The Last Man Standing (9 page)

“Do you know anyone who might want the grapes?” Elio said.

Cesare picked up his glass from the ground and drank. What Leonardo had taken for a cardigan flung on the sofa moved and he realized that it was a gray shorthaired cat.

“If you want a friendly word of advice,” Cesare said, “go to the river and chuck the lot in, then go back home and get drunk like me.”

There was a short silence while each stared at the shoes of the other; then a boy with a large birthmark on his cheek and hair that looked as if it had been cut by someone who had become bored halfway through the job emerged from the shed.

“Allow me to present the last employee of the house of Gallo,” Cesare said.

Leonardo and Elio acknowledged the boy, who responded briefly.

“I’ve turned on the fans,” he told his boss. “Will you take care of turning them off again?”

Cesare nodded. The boy stuck his hands in his pockets and headed for the gate. The green of his overalls seemed to become darker before he vanished among the hedges lining the drive out of the estate. To Leonardo, it was like reading the last page of a South American family saga. A light breeze stirred a couple of lemon trees under the portico. Then Cesare got up and gestured to them to follow him.

The terrace around back was piled with a haphazard collection of furniture, children’s toys, and other objects. It looked as though several rooms had been emptied according to some criterion connected with the size of their contents. Below this, beyond the parapet, the plain extended in regular geometrical shapes defined by the fields and roads that linked the villages. It was a magnificent view. Far off the foothills of the mountains were hidden by a layer of mist that left their summits free.

“Look at the main road to C.,” Cesare said, offering them a small pair of binoculars from his pocket. “That’s how it’s been since this morning.”

Elio looked first, then passed the binoculars to Leonardo who took several seconds to find the road. Both lanes were jammed with a continuous line of motionless vehicles.

“My family left at seven,” Cesare said, “and at midday I could still see them. They’d gone five kilometers, more or less.”

“Are you the only one staying behind?” Elio asked.

Cesare nodded.

“After what happened at C., Rita couldn’t be persuaded. So we loaded the truck last night. They’re headed to our house in Nice.”

“What was it that happened?” Leonardo asked.

“Haven’t you heard? They committed every kind of obscenity and set fire to the village before leaving. This morning Stefano Pellissero ran to see if his sister was all right. He said all you can do is tear your hair out. It’s like war’s passed through.”

“Were they outsiders?” Elio asked.

“It seems so, but people say some of them spoke Italian.”

Going back to the front of the house they found the tractor abandoned. Neither Sebastiano nor the dog were to be seen. The setting sun had transformed the courtyard into a uniform gray lake on which the tractor and its trailer seemed to be floating.

“Did you know he was unfrocked because of a woman?” Cesare said.

Leonardo did know but said nothing.

After seminary, Sebastiano had taught in the college of theology, but after several years asked for, and was given, a parish in upcountry Liguria. There he had gotten to know a woman whose man was often away at sea. The relationship continued in secret for nearly a year, then Sebastiano abandoned his work as a priest to be with her. But at this point the woman decided to stay with her boyfriend. Everyone said the disappointment had deprived Sebastiano of his senses and speech.

“You have to know how to control women,” Cesare said. “I’ve known Rita for thirty-six years and there’s nothing about her I could possibly complain of, but if one day she stuck a knife between my ribs I wouldn’t look at her with astonishment as I died. It’s not a question of malice or bad faith. Women can just wake up one day with a new idea in their heads. It’s their nature. If you can’t accept this possibility, it’s better not to get involved at all. Let alone risk losing your speech!”

They heard the door behind them open. They turned to see Sebastiano on the threshold: he was holding the dog in his arms and had draped a cowhide around his shoulders, fastening it at the throat with a curtain cord.

“Hey!” Cesare said. “That’s my bedroom carpet!”

Sebastiano passed between them and went toward the trailer. His cloak smacked against his heels like a whip. It was a dappled cowhide but in some places so threadbare that the animal’s skin was visible.

“Can you let him have it?” Leonardo asked.

Cesare shrugged, picked his glass up from the floor and took a swig.

“Are these Barbera grapes?” he asked, indicating the trailer.

“Yes,” Leonardo said.

Cesare scratched his chin; he had not shaved that morning.

“I let Rita take all the cash,” he said, “but if you like, we could do a deal.”

In half an hour they had unloaded the grapes and replaced them on the trailer with a crate of potatoes and another containing cauliflowers, carrots, chicory, and a large pumpkin.

On the way back Leonardo hugged himself: a cold wind was blowing from the mountains and moving the tops of the trees. A few gloomy black clouds were floating around the moon and the countryside seemed full of unknown things. Once home, they unloaded the cases and Elio went back to the village. Left on their own, Leonardo and Sebastiano looked at the river: the water was shining like a strip of pewter against a black cloth. Bauschan sniffed the cowhide. Sebastiano bent down to stroke him.

“Nothing that goes from outside into a man can defile him,” he said.

Leonardo looked at him; his voice had passed through his body without leaving any trace as if through an empty pipe, but the silence around them had been completely transformed.

“Does that mean we should prepare ourselves?” he asked, but got no answer.

When Sebastiano had gone, Leonardo went into his book room and looked in St. Mark’s gospel. He read:
“Nothing that goes from outside into a man can defile him. It is what comes out of a man that defiles him. For from inside, out of a man’s heart, come evil thoughts, acts of fornication, of theft, murder, adultery, ruthless greed, and malice; fraud, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly; these evil things all come from inside, and they defile the man.”

He tore out the page, folded it, and put it in his wallet. It was the first time he had heard Sebastiano speak. He was sure he would never hear him speak again.

