Limbo

LIVE

The first article stored on Traian’s pen drive is from June 9, the day after the attack. The reconstruction of facts is perfunctory and imprecise; even the place-names are wrong. But the reporter describes the region well, he’s clearly been there. Manuela may have met him, maybe even escorted him on a reconnaissance mission. But his name means nothing to her. She’s sorry it’s not Daria Cormon. The blond reporter was unlucky. Had it happened while she was visiting Bala Bayak, she could have sold her piece to the national papers, it could have been her big break. She deserved it, she’d been touring battlefields for years; but she really did bring the soldiers good luck: nothing ever happened when she was around, and her good fortune, which made her famous among the troops, condemned her to anonymity.

The Italian soldiers—the article states—were at Qal’a-i-Shakhrak for the opening of a school for girls. This was to be the fifth school either rebuilt or reopened during the Tenth Alpini Regiment’s mission in Afghanistan. A total of fifty-five schools had been reopened since 2005, when Italy assumed command of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Herat, but the PRT in Farah had encountered greater difficulties. The village, a cluster of dilapidated mud houses, topped by an equally dilapidated minaret, is located in western Afghanistan, on the edge of the area under Italian control: even though severe fighting continued elsewhere, a sort of truce had prevailed in Farah; unfortunately the situation deteriorated just as the Italians arrived to replace the U.S. Marines. Groups of insurgents, fleeing the fighting or flushed out over the course of the previous winter, had taken refuge in the barren hills that form the outer limit of the province, which runs parallel to the Iran border, or in the mountains and valleys that separate Farah from Helmand. With the help of U.S. aviation and intelligence, group after group had been arrested, at times one by one, in house-to-house searches. The Italians had established good relations with the village chiefs, and the district no longer seemed any more dangerous than the rest of the country. There had been no particular reports or warnings.

It was a joyous occasion, and marked an important success in the reconstruction of a province devastated by thirty years of war. The girls’ school had already burned down three times. The Italian mission commanders and the highest Afghani civil authorities in Farah were expected to attend. But at the time of the explosion, only the Alpini EOD team had arrived, to search the area in front of the building for explosives and to signal any anomalies, along with a close protection team. The Alpini may have realized it was a trap and tried to intervene. The fact is that the attackers didn’t await the arrival of the Afghani authorities; the explosion occurred at 8:35 local time. It was one of the bloodiest sacrifices since the start of the mission. There were three casualties, all from Ninth Company. Lieutenant Nicola Russo of Barletta, thirty-three years old, married with one daughter, and Corporal-Major Diego Jodice of Marcianise, twenty-six years old, unmarried, were within the immediate blast radius of the explosion and were killed instantly. Corporal Lorenzo Zandonà of Mel, twenty-one years old, who suffered spinal injuries and grave internal hemorrhaging, died while being airlifted to the hospital in Farah. All three were due to return to Italy within days. Sergeant Manuela Paris of Ladispoli, twenty-seven years old, who was hit by shrapnel and suffered serious head injuries, is in critical condition. Three Afghani civilians were also killed.

The June 10 article didn’t add much to the initial reconstruction of facts, but it did provide further information on the victims. It noted that First Lieutenant Russo was a veteran, on his third mission in Afghanistan, and that Corporal-Major Jodice had also been previously deployed overseas. He was to be married in August. The article was accompanied by two photos: Russo, smiling affectionately at the Afghani baby girl he held in his arms, and Lorenzo and Diego in front of their Lince. Tan, relaxed, sunglasses perched on their helmets, they gaze defiantly at Manuela from the computer monitor and seem to be saying: we’ve slogged through one hundred and sixty-seven days, epigone, we’re at minus thirteen—then we’re going home.

Only a few months have passed since Manuela took the photos that Zandonà’s parents distributed to the newspapers—for she was the one who immortalized her friends in front of the Lince. They both have beards, which they didn’t have when they arrived at Bala Bayak. Lorenzo’s is sparse and reluctant, Diego’s bushy and bristly. They’d all let them grow during their tour of duty until, little by little, they ended up looking like Afghanis—dusty, listless, slow, fatalistic. It was only at the end that their beards were so long and unkempt. And yet Lorenzo and Diego already seem infinitely younger than she is. Kids.

