Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

The railway track ran along the valley, parallel with the road. We had nearly reached Poduloea when we heard a long whistle from across the dusty countryside. We looked at each other and paled as though we recognized it.

  "What heat!" moaned Sartori wiping his forehead.

  And I noticed that he at once regretted and felt ashamed because he had said "What heat!" He thought of those people piled into cattle cars, two hundred in each car, without water and without air. That distant whistle through the still glow of the sun had a ghostly sound in that dusty, deserted countryside. After a while we saw the train. It had stopped at a signal and was whistling for a right-of-way. Then it moved on slowly and we kept beside it, following along the road. We looked at the cattle cars and at the wooden boards nailed over the windows. The train had taken three days to go twenty miles. It had to give precedence to military convoys; besides, there was no hurry. Had it reached Poduloea even after three months it still would have been on time.

  Meanwhile we had reached Poduloea where the train had stopped on a shunting track just outside the station. The heat was stifling. It was about noon; the railway officials had gone to eat. The engineer, the fireman and the military guards had jumped down from the train and were stretched out on the ground in the shade of the cars.

  "Open the cars at once," I ordered the soldiers.

  "We cannot, Domnule Capitan."

  "Open the cars at once!" I shouted.

  "We cannot. The cars are sealed," said the engineer. "The stationmaster would have to be advised."

  The stationmaster was at his meal. At first he refused to interrupt his dinner,- later, learning that Sartori was the Italian Consul and that I was an Italian Domnule Capitan, he rose and trotted along behind us with a pair of heavy pincers in his hand. The soldiers went to work at once trying to open the sliding door of the first car. The wood and iron door would not yield; it seemed as if ten, a hundred hands held it from the inside, as if the prisoners strained every sinew to prevent it from opening. At last the stationmaster shouted, "You there, inside, help us push too!" No one answered. Then all together, we tried to force it. Sartori stood facing the car, his face raised and wiped his sweat with a handkerchief. Suddenly the door yielded and the car was opened.

  A throng of prisoners hurled itself at Sartori, knocking him down and falling on top of him. The dead were fleeing from the train. They dropped in masses—with dull thuds, like concrete statues. Buried under the corpses, crushed by their huge, cold weight, Sartori struggled and wriggled trying to free himself from under that dead burden, from under that frozen mountain; finally he disappeared beneath the pile of corpses, as if it were an avalanche of stones. The dead are wrathful, stubborn, ferocious. The dead are stupid—vain and capricious as children and women. The dead are crazy. Woe to the living if a dead man hates him. Woe to him if the dead fall in love with him. Woe to the living being if he insults a dead one, touches his self-love or wounds his honor. The dead are jealous and vengeful. They fear no one, they fear nothing—neither blows, nor wounds, nor enemies in overwhelming numbers. They even have no fear of death. They fight tooth and nail, silently, without yielding a step; they never loosen their hold, they never flee. They fight to the end with a stubborn, cold courage, laughing and sneering, pale and dumb—those mad eyes of theirs wide open and squinting. When finally, they are vanquished, when they resign themselves to defeat and humiliation, when they lie beaten, they exhale a sweet, greasy odor and slowly decompose. Some, attempting to crush him, hurled themselves with all their weight upon Sartori, others dropped on him coldly, rigidly, sluggishly; others butted their heads into his chest, or hit him with their knees and their elbows. Sartori grasped their hair, clutched at their clothing, caught hold of their arms, tried to push them back by gripping their throats or hitting their faces with clenched fists. It was a furious silent struggle. We all ran to his aid and vainly tried to free him from under the oppressive mound of the dead. Finally, after great effort, we succeeded in reaching him and drew him from the pile. Sartori stood up, his suit was in tatters, his eyes swollen, and there was blood on his cheek. He was very pale and perfectly calm. He only said, "See if there is anyone living among them. My cheek has been bitten."

