Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "They are not bad, I know," de Foxá said. "They are like children. But I'm afraid of children."

  "To show them that you are not frightened, you must say 'Maljanne' in a loud voice and, looking straight at them, drain your glass in one gulp."

  "I'm done for," de Foxá said. "Another glass and I am done for."

  "For God's sake!" I said to him. "Don't get drunk! When a Spaniard is drunk, he is dangerous."

  "Señor Ministio," said a Finnish officer, Major von Hartmann, in Spanish to de Foxá, "during the Civil War in Spain, I amused myself by teaching my friends of the Tercio how to play the puukko game. It's a very amusing game. Shall I teach it to you too, Señor Ministro?"

  "I don't see the need of it," said de Foxá suspiciously.

  Major von Hartmann, who had been at the Pinerolo Cavalry School and had fought in Spain as a volunteer in Franco's army, is a courteous and willful man,- he likes to be obeyed.

  "Don't you want me to teach you? Why? It's a game that you must learn, Señor Ministro. Look. The left hand with the fingers spread out is placed on the table, the puukko is grasped in the right, and with a sharp thrust the knife's blade is driven into the table between two fingers." While he spoke he raised his puukko and made a thrust between the fingers of his open hand. The point of the knife stuck into the table between his thumb and his forefinger.

  "Did you see how it is done?" asked von Hartmann.

  "Valgame Dios!—God help me!" said de Foxá growing pale.

  "Won't you try, Señor Ministro?" asked von Hartmann, offering his puukko to de Foxá.

  "I would be glad to try it," said de Foxá, "but I cannot spread my fingers. My fingers are like those of a duck."

  "Odd!" said the incredulous von Hartmann. "Let me see!"

  "It isn't worth your trouble," de Foxá said hiding his hands behind his back. "It's a blemish, a simple fault of nature. I cannot spread my fingers."

  "Let me see!" said von Hartmann.

  They all bent over the table to see the Spanish Minister's fingers that were shaped like a duck's, and de Foxá tried to conceal his hands under the table, stuck them into his pockets, thrust them behind his back.

  "Are you web-footed?" the Governor said grasping his puukko. "Show us your hands, sir!"

  They brandished their knives as they leaned over the table.

  "Web-footed?" said de Foxá, "I'm not web-footed. Not quite web-footed, if you please. There's only a little skin between my fingers."

  "The skin must be cut," the Governor said raising his long puukko. "It isn't natural to have les pattes d'oie—goose feet."

  "What? Les pattes d'oie?" said von Hartmann. "You already have crow's feet at your age, Señor Ministro'. Show me your eyes!"

  "His eyes?" asked the Governor. "Why his eyes?"

  "You, too, have crow's feet," de Foxá said. "Show them your eyes."

  "My eyes?" the Governor said in an uneasy voice.

  They were leaning over the table, looking at the Governor's eyes.

  "Maljanne," said the Governor raising his glass.

  "Maljanne," they repeated in a chorus.

  "You do not wish to drink with us, sir?" the Governor said reproachfully to de Foxá.

  "Governor, gentlemen!" the Spanish Minister said seriously, getting to his feet, "I cannot drink any more. I am going to be sick."

  "You are ill?" asked Kaarlo Hillilä. "Are you really ill? Have another drink! Maljanne."

  "Maljanne," said de Foxá without raising his glass.

  "Have another drink!" the Governor said. "When one is ill, one must drink."

  "For God's sake, Augustin, drink!" I said to de Foxá. "If they notice that you are not drunk, you're lost! So they won't see that you are not drunk, Augustin, you must drink." In the company of Finns one must drink. If anyone does not drink with them, if anyone does not get drunk with them, if anyone falls two or three Maljannes or two or three glasses behind, he becomes a person to be looked on with distrust and suspicion. "For God's sake, Augustin, don't let them discover that you are not drunk!"

  "Maljanne," said De Foxá with a sigh and raised his glass.

  "Drink, sir!" the Governor said.

  "God help me!" exclaimed de Foxá shutting his eyes and draining his glass brimming with brandy.

  The Governor again refilled the glasses and said "Maljanne."

  "Maljanne," echoed de Foxá raising his glass.

  "For God's sake, Augustin, don't get drunk!" I said. "A drunken Spaniard is fearful. Remember that you are the Minister of Spain."

