Limbo by Melania G. Mazzucco

The Paris sisters confer. Vanessa wants to go, even though she’s never been on a horse in her life, but Manuela is reluctant. “I can’t ride, and besides, I should ask Doctor Brazzi permission.” “What are you, a minor, you have to ask permission?” Vanessa snaps. “The army doesn’t own you. So call him, if you really need his okay.” Vanessa insists because she wants to have fun and do something different. Between her job, her daughter, and Youssef, she feels trapped, wilting like a rose without water. Lapo, on the other hand, is young, he doesn’t even look twenty-five. And Manuela’s funk is starting to get on her nerves. Afghanistan sent her back a sister she doesn’t recognize—standoffish, weak-kneed, a stranger. They’ve barely said a word to each other in nearly three days, and they used to share everything, absolutely everything, even the most intimate, secret things. Manuela locks herself in her room for hours, listening to twisted music—screaming heavy metal, bestial braying, an out-of-tune guitar and a paranoid drummer right out of the asylum. Or stands out on the balcony smoking cigarette after cigarette. She’s smoking, the girl who used to sniff your clothes, interrogate you if you smelled of smoke, who could spot a speck of ash on the bathroom floor … A guy called her, nice-sounding, with a northern accent, from the Dolomites, said he was from her platoon, in Rome on vacation with two friends from Pegasus, they wanted to come see their platoon leader. But Manuela didn’t even want to talk to him, screamed at her to tell him she wasn’t home. She’d even been cold to Alessia, whom she used to adore: when she came home on leave she’d smother her with presents. But now, nothing, not even a kiss. Indifferent, almost hostile. The change is so noticeable that last night, as soon as she went down for a walk on the beach, Alessia asked her if a bomb fragment had pierced Aunt Manuela’s heart, like the glass shard in Kai’s heart in Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen . Vanessa didn’t remember the story, but she said yes. There were so many shards in Manuela’s body, they couldn’t remove or even count them all. The doctor said they would bother her at first, hurt her even, but eventually they would be absorbed, they would become part of her flesh and bones.
    â€œI don’t want the colonel thinking I came home just to have fun,” Manuela whispers. “What’s wrong with that?” Vanessa snorts. “It’s unwise, and it’s inappropriate,” Manuela elaborates. “Enough already, honey, fuck!” Vanessa explodes. “You’ve got to snap out of it!” Manuela glares at her ferociously. “Of course we’ll go, but you have to help us,” Vanessa chirps to Lapo, “because it’s not like we’re Amazons exactly.” The owner of the farm leads them to the stables. There are a dozen or so inoffensive-looking horses in the stalls, their muzzles buried in oats. Lapo sticks a carrot between the yellowed teeth of the friendliest-looking one, a white beast with big, round, sad eyes. “Paris sisters, let me introduce you to good old Adam, my horse. He lives here.” “You have a horse! So you’re rich!” Vanessa exclaims. Manuela’s not surprised by her enthusiasm, because her sister has a way of feeling at ease with everyone. Whereas she feels at ease only with her comrades now. And not only with other NCOs. With her platoon mates as well. Vanessa has dated an Albanian fisherman and the son of a notary—class has never been an issue for her. “People are just people,” she always says. “There are rich bastards and stingy bastards, angels who have college degrees and angels who are illiterate. I look at a person’s soul.” Manuela doesn’t believe in anything she can’t see, whose existence