Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  In that warm room, thickly carpeted, lighted by the cold, honey-colored moon and the pink flames of candles, the words, gestures and smiles of those young women evoked with envy and regret, a happy, immoral, pleasure-loving world, servile and satisfied with its own sensuousness and vanity, a world called back to life with a macabre sense of rotting flesh by the scent of dead roses and the dull glow of the silver and the ancient china. Veronica von Klem, the wife of a German Embassy official in Rome, had returned from Italy only a few days before and was still bubbling over with the most recent gossip gathered in the Excelsior Bar, at the dinners of Princess Isabelle Colonna and at the Acquasanta Golf Club—gossip mostly concerning Count Galeazzo Ciano and his political and social affairs. The manner with which Veronica repeated the latest Roman scandal, and the way in which the other young German women—Princess Agatha Ratibor, Maria Teresa, Alice, Countess von W— , Baroness von B— , Princess von T— commented on it—had a shade of contempt that the other ladies—Italian, American, Swedish and Hungarian—Virginia Casardi, Princess Anna Marie von Bismarck, Baroness Edelstam, Marquise Theodoli, Angela Lanza, Baroness Giuseppina von Stum—countered with a mischievous and ironical charity, both bitter and pointed.

  "There is a lot of talk about Filippo Anfuso lately," said Agatha Ratibor, "it seems that the handsome Countess D— has passed from the arms of Galeazzo Ciano into those of Anfuso."

  "'That shows," said Marquise Theodoli, "that at the moment Anfuso is in great favor with Ciano."

  "Could one say the same about Blasco d'Ayeta?" asked Veronica. "He has inherited little Giorgina from Ciano and that gave rise to the rumor that he had fallen into disgrace."

  "Blasco will never fall into disgrace," said Agatha. "His father, a court chamberlain, defends him from the King; Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, defends him from the Duce; his wife, a devout Catholic, defends him from the Pope. Blasco will always have some Giorgina within reach to protect him against Galeazzo."

  "Roman politics," said Veronica, "are in the hands of four or five playboys who are busily engaged shifting among themselves the same thirty silliest women of Rome."

  "When those thirty women are over forty," said Princess von T— , "there will be a revolution in Italy."

  "Why not when those four or five perennial bachelors are over forty?" asked Anna Marie von Bismarck.

  "Ah, it's not the same thing," said Count Dornberg. "It is much easier to get rid of politicians than of thirty old mistresses."

  "From a political point of view," said Agatha, "Rome is nothing but a garçonnière—a love-nest."

  "Why are you complaining, my dear?" asked Virginia Casardi with her American accent. "Rome is a holy city, the city God has chosen to keep a pied à terre."

  "I have just heard a nice story about Count Ciano," said Veronica. "I don't know whether I should repeat it. It comes from the Vatican."

  "You may repeat it," I put in. "There are back stairs, even in the Vatican."

  '"Count Ciano is engaged in making love,' they say in the Vatican, 'and thinks that he is engaged in politics.'"

  "Von Ribbentrop told me," said Agatha, "that when they met in Milan to sign the Pact of Steel, Count Ciano looked at him in a way that made him feel uncomfortable."

  "You sound," I said, "as though Minister von Ribbentrop has also been Ciano's mistress."

  "By now," said Agatha, "he has passed into the arms of Filippo Anfuso."

  Veronica mentioned that Countess Edda Ciano, for whom she had a sincere liking, lately had often expressed her intention of having her marriage to Ciano annulled so she could wed a young Florentine aristocrat, Marquis Emilio Pucci.

  "Is Countess Edda Ciano one of those thirty women?" asked Princess von T— .

  "Edda, politically, is the least successful one of those thirty," said Agatha.

  "The Italian people worship her as a saint. They never forget that she is Mussolini's daughter," said Alfieri in his silly gentle voice.

