The Skin

by Curzio Malaparte

  But after the liberation men had had to fight in order to live. It is a humiliating, horrible thing, a shameful necessity, a fight for life. Only for life. Only to save one's own skin. It is no longer a fight against oppression, a fight for freedom, for human dignity, for honour. It is a fight against hunger. It is a fight for a crust of bread, for a little fuel, for a rag with which to cover the nakedness of one's own children, for a handful of straw on which to lie. When men are fighting in order to live, everything, even an empty jar, a cigar-stub, a piece of orange-peel, a crust of dry bread rescued from the rubbish-heap, a meatless bone—everything has for them an enormous, decisive value. To live, men will perform the meanest actions; to live, they will stoop to every sort of infamy, every sort of crime. For a crust of bread we are ready, all of us, to sell our own wives, or own daughters, to defile our own mothers, to sell our brothers and friends, to prostitute ourselves to other men. We are ready to go down on our knees, to grovel, to lick the boots of any who can assuage our hunger, to bend our backs beneath the whip, smilingly to wipe our cheeks when men have spat upon us,; and all this with a humble, gentle smile, with eyes full of a ravenous, animal hope, a stupendous hope.

  I preferred the war to the plague. Within the space of a day, within a few hours, all—men, women and children—had been infected by the horrible, mysterious disease. What amazed and terrified the people was the sudden, violent, fatal character of that fearful epidemic. The plague had been able to achieve more in a few days than tyranny had done in twenty years of universal humiliation, or war in three years of hunger, grief and atrocious suffering. These people who bartered themselves, their honour, their bodies and the flesh of their own children in the streets—could they possibly be the people who a few days before, in those same streets, had given such conspicuous and horrible proof of their courage and fire in face of German opposition?

  When, on October 1st, 1943, the liberators reached the first suburban houses in the Torre del Greco district, the people of Naples, in a ferocious battle which lasted four days, had already chased the Germans from the city. The Neapolitans had previously risen against the Germans at the beginning of September, in the days that followed the armistice; but that first revolt had been suppressed with implacable ferocity amid a welter of blood. The liberators, whom the people awaited with eager longing, had at some points been hurled back into the water; at others, near Salerno, they resisted tenaciously with their backs to the sea; and the Germans had fought on with renewed heart and fury. Towards the end of September, when the Germans had begun to kidnap the menfolk in the streets, herding them into their vehicles with the intention of carrying them off to Germany as slaves, the people of Naples, goaded on or led by bands of infuriated women who uttered cries of "Not the men!" had fallen unarmed upon the Germans and had cornered and massacred them in the alleys, crushing them beneath an avalanche of tiles, stones, articles of furniture and boiling water dropped from roof-tops, balconies and windows. Groups of courageous boys hurled themselves at the panzers, raising aloft with both hands bundles of flaming straw, and died in the act of setting fire to those steel tortoises. Innocent-looking girls smilingly displayed bunches of grapes to the thirsty Germans, cooped up in the bellies of their sun-scorched tanks; and as soon as the Germans raised the turret-tops and leaned out to receive the grapes so kindly offered, parties of boys, who had been lying in ambush, exterminated them with a shower of hand-grenades taken from their dead foes. Many were the boys and girls who lost their lives in the execution of these cruel but selfless stratagems.

  Lorries and trams, overturned in the streets, blocked the passage of the German columns as they rushed up to lend support to the troops resisting at Eboli and Cava dei Tirreni. For the people of Naples did not assail the Germans in the rear as they retreated. They faced them, without weapons, while the Battle of Salerno was still in progress, though it was madness for unarmed citizens, weakened by three years of hunger and fierce, continuous air-raids, to resist the passage of the German columns as they drove through Naples on their way to attack the Allied invaders who had landed at Salerno. The boys and women were the most to be dreaded during those four days of strife, in which no quarter was asked for or given. I myself saw the corpses of many German soldiers, still unburied two days after the liberation of Naples, with lacerated faces and throats mangled by human teeth; and the tooth-marks could still be seen on the flesh. Many had been disfigured by scissors. Many lay in pools of blood with long nails driven into their skulls. For lack of other weapons the boys had driven those long nails into the Germans' heads, knocking them in with large stones, while ten or twenty infuriated lads pinned their victims to the ground.

