Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  We had gathered in the dining room of the Spanish Legation around the massive mahogany table supported by four huge legs resembling elephant feet and laden with glass and old Spanish silver. The tapestries of red brocade hanging on the walls, the dark squat furniture carved with figures of dancing children, with festoons of fruit and game and with heavy-breasted caryatids—that Spanish interior so sensuous and so funereal, contrasted oddly with the white dazzle of the nocturnal light coming through the open window. The men in evening dress and the bejeweled women in low-cut dresses around that massive table with elephant feet sticking out between silk skirts and black trousers, in the gloomy red glow of brocade and in the dull glint of the silver, had a funereal appearance under the constant stare of the portraits of Spanish kings and grandees hung on the walls with thick cords of twisted silk. A golden crucifix hung over the sideboard, and Christ's feet touched the necks of champagne bottles sunk in buckets of ice. They looked like paintings by Lucas Cranach; the flesh seemed livid and worn, the eyes circled with blue, the brows pale and hot; a greenish, cadaverous hue spread over every face. The guests sat with staring, wide-open eyes. The breath of the nocturnal day dimmed the windowpanes.

  Midnight was approaching and the sunset glow was reddening the treetops in Brunnsparken. It was cold. I looked at the bare shoulders of Anita Bengenström, the daughter of the Finnish Minister in Paris, and I remembered that I was leaving next day with de Foxá and Michailescu for Lapland, north of the Arctic Circle. Summer was already far advanced. We would reach Lapland too late for the best salmon fishing. The Turkish Minister, Agah Aksel, remarked with a laugh that being late is one of the many pleasures of a diplomatic life. He told us that when Paul Morand was appointed Secretary of the French Embassy in London, Ambassador Cambon, who knew Paul Morand's reputation for laziness, at once said to him: "My dear fellow, come to the office whenever you please, but not later." Agah Aksel sat facing the window; his face was copper-colored, his white hair encased his brow like the silver frame of an icon. He was short and stocky and moved cautiously. He always seemed to be looking around with suspicion. "C'est un jeune Turc qui adore le Konia," said de Foxá about him. "Ah, you are a young Turk then?" asked Anita Bengenström. "Alas, I was much more of a Turk when I was younger," replied Agah Aksel.

  The Minister of Romania, Noti Constantinidu, who had spent his best years in Italy and wanted to end his days in Rome in Panama Street, spoke about the Roman summer, the voices of the fountains in the deserted squares, the fiery heat at noon and, while he talked, he shivered in the dazzling light of the northern night and gazed at his white hands that seemed like discarded wax hands lying on the tablecloth of pale blue satin. Constantinidu had returned the day before from Mikkeli, Marshal Mannerheim's headquarters, where he had gone to convey a high decoration bestowed on the Marshal by young King Michael of Romania.

  "Since I last saw you," Constantinidu had said to the Marshal, "you have lost twenty years; the summer has brought you the gift of youth."

  "Summer?" Mannerheim had replied. "There are ten months of winter in Finland and two without summer." The conversation lingered on Marshal Mannerheim, on the clash between his "decadent" tastes and his regal manner and appearance, on the immense prestige he enjoyed among the people and in the army, on the hardships that the war was thrusting on the Finnish people during that terrible first winter of war. Countess Mannerheim remarked that in Finland the cold does not blow down from the North, but breaks in from the East. "Although Lapland is beyond the Arctic Circle," she added, "the cold is much less bitter there than in the Volga region."

  "That's a new angle on the everlasting Eastern question," said de Foxá.

  "Do you think there still is an Eastern question for Europe?" asked the Minister of Turkey. "I share Philip Guedalla's opinion— for the Western people the entire Eastern question has by now been reduced to finding out what the Turks think of the Western question."

  De Foxá mentioned that in the morning he had met the United States Minister, Arthur Schoenfeld, who was extremely vexed with Philip Guedalla because of his last book, Men of War, published in London, a copy of which he had found at Stockmann's bookshop. The English author in his chapter on the Turks made the statement that the barbarian invasions in ancient days had always come to Europe from the East simply because they could not come from anywhere else before America had been discovered.

  "The barbarian invasions have always come to Turkey from the West," said Agah Aksel, "as far back as the days of Homer."

  "Did the Turks already exist in Homeric days?" asked Colette Constantinidu.

