The atmosphere was almost festive. There was just a hint of tension, just enough concentration that could accompany, as far as I know, a sports event. There, we can say that it seemed to be in the locker room of a soccer field before a match, with the team-mates trying to loosen their tension by joking among themselves and at the same time looking askance at their opponents, both timidly and impudently, while suspended in the air there is an inadequate hope of being able to exchange something with them; yet you never know exactly what, considering that in short they will face each other on the field. "The winner takes all", that is, to the last gasp.
From an out-of-view angle, feigning a haste that no one seemed to have imposed on him, a plump soldier arrived trotting and winking. He had red hair, and a pleasant face like that of a comic actor. He ridiculously rushed towards the minute chair placed behind the machine-gun, with very bent knees and an unbalanced backward-leaning body. He managed to ungracefully sit down, amid the soldiers’ laughter, but the fat behind would not hear of entering between the arms of the chair. I found him sincerely funny and his pantomime pulled out of me a smile, almost a half-laughter. Absurd. Even in that moment I could be indulgent with an enemy, the enemy, the last enemy.
Among laughs and teasing, his comrades surrounded him, forcefully pressing him downwards till fixed in the chair. Then someone pointed out to him he did not have his helmet. The soldier rolled his eyes and slapped himself on his forehead. Among whistles, applause and "boos", he got up without detaching from the little chair and, with that appendage stuck to his rear, departed. He slid into a large tent only to come out of it a few seconds later with the helmet on backwards, covering his eyes. He pretended to grope with his arms forward like a sleepwalker until one of his comrades turned it on the right side. Then he took his seat again behind the machine-gun, rested his arms on it and, simulating an invincible weariness, let his head drop on it.
Thirteen of us had survived the skirmish that had brought about our capture. They had lined us up, one beside the other, and now a blond soldier, very serious, whom I had not seen to join in the hubbub a little earlier, approached the group of us prisoners and began to perform a strange operation: with a big knife he cut to the first in line the cord gripping his wrists behind his back, then, with a piece of the long rope he was carrying on his shoulder he tied them up again, but this time in front. With methodical and almost graceful efficiency, as if specialized in that sort of work, he accomplished the same operation with us all.
Then another soldier approached, one we had seen a little earlier very busy in the act of installing the funny soldier into the chair. He divided us into two groups: "One two three four five six…", he rapidly murmured in his language. Then he stopped and hesitated because he had realized that we were odd-numbered; for a while he remained undecided whether to assign me, being the seventh, to the first or second group. He looked in my eyes for a moment. "You are lucky", he said to me with a strange face as though he still had some doubt. The last of the first group, who was the sixth, at my right hand-side, was led away with the others.
The six men were lined up between two metal bars, which were fixed into the ground and sticking up more than two meters. On the top the bars were Y-shaped; in these two Ys a third bar was placed, forming with them a structure resembling a soccer goal. Two soldiers lifted the horizontal bar, removed it from its seat, then passed one end under the left arm and over the right arm of each prisoner; thus, holding it at the two ends, they lifted it again and replaced its ends on the two Ys, obtaining the result of having all the men tied up to the bar by their wrists, almost hanging.
The soldiers placed themselves behind the machine-gunner. We, too, were shifted to some distance form the scene, as though they did not want us to run the risk of being hit with some floating bullet.
Everything was ready, yet someone was awaited. At last two soldiers were seen arriving with a cumbersome lengthened bundle out of which some gummed metal supports poked, like the feet of a music stand. Placing the bundle on the ground, the two unwrapped it, revealing a large movie camera, fixed to a support ending in three long metal legs. Once the camera was set up, one of the two mimed with his hands the clapper-board of a movie action; then he looked towards the prisoners who were tied to the bar and in his language yelled: "Smile, please!". Then he started to laugh heartily and left.
The funny plump fellow straightened up in the chair, cleared his throat, assumed an expression of faked compunction, looked into the foresight of the machine-gun and made the barrel slide horizontally in order to properly frame the six targets, murmuring in a hardly perceptible way: "Rrrratatatatata…". Then he brought it back to the first in line.
One can imagine such operations always ordered by a captain who, once completed some preliminaries, orders to open fire. In this case there was no officer at all. On the contrary, the few soldiers gathering around the machine-gunner and the cameraman were about to thin out, dispersing within the slight fog that was about to rise.
