Kaputt (28 page)

"Let's go," I said to de Foxá, clutching his arm, but just then, Minister P— approached de Foxá and in a strange voice asked, "Is it true, my dear Minister, that you have told Mrs. McClintock that she wears feathers, I don't remember where?" De Foxá fenced and said that it wasn't true, but Minister P— paled and said, "What's that? You deny it?"

I said to de Foxá: "Don't deny it! For heaven's sake, don't deny it!"

And Minister P— persisted, becoming paler and paler, "Do you deny it? Confess that you dare not repeat what you said to Mrs. McClintock."

I said to de Foxá: "For heaven's sake, repeat to him what you said to Helen McClintock."

De Foxá began to recount that one night he had been a guest at the house of the United States Minister, Mr. Arthur Schoenfeld, along with Helen McClintock and Robert Mills McClintock, Secretary of the United States Legation; M. Hubert Guerin, Minister of Vichy France, and Madame Guerin had joined them later. Madame Guerin had happened to ask Helen McClintock if her ancestry was as Spanish as her looks and her accent seemed to suggest. Helen McClintock, who is a Spaniard from Chile, forgetting that the Spanish Minister was present, had replied, "Unfortunately, yes."

"Ha, ha! That's very amusing, isn't it?" shouted Minister P— , slapping de Foxá on the back.

"Wait, the story is not finished," I said impatiently.

De Foxá went on to say that he had replied to Mrs. McClintock, "My dear Helen, when one is from South America, one is not Spanish. One wears feathers on the head."

"Ha, ha, ha! Very amusing!" shouted Minister P— and, turning to Madame P— , he said, "Did you understand, dear? In South America, Spaniards wear feathers on their heads!"

I whispered to de Foxá, "Let's go, for heaven's sake!"

But the pathetic hour had struck when Finns become sentimental, begin to sigh deeply into their empty glasses and gaze at one another with tearful eyes. Just as de Foxá and I approached Liisi Leppo who was languidly sprawling in an armchair, to beseech her in pleading tones to excuse us, Jaakko Leppo rose and said loudly, "I want you to listen to some records." He added proudly, "I have a gramophone."

He went to the gramophone, chose a record out of a leather album, placed the needle and gazed round with a severe look. We all waited in silence.

"This is a Chinese record," he said.

It was a Linguaphone record. A nasal voice gave us a long lesson in Chinese pronunciation, to which we listened in complete silence.

Then Jaakko Leppo changed the record, wound up the machine and announced, "This record is in Hindustani."

A lesson in Hindustani pronunciation followed to which we listened in deep silence.

Then came several lessons in Turkish grammar, then a string of lessons in Arabic pronunciation and, finally, five lessons in Japanese grammar and pronunciation. We all kept silent as we listened. "Finally," announced Jaakko Leppo, turning the handle of the gramophone, "I shall let you listen to a wonderful record."

This was a lesson in French pronunciation; a teacher of the Linguaphone Institute declaimed Lamartine's "Le Lac" in a nasal voice. We all listened keeping absolutely silent. When the nasal voice stopped, Jaakko Leppo gazed around with emotion and said, "My wife has learnt this record by heart. Do you mind, dear?"

Liisi Leppo rose, slowly crossed the room, took a position by the gramophone, threw back her head, raised her arms and keeping her eyes on the ceiling, recited Lamartine's "Le Lac"—all of Lamartine's "Le Lac"—with the same enunciation, in the same nasal voice as the Linguaphone Institute teacher.

"It's wonderful, isn't it?" said Jaakko Leppo in a voice filled with emotion.

It was five in the morning. I cannot remember what else happened before de Foxá and I found ourselves in the street. It was deathly cold. The night was clear, the snow shone gently with a delicate silver glitter. When we reached my hotel, de Foxá shook my hand and said,
"Maljanne."

I replied, "
Maljanne.
"

The Swedish Minister, Westmann, was waiting for us in his library, sitting in front of the window. The silvery reflection of snow in the night melted into the dimness of the library—a warm dimness the color of leather, through which the book-bindings sent slight golden ripples. The light was turned on suddenly, outlining the tall, slim figure of Minister Westmann, clean and sharp as an engraved design on old Swedish silver. His movements that had been frozen in the air by the silent outburst of light, slowly melted and faded away, and his small head, his straight, lean shoulders for a moment struck my eyes with the cold immobility of the marble busts of Swedish sovereigns that were ranged along the high oaken bookshelves. His silver hair warmed the dead glow of the marble, and an ironical smile—the restless shadow of a smile, crept over his grave and gentle face.

