The Skin

by Curzio Malaparte

  The waiters lowered the trays and offered them to the guests, and the frightful meal began. I kept my eyes fixed on the waiters' faces: the spectacle of their disgust and contempt absorbed my attention. These waiters were wearing the livery of the house of Toledo; they recognized me and smiled at me. I was the sole Italian present at that strange banquet; only I could understand and share their humiliation. Fried spam and boiled maize! And as I perceived the disgust which numbed their white-gloved hands I suddenly noticed that the edge of each tray was embossed with a diadem. But it was not the diadem of the Dukes of Toledo.

  I was wondering from what house, and by virtue of what marriage, what right of inheritance, what alliance, those trays had found their way into the palace of the Dukes of Toledo, when, looking down at my plate, I thought I recognized it. It formed part of the famous porcelain service of the Gerace family. Sadly and affectionately I thought of Jean Gerace, of his beautiful mansion on the Monte di Do, which had been wrecked by bombs, and of his art treasures, now scattered to the four winds. I looked along the edge of the table, and there in front of the guests, in all its splendour, I saw the celebrated Pompeian porcelain of Capodimonte, on which Sir William Hamilton, His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador at the Court of Naples, had bestowed the name of Emma Hamilton; and—a last, pathetic tribute to the unhappy Muse of Horatio Nelson—"Emma" is the name given, in this same city of Naples, to those plates which the craftsmen of Capodimonte have copied from the single specimen discovered by Sir William Hamilton during the excavations at Pompeii.

  I was moved and gladdened by the knowledge that the worthy General Cork's table was graced by this porcelain, whose origin was so ancient and illustrious, and whose name was held so dear. And I smiled with pleasure as I thought that Naples, conquered, humiliated, destroyed by the raids, ravaged by suffering and hunger, could still offer its liberators such delightful evidence of its former glories. A gracious city, Naples! A noble country, Italy! I was proud and moved as I saw the Graces, the Muses, the Nymphs, the Venuses and the Cupids that chased one another round the edge of each of those beautiful pieces of china mingling the delicate pink of their flesh, the pale blue of their tunics, and the warm gold of their hair with the lurid ruby red of that terrible spam.

  That spam came from America—from Chicago. How remote Chicago was from Naples in the happy years of peace! And now America was there in that hall, Chicago was there on those porcelain plates from Capodimonte that were sacred to the memory of Emma Hamilton. Ah, what a misfortune it is to be made as I am made! To me that dinner, served on those plates, in that hall, at that table, was like a picnic above a tomb.

  I was saved from giving way to my emotions by the voice of General Cork.

  "Do you think," he asked me, "that there is a more exquisite wine in Itaiy than this delicious Capri wine?"

  That evening, in honour of Mrs. Flat, besides the usual tinned milk, the usual coffee, the habitual tea and the habitual pineapple juice, there was wine on the table. General Cork entertained an almost amorous affection for Capri, so much so that he described as "a delicious Capri wine" that light white wine which is a product of Ischia, and takes its name from Epomeo, the high, extinct volcano situated in the heart of that island.

  Whenever the situation on the Cassino front allowed him a brief respite from his cares General Cork would summon me to his office and, after telling me that he was tired, that he was not well, and that he needed two or three days' rest, would ask me with a smile if I was not of the opinion that the air of Capri would do him good. "Why, of course!" I would answer. "The air of Capri is just the thing to put an American general on his feet!" And so, after this little ritual comedy, we would set out for Capri in a motor-boat, accompanied by Colonel Jack Hamilton or some other staff-officer.

  We used to follow the strip of coast dominated by Vesuvius as far as Pompeii and cut across the gulf of Castellammare to the heights of Sorrento. And as he gazed at the vast, deep caves that open into the sheer cliff-face General Cork would say: "I don't see how Sirens could live in those damp, dark caves." And he would ask me for information about those "dear old ladies" with the same shy curiosity with which, before inviting her to dinner, he had asked Colonel Jack Hamilton for information about Mrs. Flat.

  Mrs. Flat, that "dear old lady," had discreetly given General Cork to understand that she would very much like to be invited to a dinner "in the Renaissance style." And General Cork had spent two sleepless nights trying to understand what a dinner in the Renaissance style implied. That evening, shortly before we took our places, General Cork had summoned Jack and me to his office and had proudly shown us the menu.