The breathless and methodical murmur of the camera announced that the moment had come. The burst set off barging into the six prisoners in extremely rapid sequence, from the first to the last and then again back to the first, uninterruptedly, then once more back and forth. During those seconds, my comrades seemed puppets of a puppeteer left hanging to the inclemency of the weather and shaken by gusts of wind.
I wanted to watch everything thoroughly, to learn there and then as much as possible how to die. A strange detail struck me: the head; while dying, almost all my comrades shifted imperceptibly their heads right and left so to let it drop heavily on their chest. Life leaves your head, I thought, even though they shoot at your body.
As soon as the weapon was quiet, the previous two men, who in the meantime had remained guarding us from the second group, approached the scene and tried to lift the bar again from its seat, but they did not succeed, because the weight of the bodies prevented them. That demonstration of disorganization surprised me. Then the very serious blond-headed guy arrived with his big knife and cut clean through the six pieces of rope that tied the dead at the bar. The bodies were merely moved a bit backward from the ideal line that linked the two vertical bars, while the horizontal bar was already moving towards new bodies to bear, ours.
They placed us like the others. I was the first in line. The position was not particularly uncomfortable, because, being tall, I was not properly hanging. Beside me, on my left, there was a sort of intellectual with small glasses and a beard, somewhat short and delicate, whose feet did not touch the ground. Where was he from? From Tortona, I guess he had told me the day before, when our group had formed and we had introduced ourselves. Anyway he was Piedmontese. He had liked me right away. The Piedmonteses have a sincere respect for anyone who, even though not northern, is serious, sober, efficient. And evidently he had deemed me to be as such. Instead he embarrassed me, he seemed an alien, outside being to me, with his height and flyweight build, with those small hands that in fibrillation fumbled with the breech-block of a musket, almost taller than he; he was a type more for submachine-gun than for musket, but our chief, Raffa, had put in his hand a weapon of destiny, like those which, even though you can finally load them, jam at the first shot, or at best shoot three meters to the right or the left of the target.
Raffa, the action man, was immediately unpleasant to me. The day before, when they had introduced us, he was completely busy in a typical action of an action man with a poor guy tied to a tree with some metal wire. He tortured him unnecessarily, just to spruce up with us newcomers. Then, after yelling something in his ear, he had shot at him; therefore he had turned towards us with a face convinced of having showed off what kind of stuff he is made of. I had looked in his eyes and we had immediately hated each other. Now he was there on the ground, right behind me.
The funny plump fellow was placing a new articulated belt into the machine-gun’s threading creak. It was an old weapon and already smoked a bit too much. Water cooling, probably… But after all what did I care, I was about to die!
As he had previously done, the soldier set his eye into the foresight and started to aim at everyone, slowly, one by one.
In that moment I felt dizzy and the scene shifted in front of me.
I saw myself reflected into the glass of something that could have been a French window. I was older than my age, I had much less hair and wore a moustache. I was seemingly dancing by myself, with great elegance, and I had a blissful and satisfied air. Then I realized that I was not dancing by myself at all, but had in my arms a baby girl of a few years, who was smilingly glancing at me, excited, entranced by that game. The baby girl skipped up and down as if she wanted to give a more chasing rhythm to such a slow and romantic dance. Every once in a while she slapped me playfully on my face, then she threw herself on me hugging me, to quickly assuming again some euphoric and cheeky behavior. She evidently loved me boundlessly and I loved her in the same way. She was within my blood, in my heart. In that same heart that the fatter wanted to spread all around with an old and overheated tool, in front of a movie camera that continued to grind out films destined to excite the senses of some sadistic and impotent swine.
I suddenly realized how ridiculous was the idea that those poor guys had put into their heads: they were under the illusion that they could perform a mechanical deed that would turn me into a deflated balloon streaming with blood and humors, and that they could tear from her, I say from her, the possibility to come to earth and dance one day hugged to her daddy, raining him with jokes and joy.
The thought that those soldiers were all ghosts crossed me like an invisible bullet. I started laughing, and laughing, and laughed louder and louder, with tears welling out and out of breath.
The last thing I saw of that poor fat man was his big finger that, rotating, pointing at the temple, made the gesture of the screw alluding at me, while his eyes were waiting for his comrades approval.
Then, an apocalyptic burst of fire fell on all of them, while my laughter already faded in her silvery one, which, reverberating among the thick and wrinkled clouds, made all the wood and the valleys echo, down to the sea.