In the warm dining room the light of two large, silver candelabra standing in the center of the table, delicate and warm, melted into the reflection of the ice-bound sea and of the snow-covered square, breaking on the frosty windowpanes with a harsh violence. Although the pink glow of the candles tinged the white Flemish linen of the tablecloth with a flesh color, and, by veiling the cold bareness of Marieberg and Rörstrand china, warmed the icy splendor of Orefors glass and the glitter of old Copenhagen silver, something ghostly lingered in the air and something ironical as well, if one can speak of irony in connection with ghosts and ghostly things. As if the subtle witchcraft of the northern night, penetrating the room with the gloomy reflection of the nocturnal snow, held us tied in its charm, something ghostly appeared in our faces, in the restless, wandering glances, in the very words we were uttering.

De Foxá sat by the window mirroring in his face the maze of blue veins that streaks the white flesh of nocturnal snow. Perhaps to overcome in himself the spell of the northern night, he spoke about the sun in Spain, about the colors, the smells, the sounds, the flavoring of Spain, about Andalusian sunlit days and starry nights, about the clean thin wind of the Castilian highlands, about the blue sky falling like a stone after the death of the bull. Westmann, his eyes half closed, listened to him as if he could sniff the scents of the Spanish soil through the glitter of the snow, as if he could hear the sounds and fleshy voices of Spanish streets and Spanish houses coming from beyond the ice-bound sea, as if he could gaze on the landscapes, the portraits, the still-life pictures flooded with warm deep color, the street scenes, the arena and family scenes, the dances, the processions, the idyls, the funerals, the triumphs that de Foxá was re-creating in his resonant voice.

Westmann spent several years in Madrid as the Swedish Minister, and had been appointed Minister in Helsinki only a few months before to conduct important diplomatic negotiations. He was to go back to Madrid and resume his post as Swedish Minister to Spain as soon as he had completed his temporary mission in Finland. He loved Spain with a repressed violence that was sensuous as well as romantic. He listened that evening to de Foxá with a mixture of modesty, jealousy and rancor, as an unhappy lover listens to a lucky rival talking about the woman he loves. "I am the husband, I am not your rival. Spain is my wife and you are her lover," said de Foxá to him. "Alas!" sighed Westmann in reply. But in his feeling for Spain there was that indefinite tinge of sensuous passion and hidden repugnance that always goes with the Northerner's love for Mediterranean lands—the same sensuous repugnance that is portrayed in the faces of the onlookers in the old
Triumphs of Death,
where the sight of the green corpses, exhumed and lying in the sun like dead lizards amid fleshy, strongly scented flowers, has aroused in them a reverent horror and a sensuous enjoyment that at the same time attracts and repulses them.

"Spain," said de Foxá, "is a sensuous and funereal land, but not a land of ghosts. The home of the ghosts is the North. In the streets of Spanish towns you meet corpses, but not ghosts." He talked about that odor of death that pervades all of Spanish art and literature, about certain deathlike landscapes of Goya, about El Greco's living corpses, about the putrefying countenances of Spanish kings and grandees that Velasquez painted in the background of his proud golden architecture, about the velvet and purple cloth in the green and gilded dimness of royal palaces, churches and convents.

"Even in Spain," said Westmann, "it is not unusual to meet ghosts. I like Spanish ghosts very much. They are very nice and well behaved."

"They are not ghosts," said de Foxá, "they are corpses. They are not bodiless figures, they are made of flesh and blood. They eat, drink, love, laugh as if they were alive. But they are dead bodies. They do not walk at night as ghosts do, but in the middle of the day, in full sunshine. Spain is so alive because of those corpses that can be met in the streets, that sit in cafés, that kneel down to pray in dark churches, that move slowly and silently with their black eyes shining in their green faces, through the merry bustle of the towns and villages on feast and market days, among the living people who laugh, love, drink and sing. The ones you call ghosts are not Spanish; they are alien. They come from afar, no one knows from where, and only if you summon them by name or call them forth with a magic word."

"Do you believe in magic words?" asked Westmann smiling.

"Every good Spaniard believes in magic words."

"Do you know any?" asked Westmann.

"I know many, but one above all others is endowed with the supernatural power of evoking ghosts."

