Kaputt (37 page)

"Suddenly I was struck with horror and realized that they had no eyelids. I had already seen soldiers with lidless eyes, on the platform of the Minsk station a few days previously on my way from Smolensk. The ghastly cold of that winter had the strangest consequences. Thousands and thousands of soldiers had lost their limbs; thousands and thousands had their ears, their noses, their fingers and their sexual organs ripped off by the frost. Many had lost their hair. Soldiers were known to have become bald over night; others had lost their hair in patches as if infected with ringworm. Many had lost their eyelids. Singed by the cold, the eyelid drops off like a piece of dead skin. I was struck with horror watching the eyes of those poor soldiers in the Europeiski Café in Warsaw, those pupils that expanded and contracted in the center of the fixed wide-open eyes, straining in vain to screen them from the pain of light. I thought that those poor fellows slept with eyes wide open in the dark, that night was their only eyelid; that their future was lunacy; that only lunacy could slightly shade their lidless eyes."

"Oh, stop!" Louise almost shouted. She gazed at me, her eyes staring and strangely white. "Say no more," she whispered. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

"'Let me tell you the story of the glass eye."

"You have no right to make me suffer," said Louise.

"It is merely a Christian story, Louise. Aren't you a princess of the Imperial German House, a Hohenzollern? Aren't you what is described as a well-bred young lady? Why shouldn't I tell you Christian stories?"

"You have no right," said Louise in a sharp voice.

"Let me at least tell you a nursery story," I said.

"Oh, please, keep still!" begged Louise. "Can't you see that I am shaking? You are frightening me."

"It is a story about Neapolitan children and British aviators," I went on. "A gentle story. Even in war there is a certain gentleness."

"What is most horrible in war," said Ilse, "is precisely what is gentle in it. I cannot bear to see smiling monsters."

"I was in Naples at the beginning of the war, when the first bombings began. I went to have supper one evening with a friend of mine who lives at the Vomero. The Vomero is a high cliff that dominates the city from which the Posillipo hills branch off descending to the sea. It is an enchanting place and, up to a few years ago, it was a countryside with scattered little houses and villas lost among the greenery. Each house had its orchard, a few vines, a few olive trees and terraced embankments on which blossomed eggplants, tomatoes, cabbages, peas, scented basil, rose and rosemary. The roses and tomatoes of the Vomero for beauty and fame are not inferior to the ancient roses of Paostum or to the tomatoes of Pompeii. Now the orchards have been turned into gardens. But in between the huge glass-and-concrete buildings a few ancient villas and humble farmhouses survive, and here and there the greenness of a lonely orchard fades sweetly into the vast pale blueness of the gulf; across the water, Capri stands out from the sea in a silvery mist; on the right is Ischia with its high Epomaeo; on the left the Sorrento shore can be seen in the transparent mirrors of the sea and sky, and still farther to the left is Vesuvius, that gentle idol, a kind of great Buddha looking down from the windowsill of the gulf. If one strolls through the lanes of the Vomero where it changes its name and is wedded to the Posillipo hills, between the trees and houses one can see the solemn and most ancient pine tree that shades Virgil's tomb. That is where my friend had his little rustic house and little orchard.

"While we waited for supper, we sat in the orchard under a vine arbor, smoking and talking quietly. The sun had already set and the light was being gradually extinguished. The place, the landscape, the time, the season were the same as those of which Sannazaro had sung; the breeze was Sannazaro's breeze in which the smell of the sea and the scent of the orchards melt into the delicate eastern wind. When night began to rise from the sea with its large bunches of violets already damp with nocturnal dew—at night the sea puts on its windowsills large bunches of violets that scent the air, filling the rooms with the pleasing breath of the sea—my friend said, 'The night will be clear. They will certainly come. I must put the presents for the British flyers in the orchard.' I did not understand, and I was puzzled as I watched my friend enter the house and come out carrying a doll, a little wooden horse, a trumpet and two little bags of sweets which he, without saying a word and perhaps mischievously enjoying my bewilderment, went about carefully placing here and there among the rose bushes and lettuce clumps, on the pebbles of the narrow path and on the edge of a bowl in which a family of goldfish softly flashed.

" 'What are you doing?' I asked.

