Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "I shall not talk to you about the war," I replied.

  "Thank you," said Munthe. And suddenly he asked me whether it was true that the Germans were so dreadfully cruel.

  "Their cruelty," I replied, "is made of fear; they are ill with fear. They are a sick nation, a Krankesvolk."

  "Yes, a sick people," said Munthe, tapping the floor with the tip of his cane, and after a long silence he asked me whether it was true that the Germans were thirsting for blood and destruction.

  "They are afraid," I replied, "they are afraid of everything and everybody,- they kill and destroy out of fear. Not that they fear death; no German, man or woman, young or old, fears death. They are not even afraid of suffering. In a way one may say that they like pain. But they are afraid of all that is living, of all that is living outside of themselves and of all that is different from them. The disease from which they suffer is mysterious. They are afraid above all of the weak, of the defenseless, of the sick, of women and of children. They are afraid of the aged. Their fear has always aroused a profound pity in me. If Europe were to feel sorry for them, perhaps the Germans would be healed of their horrible disease."

  "They are bloodthirsty then, it is true then, that they butcher people without mercy?" broke in Munthe tapping his stick impatiently on the floor.

  "Yes, it is true," I replied. "They kill the defenseless,- they hang Jews on the trees in the village squares, burn them alive in their houses, like rats. They shoot peasants and workers in the yards of the kolkhoz—the collective farms—and factories. I have seen them laughing, eating and sleeping in the shade of corpses swinging from the branches of trees."

  "It is a Krankesvolk," said Munthe removing his dark glasses and wiping the lenses carefully with his handkerchief. He had lowered his eyelids. I could not see his eyes. Later he asked me whether it was true that the Germans kill birds.

  "No, it is not true," I replied. "They have no time to bother with birds. They have just time enough to bother with human beings. They butcher Jews, workers, peasants. They set fire to towns and villages with savage fury, but they do not kill birds. Oh, how many beautiful birds there are in Russia! Even more beautiful perhaps than those of Capri."

  "More beautiful than those of Capri?" asked Axel Munthe in an irritable voice.

  "More beautiful and happier," I replied. "There are countless families of the most beautiful birds in the Ukraine. They fly about in thousands, twittering among the acacia leaves. They rest on the silvery branches of birches, on the ears of wheat, on the golden petals of sunflowers in order to peck the seeds out of the large black centers. They can be heard singing ceaselessly through the rumble of guns, the rattling of machine guns, through the deep hum of aircraft over in the vast Ukrainian plain. They rest on the shoulders of men, on saddles, on the manes of horses, on gun carriages, on rifle barrels, on the Panzers' conning towers, on the boots of the dead. They are not afraid of the dead. They are small, alert, merry birds, some gray, others green; still others red and some yellow. Some are only red or blue on their chests, some only on their necks, some on their tails. Some are white with a blue throat; and I have seen some that are very tiny and proud, all white, spotlessly white. At dawn they begin to sing sweetly in the cornfield, and the Germans raise their heads from a gloomy slumber to listen to their happy song. They fly in thousands over the battlefields on the Dniester, the Dnieper, the Don. They twitter away free and merry, and they are not afraid of the war. They are not afraid of Hitler, of the SS, or of the Gestapo. They do not linger on branches to look down on the slaughter, but they float in the blue singing. They follow from above the armies marching across the limitless plain. The birds of the Ukraine are truly beautiful."

  Axel Munthe raised his face, removed his dark glasses, looked at me with his lively, mischievous eyes and smiled. "At least the Germans do not kill birds," he said. "I am really happy that they do not kill birds."

  "Dear Munthe," said Prince Eugene, "has truly a tender heart, truly a noble soul."

  Suddenly there came a long low neighing from the sea, and Prince Eugene shuddered. He wrapped himself in his wide gray woolen cloak that he had left on the back of his armchair. "Come and see the trees," he said. "At this time the trees are very beautiful."

  We went into the park. It was getting cold. The eastern sky looked like filmed silver. The slow death of the light, the return of darkness after the endless summer day, gave me a feeling of peace and of calm. I felt as if the war were over and Europe still alive, "the glory that was..." etc., "the grandeur that was..." etc. I had spent the summer in Lapland, on the Petsamo front, on the Liza, in the vast Inari forests, in the dead, moonlike, arctic tundra, lit by a merciless sun that never sets; and now those first autumn shadows called me back to warmth, to rest, to a feeling of life serene, untainted by the continuous presence of death. I wrapped myself in the shadow that I had at last found again, as if it were a woolen blanket. The air had the warmth and the scent of a woman.