Manuela wants to read all the articles Traian has downloaded for her. As if the secret of the divergence that saved her might be hidden somewhere in there, along with the message that Vanessa, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ happy God, says was given to her. But at two Alessia comes knocking on the door and tells her that the man from the Bellavista rang the doorbell and is asking for her. “I was expecting you for lunch,” Mattia says, “did you forget about me?” His voice is distorted, as if coming from far away. “I was in Afghanistan,” she says. “Don’t you want to come back to Ladispoli, to me?” His playful tone doesn’t mask his worry that she has changed her mind and doesn’t want to see him anymore. “To you, who?” she asks bitterly. “I don’t even know who you are. You’re Mr. No One. All I know is the emptiness that envelops you.” “So you’re not coming?” “Not now.”

* * *

The articles that appeared on June 11 offer a different reconstruction of events. It was neither a radio-controlled car bomb nor an IED. The body of one of the Afghani civilians, a male, or rather the stump of his body that was left, showed trauma consistent with a SBBIED, or suicide body-borne IED, in other words, a suicide bomber with an explosive vest. The device contained no electronic components, which could be rendered ineffective by the soldiers’ jammers, and was probably activated by a switch or a pressure mechanism. It contained circa ten kilos of C4 explosive. The device was rendered more lethal by six Soviet-manufactured hand grenades and up to a thousand pieces of shrapnel. The explosion was devastating. The plastic explosive aside—which, in any case, is readily available—all the materials needed to construct the vest (wires, batteries, switches) are for sale in any market.

Sergeant Paris, who underwent surgery during the night at the American military hospital in Farah, is in an induced coma. The doctors still will not release a prognosis or make predictions about what her condition will be, if she does survive; nor do they know if she has suffered permanent brain damage.

Lorenzo’s father, Piero Zandonà, granted a disconsolate interview to a local paper, in which he said he was proud of his son, but didn’t understand why the government wouldn’t bring our boys home. The Twin Towers fell nearly ten years ago, along with the Taliban, but the terrorists are still multiplying like rats, practically every Afghani is a terrorist now, which means that maybe no one is. In fact, the word has fallen out of favor, and now even our allies refer to the enemy in a different way: insurgents, rebels. But, just like the word itself, an insurgent is someone who rises up, who protests, who rebels against his government or an invader. So what are the Italians doing? Fighting against people who, in the name of liberty, are rebelling against a corrupt and slavish government? But didn’t the Italians go to Afghanistan on a peace mission in the name of liberty? And if they can’t make peace there, or if that peace isn’t to the liking of the people on whom they want to impose it, they can’t make war either, because our constitution repudiates war. Other soldiers die with guns in their hands, but Italian soldiers are being blown up like sheep by land mines. They say it’s a good sign, that attacks with IEDs or suicide bombs merely reveal the impotence of the rebels, who have lost all offensive capabilities. But he doesn’t understand how it’s a good sign when his son was butchered in front of a girls’ school. For what? Would Afghani girls ever really have gone to that school? His son is dead, and no one can bring him back, but Piero Zandonà demands to know the truth about what happened. How is it possible that a TNT-wearing kamikaze managed to slip into a high-risk situation, a ceremony at which strict security measures were supposedly in place? Did someone betray them?

The remains of the dead have arrived in Italy. The state funeral will be held tomorrow, in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome.

The third and final article to appear in the national press, three days after the attack, all text, no photo, just added a bit of color, riling up the readers with a few sentences stolen from the Marcianise parish priest who was supposed to marry Diego and Imma, Russo’s young widow, and the mayor of Mel, who proclaimed mourning citywide in honor of Lorenzo’s sacrifice. The article also stated that Sergeant Paris was still in an induced coma at the Farah hospital. The mangled body of the Qal’a-i-Shakhrak suicide bomber had not been identified. The subsequent articles, scattered in local papers or odd online publications, didn’t add anything new, they simply repeated ad infinitum the little information that was already known. By July 25 the June attempt in front of the girls’ school was already a statistic. The bloodiest summer since the beginning of the mission in Afghanistan.

* * *

Manuela calls Captain Paggiarin. She’s never called him before, but over the past few months, he has let her know he’s there for her. In the way a man who is emotionally stunted can: some awkward phone calls, three or four visits to the military hospital, one with Colonel Minotto, get-well cards, even a bouquet of roses when they transferred her from the Celio military hospital to Turin so she could begin her rehab. Even though he’s only thirty-eight, just a few years older than she is, he takes pleasure in adopting a paternal attitude with his subordinates. Manuela pins her hopes on the Skinny Buddha’s political farsightedness and his relations with intelligence.

The captain is on vacation with his wife in the Dolomites, but he skillfully conceals his astonishment at hearing from her. “I need to speak with you.” Manuela is agitated. “May I come see you? It’s important. If I take the train early tomorrow morning I can be there by three, I won’t waste your time, I’ll only take ten minutes. Please.”