  Jack had pointed out to General Cork that at a dinner in the Renaissance style boiled fish ought to be served before the fried course, not after it. In point of fact, the boiled fish came after the spam and maize on the menu. But the thing that disturbed Jack was the name of the fish, which was "Siren mayonnaise."

  "Siren mayonnaise?" said Jack.

  "Yes, Siren ... I mean . . . not an old lady of the sea, of course!" replied General Cork, somewhat embarrassed. "Not one of those women with fish's tails ... I mean . . . not a Siren, but a siren ... I mean ... a fish, a real fish, the kind they call sirens in Naples."

  "A Siren? A fish?" said Jack.

  "A fish ... a fish," said General Cork, blushing. "An excellent fish. I've never tried it, but they tell me it's an excellent fish." And turning to me he asked if that kind of fish was suitable for a dinner in the Renaissance style.

  "To tell you the truth," I replied, "it seems to me that it would be more suitable for a dinner in the Homeric style."

  "In the Homeric style?" said General Cork.

  "I mean ... yes ... in the Homeric style. But a siren can be eaten with any kind of sauce," I answered, solely in order to dispel his embarrassment. And meanwhile I was wondering what sort of fish this could be.

  "Of course!" exclaimed General Cork with a sigh of relief.

  Like all the generals in the U.S. Army, General Cork lived in mortal dread of the Senators and the women's clubs of America. Unfortunately, Mrs. Flat, who had arrived by air from the United States a few days before to assume command of the Fifth Army's contingent of Waacs, was the wife of the famous Senator Flat and President of the most aristocratic women's club in Boston. General Cork was terrified of her.

  "It will be as well if you invite her to spend a few days at your beautiful house on Capri," he had said to me, as if he were giving me a piece of advice, and hoping perhaps to keep Mrs. Flat away from G.H.Q. at least for a few days.

  But I had pointed out to him that if Mrs. Flat liked my house she would undoubtedly requisition it and turn it into a women's club or a rest camp for her Waacs.

  "Ah, I hadn't considered that danger," General Cork had replied, turning pale.

  He regarded my house on Capri rather as his own personal rest camp, and he was more jealous of it than I was myself. When he had some report to write for the War Department or some operational plan to lick into shape, or when he needed a few days' rest, he would summon me to his office and ask me if I didn't think a little Capri air would do him good.

  He liked to have with him only Jack and myself, and sometimes his aide-de-camp. From Sorrento we would follow the coast as far as the heights of Massa Lubrense, and from there cut across the Bocche di Capri with our bows pointing in the direction of the Faraglioni.

  As soon as the promontory of Massullo emerged from the sea, and my house—situated at the very tip of the promontory—came into view, a boyish smile would light up the face of General Cork.

  "Ah, I see why the Sirens made their home here," he would say. "This is the real country of the Sirens!"

  And, his eyes shining with joy, he would scrutinize the caves that open into the side of the Monte di Tiberio, the enormous rocks that rise from the breakers at the foot of the sheer, dizzy cliff of Matromania, and the Sirenuse, which lie away to the east, off Positano. On one of these little islands, which fishermen no
w call the Galli, is an ancient tower, lashed by the winds and the waves. The property of Massine, Diaghilev's pupil, it is empty save for a silent, derelict Pleyel, the keyboard of which is green with mould.

  "There's Paestum!" I would say, indicating the long sandy beach which bars the eastern horizon.

  And General Cork would cry: "Ah, here's where I should like to live!"

  For him there were only two paradises in the world—America and Capri, which he sometimes affectionately called "little America". Undoubtedly he would have regarded Capri as a perfect paradise but for the fact that even that blessed isle lay prostrate beneath the heel of female tyrants—an elect band of "extraordinary women," as Compton Mackenzie calls them. All of them Countesses, Marchionesses, Duchesses, Princesses and the like, and mostly no longer young, though still ugly, they constituted the femine aristocracy of Capri: And as everyone knows, the moral, intellectual and social tyranny of old and ugly women is the worst tyranny of all.