  Everybody laughed, and Baroness von B— , turning to Alfieri, said that the most handsome of ambassadors was also the courtliest of men. They laughed again and Alfieri, bowing graciously said, "I am the ambassador of the thirty best-looking women in Rome,"—a remark that was greeted with hearty laughter by the guests.

  Countess Edda Ciano's pretense of wanting to marry young Marquis Pucci was at the time only a trivial piece of gossip. But in Veronica's words, in the comments of those other young German women, in the fact that Alfieri, greedy for gossip and particularly for Roman gossip, sometimes preferred to be considered the ambassador of the thirty best-looking women in Rome, rather than Mussolini's ambassador—the piece of gossip assumed the importance of a national event, of a fundamental event in Italian life; it implied an unspoken judgment of the entire Italian people. The talk revolved for a long time around Count and Countess Ciano; they described the young Minister of Foreign Affairs in the midst of the gilded band of beauties in the Colonna Palace and among the dandies of the Chigi Palace. They amiably poked fun at the rivalries, intrigues and jealousies of that elegant and servile court to which Veronica herself felt flattered to belong and to which Agatha Ratibor would have belonged if she were not an old maid, something Galeazzo Ciano, something of a spinster himself, abhorred above anything else in the world. They dwelt on the whole Roman smart-set, made it march in procession before our eyes with its interested servility, its greed for favor and pleasure and its moral indifference—the true mark of a deeply rotten society. The corruption of Italian life, the cynical and hopeless passivity of the entire Italian people toward the war were proudly and continuously compared with the "heroism" of German life. Veronica, Agatha, Princess von T— , Countess von W— , Baroness von B— , all seemed to say: Behold how I suffer, behold what hunger, hardship, toil and the cruelty of war have done to me; behold, and blush! And the other young women, feeling themselves foreigners in Germany, were actually blushing, as if they had no other means of concealing the smile which that worldly eulogy of the "heroism" of German life, the luster of those precious jewels, called forth to their lips, or as if deep down in their hearts they felt themselves on the same level with the others and equally guilty.

  Opposite me, between Count Dornberg and Baron Edelstam, sat a lady no longer very young, who listened with a tired smile to the frivolous and mischievous words of Veronica and her friends. I knew nothing about her except that she was Italian and that her family name was Antinori, that she had married a high official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Reich, whose name often appeared in German political columns, Minister Baron Braun von Stum. Drawn by a common sadness my attention lingered on her tired, wan features that for fleeting moments could still be youthful; on her light eyes filled with a veiled sweetness and an almost secret shyness; on those thin lines on her temples and around her sad, bitter mouth. The Italian gracefulness of her face had not faded completely and that sweet fantasy Italian women have in their eyes that resembles a love glance had not been lost between half-raised eyelids. From time to time she looked at me and I felt her glance resting on me so confidently and yieldingly that I felt inwardly troubled. I realized after a while that she was the object of hostile attention on the part of Veronica and her friends who, with female irony, kept gazing at her simple dress, unpainted nails, eyebrows neither plucked nor painted and unreddened lips, as if they felt a malicious pleasure in discovering in the face and in all of Giuseppina von Stum signs of an anguish and fear different from theirs, of sadness that was not German, that lack of pride in other people's distress of which they seemed so blatantly proud. Little by little the hidden meaning of that look in which I discerned a mute appeal for my sympathy and help was revealed to me.

  Through the misty windows, the frozen Wannsee looked like a huge slab of glistening marble on which the marks made by skates and iceboats had cut mysterious inscriptions. The high wall of the woods, black in the glow of the moon, surrounded the lake like a prison wall. Veronica was talking about the winter sunshine on Cap
ri and the Capri days of Countess Edda Ciano and her frivolous court.

  "It's unthinkable," said Dornberg, "the sort of people Countess Ciano gathers around herself. I never have seen anything like them even at Monte Carlo around the vieilles dames à gigolos— old girls with their gigolos."

  "At heart Edda is a vieille femme," said Agatha.

  "But she is only thirty!" exclaimed Princess von T— .