“Manuela, dear,” says Paggiarin, disconcerted—it’s the first time he’s ever called her by her first name—“has something happened?” “I have to ask you something, but I’d like to do it in person.” “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Paggiarin replies. “You need to rest instead of tiring yourself traveling the length of Italy by train, and I’m here with my family—as you probably know, I deploy in two weeks, we both have important things to do, don’t you think? May I ask what it’s about?”

“I didn’t find anything in the newspapers,” Manuela resigns herself to saying. “The story vanished right away. The attorney’s office hasn’t been in touch again. But the investigation must have continued, in Qal’a-i-Shakhrak. The shahid—what did the Italian and Afghani military police tell you, did they find out who he was?” Paggiarin hesitates. Manuela can hear his breath quicken. Maybe he’s thinking. This isn’t by the book. Paggiarin is so strict, so careful to follow procedures.

“No one came forward to identify the body, or what was left of it,” he finally explains. “They didn’t even ask for it to be returned. He might have been a foreigner, or from another province. And as you well know, they’re not in the habit of distributing pictures of martyrs there. They don’t have the sophisticated investigational tools we do for identifying the subject. They did an autopsy, took photographs, and drafted a very detailed report. There wasn’t much more they could do. But our analysts are still working on it.” “So you don’t know his name?” Manuela murmurs.

“Only that he was quite young,” Paggiarin says, “thirteen at most, maybe even younger. Then again, he’s not the first kid chosen to become a shahid. Even eleven- and twelve-year-olds have been recruited: a kid arouses less suspicion. He was probably an orphan.”

“Why wasn’t I told this before?” Manuela scolds him. “Why didn’t you say anything when you came to see me in the hospital?” “We were all so devastated to learn how young the suicide bomber was,” Paggiarin sighs. “I took it personally, it was an added burden for all of us. The Ninth Company officers who were on duty at Bala Bayak in June know, which is why I considered it appropriate to inform you now. But this news is not public. Do you understand?” “I had the right to know,” Manuela protests. The Skinny Buddha does not reply. He lets her vent, and then accepts her silence. He really is a wise man. So Manuela thanks him, apologizes for having bothered him, hopes she hasn’t said anything dumb, wishes him a happy new year. “I know I’ve been a bother.”

“Take care, Paris,” Paggiarin says encouragingly, forcing himself to sound warm. “Think about getting back on your feet. I hope to see you in Marcianise. Life moves on. It will be a day of resurrection for all of us.”

* * *

Traian plays defense. Taller than the other kids his age, lean and lanky, he heads the ball well and anticipates passes. Manuela, clinging to the fence, encourages him, clapping every time her brother manages to stop the opposing team from scoring. And every time, Traian gives her the victory sign with his right hand, as if to say he’s happy she approves, that it really matters to him. She’s his secret coach, the person he really plays for: he wants to win the trophy for her. Manuela didn’t ask Mattia to go with her to the JV tournament finals. She just explained that someone in the family has to watch over Traian, and she’s the only one who can, obviously. Mattia didn’t need to think about it even for a second. He doesn’t want to waste any opportunity to be with her. They have such little time. “I don’t understand a thing about soccer,” he said, “but I’d even go to a curling match with you, Manuela Paris.”

Mattia gazes distractedly at the kids scurrying across the dirt, dark and heavy with rain, careful merely to lean away when mud threatens to splash his clothes. After the game he intends to take Manuela to Rome, to the Hilton Pergola, the restaurant with the most stars in the entire city, so he’s all dressed up for a romantic evening. He hadn’t planned on going with her to a soccer field in Ladispoli’s industrial park, shadowed by abandoned warehouses and a junkyard whose crushed cars are stacked behind the fence. For him there’s nothing sadder than the sight of those boys, their bare legs covered with scratches, bruises, and scabs, muddy shorts and cleats, happy and absorbed under a low sky while a gloomy bank of clouds rolls in from the sea. The showy sunglasses he insists on wearing filter the light, accentuating contrasts and tinting everything an alarming lead color. Every now and then he clasps Manuela’s waist and draws her toward him, as if he’d like to kiss her. She quickly brushes him away. She doesn’t want Traian to suspect anything. He’s only twelve, and when you’re twelve, your sister is as asexual and innocent as the Virgin Mary.

