Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "J'ai pitié d'etre femme," said Louise softly in that Potsdam French of hers. "I'm sorry I am a woman."

  PART FIVE

  The Reindeer

  XV. Naked Men

  THE GOVERNOR of Lapland, Kaarlo Hillilä, raised his glass and said, "Maljanne." We were dining in the Governor's palace at Rovaniemi, Lapland's capital built on the Arctic Polar Circle. "The Arctic Circle runs right under the table between our feet," said Kaarlo Hillilä. Count Augustin de Foxá, Spain's Minister to Finland looked under the table; there was a burst of laughter and de Foxá whispered softly through his teeth, "Damned drunks!" Everyone was drunk and pale, their brows sweaty, their eyes staring and glistening—those Finnish eyes that alcohol tinges with mother-of-pearl lights.

  I said to de Foxá, "Augustin, you are drinking too much." Augustin replied, "Yes, you are right. I'm drinking too much, but this is my last glass." Then, on Olavi Koskinnen's raising his glass and saying, "Maljanne," de Foxá replied. "Thanks, I'm not drinking any more." The Governor stared at him and said, "Are you refusing to drink our health?"

  Softly, I whispered to de Foxá, "For God's sake, Augustin, don't be reckless! You must always say 'Yes,' always 'Yes,' for God's sake!" And de Foxá said, "Yes, always Yes." At intervals he raised his glass saying "Maljanne," and his face grew redder, his brow glistened with sweat and his eyes wavered behind his misty spectacles. Heaven help us! I thought, looking at de Foxá.

  It was close to midnight. The sun, wrapped in a thin veil of mist, shone on the horizon like an orange wrapped in tissue paper. The ghostly light of the North, penetrating in frozen gusts through the window illuminated the huge hall where we had been at the table for six hours. The hall was decorated in an ultramodern Finnish style that has the blinding glare of an operating room—a low ceiling, white-painted walls and a floor of pinkish birch wood. The large windows, long and narrow, looked out on the wide valleys of the Kemi and the Ounas, on the wooded horizon of the Ounasvaara. Ancient ryyas, those tapestries that Lapp herdsmen and Finnish peasants weave on their rustic looms, hung on the walls side by side with fine prints of the Swedes, Schjöldebrand and Aveelen, and of the French Viscount de Beaumont. Among the others was one ryya of great value: trees, reindeer, bows and arrows were woven in pink, gray, green and black; there was another extremely rare one in which the dominant colors were white, pink, green and brown. The prints showed landscapes of East Bothnia and Lapland, views along the Oulu, the Kemi and the Ounas rivers, seascapes of the Tome harbor and of the Tori of Rovaniemi. At the end of the eighteenth century, when Schjölderbrand, Aveleen and Viscount Beaumont made those beautiful etchings, Rovaniemi was only a large village of Finnish pioneers, reindeer-breeders and Lapp fishermen,- a village of small cabins built of rough-hewn logs and with high stockades around them for protection,- the entire village was herded around the Tori, the cemetery and the fine stained-wood church built by the Italian, Bassi, in a neoclassical style that despite its Swedish origin bears traces of the France of Louis XV and of Catherine's Russia—a wood that is found in the white lacquered furniture of the old houses of Finnish pioneers in northern East Bothnia and Lapland. Between the windows and above the doors hung panoplies of ancient puukkos, their blades hand wrought and their handles covered with soft, short-haired reindeer skin. Each of the guests had a puukko hanging from his belt.

  The Governor sat at the head of the table on a chair covered with a white bear skin. For some unexplained reason I sat at the Governor's right, while the Minister of Spain, Count Augustin de Foxá, was at his left. De Foxá was furious. "Not for myself, don't you know?" he said to me, "but for Spain."

  Titu Michailescu was drunk and said to him, "Ah, it's on behalf of Spain, isn't it? On behalf of your Spain?"

  I tried to calm him down. "It isn't my fault," I said.

  "You are not representing Italy, are you? Why then are you sitting on his right?" asked de Foxá.

  "He represents Italy, doesn't he? Don't you represent your Italy, Malaparte?" said Michailescu.

  "To hell with you!" said Augustin.

  I am fascinated by the talk of drunks so I listened to Michailescu and de Foxá wrangling with the ceremonious rage of drunken people.

