Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "And now we come to the Jews. Inside the ghettos they enjoy the most complete freedom. I persecute no one. I allow noblemen to go to ruin gambling and to amuse themselves with dancing. I allow the middle class to conspire, the peasants to grow rich, workers and technicians to work. Very often I even close an eye."

  "A person closes an eye," I put in, "when he is aiming a rifle."

  "That may be. But please do not interrupt me," went on Frank after a momentary hesitation. "The real fatherland of the Polish people, its real Rzepospolita Polska, is the Catholic religion. That is the only fatherland left to this unhappy people. I respect and protect it. At first, there were many grounds for dissension between me and the clergy. Now matters have changed. After the latest war developments in Russia, the Polish clergy has changed its position with regard to German policy in Poland. It does not help us, but neither does it fight us. The German army has fallen before the walls of Moscow; Hitler did not succeed, or, rather, has not yet succeeded in crushing Russia. The Polish clergy fears the Russians more than it fears the Germans, the Communists more than the Nazis. They may well be right. As you see I speak very frankly to you; and I am also sincere when I tell you that I bow before the Polish Christ. You might object that I bow before Him because He is defenseless. But I would bow before the Polish Christ even if He were armed with a tommy gun, because I am prompted by German interests and by my own conscience as a German Catholic. There is only one charge that the Polish clergy can make against me—I have forbidden pilgrimages to the shrine of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. But I was within my rights. It would have been extremely dangerous to the safety of the German occupation of Poland to tolerate a crowd of hundreds of thousands of fanatics gathering from time to time around that shrine. Every year almost two million faithful visited the Czestochowa shrine. I have forbidden the pilgrimages, and I have forbidden the public exhibition of the Black Madonna. For any other charge I am answerable only to my Führer and to my own conscience."

  Suddenly he stopped and looked around. He had spoken with a sad, resentful eloquence without pausing for a breath. We were silent as we gazed at him. Frau Brigitte was gently weeping and smiling; Frau Wächter and Frau Fischer were moved and did not take their eyes from the sweating face of the Governor-General. I felt oppressed by the silence and discreetly coughed. Frank, who was patting his forehead with a handkerchief, turned and after staring at me for a long time, smiled and asked: "You have been to Czestochowa, nicht wahr?"

  I had been to Czestochowa a few days earlier to visit the famous shrine as the guest of the Paulite monks. Father Mendera had led me to the underground crypt where the effigy of the Black Madonna is preserved, the most venerated effigy in all of Poland. The image is encased in a silver frame of Byzantine design and is called the Black Madonna because the face was darkened by smoke and flames during a siege. The Stadthauptmann of Czestochowa, who, as a near-relative of Himmler, was especially feared, despised and obeyed by the monks, had made an exception in allowing me to see the effigy of the Black Madonna. This was the first time, since the beginning of the German occupation of Poland that the sacred icon had appeared before the eyes of the faithful, and the monks were filled with joy and amazement at the unhoped-for event.

  We crossed the church and went down into the crypt followed by a group of peasants who while they were kneeling in the church, had seen us walk by. The two Nazi inspectors of the Stadthauptmann of Czestochowa, Günter Laxy and Fritz Griehschammer, and the two SS men who accompanied me stopped at the door. Günter Laxy made a sign to Father Mendera who looked at me uneasily and said in Italian, "The peasants." I replied loudly in German, "The peasants stay here." The prior of the shrine, a small, lean man with a creased and wrinkled face, came in at that moment; he wept and smiled, and now again he blew his nose into a large green handkerchief.

  Gold, silver, precious marbles gleamed softly in the dimness of the chapel. The peasants, kneeling in front of the altar, fixed their eyes on the silver door that conceals and guards the ancient image of the Czestochowa Madonna. From time to time we could hear the clattering of the rifles of the SS men who stood guarding the door.