  I had reached Stockholm only a few days previously, after a long cure in a Helsinki hospital, and I recaptured in Sweden the sweetness of a serene life that had once been the grace of Europe. After so many months of savage loneliness in the far North among the bear-hunting, reindeer-breeding, salmon-fishing Lapps, the almost forgotten peaceful business of life, such as I had just been admiring in the streets of Stockholm, exhilarated, almost bewildered me. The women above all—the athletic and gentle grace of the clear and transparent Swedish women, blue-eyed, with hair of old gold, and little breasts placed high like two medals for athletic valor—like two memorial medals for the eighty-fifth birthday of King Gustav V—restored my feeling of the dignity of life. The shadows of the first sunsets added feminine gentleness to something secret and mysterious.

  Along the streets sunk into a blue light, under a sky of pale silk, in the air illuminated by the white reflections of the house fronts, the women passed as comets of blue gold. Their smiles were warm, their glances absorbed and innocent. The couples embracing on the benches in Humle Garden, under trees already damp with the night, seemed to me ideal replicas of the embracing couple in Josephson's "Festive Scene." The sky above the roofs, the houses along the sea, sailing boats and steamers moored in the Storm and along the Strandvägen were as blue as Marieberg and Rörstrand porcelain, blue as the sea around the islands, as the Mälaren near Drottningholm, as the woods round Saltsjöbaden, as the clouds above the highest housetops of the Valhallavägen; that blue that is discernible in the white of the North, in the snow of the North, in the rivers, the lakes, and the forests of the North; the blue that is in the stuccoes of Swedish ecclesiastical architecture, in the coarse, white-painted Louis XV furniture found in the houses of Norrland and Lapland peasants; that blue about which Anders Öesterling talked to me in his warm voice as we walked between the white wooden columns with golden Doric fluting in the auditorium of the Swedish Academy in the Gamle Stade; the milky blue of the Stockholm sky at dawn, when the ghosts who have wandered all night through the streets (the North is the land of ghosts—trees, houses and animals are ghosts of trees, houses and animals) glide back along the pavements like blue shadows; and I had watched them from my window at the Grand Hotel or from the windows of Strindberg's house, the red brick house at Number Ten Karlaplan where Maioli, First Secretary of the Italian Legation, and the Chilean singer Rosita Serrano now live on different floors. (Rosita Serrano's ten dachshunds rushed up and down the stairs barking, Rosita's famous voice rose husky and sweet above the notes of the guitar, and I saw the same blue ghosts wandering through the square that Strindberg met on the stairs returning home at dawn, or caught sitting in his hall, stretching on his bed, leaning from his window, pale against the pale sky making signs to invisible passers-by.) Through the gurgling of the fountain in the middle of the Karlaplan the leaves of the trees could be heard rustling in the breeze that blew over the morning sea.

  We were sitting in the little neoclassical temple at the end of the park, where the rock drops steeply t
o the sea, and I watched the white Doric columns etched against the background of the blue autumnal landscape. By degrees, something bitter was arising in me, something like a sad anger; bitter words came to my lips, and my effort to choke them back was useless. Thus I began almost unwittingly, to talk about Russian prisoners in the Smolensk camp who fed on the corpses of their mates under the impassive gaze of German officers and soldiers. I felt horror and shame at my own words. I would have liked to apologize to Prince Eugene for that cruelty of mine; and Prince Eugene kept silent, wrapped in his gray cloak, his head bent down over his chest. Suddenly he lifted his face, his lips moved as if in speech, but he kept silent, and I read a pained reproach in his eyes.

  I would have liked to read the same cold cruelty in his eyes and on his brow that had hardened the countenance of Obergruppenführer Dietrich when I told him about the Russian prisoners in the Smolensk camp who fed on the corpses of their comrades. Dietrich had burst out laughing. I had met Obergruppenführer Dietrich, the commander of Hitler's bodyguard, in the villa of the Italian Embassy on the shores of the Wannsee near Berlin: I had felt strangely attracted by his pale face, his unbelievably cold eyes, his huge ears and his small fish-mouth. Dietrich burst out laughing: "Haben sie ihnen geschmecktt—Did they enjoy eating them?" he laughed opening wide his small pink-roofed fish-mouth, showing his crowded sharp fishlike teeth. I would have liked to see Prince Eugene's face harden with the same cruel expression that disfigured Dietrich and to hear him also ask me in his tired mellow voice, "Did they enjoy eating them?" But Prince Eugene raised his eyes and gazed at me with a look of pained reproach.

