The Skin (3 page)

He had for Europe a respect compounded of love and admiration. But in spite of his culture and his affectionate familiarity with our virtues and our faults his attitude to Europe, like that of nearly all true Americans, was conditioned by a subtle species of "inferiority complex", which manifested itself not, to be sure, in an inability to understand and forgive our misery and shame, but in a fear of understanding, a reluctance to understand which was due to a certain delicacy of feeling. In Jack this inferiority complex, this ingenuousness and wonderful delicacy of feeling, were perhaps more apparent than in many other Americans. Whenever, in a Neapolitan street, in a village near Capua or Caserta, or on the Cassino road, he happened to witness some distressing incident which typified our misery, our physical and moral humiliation, and our despair (the misery, humiliation and despair not only of Naples and Italy, but of all Europe), Jack would blush crimson.

Because of that way he had of blushing I loved Jack like a brother. Because of his wonderful delicacy of feeling, so profoundly and truly American, I was grateful to Jack, to all General Clark's G.I.s, and to all the men, women and children of America. (America—that luminous, remote horizon, that unattainable shore, that happy, forbidden country!) Sometimes, in an attempt to hide his delicacy of feeling, he would say, blushing crimson: "This bastard, dirty people." On such occasions I used to react to his wonderful sensitiveness with bitter and sarcastic words, accompanied by uneasy, malicious laughter, which I immediately regretted, and remembered with remorse all night long. He would perhaps have preferred it if I had started to cry: my tears would certainly have seemed to him more natural than my sarcasm, less cruel than my bitterness. But I too had something to hide. We too, in this miserable Europe of ours, are afraid and ashamed of our delicacy of feeling.

It was not my fault, however, if the price of negroes' flesh was increasing every day. A dead negro cost nothing; he cost much less than a dead white man—even less than a live Italian! He cost pretty much the same as twenty Neapolitan children who had died of hunger. It was indeed strange that a dead negro should cost so little. A dead negro is very handsome. He is glossy, massive, immense, and when he is stretched out on the ground he occupies almost twice as much space as a dead white man. Even if a negro, when he was alive in America, was only a poor Harlem bootblack, or a navvy whose job was to unload coal in the docks, or a fireman on the railways, in death he took up almost as much space as the huge, magnificent corpses of the Homeric heroes. At heart I was pleased to think that the corpse of a negro took up almost as much ground as the corpse of Achilles, Hector or Ajax would have done. And I could not resign myself to the idea that a dead negro should cost so little.

But a live negro cost a small fortune. Within the last few days the price of live negroes had risen in Naples from two hundred to a thousand dollars, and its tendency was to increase. It was only necessary to see the hungry expressions with which the poor people eyed a negro—a live negro—to appreciate that the price of live negroes was very high, and was still rising. The dream of all the poor people of Naples, especially the street arabs and the boys, was to be able to hire a "black", if only for a few hours. Hunting negro soldiers was the favourite sport of the boys. Naples, to them, was a vast equatorial forest, redolent with a warm, heavy odour of sweet fritters, where ecstatic negroes promenaded, swaying their hips, their eyes fixed upon the heavens. When a street arab managed to seize a negro by the sleeve of his tunic and drag him along behind him from bar to bar, from inn to inn, from brothel to brothel, all the windows, doorsteps and street corners in the maze of alleys that constitutes Toledo and Forcella would fill with eyes, hands and voices crying: "Sell me your black! I'll give you twenty dollars! Thirty dollars! Fifty dollars!" This was what was called the "flying market." Fifty dollars was the maximum price that was paid for the hire of a negro for a day, that is for a few hours—the time needed to make him drunk, to strip him of everything he had on, from his cap to his shoes, and then, after nightfall, to abandon him naked on the pavement of an alley.