  "Come on, come on, don't be silly!" said Jimmy, walking ahead of me through the maze of alleys that is Forcella.

  I preferred the war to the plague. In a few days Naples had become an abyss of shame and sorrow, an inferno of degradation. And yet the dread disease could not destroy that wonderful sentiment which the Neapolitans preserved in their hearts after countless centuries of hunger and slavery. Nothing can ever destroy the Neapolitans' historic, wonderful sense of pity. They did not only pity others: they pitied themselves too. No people can nourish a sense of freedom if it lacks a sense of pity. Even those who sold their own wives and daughters, even the women who prostituted themselves for a packet of cigarettes, even the boys who prostituted themselves for a box of caramels pitied themselves. It was an extraordinary sentiment, a wonderful kind of pity. Because of this sentiment, only because of their historic, undying sense of pity, they will one day be free—free men.

  "Oh, Jimmy, they love freedom," I said. "They love freedom so much! They love American boys, too. They love freedom, American boys, and cigarettes too. Even the children love freedom and caramels, Jimmy, even the children pity themselves. It's a splendid thing, Jimmy, to eat caramels instead of dying of hunger. Don't you think so too, Jimmy?"

  "Come on," said Jimmy, spitting on the ground.

  * * * *

  So I went with Jimmy to see the "virgin". The scene of her activities was a basso at the end of an alley near the Piazza Olivella. A small crowd of Allied soldiers, many of them negroes, was loitering outside the door of the hovel. There were also three or four American soldiers, a few Poles, and some English sailors. We joined the queue and waited our turn.

  After a wait of about half an hour, during which we moved forward a yard every two minutes, we found ourselves at the entrance to the hovel. The interior of the room was screened from our gaze by a red curtain, patched and grease-stained. At the entrance stood a middle-aged man, dressed in black. He was very thin, with a stubbly, pale face. A dingy black felt hat was set at a meticulous angle on his thick grey hair. His two hands were clasped together on his chest, and between his fingers he clutched a bundle of banknotes.

  "One dollar each," he said. "A hundred lire each person."

  We entered and looked about us. It was the usual Neapolitan interior: a windowless room with a small door at the end, a vast bed against the wall facing us, and along the other walls a dressing-table, a rough iron wash-stand enamalled white, a chest of drawers, and, between the bed and the chest of drawers, a tabie. On the dressing-table was a large glass bell, under which stood a number of coloured wax statuettes representing the Holy Family. The walls were covered with cheap oleographs depicting scenes from Cavalleria Rusticana and Tosca, a picture of Vesuvius surmounted by columns of smoke, like a horse decked with plumes for the Piedigrotta carnival, and photographs of women, children and old men, not, to be sure, taken from life, but after death, with their subjects stretched out on their death-beds and festooned with flowers. In the corner between the bed and the dressing-table stood a miniature altar with a statute of the Virgin upon it, lit by a small oil-lamp. The bed was draped with an enormous sky-blue silk counterpane, whose long gilt fringe touched the green and red clay floor. On the edge of the bed sat a girl, smoking.