  Suddenly the walls of the underground chapel were shaken by a deep rumble of drums and by the sound of silver trumpets blaring Palestrina's triumphal notes. The sliding door was raised little by little and the Black Madonna studded with pearls and precious stones that flashed in the red candlelight appeared holding the Child in her arms. Prostrated, their faces pressed to the ground, the peasants wept. I could hear their repressed sobs, their foreheads beating against the marble floor. They called the Virgin softly by name, "Mary, Mary," as if she were a member of their family—their mother, their sister, their daughter, their wife. No, not as if they had been calling their mother—they would not have said "Mary," they would have said "Mamma." The Madonna was the Mother of Jesus; she was not their mother, she was the Mother of Jesus and only of Jesus. But she was their sister, wife, daughter,- and they called her softly, "Mary, Mary," as if they feared being overheard by the two SS guards standing motionless by the door. The menacing deep rumble of the drums, the frightful blare of the long silver trumpets made the walls of the shrine shake,- it seemed as if the marble vault were about to collapse. The peasants called "Mary, Mary," as if they called to a dead person, as if they meant to rouse a sister, a wife, or a daughter from her death sleep; they cried out "Mary, Mary, Mary!" At that moment the prior and Father Mendera turned slowly around. The peasants fell suddenly silent and also turned around slowly and looked at Günter Laxy and Fritz Griehschammer, and at the two SS men armed with rifles, their brows hidden by their steel helmets, who stood motionless at the door. They looked at them and wept, silently wept. Deeper rumbled the drums in the stones, shriller blared the trumpets beneath the marble vault, as the sliding door slowly descended and the Black Madonna disappeared in a gleam of jewels and gold. The peasants turned toward me, their faces streaming with tears, and smiled.

  It was the same smile that I had seen blossoming suddenly on the lips of the miners in the depths of the Wieliczka salt mines near Cracow. Within the dark caves hewn out of blocks of rock salt a throng of pale faces, worn by hunger and anxiety, had suddenly appeared to me like a throng of ghosts in the smoky light of the torches. Before me rose a little baroque church which had been hewn out of salt with pickaxes and chisels by the Wieliczka miners about the end of the seventeenth century. The statues of Jesus Christ, the Virgin and the saints had been sculptured out of salt too. And the miners, kneeling before the altar built with blocks of rock salt and crowding at the door of the church with their leather caps in their hands, looked like statues of salt too. They gazed at me and smiled through silent tears.

  "In the Czestochowa shrine," went on Frank without giving me time to answer, "you heard the rumble of the drums and the blare of the silver trumpets and you believed that you heard the voice of Poland. No, Poland is dumb. The limitless, frosty silence of Poland is louder than our voices, our shouts, the shots of our rifles. It is useless to fight against the Polish people. It is like fighting a corpse. And yet one feels that it is alive, that blood throbs in its brain, that hatred is pulsating in its breast, that it is stronger than you are. It is like fighting a living corpse. Yes, a living corpse. Ha, ha, ha! Mein lieber Schmeling, have you ever fought a living corpse?"

  "No, never," replied Schmeling in a tone of deep amazement as he stared at Frank.

  "And what about you, lieber Malaparte?"

  "I have never fought against a corpse," I answered, "but I have been present at a fight between living and dead men."

  "Is that possible?" exclaimed Frank. "Where?"

  Everyone gazed at me attentively.

  "At Poduloea," I replied.

  "At Poduloea? Where is Poduloea?"

  Poduloea is in Romania on the Bessarabian frontier—a village only a score of miles beyond Jassy in Moldavia. I cannot listen to an engine whistling in full daylight without thinking of Poduloea—a dusty village in a
dusty valley beneath a blue sky loaded with white clouds of dust. It is a narrow valley, shut in by light, low, treeless hills with only a few scattered acacia groves, some vineyards and lean wheat fields.

