The Last Man Standing

I found this exercise book three days ago and took it because I’ve recently developed a habit of collecting everything I find. My priority is food, clothes, and anything to make our lives easier and safer. But sometimes I happen to go into a home and see a sofa, a chair in good condition, or a picture or a set of handpainted plates with cockerels in rustic style, and my first impulse is always to keep these objects. This is impossible, besides being pointless and dangerous, but when I leave them behind I feel real regret, as if they always belonged to me and I’ve been forced to abandon them.

As I was saying, I found this exercise book three days ago. My first thought was to give it to Lucia or Alberto or use its pages to light the fire. I wasn’t thinking of writing. Or perhaps I was. The fact is that, when it happened, I was confused and frightened because of what had taken me to that house, which is to say my shoes.

Recently I tried to repair them with Scotch tape, but they had become so worn out that they were coming open all around and my right foot was at risk of frostbite. They were not suitable for the long walks we are forced to make. I’ve calculated that during the last week we’ve covered almost thirty kilometers a day.

We keep well away from towns and paved roads. We know well enough that they are best for finding food, shelter, and perhaps some means of transport, but past experiences have made us mistrustful. It is the children who are most afraid. So we walk on cart tracks and over fields, in the snow, and along railway lines. My shoes haven’t stood the strain. A friendly woman warned me to find stronger ones, but I didn’t listen. I thought things would work out differently.

That is why, after a night spent in a hut in the forest three days ago, I left the children in a small clearing and took the dog with me into a village we had been able to see since the previous evening. The day before we ran across two cars parked in front of an abbey. As we approached, we saw a large bird inside one car and it began beating its wings against the windows. There were three bodies inside the car. They had been there a long time, but it was easy to see that they were a young couple and a small child. Lucia ran away in terror. When I caught up with her she was pale and trembling, and I thought she must have a fever because she was so hot. It was the first time I had seen her out of control in that way. Meanwhile Alberto had opened the door and the bird, perhaps a blackbird, had flown away. While I was hugging Lucia I saw him take a battery from the dashboard. I shouted at him not to touch anything. He obeyed, but as if he hadn’t heard me and it had been his own decision. I don’t know who or what may have been in the other car. We hurried away, almost running.

Next morning, the village seemed completely deserted; the closed houses showing no sign of having been raided, as if the people had simply gone away before anything happened. This was not necessarily a good sign, so I told the children to wait for me in the clearing.

When I reached the square I looked for an open door, and not finding one I forced one that had seemed more fragile than the others, using an iron bar I’d collected a few days earlier in a railway depot. Even now it’s in my jacket pocket. It’s the nearest thing to a weapon I’ve ever had. It makes me feel secure, though I know I could never bring myself to use it against anyone.

The place seemed to have been the home of an elderly woman, or of two elderly women, because there were two single beds in the same room. There was a bath with two handles and in the bathroom cupboard medicine for diabetes. The house had not been trashed, but everything else had been removed. Bauschan sniffed at a basket where a cat may have slept. I called him and we went to look for another door.

It is extraordinary how easy it can be to pull off a break-in, even for someone weakened by hunger, exhaustion, and with little aptitude for manual action, like me. This is one of the few resources I’ve managed to discover in myself at this time. A discovery that gives me little comfort compared to the irremediable losses that every day brings.

I found what I was looking for in an apartment on the second floor of a newly redecorated block. The man sitting in the armchair looked as if he had dozed off while contemplating a wall papered with photographs, postcards, and small maps.

The only dead bodies I had seen before last summer were those of my father, an old aunt, a Latin scholar, and my mother. Only in the last case was I present at the moment of death. My mother had been a practical woman, composed and not much inclined to frivolity, yet her exit had taken place with the lightness of fresh air replacing stale in a well-aired room. My impression as I watched her last breath, and the immobility that followed, was one of delicate inevitability. Something like the closing or opening of a flower. The darker feeling that came over me beside her lifeless body had been one of nostalgia; I believed no one would ever love me unconditionally again. I would never again be able to make someone happy with so little effort. What a pity. The bodies I have seen recently affect me quite differently. Their lives have not slipped away but have been snatched from them. Not like a child’s milk tooth, that after dangling for days drops out to make room for its successor, but like healthy teeth needlessly ripped out with cold forceps and no anesthetic. I can’t get used to seeing these bodies, and I am always disturbed by them.

