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  THE SKIN

  CURZIO MALAPARTE

  Translated from the Italian La Pelle

  by

  David Moore

  Bound edition first published in England in 1952 by Alvin Redman Limited, London, W.l

  First printing October 1952

  Sixth printing June 1956

  © 1952 Alvin Redman Ltd. All rights reserved

  First Ace Books edition 1959

  CHAPTER I - THE PLAGUE

  CHAPTER II - THE VIRGIN OF NAPLES

  CHAPTER III - THE WIGS

  CHAPTER IV - THE GREEN CARNATION

  CHAPTER V - THE BLACK WIND

  CHAPTER VI - GENERAL CORK'S BANQUET

  CHAPTER VII - THE TRIUMPH OF CLORINDA

  CHAPTER VIII - THE HOLOCAUST

  CHAPTER IX - THE FLAG

  CHAPTER X - THE TRIAL

  CHAPTER XI - THE DEAD GOD

  In affectionate memory of Colonel Henry E. Cumming, of the University of Virginia, and all the good, brave and honourable American soldiers who were my comrades-in-arms from 1943-1945, and who died in vain in the cause of European freedom.

  CHAPTER I - THE PLAGUE

  NAPLES was in the throes of the "plague." Every afternoon at five o'clock, after half an hour with the punch-ball and a hot shower in the gymnasium of the P.B.S.—Peninsular Base Section—Colonel Jack Hamilton and I would walk down in the direction of San Ferdinando, elbowing our way through the unruly mob which thronged Via Toledo from dawn until curfew-time.

  We were clean, tidy and well fed, Jack and I, as we made our way through the midst of the dreadful Neapolitan mob—squalid, dirty, starving, ragged, jostled and insulted in all the languages and dialects of the world by troops of soldiers belonging to the Armies of Liberation, which were drawn from all the races of the earth. The distinction of being the first among all the peoples of Europe to be liberated had fallen to the people of Naples; and in celebration of the winning of so well-deserved a prize my poor beloved Neapolitans, after three years of hunger, epidemics and savage air attacks, had accepted gracefully and patriotically the longed-for and coveted honour of playing the part of a conquered people, of singing, clapping, jumping for joy amid the ruins of their houses, unfurling foreign flags which until the day before had been the emblems of their foes, and throwing flowers from their windows on to the heads of the conquerors.

  But in spite of the universal and genuine enthusiasm there was not a single man or woman in the whole of Naples who was conscious of having been defeated. I cannot say how this strange feeling had arisen in the people's breasts. It was an undoubted fact that Italy, and hence also Naples, had lost the war. It is certainly much harder to lose a war than to win it. While everyone is good at winning a war, not all are capable of losing one. But the loss of a war does not in itself entitle a people to regard itself as conquered. In their ancient wisdom, enriched by the doleful experience of many hundreds of years, and in their sincere modesty, my poor beloved Neapolitans did not presume to regard themselves as a conquered people. In this they undoubtedly revealed a grave lack of tact. But could the Allies claim to liberate peoples and at the same time compel them to regard themselves as conquered? They must be either free or conquered. It would be unjust to blame the people of Naples if they regarded themselves as neither free nor conquered.

  As I walked beside Colonel Hamilton I felt incredibly ridiculous in my British uniform. The uniforms of the Italian Corps of Liberation were old British khaki uniforms, handed over by the British Command to Marshal Badoglio and—perhaps in an attempt to hide the bloodstains and bullet-holes—dyed dark green, the colour of a lizard. They were, as a matter of fact, uniforms taken from the British soldiers who had fallen at El Alamein and Tobruk. In my tunic three holes made by machine-gun bullets were visible. My vest, shirt and pants were stained with blood. Even my shoes had been taken from the body of a British soldier. The first time I had put them on I had felt something pricking the sole of my foot. I had thought at first that a tiny bone belonging to the dead man had remained stuck in the shoe. It was a nail. It would have been better, perhaps, if it really had been a bone from the dead man: it would have been much easier for me to remove it. It took me half an hour to find a pair of pliers and remove the nail. There was no gainsaying it: that stupid war had certainly ended well for us. It certainly could not have ended better. Our amour propre as defeated soldiers was undamaged. Now we were fighting at the side of the Allies, trying to help them win their war after we had lost our own. Hence it was natural that we should be wearing the uniforms of the Allied soldiers whom we had killed.

