Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "Oh, how lovely!" burst out Louise clapping her hands.

  "Now I shall tell you," I said, "the story of Siegfried and the cat. Those two Neapolitan children would not appreciate the story about Siegfried and the cat, but you will like it very much. It's a German story and Germans like German stories."

  "The Germans like everything that is German," said Louise. "And Siegfried is the German people."

  "And the cat, Louise? What is a cat? Can it also be a kind of Siegfried?"

  "Siegfried is unique," replied Louise.

  "You are right! Siegfried is unique and all other people are cats. Now listen to a story about Siegfried and the cat. I was in the village of Rita, close to Pancevo, in front of Belgrade, waiting to cross the Danube. A few rifle shots pierced the air of that white April morning stretching out like a linen screen between us and the blazing city. A squad of SS men were waiting for orders to force a crossing; they were all very young; they all had Gothic triangular faces, pointed chins, sharp profiles and Siegfried's pure, cruel look in their eyes. They sat silently on the bank of the Danube, their faces turned to the spires of Belgrade, their tommy guns rested between their knees. One of them was sitting close to where I was. He was a lad about eighteen years old, fair, with blue eyes and red lips lighted up by a cold innocent smile. We began talking, we spoke about the cruelty of war—its destruction, bereavements, slaughter. He told me that the recruits of the Leibesstandart of the SS were all trained to bear other people's pains unflinchingly. I must tell you again that his blue eyes were extraordinarily pure. He added that an SS recruit is not fit to belong to the Leibesstandart until he is able to get through the cat trial with flying colors. With his left hand, the recruit must grab a live cat by the skin of its back so as to allow it to use its claws to defend itself, and gouge out its eyes with a little knife held in the right hand. That is how one learns to kill Jews."

  Louise clutched my sleeve and her nails hurt me through the material. I felt her hand trembling. "You have no right..." she said in a low voice, turning her pale face toward the two blind soldiers who ate in silence, their heads slightly thrown backward. The nurse was helping them with slow light gestures, correcting the uncertain movements of their arms and touching the backs of their hands with her fingertips whenever the knife or the fork wandered about the edge of the plate.

  "Oh, Louise, forgive me!" I said. "Horrible stories give me the creeps too. But there are certain facts that you must know. You must know that, in a certain sense, cats also belong to the same species as Siegfried. Has it ever occurred to you that, perhaps, Jesus Christ is a kind of Siegfried—that Jesus Christ is a crucified cat? You must not think, as all Germans are taught to think, that Siegfried is unique and that all other people are cats. No, Louise, Siegfried also belongs to a species of cats. Do you know the origin of the word kaputt? It comes from the Semitic kapparoth, which means a 'victim.' The cat is a kapparoth; it is a victim as opposed to Siegfried. It is a sacrificed Siegfried, a Siegfried given as an offering. There is a time, a time that always recurs, when Siegfried, the unique, also becomes a cat, becomes kapparoth, a victim, becomes kaputt. It is the time when Siegfried is nearing death, when Hagen-Himmler gets ready to gouge his eyes as if he were a cat. It is the German people's doom to turn into a kapparoth, into a victim, to go kaputt! The secret meaning of its history is to be found in this metamorphosis from Siegfried into a cat. There are certain facts that you must know, Louise. You, too, must know that we are all Siegfrieds, that we are all destined to become kapparoth some day, victims, to go kaputt, that is why we are Christians, that is why Siegfried also is a Christian, and why Siegfried is also a cat. Emperors and the sons of emperors must know certain facts. You have been very badly educated, Louise."

  "I am not a Siegfried any longer," said Louise. "I am much closer to a cat than to an Imperial princess."

  "Yes, Louise, you are closer to a working woman than to a Hohenzollern princess."

  "You think so?" asked Louise shyly.

  "A working woman would take to you, if you were her friend in a factory."

  "I should like to work in a factory. I should change my name and work like any other factory hand."

  "Why change your name?"

  "A Hohenzollern—Do you imagine that the other workers would respect me, if they knew my real name?"

  "What good is the Hohenzollern name today?"

  "Tell me the story of the glass eye," said Louise with sudden softness.

  "It's a story like so many others, Louise. It's useless to tell it. It is a Christian story. You no doubt know some Christian stories, don't you? They are all alike."

  "What do you mean by a Christian story?"

  "Have you read Aldous Huxley's Point Counterpoint? The death of the child, of tiny Philip, in the last chapter is a Christian story. Aldous Huxley might have spared himself the useless cruelty of letting the child die. Huxley was once ordered to appear at Buckingham Palace. Queen Mary and King George V wanted to know him. Just then Point Counterpoint was enjoying its greatest success. The King and Queen welcomed Aldous Huxley most affably. They spoke to him about his books, asked him about his travels, the works he was planning, the trends of modern English literature. After the audience, when Huxley had already reached the threshold, His Majesty George V called him back in a kindly voice. The King seemed ill at ease,- he apparently had something to say, but he hesitated. Finally the King said to Huxley in an uncertain voice, 'Mr. Huxley, the Queen and I would like to reproach you for something. It really was unnecessary to let the child die.'"

