Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  Governor Fischer, as a golden rain of gravy dripped from a spoon onto the slices of venison before him, recounted how the Jews of the ghetto were buried: "A layer of corpses and a layer of lime," he said. "A layer of lime and a layer of corpses," as if he were saying, "A layer of venison and a layer of gravy, a layer of gravy and a layer of venison."

  "It's the most sanitary system," said Wächter.

  "As far as hygiene," said Emil Gassner, "the living Jews are more contagious than the dead."

  "Ich glaube so!—I should say so!" exclaimed Fischer.

  "The dead don't worry me," said Fischer. "It's the children who worry me. Unfortunately there is little that can be done to reduce the children's death rate in the ghettos. I should like, however, to do something to relieve the suffering of those unfortunate children. I should like to train them to love life, I would like to teach them to walk smiling through the ghetto streets."

  "Smiling?" I asked. "Do you wish to teach them to smile? To walk smiling? The Jewish children will never learn to smile, not if you teach them with the whip. Neither will they ever learn to walk. Don't you know that the Jewish children do not walk. Jewish children have wings."

  "Wings?" exclaimed Frank.

  Deep wonder was evident on the faces of the guests. They stared at me in silence, holding their breath.

  "Wings!" shouted Frank stretching his mouth wide open with irrepressible laughter,- raising both his arms and waving his hands over his head as if they were wings, he chirped, "Cheep, cheep, cheep," in a voice choked with laughter, and all the guests in their turn raised their arms and, waving their hands above their heads, shouted: "Ach so! ach so! Cheep, cheep, cheep!"

  At last the dinner came to an end, and Frau Fischer rose and lead us to her private sitting room that formerly had been Colonel Beck's study. The back of the armchair in which I was reclining barely touched the knees of a white marble statue that was done in the so-called "Munich style," and portrayed a Greek athlete. The light was dim, the carpets thick,- an oak fire crackled in the fireplace. The room was hot, and the air smelt of brandy and tobacco. The voices around me sounded raucous, broken by those German fits of laughter that I cannot hear without feeling slightly uncomfortable.

  Keith was mixing in crystal glasses a red Burgundy wine, a thick and tepid Volney, with pale Mumm champagne. It was "Turkischblut—Turkish blood," the traditional drink of German hunting men.

  "And so," said Frank, at that point, turning to me as if sincerely concerned, "and so the Jewish children have wings, have they? If you go to Italy and say that, the Italians will believe it. That's how legends about the Jews are born. If one believed British and American newspapers, the Germans would appear to do nothing else in Poland but kill Jews from morning till night. In spite of this, you have been in Poland for over a month, and you cannot say that you have seen a single hair pulled out of a Jewish head. The pogroms are legends, no less than the wings of Jewish children. You may drink without qualms," he added raising the Bohemian glass full of Tuikischblut, "you may drink without fear, my dear Malaparte, this is not Jewish blood. Prosit!"

  "Prosit!" I said raising my glass,- and I began to tell the story of the events that took place in the noble city of Jassy, in Moldavia.

  VI. The Rats of Jassy

  I PUSHED the door open and went inside. The house was empty,- it evidently had been left in a hurry. The window curtains had been torn down and the shreds were scattered about the rooms. In the vast bedroom beneath a hanging brass lamp stood a large round table with some chairs around it. The goose feathers had been emptied out of the ripped-open mattress, and when I first stepped into the room a white cloud rose from the floor, whirled about me and stuck to my sweaty face. The drawers were open and clothes and papers were strewn over the floor. I switched on the light. At least the electricity was still working. The kitchen was littered with straw and bits of broken crockery. Pots and pans lay overturned every which way in the fireplace. A heap of potatoes molded in a corner. An odor of filth and of decaying food infested the air.

  It certainly was not a palace, but in Jassy, Moldavia, during those days toward the end of June 1941—the first days of the German war against Soviet Russia—I could have found nothing better than that little house at the end of a large abandoned orchard at the head of Lapusneanu Street, close to the Jockey Club and to the Corso Restaurant. Later, I learned that it was not an abandoned orchard, but the ancient Orthodox cemetery of Jassy.

