He lazily folded the sheet two, four, eight times, leaving it on the console.
But about the general…
Beep.
(Don’t tell me you also have an answer for the other question, guys. I could cry…)
On the Postman’s screen only one line of text appeared: “Watch the news at 8:00.”
Good. He would.
“Thanks”, he answered. “I won’t miss them.”
Sitting in front of a tuna can and some slices of ham he turned the TV on precisely at 8:00, just in time for the jingle. He chewed, watched and listened without really following until 8:14, when the speaker closed his service about the inauguration of a high school and started the one the journalist had very cinematographically called Assault on Camp 9. Giovanni straightened his back and opened his ears; and when after a short introduction he saw general Stevanich appear on the screen, he let the cutlery fall on the dish with a loud noise and crossed his arms.
An out of sight interviewer started asking some simple questions – undoubtedly agreed in advanced – regarding the dynamic of the Assault, to which Stevanich answered with calm and sureness born from preparation. Giovanni could live, through that report, the almost epic unfurling of the battle in the Center, the one could assist to only from afar. But when they said that the casualties in the ranks of the New Order had been five – while the fax he had received counted triple that number – he thought he should doubt everything they said. Then, when the general stated that all the rebels short of the ones that were killed had been arrested and imprisoned in Camp 9 waiting for a process, he understood it was a version he too should tell, in the future, when talking about what happened.
The interview veered towards a question Giovanni didn’t expect: “General, is true that your son was leading the rebels?”
Stevanich remained calmed. Why shouldn’t he after all? It sure as hell wasn’t a surprise question. He nodded and answered: “Marco was always against the ideas of the NMO and we never got along. I think family must take a step back in front of the political, social and moral ideals that inspire our Order. Marco is a traitor. He used confidential information to elude our security system, but he didn’t consider the immense defensive power we have. He was arrested and will share the fate of all those in his condition.”
Giovanni unbuttoned the collar of his shirt.
They are all underground now. Shot and charred. The kitchen was suddenly hot.
Salutations and thanks followed, then the journalist appeared on the TV again to introduce the weather forecast. Giovanni turned it off.
He tried to get up, but a sudden vertigo forced him into sitting again. Tiredness. Tiredness asking for immediate rest. What was that churning in his head? He sure wasn’t annoyed by the “revised” version the general had told to the spectators. It was natural, a part of the power plays. Had those rebels been imprisoned, then their fate would have been much worse. They would have only contributed to fill the Tank. How many deliveries would there have been? He whistled at the idea. No, the thought that kept annoying him was another. If that Marco Stevanich lead the operation, wasn’t it plausible that he was the first man who had to climb the ladder and shoot the lock? He would never know for sure; but the thought that the men he had shot was the general’s son upset him
Be honest: would you have shot him, if you knew who he was?
“Yes”, he answered out loud. “I would have, no doubt. He was there to kill me.”
Had he some alcohol to drink, then there couldn’t have been a better moment to get drunk. But in the Tank alcohol was forbidden, like smoke and may more things. For his own good, of course.
We inform you that the delivery operations will begin tomorrow.
Right. The show must go on.
To bed, Giovanni. March.
He found the strength to go to the bathroom, brush his teeth, go to his bedroom, and crash on the bed. His mind went off like one of those ancient oil lamps when a small wheel was turned to shorten the wick.
24 – Questions, More Questions
The last Cleansing of the year, the one scheduled for the end of October, was moved up a couple of weeks. Recently there had been more deliveries than usual and the Tank needed the extra work.
From the day of the great Assault on Camp 9 the NMO had intensified the investigations regarding the so-called risky environments, those suspected of being hostbeds for insurrections or dissidence. On the morning faxes Giovanni found “Revolutionary” way more often. He expected things to be that way.
And so, halfway through October a new wave of acid cancelled once more the layers of compressed, deformed, torn, stiffened, annihilated in postures no one could ever see, but only imagine. From the tucker to the anaconda, to the Tank, to the Crown, to the tissues, flesh, organs, bones…
He wondered what he would think, what he would feel, if he was there, among the others, alive but unable to escape his doom, buried in the dark under the tonnes of corpses, listening to the sizzle of that liquid caressing his skin and piercing him little by little, get inside him, reach the deepest, most inaccessible layers of his body, of his soul…
His own scream of terror woke him from his daydreaming. And when he realized he was simply inside the lift, back from the Cleansing, he sighed as if his lungs had been squeezed.
He entered the Ring almost stumbling and entered his flat with a hand on his mouth and the that on his stomach.
He had thought that the last months would flow away with haste; that the days would pass one after the other painlessly. He was wrong.
Time had taken a new form. The obsessive repetition of gestures and words seemed to generate a slow vortex enlarging at each turn in an hideous kaleidoscope of pictures and feelings. Whatever he did, he spontaneously wondered if he was doing it in that moment, or if he was remembering, dreaming, imagining, all very vividly, something he had done hundreds of times.
He tried picking up the book he had left off, but Dostoevskij kept pushing him out of his novel; eventually The Idiot went back to his bookshelf. Making an effort to maintain a good physical shape didn’t seem so important to him, in that moment his mind needed his attention way more.
It was true that mens sana in corpore sano, but he didn’t feel sick or thought he needed therapy. He knew that everything would ho back to its place once that experience was over, once he could go back to the world he had abandoned.
(Does that world still exists, Giovanni?)
There was an island. Somewhere. And the money, too, yes.
All the things he had always wanted.
The deliveries went on, but November saw them lessen sensibly. Some Escort Guard stopped showing up and Giovanni wanted to believe they were transferred, or that the temporary decrease in workload made their presence superfluous. Bags, Glutton, Wrinkles, Steve… he never really befriended any of them in particular, but he would rather imagine them ready to work in the Tank, the tenth, the one that would maybe be operative who-knows-where in the beginning of the new year…