Kaputt (47 page)

"America," de Foxá said, "is the Finns' paradise. When Europeans die, they hope to go to heaven. When Finns die, they hope to go to America."

"When I die," the Governor said, "I shall not care to go to America. I shall stay in Finland."

"Naturally!" said Jaakko Leppo fixing a surly eye on de Foxá. "Dead or alive, we mean to stay in Finland."

"We certainly mean to stay in Finland when we die," the others said gazing with hostile eyes at de Foxá.

"I want some caviar," de Foxá said.

"You want some caviar?" asked the Governor.

"I'm very fond of caviar," de Foxá said.

"Is there much caviar in Spain?" asked Olavi Koskinnen, the Prefect of Rovaniemi.

"Once upon a time we had Russian caviar," replied de Foxá.

"Russian caviar?" said the Governor frowning.

"Russian caviar is excellent," de Foxá said. "It is very much liked in Madrid."

"Russian caviar is very bad," said the Governor.

"Colonel Merikallio," said de Foxá, "told me a very funny story about Russian caviar."

"Colonel Merikallio is dead," Jaakko Leppo said.

"We were on the Ladoga shore," went on de Foxá, "in the Raikkola forest. Some Finnish rangers had found a box full of dark grayish grease in a Russian trench. One day Colonel Merikallio entered a first line dugout in which some rangers were greasing their snow boots. He sniffed the air and said 'What a strange smell!' It was a fishy smell. 'It's this shoe grease that stinks of fish,' said a ranger showing the tin to the Colonel. It was a tin of caviar."

"Russian caviar is fit only for greasing boots," the Governor said with contempt.

Just then a waiter threw open the door and announced, "General Dietl!"

"Sir," the Governor said, rising and turning toward de Foxá, "the German General Dietl, the hero of Narvik, the supreme commander of the Northern Front, has done me the honor of accepting my invitation. I am glad and proud, sir, that you will meet General Dietl in my house!"

An unusual noise came from outside. It was a chorus of barks, meows and grunts, as if dogs, cats and wild pigs were fighting in the hall of the palace. We looked at each other in amazement. Suddenly the door opened and General Dietl appeared on the threshold. He crawled in on all fours followed by a group of officers also on all fours—one after the other. This strange procession, barking, grunting and meowing moved toward the center of the room, where General Dietl, getting to his feet and standing stiffly at attention, raised his hand to his cap and, stretching his arms out wide, in a thundering voice, shouted the customary Finnish wish to people after a sneeze:
"Nuha!"
I gazed at the extraordinary appearance of the man standing before us; tall, thin, or rather spare than thin, he was a piece of ancient wood roughly shaped by an old Bavarian carpenter. His features were Gothic, resembling wood carvings by an ancient German master. His eyes had a lively glitter that were wild and at the same time childish; his nostrils were extraordinarily hairy, his forehead and cheeks were cut by countless fine wrinkles, just like the cracks in an old, well-seasoned piece of wood. His dark smooth hair, cut short and drawn down over his brow like the fringes of Masaccio's pageboys gave his face both a monkish and youthful appearance that was unpleasantly accentuated by a twist of his mouth when he laughed. His movements were abrupt, restless and feverish, and revealed a morbid strain of character, a presence in, around and within him of something that he spurned, of something that he felt betrayed and threatened him. His right hand was maimed. Even the hampered and cut off motion of that stricken hand seemed to indicate a hidden suspicion of something that lay in ambush threatening him. He was still a youngish man of about fifty. But even he, just as his young Bavarian and Tirolean
Alpenjägers
scattered through the wild forests of Lapland in the marshes and the tundra of the Arctic region, along the huge front from Petsamo and from the Fishermen Peninsula, down along the banks of the Liza as far as Alakurti and Salla—even he showed in the greenish, yellowish color of his skin and in his humble, downcast looks the signs of that slow, fatal decay, not unlike leprosy, to which human beings fall easy prey in the extreme North—a senile decay that rots the hair, eats away teeth, cuts deep wrinkles in the face and wraps the still-living human frame in a greenish, yellowish shroud that envelops decomposing bodies. Suddenly he looked at me. His glance was the glance of a tame and resigned animal, he had something humble and despairing in his eyes that shocked me deeply. He gazed at me with the same wonderful and bestial eyes, with the same mysterious expression with which German soldiers, Dietl's young
Alpenjägers
—toothless, bald, wrinkled, with white thin noses like corpses—roamed sad and self-absorbed through the forests of Lapland.