  "Don't worry, the Governor is left-handed," said Michailescu.

  "You're wrong; he is not left-handed. He squints," replied de Foxá.

  "Ah, if he squints, it is a different matter, and you should not grumble," said Michailescu.

  "Do you imagine he squints on purpose to make me sit on his left?" asked de Foxá.

  "Most certainly. That's just why he squints," replied Michailescu.

  Then Count Augustin de Foxá, the Minister of Spain, turned to Kaarlo Hillilä, the Governor of Lapland and said: "Sir, I am seated on your left. This is not my place."

  Kaarlo Hillilä gazed at him with surprise. "Why isn't it your place?"

  De Foxá made a slight bow. "Don't you think that I should be seated in Malaparte's place?"

  Kaarlo Hillilä looked at him with growing surprise: "Why is that?" He said to me, "You wish to change places?"

  Everyone looked at me in surprise.

  "Not at all. This is my place," I replied.

  "You see?" said the Governor triumphantly, turning to the Spanish Minister. "He is seated in his right place."

  Then Titu Michailescu said to de Foxá, "Come, my dear Augustin, can't you see that the Governor is ambidextrous?"

  De Foxá blushed, wiped his glasses with a napkin and said with an embarrassed air, "Yes, you're right. I had not noticed it."

  I looked severely at Augustin. "You've had too much to drink," I said to him.

  "I am sorry!" replied Augustin with a deep sigh.

  We had been sitting at the table for six hours and after the kiapu, the red Kemi prawns, after the Swedish hors d'oeuvre, after caviar, siika, and smoked reindeer tongue, after the huge Cunas salmon—pink as a girl's lips—after roast reindeer and baked bear's paws, after a cucumber salad dressed with sugar, on the misty horizon of the table between the empty bottles of schnapps, Moselle and Château Lafite, in its dawn-tinted sky the brandy finally appeared. We all sat motionless, sunk in that deep silence of Finnish dinners when the brandy hour strikes and stared at each other fixedly, breaking that ritual silence only to say "Maljanne"

  Though we had finished eating, the jaws of the Governor made a dull, continuous, almost menacing noise. Kaarlo Hillilä was a little over thirty, stocky, with a short neck sunk deeply between his shoulders. I studied his thick fingers, his athletic shoulders, his short muscular arms. His eyes were small, cut aslant beneath two heavy, red eyelids under his narrow brow. His hair was blond, curly, almost frizzy—and as short as a fingernail. His bluish lips were swollen and cracked. When he spoke he lowered his head, resting his chin on his chest and pursing his lips, and looked up only now and again. A wild and cunning look, quick and violent with something wrathful and cruel in it, glittered in his eyes.

  "Himmler is a genius," said Kaarlo Hillilä, banging his fist on the table. That very morning he had had a four-hour interview with Himmler and he was exceedingly proud of it.

  "Heil Himmler," said de Foxá raising his glass.

  "Heil Himmler," said Kaarlo Hillilä and, staring at me with a severe and reproachful glance, added, "and you would have us believe that you met him, spoke to him and did not recognize him?"

  "I repeat it," I said. "I did not know it was Himmler."

  A few nights before a group of German officers were standing in front of the elevator, in the hall of the Pohjanhovi Hotel. On the threshold of the elevator cage stood a medium-sized man in a Hitler uniform, who looked like Stravinsky. A man with Mongolian features, high cheekbones and near-sighted eyes that resembled fish eyes—white behind the thick lenses, as if seen through an aquarium glass. His odd face wore a cruel, absent-minded expression. He spoke in a loud voice and laughed. After a while he closed the sliding door of the elevator and was about to press the electric button, when I came up on the run, pushed my
way through the group of officers and, after sliding open the door, stepped inside before the officers could stop me. The personage in the Hitler uniform made a gesture as if to push me back; this amazed me so that I pushed him back in turn and, having shut the door, I pressed the button. Thus it happened that I found myself in a cage of iron alone with Himmler. He looked at me with surprise and perhaps with a trace of irritation. He was pale, and he seemed to me rather uneasy. He took refuge in a corner of the cage, where, with his hands stretched out as if ready to defend himself against a sudden assault, and panting a little, he stared at me with his fish's eyes. I was puzzled. Through the glass door of the elevator I saw the officers, followed by Gestapo men, bounding up the stairs at great speed and knocking against each other on the landings. I turned to Himmler and smilingly apologized for pressing the button before I had inquired what floor he wanted. "Third," he said smiling, and as I thought, he appeared reassured. "I also am on the third," I said.

