The Last Man Standing Read Online Free PDF Page B

clutter up my yard with other people’s stuff?”
    It was covered by two old sheets sewn together. On its small roof was the pointed shape of a cross.
    “What are you going to do with it?”
    “Not much you can do with things of that kind.”
    “Then why did you buy it?”
    “The funeral director at D. has moved to France. He’d been in debt to my mother for as long as I can remember so he paid up with what he had. He was an honest man; he could have left without a word. What’s that in your pocket?”
    Leonardo looked down; the dog had turned around and all that could be seen was the end of his tail sticking out of the pocket. Leonardo extracted him carefully and showed him to Ottavio.
    “How old would you say he is?”
    “Ten days,” Ottavio said, after a cursory examination. “Maybe crossed with something useful for herding cows. Do you want to keep him?”
    Leonardo looked at the dog, who seemed to be struggling to open his eyes.
    “I think I do. Can you sell me any milk?”
    Ottavio stared, his face red and sweat in the hair around his ears.
    “Have you come here on purpose to annoy me?”
    “How do you mean?”
    They went into the cowshed past the immobile haunches of some twenty cows, about ten animals on each side, then passing through a metal door found themselves in a room tiled to the ceiling, in which a fan was stirring air charged with disinfectant. Ottavio took off his outdoor shoes and Leonardo did the same, placing his sandals in a small wardrobe. Both put on colored clog-like rubber shoes. There were two large zinc vats in the room, and shelves with cheeses of various sizes. Ottavio uncovered one of the vats. It was full of a yellowish liquid with what looked like thin metallic plates floating on the surface, and it smelled like shoemaker’s glue.
    “What’s this?” Leonardo said.
    “This morning’s milk.”
    Leonardo stepped back from the overpowering smell. Ottavio closed the vat and went to a window facing the back of the farm, which Leonardo knew to be where he kept his heifers and orchard. Ottavio parked his elbows on the windowsill and contemplated his property.
    “Do you hear the planes going over at night?”
    “Sometimes,” Leonardo said. In fact, being a heavy sleeper, he had heard nothing at all. It had always been like that. Once he slept for five hours in an armchair at the Lisbon airport, missing all the flights that could have taken him home. Returning to his hotel he had gotten in touch with Alessandra, who had no difficulty in believing him, and then he went to bed to watch a bit of television but without being able to keep his eyes open to the end of the film.
    “When the planes go over, the cows play this trick on me. A few months ago it was only now and then, but now for a whole week I’ve had to throw away all the milk. The big producers add powdered milk, but I don’t want that on my conscience. I don’t even give this stuff to the pigs.”
    Seen from behind, Ottavio was a short, stocky figure with no sharp edges; veins bulging on his arms even when he was not lifting anything heavy. He was five years older than Leonardo but looked five years younger.
    “Can you trust a married man?” Ottavio said.
    Leonardo said yes and thought of Elio. Ottavio nodded.
    “Then just ask him about women’s periods. My daughter hasn’t had one for two months but can’t be pregnant. And my wife, who hadn’t had a period for years, has started getting them again.”
    Leonardo looked at the ascetic white of the tiles. Someone was singing a song somewhere accompanied by the regular beat of something like an old pedal sewing machine.
    “I think,” Ottavio said, pausing to add emphasis to what he was about to say, “that those planes are dropping something; something to calm us all down, because if not we’re all going to go mad.”
    They went out into the yard where a light wind from the mountains stirred scraps of straw and blew hair about. The two dogs watched them closely