  "There are Turkish carpets," replied Agah Aksel, "that are much older than the Iliad."

  A few days previously we had visited Dinu Cantemir, who lived in Brunnsparken, opposite the British Legation, in the beautiful house of the Linders, to admire his collection of china and oriental carpets. While Dinu Cantemir's hand was drawing in the air for me the genealogical tree of his finest specimens of Dresden and while Bengt von Torne, standing under the portrait of a famous Linder beauty, spoke to Mircea Berindey and Titu Michailescu about the paintings of Gallen Kallela, the Ministers of Turkey and of Romania, kneeling in the middle of the room, wrangled about two small, sixteenth-century Turkish ritual carpets that Cantemir had spread on the floor. In one of them two squares and two diamond-shaped oblongs were alternately woven in rose, violet and green,- in the other there were four squares in pink, blue and gold of a clearly Persian inspiration. The Minister of Turkey extolled the supremely beautiful combination of the tints in the one carpet—the most difficult design he had ever seen,- the Minister of Romania praised the almost feminine delicacy of the shades resembling an old Persian miniature in the other carpet.

  "Not at all, my dear fellow," said Constantinidu, raising his voice.

  "I stake my word of honor that you are wrong," replied Agah Aksel in an angry tone. They were both kneeling, gesticulating and waving their arms as if they were worshiping in the Turkish manner. Continuing the argument, they finally sat down opposite one another, their legs crossed, on the two carpets. Agah Aksel said, "People have never been fair to the Turks."

  Aksel continued, "Some day there will only be a few carpets left of the great Turkish civilization. We are a heroic and unfortunate people. All our misfortunes arise from our centuries-old tolerance. If we had been less tolerant, we might, perhaps, have subdued all of Christendom."

  I asked him what the word "tolerance" meant in Turkish.

  "We have always been generous toward the conquered people," replied Agah Aksel.

  "I cannot understand," said de Foxá, "why the Turks did not become Christians. It would have simplified things."

  "You are right," replied Agah Aksel, "if we had become Christians, we still would be in Budapest and, perhaps, in Vienna today."

  "The Nazis are in Vienna today," said Constantinidu.

  "If they will become Christians, they will stay there," said Agah Aksel.

  "The greatest problem of modern days is still the religious problem," said Bengt von Törne. "On ne peut pas tuer le dieu— God cannot be killed." And he told us what had occurred a little time ago in Turku, the Finnish city on the Gulf of Bothnia. A Soviet parachutist who had dropped near the city was captured and locked up in the Turku prison. He was about thirty years old, a workman in a factory in Kharkov and a fervid communist. Being of a thoughtful turn of mind, he seemed not only interested in but also well informed about many subjects, particularly ethics. He was obviously better read than most udarniki or stakhanovtzi. In his cell the prisoner read extensively, choosing books on religious subjects that the governor of the prison, who was interested in so strange and complex a human specimen, allowed him to take out of his private library. Naturally, the prisoner was a materialist and an atheist.

  After a time he was given work as a mechanic in the prison factory. One day he asked to have a talk with a clergyman. A young Lutheran pastor, highly esteemed for his learning and piety, and famous as a preach
er, went to the prison and was taken into the cell of the Soviet paratrooper. For nearly two hours the two men were locked up together alone in the cell. At the end of this long talk, when the pastor rose to leave, the prisoner placed his hands on the pastor's shoulders and, after a moment of hesitation, embraced him. Later, these details were printed in the Turku papers.

  A few weeks went by, and the prisoner, who for days had appeared to be tortured by secret and painful thoughts, asked again to be allowed to see the pastor, who went to the prison and, as on the previous occasion, was locked up with the communist in his cell. About half an hour went by, when a jailer walking outside heard a shriek and a call for help. He unlocked the cell and saw the prisoner standing against the wall and the pastor lying at his feet in a pool of blood. Before he died, the pastor revealed that at the end of their conversation the prisoner had embraced him and, while his arms were around him, had stabbed him in the back with a sharp iron file. In the course of the trial the murderer declared during his examination that he had killed the pastor because his communist and atheist mind was troubled by the weight of the clergyman's reasonings. He was sentenced to death and shot.

  "He had tried," concluded Bengt von Törne, "to kill God in the pastor."

  The story of that murder, which appeared in all the Finnish papers, had deeply stirred public opinion. Lieutenant Gummerus, the son of a former Minister of Finland in Rome told me that the commander of the firing squad, a Turku officer who was a friend of his, had been greatly impressed by the murderer's serenity.

