Kaputt (16 page)

"Perhaps," said Madame Martig in a low voice, "he has forgotten us." Then she went on: "Perhaps he has forgotten you too."

"Oh, no! He has not forgotten us; he is ashamed of his own suffering, he feels ashamed of what we have all become during this war. You know, don't you? that he feels ashamed of his own suffering. You know it, don't you, Madame Martig?"

"Yes," said Madame Martig in a low voice, "we know him well, we know Monsieur Malaparte well."...

"Good morning, Childe Harold," I said sitting up in bed.

Harold Nicolson slowly removed his gloves and, stroking his mustache with his short white hand glistening with a thin reddish down, kept his fingers pressed to his lips for a long time. Harold Nicolson's mustache had always made me think of Chelsea Barracks, rather than of a young diplomat of the Foreign Office; it appeared to me to be a typical product of the English public school, of Sandhurst and of the army. Harold Nicolson was gazing at me and smiling as on that day in Paris, when he had come to take me to luncheon at Larue's in the rue Royale, where Mosley was waiting for us. I could no longer remember where I had first met Nicolson. It was Mrs. Strong who first spoke to me about him one morning, at lunch in the house of some friends in Faubourg St. Honoré. A few days later, Mrs. Strong had telephoned me that Nicolson would take me to meet Mosley.

Seated in my library, Nicolson was stroking his mustache with his short white hand glistening with a thin reddish down. From the Seine came the doleful lament of the tugs. It must have been an October morning, misty and warm. The meeting with Mosley was arranged for two o'clock. We started walking along the Seine toward rue Royale, and when we entered Larue's it was five minutes of two.

We sat at a table, ordered a martini; half an hour later Mosley had not yet made his appearance. From time to time Nicolson rose to telephone Mosley, who lived, as I was told, at the Napoleon Hotel near the Arc de Triomphe. A wonderful address for England's future Mussolini. Around three o'clock Mosley still had not shown up. I suspected him of having calmly remained in bed, and of being asleep. After more waiting—it was half-past three by then—Nicolson issued for the tenth time from the telephone booth and triumphantly announced that Sir Oswald Mosley was about to arrive. And he added laughing, as a sort of apology for him, that Mosley was in the habit of lying in bed the entire morning, that he rose late, never before twelve, and that from twelve until two he fenced a little in his own room; then he left his hotel on foot and arrived late to whatever meeting he had arranged— usually when everyone was tired of waiting for him and about to leave. I asked him whether he knew Talleyrand's saying: "In life it is easy to arrive, but difficult to leave."

"The clanger for Mosley," said Nicolson, "is that he may leave before arriving."

When Mosley at last entered Larue's it was almost four o'clock. Nicolson and I had already had some seven or eight martinis and had begun eating; I do not remember what we were eating or what we were talking about; I only remember that Mosley had a very small head and a soft voice, that he was tall—very tall—thin and lazy looking, rather stooped. He was not in the least sorry about being late, but on the contrary, quite pleased with himself. He said, "One never rushes when the purpose is to be late." He was not apologizing, but just letting us understand that he was not so stupid as not to realize that he was late. A glance exchanged between Nicolson and me was enough to bring us to an agreement, and throughout the luncheon Mosley never suspected that we had agreed to make fun of him. He appeared to be endowed with a rich sense of humor, but like all dictators—Mosley was only an aspiring dictator, but he was certainly of the stuff of which dictators are made! and we all know what that stuff is—he hadn't the least inkling that anyone could make fun of him.

He had brought with him a copy of the English edition of my book,
Coup d'Etat: The Technique of Revolution
, and he wished me to write something on the title-page. No doubt he expected a very fancy dedication from me. To tease and to disappoint him, I wrote only these two sentences from my book:
Like all dictators, Hitler is merely a woman, and dictatorship is the highest form of jealousy.
On reading these words Mosley's face clouded, and looking at me with half-closed eyes he asked, "Was Caesar, in your opinion, also only a woman?" Nicolson did his best not to laugh and winked at me. "He was worse than a woman," I replied. "Caesar was no gentleman."

"Caesar was not a gentleman?" asked Mosley in amazement.

"A foreigner who allows himself to occupy England," I replied, "is certainly no gentleman."

