End of Manners (5 page)

I was gratified by the respect she seemed to grant me for no reason I could discern, and I decided it wasn’t necessary to remind her I hadn’t been out there on the streets in years and never once in a war zone. The Barbie doll picture seemed to have had enough power to make her trust me completely. Whatever the reason, I didn’t want to deter her faith in me.

“We could take the train together tomorrow,” I suggested, as we were saying good-bye in front of the cab she was about to climb into. “Unless you were planning to drive.”

“Where?”

“To the country. Wherever this place is. For the course, I mean.”

“Oh, right. The Defenders,” she said, letting the name dangle for a second in the air. “Oh, no, darling, I’m not going to come. I did that course already
years
ago, when I went to Sudan. The insurance only needs you to do it once. But don’t worry, I’ll see you next Monday at the Emirates check-in at Heathrow.”

She hugged me tight and kissed me on both cheeks. The disappointment must have redrawn my face, as I felt my cheeks sag, my nose lengthen. What an idiot. Someone who hops from one war zone to another, what was I thinking? She didn’t need the Defenders to defend her.

“They’ll do all sorts of things to you, just wait and see,” she said, wrapping her black cashmere coat around her. “You might just love it!”

And with a devilish grin she disappeared into the darkness of the large cab, leaving behind a sweetish, spicy scent.

I walked back to the hotel in order to digest the meeting, constantly checking my “London from A to Z” map for fear of getting lost again. I felt Imo Glass was a person whose definition eluded me. Perhaps because a little girl born as Lupita Jaramillo in the slums of a South American city ruled by drug traffickers, and who subsequently mutated into a woman by the name of Imogen who grew up in Notting Hill with an art historian (father) and a psychotherapist (mother) as adoptive parents, was a unique creature whose DNA had flourished in total anarchy. That’s probably why she seemed able to effortlessly shift from one language to another, from one country to another, as if she were always swimming in the same water and consequently managed to feel at home just about everywhere. But what struck me the most about her was her total lack of fear in the way she approached complete strangers—the waitress at the club, the taxi driver, me—enveloping everyone with festive familiarity, a secret weapon that tamed them on the spot, neutralizing any aggressive potential.

The following morning at seven, I had an appointment at Paddington station at the platform with my course companions. Pierre had told me over the phone that it was going to be a short trip and that one of the instructors was supposed to meet us at the other end, at Hampshire station.

I was the last to arrive. I spotted them right away as, tottering and sweaty, I lugged my big suitcase along. They had all gathered under the platform roof and were watching me as I wobbled toward them. I knew right away I was the only Italian of the group. I guess they had only just met, but already they looked to me like a well-bonded team that was about to set off on vacation. A consolidated group that viewed with suspicion the only stranger, the one no one wanted to share a room with. They shared a similar look: casual and contemporary, equipped in Nikes and North Face; their snazzy cell phones, literary magazines poking out of bags, iPods and woolen caps. They greeted me and my about-to-burst suitcase with incredulous grins, since they were all carrying hand luggage. We quickly introduced ourselves to each other and I didn’t even try to memorize a single name; for the whole journey I pretended to be reading the
Guardian,
half listening to their wry comments on what was awaiting us.

The redbrick station was in the middle of the countryside—it looked like an idyllic English countryside, all right, with Jersey cows and lots of green. I picked the awaiting Defender at once because he was watching us from a distance and didn’t move forward. He stood next to a brick pylon, a cigarette dangling from his lips, waiting for us to go over to him like a gaggle of anxious geese waddling up to their feed.

“Welcome. My name’s Keith,” he said with an accent that sounded coarse to me as he crushed the cigarette butt under his shoe—although my ear was untrained to the endless nuance of English class pronunciation. “Defender” was written on his jacket in light blue against a yellow background. He looked around fifty, albeit a pretty trashed fifty; burly with the gravelly voice of a smoker and the watery gaze of someone who drinks a lot of beer.

“Come on, let’s get a move on. The first lesson starts at nine.” Then he looked at my bags.