The negro suspects nothing. He is not conscious of being bought and resold every quarter of an hour, and he walks about innocently and happily, very proud of his shoes, which glitter as though made of gold, his smart uniform, his yellow gloves, his rings and gold teeth, his great white eyes, viscous and translucent like the eyes of an octopus. He walks along with a smile on his face, his head inclined on his shoulder and his eyes lost in contemplation of a green cloud drifting far away through the sea-blue sky, his sharp, dazzlingly white teeth seeming to cut like scissors the blue fringe of the roofs, the bare legs of the girls leaning against the railings of the balconies, the red carnations that protrude from the terra-cotta vases on the window sills. He walks like a somnambulist, savouring with delight all the smells, colours, tastes, sights and sounds that make life sweet: the smell of fritters, wine and fried fish, a pregnant woman sitting on her doorstep, a girl scratching her back, another girl looking for a flea in her bosom, the crying of a baby in its cradle, the laughter of a street arab, the flashing of the sunlight on a window-pane, the music of a gramophone, the flames of the papier maché Purgatories in which the damned burn at the feet of the Madonnas in the chapels at the corners of the alleys, a boy who, with knife-like teeth, snow-white and dazzling, produces from a curved slice of melon, as from a mouth-organ, a half-moon of green and red sounds that sparkle against the grey sky of a wall, a girl combing her hair at a window, singing
Ohi Mari
and gazing at her image reflected in the sky as in a mirror.

The negro does not notice that the boy who holds his hand and strokes his wrist, talking to him softly and looking up at him with mild eyes, from time to time changes his identity. (When the boy sells his "black" to another street arab he slips the negro's hand into that of the buyer and loses himself in the crowd.) The price of a negro on the "flying market" is based on the lavishness and recklessness of his expenditure, on his avidity for food and drink, on the way in which he smiles, lights a cigarette or looks at a woman. A hundred expert eager eyes follow the negro's every gesture, count the coins that he draws from his pocket, observe his pink-and-black fingers with their pale cuticles. There are boys who are very expert at the precise and rapid calculation which the traffic entails. (In two months Pasquale Sole, a boy of ten, earned from the purchase and resale of negroes on the "flying market" about six thousand dollars, with which he acquired a house in the vicinity of the Piazza Olivella.) As he wanders from bar to bar, from inn to inn, from brothel to brothel, as he smiles, drinks and eats, as he caresses the arms of a girl, the negro is oblivious of the fact that he has become a medium of exchange, he does not even suspect that he has been bought and sold like a slave.

It was certainly not dignified, the position of the negro soldiers in the American Army—so kind, so black, so respectable—who had won the war, landed at Naples as conquerors, and now found themselves being bought and sold like unfortunate slaves. But in Naples this kind of thing has been happening for a thousand years. Such was the experience of the Normans, the Angevins and the Aragonese, of Charles VIII of France, and of Garibaldi and Mussolini themselves. The people of Naples would have perished of hunger centuries ago if every so often they had not been lucky enough to be able to buy and resell all those, Italians and foreigners, who presumed to land at Naples as conquerors and overlords.

If the cost of hiring a negro soldier on the "flying market" for a few hours was only twenty or thirty dollars, the cost of hiring him for one or two months was high, ranging from three hundred to a thousand dollars or even more. An American negro was a goldmine. The owner of a negro slave possessed a sure income and a source of easy gain. He had solved the problem of making a living, and often grew rich. The risk, certainly, was great, since the M.P.s, who understood nothing about the affairs of Europe, nourished an inexplicable aversion to the traffic in negroes. But in spite of the M.P.s the negro-trade was held in high honour in Naples. There was not a family, however, poor, which did not possess its negro slave.

A negro's master treated his slave as an honoured guest. He offered him food and drink, filled him with wine and fritters, let him dance with his own daughters to the strains of an old gramophone, made him sleep, along with all the members of his family, male and female, in his own bed—one of those vast beds which occupy a large part of every Neapolitan
basso.
And the negro would come home every evening with gifts of sugar, cigarettes, spam, bacon, bread, white flour, vests, stockings, shoes, uniforms, bedspreads, overcoats, and vast quantities of caramels. The "black" was delighted by the quiet family life, the decorousness and warmth of his welcome, the smiles of the women and children, the sight of the table laid for supper beneath the lamp, the wine, the
pizza
cheese, the sweet fritters. After a few days the fortunate negro, having become the slave of this poor, warm-hearted Neapolitan family, would become engaged to one of his master's daughters; and he would return home every evening laden with gifts for his
fiancee
—cases of corned beef, bags of sugar and flour, cartons of cigarettes, and treasures of every kind, which he filched from the military stores, and which the father and brothers of
his fiancée
sold to dealers on the black market. It was also possible to buy white slaves in the jungle that was Naples; but they showed little return, and so cost less. Still, a white soldier from the P.X. cost as much as a coloured driver.

