Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  Then I suddenly said to him, and my voice trembled, "Oh, Friki, Hugo is dead! I saw him at the Excelsior Bar the evening before I left Rome. He was already dead. He asked me to bring you his greetings. He could not write you a letter because he was dead."

  Frederick looked at me with his reindeer eyes, and he smiled. He said, "I knew that Hugo was dead. I knew long before he died. It is a wonderful thing to be dead." He filled my glass. I took the glass that Frederick offered me and my hand was shaking. "Nuha!" Frederick said.

  I said, "Nuha!"

  "I would like to go back to Italy for a few days," Frederick said after a long minute of silence. "I would like to go back to Rome. Rome is such a young city." Then he added, "And Paula, what is she doing? Has it been long since you have seen her?"

  "I met her on the links one morning, shortly before I left Rome. I'm very fond of Paula, Friki."

  "I'm very fond of her, too," he said. Then he asked, "And Countess Ciano, what is she doing?"

  "What do you expect her to do? She does what all the others do."

  "Meaning..."

  "Nothing, Friki."

  He looked at me and smiled. Then he said, "And Alberta, what is she doing? And Luisa?"

  "Oh Friki," I replied, "they all are whores. It is fashionable nowadays in Italy to be a whore. Everybody is a whore in Italy."

  "It has always been so in Italy," said Frederick.

  "It has always been so, it will always be so. For many years I, too, have been a whore, like all the others. Later I felt nauseated by that life. I rebelled and I ended in jail. But even to end in jail is a way of being a whore. Even being a hero, even fighting for King and for country is a way of being a whore in Italy. Even to say that this is a lie and an insult to all those who have died for freedom is a way of being a whore. There is no way out, Friki."

  "It has always been so, in Italy," said Frederick. "It is always the same country, gaily beflagged down to the bottom of the same white belly:

  Down where your belly is white

  my country is calling

  with all her flags unfurled.

  "Aren't those your lines?"

  "Yes, they are mine. I wrote them in Lipari."

  "It's a very sad poem. It is called 'Ex-voto,' I think. It is a despairing poem. One feels that it has been written in prison." He looked at me, raised his glass and said, "Nuha!"

  I said, "Nuha!"

  We kept silent a long time. Frederick was gazing at me and smiling, with that humble and despairing look of a wild beast.

  Savage howls came from the end of the room. I turned and saw General Dietl, Governor Kaarlo Hillilä and Count de Foxá standing in the center of a group of German officers. Now and then Dietl's voice broke through sudden and sharp and was followed by a deafening roar of voices and laughter. I could not make out what Dietl was saying; it seemed to me that he was repeating one word, over and over, in a very loud voice,- it seemed to be the word "traurig" which means "sad." Frederick glanced around and said, "It's awful! Always carousing, day and night, while suicides among officers and men are increasing at a dizzy rate. Himmler in person has come this far north to try and put an end to this epidemic of suicides. He will place the dead under arrest. He will have them buried with tied hands. He thinks he can stop suicides by terror. He had three Alpenjägers shot yesterday because they had tried to hang themselves. Himmler does not know that to be dead is a wonderful thing." He looked at me with that look that the eyes of the dead have. "Many shoot themselves through the head. Many drown themselves in the rivers and lakes—they are the youngest among us. Others roam about the woods delirious."

  "Trrraaauuurrriiig!" General Dietl was shouting in a very loud voice, imitating the horrible hiss of the Stuka, until Air General Mensch screamed, "Boom!" imitating the terrible crash of an exploding bomb. Everyone joined in with howls, whistles and noises produced with lips, hands and feet, reproducing the crash of crumbling walls and the howling blast of shrapnel hurled against the sky by the force of explosion. "Trrraaauuurrriiig!" shouted Dietl. "Boom!" howled Mensch. And again everyone joined in the chorus of bestial sounds and noises. There was something savage and grotesque, something barbaric and childish in this scene. General Mensch was about fifty years old, short and thin,- his face was yellow and wrinkled, his mouth toothless, his hair thin and gray; his evil eyes were caught in a net of fine wrinkles. He howled, "Boom!" as he started at de Foxá with a queer look, full of hatred and contempt.

  "Halt!" suddenly shouted General Mensch raising a hand. Turning toward de Foxá he asked him rudely, "How do you say traurig in Spanish?"

  "We say triste, I think," replied de Foxá.

  "Let's try with triste," Mensch said.

  "Trrriiisssteee!" shouted General Dietl.

