Read The Last Man Standing for Free Online

from under a bench by the wall. As he mounted his bicycle, Leonardo could feel the puppy’s hot urine running down his chest to his trouser belt. He pretended it was nothing.
    “They’ve seen those two in the woods again,” Ottavio said, “and they’ve also found a fire and the bones of a goat.”
    Leonardo swept his hair back from his brow.
    “Must be campers,” he smiled.
    But Ottavio fixed Leonardo’s pale greenish eyes.
    “It’s not the time for that kind of crap, Leonardo, can’t you see how the wind’s blowing?”
    Leonardo looked down at his foot on the pedal. A nail had gone black where the old woman, sitting down at his table in the hotel, had accidentally placed the leg of her chair on it.
    “Have you done anything for the dog’s eyes?” Ottavio said.
    Leonardo looked straight at him.
    “What can be done?”
    Ottavio shrugged.
    “If you want my opinion, wash them with his own pee; he won’t like it, but if you don’t he’ll never open them again, because they’re full of parasites.”
    At Norina’s grocery shop he bought some canned tuna, a couple of dairy products, some sardines, two packets of rusks, jam, and a box of pasta, then he got the baker to give him a French loaf and some
baci di dama
biscuits. There were no customers in either shop and the proprietors simply served him, took his money, and called him professor when they said good-bye.
    On the other hand the woman at the pharmacy, one of those waiting for oil, asked him how his journey had been as soon as she saw him come in. Leonardo said it had been fine and asked if he could have some cotton balls and sterile gauze. Before he left the woman complimented him on the dog and remarked that they would meet again in the evening when the oil was distributed. Leonardo said Elio would see to everything.
    As he made his way to the bar pushing his bicycle, he remembered a painting by Balthus of a young girl who could have been the pharmacist when she was young and the way she had not yet lost her adolescent confidence in the sensual gesture of raising her arms and doing her hair. It was said that nearly all women born with that quality lost it when they grew up, while those who had it later in life had nearly always picked it up along the way, not having originally possessed it. This to him seemed to reward hard work rather than talent, something that hardly ever happened in nature, and the thought generated a surge of good humor in him.
    Pulling his shirt out of his trousers and checking that the smell of the dog’s urine was not too powerful, he went into the bar.
    “Our professor!”
    The postman was leaning against the ice cream freezer with another man who did not live in the village but was there to see his ailing mother. They were in the corner of the shop where it had once been possible to leaf through a national daily or local weekly and sports magazines. Now the fridge was silent and back issues of a hunting magazine were stacked on it. Danilo, the proprietor, and three other men were sitting around a table playing cards.
    “Good morning,” Leonardo said.
    None of the four looked up from the cards to answer his greeting.
    Leonardo went to the bar and stood at an angle to it, so as to be able to keep an eye on the bicycle, which he had left outside with his shopping bags slung from its handlebars. The postman whispered something to the man beside him who smiled, revealing very irregular teeth: he was dressed for fishing and a thick white beard under his chin linked his ears by the longest possible route. The postman, in contrast, had a freshly shaven face; he was separated from his wife, and it was several months now since he had given up explaining to people why letters were not reaching them or were arriving weeks late. In any case, the explanations he offered came from a ministerial circular, which, as everyone knew, meant that they had only a limited connection with truth.
    Danilo slammed down his last card, then got up and