  The soldiers climbed into the car and began throwing out the corpses one by one. There were a hundred and seventy-nine of them—all suffocated, all had swollen heads and bluish faces. Meanwhile a squad of German soldiers and a little crowd of local inhabitants and peasants had come up and helped open the cars, throw out the corpses, and range them along the railway embankment. Next came a group of Poduloea Jews, led by their rabbi. They had learned that the Italian Consul was present and this had bolstered their courage. They looked pale but they were calm and did not weep. They spoke with steady voices. All had friends or relatives in Jassy, and each feared for their lives. They were clothed in black and wore odd, hard felt hats. The rabbi and five or six others who said they were on the managing board of the Agricultural Bank of Poduloea, bowed to Sartori.

  "It is hot," said the rabbi, wiping the sweat with the palm of his hand.

  "Yes, it is very hot," replied Sartori, pressing a handkerchief to his forehead.

  The flies buzzed furiously. The dead, ranged along the railway embankment, numbered about two thousand. Two thousand corpses stretched out under the sun are a great many—too many. Clutched between his mother's knees, a few-months'-old baby was still alive. It had fainted, but it still breathed. One of its arms was broken. The mother had managed to hold it for three days with its mouth glued to the door jamb; she had fought savagely not to be wrenched away by the crowd of the dying; she had been crushed dead by the merciless pressure. The baby had been buried under the dead mother, clutched between her knees, sucking that thin thread of air with its lips. "It's alive," said Sartori in an odd voice. "It's alive, it's alive!" I was moved as I looked at Sartori, at that fat placid Neapolitan who had at last shed his indifference, not because of all those dead, but because of a living child, because of a child that was still alive.

  A few hours later, toward sunset, the soldiers working in one end of a cattle car threw on the embankment a corpse with its head wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. It was the owner of the house occupied by the Italian Consulate in Jassy. Sartori looked at him in silence for a long time. He touched his forehead, then he turned to the rabbi and said, "He was an honest man."

  Suddenly we heard the sounds of a quarrel. A crowd of peasants and gypsies who had gathered from all over were stripping the corpses. Sartori made a gesture of protest, but the rabbi put a hand on his arm. "It can't be helped," he said, "it is the custom." Then with a sad smile he added in a low voice, "They will come tomorrow to sell us the clothing stolen from the dead and we shall have to buy it. What else can we do?"

  Sartori kept silent and watched those wretched corpses being stripped. The dead seemed to defend themselves with all their strength against the violence of those who were stripping them,- men and women dripping with perspiration, screaming and cursing, were doggedly trying to raise stubborn arms, bend stiff elbows and knees, in order to draw off the jackets, trousers and underclothing. The women were most stubborn in their relentless defense. I never would have thought that it would be so difficult to take a slip off a dead girl. Perhaps it was modesty still alive in them that gave the women the strength to defend themselves; sometimes they raised themselves on their elbows, brought their white faces near to the grim sweaty faces of those who profaned them and gazed at them with staring eyes until they finally fell with a dull thud naked onto the ground.

  "We must go; it is getting late," said Sartori and, turning to the rabbi, asked him to write out a death certificate for the honest man. The rabbi bowed and we all started walking toward the village. The heat was stifling in the office of the manager of the Agricultural Bank. The rabbi sent for the books of the synagogue, wrote out the death certificate and handed the document to Sartori, who folded it with care and put it in his wallet. A train whistled in the distance. A bluebo
ttle buzzed around the inkstand.

  "I regret very much that I have to go," said Sartori, "but I must be back in Jassy before night."

  "Please wait a moment," one of the board of the Agricultural Bank said in Italian. He was a short, fat Jew with a Napoleon III goatee. He opened a little cupboard, took out a bottle of vermouth, and filled several small glasses. He said that the vermouth was from Turin—real Cinzano, and he began telling me in Italian that he had been in Venice, Florence and Rome several times and that his two sons had studied medicine in Italy at the University of Padua.

  "I should like to meet them," said Sartori kindly.

  "Oh, they are dead. They died in Jassy the other day." He sighed and added, "I should like to return to Padua so much to see again the university where my two boys had studied."