  She sat with her legs dangling from the bed, and smoked sile
ntly, lost in thought, her elbows resting on her knees, her face buried in her hands. She looked very young, but she had rather lack-lustre eyes, the eyes of an old woman. Her coiffure conformed to the baroque style cultivated by the capere of the poorer quarters—a style modelled on the characteristic head-dress of Neapolitan madonnas of the seventeenth-century. Her curly, lustrous black hair was filled out with horsehair and ribbons and stuffed with tow. It rose from her head like a castle, creating the illusion that she had a tall black mitre resting on her brow. There was something Byzantine about the long, narrow, pale face, whose pallor was visible through a thick layer of paint. Byzantine too was the set of the large, slanting, jet-black eyes beneath the deep, smooth brow. But the fleshy lips, magnified by a vivid splash of rouge, lent an air of sensuality and insolence to the exquisite statuesque melancholy of the face. She wore a red silk dress, discreetly low at the neck, and flesh-coloured silk stockings, and her small, plump feet, which were encased in a pair of gaping, formless black felt slippers, swung idly to and fro. Her dress had long sleeves, narrow at the wrists, and at her throat hung one of those necklaces of pale pink coral, mellowed with age, which are the pride of every poor Neapolitan girl.

  She smoked in silence, looking fixedly in the direction of the door, with a haughty air of detachment. In spite of the insolent character of her red silk dress, her baroque hair-style, her thick, fleshy lips and her gaping slippers, her vulgarity was quite impersonal. It seemed rather to be a reflection of the vulgarity of her environment, of that vulgarity which surrounded her on all sides yet scarcely touched her. Her ears were very small and exquisite, so white and translucent that they seemed artificial, as if they were made of wax. When I entered she fixed her eyes on my captain's three gold pips and smiled contemptuously, turning her face with an almost imperceptible movement towards the wall. There were about ten of us in the room. I was the only Italian spectator. No one spoke.

  "That is all. The next in five minutes," came the voice of the man standing at the entrance, behind the red curtain. Then he thrust his head into the room through a gap in the curtain and added: "Ready?"

  The girl threw her cigarette on the floor, grasped the fringe of her petticoat with the tips of her fingers and slowly raised it. First her knees appeared, gently gripped by the silk sheath of her stockings, then the bare skin. She remained for a moment in this posture, a sad Veronica, her face severe, her mouth half-open in an expression of contempt. Then, slowly turning on her back, she lay at full length on the bed. Like the odious lobster when it mates, gradually opening its pincer-like claws, staring at the male with its small, round, shining black eyes, motionless and threatening, so the girl remained staring at the spectators. A profound silence reigned in the room.

  "She is a virgin. You can touch. Don't be afraid. She doesn't bite. She is a virgin. A real virgin," said the man, thrusting his head into the room through the gap in the curtain.

  Someone laughed, and seemed to repent of it. The "virgin" did not move, but stared at us with her eyes full of fear and loathing. I looked about me. Everyone was pale—pale with fear and loathing.

  Suddenly the girl closed her legs, bringing her knees together with a soft thud. She raised herself up with a jerk, pulled down her dress, and with a rapid movement of the hand snatched the cigarette from the mouth of an English sailor who was standing near the edge of the bed.

  "Get out, please," said the man's head framed in the gap in the red curtain, and we all slowly filed out through the little door at the end of the room, shuffling across the floor, overcome with shame and embarrassment.

  "You people ought to be well satisfied to see Naples brought to this pass," I said to Jimmy when we were outside.

  "It certainly isn't my fault," said Jimmy.

  "Oh, no," I said, "it certainly isn't your fault. But it must give you all great satisfaction to feel that you have conquered a country like this," I added. "Without such scenes how would you make yourselves feel that you were conquerors? Be frank, Jimmy: you would not feel that you were conquerors without such scenes."

  "Naples has always been like that," said Jimmy.

  "No, it has never been like that," I said. "Such things have never been seen in Naples before. If you didn't like such things, if scenes like that didn't amuse you, they wouldn't happen in Naples. Such sights wouldn't be seen in Naples."

  "We didn't make Naples," said Jimmy. "We found it ready made."

  "You didn't make Naples," I said, "but it has never been like this before. If America had lost the war think of all the American virgins in New York or Chicago who would open their legs for a dollar. If you had lost the war there would be an American virgin on that bed, instead of that poor Neopolitan girl."

  "Don't talk nonsense," said Jimmy. "Even if we had lost the war you wouldn't see things like that in America."

  "You would have seen worse things in America if you had lost the war," I said. "To make himself feel that he is a hero every conqueror needs to see these things."

