Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  The face of the German King of Poland lighted up with a smile of triumph. He glanced around, casting a look of proud satisfaction on each of his guests. He was happy, and I had known beforehand that my words would make him happy. Scheffer had laughingly warned me in Berlin before I left for Poland: "Try not to be ironical with Frank. The worthy man does not understand irony. And, if you really cannot help yourself, don't forget to tell him that he is a prince of the Italian Renaissance. He'll overlook any sin of witticism." I had remembered Scheffer's advice just at the right time.

  Before me sat Frank, on his high stiff-backed chair in the old Polish royal palace of the Wawel in Cracow, as if he were sitting on the throne of the Jagellos and the Sobieskis. He appeared to be fully persuaded that the great Polish traditions of royalty and chivalry were being revived in him. There was a light of innocent pride on his face, with its pale, swollen cheeks and the hooked nose suggesting a will both vainglorious and uncertain. His black glossy hair was brushed back revealing a high ivory-white forehead. There was something at once childish and senile in him: in his full pouting lips of an angry child, in his prominent eyes with their thick, heavy eyelids that seemed to be too large for his eyes, and in his habit of keeping his eyelids lowered—thus cutting two deep, straight furrows across his temples.

  A slight film of sweat covered his face, and by the light of the large Dutch lamps and the silver candlesticks that ranged along the table and were reflected in the Bohemian glass and Saxon china, his face shone as if it were wrapped in a cellophane mask.

  "My one ambition," said Frank thrusting himself back against his chair by propping his hands against the edge of the table, "is to elevate the Polish people to the honor of European civilization, and to turn this uncultured people—" He broke off as if a doubt had crossed his mind, and looking hard at me, he added in German: "Aber... Sie sind ein Freund der Polen, nicht wahr?— But you are a friend of Poland, aren't you?"

  "Oh, nein!" I replied.

  "How's that?" repeated Frank in Italian. "Aren't you a friend of the Poles?"

  "I have never made a secret," I replied, "of my sincere friendship for the Polish people."

  Frank gazed at me with a look of deep surprise, and after a brief silence he slowly asked me, "And why, then, did you deny it a minute ago?"

  I replied politely smiling: "I said 'no' for almost the same reason that a Russian workman in the Ukraine said 'no' to a German officer:

  "During the summer of 1941 I was in Pestchanka, a village in the Ukraine, and one morning I went to visit a large kolkhoz close by the village,- the kolkhoz Voroshilov. The Russians had left Pestchanka just two days before. It was the largest and richest kolkhoz I had ever seen. Everything was left in perfect order but the cattle sheds and stables were empty,- there was not a grain of wheat in the granges, not a blade of hay in the lofts. A horse was limping around the farmyard; it was old, blind and lame. At the end of the yard, under a long shed, were ranged hundreds upon hundreds of agricultural machines, mostly of Soviet manufacture, but many were Hungarian and some were Italian, German, Swedish and American. The retreating Russians had not set fire to the kolkhoz, to the ripe crops, or to the forests of sunflowers,- nor had they destroyed the agricultural machines. They took tractors, horses and cattle with them, wheat and sunflower seeds. They had not touched the farm machinery, not even threshing machines; they left them undamaged; they merely took the tractors away. A workman in blue jeans was oiling a large threshing machine leaning over the wheels and gears. I stood in the middle of the courtyard and watched the man working. He oiled his machine and kept on with his job as if the war were far off, as if the war had not even touched the village of Pestchanka. After a few days of rain, the sun was shining; the air was mellow,- a pale blue sky flecked with feathery white clouds was reflected in the muddy pools.

  "After a while, a German SS officer entered the kolkhoz followed by several of his men. He stopped in the middle of the yard with legs wide apart, and looked around. Now and again he turned to talk to his men and some of the gold teeth in his pink mouth glistened. He suddenly noticed the workman oiling the machine and called to him.

  "'Du, komm hier!—You, come here!'

  "The workman approached limping. He was lame, too; they had left him behind with the horse. He held a large wrench in his right hand and a brass oil can in his left. In passing close to the blind horse he said something softly and the horse rubbed its nuzzle on the man's shoulder and took a few limping steps after him. Then the workman stopped in front of the officer and took his cap off. His hair was black and crinkly, his face thin and gray, his eyes were dull. He was unmistakably a Jew.

