Read Online Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte - Free Book Online Page A

I was dead tired; my bones ached; sleep was throbbing in my head as in a pulsing artery.
    "We will take turns watching the prisoner," I said to the soldier, "you must be tired too. Wake me in three hours."
    "Nu, nu, Domnule Capitan," said the soldier, "I am not tired. I am not sleepy."
    The prisoner, whose hands and feet Grigorescu had tied with a knotted rope, sat in a corner of the room against the wall between the window and the cupboard. The thick stench of the carrion stagnated within the room. The yellow light of an oil lamp swayed along the walls; the sunflowers squeaked in the orchard under the rain. The soldier faced the prisoner and squatted on the floor with crossed legs—his rifle with a fixed bayonet rested on his knees.
    "Nopte buna —Good night," I said closing my eyes.
    " Nopte buna, Domnule Capitan," said the soldier.
    I was unable to sleep. The storm had broken and raged furiously. The sky split with a roar, sudden light flooded from the clouds and pelted onto the plain; rain fell as hard and heavy as if it were raining stones. And the stench of the mare's carcass, whipped up by the rain, penetrated fat and slimy into the house and stagnated beneath the low ceiling. The prisoner sat motionless, the back of his head leaning against the wall, and gazed at me fixedly. His hands and feet were tied; his hands, small and pale, ash-colored, with the rope knotted tightly round the wrists, hung loosely between his knees.
    "Why don't you untie him?" I asked Grigorescu. "Are you afraid that he might get away? You might at least free his feet."
    The soldier bent forward and slowly undid the feet of the prisoner who was gazing at me with his stony eyes.
    I woke up a few hours later. The soldier, his rifle across his knees, was still sitting on the floor opposite the prisoner. The Tartar, the back of his head resting against the wall, gazed at me.
    "You sleep now," I said getting out of bed. "It's my turn now."
    " Nu, nu, Domnule Capitan , I am not sleepy. "
    "Go to sleep, I tell you."
    Private Grigorescu rose, crossed the room dragging his rifle along the floor, and still clutching the rifle in his hands threw himself on the bed and turned toward the wall. He looked dead. His hair was white with dust, his uniform torn, his shoes worn. Coarse black hair bristled on the skin of his face. He looked dead.
    I settled on the floor opposite the prisoner, crossed my legs and shoved my automatic between my knees. The Tartar gazed at me with his veiled, narrow eyes, slanted like a cat's; they looked as if they were made of glass. They had the gaze that dead people's eyes have,- the eyelids, curled up under the brows, formed two scarcely visible sepia-colored folds. I leaned forward to untie the prisoner's hands. I studied his hands while my fingers fumbled with the knots on the rope; they were small, smooth, ash-colored, with nails that were almost white. Although they were marked by short deep lines, the skin was so porous that it looked as if it were seen through a microscope. The palms were thinly coated with calluses but were soft, smooth and almost tender to the touch. Hanging limply, they yielded to my hands as if they were dead, but I sensed that they were strong, nimble, tenacious, and at the same time as light and delicate as a surgeon's, a watchmaker's or a skilled precision worker's.
    They were the hands of a young recruit of the Piatiletka, of an udainik of the third Five-Year Plan, of a young Tartar who had become an engineer, a tank driver. Softened by the incessant thousand-year-long rubbing against the silky coats of horses, against manes, tendons, hocks, muscles of horses,- with reins, with the smooth leather of saddles and harness, they had passed within a few years from horse to machine, from flesh to metal tendons, from reins to controls. A few years had been enough to transform young Tartars of the Don and the Volga, of the Kirghiz Steppe and the shores of the Caspian and the Aral seas, from horse-breeders