For this reason I immediately looked away from that man sitting in his armchair studying the opposite wall. The small maps traced the stages of many itineraries, probably journeys he had made with the young woman featured in the photographs. The maps were recent ones, with the surrounding countries shaded gray and neither their borders nor their cities marked.

I looked at the man. He was short and fat, with a thick black mustache and a large mole under his left eye. When I approached, the mole flew away and I realized it must have been a fly.

Apart from its pallor, there was nothing unseemly about his face. The bullet had entered his temple cleanly. The hand holding the pistol had fallen back on the arm of the chair, while his other hand was decently covering his genitals. Only one earpiece of his glasses had slipped off.

I carefully took off his right shoe and measured it against my own: size 9 ½. I put it back on him and I went to look for a more robust pair. Some hiking boots in the lumber room fit me. There was also a camping stove, a sleeping bag, water bottles, a backpack, and fishing equipment. I took the backpack and filled it with whatever I thought might come in handy, and then I went to look for food.

The larder contained flour for making polenta, freeze-dried soup, some bars of muesli, and powdered milk: more than we had eaten for a week. I gulped down one muesli bar and gave another to Bauschan, who had not eaten since the previous day.

In the bedroom a dozen exercise books with hard covers were piled on a desk. The man had used them meticulously to record means of transport, times of departure, alterations of travel plans, and places visited. He had also stuck in vouchers, air and rail tickets, and photographs featuring the young woman from the living room wall with an open, friendly smile.

It was not easy to imagine the two meeting and beginning a relationship.

She looked like a woman open to new things, who needed a certain dose of unconventional romance. He, until he met her, must have been a man who had happily survived the usual time of life for passion unscathed. Someone who had probably found in his work, and his love of fishing, ample justification for his existence, just as I had been satisfied with books, teaching, and parenthood. But we had both made an error of judgment, and this realization had at first seemed a miracle. Though in the long run, in different ways, we had both paid for it.

I was rummaging in his drawers when I found the unused exercise book I am now writing in. Without a second thought I shoved it in the backpack together with some underpants and socks and left the house.

Writing had once been my profession, in the sense that I had been technically defined as a novelist, but that was now closed behind a solid wall in the distant past. What had first gotten me started had probably been the need to create a world on my own modest scale, a world of relationships, meetings, public gardens, shops, memories, gestures, and feelings that I could inhabit without feeling inadequate, just as I did in the real world. “Stories of courage always come from the basest part of ourselves, poetry and profundity from the most arid part,” in the words of an elderly writer I happened to meet early in my career. I know now it was his way of putting me on my guard against the path I was beginning to follow.

Now for eight years, apart from several unanswered letters, I have not written a single line, but that hasn’t stopped me still living in a world of books, both my own and those written by others—continuing to cut myself off from life.

Now death, fear, cold, hunger, and the children I am responsible for have forced me to return to real life, and the world I have found waiting for me is far more ferocious and degenerate than the one I ran away from. How did we come to this? Did the evil germinate in our hearts or have we been the victims of infection? And in either case, how can the germs have fallen on such fertile ground? I can’t offer a single word of explanation. I simply wasn’t there.

Days earlier we had left a warehouse where we had been well received; a place that at first had seemed safe but had soon shown itself quite otherwise, and after a day’s walk we had reached the outskirts of T. We decided to circle the town to the east rather than the west. I had been convinced of this by the sky, always clear in the east but blotted out by large gray clouds to the west.

Passing some hills, we ran into a pack of dogs. The setting sun perfectly outlined their shapes on some high ground. At first I took them for horses, they were so still and solemn. We were walking into the wind so they had not yet scented us.

Lucia and Alberto slowly began to retreat. Even Bauschan stopped. Whereas I continued down the cart track, my eyes fixed on those animals so sharply silhouetted against the indigo of dusk. A moment later, as if responding to a trumpet call, the dogs turned their heads toward me and, starting from a gentle trot, rushed down the hillside at full speed. The pack dodged the trees and reformed like drops of water attracted to its own substance.

Magnificent, I thought.

Only then did I notice Lucia was calling my name. I turned. The children and Bauschan were about fifty meters behind me. They had reached the gate to a farm. Only then did I understand and start running.

Thanks to a wooden ladder, we were able to climb up to what had once been a hayloft. A few seconds later, the dogs entered the farmyard and stopped, panting, to look at us. They showed neither disappointment nor ferocity, but it was clear that if it hadn’t been for the ladder they would have torn us to pieces.