  "'Du bist Jude, nicht wahr?—You are Jewish, aren't you?' asked the officer.

  "'Nein, ich bin kein Jude—No, I'm not Jewish,' replied the workman, shaking his head.

  "'Erto? Ti nie every? Ti evrey!—What? You are not Jewish!' repeated the officer in Russian.

  '"Da, ja evrey—Yes, I am a Jew,' replied the workman in Russian.

  "The officer looked at him a long time in silence; then he asked slowly: 'And why did you deny it a moment ago?'

  "'Because you asked me in German,' answered the workman.

  "'Shoot him!' said the officer."

  A fat, jolly laugh came from Frank's wide-open mouth. All the guests laughed noisily, leaning back in their chairs.

  When his burst of hilarity had quieted down, Frank said, "That officer gave a very honest reply, and he might have answered much worse, nicht wahr? But he had no sense of humor. If he had had any, he might have turned the matter into a joke. J'aime les hommes spirituels—I like clever people," he added in French with a polite bow, "et vous avez beaucoup d'esprit—and you are very clever. Wit, intelligence, art and culture take first place in the German Burg of Cracow. I want to bring an Italian Renaissance court to life in the Wawel; I want to turn the Wawel into an island of civilization and courtesy amid a sea of Slavic barbarism. Do you know that I have even managed to form a Polish philharmonic society in Cracow? All the players are Poles, of course. Furtwängler and Karajan will come to Cracow next spring to conduct a series of concerts."

  "Ah, Chopin!" he exclaimed, raising his eyes upward and running his fingers along the tablecloth as if it were a keyboard. "Ah, Chopin! White-winged angel! What does it matter that he is a Polish angel? There is room also for Polish angels in the heaven of music. And yet the Poles do not care for Chopin."

  "They do not care for Chopin?" I asked, surprised.

  "The other day," continued Frank in a sad voice, "during a concert dedicated to Chopin, the Cracow audience failed to applaud. There was not a single handclap, no surge of love for that white angel of music. I gazed upon that immense audience, silent and motionless, and I tried to discover the reason for that frozen silence. I gazed upon thousands and thousands of glistening eyes, those white brows still warmed by the passing caress of Chopin's wing; I gazed upon lips that were still bloodless from the sad, sweet kiss of the white angel, and I tried to find for myself some reason for the dumb, stony and ghostly immobility of that vast audience. Ah! I shall win these people over by the arts, poetry and music! I shall become the Polish Orpheus. Ha, ha, ha, the Polish Orpheus!" He burst into strange laughter; his eyes shut and his head was thrown against the back of the chair. He had grown pale, his breathing became labored, his forehead glistened with little drops of sweat.

  Then Frau Brigitte Frank, die deutsche Königin von Polen, raised her eyes and turned her face toward the door. At this sign the door opened and there appeared on an immense silver tray a savage, hoary wild boar, fiercely lying in ambush on a scented bed of blueberry greens.

  It was a boar which Keith, the Chief of Protocol of the Government of Poland had shot with his own gun in the Lublin forests. The angry beast lay in ambush on its bed of greens as on a bed of brambles in the thicket, ready to hurl itself against rash huntsmen and their fierce packs. Twisted white tusks protruded out of piglike jaws; on its shiny fat-soaked back, on its skin, c
racked and crackling from the heat of the open fire, there stood out hard black bristles. And there arose in my heart a mysterious feeling of sympathy for that noble Polish boar, that four-legged partisan of the Lublin woods. Deep down in its dark eye sockets there shone something silvery and hidden, as if it were a glance consumed by a great deep fire. It was the same silvery and reddish light that I had seen shining in the eyes of peasants, woodsmen and workmen in the fields along the Vistula, in the woods of the Tatra mountains toward Zakopane, in the factories of Radom and Czestochowa, in the salt pits of Wieliczka.

  "Achtung!—Attention!" said Frank, and raising his arm he sank a large knife into the boar's back.

