to one side with their eyes open, their hips apart, hardly hugging at all. Even so, Leonardo could feel the man’s great heart beating against his own in the same rhythm as the surf. A slow and profound but weightless rhythm. The beat of a light heart.

“I have so many things to tell you,” Leonardo said.

They sat down by the fire facing the sea and began to eat the octopus. Bauschan, sitting against his master’s back, stared at the elephant and the donkey, who were crouching between the pillars of the restaurant. Every so often he would let out an uncomprehending howl.

“Alberto’s lost,” Leonardo said, “but we’ve got another boy with us now, and soon Lucia’s going to have a baby.”

Sebastiano went on staring at the gentle coming and going of the waves, as if he had already heard these facts many times. He was wearing a flowered coat with a hole in place of the pocket and formal twill pants.