The Human Body (24 page)

“Please do.”

“What's going through my head is that you are a disgusting piece of shit. You come here and tell me that grief silences us.
Us
who? You weren't there. You were somewhere else. On one of those ships, reading your fucking psychology manuals. I know guys like you,
Lieutenant Commander
, you hear? The ones who've gone to university. You think you know everything. But you don't know squat. NOT A THING! You like to get into other people's heads, don't you? Stir up the shit. You'd enjoy hearing me tell you all about my private affairs. You'd like that, right? You'd be all aroused there under the table. Ugly cross-eyed fucking pervert. Don't you ever dare mention Corporal Ietri in front of me again, you hear me? He was a real man. You knocked on the wrong door, Mr.
Psychologist
. There are plenty of faggots here—go look for them outside. Unfortunately for you, I'm not one of them. I don't talk about my goddamn business with just anybody. This interview is over.”

When he leaves the mess hall, slamming the door behind him, he feels like beating someone up, banging heads, bashing, shooting, killing. Instead he rushes over to the tavern, where he orders the closest thing to an alcoholic drink—a can of Red Bull. It's not enough to rinse out his mind. Ietri plunks himself back in his head again, dead and then alive. Was he really a friend? He certainly was the nearest thing to a friend he'd found in a long time. As an adult, you no longer have any real friends, that's the awful truth. You leave the best years behind and you settle for scraps. Ietri was better than scraps, though. What the hell is happening to him? He's becoming a crybaby. The
verginella
is gone. That's it, finished. It's time to face reality, toughen up.

As he tries unsuccessfully to calm down, he listens to a conversation between two marines. He doesn't understand all the words, but he hears them mention a masseuse who practices at the base. For Cederna, a masseuse in a military camp means only one thing, and in fact the marines are enthusiastic as they talk about her, making unmistakable gestures with their hands. That's just what he needs to get rid of all the rage in his body: sex. Then for sure he'd be able to wipe it all out of his head: the bloody sheep, Ietri's hair matted with sand, the ambush, Agnese treating him like a loser, and that psychologist's face asking to be smacked. He'd sweep it all away.

He interrupts the soldiers and asks them how to find the woman.

He goes there after supper. The directions lead him to a set of sheet metal buildings near the prison, in an area off the beaten track. A sign that says “Wellness Center” is Scotch-taped to the door. The hours of operation aren't listed.

Cederna knocks, but no one answers. He pushes the door open. A woman sprawled out in a plastic chair is smoking a cigarette. The white apron she's wearing over her fleece sweatshirt makes her look like a cook. Her facial features are neither Western nor Asian. Under the pullover her arms must be fleshy and flabby.

“Massage?” Cederna asks.

The woman nods behind the pall of smoke. She gestures to him to wait. Then she gets up, stubs the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray, and moves aside a curtain dividing the room into two parts. On the other side there's a cot with folded towels on it, and a bowl of water on the floor with four flower petals floating on the surface.

“Ten dollars for thirty minutes,” she says in English.

“Huh?”

“Ten dollars. Thirty minutes.” The woman enunciates clearly.

Cederna is unfamiliar with the hourly rates for a masseuse and has only a vague idea of those of prostitutes, but it seems like highway robbery to him. Ten dollars! Nothing at the military bases is that outrageously expensive. But he has a desperate desire to have her hands on him. “Okay,” he says, and starts for the cot.

The woman stops him. “First you pay.”

Greedy bitch! Cederna flips through his wallet. He shows the woman a bill. “Five euros. Like ten dollars.”

She shakes her head sternly. “Ten dollars, ten euros.”

“Okay, okay. Fuck.” He slaps a creased ten-euro bill in her hand, as if she were stealing from him.

The woman doesn't turn a hair. She invites him to lie down. “Undress,” she orders him.

“What?”

“Undress, you. You naked,” she explains by gesturing, then pulls the curtain and leaves him to himself.

It's just the kind of place where what he needs to happen happens. He holds a towel up against the light—it's very threadbare in some spots, almost see-through—and he brings it to his face to sniff it. He feels a vague sense of uneasiness. If Ietri were still alive they would have come here together. For the corporal it would have been just the right time; he could have dumped that nickname,
verginella
. Or maybe not. Cederna would have gone on calling him that even afterward. They would have had a few drinks together and he would have grilled him for details. He feels dizzy; he has to lean on the cot to keep from falling over. Why does his mind keep going back to him? He has no intention of saddling himself with a ghost. He has to banish it right now.

