End of Manners by Francesca Marciano Read Free Book Online

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.
    When she was gone, Nkosi was gracious enough to pick up the conversation where we had left it and ignored my