  "Boom!" howled Mensch. Then he raised his hand and said, "No, triste is no good. Spanish is not a warlike language."

  "Spanish is a Christian language," said de Foxá. "It is Christ's language."

  "Ah, Cristo!" Mensch said. "Let's try Cristo!"

  "Crrriiissstoooo!" shouted General Dietl.

  "Boom!" General Mensch howled. Then he raised a hand, and said, "No, Cristo is no good."

  "Cristo is not a German word," de Foxá said with a smile.

  At that moment an officer approached General Dietl and whispered to him. Dietl turned toward us and loudly said, "Gentlemen, Himmler is back from Petsamo and is waiting for us at headquarters. As loyal German soldiers, let's go to pay our respects to Himmler!"

  We drove at high speed through the deserted Rovaniemi streets that were sunk in a white sky. It could have been ten o'clock at night, or six in the morning. A pale sun was swaying above the roofs; the houses were the color of frosted glass, the river glimmered sadly through the trees.

  Soon we came to a village of military barracks that were built on the edge of a silvery birch forest just beyond the town. Here were the general headquarters of the Northern Front. An officer approached Dietl, said something to him, and Dietl turned toward us and said, laughing, "Himmler is in the sauna. Let's go and see him naked." His words were greeted by a burst of laughter. Dietl went almost on the run toward a fir-log barrack a little way off in the wood. He pushed open a door and we went inside.

  The interior of the sauna, the Finnish steambath, was occupied by a large grate and a boiler from which the water, raising a cloud of steam, dripped onto white-hot stones that were piled on the scented fire of birchwood. On the benches, ranged on shelves along the walls of the sauna, were seated or stretched out some ten naked men. They were so white, soft, flabby and defenseless, so extraordinarily naked that they seemed to have no skin. Their flesh looked like the flesh of lobsters, pale and rosy, exuding an acid crustacean smell. They had broad chests, their fat breasts were swollen and drooping. Their grim hard faces—those German faces—contrasted sharply with their white, flabby, naked limbs, and almost had the appearance of masks. Those naked men sat or lay on the benches like weary corpses. Now and then, laboriously and slowly, they raised their arms to wipe the sweat that dripped from their whitish limbs, sprinkled with yellow freckles that looked like shining scabs.

  Naked Germans are wonderfully defenseless. They are bereft of secrecy. They are no longer frightening. The secret of their strength is not in their skin or in their bones, or in their blood; it is in their uniforms. Their real skin is their uniform. If the peoples of Europe were aware of the flabby, defenseless and dead nudity concealed by the Feldgrau of the German uniform, the German Army could not frighten even the weakest and most defenseless people. A mere boy would dare to face an entire German battalion. To see them naked is to grasp the secret meaning of their national life, of their national history. They stood naked in front of us, like shy and shameful corpses. General Dietl raised his arm and shouted in a loud voice, "Heil Hitler!"

  "Heil Hitler!" replied the naked men laboriously lifting their hands that held birch switches. These switches are used for flogging, that is a traditional part of the sauna, its most sa
cred rite. But even the motion of those hands, holding the switches, was soft and defenseless.

  I thought I recognized one of the naked men seated on the lowest shelf. Sweat was streaming down his high-cheekboned face, in which nearsighted eyes, stripped of their glasses, glittered with a whitish, soft light, that is seen in the eyes of fish. He carried his head high with an air of arrogant insolence; from time to time he threw his head back, at which sudden, brusque movement, sweat ran out of the hollows of his eyes and from his nostrils and ears, as if his head were filled with water. He sat with his hands resting on his knees like a punished schoolboy. Between his forearms protruded a little rosy swollen drooping belly, the navel strangely in relief, so that it stood out against that tender rosiness like a delicate rosebud—a child's navel in an old man's belly.

  I had never seen such a naked and rosy belly; it was so tender that one was tempted to probe it with a fork. Large drops of sweat flowing down his chest glided over the skin of that soft belly and gathered in the hair like dew on a bush. The man seemed to be dissolving in water before our eyes; he sweated so much that I feared that in a short time there would be only a mass of empty flabby skin left of him, even his bones seemed to be softening, melting and becoming glutinous. The man looked like ice cream sitting in an oven. In a twinkling of an eye only a pool of perspiration on the floor would be left of him.