“No, it’s just that”—the urge to justify myself rose like a wave—“as soon as I’m done with the course I’m flying straight to Kabul. There are cameras in it and…”

“You’re free to bring whatever you want.”

Keith’s eyelids lowered slowly and he shrugged.

“Your whole wardrobe if you like,” he said, turning his back on me.

In the small conference room of the country inn—fluorescent lights, folding chairs, gray carpet and a screen for slides—the Defenders turned up in full force, with the spirit of a soccer team at a photo shoot. They showed no interest in being liked, had no time for formalities or pleasantries. There were about ten of them, all wearing identical blue Defender T-shirts. They had a weathered look, scoured by the elements and by late nights at the pub. In fact, as I walked past them, my nostrils caught a blend of beer notes mixed with toothpaste and pine shower gel, the same sharp scent that wafts through every subway in the world around eight a.m.

They were standing in front of the slide screen with their arms crossed over their mighty stomachs, biceps on display, legs apart, in a menacing bouncer stance. I noticed how one of them—a sort of Celtic mountain who looked like Obelix, the gigantic Gallic cartoon character with braids and horns on his helmet, ready to uproot a tree—wore his thin blond hair in a ponytail, despite being well over fifty, which struck me as sad. A couple of them were younger, not as bulky but scary nevertheless. These had the sinewy, diabolical look of martial arts champions, ice-colored eyes and tattoos on their forearms. They introduced themselves one by one, mumbling their names under their breath: “I’m Roger, I’ll be giving you the first-aid course.” “I’m Alan, together we’ll take a look at weapons, munitions and land mines.” “Hi, I’m Toby, with me you’ll be doing outdoor war games, we’ll be simulating emergency situations together.”

They surveyed us with an air of polite superiority. It was obvious we didn’t arouse the least curiosity in them. There we were, a bunch of middle-class civilians shrouded in expensive layers of polypropylene with BlackBerrys stuffed in our pockets, who had only ever seen war on television. I could detect it in their eyes, the tedium of having to put up with us for a whole week.

At that point, the one who appeared to be the oldest, Tim—a mild-faced man with sky-blue eyes and a King Kong physique—invited us to introduce ourselves and name the organization we worked for.

“Please state your destination as well,” he added.

Nobody moved, eyes met all round.

One after another, my course mates stood up and declaimed their personal details as if they were introducing themselves at an AA meeting.

“Hi, I’m Bob Sheldon, I work for Reuters in Sydney and next month I’m going to Indonesia to cover the elections.”

“Um…My name is Monika Schluss, I come from Bonn and I will travel to Belize to work with Christian Aid.”

“Hi, I’m Liz Reading, I’m from London and in six months I’m going to the Congo to…well…” The sexy brunette hesitated, then giggled. “I’m with an NGO that helps local people make cheese,” and there were nervous titters all round to break the tension. The Defenders did not laugh.

“Hi, my name’s Jonathan Kirk. I work for AP. I’m American, but I live and work in Bogotá. I’m not going anywhere. I just need to survive my own neighborhood.”

“Hi, my name’s Nkosi Mkele, I work in Johannesburg. Like Jonathan, I’m not going to any hot spots because I already live in one that’s at boiling point.”

More titters of approval, zero reaction from the Defenders.

When I stood up, I stammered my name and said I was a freelance photographer.

“On Monday I’m going to Kabul,” I added before sitting down again. All my course buddies whipped their heads around to look at me, and I noticed, or perhaps I just thought I noticed, more respect in their eyes than I had seen before. Tim wound up, addressing me.

“Well, Maria, keep your ears open in the coming days, because everything you’ll learn could turn out to be very useful to you. And with that, thank you, everybody. We’ve finished here and we can begin.”

By ten I had already fainted.

I came to in a sort of slow fade-in. The utter darkness discolored into different textures of gray, then blotches of color began to emerge and separate themselves from the rest and more distinct sounds surfaced from the background hum. I realized those colored blurs were faces leaning over me; then the muffled sounds turned into voices and familiar sentences. “Water, get her some water. There, now she’s coming round. Hey, everything’s okay. There, drink, good girl, that’s the way.”

