the last book I ever read (Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay, excerpt three)

from Flesh: A Novel (2025 Booker Prize Winner) by David Szalay:

She asks him about it in detail.

He tells her in detail what happened. That they were taking water to the Ukrainians. That was the sort of thing they did, when they did anything, he tells her—take water to the Ukrainians. There were the white tankers of water, and also some armored personnel carriers to protect them. Riki was on the machine gun of the first armored personnel carrier, which was the lead vehicle of the convoy. István was on the second, with two or three water tankers between them. He tells her that they were nearing a place called Al-Suwaira, which was where the Ukrainians were, when the explosion happened. The road had been swept for explosive devices earlier in the morning but they must have missed that one. If you’re near it, he tells her, not near enough to get hit by the shrapnel but still near it, an explosion isn’t just sound. It’s pressure as well. It knocks you over, you feel like you’ve been physically hit. It fucks up your ears. “Sorry,” he says—the swear word just slipped out. The therapist nods, acknowledging his apology. He lights another cigarette. You can’t hear anything, he tells her. You don’t even hear the explosion really. You experience it as pressure, not as sound. And then there’s all this smoke everywhere. You can’t see anything either. The sense of confusion is hard to describe. The convoy stopped moving. You weren’t supposed to do that. You were supposed to keep moving but the lead vehicle had been hit and the road was blocked and there was all this smoke so that the drivers of the other vehicles couldn’t see where they were going. Some of the APCs started firing back, he tells her, in the general direction of the incoming fire, or where they thought that was. That was when he realized his ears were fucked—when he couldn’t really hear the machine guns, only see their muzzle flashes in the smoke. Anyway, he went through the smoke and helped Riki down from the turret of the lead vehicle and sat on the asphalt with him For a while Riki was still conscious. He told them that it was going to be okay, even though it probably wasn’t and he knew it probably wasn't. He also knew that after that he’d never believe anyone telling him it was going to be okay. Or maybe he would believe them. Maybe he’d want to believe them so much that he would, in the way that Riki may have believed him as they sat there on the asphalt. When Riki lost consciousness he wasn’t sure if he’d died or what.

“Had he died?” the therapist asks him.

“Yeah,” he says.