Limbo (30 page)

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I had always considered
friendship
to be a grossly overrated word. My grandfather would always say to me that a man could count on two hands the people he could truly trust in a lifetime. A woman on one. You're lying if you disagree. I had always told him I agreed. My friendships—intense, fierce, and ephemeral—lasted as long as a summer storm. They would end over one wrong word, over a heated argument filled with insults you could never take back, or simply out of indifference. I tired easily of people; my sister used to say I had a heart of steel. In elementary school I made friends with my desk mate, a boy named Khamel, who was as beautiful as an angel and as dumb as a rock, and whom I loved secretly, with no hope of reciprocation. We'd do our homework together at his house because his father was an engineer from Libya and his mother ran the pharmacy in the piazza, and he lived in a three-story house with a huge room all his own, overflowing with toys—electronic monsters from Japanese cartoons, racetracks for his cars—all of which thrilled me for years and formed a significant part of my love for their owner. I dropped him when he threw a birthday party and didn't invite me, because his father, who didn't like him playing with me, was going to be there. I never knew if his father rejected me because I was a girl or because my family was poor, but I gave Khamel up for good. My friends from the new apartment blocks lasted through middle school. Hormonal storms, Pitbull's crimes, and my own remorse separated us. I ran into Pitbull once, at the train station when I was on leave. I was in uniform; he was serving a two-year sentence for robbery. He'd be let out of Rebibbia during the day, but had to go back there every night. “You were my best friend,” he said, greeting me cheerfully. “If I have to go to jail again, I hope you arrest me next time.” I tried to explain the difference between a soldier and a police officer, but he just laughed. He asked for my cell number, so he could call me sometime. I made one up.

At the NCO Academy in Viterbo I developed a real sense of camaraderie with the other student sergeants in my year (the second years welcomed us with irritation and various kinds of ritual hazing, and I was never able to forgive them). We were united by the pride of rank, the dream of becoming specialists in weapons, communications, or explosives, of becoming platoon leaders or nurses, and by our common ambition to represent the future of the Armed Forces. NCOs are the ones who hold the troops and headquarters together, they're the backbone or link between the bodies and the minds, both soldiers and commanders, which made us feel doubly important. Living in the barracks and having very little free time for almost two years—until we were sent first for specialist training and then to our respective units—I was with them all day long, morning, noon, and night. We were together in class—English and IT, contemporary history and PE, lessons on driving a Puma, an Aries, and an armored Centaur, and urban warfare. We shared the gym and the mess hall, the crazy studying, the fear of failing, the highs and the lows. All of which, instead of making things easier, ended up making them more complicated. The usual group dynamics surfaced: competition, rivalries, jealousies, passions both repressed and latent, envy, gossip. The only one with whom I found I had a real elective affinity—we both loved death metal and for both of us joining the army was basically like emigrating to another country—was Vito, a Calabrese with fiery eyes. We kept each other's dreams alive: he wanted to be a dog handler, assigned to an EOD unit; I hoped to lead a platoon. Vito didn't get the job he wanted: he took an electronics course, to learn the software in a Freccia, and became a tower tech for IFV tanks, whereas I was sent to a weaponry specialization course. We lost track of each other, meeting again only on Facebook, where we exchanged encouraging messages. After the attack, Vito started a Facebook group about me, but once the first wave of sympathy passed, the number of members dropped, and after a while he closed it.

All things considered, apart from my sister, Vanessa, my only real friend in twenty-seven years was Angelica Scianna. The day she left for training at the Modena Academy, we promised each other eternal devotion. Wherever you are, I'll be there, too, we said, sobbing uncontrollably while she emptied her locker; kissing and crying all over each other, we swore we would do everything possible to be assigned to the same regiment one day, confident that nothing could keep us apart, that we were destined to be reunited, like the two halves of the gold-plated brass heart we gave each other as a pledge. I wore that pendant for years, even in Afghanistan. When I came out of the coma, in the hospital in Farah, I realized I didn't have it anymore. They didn't return it to me with the rest of my personal belongings. It must have been destroyed during the explosion; perhaps it was just as well.

