THE NATION’S COLLECTIVE mind, like the mind of all other nations, was often occupied with the threat of a war. This was a Cold War, that’s what everyone called it. Although the Nation was not involved entirely in this Cold War, it was not immune to the possibility of it, since it meant the possible annihilation of entire surfaces of the Earth, so powerful were the weapons involved. So when the order came for fallout shelters to become part of all new structures, the Nation was both alarmed and relieved. Alarmed because there was a threat of the world being blown up, or if not immediately blown up, the threat of the mushroom smoke of radiation loomed large, like in the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, things that no one in the Nation had witnessed in real life, but that sat imprinted in everyone’s mind through endless photographs. The smoke mushroom, the poison, something clever scientists, the rulers of reason, Diogen commented, invented and then used it to destroy life and all its forms, and children were born with deformities for decades after, and of course no one wanted that, no one, so the Nation was relieved that the President was doing something to protect them, giving them shelters, and the tools for knowing what to do.
The Nation was doing everything to be prepared on all levels. At school, children older then twelve had a subject called National Defense and Protection. The textbook had the outline of the Nation’s borders on its cover, the shape of which Mona thought looked like a shotgun, or a human heart, or a lung, depending on which way one turned the book. And inside the borders was the Nation’s flag, with the beautiful red star in the middle.
The textbook covered mainly the topic of weaponry: the different types of pistols, shotguns, machine guns, cannons; how they are dismantled and put together again; provided detailed illustrations of what each part was called; the firing and range possibilities of all these firearms. One machine gun, for example, that Mona studied was the M53. Page 56 read: “It is an almost exact copy of the M42, produced during World War II in Germany and used by the Germans. The M42 was captured during the war by the Partisans, and then reproduced in the Nation’s arms factories as the M53, with some minor differences. The aiming range of the M53 is two thousand meters, and the terminal range of the bullet is five thousand meters, though it is advisable not to aim at live targets from a distance greater than eight hundred meters, since the bullets disperse at that distance and the precision of the bullets becomes imperfect. Upon pressing the trigger, the firing pin strikes the primer of the round. This causes an explosion in the casing of the round, and the force pushes the projectile from its seated location.”
Mona considered how one hundred to one hundred and fifty bullets per minute could be fired from the M53 and each bullet would cross five kilometers in search of something to receive it—a tree, a deer’s soft muscle, a wall, a child’s liver, the air itself. And at the end of its reception, unless the bullet just exhausted itself and fell to the ground, a wound, or death. Mona wondered if she could fire a gun at a live target, at something warm, at a beating heart that pumped blood, a person, over there, an enemy.
“Yeah, of course I’d do it,” a boy said.
Another boy said, “I’d be scared.”
A girl said, “Oof, I hope it never happens.”
Another girl said, “It’s men who do it, no?”
“Well, my grandma was one of the main couriers and fighters in the national liberation struggle,” said another boy. “She was better than my granddad at throwing bombs, everyone says, but my granddad disagrees. And my mother has to go to the emergency training sessions every month for Civilian Protection, in case of nuclear warfare, which, as far as I can tell, is highly possible. My father has a whole stack of tins of meat and sardines downstairs, he says that if the world is about to end, he doesn’t want to go hungry like he did when he was a kid, in the war.”
Rosa also attended Civilian Protection practice every month. Aside from the danger of a nuclear attack, the Nation had seen horrific earthquakes in the south of the country earlier on that year, which destroyed an entire city and the surrounding area, and the President had ordered that each citizen be proficient in first aid and other forms of self protection and organization, that the people should be well rehearsed in case of a natural or nuclear catastrophe. So the citizens were trained in putting out all kinds of fires, building tents and other temporary shelters, and well versed in working out the procedures in the case of limited evacuation of populations. The Nation rehearsed the so-called ABC Defense, which stood for Atomic, Biological, or Chemical weapons, which took shape in the form of creating an orderly structure of priorities—women, children, and the elderly first, men after—and precautionary measures, such as the even distribution of first aid kits, blankets, and packaged foods. The men were trained by the military for the event of a nuclear attack with the command “atomic right,” which the commanders would shout at any given moment. The men, upon hearing the command, were to throw themselves to their left side immediately, since the army brass believed that throwing oneself on the floor in the opposite direction of a nuclear explosion would somehow shield the men. Sometimes, if Ruben was being particularly obstinate about one thing or another, Rosa would shout “atomic right” in jest, and Ruben, although aware of the joke, would say, “Rosa, you should recall the story of the boy who cried wolf and how no one came to his rescue.” Diogen would roll his eyes.
There was also a period in which the Nation was in danger of being invaded in the north, some fifteen years after it had been formed. There was turmoil in the whole world, the East and the West, the Left and the Right, and the Nation stood in the middle, attached to almost no one. Or at least, mostly see-sawing between the two sides as it saw fit. The Nation created alliances with the former colonies of Africa and Asia, now newly liberated, collaborating independently, all under the clever guidance of the President. But then the neighboring countries were invaded by one of the giants and the Nation found itself preparing for the same. Ruben was mobilized immediately and sent to the northern border to dig trenches. He was exhausted by the thought of a possible new war, and returned, three weeks later, tired and aware that his strength, although still present in his firm body, was no longer what it was when he was young. He hoped with all his heart that he would not be called up to fight again, and that there would not be another war.
A small army bag was hung on the door handle in preparation for one of the women’s Civil Protection sessions, when it was Rosa’s turn for training. Rosa also took to hanging her gas mask on the door handle. Mona would stand in front of it, examining this disembodied, suspended grimace. It was a mask like those African masks Mona had seen in books; the African masks depicted either emotions or animals or symbolized something of the human part of nature to be used in a ritual or a dance or hung on a wall. This mask was a war mask, though she couldn’t work out if it was a life mask or a death mask. It hid the face and the respiratory system of a person who was in danger of dying a nasty death if the mask was not worn or was removed.
The breathing noise of the mask, when it was attached to a face, through the round wire mesh tube, sounded like the breathing of the Elephant Man, a film Mona had seen and that had given her a unique trauma regarding human cruelty. Sometimes she would put it on in front of a mirror, and her face would get all hot with the vapor of her breath, and she would watch herself transformed into a thing, her body still familiar, but her features erased by a dark, blank stare. Or she would simply stand in front of the mask, her eyes and the goggles on the same level, and the mask would watch her darkly, not demanding anything of her, but always bearing the promise of a tragedy, of a removal from the world, a time when the air one breathes, the air that fills the lungs and the blood cells, would be unsafe. And not just for us, for all air-depending creatures on Earth, thought Mona. What would we do then? All that air that was produced by the lindens, the pines, the cedars, all that air would be gone, replaced by the great big mushroom of poison. A sense of panic and anxiety would grip her, and she would run to her bed and bury herself under the duvet. Rosa would pick up her bag of supplies and the gas mask and walk down the stairs, the suspended dark face swinging from her arm.