The Skin

by Curzio Malaparte

  "That boy," said Jack, "has a strong political sense."

  "You mean he has a strong historical sense," said Baron Romano Avezzana.

  "I wonder," said Jack, "why the people of Naples like negroes."

  "The Neapolitans are nice people," replied the Prince of Candia, "and they like negroes because negroes are nice too."

  "They are certainly nicer than white men—they are more generous, more human," said Maria Teresa. "Children are never wrong, and children prefer negroes to white men."

  "I don't see," said Antonino Nunziante, "why negroes are ashamed of being black. Are we ashamed of being white?"

  "Women are never wrong, either," said Baron Romano Avezzana, evoking cries of indignation from Consuelo and Maria Teresa.

  "In order to persuade the Neapolitan girls to become engaged to them," said Consuelo, "the negro soldiers say that they are white like the others, but that in America, before sailing for Europe, they were dyed black so that they could fight at night-time without being seen by the enemy. When they go back to America after the war they will scrape the black dye from their skins and become white again."

  "Ah, que c'est amusant!" exclaimed Jack, laughing so heartily that his eyes filled with tears.

  "Sometimes," said the Prince of Candia, "I am ashamed of being a white man. Luckily I am not only a white man—I am a Christian too."

  "What makes our behaviour unforgivable," said Baron Romano Avezzana, "is the very fact that we are Christians."

  I was silent, and listened, my heart heavy with a dark foreboding. I was silent, and with an abstracted air contemplated the walls with their historical frescoes, superimposed on a surface of red Pompeian earth, the beautiful gilt furniture of the time of King Murat, the great Venetian mirrors, and the frescoed ceiling—the handiwork of some painter schooled to follow the Spanish style which prevailed at the Court of Charles III of Bourbon. The palace of the Princes of Candia is not among the oldest of its kind in Naples: it belongs to the splendid yet unhappy age when the Spanish domination was at its most austere—the age when the Neapolitan nobles, abandoning the old, gloomy palaces which surround the Porta Capuana and flank the Decumano, began to build their sumptuous dwelling on the Monte di Dio.

  Architecturally the palace of the Princes of Candia conforms to that heavy imitation-Spanish baroque which enjoyed a great vogue in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies before Vanvitelli brought back into favour the classical simplicity of the Ancients. Yet its interiors reveal the influence of the grace and the pleasing innovations associated with that imaginative spirit which in the Naples of those days derived its artistic inspiration not so much from French refinements as from the stuccoes and encuastics of Herculaneum and Pompeii lately brought to light as a result of the learned researches of the Bourbons. The paintings and the decorative effects produced by the artists of the two ancient cities, which for so many centuries lay buried in their tomb of lava and ashes, were in fact the prototypes of those dancing Cupids portrayed on the walls, of those representations of the triumph of Venus, of Hercules leaning wearily against Corinthian columns, of Diana the huntress, and of those vendeurs d'Amours which later became a favourite subject of French decorative art. Let into the doors are great mirrors, which cast blue reflections and, by way of a contrast to the brilliant red of the Pompeian stuccoes, throw an aquamarine shadow upon the pink flesh and black tresses of the nymphs and the elusive whiteness of the classical robes.

  A transparent shaft of green light flooded down from the ceiling; and if the guests raised their heads they found themselves looking into the heart of a vast wood, through the intertwined leafy branches of which they glimpsed a brilliant blue sky, flecked with white clouds. On the banks of a river naked women, immersed in the water up to their knees, or lying on a dense carpet of vivid green (not the green beloved of Poussin, which merges into blue and yellow tints, nor the purplish green favoured by Claude Lorrain), unconscious of, or perhaps indifferent to, the Fauns and Satyrs who watched them through the leafy branches of the trees. In the distance, beyond the river, crenellated castles could be seen, rising from the summit of thickly-wooded hills. Plumed warriors with glittering cuirasses galloped through the valley; others with swords upraised fought among themselves; others yet, pinned to the ground beneath their fallen horses, pressed hard on the earth with their elbows in an effort to rise. And packs of hounds rushed in pursuit of white stags, followed from afar by knights clad in blue or scarlet jerkins.