  "Oh, what a lovely story!" exclaimed Louise.

  "It is a Christian story, Louise."

  "Tell me the story of the glass eye," said Louise blushing.

  During the winter of 1941, I was in the Ukraine, near Poltava. The countryside was infested with partisans. It seemed as if the days of the Cossack uprisings of Chmielnicki, of Pugachev and Stienka Rasin had returned. Bands of partisans roamed about the woods and marshes along the Dnieper, rifle shots and bursts of machine-gun fire broke unexpectedly from the ruins of villages, out of the ditches and thickets. Then silence fell again, the fat, dull, dreary silence of the vast Russian plain.

  One day a German officer was riding through a village at the head of an artillery column. Not a living soul was anywhere in the village,- the houses looked as if they had been abandoned long ago. In the stables of the kolkhoz about a hundred starved horses were lying on the ground, still tied by their halters to the empty bins. The village had that sinister appearance that is characteristic of Russian villages after they had been swept by the fury of German reprisals. Sadly, vaguely ill at ease, almost with fear, the officer looked at the deserted houses, the straw on the thresholds, the wide-open windows and the empty silent rooms. In the orchards, above the fences, were the black, round, motionless eyes of the sunflowers, staring from within the frames of their long yellow lashes and following the passing column with their sad vacant stare.

  The officer rode bending forward over the horse's mane, both hands resting on the pommel. He was about forty years old, with already graying hair. Now and again he lifted his eyes to the misty sky, then stood up in his stirrups and turned to watch the column. The soldiers walked in groups behind the gun carriages; the horses pressed their hooves into the muddy road; the whips hissed through the damp air; the men shouted Ja! Ja! to urge the horses on. It was a gray day and the village had a ghostly appearance in the ashen autumn air. A wind had risen; the bodies of several Jews were swinging from the branches of the trees. A constant whisper fled from house to house as if a crowd of children ran barefoot through the squalid rooms; there was a constant crackling as if an army of mice gamboled through the abandoned houses.

  The column halted in the village and the soldiers were already scattering through the lanes between the orchards in search of water for their horses when the officer trotted up hurriedly. He was strangely pale and shouted, "Weg, weg, Leute!—Off, off, boys!" and, in rushing by, he touched wit
h his whip the soldiers who had already plumped down on the steps of the houses. "Weg, weg, Leute!" he shouted. Then a rumor spread among the soldiers, Fleck-typhus—spot typhus—and the ghastly word crept along the column, down to the last gun that had stopped outside the village. All the men went back to their places, and the column moved on. "Ja! Ja!" The whips hissed through the gray air, and the artillerymen, in passing, cast frightened glances through the open windows into the houses where the corpses, bleak, colorless, livid and ghostly, were stretched out with wide-open eyes on the straw. The officer sat quietly on his horse in the center of the village square, close to Stalin's statue that lay tumbled into the mire. He watched the column moving past him and, now and again, he lifted his hand to his forehead and very slowly, with a gentle, tired movement, stroked his left eye.

  Sunset was still far away, but the first evening shadows were gathering in the foliage of the woods that by degrees were growing darker, thicker, and of a deeper and duller blue. The officer's horse was restless, it pawed the muddy ground and threatened to rear or to gallop after the column that was already moving out of the village. The officer held the horse down to a walk, trailing the last gun carriage. He kept in the rear of the column and when he reached the last houses, he stood up in his stirrups and looked back. The road and the square were deserted, the houses were gloomy and empty. And yet there was that whisper, that crackling which the wind made running its rough tongue over the walls of mud and straw, that whisper and that crackling as if barefoot children and famished mice were following the column at a distance.

  The officer raised his hand to his forehead and with a bored, sad gesture touched his eye. Suddenly a shot rang out from the village and a bullet hissed by his ear.

  "Halt!" shouted the officer. The column stopped and a machine gun belonging to the rear battery began firing at the houses in the village. Other shots had followed the first one, and gradually the firing of the partisans became livelier, more insistent and angry. Two artillerymen were hit. The officer spurred his horse and galloped along the column shouting orders. Groups of soldiers, firing on the run, moved off through the fields to surround the village. "Man the guns!" shouted the officer. "Destroy everything!" The partisans continued firing. Another artilleryman was hit. Then the officer flew into a terrible rage,- he galloped through the fields urging the men on and placing the guns so they would bear on the village from all sides. A few houses caught fire. A hail of incendiary shells rained on the village, bursting open the walls, piercing the roofs, rending the trees, raising clouds of smoke. Fearlessly the partisans kept up their fire, but very soon the violent artillery fire turned the village into a pyre. And there, from amid the smoke and flames, a group of partisans, their arms raised high, ran out. Some were old, the majority young, and among them was a woman. The officer leaned over the saddle and looked them over one by one. Sweat was dripping from his brow and streaming down his face. "Shoot them!" he said in a harsh voice, and pressed his eye with his hand. His voice was bored, perhaps even the gesture with which he pressed his eye expressed boredom.