The Real Ladis team, in red-and-blue striped shirts, faces Torvaianica, or TV, in green. The only spectators along the edge of the field are the players’ parents and siblings, but they’re all absorbed in the game as if their honor, instead of just a provincial JV tournament, were at stake. When the referee whistles for a penalty or allows a throw-in, a stream of curses and insults that could flay an ox comes from the sidelines. An African kid who plays forward for TV gets the worst of it, but the full-back for Real Ladis, with his Bolivian face and leather-colored skin, also draws elaborate insults. Monkey, bongo bongo, Congo, Zulu for the first; dried prune, cokehead, and pussy puma are among the more refined for the second. But the referee, bald, potbellied, with a vicious, sarcastic smile, won’t be intimidated. At the third boo he stops the play, holds the ball, and yells to the spectators that the next time he hears an insult with racist undertones he’ll call the game. An overweight madman near Manuela hisses “fucking faggot.”

The referee whistles and hands out yellow cards; after the home team pulled ahead in the first half thanks to a goal on a questionable offside, the game got nasty. Those skinny kids hammer like blacksmiths. “There’s something I don’t get,” Mattia says, watching as lanky Traian lets TV’s number 10, an agile dwarf, dribble around him. “If he’s your brother why doesn’t he live with you?” “He’s Teodora’s son,” Manuela says without turning around, “my father’s wife. I was hoping he would name him Vittorio, after my grandfather. He was his only male grandchild, my grandfather waited for years for him, he’d lost hope, and so he was terribly offended, it really upset him.” “But Traian’s a nice name, imperial,” Mattia comments. “It’s a shame people are so ignorant,” Manuela says, “they don’t know their history. To them it’s a Romanian name.” A car parks at the end of the street. A woman gets out, a mother, she’s late, and she clatters breathlessly on her heels toward the soccer field. Manuela stretches her neck, but it’s not Teodora.

Play is interrupted. A buzz rises from the field, the excited chirping of children’s voices: a player is on the ground, howling in pain, the ref is surrounded by green shirts, his bald head sticking out like a melon in a field. A distinguished-looking man with plastic-frame glasses, clinging to the fence a few steps away from Mattia, curses and shouts. “Send him off, send him off!” The player on the ground is TV’s number 10. “Get up,” Traian says, pulling on his wrist, “he didn’t blow the whistle, it’s not a foul.” Manuela has missed something. “He didn’t even touch him,” Mattia whispers to her. “He dived, he’s faking it.”

The TV parents call for a penalty and for Traian to be sent off. “That son of a bitch flattened him, he was going to score!” The referee tries to shake off the screaming kids and resume play. But it’s too late, the field is in turmoil, a brawl has broken out, soon it’s spreading from one group to the next, infecting coaches, ball boys, bench warmers, managers. Everyone’s shouting, insulting each other, shoving. Manuela can pick out words like gypsy, thief, bastard. Number 10 writhes in the mud, whining that that son of a bitch whacked his legs. His teammates surround Traian, one of them grabs his shirt, another pulls on his shorts. “It was a foul, you fucking Romanian, and you know it,” the African forward yells. Traian shakes him off, shouting “dirty nigger,” and at that point the TV goalie, a small kid with blond curls and a goody-two-shoes look, spits in his face. Traian springs like a leopard, jumps on his throat, and punches him in the stomach before the others can stop him. The goalie crumbles as if he’d been gunned down.

The distinguished-looking guy with the plastic-frame glasses is the goalie’s father. He darts to the gate, opens it, and hurls himself onto the field. Other parents rush in, some to break up the fight, some to defend their kids, and fists begin to fly. The goalie’s father chases Traian all over the field, grabbing the coach’s umbrella as he runs by the bench, and when he catches up with the boy, in an unexpected feat of athletic prowess, he jabs Traian’s sternum threateningly with the tip as the referee whistles; the TV trainer tries to stop him, the Bolivian kid scuffles with the faker, and the lifeless goalie is trampled by his teammates. Traian fends off the goalie’s father’s umbrella as he looks around for a weapon; in a flash he grabs a bottle of Gatorade from the bench. It’s still full—no one has drunk any yet—and slams it in the father’s nose: he would have broken it if the guy hadn’t stepped aside.

As soon as she sees the goalie’s father grab the umbrella, Manuela tucks her crutches under her arms and heads through the gate. She enters the field limping, protesting, shouting, “You should be ashamed, shame on you!” But since she can’t run and can’t defend her brother, and the man seems ready to openly beat a boy, when she finally does reach him, she loses her head. It’s like an electric shock that shoots up her spinal cord and disables her brain. She whirls her crutch and whacks the umbrella man, who falls to his knees, stunned, howling in pain, and then she hits him again and again and again.

