Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "What is the odd name of that inn?" asked Dornberg.

  "It is called 'One Never Dies Here,'" replied Virginia.

  Giuseppina von Stum began laughing, stared at me, then said softly, "Horrible!" and covered her mouth with her hand.

  "A Roman butterfly is not a butterfly like any other," said Virginia. She had brought that butterfly from Rome to Berlin by air in a cardboard box and she had released it in her bedroom. The butterfly fluttered about the room a while, then it settled on the mirror, where it stayed motionless for a few days; now and then it only moved its very delicate pale blue antennae. "It looked at itself in the mirror," said Virginia. One morning, a few days later, she found it dead on the mirror.

  "It had drowned itself in the mirror," said Marquise Theodoli. "That is the story of Narcissus."

  "Do you believe that the butterfly drowned itself?" asked Veronica.

  "Butterflies love to die," said Giuseppina von Stum softly.

  Everybody laughed and I looked at Giuseppina, annoyed by that silly laughter.

  "Its reflection killed it, its own reflection looking out of the mirror," said Countess Emo.

  "I think that its reflection died first," said Virginia. "That's the way things always are."

  "Its reflection stayed in the mirror," said Baroness Edelstam. "That butterfly did not die. It flew away."

  "Papillon. It's a nice word, papillon—" said Alfieri in his silly and flirtatious voice. "Have you noticed that papillon in French is masculine, and farfalla in Italian is feminine? We are very gallant with the ladies in Italy."

  "You mean with the butterflies," said Princess von T— .

  "In German also," said Dornberg, "the name is masculine: der Schmetterling. We tend to exalt the masculine gender in Germany."

  "Der Krieg—War," said Marquise Theodoli.

  "Death, too, is masculine in Greek: the god Thanatos," said Dornberg.

  "In German the sun is feminine die Sonne." I said: "You cannot understand the history of the German people, unless you keep in mind that it is the history of a people for whom the sun is feminine."

  "Perhaps you are right," said Dornberg.

  "What is Malaparte right about?" asked Angela in an ironical tone. "The word moon is masculine in German, der Mond. That is important, too, if you want to understand the history of the German people."

  "Certainly," replied Dornberg. "That is very important!"

  "All that is mysterious in the German character," I said, "all that is morbid in it springs from the feminine gender of the sun— die Sonne."

  "Yes, we are unfortunately a very feminine people," said Dornberg.

  "Speaking of butterflies," said Alfieri turning to me, "didn't you write in one of your books that Hitler is a butterfly?"

  "No, I said that Hitler is a woman."

  They all looked at one another, surprised and a little embarrassed.

  "Just so," said Alfieri, "to compare Hitler with a butterfly seemed to me absurd."

  Everybody laughed and Virginia said, "It would never occur to me to press Hitler between the leaves of Mein Kampf like a butterfly. It's a very odd idea."

  "It's a school girl's idea," said Dornberg smiling through the hair of his short faunlike beard.

  It was the time of the Verdunkel, and Alfieri, not to miss the view of the frozen Wannsee glittering under the moon, instead of having the curtains drawn to darken the windows, had the candles extinguished. By degrees the ghostly reflection of the moon like faraway music invaded the room and spread over the glassware, the china and the silver. We were left tense and silent in the silvery half light; the waiters in that lunar half light moved silently around the table, in that Proustian light that appeared to be the reflection "of an almost curdled sea, of the bluish color of milk." The night was clear, without a breath of wind—the trees stood motionless against the pale sky; the snow glittered in a bluish whiteness.

  We sat a long time gazing at the lake. A proud fear was in that silence, the same anguish that I had noticed before in the laughter and the voices of those young German women. "It's too beautiful," all at once burst forth Veronica, rising suddenly. "I don't like being sad." We all followed her into the drawing room flooded with light, and the pleasant conversation lasted far into the night. Giuseppina came to sit next to me in silence. At one moment I became aware that she was about to speak to me, but instead, she looked at me, rose and left the drawing room. I did not see her again that evening and I was under the impression that she had driven away because I thought I heard the crunch of wheels on snow and the fading hum of a motor. It was two in the morning when we left Alfieri and Wannsee. I drove back to Berlin with Veronica and Agatha. On the way I asked Veronica whether she knew Giuseppina von Stum well. "She is Italian," replied Veronica.

