Scalp stared at him for a few seconds; then, keeping a serious expression, he answered: “I’ll let my wife judge.”
For at least five seconds one could hear a midge fly. Was it possible that Scalp had just told a joke? Steve’s chuckle, which similar to a raspberry, confirmed it.
Giovanni nodded contritely and Scalped did the same before adding in a low voice: “I feel better now. Thanks.”
The second Guard bade Giovanni farewell by informally touching his own forehead with two extended fingers. Before turning around to follow his partner he pointed with the barrel of his sub-machine gun to a spot on the floor. “Can you clean it?”
Giovanni followed with his eyes the imaginary line that went from the weapon to the dark blood stain left on the floor by Lucas’ nose.
“Sir, yes, sir.” He said with camaraderie It was practically the first time since he started working there that he could see a small breach in the EGs’ martial rigor. It pleased him. But as soon as the cabin’s clanging noise softened, down at the Tank’s feet, the grin he had managed to put on his face vanished.
He was alone again. In complete silence. With the Shutter’s door staring at him… but no, it wasn’t the door. It was the darkness. The darkness stagnating on the other side. And the wild eyes of all those who were drowning in there.
Without hesitating he went to his apartment, took a damp scrubbing brush from the bathroom and started erasing the last visible remnants of the incident.
It wasn’t possible to recognise the newcomers at the center of the Well. Some convicts were upside down, legs wiggling from the dying, disordered mass. They reminded him of a mouse’s rear legs, half swallowed by a python. Maybe Lucas was one of those, plummeting down and sticking among the other bodies head down…
Giovanni suddenly shivered and gagged. He though he had gotten used to that condensed agony. He clearly still had to. And train his stomach. Moreover, the prostration he felt was intensified by the word uttered by the man who could boast the longest Unloading time ever. “I’m waiting for you”, he said. Maybe he was talking about all of them… he preferred interpreting it that way, since being personally addressed – even if by a man driven mad by fear and fury – disquieted and annoyed him. Those weren’t things he should brood on, he knew that. During training, the instructors had warned them about possible aggressions (more verbal than physical) by the convicts, testing the reactions of each candidate when faced with aggravating solicitations. He had passed them with flying colours and now all those thoughts were making him feel inadequate.
However, after three months in the Tank, his weakening defenses were justified. He had had his share of emotional blows, locked in there with only the company of books, TV, and dying men. The psychologist had told him so. Three months. Already one quarter of the way. Or only one quarter?
It was irrelevant. He had to go on, one step after the other, one day after the other. The calendar was already missing two sheets and the third would soon be gone, in forty-eight hours. It was all right.
A laconic message appeared on the Postman’s screen just before dinner (rabbit meat with salad, but he wasn’t in a rush). “Good behaviour with problematic subject.”
Giovanni read that line over and over again, trying to get some satisfaction out of it. What could he expect? Compliments and praise for doing his job? In the NMO few formal words could have immense value. That message was satisfying. Not like a handshake from a superior, but in his position it was the best he could get. He wondered if positive and negative notes had an impact on his compensation. There was nothing about it on the documents he had signed and he didn’t know whether to wish for it or fear it. Lacking the elements needed to come to a conclusion he input a simple “Thank you”, left the Control and went to dinner.
Watching an old movie starring Spencer Tracy, his mouth full of badly cooked meat, he muttered: “Happy birthday, Giovanni.”
He felt a fit of nostalgia for the days that would never come back – the ones from his childhood, when he celebrated with his mom and dad in the most pure serenity, before that drunken driver tore them away from him – and almost cried.
“You won’t start crying now, will you?” He said his father jokingly when he had blown over the sixteen candles on the last cake they would ever eat together.
“Nah,” Giovanni had laughed. “The smoke got into my eyes.”
His father had laughed, looking at his wife, who was watching her son in silence.
Giovanni still remember what they gave him as a present that day: a couple of novels, a black sweater with his initials knit on his heart and a silver fountain pen, a perfect imitation of those popular at the beginning of the Twentieth century. He had tried it immediately, writing a slightly crooked Thank you! on the back of the red paper in which the gift had been wrapped. His mother had kissed him on his cheek (she knew that Giovanni would forbid her were they in public, but at home there was nothing that could stop her). His father, on the other hand, had slapped him on the back of the neck, a gesture that showed how proud he was of him. Who knew how they would react to his application to the NMO? And where did that fountain pen end up? And the sweater with the letters GC knit in yellow, which looked like to weird moons on a night sky? Giovanni couldn’t answer those questions. Many, way too many things that had been part of his life once had been lost, or they had simply hidden, waiting to be found, but he had stopped looking for them…
“Mom?” He whispered. “Dad?” He closed his eyes, wishing he could hear their voices say his name once more. But the only imaged that filled the darkness of his mind was that of his parents lying on the morgue’s table, motionless under the two white, red stained sheets, lifted by the hand of the nurse so that Giovanni could say “Yes, it’s them.” And hadn’t said it, he had screamed it before exiting from that white and winter-cold room, sobbing…
He suddenly opened his eyes. He managed to hold his tears, because he knew that letting his emotions overwhelm him wouldn’t help. But it was difficult, very difficult.
Nemo me impune lacessit, so it was written on the wall over his bed. That man had hit him. And he didn’t go unpunished. He got what he deserved, nothing less. But… it had been an awful feeling, being inside the Shutter for even a very short amount of time. Who knew what those who couldn’t get out felt. Many things had happened that afternoon, so fast that he had had no time to assimilate them. But the night is meant brooding. The human mind had the desperate need to, that he wanted it or not. Lying on his bed, Giovanni gave in to the images, sounds and feelings that overflowed behind his closed eyes. He saw the faces of the guards and the convicts, their expressions, their gazes; he saw the blood, heard the screams and the insults; over and over again he thought about those words – I’m waiting for you – on the bloody lips; and while the first butterflies started flying among his thoughts, a sense of vertigo deceived him with the illusion of falling. Lazy and calm at first, then growing more and more inexorable.
Where is my island? he wondered, falling, plummeting like one of the convicts that were dying, slowly, a few meters away from him. Few meters from the dreams and the sunny island waiting for him. Is it still sunny, down there? But where was down there? In a marvelous, persuasive other place? Or maybe the dark lair of meat and suffering, heart and stomach of the Tank? He couldn’t answer.