The wines were excellent and Larue's chef—vain, punctilious, and as capricious as a woman or a dictator—by an unbroken stream of exquisite dishes fashioned with proud imagination and sensitive conceit, insisted on honoring the table of those three eccentric foreigners who lunched at such an unusual hour when tea was already steaming in the silver teapots of the Ritz. Mosley's temper was in perfect accord with the temper of the chef and the flavor of the wines. Little by little, he managed to recover his calm and his irony. One by one, the lamps along the rue Royale were lit; the flowersellers of the Madeleine were moving down toward the Concorde with their barrows loaded with withered flowers,- and we were still debating the merits of Brie cheese and the best means of seizing power in England.

Nicolson maintained that Englishmen are not sensitive either to force or persuasion, but only to "good manners" and that dictators never have good manners. Mosley countered that good manners, too, were on the downgrade, and that Englishmen, particularly those of "The Upper Ten Thousand," were ripe for dictatorship.

"But how will you get into power? " asked Nicolson.

"By the longest way, of course," replied Mosley.

"Via St. James Park or via Trafalgar Square?" asked Nicolson.

"Via St. James Park, of course," replied Mosley, "my
coup d'état
will be just a walk-over," and he laughed gaily.

"Oh! I see, your revolution will move from Mayfair. And when do you expect to rise to power?" asked Nicolson.

"The date on which the parliamentary regime will reach a crisis in England can already be reckoned with absolute accuracy. I could make an appointment with you in Downing Street today," replied Mosley.

"Right! What day and what time?" asked Nicolson.

"Ah, that's my secret," replied Mosley laughing.

"If the revolution means an appointment, you'll be late in coming into power," said Nicolson.

"So much the better,- I shall come into power when it is least expected," replied Mosley.

While we were talking and with relish inhaling the ancient and faraway bouquet of an Armagnac, the Larue dining room was gradually changing, until it became a large room strangely resembling the room where I was lying on the ripped mattress. Harold Nicolson was gazing at me smiling; he was sitting beneath the brass lamp, his elbow on the table near his black Lock hat. After a time, with a glance he called my attention to a corner of the room and, raising my eyes, I beheld Sir Oswald Mosley sitting cross-legged on the floor. I could not understand how Nicolson and Mosley happened to be in Jassy in my bedroom, and I noticed with deep wonder that Mosley had the small rosy face of a child, small hands, very short arms, and extremely long legs—so long, that he was compelled to cross them Turkish fashion to get them into the room.

"I ask myself why you stay in Jassy," said Harold Nicolson to me, "instead of going to fight."

"La dracu,"
I replied.
"La diacu
the war,
la dracu
everybody."

Mosley beat his hands on the floor raising a cloud of goose feathers. His face was plastered with feathers sticking to his sweaty skin, and he laughed, beating his hands on the floor.

Nicolson glanced sternly at Sir Oswald Mosley, "You ought to feel ashamed of these childish tricks of yours. You are no longer a child, Sir Oswald."

"Oh, sorry, sir," said Sir Oswald Mosley lowering his eyes.

"Why don't you go and fight?" went on Nicolson turning to me. "It is every gentleman's duty to fight against these barbarians," and saying this he burst out laughing.

"La dracu,"
I replied,
"la dracu
you too, Childe Harold!"

"Every gentleman's duty," continued Harold Nicolson, "is to go and fight Stalin's armies. Down with the U.S.S.R. Ha! Ha! Ha!" and he burst into a loud laugh, as he threw himself back in his chair.

"Down with the U.S.S.R.!" shouted Sir Oswald Mosley beating his hands on the floor.

Nicolson turned to Mosley. "Don't talk nonsense, Sir Oswald," he said sternly.

Just then the door opened and a tall, massive officer appeared on the threshold followed by three soldiers whose red eyes and faces glistening with sweat I could barely make out in the twilight. The moon peeped over the windowsill; a light breeze blew through the open window. The officer stepped forward, paused at the foot of the bed and with his flashlight fixed a beam of light on my face; I saw that he clutched a pistol in his fist.

"Military police," said the officer. "Have you your pass?"