  "Feuer!" shouted the Feldwebel. After the rattle of the tommy guns was over, the officer turned and looked at the fallen. He made a sign with his riding whip. "Jawohl," said the Feldwebel firing his pistol into the pile of corpses. Then he raised his hand, the gunners harnessed the horses to the guns and the column formed and started off down the road.

  The officer, bending over the horse's mane, his hands resting on the pommel of the saddle, followed the column keeping about fifty paces back of the last gun. The hoofbeats, dulled by the mud of the plain, already sounded distant, when suddenly a rifle bullet hissed by his ear. "Halt!" he shouted. The column stopped; the rear battery again opened fire on the village. All the battery's machine guns rattled away at the blazing houses. But slowly and regularly a few rifle shots pierced the cloud of smoke. "Four, five, six..." counted the officer aloud. "It's only one rifle shooting, only one man." Suddenly a shadow with raised arms ran out through the cloud of smoke.

  The soldiers grabbed the partisan and pushed him in front of the officer who, bending from his saddle, looked him over carefully. "Ein Kind!—A child!" he said softly. The boy was not more than ten years old, thin, squalid; his clothes were in rags, his face black, his hair singed, his hands scorched. Ein Kind! The boy looked at the officer calmly and blinked; now and again he raised his hand slowly and blew his nose with his fingers. The officer slipped from the saddle and winding the reins around his wrist, stood facing the boy. He looked tired and bored. Ein Kind! He had a son at home, in Berlin, at Witzleben Square, a boy about the same age. Maybe Rudolf was a year older. This boy really looks like a child, ein Kind! The officer struck his boot with the riding whip, and the horse pawed the ground with an impatient hoof and rubbed its muzzle against the officer's shoulder. Two steps away the interpreter was waiting at attention with an irritated expression. "He's only a child, ein Kind! I did not come to Russia to make war on children." Suddenly the officer bent over the boy and asked him whether any other partisans were left in the village. The officer's voice was so tired, so full of boredom that it almost leaned on the interpreter who angrily repeated the question in Russian.

  "Niet," replied the boy.

  "Why did you fire at my men?"

  The boy looked at the officer with a surprised air; the interpreter repeated the question twice.

  "You know already. Why do you ask?" replied the boy. His voice was calm and clear. There was no trace of fear, no indifference in his tone. He faced the officer squarely and, before answering, came to attention like a soldier.

  "Do you know who the Germans are?" asked the officer in a low voice.

  "Aren't you a German yourself, tovarish officer?" countered the boy.

  The officer made a sign, and the Feldwebel, grasping the boy by the arm, took his gun from his belt.

  "Not here, farther away," said the officer turning his back.

  The boy moved off, taking quick steps so as to keep up with the Feldwebel. Suddenly the officer turned, raised his riding whip and shouted, "Ein Moment!" The Feldwebel turned, looked perplexedly at the officer and came back pushing the boy with his outstretched arm.

  "What time is it?" asked the officer. Without waiting for a reply, he began to pace up and down in front of the boy, striking his boots with the riding whip. The horse pulled at the reins and followed, snorting and shaking its head. Finally the officer stopped before the boy, stared at him for a long time in silence, then said in a slow tired voice full of boredom: "Listen, I don't want to hurt you. You are a child, and I am not waging war against children. You have fired at my men, but I am not waging war on children. Lieber Gott, I am not the one who invented war." The officer broke off, then went on in a strangely gentle voice: "Listen, I have one glass eye. It is difficult to tell which is the real one. If you can tell me at once, without thinking about it, which of the two is the glass eye, I will let you go free."

  "The left eye," replied the boy promptly.

  "How did you know?"

  "Because it is the one that has something human in it."

  Louise was breathing heavily, clutching my arm.

  "And the boy? What happened to the boy?" she said in a low voice.

  "The officer kissed him on both cheeks, clothed him in gold and silver and, having summoned a royal coach drawn by eight white horses and an escort of a hundred horse guards with shining breast-plates, sent the boy to Berlin where Hitler welcomed him like a king's son amid a cheering crowd and married him to his daughter."

  "Yes, I know," said Louise. "That's how it was bound to end."

  "I met that officer again later at Soroca on the Dniester—a very serious man, a good father, but a true Prussian, a true Piffke as the Viennese say. He talked to me about his family, about his work. He was an electrical engineer. He also spoke about his son Rudolf, a boy ten years old. It was really difficult to tell the glass eye. He told me that the best glass eyes are made in Germany." "Stop it!" said Louise.
"Every German has a glass eye," I said.

  XII. A Basket of Oysters

  WE WERE left alone. The two blind soldiers, led by the nurse, had left. Ilse, who had not spoken until then, smiled and looked at me. "Glass eyes," she said, "are like glass birds. They cannot fly."

  "Oh, Ilse, do you still believe that eyes fly? What a baby you are, Ilse!" said Louise.

  "Eyes are caged birds," said Ilse. "The eyes of those two soldiers were empty cages."

  "Blind people's eyes are dead birds," said Louise.

  "Blind people cannot look outward," said Ilse.

  "They are looking at themselves in a mirror," said Louise.