The children threw a few tiles in an attempt to drive them away, but the dogs merely moved to avoid being hit. After a while a few crouched down. Others went to drink from a pool of melting snow. Two copulated.

We ate supper with our legs hanging down and the dogs watching us. It was very cold, but with hay around it would have been dangerous to light a fire. Bauschan stared at his fellow creatures and whimpered. He knew we were trapped.

“Go away, you shits!” Alberto shouted, but all I could think was that they were perfectly adapted for what they had been created to do. And to me that made them piercingly beautiful.

During the night, listening to Lucia shivering with cold beside me, I realized I was utterly unsuited to the task entrusted to me, and I wept. When we woke in the morning, the dogs had completely vanished.

As I write this, Sebastiano is watching me from the sofa with Bauschan stretched out at his feet, stroking him as if polishing a violin. He’s a tall man with a long, thin face. I have been familiar with this house for many years, it is where I used to come for massages from his mother.

When we arrived this morning we found Sebastiano in the kitchen, his cowhide over his shoulders and his suitcase packed. I don’t know how long he had been there. He certainly didn’t seem surprised to see us.

I greeted him, then asked him who had reduced the village to such a state and where everyone had gone. He didn’t answer. Then I asked him where Adele was.

He gave me a serious look, as if the answer must be utterly obvious. Then he took me to the room where her body was stretched on the couch, sewn into a sheet as used to be the custom in these parts. When I asked for an explanation, he pointed to a note on the bedside table. It had been written by Adele.

You refused to take any notice of what I said about the shoes, now stop being so stupid. I was perfectly happy to die; it was time and I had other things to think about. Dig a hole under the hornbeam and leave the children indoors so they don’t catch cold. If you can’t do it, just forget it. I haven’t been able to dream clearly whether you still have your hands or if you’ve already lost them. But whatever happens, don’t let anyone even think of burning my body. Do as I ask, then head for the sea. Take Sebastiano with you, you’ll find him useful. Best wishes for the future.

This afternoon I was digging her grave under the hornbeam when it began to rain. It was like a summer storm, so much water came pelting down. Sebastiano helped me carry the body to the foot of the tree, then he went in and he and the children watched from the window as I filled in the hole. I had never before even dug a trench, yet it seemed as natural to me as accepting a plateful of food from a neighbor and giving back the empty plate the next day washed and clean. While I shoveled that earth so heavy with rain, I thought a lot about my mother.

Then we all rested for an hour or two and dined in silence on soup and cheese.

Now the children are sleeping in Adele’s double bed, and soon Sebastiano will go up to his room. I shall stretch out by the stove on the sofa, with Bauschan on a towel I’ve laid out for him nearby. Tomorrow we have to get everything ready for our journey. It’s unbelievable how long it takes to make preparations when you have nothing. Tomorrow morning I shall go into the village. I must find a small map and some eye drops for Alberto.

January 21

The village looks as if it has been hit by a retreating army blinded by hunger and defeat. Everything that could not be carried out of the houses has been smashed or burned. A lot of furniture has been thrown out of the windows into the street, and on the outer walls are graffiti in spray paint or charcoal. IT’S US / YOU CAN’T AVOID / EVEN IF YOU WANT TO / OR ELSE LOOK OUT. I CAN’T SLEEP, I CAN’T SLEEP, I CAN’T SLEEP AND I’M IN GRIEF. WINGS, NEEDLES, IDEALS AND BONFIRES. SUPREMACY. NOTHING COMES OF NOTHING. They were like lines written by someone who has glanced through Nietzsche and then decided he’s too much trouble. The writing is in large shaky capitals, with errors of grammar and syntax. Some are slogans in basic English, as if written on a school excursion that got out of hand. I also came across syringes, empty bottles of strong alcohol, and nylon bags into which someone had poured what looked like glue. In the church the pews have been piled up and set on fire and windows broken.

There’s no trace of the inhabitants or even of their bodies. All I found was a cat feeding four kittens. I heard them mewing from the road and went into what used to be the hairdresser’s salon. Jars of cosmetics had been overturned and an enormous penis drawn on the mirror. The cat was sitting in the armchair where customers once waited their turn. When she saw Bauschan she hissed without moving so as not to disturb the kittens’ feeding. Bauschan pressed himself against my leg. He seemed sorry to have caused any distress. I picked up a bottle of what looked like shampoo and we left.