  The elevator stopped on the third floor. I opened the door and made way for him, but Himmler bowed, pointed to the door with a courtly gesture and I went first under the wondering eyes of the officers and Gestapo men.

  I had no sooner stretched out between the sheets when an SS soldier knocked at my door. Himmler was inviting me to have a drink of punch with him in his apartment. "Himmler? Perkele!" I said to myself. Perkele means "devil" and is a taboo word in Finnish. Himmler? What did he want with me? Where had I ever met him? It never entered my mind that he was the man in the elevator. Himmler? It was too much trouble to get up and, besides, it was an invitation, not an order. I sent a message to Himmler thanking him for his invitation and asking to be excused. I was dead tired and had already gone to bed. Shortly afterward somebody knocked again. This time it was a Gestapo agent. He brought me a bottle of brandy as a gift from Himmler. I put two glasses on the table and offered the Gestapo agent a drink. I said, "Prosit."

  "Heil Hitler," replied the agent.

  "Ein Liter—One liter," said I. The corridor was watched by Gestapo agents, the hotel was surrounded by SS men armed with tommy guns. I said, "Prosit"

  "Heil Hitler," replied the Gestapo agent.

  "Ein Liter," I said. Next morning the manager of the hotel politely requested me to give up my room, and moved me to a double room on the first floor, at the end of a hall. The second bed was occupied by a Gestapo agent.

  "You did not recognize him on purpose," said my friend Jaakko Leppo, staring at me with hostile eyes.

  "I had never seen him before. How could I recognize him?" I answered.

  "Himmler is an extraordinary man, an extremely interesting man," said Jaakko Leppo. "You should have accepted his invitation."

  "He is a person with whom I don't want to have anything to do," I answered.

  "You're wrong," said the Governor. "Before I met him, I also thought that Himmler was a terrible character, with a pistol in his right hand and a whip in his left. After talking for four hours with him, I realized that Himmler is exceptionally well read, an artist, a real artist and a high-minded man who responds to everything human. I'll say even more: a sentimental man." The Governor said, "A sentimental man." He added that after having had personal visits with him, and having had the honor of conversing with him for four hours, if he were called upon to paint his portrait, he would have painted him with the Gospels in his right hand and the Prayer Book in his left. The Governor actually said, "with the Gospels in his right hand and the Prayer Book in his left," and he banged his fist on the table.

  De Foxá, Michailescu and I were unable to repress a discreet smile, and de Foxá, turning to me, asked, "When you met him in the elevator, what did he have in his hands, a pistol and a whip, or the Gospels and the Prayer Book?"

  "He had nothing in his hands," I replied.

  "Then it wasn't Himmler, it was someone else," said de Foxá gravely.

  "The Gospels and the Prayer Book! Precisely!" said the Governor banging his fist upon the table.

  "You pretended not to recognize him on purpose," said my friend Jaakko Leppo. "You knew perfectly well that it was Himmler."

  "You ran a great risk," said the Governor. "Anyone present might have thought it was a criminal attempt and shot you."

  "You'll certainly get in trouble about it," said Jaakko Leppo.

  "Maljanne," said de Foxá raising his glass.

  "Maljanne," all the others replied in a chorus.

