Kaputt

by Curzio Malaparte

  "Be better? Italy is a dead country," I answered. "What can you do with a corpse? You can only bury it."

  "One never knows," he said.

  "Perhaps you are right," I said. "One never knows."

  I had known him since we had been children and of his own accord, he had always defended me against everyone. He had defended me in 1933 when I had been given a five-year sentence. He had defended me when I was arrested in 1938, in 1939 and in 1941; he had defended me against Mussolini, against Starace, against Muti, against Bocchini, against Senise and against Farinacci; and regardless of any political considerations I felt a deep and warm gratitude toward him. I also felt sorry for him. I wanted to be able to help him some day, but there was no longer anything that anyone could do. Nothing was left to do but bury him. I felt sure that, at least they would bury him. With so many friends at least they would bury him.

  "Watch out for the old man," I said.

  "I know. He hates me. He hates everybody. At times I wonder if he is mad. Do you think anything can still be done?"

  "There is no longer anything that can be done now. It's too late! You should have done something in 1940 to prevent him from dragging Italy into this shameful war."

  "In 1940?" he said, and laughed in a way that I did not like. Then he added, "The war could have turned out well."

  I remained silent. He sensed the pained hostility in my silence and said, "It's not my fault. He wanted the war. What could I do?"

  "Clear out."

  "Clear out? And then?"

  "Then? Nothing."

  "It would not have done any good," he said.

  "It would not have done any good. But you still should have cleared out."

  "Cleared out, cleared out. Whenever we talk about these things, you never can say anything else. Clear out! And then?"

  Galeazzo broke away suddenly and walked quickly toward the clubhouse. I saw him as he paused a moment on the threshold and then went in.

  I lingered for a while in the meadow, then I went back to the clubhouse too. Galeazzo was sitting at the bar between Cyprienne and Brigitte, and around him were Anne Marie, Paola, Marita, Georgette, Filippo Anfuso, Marcello del Drago, Bonarelli, Blasco d'Ayeta and a very young girl whom I did not know. Galeazzo was telling how he had communicated the declaration of war to the French and British Ambassadors.

  When the French Ambassador, François Poncet, had entered his study at the Chigi Palace, Count Ciano welcomed him cordially and said, "You certainly understand, sir, why I wished to speak with you?"

  "I am not usually very quick," replied François Poncet, "but this time I understand."

  Then Count Ciano, standing in front of his desk, read the official formula of the declaration of war. "Au nom de Sa Majesté le Roi d'Italie, Empereur d'Ethiopie, etc."

  François Poncet grew uneasy. He said, "So, it is war?"

  "Yes."

  Count Ciano was wearing a uniform of lieutenant colonel in the Flying Corps. The French Ambassador said, "And you, what are you going to do? Will you be dropping bombs on Paris?"

  "I believe so. I am an officer and I shall do my duty."

  "At least try not to get killed," replied François Poncet. "It is not worth while."

  After making that remark the French Ambassador had seemed deeply moved and said a few words that Galeazzo did not think he should repeat. Later Count Ciano and François Poncet had shaken hands and parted.

  "What could the French Ambassador have said?" asked Anne Marie. "I am dying to know."

  "A very interesting thing," answered Galeazzo, "but I cannot repeat it."

  "I bet he said something rude," Marita said. "That's why you refuse to repeat it."

  Everybody laughed and Galeazzo laughed louder than the others.

  "He had a right to be insulting," Galeazzo replied, "but, as a matter of fact, he was not. He was deeply moved."

  Then he told how the British Ambassador had received the declaration of war. Sir Percy Lorraine had entered, and asked at once why he had been called. Count Ciano read the official formula of the declaration of war: "Au nom de Sa Majesté le Roi d'Italie, Empereur d'Ethiopie, etc."

  Sir Percy Lorraine had listened attentively, as if intent on not missing a single syllable, then asked coldly, "Is this really the precise wording of a declaration of war?"

  Count Ciano was unable to hide his surprise. "Yes, this is the precise wording."

  "Ah!" exclaimed Sir Percy Lorraine, and asked, "May I have a pencil?"

  "Yes, certainly." Count Ciano offered him a pencil and a piece of stationery of the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  The British Ambassador carefully tore off the letterhead with the assistance of a paper knife, neatly folded the sheet, examined the point of the pencil and said, "Would you mind dictating to me what you have read?"

