Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "If we were in Italy," I said, "I would buy a pennyworth of marrons or lupine seeds for you. But you cannot get a single marron in Germany. Do you like lupines, Louise, and salted pumpkin seeds?"

  "When I was in Florence I bought a bag of marrons every day on the corner of Tornabuoni Street. But it all seems like a fairy story now."

  "Why don't you come and spend your honeymoon in Italy, Louise?"

  "Oh, you have already heard that I am getting married? Who told you?"

  "Agatha Ratibor told me the other day. Come to Capri, to my house, Louise. I shall be far away in Finland, and the house will be yours. At Capri the moon is truly as sweet as honey."

  "I cannot. My passport has been withdrawn. We cannot leave Germany. We live at Litzensee as if we were in exile."

  Life was not particularly easy for the princes of the Imperial house. They were not allowed to move outside a radius of a few miles of their home. Louise laughed. They had to have a special permit to go to Berlin.

  The trees were mirrored in the river, the air was sweet, illuminated by a faint veil of silvery mist. We had walked a long way from the bridge, when a young officer stopped and saluted. He was a tall blond young man, with an open smiling face.

  "Oh, Hans!" said Louise blushing.

  He was Hans Reinhold. He stood at attention in front of Louise, his arms stiffly at his sides, and he smiled at Louise. And little by little, as if drawn by a magic power transcending his will, his face turned toward a platoon of soldiers who marched in step, beating their heels hard on the pavement. They were his soldiers; they had been relieved from guard duty and were going back to the barracks.

  "Why don't you come with us, Hans?" Louise asked softly.

  "I have not finished playing at soldiers. I'm on duty tonight," said Hans. His glance was now gliding past Louise's face, following the soldiers who moved away beating their heels hard on the asphalt of the street.

  "So long, Hans," said Louise.

  "So long, Louise," said Hans. He raised his hand to his cap, saluted Louise in the stiff Potsdam manner and then turned to Ilse and me. He said, "So long, Ilse," and after a slight bow to me, overtook his platoon at a run and disappeared at the end of the avenue.

  Louise walked in silence. I could only hear the slight swish of the bicycle tires on the damp asphalt, the hum of motors on a distant road and the tread of feet on the pavement. Ilse was also silent, shaking her small blond head from time to time. Now and again, a human voice broke through that silence, through that continuous harmony of faint sounds that make up the silence of a street in a provincial town in the evening, but it was a human voice attuned to that harmony of sounds, just a human voice, nothing but a pure, solitary human voice.

  "Hans is to go to the front next month," said Louise. "We shall just have enough time to marry." Then she added after a momentary hesitation, "This war..." and she was silent again.

  "This war frightens you," I said.

  "No, that is not it. No, but there is something about this war..."

  "What?" I asked.

  "Nothing. I meant... oh, it is useless!"

  We came to a restaurant not far from the bridge and went inside. The larger room was full of people, so we took a table at the end of a smaller side room where a few soldiers sat silently around a table and two girls, mere children, were having supper with an old lady, perhaps their governess. Their long blond hair was braided down their shoulders, and they had starched white collars turned back on their gray school-girl dresses. Louise seemed embarrassed; she gazed around as if searching for someone and now and again she raised her eyes to me, smiling sadly. Suddenly she said: "I cannot bear it any longer." There was a shade of cold severity in her simple grace, that cold severity so peculiar to Potsdam, to its baroque architecture, its neoclassical pretensions, the white stuccos of its churches, its palaces, its barracks, its colleges, its houses—a severity both courtly and middle class, supported by the thick green dampness of the trees.

  With Louise I felt as free and unaffected as with a factory girl. Louise's charm was in her simplicity, the simplicity of a girl of the people, and in her shy sadness that seemed to be the result of a joyless existence, of everlasting daily toil—the gloom of a hard drab life. There was in her no trace of downcast pride or heart-felt renunciation, no trace of false humility, vainglorious shamefulness or sudden resentment in which ordinary people see indications of fallen greatness—only a sad simplicity, unconscious patience, a slightly filmed glow, an ancient and noble innocence, a dark patient power that is at the root of pride. I felt as free and unaffected with her as with one of those factory girls that one sees in the evenings in the U-Bahn coaches or in the misty streets of Berlin suburbs near the factories when they come out in groups and walk downcast and sad, followed at a distance by the dull silent crowd of bare-legged, almost nude and disheveled girls whom the Germans had brought back as prisoners from their white-slave raids in Poland, the Ukraine and Ruthenia.