I burst into laughter and turned to Nicolson. I was just about to say,
la dracu,
when I noticed Nicolson vanishing in a white cloud of goose feathers. A milk-white sky filled the room, and against that misty sky I saw the vague shapes of Nicolson and Mosley floating lazily very slowly upward toward the ceiling like swimmers after a dive rising to the surface from the bottom of the sea amid a spray of air bubbles.

I sat up in bed and became aware that I was awake.

"Have a drink?" I asked the officer.

I filled two glasses with
zuica
and we lifted our glasses saying
"Narok
—Your health."

The cold
zuica
finally brought me to, and imparted a dry and gay tone to my voice. After rummaging through the pockets of my coat hanging at the head of my bed, I passed the document to the officer saying, "Here's the pass. I bet it is forged."

The officer smiled. "It would not surprise me," he said. "Jassy is full of Russian paratroopers." Then he added, "You should not sleep alone in this forsaken house. Only yesterday we found on Usine Road a fellow in bed with his throat cut."

"I'm much obliged for your advice," I answered, "but with this forged document I should be able to sleep safely, don't you think?"

"Of course," said the officer.

My pass was signed by Mihai Antonescu, Vice-President of the Council.

"Do you mind seeing if this one is forged too?" I asked, offering another pass signed by Colonel Lupu, Military Commander of Jassy.

"Thanks," said the officer, "your papers are in order."

"Have a drink?"

"I don't mind if I do. There's not a drop of
zuica
left in all Jassy."

"
Narok
."

"
Narok.
"

The officer, followed by his soldiers went away, and I fell sound asleep again, stretched on my back and clutching the handle of my revolver in a sweating hand.

The sun was already high when I awoke. Birds twittered on the acacia branches and on the stone crosses in the old abandoned churchyard. I dressed and went out to look for something to eat. The streets were cluttered with long columns of German lorries and Panzers,- artillery trucks were blocked in front of the Jockey Club building, squads of Romanian soldiers with their large helmets trailing down the napes of their necks, their sand-colored uniforms clotted with mud, moved along treading heavily on the asphalt roads. Groups of idlers lounged at the entrance of the wineshop near the
Cafetaria Fundatia
; and around the doors of the
Coafor
Jonescu and of the
Ceasocornicaria
Goldstein. Mixed with the strong smell of
brenza,
the salty Braila cheese, there hung heavily in the air the odor of
ciorba de pui,
a greasy chicken soup mixed with vinegar. I started off along the Strada Bratianu toward the St. Spiridion Hospital and entered the shop of Kane, the broad and flatheaded Jewish grocer whose ears looked like the handles on an earthenware pot.

"Good morning,
Domnule Capitan
," said Kane.

He was pleased to see me; he thought I was still at the front along the Prut river with the Romanian troops.

"La dracu
the Prut," I said to him.

A faint feeling of sickness made me dizzy. I sat down on a bag of sugar and thrusting my fingers between my collar and shirt loosened my tie. A heavy, mixed odor of spices, dried fish, paint, kerosene and soap was stagnating in the shop.

"This silly
razboiou,"
said Kane—"This silly war."

The people of Jassy were restless; everyone expected something bad to happen. "One feels in the air that something bad will happen," said Kane. He spoke in a low tone, casting suspicious glances toward the door. Gangs of Romanian soldiers, columns of German lorries and Panzers were moving by. "What do they think they can do with all these weapons, all these guns and armored cars?" Kane seemed to be saying. But he kept silent, moving heavily and slowly about the shop.

"Domnule
Kane," I said, "I'm down to bedrock."

"I'll always have something nice for you," said Kane.

From a hiding place he fished out three bottles of
zuica,
two one-pound loaves of bread, a little
brenza,
a few boxes of sardines, two pots of jam, a little sugar and a little bag of tea.

"It's Russian tea," said Kane, "real Russian
chai.
It's the last bag. I can't give you any more when you have finished this." He gazed at me shaking his head. "If you need something else in the next few days come back to me; there is always something nice for you in my shop."

He looked sad. He said, "Come back to me" as if he knew that we should never see each other again. There really was something vaguely threatening in the air, and the people were worried. Now and then somebody looked into the shop and said, "Good day,
Domnule
Kane," and Kane shook his head in denial, looked at me and sighed. This silly
razboiou
—This silly war. I stuck the parcels of food into my pockets, tucked the bag of tea under my arm, broke off a bit of bread and began chewing it.