“Fuck this,” Di Salvo says.
“Yeah, fuck this,” Ietri echoes him.
They drop their rifles. If the Afghans can take a break, they too can take a little rest. Di Salvo gropes around for the pack of cigarettes in the side pocket of his pants and offers him one. They lean against the wall, where the mortar is still fresh.
“They shipped us over here to build a laundry room,” Ietri says. “Does that seem right?”
“No, not right at all.”
It just doesn’t sit well with him. They had promised him American women and there’s not a trace of them here—they were pulling his leg. He’d gotten a glimpse of them in Herat, of course, during the few days he was there: soldiers with ponytails, firm breasts, and the look of a woman who will eat you alive in the sack, but then they shipped him to Gulistan to build a stupid wall. Or rather, to watch someone else build it. He can’t imagine any place on earth farther removed from sexual temptation.
“To think our parents came here to smoke joints,” Di Salvo says.
“Joints?”
“Sure, you know, the seventies. The hippie fuckers.”
“Oh, sure,” Ietri says. He doesn’t know, actually. He thinks for a moment. “Anyway, my parents never came here. They never went anywhere.” He’s sure about his mother. For all he knows, his father might very well have come here, to Afghanistan; maybe he joined a group of Taliban and buries IEDs in the roads now. He always was an unpredictable type.
“I was just kidding. My parents never went anywhere either. But it was that generation. They did a lot of grass and then everyone fucked everyone, constantly.”
“What a life,” Ietri says.
“Yeah, what a life. Not like today. The girls nowadays are all no-I-don’t-drink, no-I-don’t-smoke, no-I-don’t-put-out.”
Ietri laughs. Di Salvo is right; girls today don’t put out.
“You practically have to marry them before they’ll go to bed. Although it depends on the location.”
“What do you mean, the location?”
“The ones from the Veneto hop into bed right away, for instance.” Di Salvo snaps his fingers. “Not in Belluno, though. You have to go farther south, where the students are. The students are little sluts. Once I was in Padua, I got three of them in bed in a week.”
Ietri makes a mental note of the number and location. Padua. Three. You can be sure he’ll go there, once he returns.
“The students shave it—did you know that?”
“Why?”
Di Salvo spits on the ground, then covers the spit with sand. “It’s a fad. Plus it’s more hygienic.”
Ietri is dubious. He’s never seen a female with shaved pubes, except in certain videos on the Internet, and little girls at the beach, of course. He’s not sure he’d feel comfortable.
The Afghans stick their foreheads in the sand, as if they want to plant their heads in it. Again Ietri feels the urge to kneel down and join them, see how it feels. Di Salvo arches his back and swivels his neck around, yawning. The sun is roasting them. Ietri has some sunscreen in his backpack, but he doesn’t know how to smear it on himself and he doesn’t feel right about asking his buddy. A soldier doesn’t rub cream on another soldier’s back.
“Can you imagine? Coming here when there’s no war and roaming around the country, free, with a girl beside you,” Di Salvo muses. “Smoking marijuana leaves just picked off the plant.”
“That would be cool.”
“It would be awesome.”
He moves closer to Ietri. “Do you smoke?”
Ietri, puzzled, looks at the cigarette he’s holding between his fingers.
“I’m not talking about those, asshole. Grass.”
Ietri nods. “I’ve tried it, once or twice.”
Di Salvo puts an arm around Ietri’s bare shoulders. His skin is surprisingly cool. “You know Abib?”
“The interpreter?”
“Yeah. He has grass to sell.”
“How do you know?”
“Never mind that. You can come with me if you want. We’ll each pay half. For ten euros he gives you a bag this big.” Di Salvo uses his hands to show him.
“Are you nuts? If they catch us we’re screwed.”
“Who’s going to catch us? Does Captain Masiero sniff your breath or something?”
“No,” Ietri admits.