  "Thirty years is a lot, if one has never been young," said Agatha, and added that Countess Ciano had never been young, that she was already old, that she had the wit, the temper and the capricious and despotic whims of an old woman. Like those old women who surround themselves with smiling servants, she tolerated around her only obliging friends, easy lovers and evasive people capable of amusing and distracting her. "She is a mortally sad woman," Agatha concluded. "Her worst enemy is boredom. She spends the nights playing dice like a Harlem Negress. She is a kind of Madame Bovary. Can you imagine what Madame Bovary would have been, if she were the daughter of Mussolini?"

  "She often weeps. She spends entire days locked in her room, weeping," said Veronica.

  "She always laughs," Agatha said in an evil voice. "She often spends the nights drinking in the beautiful company of lovers, crooks and spies."

  "It would be much worse if she drank alone," said Dornberg. And he told us that in Adrianople he had met an unhappy British consul who was bored to death and who, in order not to drink alone, sat all evening in front of his mirror; he kept on drinking hour after hour, in silence, in his lonely room, until his reflection in the mirror began laughing. Then he rose and went to bed.

  "Edda would have thrown her glass at the mirror within the first five minutes," said Agatha.

  "She has weak lungs and she knows she has not long to live," said Veronica. "Her eccentricities and her capricious and willful temper are a result of her illness. At times I feel sorry for her."

  "The Italians hate everybody whose most humble servants they are," said Countess W— contemptuously.

  "It may merely be a servant's hatred," said Agatha, "but they detest her!"

  "The Capri people," said Alfieri, "are not fond of her, but they respect her and forgive her all her eccentricities. 'Poor Countess,' they say, 'it's no fault of hers that she is a madman's daughter.'

  The Capri people have an odd way of looking at history. After my illness last year, I went for a few weeks of convalescing to Capri. The fishermen of Piccola Marina, watching me go by looking thin and pale, and thinking that I am a German, because I am Ambassador in Berlin, said to me, 'Don't take it too much to heart, sir. What do you care if Hitler loses the war? Think of your health.' "

  "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Dornberg. "'Think of your health!' That's not a bad policy."

  "They say she hates her father," said Princess von T— .

  "Actually, I think she abominates her father," said Veronica, "and her father worships her."

  "And what about Galeazzo?" asked Baroness von B— . "She is supposed to despise him."

  "She may despise him, but she is also very fond of him," said Veronica.

  "At any rate she is very faithful to him," said Princess von T— ironically.

  Everybody laughed, and Alfieri, "the best-looking ambassador and most chivalrous of men," said, "Ah! Are you casting the first stone?"

  "I was eighteen when I cast the first stone," replied Princess von T— .

  "Had Edda received a better education," said Agatha, "she would have been a perfect nihilist."

  "I don't know what form her nihilism is," I said, "but there certainly is something savage about her. At least that's what Isabelle Colonna believes. One evening at a dinner in a great Roman house the talk turned to the Princess of Piedmont. Countess Ciano said: 'The Mussolini dynasty is like the Savoys,- it will not last long. I shall end like the Princess of Piedmont.' Everyone was aghast. The Princess of Piedmont was seated at the same table. Once, at a dance in the Colonna Palace, Countess Ciano said to Isabelle who was advancing to meet her, 'I'm wondering when my father will make up his mind to sweep away all this.' We were talking about suicide one day. She suddenly said to me, 'My father will never have the pluck to kill himself.' I said to her, 'Show him how to shoot himself.' Next morning a police inspector came to my house to request in the name of Countess Ciano that I avoid her in the future."

  "And you have never seen her again?" asked Princess von T— .