  Whether because of the leaping flames in the large fireplace, or because of the luscious food, or because of the precious French and Hungarian wines, I felt I was blushing. I was sitting at the table of the German King of Poland, in the great hall of the Wawel, in the ancient, noble, rich, learned, royal city of Cracow, in the midst of the small court of that simple-minded, cruel and vain German copy of an Italian Signore of the Renaissance; and I felt myself blushing with melancholy shame. From the very beginning of dinner, Frank had talked about Plato, Marsilius Ficinus, about the Oricellari Gardens (Frank had studied in the Roman University, and speaks Italian perfectly with a slight romantic strain that he inherited from Goethe and Gregorovius. He has spent days and days in the galleries of Florence, Venice, Siena; he knows Perugia, Lucca, Ferrara and Mantua. He loves Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, and plays the piano divinely.) He had talked about Donatello, Politian and Sandro Botticelli, and he half closed his eyes, as if charmed by the music of his own words.

  He smiled at Frau Brigitte Frank as gracefully as Celso smiles at Amorrorisca in the work of Agnolo Firenzuola. While talking, he gazed as lovingly on Frau Wächter and Frau Gassner, as Borso d'Esté gazed on the bare shoulders and pink foreheads of the young Ferrarese women at Schifanoia. He turned to the Governor of Cracow, the young and refined Wächter—the Viennese Wächter, one of the butchers of Dolfuss—as amiably and seriously as the Magnificent Lorenzo turned to the young Politian amid the merry company in his villa of Ambra. And Keith, Wolsegger, Emil Gassner and Stahl replied to his courteous remarks with the dignified courtesy that Baldassarre Castiglione recommends to polished courtiers in polished courts. Only Himmler's man, at the end of the table, sat silent and listened. Possibly he listened to the heavy tread in the neighboring rooms, where their noble lord was not awaited by hawkers with a hooded hawk on the leather-covered hand, but by the stern SS guards armed with machine guns.

  I felt myself blushing as I had after motoring through the lonely snow-covered plains between Cracow and Warsaw, between Lodz and Radom, between Lwow and Lublin—through dimmed towns and squalid villages with inhabitants who were lean and pale, with faces marked by hunger, anxiety, slavery and despair, and whose light dull eyes possessed that innocent look that is the look of the Polish people in distress—where of an evening I entered the Deutsches Haus in some misty town where I was to spend the night and was met by raucous voices, gross laughter and the warm odor of food and drinks. I felt transported as if by magic into some expressionist German court conceived by Grosz. Around the richly-stocked tables there turned up again the napes, the paunches, the mouths, the ears that Grosz draws, and those cold staring German eyes, like fish eyes. And now a sad feeling of shame caused me to blush. While I looked in turn at each one of the guests seated at the table of the German King of Poland in the great hall of the Wawel, I remembered the lean, pale throng treading through the roads of Warsaw, Cracow, Czestochowa, Lodz—those faces sweating with hunger and anxiety, people wandering along streets covered with muddy snow—those unhappy houses, and proud palaces, out of which day by day stealthily were smuggled carpets, silver, glass and china—all the ancient tokens of wealth, vanity and glory.

  "What did you go to Batorego Street today for?" inquired Frank with a cunning smile.

  "To Batorego Street?" I said.

  "Yes, I believe it is called Ulica Batorego, isn't it?" repeated Frank turning to Emil Gassner.

  "Ja, Batoregostrasse," replied Gassner.

  "What did you call on those young ladies for—what's their name?"

  "Fräulein Urbanski," replied Gassner.

  "Fräulein Urbanski? They are two elderly young ladies, if I am not mistaken, two spinsters. Why did you call on the Misses Urbanski?"

  "You know everything," I said, "and you do not know what I did in Batorego Street? I went to bring some bread to the Misses Urbanski."

  "Bread?"

  "Yes, Italian bread."

  "Italian bread? And did you bring it with you from Italy?"

  "Precisely! I brought it from Italy with me. I should have liked to bring an armful of roses from Florence for the Misses Urbanski. But it is a long way from Florence to Cracow, and roses fade quickly. So I brought bread."

  "Bread?" exclaimed Frank, "and do you think there is a lack of bread in Poland?" And he seemed to embrace by a wide sweeping gesture the silver trays heaped with slices of that soft white Polish bread with its thin crust, smooth and rustling as silk.

  An ingenuous smile of surprise lighted his pale swollen face.

  "Polish bread is bitter," I said.

  "Yes, that's true. Italian roses are sweeter. You ought to have taken an armful of roses from Florence to the Misses Urbanski. It would have been a kindly souvenir of Italy. Particularly as long as those two 'elderly' young ladies were not the only ones you met in that house, nicht wahr?"