  His face was covered with a mask of deep suffering. He knew that I also was suffering and he gazed silently at me with loving pity. I felt that if he had spoken, if he had said one single word, if he had touched my hand, I might have burst into tears. But Prince Eugene gazed silently at me and cruel words rose to my lips; I became suddenly aware that I was telling him about a day when I had gone to the Leningrad front. I motored through a deep forest, near Oranienbaum, with a German officer—a Lieutenant Schultz of Stuttgart, to be exact—he hailed from the valley of the Neckar, Schultz called it "the poet's valley," and he talked to me about Hölderlin, and Hölderlin's madness.

  "He was not mad, he was an angel," said Schultz, moving his hand in a slow vague gesture, as if he were drawing invisible wings in the frosty air, and he looked upward as if he followed an angel's flight with his eyes. The forest was deep and thick; the blinding reflection of the snow was mirrored with a slight blue tinge by the tree trunks; the car glided on the frozen track with a mellow rustle, and Schultz said, "Among the trees of the Black Forest Hölderlin flew like a large bird," and I kept silent staring at the deep forest, listening to the rustle of the wheels on the icebound track. Schultz recited Hölderlin's lines:

  On the Rhine where the Neckar's lawns grow

  they think that to abide

  there is no better spot in the world.

  But let me to the Caucasus go.

  "Hölderlin was a German angel," I said smiling.

  "He was a German angel," said Schultz, and he recited:

  But let me to the Caucasus go.

  "Hölderlin also wanted to go to the Caucasus, didn't he?" I said.

  "Ach, so!" said Schultz.

  Just then, where the forest was thickest and deepest, and another track crossed our way, I perceived suddenly in front of us looming out of the mist a soldier sunk to his belly in the snow; he stood motionless, his right arm outstretched, pointing the way. When we passed him, Schultz raised his hand to his cap as if to salute him and thank him. Then he said: "There's another one who would like to go to the Caucasus," and he began to laugh throwing himself against the back of the seat.

  Farther on, at another crossing of tracks, another soldier loomed in the distance; he also was sunk into the snow, his right arm outstretched.

  "They'll die of cold, these poor devils," I said.

  Schultz turned to look at me. "There's no danger that they will die of cold," said he and laughed. I asked him why he thought that these poor devils ran no risk of being frozen. "Because, by now, they are used to the cold," replied Schultz, laughing and patting my shoulder. And having stopped the car, he turned to me smiling: "Do you wish to see him close by? You'll be able to ask him whether he is cold."

  We climbed out of the car and approached the soldier. He stood there motionless, his right arm outstretched to point the way. He was dead. His eyes were wide open, his mouth half closed. He was a Russian soldier, dead.

  "That's our traffic police," said Schultz. "We call them the 'Silent Police.'"

  "Are you sure they won't talk?"

  "That they won't talk? Ach, so! Try to ask him."

  "I'd better not. I feel sure he would answer me," I said.

  "Ach, very amusing!" exclaimed Schultz laughing.

  "Yes, very amusing, nicht wahr?" Then I added, feigning indifference, "Are they dead or alive when you place them on their posts?"

  "Alive, of course!" replied Schultz.

  "And then they freeze to death, of course," said I.

  "Nein, nein. They do not die of the cold! Look here!" and Schultz pointed to a clot of blood, a clot of red ice on the temple of the corpse.

  "Ach, so. Very amusing."

  "Very amusing, isn't it?" said Schultz, and he added still laughing: "Russian prisoners must be put to some use."

  ... "Stop, please," said Prince Eugene softly. He said only: "Stop, please." And I wanted to hear him also tell me in his mellow, tired, rather distant voice, "Of course, Russian prisoners must be put to some use." But he kept silent and I felt a horror and a shame at my own words. Perhaps I was expecting Prince Eugene to place his hand on my arm. I felt humbled, a sad and cruel rancor gnawed at my heart.