  The green radiance of grass and leaves which flooded down from the ceiling was softly reflected in the gilded furniture, in the yellow satin covers of the armchairs, in the pale pink and sky-blue tints of the vast Aubusson carpet, and in the white Sphinxes that adorned the Capodimonte chandeliers. These were suspended in a row above the centre of the table, which was splendidly draped in an ancient Sicilian lace cloth. There was nothing in that magnificent hall to remind one of the anguish, the destruction and the grief of Naples —nothing, save the pale, thin faces of the guests, and the modesty of the fare.

  Throughout the war the Prince of Candia, like many other members of the Neapolitan aristocracy, had refused to leave the unhappy city, now reduced to a heap of rubbish and ruins. After the terrible American air-raids of the winter of 1942 no one had remained in Naples except the common people and a few of the oldest noble families. Of the aristocracy, some had sought refuge in Rome and Florence, others on their estates in Calabria, Apulia and the Abruzzi. The wealthy middle classes had fled to Sorrento and the sea-front of Amalfi, and the poorer middle classes had scattered to the outlying districts of Naples, in particular to the little villages on the slopes of Vesuvius, in accordance with the universal conviction— and heaven knows why or how it originated—that the Allied bombers would not dare to brave the wrath of the volcano.

  Perhaps this conviction had its origin in the ancient popular belief that Vesuvius was the tutelary divinity of Naples, the city's totem—a cruel, vindictive God, who sometimes shook the earth terribly, brought down temples, palaces and hovels, and burned his own children in his rivers of fire, burying their homes beneath a pall of red-hot ashes. A cruel God, but a just one, who punished Naples for her sins and at the same time watched over her destinies, over her misery and her hunger—father and judge, executioner and Guardian Angel of his people.

  The common people had been left masters of the city. Nothing in the world—no fire from heaven, no earthquake, no pestilence— will ever be able to drive the common people of Naples from their mean dwellings, from their sordid alleys. The common people of Naples do not run away from death. They do not abandon their homes, their churches, the relics of their Saints and the bones of their dead to seek safety far from their altars and their tombs. But when danger has been graver and more immediate, when cholera has filled their homes with sorrow, or the fire and ashes from the skies have threatened to bury their city, the common people of Naples have been wont for countless centuries to raise their eyes and scan the faces of the "gentry" in order to divine their sentiments, thoughts and intentions, and from their demeanour to measure the magnitude of the scourge, estimate their chance of salvation, and derive an example of courage, piety and confidence in God.

  After each of those terrible raids, which had afflicted the unhappy city for three years, the common people of Pallonetto and La Torretta used to see the true "gentry" of Naples coming forth at the usual hour from the portals of the ancient palaces on the Monte di Dio and the Riviera di Chiaia, now wrecked by the bombs and blackened by the smoke from the fires. These were the men who had not deigned to flee, who out of pride, and perhaps also partly out of indolence, had not condescended to put themselves out for so little, but stuck to the habits which had been theirs in the era of gaiety and security, as if nothing had happened or was happening. Impeccably dressed, their gloves spotless and with fresh flowers in their button-holes, they met and exchanged affable greetings each morning in front of the ruins of the Albergo Excelsior, within the shattered walls of the Circo
lo dei Canottieri, on the mole of the little harbour of Santa Lucia with its surfeit of capsized vessels, or on the footpath outside the Caflish. The appalling stench of the dead bodies that were buried under the ruins polluted the air, but not the slightest flicker of emotion crossed the faces of those old gentlemen, who on hearing the hum of the American bombers would look fretfully up at the sky and, with ineffably scornful smiles on their faces, murmur: "There they go, the blighters."