At the chemist’s house I found eye drops but no food. Whoever had turned the house upside down can have had no interest in medicine because these had been left all over the cellar and attic. I helped myself to some preparations for the relief of influenza and inflammation as well as some vitamins. In the car in the garage was a map of the Côte d’Azur, which also included this part of Italy.

When we passed back through the square, Bauschan stopped in front of Elio’s house and looked at me. The note on which we had written that we were leaving for Basel was still on the door. When I saw it I was moved to pity, as if for something from my earliest childhood. I stroked Bauschan and told him it was no longer our house; then I turned to go where I had wanted to go from the start.

The gate had been torn off its hinges, though one of its uprights was still chained to the post that had been uprooted with it. The door of the house had suffered the same fate.

What a lot of trouble they’ve gone to, I thought.

The table where we had talked over tea about Glenn Gould, Marin Marais, and early eighteenth-century painting was lying sawn in two among books, pots, and pieces of foam rubber. Flour had been strewn on the floor, but there was a smell of game in the air as if a large wild boar had been living there. Two cushions had been ripped apart and were hanging from the chandelier.

Climbing the stairs to the upper floor, I noticed my heart beating fast and realized I had never listened to it closely before. The bedrooms were a mess and an item of clothing or curtain had been burned in the bathtub but, as I had hoped when I went into the house, there was no trace of either Elvira or her mother.

I picked one of Bernhard’s books up from the floor then, before leaving, I went into the garage, sat down in the red car, lowered the seat, and closed my eyes. On the back seat was a dressing-gown belt. I dozed for a few minutes and dreamed I was stroking the prominent vertebrae of Elvira’s naked back. My dreaming hand moved clumsily, not like caressing a woman, more as if running along a railing. Yet what I was doing gave me great pleasure and I knew it was the same for her. The nape of her neck was moving gently. I felt sexual excitement. Something I had not expected from my body for a long time.

Then I walked through the village streets. The children and Sebastiano were waiting for me, but all I wanted was to feel the weight of Bernhard’s book against my leg as I walked.

In the old house I used to spend hours in a room I called “the book room.” A place where I had collected thousands of novels, essays, treatises, and books on art. I had read many of them more than once, underlining, annotating, and dissecting them to extract instruction for myself and my students. Some had become bastions to shore up the walls of my city, and others had served as passports to my far-off lands. Syllogisms of what life was or should have been.

I haven’t the slightest wish to know what has happened to them. Unless someone has burned down the house I assume they are still there feeding mold and mice. I have infinite love for those stories, although I know they have been to blame for what I am: an inadequate man.

January 22

Lucia and I have divided the food and clothes between my backpack, Sebastiano’s knapsack, and a small bag the children will take turns carrying. We have made an omelet with four eggs and some polenta. When we have eaten that, we will still have the soups, the powdered milk, the muesli, some cans, and the fruit in syrup we found in Adele’s larder. These will last us for a week at least.

When we had finished getting ready we sat down at the table. Alberto and Sebastiano had gone to their rooms, and the gentle breath of the wind that had been pushing around the tops of the trees all day could be heard from beyond the windows. There were no animals around: I presume the chickens, geese, and rabbits that had once lived in the yard had been eaten, while the dogs must have gone off in search of food. The donkey could have met with either fate.

I asked Lucia if she was sleepy. She said no. So I put another piece of wood in the stove. It could have been nine o’clock. The church clock no longer strikes, and we’ve grown used to telling the time by the course of the sun. In any case, once the sun has gone down the time is not very important since all we can do is to find a place to retire, light a fire, and sleep.

Lucia told me she and Alberto had quarreled while I was in the village and said some very ugly things to each other. Hearing this, Sebastiano had taken refuge in his room and they hadn’t seen him all morning.

“I went up to see how he was,” she said. “I wanted to apologize to him, but he put his hand on my head in that way priests do.”

“Were you afraid?”

“No. It felt like being inside an egg, then I got sleepy.”

I am surprised anew, every day, by how she manages to live through all this without losing her grip. By the fact that her first impulse is always to create order, to heal and to work for the best. Despite appearances, there is nothing fragile or dreamy about her. Lucia’s a soldier: her sweetness is pugnacious and her gentle eyes have more of justice than charity in them. She’s a Joan of Arc without visions or armor. A delicate asphodel protected by spiky leaves that not even starving animals can manage to devour.

When I asked her why she had quarreled with Alberto, she told me he would rather not have gone away again. I asked her if she felt the same. She said no. When I asked her if anything else had been involved, she shook her head, got up, and planted a kiss on my forehead and went off to bed.