"Nuha!"
shouted Dietl. Then he added, "Where's Elsa?"

Elsa came in. Small, thin, gentle, dressed like a doll, Elsa Hillilä, the Governor's daughter, who was eighteen but still looked like a child, entered through a door at the end of the huge room and carried a large silver tray lined with glasses of punch. She walked slowly across the pink birch floor, taking short, quick steps with her small feet. With a smile, she approached General Dietl and said with a graceful curtsy,
"Haivää päivää
—Good day."

"Haivää päivää
," said Dietl with a bow. He took a glass of punch from the silver tray, raised it and shouted, "
Nuha!"
The officers on his staff took their glasses of punch from the tray, raised them and shouted,
"Nuha!"
Dietl tilted his head back, swallowed the drink down in one gulp, and his officers followed his example with a simultaneous jerk. The gamy wild smell of punch, sweetish and sticky, spread through the room. It was the same sweetish smell that reindeer have in the rain, the smell of reindeer's milk. I half closed my eyes and thought I was back in the Inari forest by the lake at the mouth of the Juutuanjoki.

It was raining, the sky was an eyeless face—a dead white face. The rain murmured constantly in the leaves of the trees and the grass. An old Lapp woman, sitting by the shore of the lake, her pipe between her teeth, gazed at me impassively, never batting an eyelash. A flock of reindeer was grazing in the wood; they raised their eyes and looked at me. Their eyes were humble and despairing with the mysterious look of the dead. The smell of reindeer's milk spread through the rain. On the shore of the lake, beneath the trees, sat a group of German soldiers, their faces covered with masks of mosquito netting, their hands protected with thick gloves of reindeer leather. Their eyes were humble and despairing; in their eyes, too, was the mysterious look of the dead.

General Dietl grasped little Elsa around the waist and, dragging her across the room, danced to the waltz that the others were singing to, to the accompaniment of handclaps and the jingle of glasses struck with the handles of
puukkos
and
Alpenjägers'
knives. A group of young officers standing by a window were drinking silently and watching. One of them turned his face and looked at me without seeing me; I recognized Prince Frederick Windischgrätz, smiled at him from across the room and called him by his nickname, Friki; he turned the other way, searching for the voice that had called him. Who was hailing him out of the remote past?

The man who was standing before me was old. He was no longer the young Friki of Rome, Florence and Forte dei Marmi; yet something of his former gentleness remained, but his gentleness now had in it something corrupt. His brow was darkened by a white, almost ghostly shadow. I watched him raising his glass, moving his lips in order to say
"Nuha!"
and throw back his head to drink. The bones in his face appeared to be frail and close to the skin, his skull showed white through the thinning hair, and the dead skin of his forehead shone softly. He was losing his hair, his teeth were loose in his mouth. Behind his waxen ears the nape was as hollow, frail and tender as a sick child's—a frail nape of an aged man. His delicate hands shook when he put his glass on the table. Friki was twenty-five and he already had the mysterious look of the dead.

I went up to Frederick and said softly, "Friki." Slowly Friki turned and slowly he recognized me,- he looked me over sadly, explored my own decomposing features, my weary mouth, my pale eyes. He pressed my hand in silence; we looked at each other and smiled for a moment, and during that long moment Frederick reappeared to me on the shore of Forte dei Marmi— the sun flowed like a river of honey over the sand, the fir trees around my house dripped a golden light as warm as honey,- only by now Clara had married Prince von Fürstenberg and Suni was in love. We raised our eyes and gazed through the window at the white glow of the leaves, the water and the sky. Poor Friki, I thought.

Frederick was standing motionless in front of the window, and he scarcely breathed as he stared in silence at the huge Lapp forest, at those green and silvery perspectives of rivers, lakes and woody
tunturit
growing distant and spreading out beneath a white frozen sky. I passed my hand lightly over Frederick's arm, and—perhaps it was a caress. Frederick turned his face to me, his skin was yellow and wrinkled, his eyes were shining, humble and despairing. Suddenly I recognized his look.