  "I don't give a damn!" said de Foxá. "Maljanne."

  "The Spaniards," von Hartmann said, "don't know how to drink. During the siege of Madrid I was with the Tercio in front of University City...."

  "What?" de Foxá said. "We Spaniards don't know how to drink?"

  "For God's sake, Augustin, remember that you are the Minister of Spain!"

  "Suomelle!" de Foxá said raising his glass. Suomelle! means, "To Finland!"

  "Arriba Espana!" said von Hartmann.

  "For God's sake, don't get drunk, Augustin!"

  "To hell with them! Suomelle!" de Foxá said.

  "Long live America!" said the Governor.

  "Long live America!" said de Foxá.

  "Long live America!" the others echoed in a chorus raising their glasses.

  "Long live Germany, long live Hitler!" said the Governor.

  "To hell with them!" de Foxá said.

  "Long live Mussolini!" the Governor said.

  "To hell with him!" I said with a smile and raised my glass.

  "To hell with him!" said the Governor.

  "To hell with him!" all the others called in a chorus and raised their glasses.

  "America is Finland's staunch friend," the Governor said. "There are many hundreds of thousands of Finns in the United States. America is our second fatherland."

  "America," de Foxá said, "is the Finns' paradise. When Europeans die, they hope to go to heaven. When Finns die, they hope to go to America."

  "When I die," the Governor said, "I shall not care to go to America. I shall stay in Finland."

  "Naturally!" said Jaakko Leppo fixing a surly eye on de Foxá. "Dead or alive, we mean to stay in Finland."

  "We certainly mean to stay in Finland when we die," the others said gazing with hostile eyes at de Foxá.

  "I want some caviar," de Foxá said.

  "You want some caviar?" asked the Governor.

  "I'm very fond of caviar," de Foxá said.

  "Is there much caviar in Spain?" asked Olavi Koskinnen, the Prefect of Rovaniemi.

  "Once upon a time we had Russian caviar," replied de Foxá.

  "Russian caviar?" said the Governor frowning.

  "Russian caviar is excellent," de Foxá said. "It is very much liked in Madrid."

  "Russian caviar is very bad," said the Governor.

  "Colonel Merikallio," said de Foxá, "told me a very funny story about Russian caviar."

  "Colonel Merikallio is dead," Jaakko Leppo said.

  "We were on the Ladoga shore," went on de Foxá, "in the Raikkola forest. Some Finnish rangers had found a box full of dark grayish grease in a Russian trench. One day Colonel Merikallio entered a first line dugout in which some rangers were greasing their snow boots. He sniffed the air and said 'What a strange smell!' It was a fishy smell. 'It's this shoe grease that stinks of fish,' said a ranger showing the tin to the Colonel. It was a tin of caviar."

  "Russian caviar is fit only for greasing boots," the Governor said with contempt.

  Just then a waiter threw open the door and announced, "General Dietl!"

  "Sir," the Governor said, rising and turning toward de Foxá, "the German General Dietl, the hero of Narvik, the supreme commander of the Northern Front, has done me the honor of accepting my invitation. I am glad and proud, sir, that you will meet General Dietl in my house!"

