Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "Fara copii—Except the children." Colonel Lupu, I thought, has already prepared his alibi; fortunately he loves children. It pleased me to think that there was in Jassy at least one decent person who loved children. Squads of policemen remained hidden in doorways of houses and in the orchards. Military patrols walked by clicking their heels hard on the asphalt. "Good day, Domnule Capitan," smiled the workmen, the coachmen and the street cleaners sitting on the tombstones. The leaves of the trees were so green against the dark sky they looked as if they had been dyed with a phosphorescent green and rustled in the damp warm wind blowing from the river Prut. Groups of children were running after each other among the mounds and the ancient crosses; it was a lively and gay scene to which the hard leaden sky imparted a feeling of the last moment of a vain and desperate game.

  A strange anguish weighed upon the city. A huge, massive and monstrous disaster, oiled, polished, tuned up like a steel machine was going to catch and grind into a pulp the houses, the trees, the streets and the inhabitants of Jassy, fara copii. If I had only been able to do something to prevent the pogrom. But General von Schobert's headquarters were at Copou, and I did not feel like walking as far as Copou. The Jews mattered nothing to General von Schobert. An old soldier, a Bavarian gentleman, a good Christian does not get himself involved in certain things. What concern were they of his? What concern were they of mine? I must go to General von Schobert, I told myself; I must at least try; one never knows.

  I started off toward Copou on foot. But when I arrived in front of the university, I stopped to examine the statue of the poet Eminescu. The trees of the avenue were teeming with birds. A little bird had alighted on Eminescu's shoulder. I remembered then that I had in my pocket an introduction to Senator Sadoveanu. A learned man, Senator Sadoveanu, a happy devotee of the Muses. He might perhaps offer me a glass of iced beer, and he would certainly declaim some of Eminescu's lyrics for me. La dracu General von Schobert; la dracu the Senator, too. I turned back, crossed the courtyard of the Jockey Club and began to go up the stairs; perhaps it was better for me to go and talk with Colonel Lupu. He would laugh in my face. "Domnule Capitan, what do I know about this pogrom of yours? I am no augurer." Nevertheless, if a pogrom was really being engineered, Colonel Lupu would certainly know all about it. In eastern Europe pogroms are always engineered and carried out with official connivance. In the lands across the Danube and the Carpathian mountains chance never plays a part in what takes place; it has no bearing on fortuitous events. He would laugh in my face. Fara copii. La dracu Colonel Lupu, la dracu the General too.

  I went down the stairs and without even turning my head passed the Corso Café-Restaurant and entered the cemetery. I stretched myself on a tomb in the shade of the green transparent leaves of an acacia and watched the black clouds gathering over my head. It was hot; flies were crawling over my face. An ant crept up my arm. After all, what concern of mine was this affair? I had done all that was humanly possible to prevent the massacre; it was no fault of mine if I could do no more. "La dracu Mussolini," I said aloud, yawning; "La dracu with him, with all his nation of heroes. We are a nation of heroes..." I began humming. A bunch of bastards is what he has turned us into. I was a fine hero too—no doubt about that. The sky croaked like a swamp.

  I was roused toward sunset by the scream of sirens; it was an effort to get up; with a yawn I listened to the hum of the motors, the rattle of anti-aircraft machine guns, the thud of the bombs, and the deep, long, dull crumbling of hit houses. This silly razboiou. Laced in their leather jackets, those Russian girls were dropping bombs onto the houses and the gardens of Jassy. Much better if they would stay at home and knit I thought, and I began laughing. As if those girls would have the time and the inclination to stay at home and knit!... The sound of a gallop suddenly made me sit up on the tomb. Drawn by a maddened horse, a cart was hurtling down the Fundatia, it rushed by in front of the churchyard and smashed against the opposite wall close to the shoe-shine parlor. I saw the horse shatter its head against the wall and, kicking, fall to the ground. The railway station was on fire. Thick clouds of smoke rose above the Nicolina sector. German and Romanian soldiers went by running, cradling their rifles in their arms. A wounded woman was dragging herself along the street. I stretched myself out again on the tomb and closed my eyes.