  I threw open the windows and began cleaning up. I was dead tired, and I did not attempt anything more that evening than to tidy up and sweep the bedroom. La dracu—To the devil with— everything else, la dracu the war, la dracu Jassy, la dracu all the Jassy houses. I had set up my cot and hung my Winchester rifle, my Contax camera, my field battery light, and the photo of my poor dog Febo on the wall.

  Two rifle shots broke the stillness of the night; the bullets splintered the window and penetrated the ceiling. I switched off the light and peeked outside. A patrol of soldiers was standing in the middle of the cemetery in front of the house; I could not make out whether they were German or Romanian. "Lumina! Lumina!" they shouted. They were Romanians. "La diacu!—To the devil!" I shouted. The reply was another bullet that whistled past my ear. In Bucharest, a few days earlier, shots had been fired from the square into my window at the Athénée Palace Hotel. Soldiers and police had been ordered to shoot at any window through which even a glimmer of light shone. "Nopte buna!—Good night!" I shouted.

  I felt about in the dark for the gramophone that I had noticed, and at random picked up one of the records that had been thrown haphazardly into a drawer; I felt the needle with my finger, wound the machine, and rested the needle on the edge of the record. It was a Romanian folk song sung by Chiva Pitzigoi. In the darkness Chiva's sweet and husky voice began:

  Ce-ai in gusa, Marioara

  Ce-ai in gusa, Marioara...

  I threw myself on the bed and closed my eyes, but very soon I got up, went into the kitchen, drew a pail of water, and placed in the cool water a bottle of zuica that I had brought with me from Bucharest. I put the pail close to the bed and stretched myself out again on the ripped mattress and closed my eyes. The record ended and the steel needle grated softly. I rose, wound up the gramophone, and set the needle on the edge of the record. The husky, sweet voice of Chiva Pitzigoi started again:

  Ce-ai in gusa, Marioara...

  Had I been allowed to switch on the light I would have read. I had brought with me Harold Nicolson's book, Helen's Tower, that I had found in Bucharest in my Jewish friend Azafer's bookshop— the one near the Curentual. Rather an oldish book, printed in 1937, it describes the life of Lord Dufferin, Harold Nicolson's uncle. La dracu Harold Nicolson and his uncle, Lord Dufferin. La dracu everyone. It was very hot; the summer was stifling; for three days a thunderstorm like a ripe tumor had been ready to break over the roofs of the city. Chiva Pitzigoi was singing in her husky voice, full of sweet blood; suddenly, the song broke off, the steel needle began to grate softly. I didn't want to get up from the bed; la dracu Marioara and her "gusa." "Nopte buna, Domniscoara Chiva." Thus, little by little, I fell asleep and began dreaming—

  At first I did not realize that I was dreaming; later I became suddenly aware that it was a dream. Perhaps I really had fallen asleep and had begun dreaming, then having suddenly awakened, as one does when one is very tired, I had gone on dreaming though I was awake. At that moment the door opened and Harold Nicolson came in. He was dressed in gray, in a light blue shirt of Oxford linen, enlivened by a bright blue tie. He threw his hat—a black felt Lock—onto the table and taking a chair a little away from my bed, he sat there and gazed at me, smiling.

