“Not much to see, huh, Doc?”
“A little boring,” Egitto says, but he doesn’t think so. The mountain changes shape every second; there are infinite nuances of the same yellow, but you have to be able to recognize them. It’s a hostile landscape to which it was easy for him to grow attached.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” the soldier says. He seems forlorn.
When Egitto climbs down from the fortification, he heads for the phones, even though there aren’t many people he can call, no one he has—or wants—to tell about his return. He calls Marianna. He enters the code on the prepaid card; a recorded message informs him of the remaining credit and asks him to please hold.
“Hello?”
Marianna always sounds abrupt when answering the phone, as if she’s been interrupted doing something that requires her utmost concentration. As soon as she recognizes his voice, though, she softens.
“It’s Alessandro.”
“Finally.”
“How are you?”
“I have a headache that just won’t quit. And you? Did they leave you all by yourself in the end?”
“The new regiment arrived. It’s strange—they treat me like an old wise man.”
“They don’t know how wrong they are.”
“Yeah. They’ll soon find out.”
There’s a pause. Egitto listens to his sister’s slightly labored breathing.
“I went back to the house yesterday.”
The last time they were there they’d gone together. Ernesto had been dead a few days and they were already wandering through the rooms, their eyes choosing which pieces of furniture to keep. In front of the mirror in the foyer, his sister had said, Could I take this? Take whatever you want, he’d replied; I’m not interested. But Marianna had been furious: Why do you do it, huh? Why do you try to make me feel guilty by saying, Take whatever you want, as if I were a selfish pig?
“How was it?” he asks.
“How do you think? Empty, dusty. Sad. I can’t believe I lived in such a place. Just think, I found the washing machine with a load of wash in it. They hadn’t even looked. The clothes were pasted together. I got a trash bag and threw them out. Then I opened the wardrobe and threw out the rest as well. Everything I happened to get my hands on.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Why shouldn’t I have?”
Egitto doesn’t know why. He knows it’s something that shouldn’t have been done, not yet. “They might have been useful,” he says.
“Useful to whom? To you? That stuff is awful. And besides, I happen to be on my own here. You could at least have the decency not to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I contacted a couple of real estate agents. They say the house needs to be fixed up, we won’t get much for it. The important thing is for us to get rid of it as soon as possible.”
Egitto would like to tell Marianna that the sale can wait, but he remains silent.
She presses him: “So when are you coming back?”
“Soon. I think.”
“Did they give you a date?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Maybe I really should make that phone call. I’m sure someone would take an interest in the matter.”
Marianna always shows a certain impetuosity toward his affairs, as if she claimed the right to preempt his decisions. Recently she’s threatened several times to lodge a complaint with the Defense Administration no less. So far Egitto has managed to talk her out of it. “They’ll get back at me. I’ve already explained it to you,” he says.
“I don’t know how you can live like that, not knowing where you’ll be in a week, or a month. Always at the mercy of other people’s whims.”
“It’s part of my job.”
“It’s a stupid job and you know it.”
“Could be.”
“Getting involved in a place that has nothing to do with you. Zilch. Hiding among a bunch of fanatics. And don’t try to tell me they’re not, because I know exactly how they are.”
“Marianna . . .”
“There’s a certain amount of stupidity in that.”
“Marianna, I have to go now.”
“Oh, of course. I thought so. Look, Alessandro, it’s really urgent that we sell the house. The way prices are going in the area is appalling. Only they could have made the place seem idyllic. Ernesto was convinced he was an expert when it came to investments, remember? He was convinced he was an expert in everything. In fact, the apartment isn’t worth anything anymore. I’m really worried.”
“I’ll take care of it, I told you.”
“You have to do it quickly, Alessandro.”
“All right. Ciao, Marianna.”
• • •
Egitto isn’t sure how much intelligence lies hidden behind Colonel Ballesio’s meditative stance. Not much, he’d guess. What’s certain is that the colonel harbors several idiosyncrasies. For example, he’s hung a disproportionate number of tree-shaped air fresheners in the tent, which fill the space with the scent of bubble gum.
“Lieutenant Morocco! Come in.”
“Egitto, Colonel, sir.”
Ballesio leans forward to read the name on his jacket. “Oh, well, not much difference, right? At ease, Lieutenant, at ease. Have a seat over there. As you can see, this tent doesn’t have many amenities. Caracciolo is a spartan type. Only because he’s young, mind you. I, however, am beginning to appreciate comfort.” He caresses his belly indulgently. “By the way, I’d like to get a refrigerator to keep a few beers here. I noticed you have one in your infirmary. Do you really need it?”
“The vaccines are in it. And the adrenaline.”
“The adrenaline, right. That’s important. I could keep it here, though. That way I’ll have room for some beers. After all, my tent is open—everyone is welcome at any hour of the day or night. I don’t have any secrets to hide. Besides, you’re leaving soon, right?”