  Suddenly there was silence. A boy went whistling by the churchyard wall. Merry voices could be heard floating on the dusty air. A little later the sirens began screaming again. The hum of the still-distant Russian aircraft spread like a smell in the warm evening. The anti-aircraft batteries of the Copou aviation camp were firing furiously. I must have been feverish; long shudders went through my aching bones. Who knew where Mica was at that moment—hairy as a goat? Stai, stai! shouted the patrols through the thickening shadows. Stray rifle shots echoed here and there among the houses and the orchards. Hoarse voices of German soldiers broke through the rumble of the trucks. Laughter, French words, and the clatter of china reached me from the Jockey Club. My God, how I liked Marioara!

  Suddenly I became aware that night had already fallen. The Copou batteries were firing at the moon—a yellow, clammy moon, a huge round summer moon that slowly climbed up the cloudy sky. The anti-aircraft guns were barking at the moon. The trees shivered in the damp wind blowing from the river. The dry, angry barking of the flak rose above the hills. Soon the moon became entangled in the branches of the trees, it hung for a moment on a branch, dangled like the head of a man from the gallows, and sank to the bottom of an abyss of black stormy clouds. Blue and green flitting lightning suddenly cut the sky. Within the yawning wounds, as in the fragments of a broken mirror, appeared deep perspectives of nocturnal landscapes of a livid and dazzling green.

  While I was walking out of the churchyard it began to rain, a slow warm rain that seemed to drop out of a cut vein. The Corso Café-Restaurant was closed. I began hammering against the door with my fist, calling Marioara. At last the door opened slightly and through the crack Marioara's voice began to moan, "Oh, oh, oh, Domnule Capitan, I cannot open. Curfew has already sounded, Domnule Capitan, oh, oh, oh!"

  I reached with my hand through the opening of the door and clutched her shoulder in a tight grasp, as sweet as a caress. "Marioara, oh Marioara! Open Marioara! I am hungry, Marioara!"

  "Oh, oh, oh, Domnule Capitan, I cannot—Domnule Capitan, oh, oh, oh!"

  Her voice was languid and shy, and as I clutched her small soft-boned shoulder, I felt her shaking all over from head to foot, perhaps because of the strong, sweet caress of my hand, perhaps because of the air scented with rain-sprinkled grass, perhaps because of the languid heat of the summer night, or perhaps because of the moon, that treacherous moon. Perhaps Marioara was thinking about the evening when she had gone with me to the old, abandoned churchyard to watch the sickle of the new moon gently cut the acacia leaves. We were sitting on a tombstone, I held her in my arms and the strong odor of her virginal skin, of her curly hair—that strong and gentle odor of Byzantium that Romanian, Greek and Russian women have, that strong and ancient odor of Byzantium, an odor of roses and of white skin, rose intoxicatingly to my face. Marioara had panted gently, straining herself against me, and I had said "Marioara," I had only said "Marioara" in a soft voice, and Marioara had gazed at me through her black lashes, her lashes of black wool.

  "Oh, oh, Domnule Capitan, I cannot open! Domnule Capitan, oh!" and she looked at me with only one eye through the crack of the door. Then she said, "Wait a moment, Domnule Capitan," and she gently closed the door. I heard her walking away, I heard the patter of her bare feet. She came back after a few minutes bringing a little bread and a few slices of meat. "Oh, thank you, Marioara," I said slipping a few hundred lei notes into her bosom. Marioara looked at me with only one eye through the crack of the door, and I felt the hot heavy drops of rain beating on the nape of my neck and running down my back. "Oh, Marioara," I said caressing her shoulder, and she bent her head and pressed her cheek against my hand. I was trying to force the d
oor open with my knee when Marioara leaned with all her weight on the door, "Oh, Domnule Capitan, oh," and she smiled at me through her long lashes of black wool.

  "Thank you, Marioara," I said caressing her face.

  "La revedere, Domnule Capitan," replied Marioara softly and she stood watching me with one eye through the crack of the door as I walked off in the rain.

  Seated on the doorstep of my house I munched very slowly and listened to the rain talking in a soft murmur over the delicate acacia leaves. A dog whined uneasily behind the hedge of an orchard at the end of the churchyard. Marioara was still a child—she was only sixteen. I gazed at the black sky, at the yellow reflection of the moon through the gloomy veil of the clouds. Marioara was still a child. And I listened to the heavy tread of patrols, to the rumble of German trucks driving up toward Copou and toward the Prut. Suddenly through the lukewarm spiderweb of the rain the wailing hoot of the sirens sounded once again.