“This is different from the stuff you find at home. This stuff is natural, it’s . . . wow!” Di Salvo tightens his grip around his neck and puts his mouth to his ear; his breath is just slightly hotter than the air. “Listen to this. Abib has a small wooden statue in his tent, one of those tribal statues, you know? With a big head and square body and enormous eyes. It’s some old carving that his grandfather gave him. He told me the whole story, but I was smoking and I don’t remember. Anyhow. The statue stares at you with those huge yellow eyes, and the last time, there I was smoking Abib’s grass and looking at the statue while it was looking at me, and at a certain point, bam!—I was stoned and I realized that the statue was death. I was looking death right in the face!”
“Death?”
“Yeah, death. But it wasn’t death like you imagine it. It wasn’t angry. It was a peaceful death, not scary. It was like . . . indifferent. It couldn’t care less about me. It looked at me and that’s it.”
“How did you know it was death? Did Abib tell you?”
“I just knew it, that’s all. Actually, no, I realized it afterward, outside the tent. I was full of energy, an energy unlike any other. It wasn’t anything like the usual sensation you get when you’ve smoked grass and feel wasted. I was extremely lucid, very focused. I had looked death in the face and I felt like a god. Then, listen to this, I pass by the flag, the one on the main tower, you know? It was fluttering because there was a little wind and I . . . I can’t explain it. I felt the flag fluttering, okay? I don’t mean I noticed the wind was making the flag flutter. I’m saying I really felt it. I was the wind, and I was the flag.”
“You were the wind?”
Di Salvo drops his arm. “You think I’m talking like an asshole hippie?”
“No. No, I don’t think that,” Ietri says, but he’s bewildered.
“Well, anyhow, happiness or sadness had nothing to do with it. I mean, those are . . . just pieces of it. They’re incomplete. Whereas I was feeling everything, all at once. The flag and the wind, everything.”
“I don’t understand what the statue and death have to do with the flag.”
“They’re part of it, I’m telling you!” Di Salvo scratches his beard. “You’re looking at me like I’m telling you a load of hippie crap.”
“No. Finish the story.”
“I’m done. That was it, get it? Something inside me opened up.”
“A revelation,” Ietri says.
“I don’t know if it was a revelation.”
“It was a revelation, I think.”
“I’m telling you I don’t know what the fuck it was. It is what it is. I’m just trying to explain to you that the stuff Abib gives you is different. It makes you feel different. It makes you feel things,” he said, suddenly irritable. “So, you want to come?”
Ietri isn’t much interested in drugs, but he doesn’t want to disappoint his platoon mate. “Maybe.”
Meanwhile, the Afghans have rolled up their mats and gone back to work. They rarely speak and when they do, it sounds to Ietri like they’re arguing. He looks at his watch; it’s twenty minutes to one. If he hurries, maybe he can beat the line at the mess hall.
• • •
Three days later, when it comes time to poke their nose out of the FOB, he doesn’t get to go.
“Today we’ll go take a look around,” René says in the morning. “I want Cederna, Camporesi, Pecone, and Torsu with me.”
The guys watch the c
hosen ones get dressed in front of their cots. They do it ceremoniously, like ancient heroes, although nothing more than a routine patrol at the village bazaar awaits them.
Cederna struts around the most, because he’s also the fittest. If there were an Achilles, son of Peleus, in Third Platoon, Charlie, it would be him; that’s why he had the first verse of the Iliad tattooed on his back just above the waist. It’s written in Greek—the tattoo artist copied it, with some inaccuracies, from one of Agnese’s high school books—and Cederna has her read and reread it in his ear when they’re in bed.
In shorts and a T-shirt, he plants himself in front of Mitrano’s cot; the corporal has already figured out what’s in store for him and gets up reluctantly, his eyes sad.
“Did your parents have any children that lived?”
“SIR, YES, SIR!”
“I’ll bet they regret that! You’re so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece! What’s your name, fatbody?”
“SIR, VINCENZO MITRANO, SIR!”
“That name sounds like royalty! Are you royalty?”
“SIR, NO, SIR!”
“Do you suck dicks?”
“SIR, NO, SIR!”
“Bullshit! I’ll bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose!”
“SIR, NO, SIR!”
“I don’t like the name Mitrano! Only faggots and sailors are called Mitrano! From now on you’re Fatbody!
“SIR, YES, SIR!”