I recognized his look and began to tremble. He had the look of a beast; I thought with horror that he had the mysterious look of a beast. He had the eyes of a reindeer—the humble, despairing eyes of a reindeer. I wanted to say to him, "No, Friki, not you," but he looked at me in silence, like a reindeer, with humble and despairing eyes.

The other officers, Frederick's companions, were young too, perhaps twenty, twenty-five or thirty, and they all bore the same marks of age, decomposition and death on their yellow, wrinkled faces. All of them had the humble and despairing eyes of reindeer. In every face, in every eye was the beautiful, wonderful tameness, the sadness of wild beasts,- each had that absorbed and melancholy madness of beasts, their mysterious innocence, their terrible sorrow—that fearful Christian pity that beasts have. It occurred to me that beasts were Christ, and my lips trembled and my hands shook. I looked at Frederick. I looked at his companions, and every one of them had the same withered, wrinkled face, the same bare brow, the same toothless smile, the same look of a reindeer. Even cruelty, even German cruelty had gone out of those faces. They had the look of Christ, the look of a beast. Suddenly I was reminded of what I had been told when I had first reached Lapland, of what everyone talked about in low voices, as if it were a mysterious thing, in fact it was mysterious, a forbidden subject; I was reminded of what I had been told since I had arrived in Lapland about those young German soldiers, those
Alpenjägers
of General Dietl's, who had hung themselves from trees in the depths of the forests, or who sat for days on the shores of a lake gazing at the skyline and then shot themselves through their heads, or else were driven by a wonderful madness, almost an amorous fantasy—roaming through the woods like wild beasts and threw themselves into the still waters of the lakes, or who stretched themselves on beds of lichen under the firs that roared in the wind and waited for death—letting themselves die slowly in the abstract, frozen loneliness of the forest.

No, Friki, not you, I wanted to say to him, but Frederick asked me, "Did you see my brother in Rome?" I replied, "Yes, I saw him one evening before I left, at the Excelsior Bar," and yet I knew that Hugo was dead, that Prince Hugo Windischgrätz, an officer in the Italian Flying Corps, had come down over Alexandria wrapped in flames. But I answered: "Yes, I saw him one evening at the Excelsior Bar. Marita Guglielmi was with him." Frederick asked, "How is he?" And I replied, "He is well. He inquired about you and sent you his greetings," and yet I knew that Hugo was dead.

"Didn't he give you a letter for me?" asked Frederick.

"I saw him only for a moment that evening, and he asked me to bring you his greetings," I answered; yet I knew that Hugo was dead.

Frederick said, "He is a nice fellow, Hugo is." And I said, "Yes, a really nice fellow. Everybody likes him and he sent you his love," and yet I knew that Hugo was dead. Frederick looked at me: "I wake up some nights and think that Hugo is dead," he said, and looked at me with the eyes of a wild beast, his reindeer eyes—with that mysterious wild beast look that is in the eyes of the dead.

"Why do you think that your brother is dead? I saw him at the Excelsior Bar, before I left Rome," I answered, and yet I knew that Hugo was dead.

"Is there any harm in being dead?" asked Frederick—"there is no harm in it; it is not forbidden. Do you think it is forbidden to be dead?"

Then I suddenly said to him, and my voice trembled, "Oh, Friki, Hugo is dead! I saw him at the Excelsior Bar the evening before I left Rome. He was already dead. He asked me to bring you his greetings. He could not write you a letter because he was dead."

Frederick looked at me with his reindeer eyes, and he smiled. He said, "I knew that Hugo was dead. I knew long before he died. It is a wonderful thing to be dead." He filled my glass. I took the glass that Frederick offered me and my hand was shaking.
"Nuha!"
Frederick said.

I said
,
"
Nuha!
"

"I would like to go back to Italy for a few days," Frederick said after a long minute of silence. "I would like to go back to Rome. Rome is such a young city." Then he added, "And Paula, what is she doing? Has it been long since you have seen her?"

"I met her on the links one morning, shortly before I left Rome. I'm very fond of Paula, Friki."

"I'm very fond of her, too," he said. Then he asked, "And Countess Ciano, what is she doing?"

"What do you expect her to do? She does what all the others do."

"Meaning..."

"Nothing, Friki."

He looked at me and smiled. Then he said, "And Alberta, what is she doing? And Luisa?"

"Oh Friki," I replied, "they all are whores. It is fashionable nowadays in Italy to be a whore. Everybody is a whore in Italy."