The Human Body by Paolo Giordano

knew it, that’s all. Actually, no, I realized it afterward, outside the tent. I was full of energy, an energy unlike any other. It wasn’t anything like the usual sensation you get when you’ve smoked grass and feel wasted. I was extremely lucid, very focused. I had looked death in the face and I felt like a god. Then, listen to this, I pass by the flag, the one on the main tower, you know? It was fluttering because there was a little wind and I . . . I can’t explain it. I
felt
the flag fluttering, okay? I don’t mean I noticed the wind was making the flag flutter. I’m saying I really felt it. I was the wind, and I was the flag.”
    â€œYou were the wind?”
    Di Salvo drops his arm. “You think I’m talking like an asshole hippie?”
    â€œNo. No, I don’t think that,” Ietri says, but he’s bewildered.
    â€œWell, anyhow, happiness or sadness had nothing to do with it. I mean, those are . . . just pieces of it. They’re incomplete. Whereas I was feeling
everything
, all at once. The flag and the wind, everything.”
    â€œI don’t understand what the statue and death have to do with the flag.”
    â€œThey’re part of it, I’m telling you!” Di Salvo scratches his beard. “You’re looking at me like I’m telling you a load of hippie crap.”
    â€œNo. Finish the story.”
    â€œI’m done. That was it, get it? Something inside me opened up.”
    â€œA revelation,” Ietri says.
    â€œI don’t know if it was a revelation.”
    â€œIt was a revelation, I think.”
    â€œI’m telling you I don’t know what the fuck it was. It is what it is. I’m just trying to explain to you that the stuff Abib gives you is different. It makes you feel different. It makes you feel things,” he said, suddenly irritable. “So, you want to come?”
    Ietri isn’t much interested in drugs, but he doesn’t want to disappoint his platoon mate. “Maybe.”
    Meanwhile, the Afghans have rolled up their mats and gone back to work. They rarely speak and when they do, it sounds to Ietri like they’re arguing. He looks at his watch; it’s twenty minutes to one. If he hurries, maybe he can beat the line at the mess hall.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    T hree days later, when it comes time to poke their nose out of the FOB, he doesn’t get to go.
    â€œToday we’ll go take a look around,” René says in the morning. “I want Cederna, Camporesi, Pecone, and Torsu with me.”
    The guys watch the chosen ones get dressed in front of their cots. They do it ceremoniously, like ancient heroes, although nothing more than a routine patrol at the village bazaar awaits them.
    Cederna struts around the most, because he’s also the fittest. If there were an Achilles, son of Peleus, in Third Platoon, Charlie, it would be him; that’s why he had the first verse of the
Iliad
tattooed on his back just above the waist. It’s written in Greek—the tattoo artist copied it, with some inaccuracies, from one of Agnese’s high school books—and Cederna has her read and reread it in his ear when they’re in bed.
    In shorts and a T-shirt, he plants himself in front of Mitrano’s cot; the corporal has already figured out what’s in store for him and gets up reluctantly, his eyes sad.
    â€œDid your parents have any children that lived?”
    â€œSIR, YES, SIR!”
    â€œI’ll bet they regret that! You’re so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece! What’s your name, fatbody?”
    â€œSIR, VINCENZO MITRANO, SIR!”
    â€œThat name sounds like royalty! Are you royalty?”
    â€œSIR, NO, SIR!”
    â€œDo you suck dicks?”
    â€œSIR, NO, SIR!”
    â€œ
Bullshit!
I’ll bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose!”
    â€œSIR, NO, SIR!”
    â€œI don’t like the name