  "Yes, only once, a little while later. I was strolling toward Matromania through the wood at the back of my house when I met her on the path. I told her she should avoid entering my woods if she had no desire to see me. She looked at me with an odd expression and replied that she wanted to talk to me. 'What have you to tell me?' I asked. She looked sad and downcast, 'Nothing! I wanted to tell you that I could ruin you, if I wanted.' She held out her hand, 'Let us be friends,' she said, 'shall we?' 'We have never been friends,' I replied. She moved off in silence. At the end of the path, she turned back and smiled. I felt very shaken. I have felt very sorry for her since that day. I should add that I feel a superstitious respect for her. She is a sort of Stavrogin."

  "A sort of Stavrogin, did you say?" asked Baroness von T— .

  "Why do you think that she is a sort of Stavrogin?"

  "She loves death," I replied. "Her face is extraordinary,- on some days it is a mask of murder, on other days it is a mask of suicide. I would not be surprised if I were told some day that she had killed somebody or that she had committed suicide."

  "Yes, she loves death," said Dornberg. "On Capri she often goes out alone at night; she scrambles over the cliffs that rise sheer above the sea. She balances herself on the edge of precipices. Peasants saw her one day sitting on the little wall of the Salto di Tiberio, her legs swinging in the void. She leans over the Migliara rock, above a precipice fifteen hundred feet deep, as if it were a balcony. One night, during a thunderstorm, I saw her with my own eyes walking about the roof of the Certosa, leaping from dome to dome like a bewitched cat. Yes, she loves death."

  "Is it enough to love death," asked Countess von W— , "to become a murderer or a suicide?"

  "It is enough," I replied. "That is Stavrogin's secret morality, the mysterious meaning of his awful confession. Mussolini is aware that his daughter is of the same cloth as Stavrogin. He is afraid of her; he has her watched; he wants to be informed about her every step, her every word, her every thought and vice. He went so far as to push a man belonging to the police into her arms, so he could spy, even through another man's eyes, to spy on his daughter in her moments of abandonment. He would like to draw from her Stavrogin's confession. His only enemy, his real rival is his daughter. She is his secret conscience. All the black blood of the Mussolinis is not in the father's veins; it runs in Edda's too. Were Mussolini a legitimate sovereign and Edda a prince and his heir, he would have done away with her to safeguard his throne. At heart Mussolini rejoices in his daughter's disordered life and in the disease that is threatening her. He can rule in peace. But can he sleep in peace? Edda is merciless, she obsesses his nights. Some day there will be bloodshed between the father and the daughter."

  "That's a very romantic story," said Princess von T— . "Isn't it the story of Oedipus?"

  "Yes, perhaps," I replied, "in the sense that a shade of Oedipus can be found in Stavrogin."

  "I think you are right," said Dornberg. "It is enough to love death. Captain Kifer, a doctor in a German military hospital in Anacapri, was summoned one day to the Quisisana Hotel to attend Countess Ciano who was suffering with a violent and persistent migraine. This was his first opportunity to observe Edda closely. Captain Kifer is an able physician who knows how to look at things; he knows that disease is mysterious. He felt very troubled after leaving Countess Ciano's room. He said later that he had noticed a discolored spot on her temple that resembled the scar of a pistol shot; he added that, no doubt it was the scar of a pistol shot that she would one day fire into her temple."

  "Another romantic story!" excla
imed Princess von T— . "I admit that I am beginning to be fascinated by that woman. Do you really believe that she will shoot herself at thirty?"

  "Don't be afraid; she'll kill herself when she is seventy," said Giuseppina von Stum suddenly.

  We turned to look at her in amazement. Everybody laughed. I watched her in silence. She was very pale and she smiled. "She is not of the butterfly breed," said Giuseppina von Stum in a contemptuous voice.

  Her words were followed by an uncomfortable silence.

  "Last time that I came from Italy," finally said Virginia Casardi with her American accent, "I brought an Italian butterfly with me."

  "A butterfly? What an idea!" exclaimed Agatha Ratibor. She looked angry, almost hurt.

  "A Roman butterfly from the Appian Way," said Virginia. And she told us that the butterfly had dropped into her hair one evening, while she was having supper with some friends in that inn with the odd name near the tomb of Cecilia Metalla.