Because something happened to me there at the ends of the earth, on the base and in that mountain gorge. I bonded with those Pegasus guys, some in particular, in a way I never could have imagined possible with someone who wasn't a relative or a lover, wasn't a father, a son, or a brother. There wasn't much to do during downtime at Bala Bayak. We couldn't leave the base. The soldiers loitered at the PX—a miserable little shop that sold razor blades, shaving cream, phone cards, and cigarettes—or challenged each other to pool. Venier would kick a soccer ball around, juggling it on the top of his foot three hundred times in a row. Jodice played Nintendo or chatted with his girlfriend (he was supposed to give up his post at the computer to anyone who outranked him or was older, but because of Imma's pregnancy he was often allowed the first shift). Lorenzo picked at the strings of the rubab he'd bought from an Afghani police officer, eager to learn how to play it before being shipped home, trying to compose songs on it. Angkor dried her long black hair—which she washed every evening because the dust dyed it gray—in the wind and, admiring those silky tresses, the only sign of a woman for hundreds of miles, no one dared protest the pointless waste of water. First Lieutenant Russo listened to Radiohead—“Everything in Its Right Place,” “Exit Music,” and “In Limbo”—and the other officers read or phoned home. They all had families, as did some of the older enlisted men.

The platoon sergeants played cards in the logistics shed. I never liked playing cards, and after the first few weeks, when I joined in because I didn't want to give the impression of being antisocial or arrogant or who knows what, I preferred to keep to myself. Sitting on a wooden bench in the empty mess hall, I read books about journalists, photographers, doctors, spies, and pacifists who, during or just before 1939, had traveled by car, on horseback, or even on foot across Afghanistan, the country on the other side of the barbed wire, the country from which I was barred. And every time the sun sank into the haze and the shadows slid down the mountains, slowly enveloping the tents, the Hesco bastions, and the watchtowers of the base, it seemed like nothing out there existed anymore. Only us, just as we were: imperfect, hateful, and wrong. Even though the darkness erased every shape, I was aware of the nearness of my platoon mates. And that nearness was a guarantee and a promise. I knew all their habits, and it reassured me to know they wouldn't change. When icy winds kicked up the sand and lashed the open space of the base, the guys holed up in their tents like nomads. They piled on Lorenzo's cot, which was always the messiest, even though no one pointed it out to him anymore. I could hear them laughing, strumming the guitar, and singing Vasco Rossi songs. Sometimes they squatted in the dust and smoked, holding their cigarettes in their fists to hide the incandescent red of the embers. Orders stipulated total blackout after sunset. The night was our ally, the invisible shield of Achilles that settled over us. And then I'd have to go over, identify myself, and order them to put out their cigarettes—because they're like lightbulbs in the dark, it's like hanging out a sign and saying to the mortar shooters in the hills, hey, aim right here! But I would have liked to share in that familiarity. I felt alone. Neither officer nor soldier, neither a mind nor a body, neither part of the elite nor one of the troops.

When we first deployed, they were all strangers to me. But then, day after day—at mess, in the tent, in the bunker, on the shooting range, in the Lince, on watch—invisible bonds formed among us, which grew stronger and stronger, and in the end proved unbreakable. We had a word to express all this. Fortunately it's obsolete, out of fashion. No one ever uses it. I wouldn't be able to hear it without falling apart.

Whenever he had time, squatting in the shade, undone by the heat that became more asphyxiating every day, Owl would work on the practice quizzes—multiple choice—for getting into the NCO Academy. He was hoping to apply in September. He'd ask my advice sometimes, and I'd gladly give it to him, because that dog-eared booklet reminded me of my own hopes and fears many years earlier. And I preferred responding to his questions to chatting with my peers in the sergeants' shed. After Goat 4 the divide between me and the other sergeants had become unbridgeable. The other NCOs were envious, so they said that Colonel Minotto, the regiment commander, who had written some very positive character notes on my performance in Kosovo, who gave me the “excellent” that had paved my way for Afghanistan, shamelessly favored me. They tried for a few months to find some weak spot in me, but I didn't offer them any opening. They found one anyway. My intimacy with the troops, they said, was excessive. Someone complained to the commander about my behavior—which was disrespectful of hierarchy—and Paggiarin asked the officers who knew me best if it was true. First Lieutenant Russo had warned me. Women walked a fine line, he had said. If they keep to themselves, they lack group spirit; if they're easygoing, they lack authority. If they're reserved, they're incapable of camaraderie, if they're indulgent, they're too emotional and destroy the group's cohesiveness. “I know your behavior is exemplary, Manuela, but be careful.” That chat made me even more reserved around my colleagues. And made me hope that a good kid like Puddu, eager and tenacious, would take their place one day.