  "He had made peace with his conscience," said de Foxá.

  "But this is horrible!" exclaimed Countess Mannerheim. "How can anyone conceive of the idea of killing God?"

  "The entire modern world is trying to kill God," said Agah Aksel. "God's very existence is in peril in the modern consciousness."

  "Is it true of the Moslem consciousness?" asked Cantemir.

  "Yes, unfortunately, also in the Moslem consciousness. Not because we are near to communist Russia, but because the murder of God is in the air,- it is an element of modern civilization."

  "The modern state," said Constantinidu, "deludes itself into thinking that it can protect God's life simply with police measures."

  "It's not only God's life. The modern state deludes itself that it can protect its own existence," said de Foxá. "Take Spain as an example. The only way to turn out Franco is to kill God, and the attempts on God's life in the streets of Madrid and Barcelona are too numerous to count. Never a day goes by that someone does not fire a pistol at Him." He told us that the day before he had found a very recent Spanish book in Stockmann's bookshop and, opening it on the first page, he had read the first line: "God, that lunatic of genius..."

  "What is significant about the Turku murder," said Bengt von Törne, "is not so much that a Russian communist has killed a clergyman, but that Karl Marx is trying to kill God. It is a typically Marxist crime."

  "We must have the courage to admit that the modern world is more willing to accept Das Kapital than the Gospels," said Constantinidu.

  "This applies to the Koran also," said Agah Aksel. "It is surprising to see how easily the Mohammedan youth accepts communism. The Mohammedan youth in the eastern republics of the U.S.S.R. gives up Mohammed for Marx without resistance. What will the Islamic world be without the Koran?"

  "The Catholic Church," said de Foxá, "has given evidence of being able to exist without the Gospels."

  "Some day there may be communism without Marx. At any rate that's what many Englishmen hope for," said Cantemir. "For many Englishmen the ideal is the Marx Kapital in a 'blue book' version."

  "The English," said Agah Aksel, "have no reasons to fear communism. For them the problem is to win the class war on the same field where they won the battle of Waterloo—on the playing-field of Eton."

  Countess Mannerheim mentioned that a few days previously when the German Minister von Blücher in talking with some colleagues had appeared to be very concerned about the communist threat to Great Britain, Count Adam de Moltke-Hieutfeldt, Secretary of the Danish Legation, had answered, "Don't worry, Britons never will be Slavs."

  "Englishmen," said de Foxá, "have the great gift of stripping every problem of all superfluous elements and of laying bare even the most serious and complex problems. We shall see communism," he added, "strolling naked through the streets of Great Britain, just as Lady Godiva rode through the streets of Coventry."

  It was about two in the morning. The cold was intense and the metallic light entering through the wide-open window turned the faces of the guests so livid that I begged de Foxá to have the window closed and the lights turned on. We all looked like corpses; nothing looks more like a dead body than a man dressed for the evening in full daylight, or a made-up, bare-shouldered young woman whose jewels glitter in the sun. We sat around the rich table like the dead attending a funeral banquet in Hades. The servants closed the windows and turned on the lights, and something warm, intimate and secret entered the room. The wine sparkled in the glasses, our faces were suffused with the color of blood, eyes shone merrily, and our voices once again became warm and deep, like the voices of living people. Suddenly we heard the long wail of the alert, followed at once by the barrage of anti-aircraft guns. The mellow beelike hum of the Soviet planes came from over the sea.

  "This may seem funny," said Constantinidu in a calm voice, "but I am frightened."

  "I'm frightened, too," said de Foxá, "and it is not in the least funny."

  No one stirred. We heard the deep dull crashes of the explosions; the walls shook. A glass in front of Colette Constantinidu cracked with a faint tinkle. At a sign from de Foxá a servant again opened the window. We could see the Soviet planes, maybe a hundred of them, flying low above the roofs of the city like large insects with transparent wings.

  "The strangest thing about these luminous nights of the North," said Mircea Berindey in his tired Romanian accent, "is that nocturnal gestures, thoughts, sentiments, objects that are born only in the secrecy of darkness, and that the night jealously guards and protects in its dark bosom, can be seen in full daylight." Turning toward Madame Slörn, he added, "Look, this is a nocturnal face."

