The Skin (14 page)

Here Jeanlouis rushed to the assistance of his friends, and began to recite a poem by Jaime Pintor, a young poet who had lost his life a few days before while trying to cross the German lines with the object of returning to Rome. Jaime Pintor had visited me at my house on Capri, and we had talked at length of Benedetto Croce, of the war, of Communism, of the rising generation of Italian writers, and of the strange ideas which Croce had on the subject of modern literature. (Bendetto Croce, who had taken refuge on Capri with his family, had just discovered Marcel Proust, and did nothing but talk about
Le côte de Guermantes,
which he was reading for the first time.) "It is to be hoped," said one of those youths, looking at me with an arrogant expression, "that you won't write Jaime Pintor off as a
bourgeois
poet. You have no right to insult a dead man. Jaime Pintor was a Communist poet—one of the best and truest." I replied that Jaime Pintor had written the poem in question when he was a Fascist and a member of the Armistice Commission in France. "So what?" said the youth. "Fascist or not, Pintor was always a true Communist. One need only read his poems to realize it." I retorted that the poetry of Pintor, and that of many other young poets like him, was neither Fascist nor Communist. "It seems to me," I added, "that that is the finest tribute one can pay him, if ones wishes to respect his memory."

"Italian literature is rotten," said Jeanlouis, stroking his hair with his small white hand, the nails of which were pink and glossy. One of the youths said that all Italian writers except those who were Communists were traitors and cowards. I replied that the one real merit of young Communist writers, and of young Fascist writers, was that they were children of their time, that they accepted the responsibilities of their age and environment in that they were rotten like everyone else. "That's not true!" cried the youth venomously, gazing into my face with a wrathful and menacing expression. "Faith in Communism is a safeguard against all corruption: it is, if anything, an expiation." I replied that it was fanatical poppycock. "What?" cried a young working man wearing the blue dungarees of a mechanic. "It's fanatical poppycock," I repeated.

"It's quite clear," said one of the youths, "that you belong to a defeated generation."

"Undoubtedly," I replied, "and I set great store by it. A defeated generation has far more significance than a victorious one. As for myself," I added, "I am not at all ashamed of belonging to a defeated generation in a defeated and ruined Europe. The thing I regret is having endured five years of imprisonment and exile. And for what? For nothing."

"Your years of hard labour," said the youth, "don't entitle you to any respect."

"And why?" I said.

"Because you didn't endure them in a noble cause."

I replied that I had endured hard labour for the freedom of art.

"Ah, so it was for the freedom of art, then—not for the freedom of the proletariat!" said the youth.

"Isn't it the same thing, perhaps?" I said.

"No, it isn't the same thing," replied the other.

"In point of fact," I retorted, "it isn't the same thing, and that's the trouble."

At this point two young-English soldiers and an American corporal entered the room. The two English soldiers were very young and shy, and they gazed at Jeanlouis with decorous admiration. The American corporal was a student from Harvard; he was of Mexican-extraction, and he talked of Mexico, of the West Indies, of Diaz, the painter, and of the death of Trotsky. "Trotsky was a traitor," said Jeanlouis. I started laughing. "Think of what your mother would say," I said, "if she heard you running down someone you don't know, and a dead man too. Think of your mother!" And I laughed. Jeanlouis flushed scarlet. "What has my mother got to do with it?" he said. "Isn't your mother a Trotskyite?" I answered. Jeanlouis looked at me in a strange way. Suddenly the door opened, and with an affectionate cry Jeanlouis rushed with open arms to meet a young English lieutenant who had appeared. "Oh, Fred!" cried Jeanlouis, embracing the newcomer.

Fred's entry had the same effect as the wind does when it changes, stirring up the dead leaves and sending them scurrying hither and thither. All the youths got up and started walking hither and thither about the room, in the grip of a strange excitement: but as soon as they heard the voice of Fred, gaily responding to Jeanlouis' affectionate greeting, they all quietened down and silently resumed their seats.

He was a tall, fair-haired young man. He could not have been more than thirty. He spoke in a slow, serious voice, which every so often rose to a shrill, feminine pitch, and died away into that delicate whisper, or, as Gerard de Nerval says of the voice of Sylvia, that
frisson modulé,
in which lies so much of the charm of the Oxford accent, now, alas! no longer fashionable.