  Already on the downward path that leads to the age of regrets and memories, already oppressed by self-pity and prompted by this complex sentiment, which is of all the most pathetic, to seek in their narrow feminine society a sad consolation for the past, a vain recompense for the love which they had lost, these faded Venuses had grouped themselves around a Roman Princess who in her youth had enjoyed many successes with both men and women. This Princess was already close on fifty. Tall and fat, she had a hard face and a raucous voice, and already her flabby chin was darkened by the suspicion of a beard. Apprehensive of the threatened raids, she had fled from Rome, placing no confidence in the protection promised by the Vatican to the city of Caesar and Peter, or rather, to use the phraseology of the time, doubting whether the Pope's umbrella was adequate to shelter Rome from the rain of bombs. And she had sought refuge on Capri, where she had summoned into her company all that still remained of that band of Venuses, once resplendent but now humbled and withered, who in the golden age of Marchesa Luisa Casati and Mimi Franchetti had made Capri a citadel of feminine grace and beauty and of a form of love in which man had no share.

  With the aim of establishing her tyranny over the island the Princess had skilfully exploited the eclipse—due to the war—of Countess Edda Ciano and her court of beautiful young women, who, owing to the great dearth of men from which Capri suffered during those years, had been reduced to making a pantomime of love and to competing for the favours of the four or five young men who had hastened to Capri from near-by Naples in order to secure, as they put it, the means to live in peace during the war. But what had helped the Princess more than anything else to assert her tyranny over the whole island was the announcement of the impending American landing in Italy. Countess Edda Ciano and her youthful court had quitted Capri in a great hurry and had sought refuge in Rome; and the Princess had been left sole mistress of the island.

  Every day, in the afternoon, these faded Venuses met in a lonely villa situated on the Piccola Marina, half-way between the villas of Teddy Gerard and Gracie Fields. What occurred during their secret reunions we are not privileged to know. It seems that their chief delights were music, poetry, painting and, added some, whisky. What is beyond question is that, even during the years of war, these gentle ladies had remained faithful in taste and sentiment to Paris, London and New York, that is to say to the rue de la Paix, Mayfair and Harper's Bazaar; and because of their fidelity they had endured insults and gibes of every sort. In matters of art they had remained faithful to D'Annunzio, Debussy and Zuloaga, whom they regarded as the Schiaparellis of poetry, music and painting. Old-fashioned, too, was their taste in dress, inasmuch as it was still inspired by the motifs which Marchesa Casati had made famous throughout Europe thirty years before.

  They dressed in long tweed jackets, the colour of burnt tobacco, and purple velvet capes, and they swathed their wrinkled brows in lofty turbans of white or red silk, richly decked with gold clasps, precious stones and pearls, so that they looked like Domenichino's Cumaean Sibyl. In addition, they wore not skirts but broad trousers of Lyonese velvet, green or blue in colour, whence protruded their feet, which were small and shod with gilt sandals, like the dainty little feet of the Queens portrayed in the Gothic miniatures in the Livres d'heures. So clad, and by reason of their hieratic postures, they had the appearance of sibyls or witches, and so in point of fact they were commonly described. When they crossed Capri's square, stiff and inexorable, sombre-faced, firm of gesture, proud and preoccupied, the people watched them go by with a vague feeling of disquiet. They inspired not so much respect as fear.

  On September 16th, 1943, the Americans landed on Capri, and at the first rumour of that happy event the square filled with jubilant people; and now there arrived in a body from the direction of the Piccola Marina the severe sibyls, who mingled with the crowd, cleaving a passage through the dense throng merely by moving their eyes, and grouping themselves around the Princess in the front rank. When the first American soldiers emerged into the square, walking with their bodies bent and their tommy-guns slung over their shoulders, as if they expected at any moment to come upon the enemy, and found themselves face to face with the group of sibyls, they halted in consternation, and many of them recoiled a step.

  "Long live the Allies! Long live America!" cried the wrinkled Venuses in their raucous voices, raising their fingers to their lips and blowing kisses at the "liberators." Rushing up to encourage his troops, who were already retreating, and imprudently pushing his way too far forward, General Cork was surrounded by the sibyls, enfolded by a dozen arms, lifted up and carried bodily away. He disappeared, and nothing more was heard of him until late in the evening, when he was seen crossing the threshold of the Albergo Quisisana, wide-eyed and wearing a dazed and guilty expression.