  "Oh, vous êtes méchantl—You are naughty!" said Frau Wächter graciously threatening Frank with her finger. A Viennese, Frau Wächter liked to talk French.

  "A Princess Lubomirska, wasn't it?" went on Frank laughing. "Lili Lubomirska. Lili. Ach, so, Lili!"

  Everyone began to laugh and I kept silent.

  "Does Lili like Italian bread, too?" asked Frank, and his words provoked general laughter.

  I then turned smiling to Frau Wächter: "I am not a man of wit," I said, "and I don't know how to answer. Won't you answer for me?"

  "Oh, I know that you are not a man of wit," replied Frau Wächter kindly, "but it is so easy to answer that. Poles and Italians are friends, and friendship's bread is best. Isn't it so?"

  "Thank you," I said.

  "Ach, so!" exclaimed Frank, adding after a moment's silence, "I forgot that you are a great friend of the Polish people. I mean to say of the Polish nobility."

  "All Poles are noblemen," I said.

  "Quite so," said Frank, "I cannot tell the difference between a Princess Radziwil and a coachman."

  "And you are wrong," I said.

  All looked at me in wonder, and Frank smiled at me.

  But at this juncture the door opened quietly and there appeared on a silver tray the roast goose, lying on its back amid a garland of potatoes roasted in fat. It was a round fat Polish goose with a flourishing bosom, full hips and a strong neck; and I cannot say why there came into my mind that its neck had not been cut in the good old-fashioned way, but that the goose had been shot against a wall by a platoon of SS men. I seemed to hear the harsh voice ordering "Fire!" and the sudden rattle of shots. No doubt the goose had fallen looking proudly into the eyes of the cruel oppressors of Poland. And I shouted "Fire!" as if to realize what that shout meant, that raucous sound, that harsh voice of command, almost as if I expected to hear the sudden rattle of rifles in the great hall of the Wawel.

  And everyone started laughing; they threw their heads backward laughing, and Frau Brigitte Frank looked fixedly at me, her eyes glistening with sensuous joy, her face red and slightly perspiring.

  "Fire!" shouted Frank in his turn, and the laughter grew in volume; they fixed their eyes on the goose, cocking their heads on their right shoulders and closing their left eyes, as if they really were taking aim. Then I laughed too, while a crawling sensation of shame overcame me little by little. I felt a sort of hurt shame. I felt on the side of the goose. Oh, yes! I sided with the goose, not with
those who were aiming their rifles, nor with those who were shouting "Fire!" nor with all those who were saying "Gans Kaputt!—The goose is dead!"

  I sided with the goose, and gazing at the goose, I thought of the old Princess Radziwil, dear old Bichette Radziwil, standing in the rain amid the ruins of the station of Warsaw, waiting for the train that was to take her to safety in Italy. It was raining, and Bichette had been standing there two hours on the platform, under the charred beams of the station's roof, that shells of the artillery and Stuka bombs had ploughed.

  "Don't you worry about me, my dear. I am an old hen," she was saying to Soro, a young secretary of the Italian Legation. And now and again she shook her head to rid the brim of her felt hat of the raindrops that had gathered on it.

  "If I only knew where to find an umbrella," said Soro.

  "An umbrella, come, it would be ludicrous at my age!" and she laughed as with her peculiar voice and accent, and with her eloquent glances she entertained the small gathering of relations and friends who had succeeded in obtaining permission from the Gestapo to see her off, and told them amusing little stories, merry little incidents, diverting little annoyances that she had experienced during her Odyssey across the territories occupied by the Russians and the Germans—as if she were prevented by her charity, her pity and her pride from looking deeply into the vast tragedy of Poland. The rain ran down her face streaking the rouge on her cheeks. Her white hair, stained yellow, drooped in sodden strands from under her felt hat. She had been standing two hours in the rain, her shoes sinking in a mess of mud and coal dust that covered the platform; but she was merry, lively, full of zest. She inquired about this one and that, about relatives, friends, the dead, the escaped, the interned—and when anyone answered, "Nothing is known about him," Bichette pleaded, "Now, come!" as if she felt deprived of a pleasant story, of a piece of amusing gossip. "Ah, that's really amusing," she exclaimed when she was told that somebody was alive. And if it so happened that anyone replied, "So-and-so is dead, so-and-so is interned," Bichette pouted and exclaimed, "Is it possible?" as if she were saying, "You are making fun of me," and as if they had told her an incredible story.