The CO has ordered us to find out where the noise is coming from, the noise whose signature—as we submariners say—will make us identifiable. Today, since there must be rough seas, judging from how we’re moving, you can hear it all the time, so several guys are running from one end of the boat to the other with their heads tilted up to try to detect from inside more or less where the noise is being produced, most likely in the free circulation zone between the deck and the resistant hull. Everyone is quiet, in order to hear better, but it’s not easy, there are echoes, rumbles, and the possibility of being discovered at any moment. Then the CO decides to send out two men, and I see Olivero putting on his orange waterproof overalls and I wonder, why risk a torpedoman, why send the man who knows the torpedo launchers and the torpedoes better than he knows himself, but down here logic must be different from common sense, or maybe they’re sending him because he’s small and skinny, or because he volunteered for the mission, I don’t know. Now I see Rabellini coming over, the officer in charge of the deck and armaments, also dressed in orange, apparently they’re both going to go because they’re both underneath the ladder that goes up to the sail. They’ve been given ten minutes to access the deck, investigate what the hell is causing the noise, and solve it; the sub will surface, the two men have to come out through the escape hatch that’s in the exhaust canopy in the conning tower. I see Olivero with his safety harness and the rope with a hook to secure himself, in case he has time for that, a couple of tools wedged into the loops of his harness, the coarse leather gloves, also orange, in both hands. They begin the maneuvers to reach the surface; since it’s not my shift I’m not in the engine room; I decide to hang around nearby, just in case, I tell myself; everything here is in case, anyway. A flash of light suddenly takes us by surprise, Olivero, who’s on a rung of the ladder, Rabellini, who’s still down here and hasn’t put on his gloves yet, and me, standing a few steps behind him; somebody takes our picture, or else they take a picture of the moment. I’m sure I’m not in it because, seen from the photographer’s perspective, Rabellini is hiding me; I’m like the dark side of the moon. Olivero climbs, somebody clicks the camera again, and I figure this one is of Rabellini alone, who—now I notice his boots wrapped in two black plastic bags—is holding the ladder tight and looking up, but not climbing yet; I’m still on the dark side, and maybe Mainieri—who’s moved a couple of steps forward on my right—will show up in the background with that worried expression I can see in profile, but in the photo it’ll be seen from the front. Imagine: surfacing and keeping planes and radar from detecting the submarine and the men. Trying to keep them from being seen and dressing them in orange! I’m getting nervous. Rabellini hasn’t gone up yet; beside me, the Executive Officer has put on his life jacket and as he pours himself a whisky he tells Gutiérrez not to take his eyes off the Magnavox; someone turns to Rabellini and tells him something I can’t quite hear, he takes his hands off the ladder and moves aside a little, then I take advantage of the opportunity to slip away, just as I am, in my dark overalls, and I start climbing up the tube in the conning tower: up there Olivero, who has just reached the upper hatch and is opening it, is outlined, orange against black. Then, through the hole at the end of the tube, a dense blue sky appears, announcing the night and one of those fierce storms that will soon be here; sea water pours in at brief intervals and falls on Olivero in buckets, and then, less heavily, on me. Now Olivero gets out through the side of the conn, most likely he’s clutching the iron handrail because the deck has become awfully slippery after several days of submersion. From there he’ll probably try to observe, to get his bearings so he can find whatever is causing the noise. He probably looks small and fragile in the light that the day and the storm grudgingly dole out to him, whipped by the constant, dangerous movement of the sea, and paralyzed by the biting cold, in an outfit that’s not designed for that cold. Like me, he probably has the strange feeling that nothing exists now, nothing but the endless, gloomy sea that beats furiously against the sub’s sail, against us, nothing and no one, only the two of us and something that was making a noise somewhere but which can’t be heard anymore because all that greater noise has swallowed it up. I don’t know how much time has passed if, in fact, time has passed at all, if it’s passing now, but I’m sure I haven’t stopped climbing, I climb to the next-to-last rung, and just when I’m about to reach Olivero, I see him let go of the handrail and struggle into the free circulation zone, and I see—to be honest I only half-see and guess the rest—that Olivero is kneeling on a metal sheet, he’s taken off his gloves and is busy unscrewing the long, thick, stubborn screws that hold the metal sheet in place. A sharp jolt throws me off balance and I can’t get to him; I yell out that I’m coming to help him, but he’s still concentrating on his task, besides, even though we’re so close, it’s impossible for him to hear me or see me in these dark overalls and this near-total darkness. Another jolt, I grab on tightly to keep from falling—the sub keeps moving, if it stopped, the violent rocking would be even worse—and behind the water gushing in, enclosed in a small space where he barely fits, I think I see Olivero lift up the black metal sheet, stick in his hand and remove something, something I can’t make out but suspect he’s caught, because of the shape one of his hands seems to be taking now as it crawls up his waterproof overalls in search of a pocket where he can deposit his prey. Now he tries to replace the metal sheet he just removed a few moments ago. I can’t do anything to help him from here, because the two of us won’t fit in that space, but I stick around anyway, maybe I can say something so he’ll know we haven’t left him alone. Olivero knows—we both know—that if the radar operator gets a signal, the hatch will close and the boat will start to dive, leaving him outside, forever floating, a ridiculous orange fallen from a tree into the water. If that should happen, I decide, I’ll stay behind too, it’s terrible to die alone, though maybe it’s not all that bad to die in the sea; I would rather die in the sea if I could choose, and I think I remember hearing Olivero once say that—or something like that. It’s nighttime now, you can’t see a thing, barely a shape that he’ll no doubt try to put back in place, groping to insert those long screws into the holes at either end of the metal sheet, screws that we all know will never fit back in again. I cross my fingers and think I can see—or imagine I see—in the thick darkness my eyes are adjusting to, Olivero’s smile, as if he’s seen me in spite of the darkness, as if he knew that, in the depths of this darkness, I’m here.