Egitto lowers his eyes.
“Anyway, think about it. Maybe it’s not a good idea. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always liked beer, even warm.” The colonel squeezes his lips between his thumb and forefinger, nodding his head vacantly. “Well, okay, then,” he murmurs. And again: “Okay, then.”
On the desk there’s a copy of The Little Prince. The two soldiers turn their eyes to the slim little boy drawn on the cover.
“My wife,” Ballesio says, as if to justify himself. “She gave it to me. She says I need to get in touch with our kids. I’m not sure what she means. Have you read it?”
“A long time ago.”
“If you ask me, it’s for homos. I fell asleep twice.”
Egitto nods, uncomfortable. He’s not sure why he came to the colonel’s tent. The Little Prince seems more out of his element than usual under the greenish light filtering through the canvas.
“Was there something in particular you wanted to tell me, Lieutenant?”
“I’d like to extend my stay, Colonel.” The meaning of the phrase isn’t fully clear to him until he’s uttered it in its entirety.
Ballesio raises his eyebrows. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here in Afghanistan or here in this Gulistan shithole?”
“At the FOB, Colonel.”
“And to think, I’d already like to leave. Ski season starts in three months. Don’t you want to go home and ski, Lieutenant? Don’t tell me you’re one of those southerners who’ve never put on a pair of skis.”
“No. I ski.”
“Good for you. Of course, I have nothing against southerners. Some of them are good people. But naturally, to call them Alpines is a different story. They’re suited to these rotten deserts. They’re used to it. Me, on the other hand, I’d give my ri
ght arm to go back to the mountains and ski all winter long. Ahhh! I tell myself each time, This year I’m devoting all my time to skiing, but then something always gets in the way. Last year my wife tripped on a curb and I found myself having to be her nurse. A depressing experience. From the windows I gazed at the Tofane Mountains with their white blanket of snow, and I would have climbed them on foot just to be able to ski back down. I would have come down on my ass. This year I won’t even see the snow. A waste of time, a waste of life. Especially at your age. Anyway. Are you really sure you want to stay?”
“I’m sure, Colonel.”
“I hope it’s not because of some kind of missionary spirit. They told me about that kid you saved, you know. The opium smoker. Congratulations. A touching story.” He mulls it over. “But we aren’t missionaries, remember that. We’re commandos. We like to play with guns, and preferably use them.”
“It’s for the money,” Egitto lies.
The colonel rubs his jaw thoughtfully. “Money is always a good reason.”
The Little Trees fresheners flutter crazily in front of the air conditioner’s jet, giving off a cloying aroma. Egitto is beginning to feel nauseated.
Ballesio points to him. “That thing on your face. Will it go away?”
Egitto sits up straighter in his chair. He pictures the pattern of blotches on his face. It changes every day, like an atmospheric disturbance, and he keeps an eye on it as if he were a meteorologist. By now he knows how each area will behave: the cheeks heal quickly, the skin around the lips is painful, the scaly eyebrows disturb people, the ears are a disaster. “Sometimes it improves. A little. With the sun, for instance.”
“It doesn’t seem like it. It makes you look like a mess. No offense.”
Egitto grabs onto his belt. All of a sudden he feels very hot.
“I have a problem too,” Ballesio says. He loosens the collar of his uniform. “Here. Look at this. There are spots, right? They itch like hell. Does your stuff itch?”
Egitto goes around the desk to examine the colonel’s neck. A slight rash follows the edge of the uniform. Red pustules, tiny as pencil marks. “It’s just a rash. I have some calendula cream.”
“Calendula? What the fuck is that? Don’t you have any cortisone?”
“You don’t need cortisone.”
“It makes me feel better right away. Bring me the cortisone. You should try it up there as well, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks for the advice, Colonel.”
He returns to his seat, puts his hands on his knees. The colonel straightens his jacket.
“So, then, you’ll be staying with us,” he says. “If it were me, they’d have to pay me a ton of money to make me hang around here. Anyway. Your business. A real doctor will come in handy for us. Your colleague Anselmo can barely manage with stitches. I’ll communicate your decision today, Lieutenant.”
Egitto requests permission to leave.
“One more thing, Doctor.”
“Sir.”
“Is it true what they say about the roses?”
“What’s that?”
“That in the spring the valley is filled with roses.”
“I’ve never seen them, Colonel.”
Ballesio sighs. “I thought so. Of course. Why should roses grow in such a horrible place?”
Sand
For Ietri everything is new and interesting. He studies the strange terrain from the helicopter, the rocky plains interrupted here and there by emerald green meadows. There’s a lone camel standing halfway up a slope, or maybe it’s a dromedary, he can never remember the thing about the humps. He didn’t think that dromedaries existed in the wild, though: they’re zoo animals. He’d like to point it out to Cederna, who is sitting beside him, but his friend doesn’t seem to be interested in the landscape. He’s staring at some point of the helicopter from behind his dark glasses, or else he’s sleeping.
