The son of a general…Giovanni wondered who he could ask to know who he was. To know all the details needed for organizing an all-in-all successful plan, at least in its first phase, there was only one possible General for all things regarding Camp 9.
He turned off the TV and sat in front of the Well. Barbed wire was rolling in his stomach. The big, blind, silent amoeba was twisting, turning and twitching because of the thousands of limbs surfacing and disappearing in a sort of crazy choreography.
“How are things in there? If it’s any consolation, it’s a mess out here, too.”
He went to his booskshelf and for the umpteenth time he looked at the well-aligned books. It was a purely mechanical gesture, as he had no intention of choosing something to read. He had to change his mind about needing new books. How long had that copy on The Idiot been on his bedside table, with a bookmark at the beginning of the second chapter? Thing is he didn’t really feel like reading. Or exercising.
It’s all accumulated tiredness, he told himself. That’s what it was.
He crashed on the bed, but immediately got up, disgusted. He wanted to change the pillow, wet with the night’s regurgitations, but he had forgotten. Wit no rush, he fixed that shameful inconvenience.
In the early afternoon two of the workers that had taken away the Escape’s lock the night before came and fixed everything in about half an hour. They also gave him a new copy of the key.
“Yours melted.” They explained.
He tried to ask some questions about the casualties and that son of a general he had heard about on TV. But their reaction was the one he expected, literally: a double “No, haven’y heard anything.”
At about 3:30 P.M. a technician came, a guy in his thirties, in a white lab coat, who worked for some minutes behind the Control’s console until the Postman’s screen lit up again.
“All done.” he announced, rubbing his hands together. “It should work now.”
Giovanni tried asking him: “Did you watch the news?”
The man quickly grabbed his tool case with a force smile. “Nope, I’ve been working all morning to fix everything that was broken. The damage at the Center is pretty serious. They will probably have to move everything to the new tank, as soon as possible. The fire has burnt a lot of stuff.”
“The new Tank?”
“Oh, well, I’ve heard some voice. I don’t even know where it is. They say it will be ready next year…” He faked looking at his watch. “If I don’t go back fast I won’t hear the end of it… farewell.”
“Thanks. You too.”
And the man exited the apartment at a fast pace. He maybe realized one second too late he had said too much. Right. It was always like that. And the Keeper couldn’t ask any questions. He had no right to know. He lived in a circle he couldn’t step out of.
He remembered the first selection for the following year’s Keeper should have started by then. A little more than a trimester was left before the changing of the guard. And who knows how many young men were dreaming that exciting and profitable adventure like he had.
The thought of the money prize surfaced again, but it was with a certain unease that he found out, even if for a moment, he couldn’t remember the amount. And it had been some time since he had last thought of his island. That sunny island, with endless beaches, the one he saw himself lying on, with no thoughts on his mind…
I found something vaguely sinister in imagining that absolute tranquillity, bathed in a light blinding your eyes even when they are closed, a warmth stinging your skin, making it darker every day. HE could smell a faint brackish reek coming the ocean, which wasn’t blue as he remembered it. And there was another smell. Of dying, decaying fish.
He opened his eyes and, looking at his distressed face, he groaned, scared. How did he end up in front of the mirror? He had wandered around the house lost in his thought. It had happened before. Nothing special.
He went to his bedroom and lay on his bed, drawing dark shapes on the ceiling with his eyes.
When he heard the well known acoustic signal – the Postman’s beep – the first thing he did was to look at the alarm clock. 5:22 P.M.. Almost one hour had passed since he went to bed. He didn’t think he would fall asleep, but apparently he did. Did he dream about something? No, he didn’t remember anything. Inside his head, while he rose from the bed, his brain started oscillating from one side to the other, first right, then left. Like a bell. He grimaced, moving to fingers to his temples.
Here we go again.
First stop, the bathroom. He put a couple of painkillers on his tongue and forced them to go down his throat drowning them with a bitter, coppery tasting glass of water. He grimaced, went in front of the mirror, lowering his eyelid with a fingertip, and looked at his sclera. He thought it was a horrible vision.
(Stop with all this nonsense worthy of a drunk psychopath, Giovanni. You aren’t like that. Go read what they wrote you and get a hang of yourself.)
“Yes, master.”
While moving away from the mirror he had the terrible impression that his reflection had moved after he had. Just a fraction of second; but it was enough to pierce his heart. And to make him lucid again, like a bucket of cold water to the face. He went to the Control rubbing his cheeks and chin, considering whether if it was appropriate to shave, when his hands would stop shaking.
“Est. Keeper Corte.” The message said, “in renewing the expression of our esteem for your behavior during the critical moment, which came to a positive end also thanks to your resistance against the rebel horde, we inform you that the delivery operations will begin tomorrow.”
Giovanni didn’t even feel like smiling, even if that pompous language didn’t really adapt to his state of mind. But he know that form always had priority in that context. Especially in trivial matters.
He thought about the opportunity to answer appropriately, maybe with some highlights like “I’m proud of fulfilling my duty” or similar sentences. But he decided he could skip the hypocrisy phase and be straightforward.
“Is it possible,” he wrote, “to know how many from the Center’s staff were killed and who they are? I also heard that the son of a general was head of the revolt. Is it Stevanich’s?”
He checked it on the fly and sent it without thinking twice. What did he have to lose? He had already asked several people, who had no doubt already reported him for being so curious. It was like stirring once more an already stirred soup.
It was for the conviction of throwing a stone into the void that the buzzing of the fax machine, after a minute or so, took him by surprise.
He grabbed the still warm sheet of paper with a quick gesture, almost as if he in case he would wait, then the machine would eat it back. It was a list of names and surnames, fifteen total; no premise, no side note, no signature. It was an aseptic list, with no apparent context. But it was very important to Giovanni. It was the first precise and unequivocal answer he had ever received from the Center’s brain trust. He then realized that it was a pretty useless answer. Maybe he knew some of those people, but only by the nicknames he had given them. He look for a Lorenzo, which was Scalp, but he didn’t find him. Who he found was Giulio Lojodice. Good old Scar. May he rest in peace. And who knows the others…