  "With pleasure," Count Ciano replied, and more than ever surprised, he read very slowly, word by word, the declaration of war. When he had finished dictating, Sir Percy Lorraine who had all the time shown no signs of emotion as he bent over the sheet of paper, rose, shook Count Ciano's hand and walked toward the door. He lingered for a moment on the threshold, then went out without looking back.

  "You have omitted something in your account," Anne Marie von Bismarck said with her slight Swedish accent.

  Galeazzo looked at Anne Marie with surprise and appeared a little uneasy, "I haven't omitted anything," he said.

  "Ah yes, you have omitted something," Filippo Anfuso said.

  "You have forgotten to tell us," I said, "that Sir Percy Lorraine, as he reached for the door, turned and said, 'You think that the war will be easy and short, but you are wrong. The war will be very long and very difficult. Au revoir!' "

  "So you know about it, too?" said Anne Marie.

  "How do you happen to know about it?" asked Galeazzo, obviously annoyed.

  "I was told by Count de Foxá, the Spanish Minister in Helsinki. Everybody knows about it. It is a typical Italian secret!"

  "I heard about it for the first time in Stockholm," Anne Marie said. "Everybody knows about it in Stockholm."

  Galeazzo smiled and I don't know whether he was more annoyed or embarrassed. Everyone was smiling as they watched him, and Marita shouted, "Don't take it to heart, Galeazzo." The women laughed and playfully made fun of him. Galeazzo joined in the merriment but there was a false ring, a flaw in his laughter.

  "François Poncet was right," Patricia said. "It isn't worth while."

  "No, really, it isn't worth while to die," Georgette said.

  "Nobody wants to die," said Patricia.

  Galeazzo's face wore an angry and worried expression. The conversation was now gently tearing down some of Count Ciano's colleagues. The young women were making fun of a diplomat who on his return from South America had pitched his tent by the golf club, so he would be constantly under Galeazzo's eyes, and would not be overlooked or forgotten. "He even plays golf in the waiting room of the Chigi Palace," Cyprienne said.

  Patricia mentioned Alfieri, and all the women agreed that Italy was fortunate to have an ambassador like Dino Alfieri. "He is so handsome!" they explained. Just then a story was making the rounds in Italy that later turned out to be the fabrication of some wit: it was said that a German Flying Corps officer who had surprised Alfieri with his wife had lashed his face a couple of times with a whip. "I hope to heaven he hasn't been disfigured!" said Patricia. Anne Marie asked Galeazzo whether the general belief were true, that he had sent Alfieri as Ambassador to Berlin because he was jealous of him. Everybody including Ciano laughed, but it was evident that he was annoyed. "I? Jealous!" he said. "That's what Goebbels is saying! He is the one who is jealous of Alfieri and would like to have him recalled."

  "Oh, Galeazzo! Let him stay where he is," Marita said without any malice. "He is doing so well in Berlin!" Everybody laughed and began to talk about Filippo Anfuso and his Hungarian love affairs. "In Budapest," Filippo said, "the women will not have anything to do with me. Hungarian women a
re dark and they are crazy about blond men." Georgette turned to Galeazzo and asked him why he had not sent a blond minister to Budapest. "Blond? Who are there blonds in our service?" replied Galeazzo and began counting them on his fingers.

  "Renato Prunas," one woman suggested. "Guglielmo Rulli," suggested another. Galeazzo, who could not stand Rulli and never lost an opportunity to run him down frowned and said, "No, not Rulli." "I am blond," Blasco d'Ayeta said. "Yes, Blasco! Blasco! Send Blasco to Budapest," all the women shouted. "Why not?" Galeazzo said. But Anfuso, knowing how promotions and appointments were made at the Chigi Palace, could not see the joke,- he turned to Blasco d'Ayeta with a smile and, alluding to the fact that Blasco had succeeded him as chief secretary to Count Ciano, sneeringly said, "You always seem very eager to step into my shoes!" Meanwhile the women were protesting because Alberto had not yet been promoted to Councillor, because Buby had not yet succeeded in obtaining a post in the Minister's office, because Ghigi had been transferred to Athens though he had been so successful in Bucharest, and because Galeazzo could not make up his mind to appoint Cesarino as Minister to Copenhagen to succeed Sapuppo, "who has been in Denmark long, and nobody knows why," Patricia said.

