The Human Body by Paolo Giordano Read Free Book Online

emerald green meadows. There’s a lone camel standing halfway up a slope, or maybe it’s a dromedary, he can never remember the thing about the humps. He didn’t think that dromedaries existed in the wild, though: they’re zoo animals. He’d like to point it out to Cederna, who is sitting beside him, but his friend doesn’t seem to be interested in the landscape. He’s staring at some point of the helicopter from behind his dark glasses, or else he’s sleeping.
    Ietri takes out his earbuds. The distorted, cavernous guitars of the Cradle of Filth are replaced by the very similar noise of the rotor blades. “Will there be a bar at the FOB?” he asks his friend. He’s forced to shout.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhat about a gym?”
    â€œNot even that.”
    â€œPing-Pong at least?”
    â€œYou still don’t get it. Where we’re going there’s not a goddamn thing.”
    He’s right. There’s nothing at Base Ice, only sand. Yellow, clinging sand—your boots sink in it up to your ankles. If you brush it off your uniform, it swirls in the air a bit and then comes back and lands in the same spot. The first night in Gulistan, when Ietri blows his nose, he leaves dark streaks on his handkerchief. The next day blood mixed with sand comes out, and so on for a week, then nothing. His body is already used to it; a young body can get used to anything.
    The space assigned to the platoon is in the northwest zone, next to a concrete structure, one of the few on the base: it was left behind by the marines. It’s a large bare room, plastered only at certain points. There’s graffiti on the walls: a flag with stars and stripes, some lewd sketches, and a mean bulldog with a studded collar. The holes, dozens of them, are from bullets fired from within.
    â€œWhat a lousy wreck,” Simoncelli says when they enter the first time, thereby choosing the name with which to baptize their digs: the Wreck. It becomes their headquarters.
    They soon discover that it’s infested with cockroaches. They’re heaped up in the corners and crevices, but occasionally an explorer crawls out onto the floor. They have shiny brown carapaces, which make a crackling noise when you crush them under your boot and spurt blood half a yard away.
    Luckily Passalacqua has brought along some insect repellent and spreads the powder around the outside perimeter and in the corners. “You know how it works?” he asks, tapping the bottom of the can to discharge the last puffs of powder. If it isn’t enough, they’re fucked: they’ll have to kill the critters one by one. “It releases a smell that excites the cockroaches. It’s called a pheronome.”
    â€œPhero
m
one, you idiot,” Cederna corrects him.
    â€œPheromone, whatever. It’s the smell of their females in heat. The cockroaches get horny and go looking for them, and instead of the females they find the poison.”
    â€œFantastic!”
    â€œThe ones who end up in the poison drop dead on the spot and give off a different odor that drives the other cockroaches crazy.”
    â€œCrazy?”
    â€œCrazy. They devour each other.”
    Ietri imagines a cockroach scurrying out of the Wreck, slipping into the tent, climbing up the leg of the cot, and crawling over his face as he sleeps.
    â€œJust imagine if the Taliban did that,” Cederna says, “if they sprayed the smell of pussy on the base instead of hurling grenades. We’d start killing one another.”
    â€œWe already have Zampieri giving off the pheromone,” Rovere says.
    â€œNo, she only smells from her armpits.”
    They all laugh. Only Ietri is left frowning. “Do you think we’re like cockroaches?” he asks.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou said that if the Taliban sprayed the smell of pussy we’d start killing each other. Like the cockroaches.”
    Cederna smiles faintly. “Maybe