He unbuckles his belt. He undresses quickly, though he takes the trouble to fold his clothes. He has to think about himself; there's no other way to get ahead in life. He's paid ten euros and he might as well get everything he can for it. He strips off his underwear as well. He stands there naked, unsure what to do. Maybe he wasn't supposed to undress completely—the masseuse wasn't clear about the underwear. Suddenly he feels embarrassed. He puts his boxers back on and lies down on the cot like that, but immediately has second thoughts. He hops down, pulls them back off, and stretches out on his stomach again, with the towel over his butt.

“Ready?” the voice on the other side asks.

The massage starts at the extremities. Cederna is surprised by the woman's strength. She pokes her fingers one by one into the tight spaces between his toes and then tugs as if wanting to yank his bones out. With her thumb she presses on a point at the center of the sole, causing a shiver to spread out and race up to his head. Then she moves on to the calves. Her palms, slick with scented oil, slide over Cederna's muscles.

He stares at the floating rose petals, motionless in the bowl.

From the thighs, she ventures under the worn towel and strokes his buttocks. On the way down, her fingertips graze his groin, then pull back right away, leaving him unsatisfied. His body is full of tension that he's having trouble letting go of.

Don't think, don't think. Stop it. Don't think
.

The woman kneads his back; it hurts but he grits his teeth. She works on the cramped nerves at length, torturing them with her thumbs. When she sticks an elbow between his shoulder blades, Cederna lets out a groan and shrugs her off.

“Massage too strong?” she asks, not at all frightened.

His pride prevents him from telling the truth. “No, not too strong. Keep going.”

It relieves the pressure, in any case. Cederna likes it when she gets to the back of his neck and his scalp. He struggles not to fall asleep, until the woman brusquely orders him to turn over on his back, then starts again. Back of the foot. Ankles. Quadriceps. Now she's more perfunctory. When she's done with his legs she gets rid of the towel, tossing it aside. Cederna's prodigious erection is right under her nose, in plain sight.

There. Now we're getting somewhere.

He opens his eyes for a moment, takes a peek at the woman's face. She doesn't seem unsettled and he feels a little affronted by this. She massages his abdomen distractedly.

Cederna has never had sex with a foreign woman. He could easily pick up an illness from someone like her—AIDS, gonorrhea, or something hideous and unknown, one of those infections that disfigure the genitals. Never mind; he'll worry about it later. He'll wash himself off thoroughly. Right now he just wants to get rid of Ietri's ashen face that has suddenly appeared before him.

The woman has turned off the neon ceiling light and in its place switched on a lamp with a red-tinted bulb. The squalor of the small room is softened, though not entirely. As she keeps prodding around his groin, teasing him, a dark infinite sadness overcomes the senior corporal major. He suddenly feels a longing for Agnese, for Ietri, and for something indistinct and his alone, like a secret he knew a long time ago and has forgotten.

“Baby massage?”

“Huh?”

“You want a massage for your baby?”

Cederna flounders in his sadness. The masseuse explains, making the same gesture used by the marines. Seen from below, in the reddish light, she's not very attractive. It doesn't matter. Cederna tries to pull her to him by the arm. She twists free, again displaying her strength. “No! No sex!” she shrieks. “Only massage.”

Bewildered, he lets go. “No sex? But I gave you ten euros!”

“No sex,” the woman insists and takes a step back, folding her arms.

Cederna punches the side of the cot with his fist.

“Baby massage? Yes or no?”

He gives in. Okay, baby massage, whatever. As long as it takes him away from where he is. He lets his arms drop along the sides.

“You want music?” the woman asks.

“No. Please. No music.”

 • • • 

A
t the American base, garbage of all kinds has piled up alongside the wooden walkways and in the drainage ditches. A population of feral cats moves cautiously through the trash; occasionally the cats stop, spot something, then pounce forward. René doesn't see even a single rat, but clearly they're around, and in abundance.