  "She is rather crazy," added Agatha in her slightly squeaky voice.

  I was in a subway car crowded with pale, sweating, dirty people with ashen faces, and suddenly I saw Giuseppina von Stum sitting in front of me with a large bag on her lap. She smiled at me and blushing said, "Good evening." Her clothes were simple, almost poor; her hands were bare, cracked by frost and creased by those short reddish cuts that bleach produces on a delicate skin. She seemed to be downcast and exhausted; she was pale and wan; her eyes had red circles and her lips were livid. As if apologizing she told me she had been out to buy something for supper and that she had had to wait in line outside a shop for four hours; now she was hurrying home, it was late and she was a little anxious about her two children who had been waiting for her at home alone. Then she added, "A hard life." She smiled as she spoke, but her voice shook, and now and then she blushed.

  She asked me for news of Italy. She wanted to go back to Italy, even for a few days—to Rome or to Umbria, to her mother's house. She was badly in need of rest, but she could not go— her duty as a German woman, and she blushed when she said "German woman," made her stay in Germany to do her share for the war.

  I said to her, "It's good to be an Italian up here, isn't it?" Dark sadness settled on her face, as though the night were settling on a sweet Italian landscape. She replied, "By now, Malaparte, I am no longer an Italian. I am a German woman," and something arose in her face, something humble and despairing. I had been told that of her husband's three sons—Baron Braun von Stum had been a widower and had three sons by his first wife—one had died in Russia, the second had been seriously crippled, and the third was lying wounded in a Berlin hospital. Of the three children she had had with Baron Braun von Stum, the second, a ten-year-old boy, had tragically drowned a few months previously in the bathing pool of an hotel in the Tirol. Giuseppina had to look after the home, sweep, wash, cook, wait in line in front of the shops, take the girl to school and nurse the baby. "I have no milk left. I am worn out, Malaparte," she said blushing. She had descended little by little into the dark and lonely feminine world of Germany at war, into that gloomy world, filled with anguish arid bereft of grace and hope.

  Minister Baron Braun von Stum was proud that his wife shared the want, suffering and privations that war had inflicted on all German women. He had not wanted Giuseppina to enjoy the privileges granted to the wives of diplomats and of the high officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Reich. "I want my wife to be an example, to share the common lot." The privations, the toil, the suffering and the dumb despair of his wife crowned his day as a loyal and faithful Prussian official. He was proud that Giuseppina worked and suffered like any other German woman. Minister Baron Braun von Stum was proud that his wife stood in line in front of the shops, that she carried home the sack with the monthly ration of coal, washed the floors and cooked the meals. He had his meals at the club connected with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, unless he was attending one of the frequent and abundant banquets. In 1942 the chef of the Ausländer Club was famous throughout Berlin. The cellar also enjoyed a justifiable reputation. He preferred red to white wine, Châteauneuf du Pape to any brand of Moselle or Rhine wine. His favorite brandy was Courvoisi
er. In winter he preferred Hennessy. "I met Monsieur Hennessy in Paris in 1936." He drove home late in the evening in a luxurious government car, and he was proud to find his wife pale, worn out and filled with fear and anguish. Minister Baron Braun von Stum was an honest and faithful functionary of the Reich, a Prussian loyal to his duty, devoted above all to the German fatherland and the Reich. Ja, ja! Heil Hitler!

  After a while she said to me, "I get off here. Good evening." It was not my station. I should have gone on to Kaiserhof, but I rose too, picked up the heavy suitcase, and said to her, "Allow me to see you home." We climbed up the stairs, went out of the subway station and walked along the streets which were already dark. The muddy snow crackled under our boots. We took an elevator to the third floor; in front of her door Giuseppina said, "Won't you come in?" But I knew that she had to cook supper for her little girl, feed the baby and set the house in order, and I replied, "Thanks, I must go. I have an important engagement. With your permission I will come some other time and then we can talk— "

  I would have liked to say to her: We shall talk about Italy. But I was too sorry for her—it seemed too cruel to talk to her about Italy. And besides who knew whether Italy really existed? Perhaps Italy was a fairy tale, a dream; who knew whether Italy still existed; who knew? Nothing existed any longer except gloomy, cruel, proud, despairing Germany. Nothing existed any longer. Italy, indeed! And so I went down the stairs laughing, and at that moment I was no longer sure that Italy existed. I went down the stairs laughing and as soon as I reached the street, I said aloud, "Italy, indeed!"