  A hot wind was blowing, a wind that was as rough as a cat's tongue. The wheat had already been harvested, the stubble fields gleamed yellow in a slimy, heavy sun. Clouds of dust rose from the valley. It was the end of June 1941, a few days after the great Jassy pogrom. I was motoring to Poduloea with Sartori, the Italian Consul in Jassy whom everybody called "Marquis," and with Lino Pellegrini, "a stupid Fascist" who had come from Italy with his young wife to spend his honeymoon in Jassy and who was sending home to Mussolini's papers articles steeped with enthusiasm for Marshal Antonescu, the "Red Dog," and for all the bloody bastards who were driving the Romanian people to ruin. He was the best-looking young fellow who had ever walked under the Moldavian sun. Everywhere between the Transylvanian Alps and the mouth of the Danube women were crazy about him; they leaned out of the windows, they came to the shop doors to see him go by, and they said, sighing, "Ah, frumoso! frumoso!— Beautiful, beautiful!" But he was a "stupid Fascist." Moreover it goes without saying that I was somewhat jealous of him, and would have preferred it if he were not so good-looking and less of a Fascist. In my heart I looked down on him until the day I saw him face the Jassy Chief of Police and shout in his face, "Rotten murderer!" He had come to spend his honeymoon in Jassy, under the bombs dropped by the Soviet planes, and he spent his nights with his wife hidden in an adapost, the underground shelter that had been dug amid the tombs of the old abandoned graveyard. Now, the three of us were driving to Poduloea to look for the owner of the villa inhabited by the Italian Consulate. He was a Jewish lawyer, an honest man, whom the police had injured severely in the garden of the Consulate by hitting with their rifle butts. Then they had carried him away more dead than alive, probably to finish him elsewhere, so they would not leave on the grounds the evidence that they had murdered a Jew within the precincts of the Italian Consulate.

  The day was hot, the car moved slowly along the road pitted with deep holes. A victim of my usual hay fever, I was sneezing continuously. Clouds of furiously buzzing flies followed us. Sartori drove away the flies with his handkerchief. His face streaming with perspiration he said, "What a bore to be looking for a corpse in this heat, with all the thousands of corpses that are lying about in Moldavia! It is like looking for a needle in a haystack!"

  "For goodness' sake, don't talk about hay, Sartori!" I said sneezing.

  "Ah, Jesus, Jesus!" said Sartori, "I forgot that you have hay fever," and he gazed with eyes full of pity at my congested face, purple nose, red and swollen eyelids.

  "You like searching for corpses, Sartori," I said to him. "Confess that you like it. You are a Neapolitan and Neapolitans like dead bodies, funerals, weeping, mourning and cemeteries. You like burying the dead. Isn't it a fact that you like corpses?"

  "Don't make fun of me, Malaparte. I could really do without searching for corpses in this heat. But I have given my word to the poor chap's wife and daughter, and a promise is a debt. Those poor women still hope that he may be alive. Do you think it possible, Malaparte, that he is still alive?"

  "How could he be alive, if unprotesting you allowed him to be murdered under your very eyes? I realize now why you are as fat as a butcher. Is this the fine way in which things are being done in the Royal Italian Consulate of Jassy?"

  "After what you said, if Mussolini were a just man, Malaparte, he would make me an ambassador."

  "He will appoint you to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I bet you have hidden the corpse under your bed. Be honest, Sartori, you like sleeping with a corpse under your bed."

  "Ah, Jesus, Jesus!" sighed Sartori dabbing his face.

  We had been looking for the corpse for three days. The night before we had finally gone to see the Chief of Police to try to find out whether by any chance that poor wretch, having been spared at the last moment by his murderers, had been cast into a prison. The Chief of Police had received us kindly; his face was yellow and flabby, his eyes black and hairy with yellow reflections in the shadow of his thick eyebrows. I was surprised to notice that hair was growing along the inside edge of his eyelids,- they were not lashes; it was actually a thick fine down of grayish color.

  "Have you tried the St. Spiridion Hospital? He may be there," said the Chief of Police after a while, half-closing his eyes.

  "No, he is not at the hospital," replied Sartori in his quiet voice.

  "Are you quite sure," went on the Chief of Police gazing at Sartori with a narrow sector of his eye flashing black and green through the grayish down, "quite sure that it happened on the Consulate grounds? And that it was done by my men?"

  "Would you at least help me trace the corpse?" asked Sartori smiling.

  "It would appear," said the Chief of Police, lighting a cigarette, "that some pistol shots were fired from the windows of the Italian Consulate on a police patrol passing along the street."

  "I can see that it will not be difficult for me to trace the corpse with your assistance," said Sartori smiling.

  "I have no time to bother with corpses," said the Chief of Police with a gentle smile. "I am far too busy with the living."

  "Luckily," remarked Sartori, "the living are rapidly growing fewer in number, and you will be able to have some rest."

