Cederna punches the side of the cot with his fist.

"Baby ma.s.sage? Yes or no?"

He gives in. Okay, baby ma.s.sage, whatever. As long as it takes him away from where he is. He lets his arms drop along the sides.

"You want music?" the woman asks.

"No. Please. No music."

At the American base, garbage of all kinds has piled up alongside the wooden walkways and in the drainage ditches. A population of feral cats moves cautiously through the trash; occasionally the cats stop, spot something, then pounce forward. Rene doesn't see even a single rat, but clearly they're around, and in abundance.

He enters the phone center, which compared to the makeshift arrangement at the FOB looks like the command center of a s.p.a.ce agency. He searches his phone directory for Rosanna's number and dials it without giving himself time to hesitate any further-he's already wavered too long. The phone rings four times, but finally she picks up.

"It's me. Rene."

"Oh, my G.o.d."

The lag in the signal allows time for one last, weak-willed uncertainty. Is it really what he wants? He's about to tie himself down to a woman he barely knows, a woman who's much older than he is; he made love with her a handful of times and they watched old movies together. He's setting himself up for serious consequences, difficulties he can't even imagine, unhappiness maybe. The conflicting pros and cons rise up in his mind again, but this time Rene rejects them. He knows what the right thing to do is. He has a clear picture of himself and the child lying on a green stretch of gra.s.s and, at the end of the day, that's the best fantasy he's come close to in a long time.

"How are you? Are you wounded?"

"No. No, I'm fine."

"I heard all about it on the news. They mentioned your name. What a horror, Rene. What a terrible atrocity. Those poor boys."

"Rosanna, listen to me. I had a lot of doubts, I thought and thought about it. I didn't think I could do it, that you were- Well, we barely know each other, right? And we have a lot of differences. But life here has opened my eyes. G.o.d chose for me not to die. He decided that I should look after our baby, so he can grow up with a father. I thought I still had too much to do for myself and instead there's nothing more I have to do for me-it doesn't matter to me. I want the baby. I'm ready. I am, believe me."

"Rene, listen . . ."

"I've already thought of everything. Last night I sat on the cot with the flashlight in my mouth and I took notes, I wrote up a list. There are a lot of things to arrange, but we'll make it. You can move in with me-the house isn't huge, but it's big enough. I'll have to clear out my study, but there's just a bunch of c.r.a.p in there. It's not even a real study, I just call it that. I can throw everything out and make room. I'll be a good father, Rosanna, I swear to you. I've been a bad leader. I let five of my men die, but I'll make it up, I'll be a perfect father. I'll keep him with me always. I'll teach him to ride a bike and play soccer and . . . everything. Even if it's a girl. I'd like so much for it to be a girl. Have they told you yet? Is it a boy or a girl, Rosanna? Tell me, please-I want to know."

He hears her breathing on the other end. She's crying. He wishes she were there with him; he'd hold her close and wipe her tears. It's right for her to cry, because this is their tragic and joyous moment, the beginning of their life together and many years from now they will remember it.

"You're a fool, Rene."

"No, Rosanna. I'll do everything right, I swear. The two of us . . . we'll find a way."

"Shut up! Don't you get it?"

"What?"

"It's too late now."

Rene's mouth is dry. He's talked a lot and is in a rush. The Americans' voices are loud-they're shouting into the phones, barking; they're not very considerate. The racket is making his head spin. "What did you do?" Rene says.

"It's too late."

"Rosanna, what the f.u.c.k did you do?"

The sheep hurtle down the slope and falter on their glabrous hooves, their faces contracted in terror. Something is wrong, there's no shepherd. They want to screw us. Fire, fire, fire with everything you've got. The truck explodes with a roar that leaves their ears ringing. They must be ready, they must be on their guard. The baby isn't yet a baby, it's a mosquito. They suck it out with a tube and in five minutes it's all over.

"Good-bye, Rene," Rosanna says. "Take care of yourself."