  Slowly the room assumed a different shape; it began turning into a street, then into a square with some trees. I recognized the Paris sky above the roofs. I saw Place Dauphine, the windows of my house in Place Dauphine. Walking close to the walls so as not to be recognized by the newsdealer on the Pont Neuf, I turned the corner of
Quai de l'Horloge and halted before Number Thirty-nine in front of my gate. It was really the gate of my house, the gate of Daniel Halévy's house. I inquired of the concierge, Madame Martig, "Is Monsieur Malaparte at home?" Madame Martig looked at me in silence, without recognizing me, I felt grateful to her for not recognizing me. I felt ashamed to return to Paris in an Italian officer's uniform. I felt ashamed seeing the Germans in the Paris streets. How could she know me again after so many years? "No, Monsieur Malaparte is not in Paris," replied Madame Martig. "I'm a friend of his," I said. "We have no news of him," answered Madame Martig, "perhaps Monsieur Malaparte is still in prison, in Italy; perhaps he is at the front, somewhere in Russia, in Africa, in Finland—who knows? Perhaps dead or a prisoner— who knows?" And I asked whether Madame and Monsieur Halévy were at home. "No, they are not here, they have just left," was Madame Martig's soft-voiced reply. Then I walked slowly up the stairs and turned smiling toward Madame Martig, who perhaps knew me then. She smiled uncertainly; perhaps she had smelled the odor I had brought with me—the odor of dead horses, the odor of the grass on the tombs of the ancient abandoned cemetery of Jassy. I came to a stop in front of Daniel Halévy's door; I searched for the door handle and tried to turn it, as I had that day when I went to bid him good-by before returning to Italy, before leaving for detention and exile on Lipari Island. Jacques Emile Blanche and Colonel De Gaulle,- a gloomy foreboding gripped my heart. "Monsieur Halévy is not at home," Madame Martig shouted from the foot of the stairs. I resumed my climb up the narrow wooden steps leading to my garret. I knocked at the door, and after a while heard a step inside. I recognized it, and Malaparte opened the door. He was young, much younger than I am, with a clear countenance, black hair, and eyes that were opaque. He looked silently at me, and I smiled at him,- but he did not smile back, he looked at me suspiciously, as if I were a stranger. I entered my own home and looked around. Seated in the library were all my friends, Jean Giraudoux, Luigi Pirandello, Henri Malraux, Bassand-Massenet, Jean Guehenno, Harold Nicolson, Glenway Wescott, Cecil Sprigge and Barbara Harrison. All my friends were there in front of me, sitting silently, some among them were dead, their faces pale, their eyes without light. Perhaps they had been there all those years waiting for me, and they did not recognize me. Perhaps they no longer hoped that I would return to Paris after so many years of detention, exile and war. The screeching of the tugs steaming up the Seine with their train of barges, sounded faint and doleful. I looked out of the window and saw the bridges of Paris, from Saint Michel to the Trocadero. I saw the green foliage along the quays, the front of the Louvre and the trees of Place de la Concorde. My friends gazed silently at me and I sat down among them. I wanted to hear their voices again, I wanted to hear them talk, but they sat motionless and impenetrable; they gazed intently at me, and I felt that they were sorry for me. I wanted to tell them that it was through no fault of mine that I had become cruel; we have all grown cruel; you too, Bassand-Massenet; you too, Guehenno; you too, Jean Giraudoux; and you too, Barbara; isn't that so? And Barbara smiled and nodded as if to tell me that she knew, that she understood. The others smiled, too, and nodded, as if to say that it was not our fault that we had all grown cruel. Then I stood up and walked to the door, and smiling I turned on the threshold to look at them. Slowly I went down the stairs, and Madame Martig said in a low voice, "He has never written us." I wanted to apologize for never having written to her from Regina Coeli prison or from Lipari Island. "It was not because of pride, you know, but because he was ashamed." I felt the prisoner's shame, that shame of a hunted man, locked up in a cell, infested with vermin, with sleeplessness, with fever; gnawed by loneliness and by cruelty. "Yes, Madame Martig, gnawed by his own cruelty."

  "Perhaps," said Madame Martig in a low voice, "he has forgotten us." Then she went on: "Perhaps he has forgotten you too."

  "Oh, no! He has not forgotten us; he is ashamed of his own suffering, he feels ashamed of what we have all become during this war. You know, don't you? that he feels ashamed of his own suffering. You know it, don't you, Madame Martig?"

  "Yes," said Madame Martig in a low voice, "we know him well, we know Monsieur Malaparte well."...

  "Good morning, Childe Harold," I said sitting up in bed.

  Harold Nicolson slowly removed his gloves and, stroking his mustache with his short white hand glistening with a thin reddish down, kept his fingers pressed to his lips for a long time. Harold Nicolson's mustache had always made me think of Chelsea Barracks, rather than of a young diplomat of the Foreign Office; it appeared to me to be a typical product of the English public school, of Sandhurst and of the army. Harold Nicolson was gazing at me and smiling as on that day in Paris, when he had come to take me to luncheon at Larue's in the rue Royale, where Mosley was waiting for us. I could no longer remember where I had first met Nicolson. It was Mrs. Strong who first spoke to me about him one morning, at lunch in the house of some friends in Faubourg St. Honoré. A few days later, Mrs. Strong had telephoned me that Nicolson would take me to meet Mosley.