“Stop! You’re out of your mind, stop!” Mattia yells. He tries to make his way through the downed, weeping children. But a Manuela completely unknown to him, a fury of uncontrollable force, is savagely beating the kneeling man, who has dropped the umbrella and isn’t even trying to defend himself: balled up like a fetus in the muck, moaning and begging her to stop, he bears her blows, the crutch and the boot that pound his head and back. Mattia tries to block that steel rod, but he misses and instead the crutch lands on his shoulder, the pain so sharp that it paralyzes him for a second. Mattia throws himself on top of her, locking his arms around her waist, and Manuela resists, lashes out, wriggles free, and it takes that vulgar, two-hundred-plus-pound madman to help Mattia free himself of the crazy woman with a crutch, as Mattia politely protests that this is all highly uncivilized and unbelievable. The crutch wheels, the boot kicks, the goalie’s father moans, and Mattia tries again to stop Manuela, who now throws away her crutches, punches the madman in the face, hurls herself at Mattia, and locks him in a judo hold, which sends his sunglasses flying, clenches his neck with both hands. “Manuela,” Mattia stammers, “please.” She stares ferociously at him with wild eyes, not recognizing him.

Blood gushes from above the goalie’s father’s eye. Traian takes the umbrella from his hands, which have gone slack, and goes over to Mattia, wondering who the heck the guy in the suit is, the one kneeling in the mud and hugging Manuela’s knees, and whispering in a strangled voice, “Calm down, my love.” The madman spits three teeth into the palm of his hand.

Mattia gropes around with his left hand, trying to retrieve his sunglasses, but the Bolivian boy, who hasn’t realized that Mattia is on the Real Ladis side and is only trying to calm everyone down and resolve the situation, crushes them with his cleats, jumping on top of them until they disintegrate. “What have you done!” Mattia shouts. He feels he has suffered a grave injustice. Without his sunglasses, he feels lost, vulnerable, naked.

The police arrive, sirens blaring. Not just one squad car, but three. Everyone settles down as soon as the boys in blue arrive, in fact, they’re amazed that someone called the cops: nothing happened, just a kids’ soccer game. An uncalled penalty. But parents and kids, the referee, managers, and coaches—all are in bad shape, covered in mud, rumpled, bruised. The goalie’s father is hurting and touching his ribs; he has the unsettling feeling that they’re out of place; he comforts his son, who is sobbing and eyeing with a look of sheer terror the crazy girl with the crutches; the madman’s lips are bloody and as swollen as sausages; Traian is still clutching the umbrella like a sword, as if he might need to use it at any moment; Mattia feels an unnatural tingling at the base of his neck and a sharp pain in his trachea, and Manuela kneels to pick up her crutches, amazed they’re no longer under her arms, amazed to find herself in the middle of the soccer field, amazed that she doesn’t have the slightest idea what happened, as if a switch had been turned off. The game is called.

“Let’s get out of here, for heaven’s sake,” Mattia says, taking Manuela under the arm. But the police have closed the gate to the field and an officer is guarding the exit. He wants to identify the adults involved in this disgraceful brawl. There will be consequences. And not only for the players. The managers of the two teams try to downplay things; the parents, furious, defend their own children by accusing the others; they don’t want to show ID, they protest, swear. “She broke three of my teeth,” the madman sputters to a police officer trying to get an explanation of how it all happened, “that tall lady with the shaved head, the one who’s trying to slink off, she’s a crazy woman, dangerous, you should arrest her, I’m pressing charges.”

“I have to go,” Mattia says, seized by an anxiety he can’t control, “I have to go, I have to go.” But Manuela’s not listening to him because Traian, tall Traian with an adult’s body and a boy’s heart, is crying so hard he can barely breathe. “It wasn’t a penalty,” he keeps repeating, “I didn’t even touch him. We were winning, only ten minutes left on the clock, the trophy was ours.” It’s the first major disappointment of his life.

“ID, please,” a policeman orders. Mattia pretends not to have heard and tries to go around him and slip through the gate. “ID,” the officer insists. Harshly, because headquarters radioed in about a brawl that involved racial insults that had broken out on the soccer field just as he was about to go off duty, and he and his wife have to go to dinner at his in-laws’, out in the country, almost an hour’s drive, and he has to shower first, and now he’s going to be late, fucking hell. “I don’t have any on me,” Mattia says, forcing himself to sound convincing, “I went out without thinking, I wasn’t planning on coming to the game.” “I have to identify you,” the policeman says, opening his notebook. “First name.” “Mattia,” he says quietly. “Last name.” “I can explain,” Mattia whispers, “it’s an unusual situation.”