Ietri takes out his earbuds. The distorted, cavernous guitars of the Cradle of Filth are replaced by the very similar noise of the rotor blades. “Will there be a bar at the FOB?” he asks his friend. He’s forced to shout.
“No.”
“What about a gym?”
“Not even that.”
“Ping-Pong at least?”
“You still don’t get it. Where we’re going there’s not a goddamn thing.”
He’s right. There’s nothing at Base Ice, only sand. Yellow, clinging sand—your boots sink in it up to your ankles. If you brush it off your uniform, it swirls in the air a bit and then comes back and lands in the same spot. The first night in Gulistan, when Ietri blows his nose, he leaves dark streaks on his handkerchief. The next day blood mixed with sand comes out, and so on for a week, then nothing. His body is already used to it; a young body can get used to anything.
The space assigned to the platoon is in the northwest zone, next to a concrete structure, one of the few on the base: it was left behind by the marines. It’s a large bare room, plastered only at certain points. There’s graffiti on the walls: a flag with stars and stripes, some lewd sketches, and a mean bulldog with a studded collar. The holes, dozens of them, are from bullets fired from within.
“What a lousy wreck,” Simoncelli says when they enter the first time, thereby choosing the name with which to baptize their digs: the Wreck. It becomes their headquarters.
They soon discover that it’s infested with cockroaches. They’re heaped up in the corners and crevices, but occasionally an explorer crawls out onto the floor. They have shiny brown carapaces, which make a crackling noise when you crush them under your boot and spurt blood half a yard away.
Luckily Passalacqua has brought along some insect repellent and spreads the powder around the outside perimeter and in the corners. “You know how it works?” he asks, tapping the bottom of the can to discharge the last puffs of powder. If it isn’t enough, they’re fucked: they’ll have to kill the critters one by one. “It releases a smell that excites the cockroaches. It’s called a pheronome.”
“Pheromone, you idiot,” Cederna corrects him.
“Pheromone, whatever. It’s the smell of their females in heat. The cockroaches get horny and go looking for them, and instead of the females they find the poison.”
“Fantastic!”
“The ones who end up in the poison drop dead on the spot and give off a different odor that drives the other cockroaches crazy.”
“Crazy?”
“Crazy. They devour each other.”
Ietri imagines a cockroach scurrying out of the Wreck, slipping into the tent, climbing up the leg of the cot, and crawling over his face as he sleeps.
“Just imagine if the Taliban did that,” Cederna says, “if they sprayed the smell of pussy on the base instead of hurling grenades. We’d start killing one another.”
“We already have Zampieri giving off the pheromone,” Rovere says.
“No, she only smells from her armpits.”
They all laugh. Only Ietri is left frowning. “Do you think we’re like cockroaches?” he asks.
“What?”
“You said that if the Taliban sprayed the smell of pussy we’d start killing each other. Like the cockroaches.”
Cederna smiles faintly. “Maybe you’d be saved, verginella. You don’t know that smell yet.”
• • •
The first task assigned to the Third Platoon, Charlie Company (since the Sixty-sixth Company set foot on foreign soil, its designation was changed to its battle name), is the construction of a masonry structure to house the washing machines. The sand has already put two of them out of order, and they are now stacked in a corner of the camp along with other discarded materials, receptacles full of empty cans and scrap metal.
Ietri has been working for a couple of hours with Di Salvo and four masons from the village. In actuality, all the soldiers do is watch to
see that the Afghans don’t bungle it. It’s not clear who among them has the most experience with construction. The plan they have to follow is sketchy and the design lacks the lateral dimensions, so they’ve marked out the perimeter roughly by counting the number of bricks in the drawing. It’s just past noon and the sun is beating straight down on their naked shoulders.
“We could use a beer,” Ietri says.
“Yeah, ice cold.”
“With a lemon wedge stuck in the neck.”
“I like to suck the lemon after the beer.”
The wall they’re building seems straight, at least to their eye, yet there’s something odd about it. They’re at the eighth row of bricks; soon they’ll need a ladder and Ietri hopes he won’t have to escort the Afghans to the storeroom to get it.
All of a sudden the Afghans stop what they’re doing, drop their tools on the ground, and spread out some mats that had been piled aside, arranging them in the sole triangle of shade. They kneel down.
“What the fuck are they doing?”
“What do you think?”
“Do they have to pray right now?”
Di Salvo shrugs. “Muslims are always praying. They’re fundamentalists.”
Ietri fishes a glop of mortar out of the bucket and throws it on the wall. He flattens it with a trowel. What lunacy, he thinks, then turns to look at the Afghans again. They’re doing a kind of gymnastics: they bend down to the ground, straighten up, then hunch over again, all the while intoning a mantra. For a moment he has the urge to imitate them.