  "Don't talk rubbish," said Jimmy.

  "I would rather lose the war and spend my time sitting on that bed like that poor girl, than behave in such a way for the pleasure and glory of feeling that I was a conqueror."

  "You came to see her too," said Jimmy. "Why did you come?"

  "Because I am a coward, Jimmy, because I too need to see such things, so that I may feel that I am one of the defeated—that I am one of the unfortunate ones."

  "Why don't you go and sit on that bed too," said Jimmy, "if it gives you so much pleasure to feel that you are on the side of the conquered?"

  "Tell me the truth, Jimmy—would you be willing to pay a dollar to come and see me?"

  "I wouldn't even pay a cent to come and see you," said Jimmy, spitting on the ground.

  "Why not? If America had lost the war I should immediately go over there to see Washington's descendants behaving like that in front of the conquerors."

  "Shut up!" cried Jimmy, forcibly gripping my arm.

  "Why wouldn't you come and see me, Jimmy? All the soldiers of the Fifth Army would come and see me. Even you would come, Jimmy. You would pay not one dollar, but two or even three. All conquerors need to see these things, to convince themselves that they have won the war."

  "You're all a lot of mad swine, in Europe," said Jimmy, "that's what you are."

  "Be frank with me, Jimmy—when you go back to America, to your home in Cleveland, Ohio, it will give you pleasure to talk of the triumphal arch of the poor Italian girls' legs."

  "Don't say that," said Jimmy in a low voice.

  "Forgive me, Jimmy—I hate it for your sake and for mine. It isn't your fault or ours. I know. But it makes me sick to think of some things. You shouldn't have taken me to see that girl. I shouldn't have come with you to see that horrible thing. I hate it for your sake and for mine, Jimmy. I feel miserable and cowardly. You Americans are fine fellows, and there are some things that you understand better than many other people. Isn't it a fact, Jimmy, that there are some things you understand too?"

  "Yes, I understand," said Jimmy in a low voice, gripping my arm tightly.

  * * * *

  I felt miserable and cowardly, as I had done on the day when I climbed the Gradoni di Chiaia, in Naples. The Gradoni are that long flight of steps leading up from Via Chiaia to Santa Teresella degli Spagnoli, the miserable quarter where once were the barracks and places of amusement of the Spanish soldiers. The sirocco was blowing, and the clothes hanging out to dry on the lines which stretched from house to house flapped noisily in the wind like flags: Naples had not thrown its flags at the feet of the conquerors and the conquered. During the night a fire had destroyed a large part of the magnificent palace of the Dukes of Cellamare, situated in Via Chiaia, not far from the Gradoni; and the warm, humid air was still pervaded by a dry odour of burnt wood and cold smoke. The sky was grey; it seemed to consist of dirty paper, covered with specks of mould.

  On days when the sirocco prevails Naples, huddled beneath that scab
ious, mouldy sky, assumes an appearance that is at once both miserable and arrogant. The houses, the streets and the people exhibited a self-conscious air of abject, baleful insolence. In the distance, above the sea, the sky was like the skin of a lizard, mottled green and white, dripping with the cold, dull moistness peculiar to the skin of reptiles. Grey clouds with greenish edges flecked the dirty blue of the horizon, on which the warm squalls of the sirocco left a trail of oily yellow streaks. The sea was green and brown in colour, like the skin of a toad, and the smell of the sea was pungent and sweet, like the smell of a toad's skin. From the mouth of Vesuvius belched forth a dense yellow smoke, which, repelled by the low vault of the cloudy sky, opened out like the foliage of an immense pine-tree, interspersed with black shadows and large green cracks. And the vineyards dotted about the purple fields of cold lava, the pines and cypresses rooted in the deserts of ashes, amid which the greys and pinks and blues of the houses that clung to the sides of the volcano stood out with sombre prominence, took on gloomy, deathly tints in that panorama, which was bathed in a greenish half-light broken by vivid yellows and purples.