“Last name,” the policeman repeats, annoyed at having to waste time on this guy dressed in Armani, who flashes his fifteen-thousand-dollar, white gold Rolex and seems completely out of place on a JV soccer field. “Rubino,” Mattia concedes. “Residence.” “Bellavista Hotel on the promenade, it’s named after some Savoia queen, Margherita, I think.” “Don’t mess with me,” the policeman hisses, “I need your actual home address—street, street number, city, zip code.” “I’m serious, Bellavista Hotel,” Mattia repeats. “Listen,” Manuela cuts in, waving her Armed Forces card under the policeman’s nose, “he’s with me, my brother’s on the Real Ladis team, this man had nothing to do with this, he didn’t hit anyone, he just tried to calm people down. I was the one who beat up that guy”—she points to the man with the plastic glasses—“but he wanted to beat up my brother, a twelve-year-old boy, and I couldn’t let that happen.” “She broke three of my teeth,” the madman blabbers as he comes over, “there are witnesses, she’s a crazy woman, she should be arrested, I’m pressing charges.”

The policeman examines Sergeant Paris’s ID. It’s the girl from Afghanistan. He saw her on TV on Christmas Day. She’s cuter in person. Eyes like a gazelle. Fresh faced, so young. “I’m sorry,” he says to her, “but I have to record the particulars of everyone present, it’s my duty.” “Take mine,” Manuela says, “I threw myself into the fight, I went a little overboard. I have trouble controlling my aggression. Mr. Rubino doesn’t have anything to do with it, really. I’ll vouch for him. If anyone should be reported, it’s me.”

Sergeant Paris who almost died at the ends of the earth. The police officer heard from a colleague’s cousin that a soldier deployed overseas earns maybe a hundred and thirty euros a day, which, multiplied by six months, comes to almost twenty-five thousand. Not bad. Then again, it’s only fair, otherwise, who’d even go? Why else would you agree to risk your life when you’re twenty? But, money or no, Paris put her life on the line, and almost lost it. Some people deserve respect. “If the people you attacked take action,” he advises her, “Mr. Rubino’s favorable testimony will be useful, so it’s to your advantage that he be recorded as present.” “I won’t need any testimony,” Manuela says, “I made a mistake, I take responsibility for my actions.”

On their way back to the Audi, Mattia is silent, absorbed. He doesn’t know what to make of the woman who savagely beat a defenseless man with her crutch. He doesn’t like a woman who acts like that, and yet he likes her even more than before, because he confusedly intuits that wielding that crutch like a club has something to do with what happened to her, with an endless rage that she masks and that she lulls to sleep, but that in reality is eating her up inside, and he wants to fish her out of the sea of that rage, even though he’s the person least suited to do it.

Manuela would like to erase that whole afternoon, the game, the umbrella, the goalie’s father, the madman, the crack of teeth beneath her knuckles, her all-consuming rage. She may have ended her military career right then and there in that small-town soccer field. That idiotic JV championship may have succeeded in killing Sergeant Paris, something even ten kilos of plastic explosive failed to do. She’s ashamed of having lost control, and yet feels relieved, euphoric even, as if pounding her crutch into that limp flesh and slamming her fist against a stranger’s teeth had freed her of a weight. She would never admit it, but she liked it.

Ignoring Traian’s jealous glances, she leans her head on Mattia’s shoulder and tells him sweetly that Rubino is quite a name, should she think of him as someone precious? Mattia asks if she can drive with her injured leg. “Because I really don’t have my license on me,” Mattia says. But Manuela can’t drive: her right foot has been too badly injured. The malleolus, the astragalus, and the calcaneum have disintegrated; the hospital counted twenty-one bone fragments. The screws and titanium plates prevent her from pressing the accelerator. The whole way to Traian’s house, they both scan the edges of the road apprehensively, hoping they won’t run into a patrol car. He goes out without his ID, like a kid, Manuela is thinking. And he really does live at the Bellavista Hotel. He doesn’t like violence, he prefers to mind his own business, but he threw himself into the fray for Traian, in other words, for me. I don’t know the first thing about him.

* * *

Dinner at the pizzeria on the overpass with Traian and his mother has to substitute for the candlelight dinner on the Hilton Pergola’s panoramic terrace. After all that happened, Mattia didn’t feel like driving. He promises they’ll go to Rome sooner or later. But it’s best if he doesn’t go out too much. He can’t explain, but he has to stay at the Bellavista, or at least in the area. So far he’s been lucky, but no need to tempt fate. Manuela warns him that Traian’s mother is very lively and can seem aggressive. “Look who’s talking,” he says, and Manuela smiles.