He enters the phone center, which compared to the makeshift arrangement at the FOB looks like the command center of a space agency. He searches his phone directory for Rosanna's number and dials it without giving himself time to hesitate any further—he's already wavered too long. The phone rings four times, but finally she picks up.

“It's me. René.”

“Oh, my God.”

The lag in the signal allows time for one last, weak-willed uncertainty. Is it really what he wants? He's about to tie himself down to a woman he barely knows, a woman who's much older than he is; he made love with her a handful of times and they watched old movies together. He's setting himself up for serious consequences, difficulties he can't even imagine, unhappiness maybe. The conflicting pros and cons rise up in his mind again, but this time René rejects them. He knows what the right thing to do is. He has a clear picture of himself and the child lying on a green stretch of grass and, at the end of the day, that's the best fantasy he's come close to in a long time.

“How are you? Are you wounded?”

“No. No, I'm fine.”

“I heard all about it on the news. They mentioned your name. What a horror, René. What a terrible atrocity. Those poor boys.”

“Rosanna, listen to me. I had a lot of doubts, I thought and thought about it. I didn't think I could do it, that you were— Well, we barely know each other, right? And we have a lot of differences. But life here has opened my eyes. God chose for me not to die. He decided that I should look after our baby, so he can grow up with a father. I thought I still had too much to do for myself and instead there's nothing more I have to do for me—it doesn't matter to me. I want the baby. I'm ready. I am, believe me.”

“René, listen . . .”

“I've already thought of everything. Last night I sat on the cot with the flashlight in my mouth and I took notes, I wrote up a list. There are a lot of things to arrange, but we'll make it. You can move in with me—the house isn't huge, but it's big enough. I'll have to clear out my study, but there's just a bunch of crap in there. It's not even a real study, I just call it that. I can throw everything out and make room. I'll be a good father, Rosanna, I swear to you. I've been a bad leader. I let five of my men die, but I'll make it up, I'll be a perfect father. I'll keep him with me always. I'll teach him to ride a bike and play soccer and . . . everything. Even if it's a girl. I'd like so much for it to be a girl. Have they told you yet? Is it a boy or a girl, Rosanna? Tell me, please—I want to know.”

He hears her breathing on the other end. She's crying. He wishes she were there with him; he'd hold her close and wipe her tears. It's right for her to cry, because this is their tragic and joyous moment, the beginning of their life together and many years from now they will remember it.

“You're a fool, René.”

“No, Rosanna. I'll do everything right, I swear. The two of us . . . we'll find a way.”

“Shut up! Don't you get it?”

“What?”

“It's too late now.”

René's mouth is dry. He's talked a lot and is in a rush. The Americans' voices are loud—they're shouting into the phones, barking; they're not very considerate. The racket is making his head spin. “What did you do?” René says.

“It's too late.”

“Rosanna, what the fuck did you do?”

The sheep hurtle down the slope and falter on their glabrous hooves, their faces contracted in terror. Something is wrong, there's no shepherd. They want to screw us. Fire, fire, fire with everything you've got. The truck explodes with a roar that leaves their ears ringing. They must be ready, they must be on their guard. The baby isn't yet a baby, it's a mosquito. They suck it out with a tube and in five minutes it's all over.

“Good-bye, René,” Rosanna says. “Take care of yourself.”

 • • • 

T
he masseuse's name is Oxana; she's thirty-eight years old, but she looks older. She comes from Turkmenistan, which in Cederna's imagination is just another abominable place somewhere in the north, another place not worth knowing. There's not much more she'll allow him to know: when the soldier tries to start a conversation, the woman cuts him short, pointing to the cot, or if they've finished, the door. She answers his questions in monosyllables, and never asks him anything about himself. To get back at her, Cederna forces her to reduce the time she spends on the massage, grabbing her hand immediately and placing it where he wants it. She's not happy about it; the preliminaries allow her to feel less disgust for herself—Cederna is not so insensitive as to not realize it. His way, everything is over in a few minutes. Then he finds himself out the door again, at loose ends there at the U.S. base, having to deal with a tension that instead of abating keeps growing and growing. In the time it takes him to reach the tent where his companions continue to remain silent and remorseful, he's horny again. He craves Oxana. He can't think of anything else.