“Do you think I’m cute, Fatbody? Do you think I’m funny?”
“SIR, NO, SIR!”
“Then wipe that disgusting grin off your face!”
And on and on, until Mitrano kneels down and offers his neck to Cederna, who pretends to strangle him—and actually does choke him a little, enough to make his face turn a bit purple. Mattioli urges him not to quit; the others laugh like madmen, even though they’ve seen the performance dozens of times. Cederna is able to quote the first forty minutes of Full Metal Jacket from memory, line by line: Mitrano is his Private Gomer Pyle, his designated victim, and like the soldier in the film, he’s not enjoying it one bit. When they’re done, he climbs back on the cot and curls up, minding his own business. If he doesn’t go along with the game, Cederna slaps the back of his neck so many times it gives him a crick.
Now that Cederna has everyone’s attention he can continue getting dressed. The senior corporal major’s equipment includes: a TRU-SPEC combat shirt, an eggplant-colored Defcon 5 armor carrier vest with coordinated accoutrements, a Kevlar helmet, an ESS Profile TurboFan mask, a pair of Vertx pants with a gusseted crotch and articulated knee (they’re the most expensive and fit decidedly better than any other tactical pants), Quechua socks and briefs, a Nite MX10 quartz watch with GTLS whose dial and hands are illuminated fluorescent green even during the day, a pair of Otte Gear waterproof gloves, a keffiyeh, a pair of 12×25 binoculars, a Condor T&T belt, elbow and knee pads of the same brand, an ONTOS Extrema Ratio knife with a 165-millimeter steel blade, a GLX grenade launcher, a CamelBak canteen, a Beretta 92FS tucked into a thigh holster, a Beretta SC70/90 assault rifle, Lowa Zephyr GTX HI TF task force desert boots, monocular night vision goggles with IR illuminator, and seven magazines with appropriate ammunition. Aside from the firearms and the helmet, the items have all been ordered via the Internet. In the inside pocket of his jacket there is also a photo, a selfie that Agnese slipped into his backpack as a surprise, a three-quarters shot in which she’s wearing a thong and barely covering her breasts with one arm, enough to make your eyes pop out of their sockets. Sixteen kilos and two thousand euros’ worth of equipment: when he has his weapons on him Cederna feels different, more clearheaded, more alert. More fit. More cocky.
“I’ll buy you some peanuts,” he says to his buddies on his way out. He goes by the cot where Ietri is still lying in his skivvies, green with envy (though his nose, ears, and shoulders are red from the severe sunburn he got), slaps him sharply on the thigh. “Be a good girl, verginella.” Ietri raises his middle finger.
Cederna sits up front in the Lince, on the right, and sees to communications. Camporesi drives. In back are Pecone and René, with Torsu in the middle, standing on the turret. The convoy of three armored vehicles is commanded by Captain Masiero. There’s bad blood between Masiero and Marshal René—Cederna knows it and he sometimes likes to tease René about it.
He’s not afraid. Not at all. Instead, he’s excited. If they were to be ambushed, he knows that his reaction time to load the rifle or draw the pistol and take aim at the target would be less than two seconds; he also knows that less than two seconds might be too long, but that thought is a waste of time, so he sets it aside and focuses on the positive.
Nothing happens. The patrol rolls along without a hitch. They park the vehicles near the Afghan police barracks, which controls the road to the market. The soldiers take a guided tour inside to familiarize themselves with the place, since starting the following week they’ll have to go there every day to train the Mau Maus. From the way the Afghan policemen hold their weapons, it’s clear to Cederna that they’re hopeless: he’s ready to bet that if the politicos decide to withdraw the troops and turn the war over to them, Afghanistan will fall back into the hands of the Taliban immediately. Cederna hates politicians; all they think about is lining their own pockets and that’s it.
Once they’ve left the blockhouse the atmosphere relaxes and the patrol allows itself a walk along the road. The armored vehicles follow the soldiers, who are on foot like tame animals. From their shoddy holes-in-the-wall, the Afghans watch the soldiers parade by. Cederna frames them one at a time in the SC70/90’s sight, imagines hitting them in the head, the heart, the knees. In a specialization course he learned to breathe with his belly, so that the shoulder his rifle butt rests on remains still—it’s a technique used by commandos, just what Cederna wants to become. At the end of the mission he’ll submit his application to enter the special forces.