January 23

It very soon became clear that walking through the vineyards and woods, as we had planned to do, was impossible and cost us the whole morning. In fact, the snow was already above our knees, and an hour after starting out we had to stop, light a fire, and wait until our shoes and pants dried out. When we set off again it was after midday and we decided to take the main road. The snow has almost completely gone from it and even where it remained we saw no trace of tires. The houses along the road are empty and the few shops already stripped bare, and we saw no smoke or anything else that might indicate human presence. Only toward dusk did I think I saw two figures in the woods but by the time I asked the others whether they could see them, they had already vanished around the corner of the hillside. Apart from that, the mantle of white is marked by many animal tracks but no human ones.

When the light began to fade we looked for somewhere to spend the night and light another fire; there is plenty of wood, and we have matches, paper, and a certain expertise. Lucia is better at lighting fires than I am. She doesn’t use so much paper, and she lays the twigs in a way that encourages the flames to leap up quickly. In this, too, she shows her aptitude for learning and her love of things well done.

It only took us a few minutes to devour the omelet and some of the polenta. We’ll reheat the rest tomorrow morning before we leave. I showed the children the map. It should take us two days to reach the pass leading down to the sea. I’ve calculated five days’ walk altogether. When Alberto asked why are we going to the sea, I said with a bit of luck we might find a ship, or else we can follow the coast to France. To tell the truth, I don’t know how many opportunities we have to leave the country in one way or another.

Alberto took my answer with indifference, going back to where he’d left his cover and lying down to sleep. In any case these were the first words I’d heard him speak since the morning. During the day he walks without complaining or asking questions. When he raises his eyes and looks ahead, he does it as if he has already made the journey any number of times. Sometimes he seems like an old man. Times when the young body that contains him seems nothing but a joke in bad taste.

Today, seeing him sitting with his head between his knees, I felt tempted to reach out and stroke his hair but, as if he knew what I had in mind, he looked up and glared fiercely at me for so long that I thought he would never stop. His eyes were two mirrors of restful brown water that seemed to have something terrible in them. At night I feel he must be awake and staring at me, but if I wake with a start I see him wrapped in his blanket, breathing deeply in his sleep, his eyes sealed by little yellow crusts.

Sometimes the silence around us is so profound I find myself longing to meet someone to rescue us in some way from our solitude and uncertainty. Often I move away with the excuse of needing to attend to my physical needs and spend a few minutes weeping, crouched among the trees. Sebastiano can’t help me. I’m not even sure he’s fully aware of our situation.

The only thing that cheers me is that for the moment the cold has stopped tormenting us. The sky is overcast and even at night the temperature doesn’t fall below freezing. The sun may warm us for an hour or two, but once it has set, we have to face much more severe nights.

The place where we are camping now is an old road-maintenance building. Its facade is the color of burgundy, divided in two by a broad, white stripe that separates the lower floor from the upper. It has a sharply sloping roof, in the Nordic style. None of its windows face the valley, which means it cannot be easily seen, and what windows it has are covered by wooden shutters that prevent the glow of our fire filtering through to the outside world. Features I’ve learned to value.

January 24

On the first afternoon we were walking halfway up the woods that entirely cover these hills, following a path formerly used by shepherds and mushroom hunters, keeping one eye on the road a hundred meters or so below us, when a voice from behind us ordered us to raise our arms above our heads. We did as we were told. I heard a rustle of dry leaves as the man approached, until he came into sight on my right, a meter or two above us. In the cold shadow his face looked severe. He might have been thirty-five years old, with long untidy hair. He placed himself in such a way that he could keep all four of us within range of his rifle, and then he asked us what we were doing there.

I said we were heading for the pass and our plan was to go down from there into Liguria. The man looked closely at the baggage on our shoulders and asked the children if they were with me of their own free will. Lucia said yes.

“You too?” the man asked Alberto.

The boy must have nodded because the man slightly lowered the rifle, which up to then he had been pointing at my chest.

“Have you any medicine?”

“What sort of medicine?” I asked.

“Something for fever.”

“I think so.”

“Please check.”

I took off the backpack and opened the side pocket where I had stored the medications. While I checked the instruction leaflets, Bauschan went over to sniff at his feet. The man let him do this.

“I’ve got an antibiotic here, and this is some kind of aspirin.”

“They’ll do. Throw them over to me.”

I did as he asked. He picked them up and stowed them in one of the many pockets of his hunter’s jacket. He had mountaineering boots on his feet. He seemed well fed and equipped.