  When Dietl raised his arm and said, "Heil Hitler!" the man rose, and I recognized him. He was the man I had met in the elevator—it was Himmler. He stood before us, the big toes on his flat feet oddly thrust upward, his short arms dangling. Little streams of perspiration gushed like little fountains from the tips of his fingers. Around his flabby breasts grew two little circles of hair, two halos of blond hair,- perspiration gushed like milk from his nipples.

  He leaned against the wall so as not to slip on the wet, slimy floor and as he turned, he exposed protruding rotundities on which the grain of the wooden bench was imprinted like a tattoo. At last he succeeded in recovering his balance, turned, raised his arm and opened his mouth, but the sweat, streaming down his face and filling his mouth, prevented him from saying, "Heil Hitler!" And his gesture was mistaken for the signal for flogging. The other men raised their birch switches and began hitting each other first; then, by common consent, with ever-increasing energy, they applied their switches to Himmler's shoulders and back.

  The birch twigs left the white imprints of their leaves on the tender flesh that turned red at once, and then disappeared. A fleeting forest of birch leaves appeared and disappeared on Himmler's skin. The naked men raised and lowered their switches with raging energy,- their breath came in short hisses from their swollen lips. At first Himmler tried to fend them off, shielding his face with his arms, and laughed, but it was forced laughter revealing rage and fear. Later, as the switches began biting his hips, he began twisting this way and that, covering his belly with his elbows, turning about on his toes and drawing his neck into his shoulders,- he laughed with hysterical laughter while being whipped, as if he suffered more from tickling than from the birching. Finally Himmler saw the door of the sauna open behind us, stretched out his arms to push his way through and ran out the door, pursued by the naked men who never ceasing to hit him, fled toward the river into which he dived.

  "Gentlemen," said Dietl, "while we wait for Himmler to return from his bath, I invite you to have a drink in my house."

  We came out of the wood, crossed a meadow and, following Dietl, entered his little wooden house. It seemed like crossing the threshold of a dainty house in the Bavarian mountains. A nice fire of fir twigs crackled in the grate; a pleasant resinous smell spread in the warm air. We began drinking again, shouting "Nuha!" in a chorus whenever Dietl or Mensch, raising their glasses, gave the sign. After a time, while the others, gripping puukkos and Alpenjägers' knives, seated themselves around Mensch, and de Foxá pantomimed the last moments of a corrida—Mensch was the bull and de Foxá was the matador—General Dietl signaled to Frederick and me to follow him. We left the room and entered his study. An army cot stood against the wall in a corner. The floor was covered with skins of Arctic wolves; a magnificent white bear skin was spread on the cot. On the walls were tacked a number of photographs of mountains—the Towers of Vaiolet, the Marmolata, the Tofane, landscapes of the Tirol, Bavaria and Cadore. On the table next to the window in a leather frame was a photograph of a woman with three girls and a boy. The woman had a simple, pure and gentle air. From the next room came the shrill voice of General Mensch followed by outbursts of laughter, savage howls and the banging noise of hands and feet. The voice of Mensch made the windowpanes and pewter mugs on the mantel rattle.

  "We'll let those boys amuse themselves for a while," said Dietl, stretching out on his cot. He turned his eyes toward the window and he, too, had the humble and despairing eyes of a reindeer, he also had the mysterious animal look that the eyes of the dead have. A white sun aslant the trees lighted the Alpenjägers' barracks and the white houses of the officers ranged along the edge of the wood. From the river came the voices and laughter of the bathers—the laughter of Himmler of the pink belly. A bird called from the branches of a fir tree. Dietl had closed his eyes; he was asleep, one hand fallen by his side, the other on his chest—a child's hand, small and white. It is a wonderful thing to be dead. The distant roar of an engine dimmed the silvery green of the birch wood. A plane hummed through the lofty transparent sky. In the next room the orgy went on: the savage shouts, the noise of shattered glasses, hoarse voices outshouting one another, childish and violent laughter. I leaned over Dietl and scanned his yellow wrinkled face,- Dietl, the conqueror of Narvik, was a German war hero, a hero of the German people. He was another Siegfried, he was Siegfried and a cat at the same time; he also was a kapparoth, a victim, a kaputt. It was a wonderful thing to be dead.

  From the next room I heard the shrill voice of Mensch and de Foxá's deep tones, the noise of a quarrel. I went to the door. Mensch stood facing a pale and perspiring de Foxá. Each had a glass in his hand; the officers around them also were gripping their glasses.

  General Mensch said, "Let us drink to the countries that are fighting for the freedom of Europe. Let us drink to Germany, Italy, Finland, Romania, Hungary..."