Throughout the whole of October the line of cars continued to move slowly through the valley toward France, without thinning out. It was not easy to find out what was happening: the national radio had not been broadcasting for weeks and the only stations you could pick up were independent ones broadcasting music programs. Both landline telephones and cell phones were silent, and the Internet had been the first thing to crash. The only remaining source of information was television, which for several days now had been transmitting classical music concerts. A journalist made an appearance late one evening to read a government communication that claimed the situation was stable and urged citizens to be vigilant. Practical advice was also available about food and water, garbage collection, and the precautions to be taken by anyone planning to travel.

Halfway through the month a delegation went to the valley to interview the lined-up travelers. The picture they brought back was schizophrenic. Many maintained that the northeast of the country was in the hands of plundering gangs who took everything they could lay hands on and that although the National Guard controlled a few cities and major routes of communication, otherwise all law and order had broken down. Others, however, reported that things were near normal. They complained of a shortage of gasoline and other necessities but insisted they had seen or heard nothing of assaults or other violence. One man from T. said that in the city the market was crowded, the shops open as usual, and the streets well protected by the military. When asked in that case why he was taking his family to France, he answered, “To be on the safe side.”

The consequence, in any case, was that the country began emptying. The first to leave were those who had relatives or friends beyond the frontier, also families with children. Those who stayed behind were the old, people who were waiting for somebody, and those like Cesare Gallo, who would have stayed even if bombs had been falling.

Leonardo spent the month reading on the veranda or in the book room. Elio had closed his shop and passed by most days for a chat, updating him on who had left and on the general state of affairs. When the weather was fine, they would walk as far as the hill of Sant’Eugidio. There was a small Romanesque church on top of it, surrounded by an English-style churchyard, in which the most recent grave was a century old. Bauschan loved this walk for the river, the stretch of woodland, and the bushes from which he could make the thrushes rise.

When he ran out of provisions, Leonardo was forced to go into the village, which he had avoided since the night of the fire. Only Norina’s grocery, the bar, the baker’s, the pharmacy, and the butcher’s were still open. All the other shops had drawn their shutters with no notices to say why they were closed or for how long. Apart from a knot of old people leaning on the balustrade of the belvedere and commenting on the length of the line of cars down in the valley, the square was deserted. The narrow streets were full of the stench of the grapes rotting in the vineyards.

Waiting his turn at the grocer’s, Leonardo noticed the only subjects of conversation among those who were left were medications, gasoline, and cigarettes since no one knew if or when any of these would arrive. When he bought a loaf of bread, he told the three women who ran the shop that he would be going down to A. on business and would find out all he could about the availability of these goods; they looked at him as though he were a young blond volunteer sticking his head out of the window of a train heading for the front.

The next day he settled Bauschan on the rear seat, started the car, and drove through the village under the skeptical eyes of the old men on the belvedere. During the eighteen kilometers to A. he only passed two cars and one small truck going in the opposite direction. Many of the houses along the route had their windows barred and the fields looked neglected, but apart from this the hills had a gentle autumnal air while the Dolcetto vines were already a vivid yellow, the Barberas turning wine-red, and the Nebbiolos still green.

Things gradually changed the closer he got to the town. It seemed as if everything had suddenly grown old: shop signs, warehouses, supermarkets, even the road signs: everything seemed faded and cold. The gas pumps looked like archaeological relics, and the trucks and car transporters cluttering up the open spaces were like tanks from some ancient war waiting to be overgrown with ivy and rust away.

He felt better when he saw several people walking along the station approach with shopping bags, pushchairs, and overnight bags. Bauschan watched the coming and going of the town without much interest and from time to time yawned with boredom.

They parked in the central square and Leonardo took from his pocket a rudimentary leash he had made the evening before from a piece of cord, a clip, and a piece of Scotch tape. Bauschan accepted this philosophically and walked without testing the fragility of the noose. The shops were open, but few of the passersby showed any interest in what was left in their windows. The tables outside the bars on the main street were empty.

The bank was on the ground floor of a building from the Fascist era, originally an agricultural cooperative and later a school. The entrance was protected by a National Guardsman with a submachine gun, bulletproof vest, and helmet. The young man demanded to see his papers and read the details into his transistor radio, asking Leonardo to be patient for a few minutes while his identity was established. The man’s cranium was like a crudely hewn block of marble.

Once approved, Leonardo was allowed inside, where another soldier, who was smaller in size, checked his documents again.

“Go ahead,” he said when he had finished.

The young cashier at the window was thorough. Leonardo still had just over ten thousand lire in his account and, as was made clear to him on a circular with an annexed table, customers were permitted to withdraw in cash up to between 10 and 20 percent of their total deposit, depending on its size. The rest would be available at a monthly rate, but in order to state this the young man looked away from Leonardo and fixed his gaze on the pen tied by a little chain to the marble surface of the counter.

Leonardo established that the sum in his account allowed him to take out 13 percent of his deposit and, while the young man was counting out the one thousand three hundred lire, Leonardo asked him for the latest news of gasoline, medications, and cigarettes.

The young man could not have been older than twenty-five.

“We are not qualified to give such information,” he answered.

Leonardo studied his red hair and the freckles that covered most of his face. He could easily have been one of the children forced to thieve in the muddy streets of London by the crafty Fagin.

“I understand,” he said.

The boy asked him to sign a piece of paper, which he placed on a pile reaching from the floor up to his elbow, and then gave him a serious look.

“After a theater reading two years ago,” he said, “you autographed a copy of
The Roses Near the Fence
for me. You won’t remember, but I told you about a novel I was writing. You shook my hand and told me to keep at it.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember. And did you keep at it?”

The boy looked across at the girls moving between desks cluttered with papers and large registers on the other side of the great hall. For the first time, he seemed aware of his surroundings.

“No.”

“You’re very young, you can easily begin writing again.”

The bank clerk shook his head.