“Now go,” he said.

We stood looking at him in uncertainty.

“Which way?”

“Leave the path and go down to the road,” he said, indicating the way for us with his rifle, “It’s not far to G.”

We began going down through the forest. Brambles and brushwood sometimes forced us to change direction and climb back up. On one of these occasions I looked up and saw the man still standing where we’d left him. He had lowered his gun but was still watching us, as though pondering what he might have done but hadn’t done, or the other way around.

Once we reached the road we walked on in silence until the trees behind us formed a thick curtain. Then I announced that we could stop. I pulled out one of the two bottles of water we carry and passed it to the children. They drank, their eyes still on the forest. I told them that if that man meant us any harm he would already have done it. Lucia nodded, but just as she did so I saw him reappear among the acacias at the end of the field.

We stayed sitting motionless on the safety barrier, staring at him as he approached. When he was about ten meters away he stopped, put his rifle over his shoulder, and looked toward the sun, which was disappearing behind the hills. I noticed his face was sunburned and clean-shaven. His eyes were a peaceful hazel color.

“I can offer you food and shelter for tonight,” he said.

During the half hour we walked behind him he never spoke or turned to check if we were following. When he got to the top of the hill he went down the other side, crossed a stream, and made his way to a house in the middle of a small clearing. A woman was waiting on the terrace. When she saw us she lifted her hand to her brow as though the sun was in her eyes. The man greeted her. She did not respond but went back into the house.

“That’s Manon,” the man said.

“I’m Leonardo.”

“I know.”

Manon had cooked a piece of deer and greens for supper. These seemed to be the herbs we had seen her washing earlier in the sink. There was homemade bread, too, and a dessert made with milk and cocoa. Manon’s fair hair had been given a basic cut. She is of Dutch origin and at first sight her beauty looks banally Nordic, but once you take in the exact color of her eyes and their almond shape one feels one is in the presence of something religious. She and Sergio live in this house with their two sons. The elder, Salomon, is eight and has his mother’s fair hair and his father’s taciturn nature. The younger is named Paul, but he is out of sight upstairs with a fever.

Their house is half Alpine hut and half farm. Its walls are stone and the lintels of the doors and windows are made of wood, but the rooms have high ceilings and are well lit. The house uses solar panels to produce electricity and has a wood-burning boiler, and the rooms are well heated. Before supper we were able to take a shower and rest in the room where we will spend the night.

In the bathroom I was afflicted by another fit of weeping. I had not seen myself naked in a mirror for a long time: in the last few weeks my body has become leaner, my shoulders broader and my back straighter. My leg muscles are again like when I used to run ten kilometers or so every day as a student. The whole effect is of a tired man who has grown several years younger. A tense, nervous man, such as I have never been before. Lucia heard me sobbing from our room and asked if I was all right; I said fine, I’m just singing.

When they came to call us for supper I woke Alberto and Sebastiano, who had fallen asleep on mattresses on the floor. Sergio waited at the door for us to put on our shoes; then asked if we were doing anything for Alberto’s conjunctivitis. I said we had some eye drops and asked if he was a doctor. A vet, he said.

During supper no one said very much. Sergio and Manon do not want to know where we have come from or where we are going and why. Nor did they ask us about the world around us in general, nor talk about what life was like before and what the future may hold now. Clearly, having guests is a new experience for them. This was obvious from the way Salomon studied the children during supper, as though until yesterday he had thought himself the last child left on earth.

While Manon was washing up, Sergio whispered something in her ear to which she replied in the same manner, then he told me he wanted to talk to me and we went out on the pretext of taking something to eat to Bauschan. I had realized at once that they preferred to have the dog left outside, so this is what I had done. They keep no animals in their house or yard. Not far from the main building is a wooden shed that I think Sergio must have built. As we walked around it I noticed the humming of a freezer coming from it. I think it must be their larder. Its door is secured with two large locks.

We sat down on the terrace steps. The air felt very cold, and one or two stars could be seen in the sky. It was only then that I noticed the windows were sealed so that no light filtered out from the inside. If I had moved a few meters away the only way I could have found the house again would have been by bumping into it. Hearing our footsteps, Bauschan came up to us. Sergio offered him the piece of meat we had saved for him.

“Are you still teaching?” Sergio asked.

“No, I left my job eight years ago.”

“To concentrate on writing?”

“Not entirely. I got caught up in something disagreeable. You probably heard about it.”