  "I really need it," replied the Chief of Police raising his eyes to the sky.

  "Why can't we agree and share the task?" asked Sartori in his placid voice. "While you are busy tracing and arresting the murderers—who certainly are still alive, I shall undertake to find the dead body. What do you say to that?"

  "If you fail to bring me the corpse of this gentleman and cannot prove that he has been killed, how can I trace the murderers?"

  "I see your point," said Sartori smiling. "I'll bring you the corpse. I'll bring it here, into your office, along with the other seven thousand corpses and you will help me to find it in the pile. Is it agreed?" He spoke slowly, smiling, with imperturbable indifference, but I know my Neapolitans. I know what some Neapolitans are, and I knew that Sartori was quivering with wrath and indignation at that moment.

  "Agreed," replied the Chief of Police.

  Then Pellegrini, the "stupid Fascist" stood up and, clenching his fists, said to the Chief of Police: "You are a low-down murderer and a cowardly bastard."

  I looked at him in amazement. It was the first time that I looked at him without envy. He looked most handsome—tall, athletic,- his face was pale, his nostrils quivered and his eyes flashed. His angry movement made his wavy black hair drop in long curls on his forehead. I looked at him with the deepest respect. He was a stupid Fascist, but during the night of the great Jassy pogrom he had several times risked his life to save a handful of unfortunate Jews, and now, when a nod from the Chief of Police would have sufficed to have him murdered on a street corner that very night, he was risking his skin for the sake of the corpse of a Jew. I promised myself that, if Mussolini were to be sent home one of these days, I would take up Pellegrini's defense against anyone who wished to make him pay for his "stupid Fascism." A Fascist who risks his skin to pull doomed Jews out of their murderer's hands, a man who risks his skin for the sake of a corpse, deserves the respect of all free and civilized men.

  The Chief of Police also stood up and fixed him with those hairy eyes of his. He willingly would have shot him in the stomach; he would have fired at Sartori, at Pellegrini and at me, but he did not dare. We were not wretched Romanians, we were not three wretched Jews from Jassy. He feared that Mussolini would avenge us. Ha, ha, ha! He feared that Mussolini would avenge us. He did not know that had he killed me, Mussolini would not even have protested. Mussolini had no intention of being bothered. Didn't he know that Mussolini was afraid of everyone—even of him? And I laughed thinking about the Chief of Police in Jassy being afraid of Mussolini.

  "What are you laughing at?" suddenly asked the Chief of Police, turning abruptl
y to me.

  "What does this gentleman want?" I asked Pellegrini. "Does he wish to know what I am laughing at? I am laughing at him. Can't I laugh at him?"

  "It certainly is not forbidden to laugh at him," said Pellegrini, "but I realize why it would not make him very happy."

  "It certainly does not make him happy."

  "Do you mean it? Are you laughing at him?" asked Sartori in his placid voice. "I beg your pardon, Malaparte, but it seems to me you are wrong. He is a perfect gentleman and should be treated as he deserves."

  Quietly we rose and went out. But we had no sooner crossed the threshold when Sartori stopped us and said, "We have overlooked saying good-by to him. Shall we go back?"

  "No," I replied, "instead let's go to the Commandant."

  The Commandant offered us cigarettes, listened to us kindly and then said, "He may have gone to Poduloea."

  "To Poduloea?" asked Sartori. "Why?"

  A couple of days after the slaughter, a train loaded with Jews had started for Poduloea, a village some twenty miles beyond Jassy, where the Chief of Police had decided to establish a concentration camp. That train had left three days before and should have been there long ago.

  "Let's drive to Poduloea," said Sartori.

  So the next morning we started for Poduloea in a car. We stopped to ask for news of the train at a small station lost in the dusty countryside. Several soldiers, sitting in the shade of an abandoned car on a siding told us that the train, made up of about ten cattle cars, had passed through there two days before and had spent a whole night in the station. The unfortunate people packed into the sealed cars had shrieked and moaned, begging the soldiers to remove the wooden boards nailed over the windows. About two hundred Jews had been piled into each car, and those wretched people were unable to breathe. The train had started at dawn for Poduloea.

  "You may be able to overtake it before it reaches Poduloea," said the soldiers.