  When I at last succeeded in removing the nail and putting on my shoe I found that the company of which I was to assume command had been assembled for some time past on the barrack-square. The barracks consisted of an ancient monastery, which had been reduced by time and the air bombardments to a state of ruin. It was situated in the vicinity of La Torretta, behind Mergellina. The "square" was a cloistered courtyard, bounded on three sides by a portico, which rested on slender columns of grey tufa, and on the fourth by a high yellow wall, dotted with specks of green mould and great slabs of marble, on which were carved long lists of names, surmounted by great black crosses. During some cholera epidemic of centuries before the monastery had been used as a hospital, and the names referred to those who had died of the disease. On the wall was written in large black letters: Requiescant in pace.

  Colonel Palese had been anxious to introduce me to my soldiers himself in one of those simple ceremonies of which old military men are so fond. He was a tall, thin man, with completely white hair. He clasped my hand in silence and smiled, sighing dolefully as he did so. The soldiers were nearly all very young. They had fought well against the Allies in Africa and Sicily, and for this reason the Allies had chosen them to form the first cadre of the Italian Corps of Liberation. Lined up before us in the middle of the courtyard, they eyed me with a fixed stare. They too were wearing uniforms taken from British soldiers who had fallen at El Alamein and Tobruk, and their shoes were dead men's shoes. Their faces were pale and emaciated; their eyes, which were white and steady, consisted of a moist, opaque substance. They seemed to gaze at me without blinking.

  Colonel Palese nodded his head, and the sergeant shouted: "Company—'shun." The soldiers riveted their gaze upon me; it was sorrowful and intense, like the gaze of a dead cat. Their limbs became rigid and they sprang to attention. The hands that grasped their rifles were white and bloodless. The flabby skin hung from the tips of their fingers like a glove that is too big.

  Colonel Palese began to speak, "Here is your new commanding officer," he said, and while he spoke I looked at those Italian soldiers with their uniforms that had been taken from British corpses, their bloodless hands, their pale lips and white eyes. Here and there on their chests, stomachs and legs were black spots of blood. Suddenly I realized to my horror that these soldiers were dead. They gave out a faint odour of musty cloth, rotten leather, and flesh that had been dried up by the sun. I looked at Colonel Palese, and he was dead too. The voice that proceeded from his lips was watery, cold, glutinous, like the horrible gurgling that issues from a dead man's mouth if you rest your hand on his stomach.

  "Tell them to stand at ease," said Colonel Palese to the sergeant when he had ended his brief address. "Company stand at—ease!" cried the sergeant. The soldiers flopped down on to their left heels in limp and weary attitudes and stared at me fixedly, with a softer, more distant look. "And now," said Colonel Palese, "your new commanding officer will say a few words to you." I opened my mouth and a horrible gurgling sound came out; my words were muffled, thick, flaccid, I said: "We are the volunteers of Freedom, the soldiers of the new Italy. It is our duty to fight the Germans, to drive them out of our homeland, to throw th
em back beyond our frontiers. The eyes of all Italians are fixed upon us. It is our duty once more to hoist the flag that has fallen in the mire, to set an example to all in the midst of so much shame, to show ourselves worthy of the present hour, of the task that our country entrusts to us." When I had finished speaking Colonel Palese said to the soldiers: "Now one of you will repeat what your commanding officer has said. I want to be sure you understand. You!" he said, pointing to a soldier. "Repeat what your commanding officer said."

  The soldier looked at me; he was pale, he had the thin, bloodless lips of a dead man. Slowly, in a dreadful gurgling voice, he said: "It is our duty to show ourselves worthy of the shame of Italy."

  Colonel Palese came up close to me. "They understand," he said in a low voice, and moved silently away. Under his left armpit was a black spot of blood which gradually spread over the material of his uniform. I watched that black spot of blood as it gradually spread, my eyes followed the old Italian colonel, with his uniform that had belonged to an Englishman now dead, I watched him slowly move away and heard the squeaking of his shoes, the shoes of a dead British soldier, and the name of Italy stank in my nostrils like a piece of rotten meat.

  "This bastard people!" said Colonel Hamilton between his teeth forcing his way through the crowd.

