The Skin by Curzio Malaparte Read Free Book Online Page B

Je suis cartesien, hélas!"
    "Do you think, then, that Cartesian logic can help you, for instance, to understand Hitler?"
    "Why particularly Hitler?"
    "Because Hitler too is an element in the mystery of Europe, because Hitler too belongs to that other Europe which Cartesian logic cannot penetrate. Do you think, then, that you can explain Hitler solely with the help of Descartes?"
    "Je l'explique parfaitement," replied Jack.
    Then I told him that Heidelberg witz which all the students in the German universities laughingly pass from one to the other. At a conference of German scientists held at Heidelberg, all present found themselves agreed after lengthy discussion in asserting that the world can be explained with the aid of reason alone. At the end of the discussion an old professor, who until that moment had remained silent, with a silk hat jammed down over his eyes, got up and said: "You who explain everything—could you tell me how on earth this thing has appeared on my head tonight?" And, slowly removing the silk hat, he revealed a cigar, a genuine Havana, which was projecting from his bald cranium.
    "Ah, ah, c'est merveilleux!" said Jack, laughing. "Do you mean, then, that Hitler is a Havana cigar?"
    "No, I mean that Hitler is like that Havana cigar."
    "C'est merveilleux! un cigare!" said Jack; and he added, as though seized by a sudden inspiration: "Have a drink, Malaparte." But he corrected himself, and said in French: "Allons boire queique chose."
    The bar of the P.B.S. was crowded with officers who already had many glasses' start on us. We sat down in a corner and began to drink. Jack looked into his glass, and laughed; he banged his fist on his knee, and laughed; and every so often he exclaimed: "C'est merveilleux! un cigare!"—until his eye grew dim and he said to me, laughing: "Tu crois vraiment qu'Hitler ..."
    "Mais oui, naturellement."
    Then we went in to supper, and sat down at the big table reserved for senior officers of the P.B.S. All the officers were in a merry mood, and they smiled at me sympathetically because I was "the bastard Italian liaison officer, that bastard son of a gun." At a certain point Jack began telling the story of the conference of German scientists at Heidelberg University, and all the senior officers of the P.B.S. looked at me in amazement, exclaiming: "What? A cigar? Do you mean that Hitler is a cigar?"
    "He means that Hitler is a Havana cigar," said Jack, laughing.
    And Colonel Brand, offering me a cigar across the table, said to me with a sympathetic smile: "Do you like cigars? This is a genuine Havana."
     
     

CHAPTER II - THE VIRGIN OF NAPLES
    "H AVE you ever seen a virgin?" Jimmy asked me one day as we came out of the baker's shop on the Pendino di Santa Barbara, crunching the lovely hot, crisp taralli between our teeth.
    "Yes, but only from a distance,"
    "No, I mean close up. Have you ever seen a virgin close up?"
    "No, never close up!"
    "Come on, Malaparte," said Jimmy.
    At first I was unwilling to follow him. I knew that he would show me something distressing and humiliating, some appalling evidence of the depths of physical and moral humiliation to which man can sink in his despair. I do not like to witness the spectacle of human baseness; it is repugnant to me to sit, as judge or as spectator, watching men as they descend the last rungs of the ladder of degradation. I am always afraid they will turn round and smile at me.
    "Come on, come on, don't be silly," said Jimmy walking ahead of me through the maze of alleys that is Forcella.
    I do not like to see how low man can stoop in order to live. I preferred the war to the "plague" which, after the liberation, had defiled, corrupted and humiliated us all—men, women and children. Before the liberation we had fought and suffered in order not to die. Now we were fighting and suffering in order to live. There is a profound difference between fighting to avoid death and fighting in order to live. Men who fight to avoid death