As soon as Fred had appeared in the doorway Jeanlouis's manner had undergone a sudden change, as had that of his young friends, who seemed cowed and uneasy, and gazed at Fred not so much respectfully as jealously and with ill-concealed fury. To my amazement and annoyance the conversation between Fred, Jeanlouis and myself assumed a "society" tone. Fred persisted in trying to persuade me that I had undoubtedly known his father, that it was impossible that I had never met him.

At a certain point in the conversation Fred turned to Jeanlouis and, speaking in a curiously soft voice, began holding forth about London, actors, obscure happenings in the worlds of the theatre and of fashion, embroidering in the air, as on an invisible canvas, with languid, graceful gestures of his transparent hands, the profiles of personages whom I did not know, wanderers in the mists of a fabulous London, scene of the most extraordinary exploits and the most wonderful adventures. Then, suddenly turning to me as if resuming an interrupted conversation, he asked me whether the supper at Torre del Greco was fixed for the morrow or for another day. Jeanlouis looked at him meaningly and Fred was silent, flushing slightly and staring at me in amazement.

"I think it's tomorrow, isn't it, Jeanlouis?" I said with an ironical smile.

"Yes, tomorrow," replied Jeanlouis in an agitated voice, giving me an angry look. "But what's it got to do with you? We've only a jeep and there are already nine of us. I'm sorry, but there's no room for you."

"I'll come in Colonel Hamilton's car," I said. "I'm sure you won't expect me to walk to Torre del Greco.

"You had better walk," said Jeanlouis, "seeing that no one has invited you."

"If you have another car," said Fred with an air of vexation, "there will be room for everyone. Including you there will be ten of us: Jeanlouis, Charles, myself, Zizi, Georges, Lulu . . .", and he continued to count on his fingers, mentioning the names of some celebrated Corydons hailing from Rome, Paris, London and New York. "Of course," he added, "it won't be our fault if you feel —how shall I put it?—an intruder."

"I shall be your guest," I answered. "How could I feel uncomfortable?"

Many times in the past I had heard references to "the confinement," the famous sacred rite which is celebrated secretly every year at Torre del Greco, and is attended by the highest dignitaries of the mysterious sect of the Uranians, who come from all over Europe for the purpose; but it had never been my good fortune to witness that mystic and most ancient rite
{4}
. Its celebration had been suspended during the war; and now for the first time since the liberation the mysterious ceremony was coming into its own again. Luck was with me, and I was taking advantage of it. Jeanlouis seemed annoyed and almost offended by my impudence, but he did not dare to shut the doors of the forbidden temple in my face, feeling that it would be safer if my curiosity were allayed than if it were left unsatisfied. Fred, who had at first taken me for an initiate and now found that I was a layman, seemed amused at his error and showed himself a good sportsman. At heart he enjoyed Jeanlouis' embarrassment and smiled at it with that malignity which is peculiar to his sex and is the noblest sentiment of which the Uranian soul is capable. But Jeanlouis' young friends, who did not know English and so had not grasped the meaning of our words, looked at us with distrust and, so it seemed to me, even hostility.

"Isn't there anything to drink?" said Jeanlouis loudly and with forced gaiety, in an attempt to divert his friends' attention from that vexing incident. The American corporal had brought a bottle of whisky with him, and we all began drinking; but when that first bottle had been emptied the young working man in the mechanic's dungarees turned to Jeanlouis and said with an insolent air, "You're the one with the cash—out with it! We're short of juice!" Taking some money from his pocket Jeanlouis handed it to the youth, bidding him hurry up. The boy went out and shortly afterwards returned with four more bottles of whisky which we hastened to pass from hand to hand and from glass to glass. The youths were very soon merry, their shyness and with it their air of jealousy and spitefulness vanished, and soon they were exchanging smiles, talking and caressing one another openly and shamelessly.

Jeanlouis had seated himself on the divan next to Fred and was talking to him in a low voice, caressing his hand. "Let's dance!" cried one of the youths, and the girl, who until that moment had continued to sit by the gramophone, smoking in silence, never blinking, her elbows resting on her knees and her face between her hands, rose and put a record on the gramophone. The smoke-filled room resounded with the raucous, sugary voice of Frank Sinatra. Fred jumped to his feet, seized Jeanlouis round the waist and began to dance. All the rest followed suit: the young working man in dungarees put his arm round the American corporal, other couples took the floor, and so languid were their movements, their smiles, the swaying of their hips, the way in which they embraced and slipped their knees between those of their partners, that they looked like so many pairs of dancing women.