  A few months later on my way back from Finland I stopped for two days in Berlin. As usual I had only a transit visa,- as usual I was not allowed to stay in Germany more than two days. In the evening, in his Wannsee villa, Alfieri, toward the end of dinner, told me in his silly, gentle voice that Giuseppina von Stum had jumped out of a window. I was neither shocked nor grieved. For me it was an old sorrow. I had known for many months that Giuseppina had jumped out of a window. I had known about it since that evening when I had gone down the stairs laughing, spat on the muddy snow and said aloud, "Italy, indeed!"

  XIV. The Soroca Girls

  "OH. HOW difficult it is to be a woman!" said Louise.

  "Minister Baron Braun von Stum," said Ilse, "when he learned that his wife had committed suicide—"

  "Did not bat an eye. He blushed a little. He said 'Heil Hitler!' That very morning he presided as usual at the daily conference of the foreign press at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He looked perfectly calm. No German women went to the funeral of Giuseppina, not even the wives of the colleagues of the Minister Baron von Stum. Following the hearse were only a few Italian women living in Berlin, a group of Italian workmen of the Todt organization and a few officials of the Italian Embassy. Giuseppina was not worthy of the sympathy of the German women. The wives of German diplomats take pride in the suffering, the want and the hardships of the German people. The German wives of German diplomats do not jump out of windows, they do not kill themselves. Heil Hitler! Minister Baron von Stum followed the bier in the uniform worn by Hitler's diplomats; now and then he looked around suspiciously; from time to time he blushed. He felt ashamed that his wife—Ach! he had married an Italian woman—had not had the strength to withstand the suffering of the German people."

  "Sometimes I am ashamed of being a woman," said Louise softly.

  "Why, Louise? Let me tell you the story of the girls of Soroca," I said, "of Soroca in Bessarabia, on the Dneister— "

  They were poor Jewish girls who had fled into the fields and the woods to escape the hands of the Germans. The grain fields and the woods of Bessarabia, between Baltsiu and Soroca, were full of Jewish girls hiding in fear of the Germans, in fear of the hands of the Germans.

  They were not afraid of their faces, their terrible raucous voices, their blue eyes, their broad and heavy feet, but they were afraid of their hands. They were not afraid of their fair hair or their tommy guns, but they were afraid of their hands. When a column of German soldiers appeared at the end of the road, the Jewish girls hiding in the wheat and among the trunks of acacias and birches shook with fear; if one of them began crying and screaming, her companions jammed their hands over her mouth, or filled her mouth with straw; but the girl would struggle and howl—she was afraid of the German hands,- she already felt those hard smooth German hands under her dress. She already felt those iron fingers penetrating her secret flesh. They lived for days hidden in the fields amid the wheat, stretched out between the furrows among the tall golden ears as in a warm forest of golden trees,- they moved very slowly lest the golden ears should sway. Whenever the Germans saw the ears swaying in the windless air, they called "Achtung! Partisans!" and fired volleys with their tommy guns into the forest of golden wheat.

  They were Jewish girls, about eighteen to twenty years old; they were the youngest and best looking. The others, the ugly and crippled girls of Bessarabian ghettos, remained shut up in their houses, and peered from behind the curtains to watch the Germans go by and shook with fear. Maybe it was not only fear, maybe it was something else that made all these unfortunate women tremble: the hunch-backed, the lame, the halt, the scurvy-scarred, the pock-marked or those with their hair devoured by eczema. They shook with fear as they lifted the curtains to watch the German soldiers go by, and they drew back frightened by the casual glance, the involuntary gesture or the voice of some soldier; but they laughed, red in the face and sweating, within those darkened rooms, and they ran limping and bumping against each other to the window of the next room to watch the German soldiers rounding the bend in the road.

