Read Online Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte - Free Book Online

Grigorescu strapped on his cartridge belt, took the rifle that was leaning against the wall (they were French cartridge pouches, wide and flat, and the rifle was a French Lebel with its long triangular bayonet), he took his haversack from a nail on the wall, flung it across his shoulder, spat on the ground and said, "Let's go."
    The prisoner continued to sit in his corner. He looked at us with his glazed eyes. "Podiom —Let's go!" I told the prisoner. The Tartar rose slowly to his feet; he was tall, as tall as I am,- his shoulders were rather narrow, his neck thin. He followed me stooping a little, and Private Grigorescu kept behind him with his rifle ready.
    A fierce wind was blowing; the sky was gray, as heavy as a cast-iron plate; the wheat's voice rose and fell with the wind, like the voice of a river. From time to time, the forests of sunflowers were heard squeaking in the hoarse dusty gusts.
    "La revedere —See you again," said the corporal shaking my hand. The soldiers came up one by one, to shake hands. " La revedere, la revedere, Domnule Capitan, la revedere ." I started the motor, left the village, and drove along a track full of holes and ploughed in deep furrows (the tracks of the caterpillar tanks were sharply imprinted in the yielding mattress of dust). Private Grigorescu and the prisoner were sitting behind me, and I felt the fixed gaze of the Tartar boring into my back.
    The storm was approaching from the end of the vast plain,- little by little it covered the breadth of the sky like a huge frog. It was a green cloud, spotted white here and there; the soft frog's belly could be seen throbbing with labored breathing. From time to time a harsh croaking reached us from the edge of the horizon. In the fields, by the roadside, there lay hundreds of burned-out machines, carcasses of lorries, steel carrion stretched out sideways with legs apart, miserable and obscene. And lo! by degrees, I seemed to recognize the road, I had certainly driven through there before, a few days before, perhaps that very morning: there were the river and the pools, their shores thick with reeds and willows. The reflection of the whitish belly of the huge frog, swallowing the sky with raucous croaks, floated on the livid surface of the water. A few drops, slow, hot and heavy, pierced the dust on the road sizzling like a red-hot iron dropped in water. At last I made out some houses through the dusk, and I recognized the houses of Alexandrovska, the abandoned village where I had spent the night.
    "We had better stop here," I said to Private Grigorescu. "It's too late to go on; Balta is still far off."
    I stopped the car in front of the house where I had slept. The rain had begun, it fell heavily with a subdued thud, raising a thick cloud of yellow dust. The mare's carcass still lay at the edge of the road in front of the wooden gate. Its wide-open eye was filled with a white light. We entered the house. Everything was as I had left it in the morning, in the same motionless, ghostlike disorder. I sat down on the bed, looking at the Private Grigorescu, who removed his cartridge belts and hung his haversack on the door handle. The prisoner was leaning against the wall, his arm hanging by his sides, and he gazed at me with his small, slanting eyes.
    I stood in the door; the night was as black as coal. I went into the orchard, pushed the gate open and sat down on the edge of the road close by the mare's carcass. The rain drenched my face, ran down my back. Greedily I took in the scent of wet grass, and little by little the soft, greasy stench of the carrion penetrated that fresh and exhilarating scent, conquered the odor of rotting steel, dissolving iron and putrefied metal. I felt as if the ancient law of war—human and animal—was mastering the new law of mechanical war,- I felt at home in the odor of the dead horse as if in an old fatherland, a fatherland that I had found again.
    Later I went back to the house and stretched out on the bed.