The ma.s.seuse's name is Oxana; she's thirty-eight years old, but she looks older. She comes from Turkmenistan, which in Cederna's imagination is just another abominable place somewhere in the north, another place not worth knowing. There's not much more she'll allow him to know: when the soldier tries to start a conversation, the woman cuts him short, pointing to the cot, or if they've finished, the door. She answers his questions in monosyllables, and never asks him anything about himself. To get back at her, Cederna forces her to reduce the time she spends on the ma.s.sage, grabbing her hand immediately and placing it where he wants it. She's not happy about it; the preliminaries allow her to feel less disgust for herself-Cederna is not so insensitive as to not realize it. His way, everything is over in a few minutes. Then he finds himself out the door again, at loose ends there at the U.S. base, having to deal with a tension that instead of abating keeps growing and growing. In the time it takes him to reach the tent where his companions continue to remain silent and remorseful, he's h.o.r.n.y again. He craves Oxana. He can't think of anything else.

In a single day he's gone to the ma.s.seuse five times. The hand job is demeaning, it doesn't fully satisfy him, but what else can he do? She shoves him away if he tries to get more. When he happens to find the door at the compound locked, he kicks and punches it. "Come out of there!" he yells. He walks around the base aimlessly and goes back less than half an hour later. She's there. He beleaguers her with questions-can he possibly be jealous of a prost.i.tute? She'd simply gone out to go to the toilet. He struggles to calm down.

Before the third evening in Delaram he runs out of money. He tries to persuade Oxana to give him a free session. She won't even let him get near the cot. Cederna hurls a load of insults at her. It doesn't do any good.

He goes back to the tent even more frantic. He asks Di Salvo to lend him some money. He's the best friend he has left.

"I wouldn't even lend you a dime, you a.s.shole."

"Please."

"Beat it, Cederna. Go beg from someone else."

He turns to Pecone, to Rovere, to Pa.s.salacqua, even to Abib. They all tell him they don't have any money or just flatly say no, with a rudeness he doesn't feel he deserves. Finally he tries Zampieri.

"What do you need it for?"

"I can't tell you."

Zampieri's eyes are lined with dark circles. "I wouldn't give it to you anyway," she says.

"It's an emergency."

"No. It's not. We've already had an emergency. Now there's no emergency anymore."

"Come on, Zampa, help me out."

"Do you know how many hours it's been since I've slept? Eighty-four. I counted them. Eighty-four. I don't think I'll ever be able to sleep again."

He walks away. He hasn't sc.r.a.ped together even one euro. He doesn't know what he'll do if he doesn't come up with the money.

Before supper he's back in front of Oxana's compound. He'll give her something in exchange. He has a very nice knife-it's worth much more than ten euros. A knife with a rubber handle and antireflective coating on the blade. It will cost him to part with it, but he'll buy another one just like it back in Italy.

He bursts into the small room and this time she's on the other side of the curtain with someone. She chases him out, swearing at him in her own language. Cederna sits outside on the ground. It grows dark as he imagines what the woman is doing with the other soldier. He's sure she must allow him to go further, of course, because he's an American. When the man comes out, he shines his flashlight on him briefly. A black guy. Oxana has just been with a black man! He rushes in like a fury, slamming the door behind him. He wants to catch her still half naked. Instead Oxana is wearing her usual ap.r.o.n and is placing clean towels on the cot.

"Were you with that guy?"

She gives him a scornful look. She shrugs. She doesn't understand.

"Tell me. Do you perform these little services for blacks too?"

"Do you have the money?" she asks him, not turning around.

"No," Cederna says.

"No money, no ma.s.sage."

She's ready to send him away again. He has to calm down. Cederna pulls the knife out of his belt. "I have this," he says.

Oxana jumps back. She presses against the wall. "Put it away!" she cries. She tries to reach out a hand to the drawer of a wheeled cart.

She's misunderstood him. Cederna didn't mean to hurt her. He bursts out laughing. "See how fast you've changed your tune now?"

"Put it away!" the woman repeats.

What does she take him for? A bada.s.s? "Okay," Cederna says. "If that's what you think, then let's have some fun."

He moves close and rolls the cart away with his foot. She doesn't take her eyes off the black blade.

Cederna brandishes the knife in his hand (he can twirl it 360 degrees between his fingers, one of the many little tricks that make him the envy of a lot of people). "Oh oh oh," he says. "No money, no ma.s.sage? And that guy who was here before, did he have money?"

Oxana huddles on the floor. "Please," she begs.