  Louise had delicate hands with pale transparent nails. A network of blue veins flowed from her slender wrists into the lines of her hands. She was resting one of her hands on the tablecloth, as she looked at the sporting prints that decorated the walls of the room—the most famous thoroughbreds of the Vienna Hochschule drawn by Vernet and Adam, some prancing, others galloping through landscapes of blue trees and green waters. I gazed at Louise's typical Hohenzollern hand. I could recognize the hands of the Hohenzollerns, famous for their shortness, their provincial refinement, rather plump, with an out-thrust thumb, a tiny little finger with the middle finger scarcely exceeding the other fingers in length. But Louise's hand was red and roughened by scouring powder and covered with a mesh of fine wrinkles, cracked and chafed, like the hands of the Polish and Ukrainian factory women whom I had seen munching bits of brown bread close to the wall of a factory the day I had gone to the Ruhleben suburbs—like the hands of the "white slaves" from the east, of the Russian engineering women workers who in the evenings throng the sidewalks of the industrial quarters of Pankow and Spandau.

  "Could you bring me some soap from Italy or Sweden?" asked Louise trying to conceal her hand. "I have to do my own laundry, my stockings and my underwear. A little kitchen soap." And she added after an embarrassed silence, "I would prefer working in a factory. I cannot bear this lower middle-class life any longer."

  "Your turn will come soon," I said. "They will send you to work in a factory."

  "Oh no, they will have nothing to do with a Hohenzollern. We are pariahs in Germany. They will have nothing to do with us," she added with a spark of contempt. "They will have nothing to do with an Imperial Highness."

  At that moment two soldiers, their eyes covered by black bandages entered the room. A nurse was with them to help them find their way. They sat at a near-by table, motionless and silent. The nurse turned now and again to look at us. Finally she whispered something softly to the two blind soldiers who turned their faces in our direction.

  "How young they are!" said Louise in a low voice. "They look like mere boys."

  "They have been lucky," I said. "The war has not devoured them. The war does not eat corpses—it only eats living soldiers. It gnaws the legs, the arms, the eyes of living soldiers, mostly while they sleep, just as rats do. But men are more civilized; they never eat living men. Heaven knows why, they prefer to eat corpses. Perhaps it is because it must be very hard to eat a living man even though he is asleep. I saw Russian prisoners at Smolensk eating the corpses of their comrades who had died of hunger and cold. The German soldiers stood by looking at them in the most respectful and kindly way. The Germans are full of human feeling, aren't they? But it was no fault of theirs, they had nothing to give the prisoners to eat, and so they stood by looking at them and shaking their heads and saying, 'Arme Leute—Poor fellows.' The Germans are a sentimental people, the most sentimental and the most civilized people in the world. The German people will not eat corpses,- they eat living men."

  "Please, don't be cruel, don'
t talk about such horrors," said Louise resting her hand on my arm. I felt her shivering, and I was overcome by a rush of angry pity.

  "The cold was frightful," I went on, "and I was sick. I felt ashamed of appearing so weak before the Germans. The German officers and men looked at me with contempt, as one looks at a puny woman. And I blushed. I meant to apologize for that moment of weakness but my retching prevented me from apologizing to the Germans."

  Louise was silent. I felt her hand trembling on my arm. She had closed her eyes,- she seemed to have stopped breathing. Keeping her eyes closed and trembling, she said, "I sometimes wonder whether my family is partly responsible for all that is happening now. Do you think we Hohenzollerns are partly responsible?"

  "Who is not partly responsible? I am no Hohenzollern—and yet I sometimes think that I, too, am partly responsible for what is now taking place in Europe."

  "I sometimes wonder whether, being a German woman, I am bound to love the German people. A Hohenzollern should love the German people, don't you think?"