So the unsolved mysteries of the NCO entrance exam booklet became a torment for the whole platoon. What is the past participle of the verb “to fly”? A) flew; B) flied; C) flowed; D) flown. Who is the author of the poem
Ginestra
? A) Petrarch; B) Leopardi; C) Pirandello; D) Pascoli. Who guards the gates to hell in Dante's
Inferno
? A) Cerberus; B) Virgil; C) Hydra; D) Limbo. What is the Constitution? A) a code; B) a source of the law; C) an organization; D) a document. What does each point in the Hubble diagram represent? On a map with a scale of 1:500,000, three centimeters correspond to how many kilometers? 0.0003, 1,500,000, 15, 150 … What is a deciduous forest? Which of these fruits is an achene? A pear, an orange, a fig, or fennel?

“What's the synonym of
epigone
, Spaniard?” Owl asked as we were in line for the toilets. They were all occupied. We must have eaten some rotten chickpeas at mess the day before, because the next day the entire company was tormented by diarrhea. The stench of shit spread from the chemical toilets through the still, sultry air. “The choices are: polygon, polyhedron, follower, friend.” “D, friend,” Diego answered immediately. But Lorenzo was flabbergasted. He stopped suddenly, at the door to the john, butted into the conversation, and assured him he was wrong. “Bullshit, Spaniard, the correct answer is A, polygon. An epigone is a polygon, it even rhymes, it's the same thing, a synthesis.” “You're a beast, Baby,” Diego replied, “an ignoramus. It's synonym, not synthesis, and
epigone
means ‘friend.' You and I are epigones,” he affirmed, pushing the dubious Owl into the john, which reeked of rotten chickpeas. “Are we epigones, Manuela?” Diego asked me that evening, when he saluted me before taking his shift in the tower. “Yes,” I said, before quickly drawing the mosquito net between myself and his enthusiasm.

And so that word became our secret code. I told my epigones things I hadn't even told myself. And they did the same with me. We gave ourselves over to each other completely. “Know why I'm here?” Lorenzo said one evening as we were lifting weights in the tent that had generously been rebaptized as a gym, the only recreational space on the base. “Because you're from the Tenth, and when you found out your regiment was being deployed, you didn't hesitate,” I replied. “Come on,” Lorenzo laughed, loading another weight on his barbell. “I'm an unwilling volunteer, a contradiction. My father mailed in my application. I didn't know anything about it, I certainly didn't want to enlist. He practically forced me to, he drove me to the barracks himself. He was afraid I'd fuck up and end up in jail sooner or later,” he added with a snort. “And was he right?” I asked, stunned. “What do you think?” Lorenzo laughed. “I left high school when I was fourteen, I started a thousand jobs without learning any of them. I wanted to be an extreme ski champion, like Kammerlander, but I tore the ligaments in my knee. So my uncle got me a job in an eyeglass factory, but the work was so repetitive that I quit. I would have liked to buy a truck, but you can imagine my parents, a truck driver son seemed like a failure to them, a public humiliation—my mom's a teacher and my father manages a hotel. Meanwhile, I started an alternative rock band, we called ourselves the Puking Dogs, I played guitar and wrote lyrics. To see me now you wouldn't believe it, but we were pretty famous, they booked us for a summer tour, we played in soccer stadiums. We even opened for Pearl Jam once, at the Jammin' Festival in Venice. I was convinced I could live off my music, everything was going good. I was playing music, having fun, even making some money. But we were heading home after a concert in Pordenone one night when a patrol car pulled us over. It was a Saturday, you know those damned checkpoints, looking for drunk drivers. The singer was a real
cojòn
, he had three hundred grams of cocaine in the glove compartment. They took us to headquarters. The police chief knew my father, and he told him to make me enlist, the Alpini would straighten me out, instill some values in me. So my father sent in the application. I wasn't even eighteen. I was the best rock guitar player in eastern Italy. I curse him every time I think about it. But my father is always right.”