Water doesn’t do a thing. I know because I’m prone to fainting and there’s always someone who thinks that making me drink will get me back on my feet.

Roger—one of the ones with the ice-colored eyes and raven hair who looked scary—had asked before starting the slide show if anyone in the room was likely to be affected by the sight of blood. No arm was raised and I didn’t move.

“Always better to ask,” Roger had said. “People have passed out before.”

My companions had giggled. I had kept quiet, hoping that I wouldn’t, this one time.

We had been sitting on the folding chairs, each with our own notepad with Defenders letterhead, complete with pen with the same logo, while Roger went through the slides, illustrating the basics of extreme first aid.

He had just started on the subject of hemorrhages and, in particular, arterial bleeding when I began to feel strange. The description of blood pressure, but mostly the use of the word “gush” caused a sort of softening in my stomach. I tried to stay focused as Roger called Tim over to act as a guinea pig and went on to show where to tie the tourniquet on the thigh, higher than the wound, and how to exert pressure on the artery by pushing a fist into the groin with as much force as possible. When he started to demonstrate how to push to stem the blood flow, emphasizing the speed with which the victim can bleed to death, I started to get that languid feeling I know so well. Monika Schluss, the German from Christian Aid—a Louise Brooks haircut dyed red, oval glasses—was diligently taking notes next to me, unperturbed, whereas I could not stop the image of spurting blood, of lips turning whiter every second and most of all of the pool of thick red liquid spreading on the floor.

How can everyone listen to these sounds, I asked myself—
firearm, severed vein, gushes, squirts, puddle, blood
—and not feel the same atrocious chill that is slowly taking hold of me?

Everybody looked perfectly calm, interested, some actually even amused. My body instead started to simulate the same process Roger was describing. I could actually feel life flowing away from me like river water, the blood streaming away from my wrists, down my legs, away from my heart and lungs, emptying my body, leaving me dry. I pointed my toes to ward off that familiar somnolence, that desire to be elsewhere. It’s the first warning that my body has decided to give up on me. There’s nothing I can do. My body seems to possess a personality of its own, like a difficult friend who will walk out of a scary movie without a word of warning.

A split second before I passed out, a last thought flashed through my mind. It is truly unbearable to accept the idea of how vulnerable our bodies are in the face of elements, accidents, attacks. How can we possibly walk around our whole lives carrying this tangle of veins, organs, tubes, valves, glands, air chambers, filters, juices, membranes, protected by only two millimeters of epidermis? Madness, I thought, that such a delicate load—doesn’t our life depend entirely on its correct functioning after all?—should be wrapped in tissue paper…Then I was out.

At dinner I had decided to join Nkosi, the South African journalist and the only black person in the group, precisely because I noticed he was sitting by himself. The others had already formed small cliques all around, and I got the impression that he might be feeling out of place as well, in this wet and wintry English countryside.

“Of course you can sit here.” He smiled. “Maria, right? You’re the one who’s going to Kabul, isn’t it?”

He was wearing a pair of dazzling yellow glasses and a black-and-orange-striped sweater, which made him look like a bee. You could tell he came from a country where there was plenty of sunshine. He wasn’t scared of bright colors. With old-fashioned charming manners he had moved a chair for me to sit on.

Just then Liz Reading crept up behind me. She had been heading toward a table of journalists rigged out in black and gray Patagonia gear when, as if on an afterthought, she approached my table with the false concern whose sole purpose I knew was to humiliate me. She leaned in towards me.

“Roger told me tomorrow’s class will be on amputated limbs. I just thought I’d let you know, in case you…you know…might faint again. There may be lots of blood on the slides, so…”

“So what?” I asked abruptly.

“Nothing. But he suggested I tell you, in case you prefer to leave the room,” she advised in a mellifluous tone.

“I’m
not
scared of blood. It’s just that it freaks me out how easy it is to die,” I said, coldly glaring at her and stressing every syllable like a mad person. She hastily withdrew, holding her overflowing plate of roast beef and potatoes close to her chest, as if she’d run into a Jehovah’s Witness on her doorstep, ready and eager to discuss the Last Judgment.