The Skin

by Curzio Malaparte

  Not until the struggle in the streets of Oltrarno had lasted for fifteen days did we manage to cross the river and penetrate into the heart of the city. We had established ourselves securely on the top floor of the Pensione Bartolini, an ancient mansion on the Lungarno Guicciardini, and we had to bend down as we walked about the rooms to avoid being riddled by the fire of the Germans crouching behind the windows of the Palazzo Ferroni, which stood facing us across the Arno, at the approach to the Santa Trinita bridge.

  During the night, as I lay beside the Canadian soldiers and the partisans from the Potente Communist Division, I pressed my face against the brick floor, forcibly restraining myself from getting up, going down into the street, and moving from house to house shooting in the stomach all those who were hiding in the cellars, tremulously awaiting the moment when, the danger over, they could run out into the square with tricolour rosettes on their chests and red kerchiefs round their necks, crying "Long live freedom!" I was nauseated by the hatred which consumed my heart, but I had to cling to the floor with my nails to prevent myself from going into the houses and killing all the false heroes who one day, when the Germans had abandoned the city, would emerge from their hiding-places with cries of "Long live freedom!" looking at our bearded faces and tattered uniforms with contempt, pity and hatred in their eyes.

  "Why don't you sleep?" Jack asked me in a low voice. "Are you thinking of tomorrow's heroes?"

  "Yes, Jack, I'm thinking of tomorrow's heroes."

  "Don't worry," said Jack. "The same thing will happen all over Europe. Tomorrow's heroes are the ones who will have saved the freedom of Europe."

  "Why did you come and liberate us, Jack? You should have let us rot in slavery."

  "I'd give all the freedom of Europe for a glass of iced beer," said Jack.

  "A glass of iced beer?" cried Major Bradley, waking up with a start.

  One night, as we were on the point of going out to patrol the roofs, a partisan from the Potente Division came to inform me that an Italian artillery officer was asking after me. It was Giacomo Lombroso. We embraced in silence, and I trembled as I looked at his pale face and his great eyes, which were filled with the strange light that appears on the eyes of a Jew when Death comes to rest on his shoulder like an invisible owl. We made a long tour of the roofs, our object being to start the francs-tireurs from their coverts behind the chimney-stacks and skylights, and on our return we went and lay down on the roof of the Pensione Bartolini in the shelter of a chimney.

  Stretched out on the warm tiles in the summer night, whose peace was broken by lightning-flashes from a distant storm, we talked among ourselves in low voices, gazing at the pale moon as it slowly rose into the sky above the olive-trees of Settignano and Fiesole, and the cypress-woods of Mount Morello, and the bare ridge of Calvana. Down below, at the far end of the plain, I seemed to see the roofs of my native city shining in the faint light of the moon. And I said to Jack: "That's Prato, Jack—that's my native city. My mother's house is there. I was born near the house in which Filippino Lippi was born. Do you remember, Jack, the night that we spent hiding in that grove of cypresses on the hills of Prato? Do you remember how we saw the eyes of Filippino Lippi's Madonnas and Angels shining among the olive-trees?"

  "It was the glow-worms," said Jack.

  "No, it wasn't the glow-worms. It was the eyes of Filippino Lippi's Madonnas and Angels."

  "Why are you trying to pull my leg? It was the glow-worms," said Jack.

  Perhaps it was the glow-worms, but in the moonlight the olive-trees and the cypresses looked exactly as if they had been painted by Filippino Lippi.

  A few days previously Jack and I, together with a Canadian officer, had gone out on patrol behind the German lines, our object being to ascertain whether, as the partisans asserted, the Germans, rejecting the idea of defending Prato, the entrance to the valley of the Bisenzio, and the road that leads from Prato to Bologna, had abandoned the city. Since I knew the district I acted as guide, while Jack and the Canadian officer were to communicate by radio with the Headquarters of the American Air Force if they thought a new and more terrible bombardment of Prato was necessary. The life of my native city depended on Jack, the Canadian officer and myself. We walked towards Prato as the Angels walked towards Sodom. Our mission was to save Lot, and Lot's family, from the rain of fire.

