A Winter's Night by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Christine Feddersen-Manfredi Page B

“No fear, men, we’re past the worst. I believe we’ve distanced them sufficiently so that they won’t catch up to us.”
    Floti approached the wounded boy and touched his brow with the back of his hand: he was burning up, and when Floti felt his pulse there was a constant throbbing instead of a steady beat. He had begun ranting as well. Confused sounds came from his lips: curses, perhaps, or prayers. Nothing that made sense.
    Floti jumped off the truck and walked ahead of the convoy for a while to clear his mind. After a short stretch of road, behind a rocky outcropping, he spotted a tent with a light on inside. There was a red cross painted on the canvas. He immediately turned back at a run: “Captain! There’s a field hospital just a hundred meters from here!” Without waiting for a reply, he got the others to help him unload their feverish comrade from the truck. They placed him on a stretcher and ran him over to the tent. A number of wounded men were piled up at the entrance, several of them more dead than alive. Bone-chilling screams, weeping and cursing could be heard from inside.
    The soldiers stared at each other in that first pale light of dawn, seeing faces the color of mud, sunken, darkly-ringed eyes, dry, cracked lips and bewildered expressions.
    â€œI’ll go,” said Floti. “You wet his lips with a little water,” he added, leaving his flask with them. He went in.
    There was a big table covered with blood at the center of the tent and, behind it, a man wearing an apron so soaked with blood it was dripping. A couple of nurses were laying a semi-conscious man whose leg had been amputated onto the ground. The limb was sticking out of a wooden laundry tub.
    Two soldiers and a nurse were depositing on the table another soldier whose abdomen was ripped open; he’d lost his voice with screaming but hoarse noises were still coming out of his open mouth. If the sight was unbearable, the smell was worse, and Floti had to swallow hard to stop himself from retching.
    â€œWhat the hell do you want?” shouted the doctor. “Piss off, can’t you see what we’re doing here?”
    Floti nodded and turned back towards the exit, mumbling a swear word in dialect under his breath.
    â€œWhat’d you say?” yelled back the doctor in the same dialect.
    Floti stopped in his tracks without turning around and answered in good Italian: “I think you know if you asked me that question, sir.”
    â€œCome over here,” said the doctor. “Where are you from?”
    â€œProvince of Bologna.”
    â€œMe too. You’re the first one I’ve seen. What d’you want?”
    Before Floti could answer, the patient on the table gave one last gasp and went limp.
    â€œThis one’s gone,” said the doctor. “Take him away. We’ll stop for a minute here. I have to catch my breath.”
    He handed Floti a bench, took a pack of cigarettes from his vest pocket and held it out to Floti. He lit one up himself and took a long pull.
    â€œLieutenant, sir,” began Floti, having checked the rank on the doctor’s shoulder, “outside there’s a boy who’s just twenty years old. He’s got an infected wound and he’s at risk of dying. Can’t you do something for him?”
    â€œYou know that if I stop to look at him, someone else will die in his place, don’t you?”
    â€œEach of us is concerned with those who we’re close to and who we care about, sir. And that’s a good thing.”
    â€œRight.
Mors tua vita mea
,” said the doctor, quoting in Latin.
    â€œIn three minutes, you’ve spoken three different languages, sir,” commented Floti, “but one is enough for me, you can answer me in dialect if you want. Can you give this kid a look, yes or no?”
    The doctor ground out the cigarette stub under his boot and replied: “Have him brought in.”
    Floti motioned