“I’ve been living here for ten years. We have no television or radio and don’t read the papers, so I’ve no idea what you might have been up to.”

“Were you one of my students?”

“I was.”

“What course were you on?”

“The one specializing in Leopardi.”

“But then you became a vet.”

“It was the exam at the end of that course that made me want to change. Until then I saw myself as having a brilliant mind.”

“I’m sure that was true. Exams can always get things wrong.”

“No, no. The only reason I chose Leopardi was to annoy my father, who was a vet. Changing over was the best thing I ever did. Otherwise I’d never have met Manon.”

I realized from the smell of tobacco that he must have lit a cigarette, but I could see no red glow. He was holding it in the hollow of his hand like soldiers and sailors do.

“I’ve been trying to think of a polite way to say it but I couldn’t find one, so I’ll say it straight out: tomorrow you must continue your journey. We can’t keep four extra people.”

“Of course. It’s been extremely kind of you to look after us this evening.”

“It has nothing to do with kindness. When I let you go today I was afraid you might come back with someone else to rediscover the path and find our house. So I either had to shoot you or put you in our debt. At the university you seemed to me a decent sort of person. So I chose the second alternative.”

“Are you always so honest?”

“We have no choice. The only reason we’re still alive is that everyone else around here has either gone away or is dead, and no one even knows this house exists. If some stray person or one of the gangs were to find us, we’d be finished.”

“Gangs of outsiders?”

He shook his head and for an instant I caught a glimpse of the red glow of the cigarette.

“Youngsters. A hundred, two hundred of them. Some my age, but younger too. With cars and trucks. I don’t know where they get the gas. Luckily they always play loud music and never leave the main road. If you hear them coming, keep clear.”

“We will.”

“Tomorrow I’ll give you some salted meat for the journey and some coffee that you’ll be able to reheat.”

“Thanks. We do have a little money.”

“Money means nothing to us. It’ll be more useful to you on the road. Now I’m off to bed.”

In some ways Sergio reminds me of Elio. The same control of himself and of everything around him. The same awkward determination. If I had to bet on anyone to survive all this, I’d bet on those two. If I had to trust anyone else with the children, it would be them.

January 25

Sergio walked a little way with us. He said he could help us avoid the main road by taking us a short cut through the forest, but I had the impression that what he really wanted was to disorientate us, to make it impossible for us to find the house again. When he took his leave he squeezed each one of us by the hand, after which we saw him retrace his steps and vanish into the forest. A little later we heard a rifle shot. He had told us he liked to hunt at some distance from the house so as not to attract attention to it with the sound of his gun. Bauschan was walking between my legs looking around cautiously. In the end I had to carry him in my arms so as not to trip over him. I had not done this for some time, and I became aware of how tough and elastic the skin under his gray-black coat had become. There is nothing left in him now of the puppy he was. He is like a flute cut from a cane. A strong hollow length of wood. Or one of those architectural creations of metal and glass I used to love so much.

Skirting an unknown small village, we heard the church clock strike four. The time corresponded with the light. Smoke was rising from a couple of chimneys but we did not go near them.

Following Sergio’s advice we have kept to the fields beside the road so as to be able to take refuge in the forest at the first sound of a car engine. In our bags we have cured meat, a bottle of coffee, and what’s left of our provisions. The sky is clearer than in recent days, though short gusts of cold wind hit us in the face and bring tears to our eyes. Despite the sunshine we have buttoned up our jackets and pulled scarves and caps from our pockets. Walking like this makes us sweat, but we can’t afford to risk falling ill.

This evening, after the children had gone to sleep, I talked at length to Sebastiano about Clara. While I talked he looked steadily into my eyes without nodding or shaking his head. When he saw I had finished, he lifted one of his great hands and laid it on my head. I felt my ankles and knees and my other joints stop hurting and melt with warmth.

Then he withdrew his hand and lay down under the cowhide he uses as a cloak by day and as a blanket at night, and his breathing told me almost at once that he was asleep. I settled a branch on the fire. A mass of sparks rose to skim the ceiling of the stall where we have taken refuge. Watching them fall back and go out, I ask myself whether I am being subjected to an act of purification. Or whether sentence has already been passed and a bizarre judge has placed the scaffold a long way from the cell.

January 26

A day of full sunlight. The snow has been thawing and we have had to leave the fields to walk on the road.