  We had forded the Arno near Lastre a Signa, and at a certain point had begun to make our way along the bank of the Bisenzio, the river close to which I was born—the "happy Bisenzio" of Marsilio Ficino and Agnolo Firenzuola. Near Campi we had turned aside from the river in order to avoid the houses, and after a long detour had struck the Bisenzio once more near Capalle Bridge. From there, always following the river-bank, we had trudged on until we came in sight of the walls of Prato. With Querce as our starting-point we had climbed the slopes of Retaia and, cutting across the mountain above the Capuchin monastery, had walked down to Filettole, where, hidden in a grove of cypresses, we had spent the night watching the glow-worms as they flitted about among the leafy branches of the olive-trees, diffusing a pallid radiance.

  I said to Jack: "Those are the eyes of Filippino Lippi's Madonnas and Angels."

  "Why are you trying to frighten me?" said Jack. "They are glowworms."

  I laughed and said: "That faint glow over there, near the fountain that is singing in the shadows, comes from the veils of Filippino Lippi's Salome."

  "To hell with your Salome!" said Jack. "Why are you trying to pull my leg? It's the glow-worms."

  "One must have been born in Prato," I said to him, "one must be a fellow-citizen of Filippino Lippi, to realize that it isn't glow-worms but the eyes of Filippino's Angels and Madonnas."

  Jack said: "Unfortunately, I'm only a poor American."

  Then we were silent for a long while, and I felt full of affection and gratitude towards Jack and all those who, unfortunately, were only poor Americans, and were risking their lives for me, my native city, and Filippino Lippi's Madonnas and Angels.

  The moon set, and the dawn lightened the sky over Retaia. I looked at the houses of Coiano and Santa Lucia, far away across the river, and the cypresses of Sacca, and the wind-swept summit of Spazzavento, and I said to Jack: "There is the country in which I spent my childhood. It was there that I first set eyes on a dead bird, a dead lizard, a dead man. It was there that I first set eyes on a green tree, a blade of grass, a dog."

  Jack said to me in a low voice: "That boy down there, running along the river-bank—is that you?"

  "Yes, that's me," I answered. "And that white dog is my poor Belledo. He died when I was fifteen. But he knows I've come back, and he's looking for me."

  Columns of German vehicles were passing along the road to Coiano and Santa Lucia, climbing in the direction of Vaiano, Vernio and Bologna.

  "They're leaving," said Jack.

  However much we scanned the hills, valleys and woods with our binoculars we did not see a sign of any barbed-wire entanglements, trenches or gun-emplacements, nor any munition-dumps, tanks or concealed anti-tank guns. The city seemed to have been abandoned not only by the Germans but even by the inhabitants. Not a single wisp of smoke ascended from the chimneys of the factories or from those of the houses. Prato looked deserted and dead. Yet in Prato, as in all the cities of Italy and of Europe, the false "resisters," the false defenders of freedom, the heroes of tomorrow, lay hidden, pale and trembling in the cellars. The imbeciles and the madmen, together with the partisan groups, had taken to the maquis and were fighting at the side of the Allies or swinging from the lamp-posts in the city squares. But the wise and the prudent, all those who one day, with the danger over, would laugh at us and our mud-spattered and bloodstained uniforms, were there, cowering in their secure hiding-places, awaiting the moment when they could come out into the square uttering cries of "Long live freedom!"

  "I'm truly glad that the fair-haired man has married the dark woman," I said to Jack with a smile.

  "I'm glad too," said Jack, and
smilingly he began to transmit by radio the words of the conventional message, "The fair-haired man has married the dark woman," which signified: "The Germans have abandoned Prato." A horse was grazing on the green bank of the Bisenzio, a dog was running about, barking, on the gravel at the edge of the river, a girl, clad in red, was walking down to the fountain at Filettole, supporting a shining copper bowl on her head with upraised arms. And I smiled happily. The bombs of the Liberators would not blind Lippi's Madonnas and Angels; they would not break the legs of Donatello's Cupids that danced in the pulpits of the Cathedral, nor kill the Madonnas of Mercatale and Olivo, nor Tacca's Bacchino, nor the Virgins of Luca della Robbia, nor Filippino Lippi's Salome, nor the statute of San Giovanni delle Carceri, They would not murder my mother. I was happy, but my heart ached.