At a certain point in the proceedings there occurred an incident which I had not anticipated, although I had an obscure feeling that something of the kind was likely to happen at any moment. The girl, who had resumed her seat beside the gramophone, and was gazing at Jeanlouis with hatred in her eyes, suddenly leapt to her feet, shouting: "Cowards! Cowards! You're a lot of cowardly Trotsky-ites!"—and hurling herself at Fred she slapped his face.

*       *       *       *

At about eleven o'clock on the evening of July 25th, 1943, the Secretary of the Royal Italian Embassy in Berlin, Michele Lanza, was reclining comfortably in an armchair near the open window in the little bachelor apartment occupied by the Press Attache, Cristiano Ridomi.

It was stiflingly hot, and the two friends, having extinguished the light and thrown the window wide open, were sitting in the dark room, smoking and chatting. Angela Lanza had left for Italy with her little girl a few days before, intending to pass the summer in her villa near Lake Como. (The families of foreign diplomats had left Berlin at the beginning of July in order to avoid not so much the suffocating heat of the Berlin summer as the air-raids, which were becoming heavier each day.) And Michele Lanza, like the other Embassy officials, had got into the habit of spending his nights at the homes of various colleagues so as not to be left alone. Shut up in a room, during the hours of darkness, which are the slowest of all to pass, and so that he might share with a friend, with a human being, the anguish and dangers of the raids.

That evening Lanza was in Ridomi's apartment, and the two friends were sitting in the darkness, discussing the massacre of Hamburg. The happenings described in the reports from the Royal Italian Consul in Hamburg were terrible. Whole districts of the city had been set alight by phosphorus bombs, which had claimed a great number of victims. There was nothing strange about that: even the Germans are mortal. But thousands and thousands of unfortunate people, dripping with burning phosphorus, had thrown themselves into the canals which cross Hamburg in every direction, into the river, the harbour, into ponds, even into the basins in public gardens, hoping thereby to extinguish the flames that were devouring them; or they had had themselves covered over with earth in the trenches that had been dug here and there in the squares and streets to provide immediate shelter in the event of sudden raids. Clinging to the banks and to boats and immersed in the water up to their mouths, or buried in the earth up to their necks, they waited for the authorities to find some antidote to those treacherous flames. For the nature of phosphorus is such that it adheres to the skin like a sticky leprous crust, and burns only when it comes in contact with the air. As soon as those wretched beings stuck an arm out of the ground or out of the water it started to burn like a torch. To protect themselves from the scourge the hapless victims were forced to remain immersed in the water or buried in the earth like the damned in Dante's
Inferno.
Rescue-squads went from one to another of them, offering them food and drink, fastening those who were immersed in the water to the bank with ropes lest, overcome by weariness, they should collapse and drown, and experimenting with all sorts of ointments. But their efforts were in vain; for while they were anointing an arm, or a leg, or a shoulder, having momentarily pulled it out of the ground, the flames at once flared up again like little fiery serpents, and nothing availed to check the spread of that terrible burning corruption.

For a few days Hamburg presented the appearance of Dis, the infernal city. Here and there in the squares, in the streets, in the canals, in the Elbe, thousands and thousands of heads projected from the water and from the ground, looking as though they had been lopped off by the headman's axe. Livid with terror and pain, they moved their eyes, opened their mouths and spoke. Those horrible heads, wedged between the paving-stones of the streets or floating on the surface of the water, were visited night and day by their doomed owners' relatives, an emaciated, ragged throng, who spoke in low voices, as if to avoid intensifying their excruciating agony. Some brought food, drink and ointments, others brought cushions to place beneath the heads of their dear ones; some sat beside those who were buried in the ground and fanned their faces to bring them comfort in the heat of the day, while others sheltered their heads from the sun with umbrellas, or mopped their perspiring brows, or moistened their lips with soaking handkerchiefs, or straightened their hair with combs; some leaned from boats or from the bank of the canal or the river and consoled the doomed victims as they clung to their lines and moved to and fro with the current. Packs of dogs ran hither and thither, barking and licking the faces of their interred masters, or jumping into the water and swimming out to help them. Sometimes one of the doomed creatures, seized with impatience or despair, would utter a loud cry and attempt to escape from the water or from the ground, to put an end to the torment of his useless waiting; but immediately his limbs came into contact with the air they flared up, and dreadful scuffles broke out between the desperate victims and their relatives, who punched them with their fists, struck them with stones and sticks, or exerted the whole weight of their bodies in their efforts to push those dreadful heads back into the water or into the earth.