  "Why do you say that, Jack?"

  Having reached the top of the Augusteo we used to turn off each day into Via Santa Brigida, where the crowd was thinner, and pause a moment to regain our breath.

  "This bastard people," said Jack, straightening his uniform, which had been rumpled by the terrible pressure of the crowd.

  "Don't say that, Jack."

  "Why not. This bastard, dirty people."

  "Oh, Jack! I am a bastard and a dirty Italian too. But I am proud of being a dirty Italian. It isn't our fault if we weren't born in America. I am sure we should be a bastard, dirty people even if we had been born in America. Don't you think so, Jack?"

  "Don't worry, Malaparte," said Jack. "Don't take it to heart. Life is wonderful."

  "Yes, life is a splendid thing, Jack, I know. But don't say that."

  "Sorry," said Jack, patting me on the shoulder. "I didn't mean to offend you. It's a figure of speech. I like Italians. I like this bastard, dirty, wonderful people."

  "I know, Jack—I know you like this poor, unhappy, wonderful people. No people on earth has ever endured as much as the people of Naples. They have endured hunger and slavery for two thousand years, and they don't complain. They revile no one, they hate no one—not even their own misery. Christ was a Neapolitan."

  "Don't talk nonsense," said Jack.

  "It isn't nonsense. Christ was a Neapolitan."

  "What's the matter with you today, Malaparte?" said Jack, looking at me with his fine eyes.

  "Nothing. What do you suppose is the matter with me?"

  "You're in a black mood," said Jack.

  "Why should I be in a bad mood?"

  "I know you, Malaparte. You're in a black mood today."

  "I am sad about Cassino, Jack."

  "To hell with Cassino."

  "I am sad, truly sad, about what is happening at Cassino."

  "To hell with you," said Jack.

  "It really is a shame that you're bringing such misery to Cassino."

  "Shut up, Malaparte."

  "Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you, Jack. I like Americans. I like the pure, the clean, the wonderful American people."

  "I know, Malaparte. I know you like Americans. But take it easy, Malaparte. Life is wonderful."

  "To hell with Cassino, Jack."

  "Oh, yes. To hell with Naples, Malaparte."

  There was a strange smell in the air. It was not the smell that comes down at eventide from the alleys of Toledo and from the Piazza delle Carrette and Santa Teresella degli Spagnoli. It was not the smell from the fried-fish shops, taverns and urinals nestling in the dark and fetid alleys of the Quartieri that stretch from Via Toledo up towards San Martino. It was not that nauseating, stuffy, glutinous smell, composed of a thousand effuvia, a thousand noisome exhalations—mille délicates puanteurs, as Jack put it—which at certain times of day pervades the city and emanates from the withered flowers that lie in heaps at the feet of the Madonnas in the chapels at the corners of the alleys. It was not the smell of the sirocco, which smacks of bad fish and of the cheese that is made from sheep's milk. It was not even that smell of cooked meat which towards evening spreads over Naples from the brothels—that smell in which Jean-Paul Sartre, walking one day along Via Toledo, sombre comme une aisselle, pleine d'une ombre chaude vaguement obscene, detected the parenté immonde de l'amour et de la nourriture. No, it was not that smell of cooked meat which broods over Naples towards sunset, when la chair des femmes a fair bouillie sous la crasse. It was an extraordinarily pure, delicate smell, dry, light, unsubstantial—the smell of brine, the salt tang of the night air, the smell of an ancient forest from the trees of which paper is made.

  Parties of dishevelled, painted women, followed by crowds of negro soldiers with pale hands, were parading up and down Via Toledo, cleaving the air above the thronged streets with shrill cries of "Hi, Joe! Hi, Joe!" At the entrances to the alleys loitered the public hairdressers, the capere. They formed long lines, and each stood behind a seat. On the seat, their eyes closed and their heads lolling against the backs or sunk upon their breasts, sat athletic negroes with small round skulls and yellow shoes that shone like the feet of the gilded statutes of the Angels in the church of Santa Chiara. Yelling and calling to one another with strange guttural cries, singing, or arguing at the top of their voices with their neighbours, who looked down from the windows and balconies as though from boxes at the theatre, the capere sank their combs into the negroes' curly, woolly hair, drew them towards them with both hands, spat on the teeth to reduce the friction, poured rivers of brilliantine into the palms of their hands, and rubbed and smoothed the patients' wild locks like masseuses.