  "I want to tell you," Galeazzo said, "how Minister Sapuppo learned the news about the German invasion of Denmark. Sapuppo swore by everything holy that the Germans would never be silly enough to invade Denmark. Virgilio Lilli swore by everything holy that they would. Minister Sapuppo said, 'No, no, my dear Lilli! Why would the Germans come to Denmark?' Lilli replied, 'What difference does it make to you why the Germans might come into Denmark? All you want to know is whether they will or will not come.' 'They will not come,' said Sapuppo. 'They will come,' Lilli said. 'My dear Lilli, are you under the impression that you are better informed than I?' asked Sapuppo.

  "Virgilio Lilli lived at the Hotel Britannia. Every morning, exactly at eight, an old, white-haired waiter, his rosy face framed in long, old-fashioned, white side-whiskers, and wearing a blue livery with gold buttons, entered his room with a tea tray, placed it on a little table by the bed, and with a bow said: 'Here is your tea, as usual.'

  "This ritual went on for twenty days every morning exactly at eight, and it always ended with the same sentence, 'Here is your tea, as usual.' One morning the old waiter came in, as usual, punctually at eight, and with the usual inflection in his voice bowed and said, 'Here is your tea, as usual. The Germans have come.' Virgilio Lilli bounced out of bed and called Minister Sapuppo to announce to him that during the night the Germans had occupied Copenhagen."

  Everybody was very much amused by the story about Sapuppo and Lilli, and Galeazzo, who laughed with the others, seemed to recover from his uneasiness and embarrassment. From Sapuppo the conversation went on to the war and Marita said, "What a bore!" Her friends protested because no more American films were being shown at the Quirinetta and because not a drop of whisky or a single package of American or English cigarettes could be found anywhere in Rome. Patricia said that in this war the only thing the men could do was fight if they wanted to and if they had the time. "We want to," Marcello del Drago had said, "but we haven't the time." While the women could only wait for the arrival of the British and the Americans with their victorious battalions of Camels, Lucky Strikes and Gold Flakes. "I'd walk a mile for a Camel," Marita said using advertising slang she had picked up from The New Yorker. Everyone began talking in English using a peculiar mixture of Oxford and Harper's Bazaar expressions.

  Suddenly a fly came in through the open window, then another, then ten more, twenty, a hundred, a thousand, and within a few minutes the bar was filled with clouds of flies. It was the hour of flies. Every day, at a certain hour that varies with the seasons, a buzzing swarm of flies attacks the golf club of the Acquasanta. The players swing their clubs to drive off that storm of black glistening wings, the caddies drop the bags on the grass and wave their hands before their faces, and the old Roman princesses nee Smith, Brown and Samuel, the solemn dowagers, the old D'Annunzio beauties strolling on the fairway, flee as they flail the air with their hands and silver-handled canes.

  "The flies!" screamed Marita jumping to her feet. Everybody laughed and Marita said, "You can laugh, but I am afraid of flies!"

  "Marita is right," Filippo Anfuso said, "flies bring bad luck."

  Filippo's words were greeted by a burst of laughter, and Georgette remarked that each year a new scourge hits Rome; one year it is mice, next year—spiders, next year—beetles. "As soon as the war began the flies came," she said.

  "The Acquasanta links are notorious for the flies," Blasco d'Ayeta said. "At Montorfano and at Ugolino they all laugh about it."

  "It is not a laughing matter," Marita said. "If the war goes on, we will end up by being eaten by flies."

  "That's an end we all deserve," Galeazzo said. He rose and, taking Cyprienne's arm, walked to the door followed by the others.