  An unusual noise came from outside. It was a chorus of barks, meows and grunts, as if dogs, cats and wild pigs were
fighting in the hall of the palace. We looked at each other in amazement. Suddenly the door opened and General Dietl appeared on the threshold. He crawled in on all fours followed by a group of officers also on all fours—one after the other. This strange procession, barking, grunting and meowing moved toward the center of the room, where General Dietl, getting to his feet and standing stiffly at attention, raised his hand to his cap and, stretching his arms out wide, in a thundering voice, shouted the customary Finnish wish to people after a sneeze: "Nuha!" I gazed at the extraordinary appearance of the man standing before us; tall, thin, or rather spare than thin, he was a piece of ancient wood roughly shaped by an old Bavarian carpenter. His features were Gothic, resembling wood carvings by an ancient German master. His eyes had a lively glitter that were wild and at the same time childish; his nostrils were extraordinarily hairy, his forehead and cheeks were cut by countless fine wrinkles, just like the cracks in an old, well-seasoned piece of wood. His dark smooth hair, cut short and drawn down over his brow like the fringes of Masaccio's pageboys gave his face both a monkish and youthful appearance that was unpleasantly accentuated by a twist of his mouth when he laughed. His movements were abrupt, restless and feverish, and revealed a morbid strain of character, a presence in, around and within him of something that he spurned, of something that he felt betrayed and threatened him. His right hand was maimed. Even the hampered and cut off motion of that stricken hand seemed to indicate a hidden suspicion of something that lay in ambush threatening him. He was still a youngish man of about fifty. But even he, just as his young Bavarian and Tirolean Alpenjägers scattered through the wild forests of Lapland in the marshes and the tundra of the Arctic region, along the huge front from Petsamo and from the Fishermen Peninsula, down along the banks of the Liza as far as Alakurti and Salla—even he showed in the greenish, yellowish color of his skin and in his humble, downcast looks the signs of that slow, fatal decay, not unlike leprosy, to which human beings fall easy prey in the extreme North—a senile decay that rots the hair, eats away teeth, cuts deep wrinkles in the face and wraps the still-living human frame in a greenish, yellowish shroud that envelops decomposing bodies. Suddenly he looked at me. His glance was the glance of a tame and resigned animal, he had something humble and despairing in his eyes that shocked me deeply. He gazed at me with the same wonderful and bestial eyes, with the same mysterious expression with which German soldiers, Dietl's young Alpenjägers—toothless, bald, wrinkled, with white thin noses like corpses—roamed sad and self-absorbed through the forests of Lapland.

  "Nuha!" shouted Dietl. Then he added, "Where's Elsa?"

  Elsa came in. Small, thin, gentle, dressed like a doll, Elsa Hillilä, the Governor's daughter, who was eighteen but still looked like a child, entered through a door at the end of the huge room and carried a large silver tray lined with glasses of punch. She walked slowly across the pink birch floor, taking short, quick steps with her small feet. With a smile, she approached General Dietl and said with a graceful curtsy, "Haivää päivää—Good day."

  "Haivää päivää," said Dietl with a bow. He took a glass of punch from the silver tray, raised it and shouted, "Nuha!" The officers on his staff took their glasses of punch from the tray, raised them and shouted, "Nuha!" Dietl tilted his head back, swallowed the drink down in one gulp, and his officers followed his example with a simultaneous jerk. The gamy wild smell of punch, sweetish and sticky, spread through the room. It was the same sweetish smell that reindeer have in the rain, the smell of reindeer's milk. I half closed my eyes and thought I was back in the Inari forest by the lake at the mouth of the Juutuanjoki.

  It was raining, the sky was an eyeless face—a dead white face. The rain murmured constantly in the leaves of the trees and the grass. An old Lapp woman, sitting by the shore of the lake, her pipe between her teeth, gazed at me impassively, never batting an eyelash. A flock of reindeer was grazing in the wood; they raised their eyes and looked at me. Their eyes were humble and despairing with the mysterious look of the dead. The smell of reindeer's milk spread through the rain. On the shore of the lake, beneath the trees, sat a group of German soldiers, their faces covered with masks of mosquito netting, their hands protected with thick gloves of reindeer leather. Their eyes were humble and despairing; in their eyes, too, was the mysterious look of the dead.

  General Dietl grasped little Elsa around the waist and, dragging her across the room, danced to the waltz that the others were singing to, to the accompaniment of handclaps and the jingle of glasses struck with the handles of puukkos and Alpenjägers' knives. A group of young officers standing by a window were drinking silently and watching. One of them turned his face and looked at me without seeing me; I recognized Prince Frederick Windischgrätz, smiled at him from across the room and called him by his nickname, Friki; he turned the other way, searching for the voice that had called him. Who was hailing him out of the remote past?

  The man who was standing before me was old. He was no longer the young Friki of Rome, Florence and Forte dei Marmi; yet something of his former gentleness remained, but his gentleness now had in it something corrupt. His brow was darkened by a white, almost ghostly shadow. I watched him raising his glass, moving his lips in order to say "Nuha!" and throw back his head to drink. The bones in his face appeared to be frail and close to the skin, his skull showed white through the thinning hair, and the dead skin of his forehead shone softly. He was losing his hair, his teeth were loose in his mouth. Behind his waxen ears the nape was as hollow, frail and tender as a sick child's—a frail nape of an aged man. His delicate hands shook when he put his glass on the table. Friki was twenty-five and he already had the mysterious look of the dead.