  We sat for a long time in silence in that room filled with flies. Then Sartori rose and we all filed out. While we were getting into the car, the Jew with the Napoleon III goatee placed his hands on Sartori's arm and humbly said in a low voice: "To think that I know the entire Divine Comedy by heart!" and he began declaiming:

  Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita...

  The car moved off and the group of black-coated Jews disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  "The Romanians are not a civilized people," said Frank with contempt in his voice.

  "Ja, they have no Kultur," said Fischer, shaking his head.

  "You are mistaken," I replied. "Romanians are a generous and kindly people. I am very fond of the Romanians. Among all the Latin races the Romanians alone have given evidence of a noble sense of duty in this war and a great generosity in shedding their blood for their Christ and their king. They are a simple people—a people of primitive, kindly peasants. They cannot be blamed if the upper classes, the families and the men who should be an example to them, have rotten souls, rotten minds and rotten bones. The Romanian people are not responsible for the slaughter of Jews. In Romania pogroms are organized and inspired by order or with the connivance of the authorities. The people are not at fault if corpses of Jews, quartered and hung on hooks like beef, have been on display for days in many Bucharest butcher shops for the entertainment of the Iron Guards."

  "I understand and I share your feeling of revulsion," said Frank. "Thanks to heaven and, a little to me, you have not had and never will have any occasion to witness such horrors in Poland. No, mein lieber Malaparte, in Poland—in German Poland—you will certainly have no occasion or excuse to give vent to your lofty feeling of indignation and pity."

  "I should certainly not tell you what Sartori, Pellegrini and I had said to the Jassy Chief of Police, if I had thought differently about you. It would not be prudent. You would have me locked up in a concentration camp, nicht wahr?"

  "And Mussolini would not even file a protest," laughed Frank.

  "No, he would not even file a protest. Mussolini does not wish to be bothered."

  "You are aware," said Frank, emphatically, "that I am a just and straightforward man and that I do not lack a sense of humor. If you have something just and straightforward to tell me, you may come to me freely, without any fear. We are in Warsaw, not in Jassy, and I am not the Jassy Chief of Police. Have you by any chance forgotten our agreement? Don't you remember what I told you when you arrived in Poland?"

  "You warned me that you would have me watched closely by the Gestapo, but that I would be entitled to think and act as a free man. You have assured me that I may open my mind to you freely and that you would do the same with me, that we would play the game fairly and according to rules."

  "This agreement is still in force," said Frank. "Didn't I play cricket? To show you how honest I am with you, I will tell you that Himmler does not trust you. I defended you. I told him that you are not only an honest man but also a free man, that in Italy you have suffered imprisonment and persecution for your books, for the freedom of your mind, for your rashness as an enfant terrible and not for any lack of honesty on your part. To show him that the opinion I had formed of you was right, I reminded him that in passing through Sweden, as you often do when you go to the Finnish front, it would be easy for you to stay in that neutral country as a political refugee and that no one could stop you, but that you have not done so because you are a war correspondent wearing an Italian officer's uniform which puts you on your honor not to desert. I have also added that your books are published in England, France and America, and that in consequence you are a writer who deserves attention; and it is advisable for us to provide you with evidence that German Poland is as free as Sweden. To be completely frank with you I must add that, to be on the safe side, I have advised Himmler to have you searched when you leave Polish territory. Perhaps I should have warned you in advance that I intended to make this suggestion to Himmler, or else refrained from making it. At any rate I warn you now. And this is also cricket, nicht wahr?"

  "It is almost cricket," I answered smiling, "but you would have done better if you had advised Himmler to have me searched when I entered Poland. To give you proof of my frankness, I want to tell you how I have spent my time while Himmler was in Warsaw." I told him about the letters, the parcels of food and the money that Polish refugees in Italy had begged me to deliver to their relatives and friends in Warsaw.

  "Ach, so! Ach, so!" shouted Frank laughing, "and right under Himmler's nose! Ach, wunderbar! Right under Himmler's nose!"

  "Wunderbar! Ach, wunderbar!" they all shouted with noisy laughter.

  "I trust you consider this cricket?"

  "Yes, that's cricket!" shouted Frank. "Good for you, Malaparte!" and he raised his glass saying "Prosit!"

