"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 st.i.tches. 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 gla.s.ses, 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 s.p.a.ce a.s.signed 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 c.o.c.kroaches. 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 Pa.s.salacqua 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 f.u.c.ked: they'll have to kill the critters one by one. "It releases a smell that excites the c.o.c.kroaches. It's called a pheronome."

"Pheromone, you idiot," Cederna corrects him.

"Pheromone, whatever. It's the smell of their females in heat. The c.o.c.kroaches get h.o.r.n.y 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 c.o.c.kroaches crazy."

"Crazy?"

"Crazy. They devour each other."

Ietri imagines a c.o.c.kroach 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 p.u.s.s.y 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 c.o.c.kroaches?" he asks.

"What?"

"You said that if the Taliban sprayed the smell of p.u.s.s.y we'd start killing each other. Like the c.o.c.kroaches."

Cederna smiles faintly. "Maybe you'd be saved, verginella. You don't know that smell yet."

The first task a.s.signed 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 sc.r.a.p 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 f.u.c.k 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.

"f.u.c.k this," Di Salvo says.

"Yeah, f.u.c.k 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 s.e.xual temptation.

"To think our parents came here to smoke joints," Di Salvo says.

"Joints?"

"Sure, you know, the seventies. The hippie f.u.c.kers."

"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 gra.s.s and then everyone f.u.c.ked 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 s.l.u.ts. 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 p.u.b.es, 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, a.s.shole. Gra.s.s."

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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s and feel wasted. I was extremely lucid, very focused. I had looked death in the face and I felt like a G.o.d. Then, listen to this, I pa.s.s 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 a.s.shole hippie?"

"No. No, I don't think that," Ietri says, but he's bewildered.