  At first it was a far-off hum, very high up in the sky, a hum of bees that little by little came nearer, and became a high, mysterious language of the black sky. It was a mysterious voice, a sweet and secret language, a voice like a memory, like bees humming in a wood. Suddenly I heard Marioara's voice calling me from amid the tombs. "Domnule Capitan," she said. "Oh, Domnule Capitan!"

  She had run away from the Corso, she was afraid of being alone; she wanted me to take her home; she lived on Usine Road, near the power station. But she did not dare to cross the town,- the patrols fired on the passers-by; they shouted stai! stai! and fired at once without giving anyone time to raise one's arms.

  "Oh, take me home, Domnule Capitan!" I saw her black eyes shining in the darkness, now bright, now dim in the warm darkness as on the verge of a night remote from me, as on the verge of a black forbidden night.

  People wandered silently by amid the mounds and crosses, groups of people who sought shelter in the adapost that had been excavated in the center of the churchyard. Those shadows of men, women and half-naked children went down beneath the ground silently, like the spirits of the dead, going back to the bottom of their dark hell. I already knew all of them, they were always the same; they went by every evening on their way to the adapost— the owner of the lustrageria across the road, the two old people whom I always saw sitting at the foot of the Unirii monument between the Jockey Club and the Fundatia, the coachman whose stable was at the back wall of the churchyard, the woman who sold papers on the corner of the Fundatia, the porter of the des-facere de vinuri with his wife and five children, the tutun seller, the tobacconist whose shop was near the post office.

  "Buna sear a, Domnule Capitan," they said in passing.

  "Buna sear a," I replied.

  Marioara did not want to go down into the adapost-, she wanted to go home, she was afraid and wanted to go home. On other nights she slept on a settee in a room of the Corso Café-Restaurant, but that evening she wanted to go home; she was all atremble.

  "They will fire at us, Marioara," I said.

  "Nu, nu, the soldiers cannot fire at an officer."

  "Who can tell? It is dark. They will fire at us, Marioara."

  "Nu, nu," replied Marioara, "Romanian soldiers will not fire at an Italian officer, will they?"

  "No, they will not fire at an Italian captain, they are afraid. Come along, Marioara. Colonel Lupu also is afraid of an Italian officer."

  We walked close to one another, along the walls, in the warm rain. Marioara's bosom was heaving gently against my arm, the light breathing of a child. We went down toward Usine Road, among the ghosts of disemboweled houses. From hovels made of wood or straw and mud came voices, laughter, weeping of children, raucous triumphal songs of gramophones. Sharp rifle shots pierced the night down there beyond the station. Through the amplifier of an old gramophone, placed on the sill of a dark window, a sad raucous voice sang:

  Voi, voi, voi, mandrelor voi...

  From time to time we hid behind a tree trunk, behind the wall of an orchard and held our breath until the tread of a patrol had faded away in the distance. "There, my home is there," said Marioara. Before us the massive red-brick building of the central power station loomed out of the darkness like a silo. From the tracks around the railroad station came the mournful whistling of engines.

  "Nu, nu, Domnule Capitan, nu, nu," said Marioara.

  But I crushed her in my arms, caressed her curly hair, the thick hard eyebrows, the thin little mouth.

  "Nu, Domnule Capitan, nu, nu," said Marioara trying to push me away, her hands pressing against my chest.

  Suddenly the storm burst like a mine on the roofs of the town. Charred shreds of clouds, trees, houses, streets, men and horses were hurled into the air and whirled about in the wind. A stream of lukewarm blood gushed forth from the clouds torn open by red, green and blue thunderbolts. Romanian soldiers went by in groups shouting, "Parasiutist! Parasiutist!" They ran firing their rifles aimed into the air; a confused din reached us faintly from the lower city through the high, faraway hum of the Russian planes.

  We backed against the fence surrounding Marioara's house, and at that moment two soldiers who came running from the turn in the road fired at us without stopping. We heard distinctly the thud of the bullets against the fence. A sunflower, bending its head, peered at us with its round, polyphemic, impersonal eye, the long yellow lashes half-curled over the great black pupil. I crushed Marioara in my arms, and she leaned back, her eyes turned to the sky. Suddenly she said in a low voice: "Oh, frumos! frumos!—Oh, beautiful! beautiful!" I lifted my eyes to the sky and a shout of wonder escaped my lips.