  On the following evening there was a great gala ball at the Quisisana in honour of the "liberators," and on this occasion General Cork was responsible for a memorable exploit. It was his duty to open the ball with the first lady of Capri; and without a doubt the first lady of Capri was the Princess. While the Quisisana orchestra played Stardust General Cork gazed one by one at the mature Venuses grouped around the Princess, who was already smiling, already slowly raising her arms. The countenance of General Cork was still pale with fright following his experiences of the previous evening.

  Suddenly his face lit up as he looked beyond the wall of sibyls and fixed his gaze on a dark, saucy-looking girl with very beautiful dark eyes. She had a wide, red mouth, and a black down covered her neck and cheeks. She was standing at the door of the buttery with the hotel maids, enjoying the gay confusion. Her name was Antonietta, and she was employed at the Quisisana as wardrobe-mistress. General Cork smiled, forced his way through the group of sibyls, passed unseeingly between the lines of beautiful, bare-shouldered, bright-eyed young women who were massed behind the Princess and her wrinkled nymphs, and opened the ball in the hairy arms of Antoinetta.

  It was a colossal scandal, and the Faraglioni are still quivering from its impact. What a splendid army the American Army was! What a wonderful general was General Cork! Not content with crossing the Atlantic to conquer Europe, landing in Italy, spreading confusion among the hostile armies, entering Naples as a liberator and conquering Capri, the island of love, here he was celebrating his victory by opening the ball with the wardrobe-mistress of the Quisisana! The Americans, it must be acknowledged, are smarter than the British. When, a few months later, Winston Churchill landed on Capri, he went and had lunch on the rocks of Tragara, right under my house. But he wasn't as chic as General Cork. He ought at least to have sent a luncheon invitation to Carmelina, the maid at the Trattoria dei Faraglioni.

  During the days that he spent at my house on Capri, General Cork used to rise at dawn and go for a solitary walk in the wood situated near the Faraglioni, or climb the craggy precipice which overhangs my house on the Matromania side; or, if the sea was calm, he would go out in a boat with Jack and me and fish among the rocks under the Salto di Tiberio. He liked to sit at my tab
le alongside Jack and me with a glass of Capri wine before him, pressed from the vines of Sordo. My cellar was well stocked with wines and liqueurs, but more than the best Bourgogne, the best Bordeaux, hock, moselle, or the choicest Cognac he liked the pure, unadulterated wine that comes from the vineyards of Sordo, on the Monte di Tiberio. In the evening, after supper, we used to sprawl in front of the chimney-piece on the chamois-skins that cover the stone-paved floor. It is a vast chimney-piece, and built into the back of the fireplace is a representation of Jena in quartz. Through the flames one discerns the moonlit sea, the Faraglioni rising from the waves, the crags of Matromania, and the forest of pines and holm oaks that lies behind my house.

  "Will you tell Mrs. Flat about your meeting with Marshal Rommel?" said General Cork to me with a smile.

  To General Cork I was neither Captain Curzio Malaparte, the Italian liaison officer, nor the author of Kaputt: I was Europe. I was Europe, the whole of Europe, with its cathedrals, its statues, its pictures, its poetry, its music, its museums, its libraries, its victories and defeats, its immortal glories, its wines, its foods, its women, its heroes, its dogs, its horses. I was Europe—cultured, refined, witty, amusing, disturbing and incomprehensible. General Cork liked to have Europe at his table, in his motor car, at his headquarters on the Cassino or Garigliano front. He liked to be able to say to Europe: "Tell me about Schumann, Chopin, Giotto, Michelangelo, Raphael, Picasso, that damned fool Baudelaire—tell me about Jean Cocteau." He liked to be able to say to Europe: "Give me in a few words the history of Venice, tell me the theme of the Divine Comedy, talk to me about Paris and Maxim's." He liked to be able to say to Europe, at any time—at table, in his car, in a trench, in an aeroplane: "Tell me something about the life the Pope leads, what his favourite sport is—tell me if it's true that the Cardinals have lovers."