  So too this evening, as I lay beside Jack and Lombroso on the roof of the Pensione Bartolini, watching the pale moon slowly climb the sky, I was happy; but my heart ached. An odour of death rose from the blue abyss of the alleys of Oltrarno and from the deep silvery gash of the river into the pale green vault of the summer night, and when I leaned over the edge of the roof I could see the bodies lying on the pavement below, between the bridge of Santa Trinita and the entrance to Via Maggio—a dead German, still gripping his rifle, a dead woman, her face resting on her shopping-basket, which was stuffed with tomatoes and gourds, a dead boy with an empty bottle in his hand, a dead horse wedged between the shafts of a carriage, while the dead coachman sat on his box with his hands on his stomach, his head drooping on to his knees.

  Those corpses—I hated them. I hated all corpses. It was they that were the foreigners—the only real foreigners in the universal country of the living, in the universal country that is life. Living Americans, living Frenchmen, Poles and negroes belonged to my own race, a race of living men, to my own country—life. Like me they spoke a warm, living, sonorous language, they moved and walked, their eyes shone, their lips opened when they breathed and smiled. They were alive, they were living men. But the dead were foreigners, they belonged to a different race, a race of dead men, and to a different country—death. They were our enemies, the enemies of my country, of the universal country—life. They had invaded Italy, France, all Europe. They were the only real foreigners in a Europe which, though conquered and humiliated, was alive—the only real enemies of our freedom. We had to defend life—our true country, life—even against them—the dead.

  Now I understood the reason for that hatred, that lust for killing, which gnawed at my vitals and consumed the souls of all the peoples of Europe. It was that we felt impelled to hate something that was alive, warm, human, something that belonged to us, something that resembled us, something that was of our own kind, that belonged to our own country, life, instead of hating those foreigners who had invaded Europe, and for five years had lain motionless, cold, livid, with empty eye-sockets, oppressing our country, which was life, and crushing our freedom and dignity, love, hope and youth, beneath the appalling weight of their ice-cold flesh. Why was it that we were hurling ourselves like wolves against our brothers? Why was it that in the name of freedom Frenchmen were pitting themselves against Frenchmen, Italians against Italians, Poles against Poles, Rumanians against Rumanians? It was that we all felt impelled to hate something that resembled ourselves, something that belonged to us, something in which we could recognize and hate ourselves.

  "Did you see how pale poor Tani was?" said Lombroso suddenly, breaking the long silence.

  He too was thinking of death. Already he knew that a few days later, on the morning of Florence's liberation, as he returned home after so many long, tragic months and knocked at his door, a man hidden in the cellar of the adjoining house would fire at him from below, mortally wounding him in the groin. Perhaps he already knew that he would die, alone on the pavement, like a sick dog, while overhead the first swallows greeted the dawn with cries of terror. He already knew, perhaps, that his brow was veiled in the pallor of death, that his face was pale and bright as the face of Tani Masier.

  As we returned that same evening from our patrol of the rooftops of Oltrarno, we were walking through the Vicolo di Santo Spirito, which lies behind the Lungarno Guicciardini, when a sudden hail of mortar-fire drove us to shelter in the entrance-hall of a house. In the dark hall we saw a white shadow coming towards us—the gracious shadow of a woman, smiling through her tears. It was Tity Masier; and although she did not recognize me she invited us into a room on the ground floor, a kind of cellar in which there lay, on beds of straw, a number of shadowy human figures. They were men, and at once I scented the odour of death.

  One of the shadows raised itself on to its elbows and called me by name. It was a most beautiful spectre, reminiscent of those youthful spectres which the ancients used to meet walking along the dusty roads of Phocis and Argolis in the midday sun, or sitting at the edge of the Castalian spring at Delphi, or in the shade of the vast forest of olive-trees which stretches from Delphi down to Itea, from Delphi down to the sea, like a river of silvery leaves.

  I recognized it: it was Tani Masier. But I did not know whether he was already dead or whether he was still alive, and was turning round to call me by name from the threshold of the night. And I scented the odour of death, that odour which is like a singing voice, a summoning voice.