  Pale, her lips faintly trembling, her white eyelids quivering, Madame Slörn smiled, lowering her head. Madame Slörn was born in Greece, her face is diaphanous, her eyes black, her brow lofty and pure, and there is an antique gentleness in her smile and her gestures. She has owl's eyes, the eyes of Pallas, with white delicate quivering eyelids.

  "I like being afraid," said Madame Slörn.

  From time to time a deep silence blended with the rumble of guns, the crash of bombs and the hum of engines. During those sudden streaks of silence we could hear the birds singing.

  "The railway station is in flames," said Agah Aksel who sat facing the window.

  The Elanto stores were also on fire. It was cold. The ladies had wrapped themselves in their furs; the icy nocturnal sun shone through the trees of the park. Far away, toward Soumenlinna, a dog was barking.

  PART FOUR

  The Birds

  XI. The Glass Eye

  PRINCESS Louise von Preussen, a niece of Kaiser Wilhelm II— Prince Joachim Hohenzollern, her father, now dead for some years, had been a younger brother of the Crown Prince—and Ilse were to meet me that evening at the Potsdam station. "We shall bicycle over from Litzensee," Ilse had phoned.

  It was a damp, warm spring evening. When I got off the Berlin train a light drizzle was scattering silvery dust into the air. The houses at the end of the square looked as though they were made of aluminum. Officers and soldiers stood in groups on the sidewalks before the station.

  As I was gazing at a propaganda poster of the Leibesstandart Adolf Hitler stuck up on the wall of the station—on the poster two SS men armed with tommy guns, their faces clean shaven and clear-cut, their foreheads concealed under large steel helmets, a cold cruel glint in their gray eyes, stood out sharply against a landscape of blazing houses,
charred trees and guns sunk in mud up to the wheel hubs—I felt a hand touch my arm. "Good evening," said Ilse. Her cheeks were flushed by the long bicycle ride, her hair was ruffled by the wind. "Louise is waiting for us outside," she said. "She is watching the bicycles." Then she smiled and added, "She is very sad, poor child. Be nice to her."

  Louise had rested the two bicycles against a lamp post and was waiting for us with her hand on a handlebar. "How are you?" she inquired in that peculiar Potsdam French, self-conscious and shy. She looked up at me, smiling, her head cocked slightly on one shoulder. She asked me if I had a pin. Was I without a pin, too? "You cannot find a single pin in all of Germany," she said laughing. There was a little tear in her skirt, and she seemed to be very concerned about it. She wore a small green felt Tirolean hat pulled down over the nape of her neck and a tobacco-colored tweed skirt; a leather jerkin of mannish cut encased her bosom, revealing the shortness of her waist and the softness of her hips. Her socks were very short and her legs bare. She was pleased to see me again. Why couldn't I go back with them to Litzensee? She could certainly find a bicycle for me, and I would spend the night at the castle. I could not do it; I was to start next morning for Riga and Helsinki. Couldn't I postpone my departure? Litzensee was very beautiful, it was not really a castle, but an old country house surrounded by gorgeous woods; whole families of deer and fallow-deer lived in the Litzensee forests; nature was very lovely and very young there.

  We walked toward the center of town,- I was walking beside Louise who was leaning on her bicycle. The rain had stopped; it was a warm, clear, moonless night. I felt as if I were walking by the side of a girl through the suburbs of my hometown,- as if I had gone back to my boyhood in Prato,- in the evening when the girls left the factories, I would wait for Bianca on the sidewalk of the Fabbricone, beyond the Serraglio Gate, and walk home with her, leaning on my bicycle. The street was muddy and Louise seemed as heedless of the mud as the working girls had been. She stepped into puddles just like the factory girls in my hometown, just like Bianca. The first stars, pale and remote, peeped through the misty sky. On the branches of the trees the birds made sweet and merry music, and the voice of the river swayed at the end of the street like a curtain in the wind. We stopped on the bridge and leaned over to look at the water. A boat with two soldiers was gliding under the arches, sweeping down the stream. Louise, leaning on the marble parapet, watched the stream flowing gently between the grassy banks. She leaned over the parapet, raising herself on tiptoe just as Bianca used to do on the Mercatale Bridge to watch the stream of the Bisenzio gliding along the tall red wall that encircles the town. I used to buy a bag of lupine or pumpkin seeds and Bianca amused herself by spitting the shells into the river.