It's at this point that Cederna fully realizes the possibility that is being offered to him by the six-and-a-half-inch blackened steel blade. His money has run out. Oxana is alone. Who's going to go and report it? Officially she doesn't exist-there are no prost.i.tutes inside a military base. And in a few hours he'll climb aboard a helicopter and return to the FOB. Even if the ma.s.seuse enjoyed internal protection, which seems likely, her buddies wouldn't have time to get organized and come looking for him.

Only a few seconds go by between reflection and action. The army trained him to react quickly.

He helps her get up, gently. He pushes her toward the cot, makes her turn her back. Oxana obeys the knife point as if it were a magic wand. She's strong, but not strong enough to prevent him from securing both her hands with his left. He uses his right hand to undress her and undress himself, the bare minimum, then he grabs the knife that he's been clenching in his teeth and places it under her chin. He sinks it into the flesh of her neck a little, without cutting her. He doesn't want to hurt her.

You really are a savage, Francesco Cederna.

I'm a wolf-didn't they tell you?

Oxana is no longer screaming; her moans might also be cries of encouragement. She stiffens when he bites her shoulder and Cederna feels driven to do it again. He wants to rip her to shreds, chew her up. He's drooling on her neck, her hair. There, the thoughts are fading, finally. The ghosts are evaporating. That's all he needed; it wasn't much. He's a soldier; he knows how to get what's denied him.

Afterward, he won't remember much. Only his last look at the ma.s.seuse before he flees the compound: the pullover rolled halfway up her back, the ap.r.o.n on the ground, slacks and panties scrunched up around her ankles, and a pair of shapely legs, pale in the reddish light. One of them is shaken by a slight tremor. Cederna, sated, lumbering, disbelieving, charges out, swallowed up by the night.

Giulia Zampieri has been wandering through the American base for hours, in a darkness that unlike the absolute darkness of the FOB is interrupted by neon lights over the entrances to the barracks. Her mind is blank, as if someone had sprayed it down with a hose. She turns a corner behind a tent and comes across a makeshift swing: a truck tire hanging by two chains from a metal tripod. What are the marines doing with a swing? It sounds like some kind of a joke: What does an American soldier do on a swing? The only thing he can do, Zampieri thinks: He swings.

She sits on the rubber ring and leans back into the opening. She gives a push with her legs. The chain screeches. She touches the ground again with her toes, then begins moving the way she was taught a century ago, in a previous life: bend and stretch, bend and stretch . . . She flexes her torso to accelerate the swinging. The swing lulls her, back and forth in the warm, dark, stagnant air.

By the time the soldiers return to FOB Ice, the weather has changed. It's been raining nonstop for three days, a fine, debilitating rain. In a very short time the region reaches the average annual precipitation level, then doubles it, triples it. The dust on the ground becomes muddy sludge, then liquefies completely. Wherever there's a slope, however slight, the slime oozes down. The rivulets converge into a torrent that runs through the base from north to south and spills out the main entrance. One by one, weak points in the tents' impermeability begin to appear and the infinite imprecisions with which they were erected become evident. The men are forced to dig ditches around each perimeter, patch holes, spread tarps. For them it's a cruel, cynical lesson on how life goes on: some have died, but those who've survived have to roll up their sleeves, make sure they stay dry.

Lieutenant Egitto placed a bucket under a tear in the roof. The drops plunk down at regular intervals, like the ticking of a clock. He's also spread some rags on the ground, at the entrance, so the soldiers can sc.r.a.pe their boots when they come in. Only a few show up, however. A new sense of reserve has spread through the base in the aftermath of the mission: who has the nerve to seek treatment for conjunctivitis, the flu, or a harmless hernia when five companions died under enemy fire and another is virtually out of commission? Egitto himself takes part in that unprecedented version of personal neglect. He's stopped shaving, he hardly eats, and he washes sparingly, even his teeth.

Irene is gone. He found a note from her rolled up inside one of the bottles of antidepressants, which she replaced with a handful of jelly beans. An affectionate gesture, though also meant to chide. The note simply has her initials and phone number, no greetings or comments. Why did she leave her number? And what is he supposed to do with it? He's put it away among his personal effects, certain that he won't use it.