  I went up to Frederick and said softly, "Friki." Slowly Friki turned and slowly he recognized me,- he looked me over sadly, explored my own decomposing features, my weary mouth, my pale eyes. He pressed my hand in silence; we looked at each other and smiled for a moment, and during that long moment Frederick reappeared to me on the shore of Forte dei Marmi— the sun flowed like a river of honey over the sand, the fir trees around my house dripped a golden light as warm as honey,- only by now Clara had married Prince von Fürstenberg and Suni was in love. We raised our eyes and gazed through the window at the white glow of the leaves, the water and the sky. Poor Friki, I thought.

  Frederick was standing motionless in front of the window, and he scarcely breathed as he stared in silence at the huge Lapp forest, at those green and silvery perspectives of rivers, lakes and woody tunturit growing distant and spreading out beneath a white frozen sky. I passed my hand lightly over Frederick's arm, and—perhaps it was a caress. Frederick turned his face to me, his skin was yellow and wrinkled, his eyes were shining, humble and despairing. Suddenly I recognized his look.

  I recognized his look and began to tremble. He had the look of a beast; I thought with horror that he had the mysterious look of a beast. He had the eyes of a reindeer—the humble, despairing eyes of a reindeer. I wanted to say to him, "No, Friki, not you," but he looked at me in silence, like a reindeer, with humble and despairing eyes.

  The other officers, Frederick's companions, were young too, perhaps twenty, twenty-five or thirty, and they all bore the same marks of age, decomposition and death on their yellow, wrinkled faces. All of them had the humble and despairing eyes of reindeer. In every face, in every eye was the beautiful, wonderful tameness, the sadness of wild beasts,- each had that absorbed and melancholy madness of beasts, their mysterious innocence, their terrible sorrow—that fearful Christian pity that beasts have. It occurred to me that beasts were Christ, and my lips trembled and my hands shook. I looked at Frederick. I looked at his companions, and every one of them had the same withered, wrinkled face, the same bare brow, the same toothless smile, the same look of a reindeer. Even cruelty, even German cruelty had gone out of those faces. They had the look of Christ, the look of a beast. Suddenly I was reminded of what I had been told when I had first reached Lapland, of what everyone talked about in low voices,
as if it were a mysterious thing, in fact it was mysterious, a forbidden subject; I was reminded of what I had been told since I had arrived in Lapland about those young German soldiers, those Alpenjägers of General Dietl's, who had hung themselves from trees in the depths of the forests, or who sat for days on the shores of a lake gazing at the skyline and then shot themselves through their heads, or else were driven by a wonderful madness, almost an amorous fantasy—roaming through the woods like wild beasts and threw themselves into the still waters of the lakes, or who stretched themselves on beds of lichen under the firs that roared in the wind and waited for death—letting themselves die slowly in the abstract, frozen loneliness of the forest.

  No, Friki, not you, I wanted to say to him, but Frederick asked me, "Did you see my brother in Rome?" I replied, "Yes, I saw him one evening before I left, at the Excelsior Bar," and yet I knew that Hugo was dead, that Prince Hugo Windischgrätz, an officer in the Italian Flying Corps, had come down over Alexandria wrapped in flames. But I answered: "Yes, I saw him one evening at the Excelsior Bar. Marita Guglielmi was with him." Frederick asked, "How is he?" And I replied, "He is well. He inquired about you and sent you his greetings," and yet I knew that Hugo was dead.

  "Didn't he give you a letter for me?" asked Frederick.

  "I saw him only for a moment that evening, and he asked me to bring you his greetings," I answered; yet I knew that Hugo was dead.

  Frederick said, "He is a nice fellow, Hugo is." And I said, "Yes, a really nice fellow. Everybody likes him and he sent you his love," and yet I knew that Hugo was dead. Frederick looked at me: "I wake up some nights and think that Hugo is dead," he said, and looked at me with the eyes of a wild beast, his reindeer eyes—with that mysterious wild beast look that is in the eyes of the dead.

  "Why do you think that your brother is dead? I saw him at the Excelsior Bar, before I left Rome," I answered, and yet I knew that Hugo was dead.

  "Is there any harm in being dead?" asked Frederick—"there is no harm in it; it is not forbidden. Do you think it is forbidden to be dead?"