Read Online The Skin by Curzio Malaparte - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Curzio Malaparte
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secret anguish, and the children pass long hours seated mutely on the ground, nibbling crusts of bread or fruit black with flies, or looking at the cracked walls on which can be seen the motionless outlines of lizards, embedded by mildew in the ancient plaster. The air is heavy with the perfume of the brilliant carnations which stand in terracotta vases on the window-sills. The voice of a woman, singing, ascends now from this side, now from that: the song echoes slowly from window to window, coming to rest on the sills like a weary bird.
The odour of cold smoke from the fire in the Cellamare palace pervaded the dense, sticky atmosphere. Sadly I inhaled that odour of a captured city, sacked and consigned to the flames, the ancient odour of an Ilium enveloped in smoke from burning buildings and funeral pyres, prostrate on the shore of a sea crowded with enemy ships, under a mould-specked sky, beneath which the flags of the conquering peoples, who had hurried forward from all the corners of the earth to take part in the long siege, grew mouldy in the wind that blew in hoarse, steamy, fetid gusts from the far horizon.
I walked down Via Chiaia in the direction of the sea, surrounded by crowds of Allied soldiers who thronged the pavements, jostling and pushing one another and shouting in a hundred strange, unfamiliar tongues, as they made their way along the banks of the raging river of vehicles which flowed tumultously through the narrow street. And I felt amazingly ridiculous in my green uniform, which was riddled with bullets from our own rifles, and had been stripped from the corpse of an English soldier who had fallen at El Alamein or Tobruk. I felt lost in that hostile throng of foreign soldiers, who pushed me on my way with violent shoves, used elbows and shoulders to thrust me to one side, and turned back, looking contemptuously at the gold braid on my uniform and saying to me in furious voices: "You bastard, you son of a bitch, you dirty Italian officer."
And I thought to myself as I walked: "Who knows how one says 'You bastard, you son of a bitch, you dirty Italian officer' in French? And how one says it in Russian, in Serb, in Polish, in Danish, in Dutch, in Norwegian, in Arabic? Who knows, I thought, how one says it in Brazilian? And in Chinese? And in Indian, in Bantu, in Madagascan? Who knows how one says it in German?" And I laughed as I thought that that conquerors' jargon must certainly translate very well into German too—even into German—because German too, compared with Italian, was the language of a victorious people. I laughed as I thought that all the languages of the earth, even Bantu and Chinese, even German, were the languages of victorious peoples, and that we alone, we Italians alone, in Via Chiaia, Naples, and in all the streets of all the cities of Italy, spoke a language which was not that of a victorious people. And I felt proud of being a poor "Italian bastard," a poor "son of a bitch."
I looked about me in the crowd for someone who, like me, felt proud of being a poor "Italian bastard," a poor "son of a bitch." I looked hard into the faces of all the Neapolitans I met, lost like me in that noisy crowd of conquerors, pushed like me on one side with violent shoves, with elbow-thrusts in the ribs: poor wan, emaciated men, women with thin white faces hideously restored to life with rouge, skinny children with enormous eyes, ravenous and fearful; and I felt proud of being an "Italian bastard" like them, a "son of a bitch" like them.
But something in their faces, in their expressions, made me feel humble. There was something about them that wounded me deeply. It was an insolent pride, the vile, horrible pride of hunger, the arrogant and at the same time humble pride of hunger. They did not suffer in their souls, but only in their bodies. They suffered no kind of pain other than bodily pain. And suddenly I felt lonely and strange in that crowd of conquerors and poor starving Neapolitans. I was
The odour of cold smoke from the fire in the Cellamare palace pervaded the dense, sticky atmosphere. Sadly I inhaled that odour of a captured city, sacked and consigned to the flames, the ancient odour of an Ilium enveloped in smoke from burning buildings and funeral pyres, prostrate on the shore of a sea crowded with enemy ships, under a mould-specked sky, beneath which the flags of the conquering peoples, who had hurried forward from all the corners of the earth to take part in the long siege, grew mouldy in the wind that blew in hoarse, steamy, fetid gusts from the far horizon.
I walked down Via Chiaia in the direction of the sea, surrounded by crowds of Allied soldiers who thronged the pavements, jostling and pushing one another and shouting in a hundred strange, unfamiliar tongues, as they made their way along the banks of the raging river of vehicles which flowed tumultously through the narrow street. And I felt amazingly ridiculous in my green uniform, which was riddled with bullets from our own rifles, and had been stripped from the corpse of an English soldier who had fallen at El Alamein or Tobruk. I felt lost in that hostile throng of foreign soldiers, who pushed me on my way with violent shoves, used elbows and shoulders to thrust me to one side, and turned back, looking contemptuously at the gold braid on my uniform and saying to me in furious voices: "You bastard, you son of a bitch, you dirty Italian officer."
And I thought to myself as I walked: "Who knows how one says 'You bastard, you son of a bitch, you dirty Italian officer' in French? And how one says it in Russian, in Serb, in Polish, in Danish, in Dutch, in Norwegian, in Arabic? Who knows, I thought, how one says it in Brazilian? And in Chinese? And in Indian, in Bantu, in Madagascan? Who knows how one says it in German?" And I laughed as I thought that that conquerors' jargon must certainly translate very well into German too—even into German—because German too, compared with Italian, was the language of a victorious people. I laughed as I thought that all the languages of the earth, even Bantu and Chinese, even German, were the languages of victorious peoples, and that we alone, we Italians alone, in Via Chiaia, Naples, and in all the streets of all the cities of Italy, spoke a language which was not that of a victorious people. And I felt proud of being a poor "Italian bastard," a poor "son of a bitch."
I looked about me in the crowd for someone who, like me, felt proud of being a poor "Italian bastard," a poor "son of a bitch." I looked hard into the faces of all the Neapolitans I met, lost like me in that noisy crowd of conquerors, pushed like me on one side with violent shoves, with elbow-thrusts in the ribs: poor wan, emaciated men, women with thin white faces hideously restored to life with rouge, skinny children with enormous eyes, ravenous and fearful; and I felt proud of being an "Italian bastard" like them, a "son of a bitch" like them.
But something in their faces, in their expressions, made me feel humble. There was something about them that wounded me deeply. It was an insolent pride, the vile, horrible pride of hunger, the arrogant and at the same time humble pride of hunger. They did not suffer in their souls, but only in their bodies. They suffered no kind of pain other than bodily pain. And suddenly I felt lonely and strange in that crowd of conquerors and poor starving Neapolitans. I was
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