"He gazed at me with a serious expression and smiled. He told me that his two children, who were already in bed, had been overcome with a terrific fear during the first bombings, that the health of the youngest one had been seriously affected—and that he had evolved a means of changing the fearful bombings of Naples into an entertainment for his children. As soon as the alarm hooted through the night, my friend and his wife jumped out of bed and, gathering the two little ones in their arms, began shouting merrily: 'What fun! What fun! The British planes are coming to throw their presents to you!' They went down into their cellar that offered scant and ineffectual shelter and, huddling there, they passed the hours of terror and death laughing and shouting, 'What fun!' until the boys fell happily asleep dreaming about the presents from the British flyers. From time to time, as the crash of the bombs and the crumbling of buildings came nearer, the little ones awoke, and the father said: 'Now, now, they are throwing down your presents!' The two boys clapped their hands with joy, shouting: 'I want a doll! I want a sword! Daddy, do you think that the British will bring me a little boat?' Toward dawn, when the hum of the motors moved off fading slowly into a sky that was already clear, the father and mother led the children by their hands into the garden, saying, 'Look for them, look! They must have dropped them on the grass.' The two boys searched among the rose bushes, wet with dew, among the lettuce plants and the tomato stalks, and they found a doll here, a little wooden horse there and, farther off, a bag of candy. The two children were no longer afraid of bombings, instead they waited anxiously for them and welcomed them joyfully. Some mornings, searching through the grass, they found little spring-propelled airplanes—undoubtedly poor British airplanes that those nasty Germans had brought down with their guns while they bombarded Naples to make Neapolitan children happy."

"Oh, how lovely!" burst out Louise clapping her hands.

"Now I shall tell you," I said, "the story of Siegfried and the cat. Those two Neapolitan children would not appreciate the story about Siegfried and the cat, but you will like it very much. It's a German story and Germans like German stories."

"The Germans like everything that is German," said Louise. "And Siegfried is the German people."

"And the cat, Louise? What is a cat? Can it also be a kind of Siegfried?"

"Siegfried is unique," replied Louise.

"You are right! Siegfried is unique and all other people are cats. Now listen to a story about Siegfried and the cat. I was in the village of Rita, close to Pancevo, in front of Belgrade, waiting to cross the Danube. A few rifle shots pierced the air of that white April morning stretching out like a linen screen between us and the blazing city. A squad of SS men were waiting for orders to force a crossing; they were all very young; they all had Gothic triangular faces, pointed chins, sharp profiles and Siegfried's pure, cruel look in their eyes. They sat silently on the bank of the Danube, their faces turned to the spires of Belgrade, their tommy guns rested between their knees. One of them was sitting close to where I was. He was a lad about eighteen years old, fair, with blue eyes and red lips lighted up by a cold innocent smile. We began talking, we spoke about the cruelty of war—its destruction, bereavements, slaughter. He told me that the recruits of the
Leibesstandart
of the SS were all trained to bear other people's pains unflinchingly. I must tell you again that his blue eyes were extraordinarily pure. He added that an SS recruit is not fit to belong to the
Leibesstandart
until he is able to get through the cat trial with flying colors. With his left hand, the recruit must grab a live cat by the skin of its back so as to allow it to use its claws to defend itself, and gouge out its eyes with a little knife held in the right hand. That is how one learns to kill Jews."

Louise clutched my sleeve and her nails hurt me through the material. I felt her hand trembling. "You have no right..." she said in a low voice, turning her pale face toward the two blind soldiers who ate in silence, their heads slightly thrown backward. The nurse was helping them with slow light gestures, correcting the uncertain movements of their arms and touching the backs of their hands with her fingertips whenever the knife or the fork wandered about the edge of the plate.