  "To Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovakia!" others suggested.

  "To Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovakia!" repeated Mensch.

  "To Japan!"

  "To Japan!" Mensch repeated.

  "To Spain!" said Count de Foxá, the Spanish Minister to Finland.

  "No, not to Spain!" Mensch shouted.

  De Foxá slowly lowered his glass, his brow was pale and covered with sweat.

  "To Spain!" de Foxá repeated.

  "Nein, nein, Spanien nicht!" General Mensch shouted.

  "The Spanish Blue Division," de Foxá said, "is fighting alongside the German soldiers on the Leningrad front."

  "Nein, Spanien nicht!" Mensch shouted.

  All looked at de Foxá who, pale and firm, faced General Mensch and fixed him with a wrathful and proud glare.

  "If you do not drink to Spain," said de Foxá, "I shall say merde to Germany."

  "Nein," shouted Mensch, "Spanien nicht!"

  "Meide to Germany!" de Foxá shouted raising his glass, and he turned to me, a flash of triumph in his eyes.

  "Good for you, de Foxá," I said. "You've won your bet."

  "Vive l'Espagne, merde à l'Allemagne!" de Foxá shouted.

  "Ja, ja," Mensch shouted, raising his glass, "Merde à l'Allemagne!"

  "Merde à l'Allemagne!" they all repeated in a chorus, raising their glasses.

  They embraced each other and some fell to the ground. General Mensch was dragging himself on all fours, trying to catch a bottle that was slowly rolling across the wooden floor.

  XVI. Siegfried and the Salmon

  "ARMCHAIRS covered with human skin?" Kurt Franz asked incredulously.

  "Yes, they were covered with human skin," I repeated.

  Everybody laughed. Georg Bean
dasch said, "They should be very comfortable."

  "The skin is very soft and thin," I said, "almost transparent."

  "I have seen old books in Paris bound in human skin, but never armchairs."

  "Those armchairs are in Italy," I said, "in the castle of the Counts of Conversano in Apulia. It was a Count Conversano who, toward the middle of the seventeenth century, had his enemies killed and skinned—priests, noblemen, outlaws, brigands— in order to cover the armchairs in the large hall of his castle. There is one, the back of which is covered with the skin taken from the belly and the breasts of a nun. One can still discern the shape of the breasts and the nipples polished and worn with use."

  "With use?" queried Beandasch.

  "Just think of the hundreds of people who have sat in that armchair during the course of three centuries," I said. "I fancy that is enough to wear out even a nun's breasts."

  "Count Conversano," Victor Maurer said, "must have been a monster."

  "I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of armchairs could be covered with the human skins of Jews whom you have killed during this war?" I asked.

  "Millions!" Georg Beandasch said.

  "A Jew's skin is no good for anything," Kurt Franz said.

  "The German skins are no doubt of a better quality," I said. "Gorgeous upholstering can be made out of them."

  "Nothing is as good as Hermes leather," said Victor Maurer whom General Dietl called "the Parisian." Victor Maurer was a cousin of Hans Mollier, the press secretary of the German Embassy in Rome, and he had spent many years in France. For him France meant Paris and Paris meant the Ritz Bar.

  "After the war," Kurt Franz said, "the German skins will be worth nothing."

  Georg Beandasch laughed. He was stretched out on the grass, his face covered with mosquito netting. He was chewing a birch leaf and now and then he lifted the net to spit. He laughed and said: "After the war? What war?"

  We were sitting on a bank of the Juutuanjoki, near the lake. The river rushed violently by, twisting between the great boulders. Blue smoke rose over the Inari village where Lapp herdsmen were cooking their reindeer soup in copper pots hanging over the fires. The sun swayed on the horizon as if it were blown by the wind. The forest was warm, green and bluish, traversed by brooks of wind that rippled beautifully through the grass and the tree branches. A flock of reindeer was grazing on the opposite bank. Through the trees glittered the silvery lake veined with pink and green, like beautiful old Meissen ware. Those very green and pink tints, those shy and warm tints of Meissen china, those warm and shy greens, those warm pinks that here and there coagulated into little drops of glistening purple. It was beginning to rain—the everlasting summer rain of the Arctic lands. A slight and continuous buzzing was flowing through the forest. Suddenly a sunbeam struck the pink-green of the lake and a prolonged tinkle ran through the air, that sweet sorrowful tinkle of cracking china.