"Please say it, even if you only whisper it."

"I dare not. I am afraid," said de Foxá becoming slightly pale. "It is the most frightful and dangerous word in the Castilian language. No true Spaniard dares to utter it. Let a corpse be brought here and placed on this table, and I will not bat an eye. But don't call a ghost; don't open a door to him. I would die of fright."

"Tell us at least what the word means," said Westmann.

"It is one of the many names given to snakes."

"Snakes have gentle names," said Westmann. "In Shakespeare's play, Antony calls Cleopatra by the sweet name of a snake."

"Ah!" shouted de Foxá growing white in the face.

"What is the matter? Is that the word that you dare not utter? Yet it has the sweetness of honey on Antony's lips. Cleopatra never had a gentler name. Wait—" went on Westmann with complacent cruelty, "I think I can recall precisely the word that Shakespeare puts in Antony's mouth—"

"Be silent, please!" shouted de Foxá.

"If my memory does not fail me," pursued Westmann with a cruel smile, "Antony calls Cleopatra—"

"For God's sake, be silent!" shouted de Foxá. "Don't speak that word aloud. It is a terrible word that must be spoken thus in a low voice..." and scarcely moving his lips, he whispered, "
Culebra!"

"Ah, 'adder!'" said Westmann laughing. "And that's enough to frighten you? It is a word like any other, and to me is nothing terrible or mysterious. If I am not wrong," he added raising his eyes to the ceiling as if searching his memory, "the word that Shakespeare used is 'snake,' and it does not sound so sweet as the Spanish word
culebra. O mi culebra del antiquo Nilo.
—O my snake of the ancient Nile."

"Please, don't repeat it," said de Foxá. "It is an ill-omened word. One of us, or someone who is near to us will die tonight."

At that moment the door flew open and a glorious salmon from Lake Inari was placed on the table; its rosy color, tender and lively, flashed through the deep cracks in its skin, covered with silvery scales of delicate green and bluish hues, resembling as de Foxá said, the silks in which the statues of the Blessed Virgin are clothed in the churches of Spanish villages. The salmon's head rested on a pillow of herbs fine as women's hair—those transparent weeds that grow in the rivers and lakes of Finland. It looked like the head of a sleeping fish in a still-life painting by Braque. The taste of that salmon was like a faraway memory of waters, woods and clouds. To me it was like a memory of Lake Inari on a summer night lighted by the pale Arctic sun, tender and childish under a green sky. The rosy color shining through the silvery scales of the salmon was the very color of clouds when the evening sun rests on the edge of the horizon, like an orange on a windowsill, and a gentle wind rustles through the leaves of the trees, over the clear water and the grassy shores, as it glides lightly above the rivers, lakes and vast forests of Lapland. It was the same rosy color, tender and lively, that shines through the silvery scales covering Lake Inari when the sun, in the depths of the Arctic night, wanders over a green sky streaked with slender blue veins.

"It is a pity," said de Foxá laughing, "that the U.S.S.R. flags are not salmon pink in color!"

"Thank God," I replied, "that the U.S.S.R. flags are red and not salmon pink. Who knows what would happen to poor Europe if the U.S.S.R. flags had the same pink color as that of a salmon and of the
dessous de femme."

"Everything fades in Europe," remarked Westmann. "Very likely, we are moving toward a Middle Age, salmon pink in color."

"I often ask myself," said de Foxá, "what the function of the intellectuals will be in a new medieval period. I bet they would take advantage of the opportunity to try again to save European civilization."

"Intellectuals are incorrigible," said Westmann.

"Even the old Monte Cassino abbot," I said, "sometimes asks himself the same question." I told them that Count Gavronski, the Polish diplomat who is married to Luciana Frassati, the daughter of Senator Frassati, formerly Italian Ambassador in Berlin, a refugee in Rome since Poland had been occupied by the Germans, from time to time spends a few weeks in the guest house of the Monte Cassino Abbey. Old Archbishop Dom Gregory Diamare, the abbot, talking one day to Gavronski about the barbarism into which Europe was in danger of sinking through war, said that during the darkest Middle Ages the monks of Monte Cassino had saved Western civilization by copying the ancient and precious Greek and Latin manuscripts by hand. "What should we do today to save European culture?" concluded the venerable abbot. "Have the same manuscripts copied on typewriters by your monks," replied Gavronski.