  The guests sat stiffly, resting heavily against the backs of their chairs and shaking their heads slightly as if a violent wind were blowing. The dry and pungent odor of brandy was spreading through the room. Jaakko Leppo stared intently at de Foxá, Michailescu and me, with a peculiar hostile flash in his dull eyes. "Maljanne," said Governor Kaarlo Hillilä from time to time, raising his glass. "Maljanne," echoed the others in a chorus. Through the large windows I gazed at the sad, deserted, hopeless landscape of the Kemi and the Ounas valleys, those stupendously transparent and deep perspectives of forest, water and sky. A limitless horizon, chalky with the violent and pure bleached light of the North, touched the end of the distant rolling tunturit, those wooded hills in whose soft folds are concealed marshes, lakes, forests and the winding course of the great Arctic rivers. I was gazing at that empty lofty sky, that squalid abyss of light hanging over the cold glow of leaves and water. All the secret, mysterious meaning of that ghostly country was revealed in the color of the sky, in that frozen loneliness aglow with a wonderful white light and a dead and frozen splendor of chalk. Beneath that sky, in which the pale disk of the nocturnal sun seemed to be painted on a smooth white wall, the trees, the rocks, the grass and the water dripped with a queer substance, soft and slimy; that chalky light was the ghostly, dazzling light of the North, and in that still, pure glow the human faces looked like masks of chalk, blind and dumb. Faces without eyes, without lips, without noses—shapeless and smooth masks of chalk, resembling the egg-shaped heads of the characters painted by de Chirico.

  Turning with a smile to the Governor, I said that his features and the features of all his guests recalled to my mind the faces of the sleeping soldiers in the Tori on the night I had reached Rovaniemi. They had been asleep on the ground on beds of straw. Their faces seemed carved from chalk: eyeless, lipless, noseless, smooth and egg-shaped. The eyes of the sleepers were delicate and sensitive surfaces on which the white light rested with a light timid touch, forming a small warm nest—just a drop of a shadow, just a drop of blue. The only living thing in those faces was that drop of a shadow.

  "An egg-shaped face? My face also egg-shaped?" asked the Governor gazing at me with uneasy surprise and touching his eyes, his nose and his mouth.

  "Yes," I replied. "Just like an egg." And I told them what I had seen at Sodankylä, on the road to Petsamo. The night was clear, the sky white, the trees, the hills, the houses, everything seemed made of chalk. The night sun looked like a blind eye without eyelashes. After a while I saw an ambulance coming down Ivalo Road. It stopped in front of the post office by the small hotel that housed the hospital. A few white-clothed attendants—ah, the dazzling whiteness of those linen uniforms!—began lifting the stretchers out of the ambulance and ranging them on the grass. The grass was white, mellowed by a transparent bluish veil. On the stretchers in heavy, motionless frozen postures, lay statues of chalk, their heads oval and smooth, without eyes, without noses, without mouths. Their faces were egg-shaped.

  "Statues?" asked the Governor. "Do you really mean statues? Chalk statues? And they were being carried to the hospital in an ambulance?"

  "Yes, statues," I replied. "Chalk statues. Suddenly a gray cloud spread over the sky, and out of the sudden twilight around me, revealing their real shape, emerged the beings and things that before had been merged into that still white glow. The chalk statues on the stretchers were abruptly changed into human shapes by the sudden shadow from that cloud. Those chalk masks were turned into living human features. They were men, they were wounded soldiers. They followed me with their wonde
ring and puzzled glances, for I, too, had suddenly turned before their eyes from a chalk statue into a man—a living man, made of flesh and shadow."

  "Maljanne," gravely said the Governor gazing at me with an amazed and puzzled look.

  "Maljanne," echoed the others in a chorus and raised their glasses filled to the brim with brandy.

  "What's Jaakko doing? Has he gone mad?" said de Foxá clutching my arm.

  Jaakko Leppo was sitting on his chair, his body motionless, his head thrust slightly forward. Without gesturing he spoke in a low voice, his face impassive, his eyes burning with a black flame. Very slowly his right hand had slipped along his side, unsheathed the bone-handled puukko hanging from his belt, and suddenly, he had raised his short thick arm and was holding the knife and staring into Titu Michailescu's face. Everyone followed his lead and unsheathed their puukkos.

  "No, that's not the way it should be done," the Governor said. He also drew his puukko and imitated the movements of a bear hunter.

  "I've got him, straight through the heart," said Titu Michailescu, turning slightly pale.

  "Like this, straight through the heart," repeated the Governor, making a downward thrust with his knife.

  "And the bear drops to the ground," said Michailescu.

  "No, he does not drop at once," Jaakko Leppo said. "He moves a few steps forward, then sways and drops. It's a most wonderful moment."

  "They are all dead drunk," de Foxá said softly clutching my arm. "I am beginning to be afraid."

  I said to him, "For God's sake, don't show them that you are afraid. If they notice that you are frightened, they are apt to take offense. They are not bad, but when they are drunk they are like children."