  "Poor Tani—he doesn't know that he must die," said Giacomo Lombroso in a low voice. He for his part already knew that Death was standing on the threshold of his house, leaning against his door, waiting for him to come.

  Brunelleschi's cupola was shimmering high above the roofs of Florence. The moon shed its pale beams upon Giotto's white steeple. I thought of little Giorgio, my sister's son—I thought of that boy, of thirteen, asleep in a pool of blood behind the laurel hedge in my sister's garden, yonder on the heights of Arcetri. What did they want of me, all those corpses that lay beneath the moon in the paved streets, on the tiles of the roofs, in the gardens beside the Arno— what did they want of us?

  From the vast maze of Oltrarno's alleys an odour of death ascended, like a singing voice, a summoning voice. But why? Could it really be that the dead hoped to persuade us that it was better to die?

  One morning we crossed the river and occupied Florence. From sewers, cellars, attics and cupboards, from under beds and from cracks in the walls, where for a month they had been living "clandestinely," there emerged, like rats, the latter-day heroes, the tyrants of tomorrow—those heroic rats of freedom who one day would overrun Europe in order to build on the ruins of foreign tyranny the kingdom of domestic oppression.

  We passed through Florence in silence, with downcast eyes, feeling like intruders and spoil-sports beneath the scornful gaze of the clowns of freedom, with their rosettes, armlets, braid and ostrich-feathers, and their red, white and green faces. We pursued the Germans into the valleys of the Apennines and up the mountains. Upon the still lukewarm ashes of summer descended the chill rain of autumn, and we passed long months in front of the Gothic Line listening to the murmur of the rain as it fell on Montepiano's forests of oaks and chestnut-trees, the firs of the Abetone, and the white marble rocks of the Apaun Alps.

  Then came winter, and every three days we used to leave Leghorn, where the Allied Command had its headquarters, and go up the line into the Versilia-Garfagnana sector. Sometimes at night we were caught unawares and took refuge near the American Ninety-second Negro Division in my house at Forte dei Marmi, which the German sculptor Hildebrand, helped by the painter Boeklin, had built at the end of the last century on the barren slope between the pine-forest and the sea.

  We used to spend our nights sitting round the fireplace in the great hall, which was adorned with frescoes by Hildebrand and Boeklin. Bullets from the German machine-gun nests on the banks of the Cinquale pinged against the walls of the house, the wind in its fury shook the pines, the sea roared beneath the cloudless sky, across which sped Orion of the beautiful sandals with his gleaming bow and sword.

  One night Jack said to me in
a low voice: "Look at Campbell."

  I looked at Campbell. He was sitting in front of the fireplace among the officers of the Ninety-second Negro Division, and he was smiling. At first I did not understand. But in Jack's eyes, which were fixed on Campbell's face, I read a timid valediction, an affectionate farewell; and when Campbell lifted his head and looked at Jack his eyes, too, expressed a timid valediction, an affectionate farewell. I saw them smile at each other, and I was conscious of a very mild sense of envy, a tender jealousy. In that moment I understood that Jack and Campbell shared a secret, that Tani Masier, Giacomo Lombroso and my little Giorgio, my sister's son, shared a secret, which they jealously, smilingly kept from me.

  One morning a partisan from Camaiore came to ask me if I wanted to see Magi. When, a few months before, our pursuit of the Germans had brought us to Forte dei Marmi, I had immediately, without telling Jack, gone to look Magi up. The house was deserted. Some partisans told me that Magi had fled on the very day on which our advanced guards had entered Viareggio. If I had found him at home, if, when I knocked at his door, he had appeared at the window, I might have shot him—not because of the wrong he had done me, not because of the persecution I had suffered following his denunciations, but because of the wrong he had done others. He was a kind of local Fouché. He was tall, pale and thin, with bleary eyes. His house was the one in which Boeklin had lived for many years at the time when' he was painting his Centaurs and Nymphs and his famous Island of the Dead. I knocked at the door and looked up, expecting him to appear at the window. In the wall beneath the window is the tablet commemorating the years which Boeklin spent at Forte dei Marmi. I read the words on the tablet and waited for the window to open, my automatic rifle in my hand. If he had appeared at that moment I might have shot him.