  Bands of ragged boys knelt before their little wooden boxes, which were plastered with flakes of mother of pearl, sea-shells and fragments of mirrors, and beat the lids with the backs of their brushes, crying "Shoeshine! Shoeshine!" Meanwhile, with bony, eager hands, they grabbed the negro soldiers by the edge of the trousers as they went past, swaying their hips. Groups of Moroccan soldiers squatted along the walls, enveloped in their dark robes, their faces riddled with pock-marks, their yellow deep-set eyes shining from dark, wrinkled sockets, inhaling through quivering nostrils the dry odour that permeated the dusty air.

  Faded women, with livid faces and painted lips, their emaciated cheeks plastered with rouge—a dreadful and piteous sight—loitered at the corners of the alleys, offering to the passers-by their sorry merchandise. This consisted of boys and girls of eight or ten, whom the soldiers—Moroccans, Indians, Algerians, Madagascans— caressed with their fingers, slipping their hands between the buttons of their short trousers or lifting their dresses. "Two dollars the boys, three dollars the girls!" shouted the women.

  "Tell me frankly—would you like a little girl at three dollars?" I said to Jack.

  "Shut up, Malaparte."

  "After all, it's not much, three dollars for a little girl. Two pounds of lamb cost far more. I'm sure a little girl costs more in London or New York than here—isn't that so, Jack?"

  "Tu me dégoutes," said Jack.

  "Three dollars is barely three hundred lire. How much can a little girl of eight or ten weigh? Fifty pounds? Remember that on the black market two pounds of lamb cost five hundred and fifty lire, in other words five dollars and fifty cents."

  "Shut up!" cried Jack.

  During the last few days the prices of girls and boys had dropped, and they were still falling. Whereas the prices of sugar, oil, flour, meat and bread had risen and were still on the increase, the price of human flesh was slumping from day to day. A girl between twenty and twenty-five years of age, who a week before was worth up to ten dollars, was now worth barely four dollars, bones included. T
his fall in the price of human flesh on the Neapolitan market may have been due to the fact that women were flocking to Naples from all parts of Southern Italy. During recent weeks the wholesalers had thrown on to the market a large consignment of Sicilian women. It was not all fresh meat, but the speculators knew that negro soldiers have refined tastes, and prefer meat not to be too fresh. Yet Sicilian meat was not in great demand, and even the negroes refused it in the end: negroes don't like white women to be too dark. Every day there arrived in Naples, on carts drawn by wretched little donkeys or in Allied vehicles, but mostly on foot, parties of sturdily-built, robust girls, nearly all of them peasants, attracted by the mirage of gold. They came from the Calabrias, the Apulias, the Basilicata and Molise. And so the price of human flesh on the Neopolitan market had been crashing, and it was feared that this might have a serious effect on the whole economy of the city. (Nothing of the kind had ever been seen in Naples before. It was certainly a disgrace, and the vast majority of the good people of Naples blushed with shame because of it. But why did it not bring a blush to the cheeks of the Allied authorities, who were the masters of Naples?) In compensation, negroes' flesh had risen in price, and this, luckily, was helping to re-establish a certain equilibrium on the market.

  "What does negroes' flesh cost today?" I asked Jack.

  "Shut up," he answered.

  "Is it true that the flesh of a black American costs more than that of a white American?"

  "Tu m'agaces," answered Jack.

  I certainly had no intention of offending him, nor of poking fun at him, nor even of being disrespectful to the American Army—the loveliest, the kindest, the most respectable Army in the world. What did it matter to me if the flesh of a black American cost more than that of a white American? I like Americans, whatever the colour of their skin, and I proved it a hundred times during the war. White or black, their souls are pure, much purer than ours. I like the Americans because they are good and sincere Christians; because they believe that Christ is always on the side of those who are in the right; because they believe that it is a sin to be in the wrong, that it is immoral to be in the wrong; because they believe that they alone are honourable men, and that all the nations of Europe are more or less dishonest; because they believe that a conquered nation is a nation of criminals, that defeat is a moral stigma, an expression of divine justice.