  The girls hidden in the fields and in the woods grew pale when they heard the rumble of motors, the clatter of horses, the creaking of wheels on the roads leading to Baltsiu in Bessarabia, to Soroca on the Dniester, and to the Ukraine. They lived like wild beasts, feeding on what little they could beg from the peasants, a few slices of mamaliga bread, some scraps of salted brenza. There were days when at sunset the German soldiers went out to hunt for Jewish girls in the wheat. They spread out like the fingers of a huge hand, raking the wheatfields, and they hailed one another, "Kurt! Fritz! Karl!" They had youthful slightly hoarse voices. They looked like sportsmen beating a moor to raise the partridges, quails and pheasants.

  The larks, surprised and frightened, fluttered in the dusty sunset air. The soldiers raised their faces following them with their eyes, and the hidden girls held their breath, watching the hands of the German soldiers clutching their tommy guns and appearing and disappearing amid the grain—those German hands covered with light glistening down, those hard, smooth German hands. By now the hunters were close, they stooped a little as they advanced. They could be heard breathing noisily with a slightly hoarse hiss. At last one of the girls let out a shriek, then another, and still another.

  One day the Department of Sanitation of the Eleventh German Army decided to open a military brothel in Soroca. But there were only old and ugly women in Soroca. Most of the town had been wrecked by mines and by German and Russian shells. Almost the entire population had fled and the young men had followed the Soviet Army toward the Dnieper. Only the part around the public gardens remained standing and the old castle which was built by the Genoese on the western bank of the Dniester in the midst of a maze of squat hovels made of mud and wood where wretched crowds of Tartars, Romanians, Bulgarians and Turks lived. From the top of the cliff overhanging the river, the town can be seen hemmed in between the river and the steep wooded bank. In those days the houses looked crumbling and gutted; a few beyond the public gardens were still smoldering. Such was Soroca on the Dniester when the military brothel was opened in a house close to the wall of the Genoese castle—a city in ruins, its streets cluttered with columns of soldiers, with horses and cars.

  The Department of Sanitation detailed special patrols to hunt for the Jewish girls hiding in the grain and in the woods around the town. And so, when the brothel was officially opened with an inspect
ion, very military in style, by the commander of the Eleventh Army, some ten pale trembling girls, their eyes scorched with weeping, received General von Schobert and his suite. All were very young, a few were still children. They did not wear those long silken loose gowns, red, yellow and green, with wide sleeves that are the traditional uniform of eastern brothels. They just wore their best dresses, the simple and honest clothes of middle-class girls in the provinces, so that they looked like students—some of them were students—who had gathered in the house of a friend to prepare for an examination. Their appearance was humble, shy and frightened. I had seen them go by in the street a few days before the opening of the brothel, about ten of them. They walked in the middle of the street with bundles under their arms or else carrying a leather suitcase or a parcel tied with string. Two SS men armed with tommy guns followed them. Their hair was gray with dust, wheat ears clung to their skirts, their stockings were torn,- one of them limped with one bare foot, carrying a shoe in her hand.

  A month later, when I was passing through Soroca, Sonderführer Schenck asked me one evening to go with him to see the Jewish girls in the military brothel. I refused and Schenck laughed, looking mockingly at me. "They are not prostitutes. They are girls who belong to good families," said Schenck.

  I replied, "I know that they are decent girls."

  "It isn't worth while feeling very sorry for them. They are Jewish girls."

  I replied, "I know that they are Jewish girls."

  "Well then," said Schenck, "perhaps you fear that they might feel hurt if we pay them a visit?"

  I replied, "You cannot understand some things, Schenck."

  "What is there to understand?" he asked.

  I replied, "These unfortunate Soroca girls are not prostitutes. They are not selling themselves of their own free will. They are compelled to prostitute themselves. They are entitled to respect from everyone. They are war prisoners whom you exploit in an ignoble way. What percentage of the earnings of these unfortunate girls goes to the German Command?"