  Often, especially in the mornings, one saw passing along the deserted streets—littered with abandoned and already bloated human bodies, the remains of horses, and vehicles that had been overturned by the explosions—a few old Tilburys, pride of English coachmakers, and even an occasional antiquated horse-charabanc, drawn by a shrunken jade, one of the few that remained in the squalid stables after the last requisition for the army. They passed by carrying old aristocrats of the generation of Prince Jean Gerace, accompanied by young women with pale, smiling faces. Coming out into the sordid alleys of Toledo and Chiaia, the poor people, ragged, gaunt-faced, their eyes bright from hunger and lack of sleep, their faces dark with anguish, would greet the "gentry" with smiles as they drove by on top of their coaches. Aristocrats and paupers would then acknowledge one another with those informal gestures of greeting, those mute looks and that affectionate arching of the brows, which in Naples mean so much more than words.

  "We are glad to see you well, gentlemen," implied the informally deferential gestures of the paupers. "Thank you, Gennari', thank you, Cuncetti'," the affectionate gestures of the aristocrats seemed to reply. "We can't bear it any longer, gentlemen, we can't bear it any longer!" was the purport of the poor people's looks and bows. "Patience, children, have patience for a little longer! This trouble will pass as they all do," was the aristocrats' reply, conveyed by nods and gestures of the hand. And as they raised their eyes to heaven the paupers seemed to say: "Let us hope the Lord will help us!"

  For in Naples Princes and paupers, the aristocracy and the poor, have all known one another for countless centuries, and their acquaintanceship has been handed down from generation to generation, from father to son. They know one another by name, they are all blood-relations, in virtue of that family affection which has from time immemorial existed between the commonalty and the old nobility, between the hovels of Pallonetto and the palaces of the Monte di Dio. From time immemorial the aristocracy and the commonalty have lived together in the same streets, in the same palaces, the populace in their bassi, in those dark caves which open out on to the alleys, the aristocracy in the magnificent gilded halls of the piani nobili{5} For countless centuries the great noble families have fed and protected the common people, huddled together in the alleys that surround their palaces, not, to be sure, in a spirit of feudalism, nor merely out of Christian charity, but in fulfilment, I would say, of the obligations of kinship. For many years the aristocracy too have been poor; and the populace almost seem to apologize because they cannot help them. Commonalty and nobility share the joy of births and marriages, the anxieties of sickness, the tears of mourning; and there is not a pauper who is not accompanied to the cemetery by the lord of his district, nor a lord whose bier is not followed by a weeping crowd of paupers. It is an old saying among the populace of Naples that men are equal not only in death, but in life.

  The traditional attitude of the Neapolitan nobility to death is different from that of the common people. They greet it not with tears but with smiles, almost gallantly, as one greets a beloved woman or a young bride. In Neapolitan painting, as in Spanish, weddings and funerals recur with a haunting regularity. The pictures have a macabre and at the same time a gallant character; they are the work of obscure painters who maintain even today the great tradition of El Greco and Spagnoletto, though in their hands it has lost its scrupulousness and its distinctive character. And it was an ancient custom, observed until a few years ago, that noblewomen should be buried with their white bridal veils about their heads.

  Hanging on the wall directly in front of me, and behind the Prince of Candia, was a large canvas, on which was depicted the death of Prince Filippo of Candia, our host's father. Dominated by the balefulness and gloom of the dirty greens and blues, by the shabbiness of the faded yellows and by the excessive boldness of the crude, cold whites, this canvas contrasted strangely with the festive splendour of the table, brilliant with Angevin and Aragonese silverware and Capodimonte porcelain, and draped in its vast cloth of old Sicilian lace, whose Arabian and Norman ornamental motifs were interwoven with the traditional themes of pomegranate and laurel branches, bending under the weight of fruits, flowers and birds, against a sky filled with twinkling stars. The old Prince Filippo of Candia, conscious of the approach of death, had illuminated the ballroom in festive style, donned the uniform of a high dignitary of the Sovereign Order of Malta and, supported by his servants, made a solemn entry into the vast, empty, brilliantly lighted hall, clutching in his palsied hand a bouquet of roses. The obscure painter, who by the manner in which he piled white on white revealed himself to be in some remote way an imitator of Toma, had portrayed him standing in the middle of the hall, in the bright solitude of the exquisite marble floor, which was embellished with scenes from history. He was offering the bouquet of roses to his unseen Princess, bowing as he did so. And he had died where he stood, in his servants' arms, while the common people from the Vicolo del Pallonetto stood in the open doorway and in reverent silence witnessed the death of the great Neapolitan aristocrat.