Teodora Gogean sizes Mattia up right away. Fifteen years on the men’s ward at the hospital have made her a kind of expert. All she has to do is feel someone’s handshake. She has an aversion to sweaty palms and limp grips. Manuela’s friend is a vigorous man. And an experienced lover. He knows how to act, can play the role of the attentive boyfriend, but Teodora knows instinctively what he’s really like. By dint of emptying urinals, inserting catheters, removing intravenous needles, she’s learned to pick up vibrations from men’s bodies, intuit their desires, anticipate their whims. She’s amazed that Manuela has hooked up with someone like him. But then again, she needs to forget.

She can’t swallow the fact that Traian let himself be dragged into a brawl. She reminds him on a daily basis that prejudice is a wall: if you want to end up on the other side, you have to dismantle it patiently, brick by brick. It takes years to construct an image of honesty and respectability, and only an hour to destroy it. Ever since she arrived in Italy, Teodora has borne every insult in silence, and she thought she’d taught him to do the same. But Traian isn’t about to take the blame. “All I did was defend myself,” he objects, burying his fork in the cheese of his pizza then lifting it to contemplate the stretchy white strings. “In a fight I follow the Italian rules of engagement: I don’t shoot first, but if they shoot, I defend myself, that’s how it works, right, Manù?” “Not exactly,” Manuela says, “first you have to judge very carefully who you have in front of you. A peacekeeping soldier can’t follow the old binary logic of war and separate everyone into enemies or friends. Sometimes the person shooting at you is both, and you have to gauge your response accordingly. And regardless, your reaction force has to be minimal, and proportional to the offense.” Traian shakes his head, unconvinced. Manuela lectures well, but she didn’t apply minimal force with the goalie’s father, and her actions weren’t at all proportional to the offense. But he doesn’t say anything, he would never betray his sister. And besides, he’s too proud of her. She flattened them, those assholes, both of them. What a sight. Manuela is better than Lara Croft.

“If you get mixed up in something like this again, I’ll pull you off the team and that will be the end of your playing soccer,” Teodora concludes. “It’s not his fault,” Manuela tries to placate her; she feels guilty for having set such a negative example for her brother—but they did start it. “Don’t defend him, Manuela, he’s a savage, you have no idea how hard I try to teach him some values.” Traian lets out an irritated snort. Eating dinner with adults is so boring. “Do you have children, Mattia?” Teodora asks all of a sudden. “Manuela doesn’t realize they need authority figures, you spoil them if you always let them have their way.” “No,” Mattia says, and Manuela can’t decide if that is his opinion or his answer to her question. The waiter brings them their beer and the conversation shifts. Traian asks Mattia if he’s an officer in the navy. Somehow he’s gotten this idea. There are a ton of naval officers in the area, because of the port at Civitavecchia.

“No, I’m not in the navy,” he is quick to make clear. “Air force, then?” There are a ton of air force officers around, too, the military airport is in Vigna di Valle, behind Lake Bracciano. “Nope.” “Good thing,” Traian exclaims. “We have a big rivalry with the navy and air force.” “Who’s we?” Mattia asks, surprised. “We, the army.” Traian is getting excited. “They think we’re all southerners, from Sardinia or Naples, they hate us. But we’re the best of the Armed Forces. I’m joining the Airborne Brigade when I’m eighteen, and putting on that deep red beret. Or I’ll become a commando, or an Alpino paratrooper. I don’t really care that much about soccer, I play just to beef up. You have to be a real athlete to get into special forces.” “Mattia’s not interested in this stuff,” Manuela says, “he’s not in the military.” “And you’re going out with him anyway?!” Traian chastizes her.

Teodora and Mattia burst out laughing, but Traian’s supercilious stare silences them. “My sister helped capture Mullah Wallid, an insurgent who was hunted for months, who was responsible for acts of terrorism that caused the deaths of lots of innocent people,” he explains proudly. “There aren’t very many women who participate in assaults, you know, very few in fact, she’s doing you a real favor going out with you if you’re just a civilian.” “I guess I’m the only one here who doesn’t know about it!” Mattia observes, turning to Manuela. She’s blushing. She doesn’t feel like talking to him about her mission operations. She can guess what his opinion would be. Mattia seems to her one of those people who donate point five percent of their taxes to the most radical humanitarian organizations they can find. “I didn’t do anything special,” she says, playing things down. “And besides, it wasn’t an assault, we’re not special forces, we don’t do assaults. We’re just Alpini.”