  "You don't have to love them. But the Germans are very nice."

  "Oh, yes—they are very nice," said Ilse smiling.

  "Do you want me to tell you the story of the glass eye?"

  "I cannot bear to listen to these harrowing stories," said Louise.

  "It is not a harrowing story. It is a German story, a sentimental story."

  "Talk softly," said Louise. "The two blind soldiers might hear you. Can you imagine anything in the world gentler than the blind?"

  "Perhaps there is something even gentler in the world— namely, men who have glass eyes. But last winter in Poland I saw men who were gentler than the blind, gentler than men with glass eyes. I was in Warsaw, in the Europeiski Café. I was just back from the Smolensk front, and I was terribly weary, a feeling of nausea prevented me from sleeping. I would awake at night with a cruel pain in my stomach; I felt as if I had swallowed an animal and the animal was gnawing at my insides. I felt just as if I had eaten a piece of a live man—and I would lay by the hour gazing into the darkness with wide-open eyes. This night I was in the Europeiski Café. The orchestra was playing old Polish songs and Viennese Lieder. Several German soldiers were sitting with two nurses at a near-by table. The café was crowded with the usual people, splendid and miserable, full of the dignity and chivalrous sadness that is ever present at Polish meeting places during these years of slavery and destitution. Worn-looking men and women sat at the tables silently listening to the music or whispering softly among themselves. They wore crumpled clothing, washed-out linen and down-at-the-heel shoes. There was that gentleness in their manner that makes the Polish nation like a misty mirror in which the most common actions are reflected with an old world grace and nobility.

  "The ladies were marvelous in their simplicity, full of grandeur and pride that veiled the pallor of hunger in their faces. They smiled wanly, and yet there was no trace of sweetness, resignation or pity. There was nothing humble in the wan smiles on those pain-stricken lips. Their eyes, deep and clear, were stormy; they resembled wounded or caged birds. They resembled those seagulls that fly wearily by, forecasting a storm—white against the black sea sky, mingling their shrieks with the noise of wind and waves. The German soldiers sat at the neighboring table, their eyes staring, their faces motionless. In the center of their staring eyes, I could see their pupils oddly expanding and contracting. I noticed that they did not flicker their eyelids. But they were not blind; some were reading the papers, others watched the musicians, the people coming and going, the waiters fussing around the tables, and, through the misty panes of the large windows, the vast Pilsudski Square deserted in the snow.

  "Suddenly I was struck with horror and realized that they had no eyelids. I had already seen soldiers with lidless eyes, on the platform of the Minsk station a few days previously on my way from Smolensk. The ghastly cold of that winter had the strangest consequences. Thousands and thousands of soldiers had lost their limbs; thousands and thousands had their ears, their noses, their fingers and their sexual organs ripped off by the frost. Many had lost their hair. Soldiers were known to have become bald over night; others had lost their hair in patches as if infected with ringworm. Many had lost their eyelids. Singed by the cold, the eyelid drops off like a piece of dead skin. I was struck with horror watching the eyes of those poor soldiers in the Europeiski Café in Warsaw, those pupils that expanded and contracted in the center of the fixed wide-open eyes, straining in vain to screen them from the pain of light. I thought that those poor fellows slept with eyes wide open in the dark, that night was their only eyelid; that their future was lunacy; that only lunacy could slightly shade their lidless eyes."

  "Oh, stop!" Louise almost shouted. She gazed at me, her eyes staring and strangely white. "Say no more," she whispered. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

  "'Let me tell you the story of the glass eye."

  "You have no right to make me suffer," said Louise.

  "It is merely a Christian story, Louise. Aren't you a princess of the Imperial German House, a Hohenzollern? Aren't you what is described as a well-bred young lady? Why shouldn't I tell you Christian stories?"

  "You have no right," said Louise in a sharp voice.

  "Let me at least tell you a nursery story," I said.

  "Oh, please, keep still!" begged Louise. "Can't you see that I am shaking? You are frightening me."

  "It is a story about Neapolitan children and British aviators," I went on. "A gentle story. Even in war there is a certain gentleness."