We had been walking on the asphalt for about an hour when a car appeared from nowhere. We were aware of it at the last moment and dived for cover as it rounded the corner behind us. The youth who was driving it looked at the clump of birches where we had thrown ourselves. He didn’t slow down and I’m not sure he saw us, but I can’t be sure he didn’t see us either. I got the impression of a painted face and blond hair. The car was a little urban two-seater painted yellow in an amateurish manner with flames on the hood. The bass notes of a stereo could be heard from behind its closed windows.

Afraid the youngster might come back, we left the road. I was pretty sure we weren’t far from the pass, but it was dark when we reached the hillside. A slice of moon lit the last stretch of the climb.

Where the road descends the hill into Liguria we found a hotel, a bar, a children’s summer camp, and a few houses, all these places abandoned. Even so it seemed risky to stop there for the night because anyone coming over the pass would be able to see or smell the smoke from our fire. Of course we could do without a fire, but we need to eat something hot and dry our shoes. So I told the children and Sebastiano to shelter from the wind, and I set off by myself along the crest of the hill where great revolving wind turbines stand. After a kilometer I came across a small building with two floors. I think it must have been a base for the installation engineers. On the ground floor it has a kitchen and a room with a computer and other instruments, and on the upper floor two small bedrooms.

I went back for the children and we settled in. We lit our fire in the most sheltered room, the laboratory, and Sebastiano went to look for wood. Some of the equipment seems to be in working order, and two red indicators go on and off intermittently on one of the consoles. We ate some cured meat and then, while the soup heated, I told the children the road would be downhill the next day and within two days we’d be at the sea. Lucia said she had been to A. on vacation with her mother. For a few minutes the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the chomping of Bauschan’s jaws.

“I want to go to Switzerland,” Alberto said.

He spoke with none of the usual arrogance; it was the voice of a terrified child I had not heard before.

“Perhaps we’ll be able to get there from France,” I answered.

He looked at me across the flames of the fire. It seemed to me his mind must still be working on one of those decisive questions I have only read about in books, never experienced in real life, like crossroads crucial to a man’s destiny. His eyes were gentle and full of grace; for the first time, they were like Lucia’s eyes. Then suddenly his mouth hardened and he looked away. I understood he had made his choice.

When everyone was asleep I went out to urinate. Tonight the sky is covered with a thin gauze that magnifies the moonlight. The wind is cold but carries the smell of trees and of something unfolding.

I sat on a stone and searched the sky for some deficiency or excess that might explain what is happening. But the sky was the same as it always is, offering no signs. The powerful steel turbines were turning with a sound like enormous bicycles struggling uphill. I could see the red lights on their towers delineate the watershed between two valleys. I imagined this land after our own time, with the turbines still revolving and filling the silence with their powerful humming, cradling sleeping animals and driving them to mate as the sound of water does.

I am writing these last lines by the weak light of the dying fire. This act of writing that I had put behind me has returned to be part of me again, emerging from the dark place into which it had slipped. Before pulling my cover over me I kissed Lucia’s brow. I have a daughter, the night outside is deep and indifferent and everything seems destined to last longer than us. Yet I see beauty.

January 27

The snow has gone. The vegetation has changed. We haven’t yet seen the sea, but we’ve come across the first olives and can already feel the warm and pleasant wind rising from the coast. We walked all day at a good pace and after lunch allowed ourselves an hour’s sleep with our faces turned to the warm sun. There are no villages in the valley, only an occasional group of abandoned houses along the constant curves and hairpin bends of the winding road. No problems to report except that Bauschan has trodden on a tin can or a piece of broken glass and cut his paw. It was Lucia who told me he was limping and leaving bloodstains on the leaves. I disinfected the wound and tried to put a Band-Aid over it, but as soon as we began walking again it came off. I’ve tried a handkerchief, but he rips it with his teeth. This evening I repeated the medication. But it doesn’t seem to be anything serious. For the first time we’ve decided to sleep in the open. The marin, the wind rising from the sea, warms the air, and inside a ruin or other building it would be colder.

We’ve lit a small fire, screening it with stones. We’re tired but calm. It’s been a good day. I don’t know what we’ll find tomorrow when we reach the coast, maybe only other people like ourselves who have gotten so far and hope to be able to leave the country. Even if they haven’t yet succeeded, they will probably have organized themselves somehow and will be able to accept us. And if some have succeeded, it means it must be possible for us to find a ship and leave too; we do have a little money. If not, we’ll walk to France. I’ve copied the address Elio left me into this exercise book.