“Manuela’s company was involved in Operation Goat Four,” Traian says, as if Mattia would know the mission by name. “I realize I don’t understand much about your work, I thought you went to Afghanistan to distribute medicine to children,” says Mattia, who’s starting to get some vague idea of what Manuela is really capable of, and isn’t sure he wants to know more. “Well, sure,” she comments ironically, “we distributed medicine by the truckload. But the fact is, if you want to get the medicine to the people who need it, you have to take it to them, and in order to take it to them, you need a road, and to get a truck down a road, you have to keep that road clear, and to keep it clear and safe you have to search the nearby villages, and arrest whoever is manufacturing explosive devices, and patrol the intersections, and sometimes even have a combat helicopter clear the field of hostile elements.” “So you hunt insurgents?” Mattia blurts out. “It’s hardly a secret,” Manuela says. “The restrictions on our field of action that made us appear ridiculous to our allies were lifted. And anyway, in six months, my platoon only carried out one of these operations, fifteen weeks after our arrival in the theater of operations.” “Theater?” Mattia says. “The theater of operations is where you carry out your mission,” Traian explains. Mattia reflects that the military has a peculiar way of twisting language, but he doesn’t say so.

“It was a routine operation, just a cordon and search,” Manuela downplays, using the English phrase. “Which means?” “It means surround and capture.” “Surround and capture”: to Mattia, it’s a sinister phrase, one that ought to be avoided. Maybe headquarters thinks the same thing, which is why they prefer to use the English. In an attempt to encrypt the code and make it incomprehensible to outsiders, the army—every army—uses a private language, a monosyllabic slang stuffed with acronyms and technical terms, euphemisms, and foreign words. “Basically,” Manuela explains, “you encircle a village, search the houses, or have the Afghani soldiers search them rather, because at this point they’re capable of doing it on their own, and whoever flees is blocked by the cordon of troops. That’s what we did, and we flushed out an insurgent.” She stops. So much time has passed. She’s not even sure she’s the same person who advanced in total darkness among the partially destroyed houses of Negroamaro. “It was a bloodless operation, we didn’t fire a shot, and I was hoping we wouldn’t have to.” But as she speaks she realizes that this is how she feels now, a thought of this moment, born in the overpass pizzeria, while looking into Traian’s excited face and Mattia’s myopic eyes, wide with astonishment, because he can’t seem to reconcile his Manuela, the girl who moans in his bed at the Bellavista, with the sergeant armed with night vision goggles and an automatic rifle who searched a remote Afghani village in the dead of night. In that moment she was ready; her hands didn’t shake. “They ambushed us on the way back, and we had to defend ourselves. That was my big action in Afghanistan. There’s nothing heroic about it. I didn’t kill anyone. I never killed anyone, Traian.”

“Whatever happened to Mullah Wallid?” Teodora joins in. “I don’t know,” Manuela responds, “it wasn’t our duty to try him, we’re guests there, our job was to offer ANA support in the capture of the wanted individual.” “If he was an insurgent he was probably tortured until he revealed who subsidized him and then shot,” Mattia theorizes. “Not necessarily,” Manuela says. “A leader is worth more alive than he is dead. He might side with the government one day, you never know. Alliances are unstable, nothing lasts. And everything has a price. I learned not to ask myself what will happen when we pull out. To live day by day, and to do the right thing at the right time. I wouldn’t have been able to survive there otherwise.”

* * *

That night at the Bellavista, when he turns back the comforter and slides in bed, Mattia sees her scar. Manuela’s leg, slender and white, is visible between the rumpled sheets. She was too tired to wait up for him and has already fallen asleep. Instinctively he runs his fingertips along the wound. The hard, compact flesh is the color of blood. The edges are uneven, the line wavy and wandering. Her flesh, ripped apart by the shrapnel, has been stitched back together, but along the edges the skin is rippled, and little knots have formed, rough to the touch, like rope. A transparent membrane has formed where the epidermis was destroyed, as smooth as a baby’s skin, forever fragile. A hieroglyph of pain.

He doesn’t want to wake her, and yet he can’t keep from bringing his lips to the scar and kissing it, from her knee to her ankle, following the painful hem of flesh. He shivers at the touch of her skin, as if it held the memory of the metal that had pierced her so deeply. “What are you doing?” she murmurs, feeling around for the sheets. The room is dim, and lines of light cut across the bed. “I’m listening to you,” he says.