  As he passed by me he looked at me and seemed to remember something. Freeing Cyprienne's arm he placed his hand on my shoulder and kept on walking beside me, as if he were pushing me. We went into the garden. We walked in silence, and suddenly Galeazzo said to me, as if pursuing a disagreeable thought aloud: "Do you remember what you once said to me, talking about Edda? I lost my temper and would not let you finish. But you were right. My real enemy is Edda. She does not realize it, it's not her fault. I don't know and I don't even ask myself whether it is, but I feel that Edda is dangerous for me, that I must beware of her as if she were an enemy. If Edda were to leave me, if she had something else, something serious in her life, I would be lost. You know that her father worships her, that he never would do anything against me if he knew it would hurt her, but he is only biding his time. Everything depends on Edda. I have tried several times to make her understand how dangerous her behavior is for me. Perhaps there's nothing bad in what she does,- I don't know. I don't want to know. But one cannot talk with Edda. She is a hard, strange woman. You never know what to expect from her. At times she frightens me." He spoke jerkily, in that hoarse toneless voice of his, and he drove off the flies with a monotonous gesture of his fat white hand. The flies, angry and persistent, buzzed around us; now and then from a distant tee came the soft crack of a driver against a ball. "I don't know who starts those silly rumors about Edda, about her plans to have our marriage annulled so she can marry someone else. Ah, these flies!" he exploded with an impatient gesture. After a moment he added, "Nonsense! Edda will never do anything of the sort. But meanwhile her father has already pricked up his ears. You will see that I will not stay long in the Cabinet. Do you know what I think? I think that I will always be Galeazzo Ciano, even if I cease to be a Minister. My moral and political position will only stand to benefit if Mussolini sends me away. You know what the Italians are; they will forget my mistakes and my sins, and they will see me only as a victim."

  "A victim?" I said.

  "Don't you think the Italian people know who is the only person responsible for everything? They know how to differentiate between me and Mussolini! They know that I was opposed to war, that I did everything in my power—"

  "The Italian people," I interrupted, "know nothing, do not want to know anything, and believe in nothing any longer. You and the others should have done something in 1940 to prevent this war. You should have done something, risked something!

  That was the time to sell your lives dearly. Now your lives are worth nothing. But you were too fond of power. That is the truth and the Italians know it."

  "Do you think that if I cleared out today..."

  "It is too late now. You will drown with him."

  "Then what should I do?" Galeazzo said with shrill impatience in his voice. "What am I expected to do? Should I allow myself to be thrown away like a filthy rag when it suits his convenience? Should I resign myself to drowning with him? I do not want to die!"

  "To die? It isn't worth while," I replied, repeating the words of the French Ambassador François Poncet.

  "Quite so, it
isn't worth while," Galeazzo said. "Why die? The Italians are a kind people. They do not want anyone's death."

  "You are mistaken," I said. "The Italians are no longer what they once were. They would be pleased to see you die—him and you. Him and you, and all the others."

  "And what would our deaths accomplish?" asked Galeazzo.

  "Nothing. Nothing at all."

  Galeazzo was silent. He was pale and his brow was damp with sweat. At that moment a girl crossed the meadow on the way to meet a group of golfers who were walking toward the clubhouse, swinging their putters in their hands.

  "What a good-looking girl!" Galeazzo said. "Would you like to have her?" and he gave me a slight dig in the ribs with his elbow.

  XVIII. Blood

  AS SOON as I was released from the Regina Coeli prison in Rome I went straight to the railway station and boarded the Naples train. It was the seventh of August 1943. I was running away from the war, the slaughter, typhus and hunger; I was running away from the prison, from the stinking, dark, airless cell, the filthy straw mattress, the loathsome soup, bugs, lice and the pail full of excrement. I wanted to go home, I wanted to go to Capri, to my lonely house high above the sea.

  By then I had reached the end of my long, cruel four-year journey through war, blood, hunger, burned villages and wrecked towns. I was tired, disillusioned and cowed. Jail after jail, always a jail in Italy. Nothing but jail, policemen and manacled men—that is Italy. Mario Alicata and Cesarini Sforza, as soon as they had been released from Regina Coeli, after the long months they had spent in their cells also had gone home. I went to the railway station and boarded the Naples train. I, too, wanted to go home. The train was packed with refugees, old people, women, children, officers, soldiers, priests and policemen,- the roofs of the coaches swarmed with soldiers, some of them were armed, others not; some were in uniform, others in tatters, dirty and downcast; still others were half-naked, filthy and merry; they were deserters going home, or simply fleeing without knowing where, singing and laughing, as if overwhelmed and inspired by a great and wondrous fear.