  There were men up there, walking on the roof of the storm. Small, awkward, round-bellied, they walked along the edges of the clouds, holding up with one hand a huge white umbrella that swayed in the gusty wind. They were perhaps the old professors of the Jassy university with their gray top hats and pea-green frock-coats, who were returning home along the avenue from the Fundatia. They strolled very slowly in the rain, in the livid flashes of lightning, and they talked among themselves. It was funny to see them up there. They moved their legs in an odd way, like scissors opening and closing, cutting the clouds, making a way for themselves through the spiderweb of rain hanging over the town. "Nopte buna, Domnule Professor," they said to one another inclining their heads and raising their gray top hats with finger and thumb, "Nopte buna!" Or perhaps they were the proud, handsome ladies of Jassy returning from their promenade in the park, shading their delicate faces under pale blue or pink silk parasols trimmed with white lace; and they were followed at a distance by their old black, solemn carriages, with eunuch coachmen brandishing their whips with the long red tassels above the glistening croups of the fine horses with long yellow manes. Perhaps they were the old noblemen of the Jockey Club, the fat Moldavian noblemen, with side whiskers trimmed Paris fashion, Saville Row clothes, and small ties that were drawn through the narrow openings in their high stiff collars so they could breathe a little fresh air after the endless bridge games in the smoky rooms of the Jockey Club with its smell of roses and tobacco. They swayed from their hips, clipping their scissors, their extended right arms grasping the long handles of their huge white umbrellas, their tall, gray top hats slightly tilted over their ears as those of certain vieux beaux of Daumier, or of Caran d'Ache.

  "They are the Jassy noblemen escaping," I said. "They are afraid of the war and they are looking for safety in the Athénée Palace in Bucharest."

  "Oh no, they are not escaping; down there are the houses of the gypsy women,- they are going to make love to the gypsies," replied Marioara gazing at the floating men.

  The clouds looked like the foliage of the large green trees that rise among the little tables of the Pavilion d'Armenonville against a background of green, blue and pink trees in a Manet picture of the Porte Dauphine. They really were Manet's greens, pinks, blues and grays in the delicate landscape of lawns and leaves that appeared and disappeared within the gashes between the clouds, whenever a thunderbolt destroyed the tall purpl
e castles of the storm.

  "It is truly like a feast," I said, "a gay feast in a beautiful park in springtime."

  Marioara gazed at the demi-dieux of the Jockey Club—the white demi-gods of Jassy. Jassy is du côté de Guermantes, a provincial côté de Guermantes belonging to that ideal province that is the true Parisian country of Proust, and in Moldavia everyone knows Proust by heart. She gazed at the gray top hats, the monocles, the white carnations in the buttonholes of the blue coats, the silken lace-edged parasols, the arms covered with lace gloves to the elbows, the little hats decked with birds and flowers, the brittle little feet peeking from under the pleated skirts. "Oh! how I should like to go to that party. I wish I, too, could go in a fine silk dress!" said Marioara touching with slender fingers her poor faded cotton frock stained with ciorba de pui.

  "Oh, look, look how they run away! Look how the rain is chasing them, Marioara! The party is over, Marioara."

  "La revedere, Domnule Capitan," said Marioara, pushing open the little gate leading into her orchard. Marioara's home was a single-story, wooden hovel with a roof of red tiles. The windows were shut, a glimmer of light showed through the slats of the blinds.

  "Marioara!" called a woman's voice from inside the house.

  "Oh, la revedere, Domnule Capitan," said Marioara.

  "La revedere, Marioara," I said, holding her to me.

  Marioara yielded to my arms and gazed up at the sky at the fiery tracks of the tracer bullets streaking the black glass of the night; they looked like coral necklaces hanging on invisible feminine necks, flowers thrown into a velvety black abyss, phosphorescent fish darting about a nocturnal sea; they were evanescent shapes of red lips melting into the shade of silk parasols; they were roses blossoming in a secret recess of a garden on a moonless night just before dawn. The vieux beaux of the Jockey Club and the old university professors sheltered from the rain under their huge white umbrellas, went home after the party as the last skyrockets were being fired.