  Seated in my library, Nicolson was stroking his mustache with his short white hand glistening with a thin reddish down. From the Seine came the doleful lament of the tugs. It must have been an October morning, misty and warm. The meeting with Mosley was arranged for two o'clock. We started walking along the Seine toward rue Royale, and when we entered Larue's it was five minutes of two.

  We sat at a table, ordered a martini; half an hour later Mosley had not yet made his appearance. From time to time Nicolson rose to telephone Mosley, who lived, as I was told, at the Napoleon Hotel near the Arc de Triomphe. A wonderful address for England's future Mussolini. Around three o'clock Mosley still had not shown up. I suspected him of having calmly remained in bed, and of being asleep. After more waiting—it was half-past three by then—Nicolson issued for the tenth time from the telephone booth and triumphantly announced that Sir Oswald Mosley was about to arrive. And he added laughing, as a sort of apology for him, that Mosley was in the habit of lying in bed the entire morning, that he rose late, never before twelve, and that from twelve until two he fenced a little in his own room; then he left his hotel on foot and arrived late to whatever meeting he had arranged— usually when everyone was tired of waiting for him and about to leave. I asked him whether he knew Talleyrand's saying: "In life it is easy to arrive, but difficult to leave."

  "The clanger for Mosley," said Nicolson, "is that he may leave before arriving."

  When Mosley at last entered Larue's it was almost four o'clock. Nicolson and I had already had some seven or eight martinis and had begun eating; I do not remember what we were eating or what we were talking about; I only remember that Mosley had a very small head and a soft voice, that he was tall—very tall—thin and lazy looking, rather stooped. He was not in the least sorry about being late, but on the contrary, quite pleased with himself. He said, "One never rushes when the purpose is to be late." He was not apologizing, but just letting us understand that he was not so stupid as not to realize that he was late. A glance exchanged between Nicolson and me was enough to bring us to an agreement, and throughout the luncheon Mosley never suspected that we had agreed to make fun of him. He appeared to be endowed with a rich sense of humor, but like all dictators—Mosley was only an aspiring dictator, but he was certainly of the stuff of which dictators are made! and we all know what that stuff is—he hadn't the least inkling that anyone could make fun of him.

  He had brought with him a copy of the English edition of my book, Coup d'Etat: The Technique of Revolution, and he wished me to write something on the title-page. No doubt he expected a very fancy dedication from me. To tease and to disappoint him, I wrote only these two sentences from my book: Like all dictators, Hitler is merely a woman, and dictatorship is the highest form of jealousy. On reading these words Mosley's face clouded, and looking at me with half-closed eyes he asked, "Was Caesar, in your opinion, also only a woman?" Nicolson did his best not to laugh and winked at me. "He was worse than a woman," I replied. "
Caesar was no gentleman."

  "Caesar was not a gentleman?" asked Mosley in amazement.

  "A foreigner who allows himself to occupy England," I replied, "is certainly no gentleman."

  The wines were excellent and Larue's chef—vain, punctilious, and as capricious as a woman or a dictator—by an unbroken stream of exquisite dishes fashioned with proud imagination and sensitive conceit, insisted on honoring the table of those three eccentric foreigners who lunched at such an unusual hour when tea was already steaming in the silver teapots of the Ritz. Mosley's temper was in perfect accord with the temper of the chef and the flavor of the wines. Little by little, he managed to recover his calm and his irony. One by one, the lamps along the rue Royale were lit; the flowersellers of the Madeleine were moving down toward the Concorde with their barrows loaded with withered flowers,- and we were still debating the merits of Brie cheese and the best means of seizing power in England.

  Nicolson maintained that Englishmen are not sensitive either to force or persuasion, but only to "good manners" and that dictators never have good manners. Mosley countered that good manners, too, were on the downgrade, and that Englishmen, particularly those of "The Upper Ten Thousand," were ripe for dictatorship.

  "But how will you get into power? " asked Nicolson.

  "By the longest way, of course," replied Mosley.

  "Via St. James Park or via Trafalgar Square?" asked Nicolson.

  "Via St. James Park, of course," replied Mosley, "my coup d'état will be just a walk-over," and he laughed gaily.

  "Oh! I see, your revolution will move from Mayfair. And when do you expect to rise to power?" asked Nicolson.