  The noise of restless hooves beating the damp soil, and of soft neighing reached us from the deeps of the wood of Oakhill. Prince Eugene raised his brow and stood listening for a moment. Then he got up and moved in silence toward the villa. I followed him. We went silently to his study and sat at a small table on which tea was served in the fine Russian transparent, slightly bluish china of Catherine's days; the teapot and the sugar bowl were of old Swedish silver, not as shiny as the Fabergé Russian silver, but slightly dull, with the dark luster that old tenn{1} has in the Baltic countries. The neighing of the horses reached us dimly, mingled with the rustle of the wind through the leaves.

  I had gone to Upsala the previous day to visit the famous garden of Linnaeus and the tombs of the old Swedish kings, those large earthen graves similar to the tombs of the Horatii and Curiatii on the Appian way. I asked Prince Eugene whether it was true that the old Swedes sacrificed horses on the tombs of their sovereigns.

  "Occasionally they sacrificed the sovereigns on the tombs of the horses," replied Prince Eugene, and he laughed mischievously as if pleased to see me composed once again, without a hint of cruelty in my voice or in my eyes. The wind was blowing through the trees in the park, and I was thinking of the heads of horses hanging from the branches of the Upsala oaks around the graves of their sovereigns. I was thinking of the large equine eyes filled with that same damp light that women's eyes have when pleasure or pity shines in them.

  "Did it ever occur to you," I said, "that the Swedish landscape is equine in character?"

  Prince Eugene smiled and asked. "Do you know Carl Hill's drawings of horses, Carl Hill's häster?" And he added, "Carl Hill was mad; he thought trees were green horses."

  "Carl Hill," I replied, "painted horses as if they were landscapes. There is something strange in Swedish nature, the same sort of madness that is in the nature of horses. There is also the same gentleness, the same morbid sensitiveness, the same free and abstract fancy. The equine character, the equine madness of the Swedish landscape is revealed not only in the great, solemn, incomparably green trees of the forests but also in the silky gloss of the vistas of water, woods, islands and clouds, in the light and deep airy vistas in wh
ich a transparent white lead, warm vermilion, cold blue, damp green and shiny turquoise compose a clear and elusive harmony, as if the colors never rested long on the woods, meadows and waters, but flitted instantly away like butterflies. (If you touch the Swedish landscape it tinges your fingertips just like a butterfly's wing.) It is a landscape as smooth to the touch as a horse's coat. And it possesses the same elusive tones, the same airy lightness and shine, the same changing gloss that is seen on the coat of a horse fleetly prancing along stretches of grass and leaves in the turmoil of the hunt, beneath a gray and pink sky.

  "Look at the sun," I said, "when it rises above the blue pine woods, on the light birch groves, on the old silver of the water, on the greeny blue of the meadows,- look at the sun," I said, "when it rises on the horizon lighting up the landscape with the liquid splendor of a large, staring equine eye. There is something unreal in Swedish nature, full of fancies and whims, of that tender and lyrical madness that shines from the eye of a horse. The Swedish landscape is a galloping horse. Listen," I said, "to the neighing of the wind through the trees. Listen to the neighing of the wind among the leaves and the grass."

  "The Tivoli horses are returning from the sea," said Prince Eugene listening.

  "Some time ago," I said, "I went to the steeplechase near the Royal Hussar barracks, to the Stockholm Fatrittklubb, on the last day of the horse show when the best horses of the finest royal regiments were competing. The horses, the trees, the grass of the field, the dead gray walls of the large indoor tennis court, the light dresses of the feminine spectators, the pale blue uniforms of the officers made up a delicate and tender picture by Degas shaded in light gray, pink and green tones in the silvery air.

  "It was on that last day of the horse show that the horse Führer, ridden by Lieutenant Eriksson of the Norrland Royal Artillery in the löktaren race, knocked down at the start bars, fences and every kind of hurdle, and the onlookers kept silent in order that the Führer's Germany across the sea might not find a pretext to invade Sweden. It was on that day that, owing to a highly sensitive spirit of neutrality the horse Molotov, ridden by an officer with an English name, and thus an awkward name at the time—Captain Hamilton of the Göta Royal Artillery—had withdrawn from the race at the very last moment, as much because of the dangerous tension that just then existed between Sweden and the U.S.S.R. after the sinking of some Swedish ships in the Baltic, as to avoid a public competition between Führer and Molotov.