"Oh, Louise, forgive me!" I said. "Horrible stories give me the creeps too. But there are certain facts that you must know. You must know that, in a certain sense, cats also belong to the same species as Siegfried. Has it ever occurred to you that, perhaps, Jesus Christ is a kind of Siegfried—that Jesus Christ is a crucified cat? You must not think, as all Germans are taught to think, that Siegfried is unique and that all other people are cats. No, Louise, Siegfried also belongs to a species of cats. Do you know the origin of the word
kaputt
? It comes from the Semitic
kapparoth,
which means a 'victim.' The cat is a
kapparoth
; it is a victim as opposed to Siegfried. It is a sacrificed Siegfried, a Siegfried given as an offering. There is a time, a time that always recurs, when Siegfried, the unique, also becomes a cat, becomes
kapparoth,
a victim, becomes
kaputt.
It is the time when Siegfried is nearing death, when Hagen-Himmler gets ready to gouge his eyes as if he were a cat. It is the German people's doom to turn into a
kapparoth,
into a victim, to go
kaputt!
The secret meaning of its history is to be found in this metamorphosis from Siegfried into a cat. There are certain facts that you must know, Louise. You, too, must know that we are all Siegfrieds, that we are all destined to become
kapparoth
some day, victims, to go
kaputt,
that is why we are Christians, that is why Siegfried also is a Christian, and why Siegfried is also a cat. Emperors and the sons of emperors must know certain facts. You have been very badly educated, Louise."

"I am not a Siegfried any longer," said Louise. "I am much closer to a cat than to an Imperial princess."

"Yes, Louise, you are closer to a working woman than to a Hohenzollern princess."

"You think so?" asked Louise shyly.

"A working woman would take to you, if you were her friend in a factory."

"I should like to work in a factory. I should change my name and work like any other factory hand."

"Why change your name?"

"A Hohenzollern—Do you imagine that the other workers would respect me, if they knew my real name?"

"What good is the Hohenzollern name today?"

"Tell me the story of the glass eye," said Louise with sudden softness.

"It's a story like so many others, Louise. It's useless to tell it. It is a Christian story. You no doubt know some Christian stories, don't you? They are all alike."

"What do you mean by a Christian story?"

"Have you read Aldous Huxley's
Point Counterpoint
? The death of the child, of tiny Philip, in the last chapter is a Christian story. Aldous Huxley might have spared himself the useless cruelty of letting the child die. Huxley was once ordered to appear at Buckingham Palace. Queen Mary and King George V wanted to know him. Just then
Point Counterpoint
was enjoying its greatest success. The King and Queen welcomed Aldous Huxley most affably. They spoke to him about his books, asked him about his travels, the works he was planning, the trends of modern English literature. After the audience, when Huxley had already reached the threshold, His Majesty George V called him back in a kindly voice. The King seemed ill at ease,- he apparently had something to say, but he hesitated. Finally the King said to Huxley in an uncertain voice, 'Mr. Huxley, the Queen and I would like to reproach you for something. It really was unnecessary to let the child die.'"

"Oh, what a lovely story!" exclaimed Louise.

"It is a Christian story, Louise."

"Tell me the story of the glass eye," said Louise blushing.

During the winter of 1941, I was in the Ukraine, near Poltava. The countryside was infested with partisans. It seemed as if the days of the Cossack uprisings of Chmielnicki, of Pugachev and Stienka Rasin had returned. Bands of partisans roamed about the woods and marshes along the Dnieper, rifle shots and bursts of machine-gun fire broke unexpectedly from the ruins of villages, out of the ditches and thickets. Then silence fell again, the fat, dull, dreary silence of the vast Russian plain.

One day a German officer was riding through a village at the head of an artillery column. Not a living soul was anywhere in the village,- the houses looked as if they had been abandoned long ago. In the stables of the
kolkhoz
about a hundred starved horses were lying on the ground, still tied by their halters to the empty bins. The village had that sinister appearance that is characteristic of Russian villages after they had been swept by the fury of German reprisals. Sadly, vaguely ill at ease, almost with fear, the officer looked at the deserted houses, the straw on the thresholds, the wide-open windows and the empty silent rooms. In the orchards, above the fences, were the black, round, motionless eyes of the sunflowers, staring from within the frames of their long yellow lashes and following the passing column with their sad vacant stare.

The officer rode bending forward over the horse's mane, both hands resting on the pommel. He was about forty years old, with already graying hair. Now and again he lifted his eyes to the misty sky, then stood up in his stirrups and turned to watch the column. The soldiers walked in groups behind the gun carriages; the horses pressed their hooves into the muddy road; the whips hissed through the damp air; the men shouted
Ja! Ja!
to urge the horses on. It was a gray day and the village had a ghostly appearance in the ashen autumn air. A wind had risen; the bodies of several Jews were swinging from the branches of the trees. A constant whisper fled from house to house as if a crowd of children ran barefoot through the squalid rooms; there was a constant crackling as if an army of mice gamboled through the abandoned houses.