  "What is most horrible in war," said Ilse, "is precisely what is gentle in it. I cannot bear to see smiling monsters."

  "I was in Naples at the beginning of the war, when the first bombings began. I went to have supper one evening with a friend of mine who lives at the Vomero. The Vomero is a high cliff that dominates the city from which the Posillipo hills branch off descending to the sea. It is an enchanting place and, up to a few years ago, it was a countryside with scattered little houses and villas lost among the greenery. Each house had its orchard, a few vines, a few olive trees and terraced embankments on which blossomed eggplants, tomatoes, cabbages, peas, scented basil, rose and rosemary. The roses and tomatoes of the Vomero for beauty and fame are not inferior to the ancient roses of Paostum or to the tomatoes of Pompeii. Now the orchards have been turned into gardens. But in between the huge glass-and-concrete buildings a few ancient villas and humble farmhouses survive, and here and there the greenness of a lonely orchard fades sweetly into the vast pale blueness of the gulf; across the water, Capri stands out from the sea in a silvery mist; on the right is Ischia with its high Epomaeo; on the left the Sorrento shore can be seen in the transparent mirrors of the sea and sky, and still farther to the left is Vesuvius, that gentle idol, a kind of great Buddha looking down from the windowsill of the gulf. If one strolls through the lanes of the Vomero where it changes its name and is wedded to the Posillipo hills, between the trees and houses one can see the solemn and most ancient pine tree that shades Virgil's tomb. That is where my friend had his little rustic house and little orchard.

  "While we waited for supper, we sat in the orchard under a vine arbor, smoking and talking quietly. The sun had already set and the light was being gradually extinguished. The place, the landscape, the time, the season were the same as those of which Sannazaro had sung; the breeze was Sannazaro's breeze in which the smell of the sea and the scent of the orchards melt into the delicate eastern wind. When night began to rise from the sea with its large bunches of violets already damp with nocturnal dew—at night the sea puts on its windowsills large bunches of violets that scent the air, filling the rooms with the pleasing breath of the sea—my friend said, 'The night will be clear. They will certainly come. I must put the presents for the British flyers in the orchard.' I did not understand, and I was puzzled as I watched my friend enter the house and come out carrying a doll, a little wooden horse, a trumpet and two little bags of sweets which he, without saying a w
ord and perhaps mischievously enjoying my bewilderment, went about carefully placing here and there among the rose bushes and lettuce clumps, on the pebbles of the narrow path and on the edge of a bowl in which a family of goldfish softly flashed.

  " 'What are you doing?' I asked.

  "He gazed at me with a serious expression and smiled. He told me that his two children, who were already in bed, had been overcome with a terrific fear during the first bombings, that the health of the youngest one had been seriously affected—and that he had evolved a means of changing the fearful bombings of Naples into an entertainment for his children. As soon as the alarm hooted through the night, my friend and his wife jumped out of bed and, gathering the two little ones in their arms, began shouting merrily: 'What fun! What fun! The British planes are coming to throw their presents to you!' They went down into their cellar that offered scant and ineffectual shelter and, huddling there, they passed the hours of terror and death laughing and shouting, 'What fun!' until the boys fell happily asleep dreaming about the presents from the British flyers. From time to time, as the crash of the bombs and the crumbling of buildings came nearer, the little ones awoke, and the father said: 'Now, now, they are throwing down your presents!' The two boys clapped their hands with joy, shouting: 'I want a doll! I want a sword! Daddy, do you think that the British will bring me a little boat?' Toward dawn, when the hum of the motors moved off fading slowly into a sky that was already clear, the father and mother led the children by their hands into the garden, saying, 'Look for them, look! They must have dropped them on the grass.' The two boys searched among the rose bushes, wet with dew, among the lettuce plants and the tomato stalks, and they found a doll here, a little wooden horse there and, farther off, a bag of candy. The two children were no longer afraid of bombings, instead they waited anxiously for them and welcomed them joyfully. Some mornings, searching through the grass, they found little spring-propelled airplanes—undoubtedly poor British airplanes that those nasty Germans had brought down with their guns while they bombarded Naples to make Neapolitan children happy."