For the time being his job is anything but that of assault: Captain Masiero has distributed handfuls of candy to the soldiers and children buzz around them like wasps. René tries to disperse them, flailing his arms.
“Don’t worry, Marshal. They won’t hurt you, you’ll see,” Masiero makes fun of him.
“We shouldn’t let too many of them come near us at one time,” René snaps back. He’s citing the regulations.
“Are you expecting a bomb on a beautiful day like this? If you act like that, I won’t allow you out anymore. You’re scaring all my little friends.” The captain bends down to one of the children and ruffles his hair. “It seems to me you still haven’t understood a thing about our mission, Marshal.”
Cederna watches his leader take his lumps. He can’t stand Masiero either—he’d gladly knee him in the stomach. He gives René a consoling clap on the shoulder instead, and he too starts handing out candy.
A little boy, smaller than the others and wearing a tattered smock, is about to end up crushed. Cederna lifts him up and the child lets him carry him, staring at him with wide, rheumy eyes, his nose caked with dried snot.
“Doesn’t your mother ever give you a bath, kid?”
The answer is a kind of gap-toothed smile.
“You don’t understand a word I’m saying, huh? No, you don’t understand a word. I can say whatever I want, then. That you’re lousy with fleas, for instance. Filthy. Smelly. That makes you laugh? Really? Smelly, smelly. You stink. Look at you laughing! All you want is your candy, like all the others, right? Here you are. Uh-oh, slow down. Promise me, though, that when you grow up you won’t become a Taliban, okay? Otherwise I’ll have to put a bullet from this in your little head.” He waves the rifle in front of him; the boy follows it with his eyes. “Torsu—hey, Torsu, come over here.”
His cohort approaches at a slow jog, followed by his swarm of kids.
“Take my picture. Come on.”
With one arm
Cederna holds the child—who after trying unsuccessfully to unwrap the candy has popped it into his mouth, wrapper and all—and with the other raises the rifle in the air, holding it by the stock. It’s a brazen pose, and he’ll use it to beef up his online profile.
“Did I come out okay? Take another one—one more.”
He sets the boy down on the ground, takes the last of the candy from his pocket, and tosses it far away, in the dust. “There. Go get it.”
Food Supplies
Replenishments come by air, without much notice or regularity. Although requests sent from the FOB are always detailed, the bureaucrats in Herat send whatever they want, taking advantage of excess inventory: toilet paper instead of ammunition, juice when the soldiers have no water. For six days the helicopters haven’t flown over the area because of the haze. Any longer and the soldiers will be forced to eat K rations. Fortunately, the meteorological situation has improved in the past few hours, the sky is once again a blazing blue and the guys from Charlie are grouped on the flat open space in front of the base, waiting for an airdrop.
The helicopter appears in the notch between the hill and the mountain, silent and tiny as an insect. The guys’ eyes, all shielded by reflective lenses, turn toward the little black dot, but no one takes a step forward or unfolds his crossed arms. The aircraft descends and they can now make out the incorporeal circles described by the whirling rotor blades. No matter how many times you’ve seen a C-130 approach with its rear cargo hatch open, no matter how many bone-stiffening hours you’ve spent traveling in it, you can’t help thinking how much it resembles a bird with its ass wide open.
The pallets are dropped in rapid succession; the cords of the parachutes—about a dozen in all—grow taut in the air and the white nylon canopies bloom against the cobalt sky. The aircraft makes a turn and disappears in a few seconds. The parachuted containers dangle in the air like abnormal jellyfish. Something goes wrong, though. A burst of wind slams into a parachute, which tilts over and nudges the cord of the one beside it, as if looking for company. It wraps itself around it and the beleaguered cord in turn goes into a spin. The spiral they form picks up speed, and the cords get snarled up all the way to the top, strangling the canopies. The Siamese parachutes knock into two of the ones below them, and together they form a tangled knot.