  Something in that canvas filled me with disquiet. It was not the waxen face of the dying man, nor the pallor of the servants, nor the ostentatious splendour of the vast hall, with its glittering mirrors, marbles and gilt ornaments. It was the bouquet of roses which the dying man was clutching in his hand. These roses were of a vivid, sensuous red colour; they looked as if they were composed of flesh —the pink, warm flesh of a woman. They radiated an impression of restless sensuality, and with it a pure, tender sweetness, as if the presence of death did not detract from the delicious vitality and smoothness of the flesh-like petals, but enhanced their triumphant quality—the ephemeral yet eternal quality of the rose.

  Roses of the self-same variety, which had bloomed in the selfsame hot-houses, protruded in fragrant bunches from the old, tarnished silver vases that had been set out in the middle of the table.

  And it was not the scanty, humble fare, consisting of eggs, boiled potatoes and black bread, nor the thin, pale faces of the guests, so much as these roses that cast a gloom on the whiteness of the table-linen and on the very magnificence of the silver, the crystals and the porcelain, conjuring up an invisible presence and filling my mind with a painful apprehension, a foreboding of which I could not rid myself, and which profoundly disturbed me.

  "The people of Naples," said the Prince of Candia, "are the most Christian people in Europe." And he related how on September 9th, 1943, when the Americans landed at Salerno, the people of Naples, unarmed though they were, revolted against the Germans. The ferocious battle in the streets and alleys of Naples lasted for three days. The people, who had counted on the Allies' help, fought with a frenzy born of desperation. But General Clark's soldiers, who ought to have come to the aid of the city now that it had rebelled, were clinging to the beach at Paestum, and the Germans were trampling on their hands with the heels of their heavy hobnailed boots in an effort to make them relax their hold and to throw them back into the sea. Thinking they had been deserted, the people denounced their betrayal: men, women and children wept for rage and grief as they fought. After a frightful struggle lasting three days the Germans, who had been driven out by the infuriated populace and had begun to retreat along the road to Capua, returned in force, re-occupied the city, and indulged in horrible reprisals.

  The German prisoners who had fallen into the hands of the people numbered many hundreds. The heroic and unhappy Neapolitans did not know what to do with them. Should they let them go free? Had they done so the prisoners would have slaughtered the ver
y people who had captured them and given them back their freedom. Should they cut their throats? The people of Naples are Christians, not a race of murders. So the Neapolitans bound their prisoners hand and foot, gagged them, and hid them in the depths of their hovels, pending the advent of the Allies. But meanwhile they had to be fed, and the people were dying of hunger. The responsibility of guarding the prisoners entrusted to the women, who, their fury at the slaughter having subsided, and their hatred giving way to Christian compassion, took the poor and scanty food from their children's mouths in order to feed their prisoners, sharing with them their kidney-bean or lentil soup, their tomato salad and their meagre ration of miserable bread. And not only did they feed them, but they washed them and looked after them as though they were infants in swaddling-clothes. Twice a day, before removing their gags in order to victual them, they knocked them out, lest, having been relieved of their gags, they should call for help, giving the alarm to their comrades as they passed along the street. But in spite of necessary blows and inadequate feeding the prisoners, who had nothing to do but sleep, waxed fat like fowls in the hen-coop.

  Finally, at the beginning of October, after a month of anguished waiting, the Americans entered the city. And on the following day there appeared on the walls of Naples large notices in which the American Governor urged the population to hand over their German prisoners to the Allied authorities within twenty-four hours, promising a reward of five hundred lire for each prisoner. But a committee of citizens went to the Governor and explained to him that in view of the increase in the cost of kidney-beans, lentils, tomatoes, oil and bread the price of five hundred lire per prisoner was too low.

  "Try to understand, Excellency! We can't let you have the prisoners for less than fifteen hundred lire a head. We don't want to make a profit—we don't even want to recoup our losses!"

  The American Governor was inflexible. "I have said five hundred lire—not another cent!" he insisted.