The Human Body by Paolo Giordano Read Free Book Online Page A

you’d be saved,
verginella
. You don’t know that smell yet.”
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    T he first task assigned to the Third Platoon, Charlie Company (since the Sixty-sixth Company set foot on foreign soil, its designation was changed to its battle name), is the construction of a masonry structure to house the washing machines. The sand has already put two of them out of order, and they are now stacked in a corner of the camp along with other discarded materials, receptacles full of empty cans and scrap metal.
    Ietri has been working for a couple of hours with Di Salvo and four masons from the village. In actuality, all the soldiers do is watch to see that the Afghans don’t bungle it. It’s not clear who among them has the most experience with construction. The plan they have to follow is sketchy and the design lacks the lateral dimensions, so they’ve marked out the perimeter roughly by counting the number of bricks in the drawing. It’s just past noon and the sun is beating straight down on their naked shoulders.
    â€œWe could use a beer,” Ietri says.
    â€œYeah, ice cold.”
    â€œWith a lemon wedge stuck in the neck.”
    â€œI like to suck the lemon after the beer.”
    The wall they’re building seems straight, at least to their eye, yet there’s something odd about it. They’re at the eighth row of bricks; soon they’ll need a ladder and Ietri hopes he won’t have to escort the Afghans to the storeroom to get it.
    All of a sudden the Afghans stop what they’re doing, drop their tools on the ground, and spread out some mats that had been piled aside, arranging them in the sole triangle of shade. They kneel down.
    â€œWhat the fuck are they doing?”
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    â€œDo they have to pray right now?”
    Di Salvo shrugs. “Muslims are always praying. They’re fundamentalists.”
    Ietri fishes a glop of mortar out of the bucket and throws it on the wall. He flattens it with a trowel. What lunacy, he thinks, then turns to look at the Afghans again. They’re doing a kind of gymnastics: they bend down to the ground, straighten up, then hunch over again, all the while intoning a mantra. For a moment he has the urge to imitate them.
    â€œFuck this,” Di Salvo says.
    â€œYeah, fuck this,” Ietri echoes him.
    They drop their rifles. If the Afghans can take a break, they too can take a little rest. Di Salvo gropes around for the pack of cigarettes in the side pocket of his pants and offers him one. They lean against the wall, where the mortar is still fresh.
    â€œThey shipped us over here to build a laundry room,” Ietri says. “Does that seem right?”
    â€œNo, not right at all.”
    It just doesn’t sit well with him. They had promised him American women and there’s not a trace of them here—they were pulling his leg. He’d gotten a glimpse of them in Herat, of course, during the few days he was there: soldiers with ponytails, firm breasts, and the look of a woman who will eat you alive in the sack, but then they shipped him to Gulistan to build a stupid wall. Or rather, to watch someone else build it. He can’t imagine any place on earth farther removed from sexual temptation.
    â€œTo think our parents came here to smoke joints,” Di Salvo says.
    â€œJoints?”
    â€œSure, you know, the seventies. The hippie fuckers.”
    â€œOh, sure,” Ietri says. He doesn’t know, actually. He thinks for a moment. “Anyway, my parents never came here. They never went anywhere.” He’s sure about his mother. For all he knows, his father might very well have come here, to Afghanistan; maybe he joined a group of Taliban and buries IEDs in the roads now. He always was an unpredictable type.
    â€œI was just kidding. My parents never went anywhere either. But it was that generation. They did a lot of grass and then everyone fucked