  "Prosit!" I said raising my glass.

  "Prosit!" echoed the others.

  We drank the German way, all in one gulp.

  Finally we rose from the table and Frau Brigitte Frank led us to a neighboring room—a round room lighted by two large, French windows opening on the park—that once had been Marshal Pilsudski's bedroom. Little gray birds hopped about on the branches of the trees; at the crossroad the statues of Apollo and Diana were mantled with snow, and here and there German sentries walked about with rifles cradled in their arms. The reflection of the snow melted softly into the walls, furniture and thick carpets.

  "It was in this room," said Frank, "precisely in the armchair in which Schmeling is now sitting, that Marshal Pilsudski died. I gave orders that nothing should be disturbed. I wanted everything to remain unchanged. I only had the bed removed." And he added in a gentle voice, "Marshal Pilsudski's memory deserves our respect, nicht wahr?"

  He had died gazing in that armchair between the two large French windows at the trees in the park. The large niche in the wall facing the French windows where once Pilsudski's bed stood, was now occupied by a settee on which Frau Fischer and Governor-General Frank were seated. Standing by the armchair in which he had died and in which prize fighter Max Schmeling was now sitting, the old Marshal, his face streaked with bluish veins that resembled scars, his great mustaches drooping in the Sobieski manner, his brow bristling with short, black, closely cropped hair, was waiting for Schmeling to rise and give up his seat to him. Frank was right. Marshal Pilsudski's memory deserved our respect.

  Frank was loudly discussing sports and champions with Schmeling.

  The air was hot and smelled of tobacco and brandy. I was gradually overcome by torpor,- I heard the voices of Frank and of Frau Wächter; I saw Schmeling and Governor Fischer lifting their brandy glasses to their lips, Frau Fischer turned smilingly to Frau Brigitte, and I seemed to be wrapped in a warm mist that was slowly erasing the voices and the faces. I was tired of those faces and voices. I could not bear to remain in Poland any longer. I was to start in a few days for the Smolensk front; that was cricket too—nicht wahr?

  At that moment I imagined that Frank turned to me and invited me to spend several days in the Tatra mountains at Zakopane, the famous Polish winter resort. "Just before the war in 1914, Lenin spent several months in Zakopane," Frank said, at once laug
hing. I replied, or I thought I replied, that I could not, that I was due on the Smolensk front and then I found myself saying: "Why not? I could spend five or six days in Zakopane with pleasure." Suddenly Frank rose, we all rose, and Frank suggested that we take a walk through the ghetto.

  We left the Belvedere. I was in the first car with Frau Fischer, Frau Wächter and Governor-General Frank. In the second car were Frau Brigitte Frank, Governor Fischer and Max Schmeling. The other guests followed in two more cars. We drove along the Aleja Ujazdowska, turned into the Svientocziska and the Marsalkowska and at the entrance to the "forbidden city," in front of the gate in the high red-brick wall that the Germans had built around the ghetto, we stopped and got out.

  "See this wall?" said Frank to me. "Does it look to you like the terrible concrete wall bristling with machine guns that the British and American papers write about?" And he added, smiling, "The wretched Jews all have weak chests. At any rate this wall protects them against the wind."

  In Frank's arrogant voice there was something that I seemed to recognize, something turbid—a sad and debased cruelty.

  "The atrocious immorality of this wall," I replied, "doesn't lie in the fact that it prevents the Jews from leaving the ghetto but in the fact that it does not prevent them from entering it."

  "And still," said Frank laughing, "although leaving the ghetto is punishable by death, the Jews go in and out as they please."

  "Over the wall?"

  "Oh, no," replied Frank, "they get out through rat holes, that they dig by night under the wall and that they cover up by day with a little earth and leaves. They crawl through those holes and go into the city to purchase food and clothing. The black market in the ghetto is carried on mainly through such holes. From time to time one of the rats is caught in a trap; they are children not over eight or nine years old. They risk their lives in a true sporting spirit. That is cricket too, nicht wahr?"

  "They risk their lives?" I shouted.