Drivers were the most expensive of all. A black driver cost up to two thousand dollars. There were drivers who presented their
fiancées
with complete vehicles laden with flour, sugar, tyres and tins of petrol. One day a black driver gave his
fiancée,
Concetta Esposito, of the Vicolo della Torretta, situated at the end of the Riviera di Chiaia, a heavy tank—a Sherman. In two hours the tank, which had been hidden in a yard, was stripped of all its screws and dismantled. In two hours it disappeared: not a trace was left of it save for a patch of oil on the flagstones of the yard. One night a Liberty ship, which had arrived from America a few hours before in convoy with ten other ships, was stolen from Naples harbour. Not only was the cargo stolen, but the ship itself. It vanished, and was never heard of again. All Naples, from Capodimonte to Posillipo, rocked with tumultuous laughter, as if convulsed by an earthquake. The Muses, the Graces, Juno, Minerva, Diana and all the Goddesses from Olympus, who in the cool of the evening appear among the clouds above Vesuvius and look down on Naples, could be seen laughing and clasping their bosoms with both hands, while Venus made the heavens shimmer with the flashing of her white teeth.

"How much does a Liberty ship cost on the black market, Jack?"

"Oh, ca ne cotâe pas cher, you damned fool!" Jack would reply turning red.

"You were right to post sentries on the bridges of your battleships. If you aren't careful they'll steal your fleet."

"To hell with you, Malaparte."

When, each evening, we came to the end of Via Toledo and arrived outside the famous Caffè Caflisch, which the French had requisitioned and turned into their
Foyer du soldat,
we used to slacken our pace in order to listen to Général Juin's soldiers talking French among themselves. It was a pleasure to us to hear the French language articulated by French voices. (Jack always spoke French to me. When, immediately after the Allied landing at Salerno, I was appointed liasion officer between the Italian Corps of Liberation and General Headquarters of the Peninsular Base Section, Jack, Staff Colonel Jack Hamilton, had at once asked me if I spoke French, and at my "Oui, mon colonel" he had flushed with joy. "Vous savez," he said to me, "il fait bon de parler francais. Le francais est une langue tres bon pour la sante.") At every hour of the day a small crowd of soldiers and sailors from Algeria, Madagascar, Morocco, Senegal, Tahiti and Indo-China would be standing about on the pavement outside the Caffè Caflisch, but their French was not that of La Fontaine, and we could not understand a word they said. Sometimes, however, if we strained our ears, we were lucky enough to catch a few French words pronounced with a Parisian or Marseillais accent. Jack would flush with joy, and seizing me by the arm would say: "Ecoute, Malaparte, écoute, voila du francais, du veritable francais!" We would both stop, deeply moved, and listen to those French voices, those French words, with their Menilmontant or La Cannebière intonation, and Jack would say: "Ah, que c'est bon! Ah, que ca fait du bien!"

Often, each lending the other courage, we would cross the threshold of the Caffè Caflisch. Timidly Jack would go up to the French sergeant who ran the
Foyer du soldat
and ask him with a blush: "Est-ce que, par hasard . . . est-ce qu'on a vu par là le lieutenant Lyautey?"

"Non, mon colonel," the sergeant would reply, "on ne l’a pas vu depuis quelques jours. Je regrette."

"Merci," Jack would say. "Au revoir, mon ami."

"Au revoir, mon colonel," the sergeant would say.

"Ah, que ca fait du bien, d'entendre parler francais!" Jack would say, red-faced, as we left the Caffè Caflisch.

Jack and I, accompanied by Captain Jimmy Wren, of Cleveland, Ohio, used often to go and eat hot
taralli,
fresh from the oven, in a baker's shop situated on the Pendino di Santa Barbara, that long, gently sloping flight of steps which leads up from the Sadile di Porto in the direction of the Monastery of Santa Chiara.

The Pendino is a dismal alley. It owes its character not so much to its narrowness, carved out as it is between the high, mildewed-walls of ancient, sordid houses, or to the eternal darkness that reigns within it even on sunny days, as to the strangeness of its inhabitants.

In point of fact, the Pendino di Santa Barbara is famous for the many female dwarfs who reside in it. They are so small that they barely come up to the knee of a man of average height. Repulsive and wrinkled, they are among the ugliest of their kind in the world. There are in Spain female dwarfs of great beauty, with well-proportioned limbs and features. And I have seen some in England who are truly exquisite, pink-skinned and fair-haired, like miniature Venuses. But the female dwarfs of the Pendino di Santa Barbara are frightful creatures. All of them, even the youngest, look like very old women, so wizened are their faces, so creased their foreheads, so thin and faded their dishevelled locks.