He doesn't feel sad, either about her departure or-on a much more serious level-about the men's deaths. Maybe it's the pills that hold him back, or else he's no longer capable of feeling. Though the second hypothesis troubles him, the first is not much consolation. He's experiencing something he already knew: that all grief, suffering, and compa.s.sion toward other human beings can be reduced to pure biochemistry-hormones and neurotransmitters, inhibited or released. When he realizes this, what he finds himself feeling, unexpectedly, is indignation.

Since he's unable to come up with anything better, he decides he'll force himself to do it: it will be his own personal form of atonement for the horrors he witnessed and took part in. Abruptly, one Friday night, he stops taking the medication. He unscrews the cap and empties the powdery contents in the trash basket. In its place he chews a raspberry jelly bean. He suspends the treatment cold turkey after eight months, violating the recommendations of the pharmaceutical company with surrept.i.tious glee.

He expects some kind of aftereffect as a result of not taking the drug, but for days nothing happens, if you don't count insomnia and a few brief hallucinatory episodes. His mood is a level plain. The grief remains frozen, someplace else. The lieutenant starts to doubt it exists at all. He remains unmoved during the funeral service performed in the mess hall by a visiting chaplain. He's unmoved when he talks-mumbles-on the phone with First Corporal Major Torsu, in Italy, where he's about to undergo his third maxillofacial reconstructive surgery. He's unmoved by the fragile, absent sound of Nini's voice, or when the first sun in days breaks through the veil of clouds and restores the mountain to its golden splendor.

After meals he still goes to talk with Ballesio. At first the colonel seems uncertain as to what att.i.tude to adopt with respect to the general mourning. Then, evidently, he decides it's best to follow his instinct-that is, carry on as if nothing has happened. He has his own way of trying to raise Egitto's spirits, which is not very effective. More and more often they remain silent, Ballesio concentrating on the pipe he's recently taken up, Egitto watching the smoke rings formed by the colonel's lips, which dissolve as they float upward.

Egitto's body is first to react. He gets a fever, a high one: at night it hovers around 104 degrees. His body temperature hasn't risen that high since he was a child, when Ernesto would examine him, listening through his stethoscope, his mouth and nose well protected by a mask. Huddled in his sleeping bag, Egitto perspires profusely, racked by shivers. He stays in bed for two days in a row, but doesn't ask for help. He has them bring him a basin of water, enough so he doesn't have to leave the tent. Ballesio comes to see him once, but he's too sick to remember, afterward, what he said to him and what he replied. All he remembers is that the colonel didn't stop talking and waving his arms around as he loomed over him with that big round moon face of his.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the fever goes away, leaving him dreamy and strangely energetic, determined about an action that he hasn't yet begun and isn't even aware of. Egitto feels like walking, moving; he treks from one end of the base to the other several times a day. If only he could leave the FOB, he'd set off and run for miles without tiring.

The only available means to get away is the phone, however. After ten days of putting it off, he decides to dial Marianna's number.

"I've written you eight e-mails-eight of them. I called every d.a.m.ned ministry office to find you and you didn't bother to return my call. Do you have any idea how upset I was? It was awful. Didn't you think about how worried I'd be?"

"I'm sorry," Egitto says, but the apology is automatic.

"I hope they'll send you home now. Right away."

"The tour lasts another four months."

"Yes, but you've suffered a trauma."

"Like a lot of others here."

Marianna exhales loudly. "I don't feel like having this discussion with you anymore. I'm . . . worn-out. Have you called Nini, at least?"

It's the first time in many years that Marianna has expressed interest in their mother, concerned about the fact that Nini might also be worried about him. Egitto is astounded.

Obviously he's mistaken.

"Have you spoken to her about the house?" his sister adds.

"No."

"Alessandro, I asked you to please take care of it. This is the right time to sell-in fact, we're already late. With the crisis in the real estate market, that place is depreciating every day."

Only now does he get it: the stopper that's bottling up his emotions and is now pushed out by pressure is not due to compa.s.sion or pity; it's not due to grief. It's due to pure anger, and it erupts from his stomach, flooding his spinal cord and spreading through the nerves to their peripheral endings.

"You could have spoken to her," Egitto says.

"Are you crazy, Alessandro? I don't speak to her."

"You're the one who's interested in selling the house. You could have spoken to her."

"Look, what you've been through can't have been pleasant. I realize that. But that doesn't give you the right to take it out on me."

"I love that house."