The Skin (37 page)

"But it isn't possible! I can't believe..." stammered Pierre Lyautey, who was green in the face, and he pressed his hand to his stomach.

"If you don't believe me," I said, "look here, on my plate. Do you see all these little bones? They are the phalanges. And these, ranged along the edge of the plate, are the five nails. You will forgive me if, in spite of my good breeding, I wasn't equal to swallowing the nails."

"Mon Dieu!" cried General Guillaume, gulping down a glass of wine at a single draught.

"That'll teach you," laughed Jack, "to question the truth of what Malaparte relates in his books."

At that moment we heard a report far out on the plain, followed by a second and a third. From the direction of Frattocchie, clear and crisp, came the thunder of a Sherman cannon.

"Ca y est!" exclaimed General Guillaume, springing up.

We all jumped to our feet and, overturning the benches and leaping over the table, ran towards the edge of the wood, whence the eye could explore the whole of the Roman Campagna, from the mouth of the Tiber to the Anio.

We saw a blue cloud rising from the Via Appia, on the far side of the Bivio delle Frattocchie, and the distant roar of a hundred— a thousand—engines reached our ears. Jack and I uttered a cry of joy as we saw the endless column of the American Fifth Army bestirring itself and setting off in the direction of Rome.

"Au revoir, mon General!" cried Jack, grasping General Guillaume's hand.

All the French officers around us were silent. “Au revoir," said General Guillaume; and in a low voice he added: "Nous ne pouvons pas vous suivre. Nous devons rester la."

His eyes were moist with tears. I gripped his hand in silence.

"Come and see me whenever you like," General Guillaume said to me with a sad smile. "You will always find a place waiting for you at my table, and my hand outstretched in friendship."

"Votre main, aussi?"

"Allez au diable!" shouted General Guillaume.

Jack and I rushed down the wooded slope, making for the spot where we had left our jeep.

"Ah! ah! bien joué, Malaparte! un tour formidable!" cried Jack as he ran. "That'll teach them to question the truth of what you relate in
Kqputt!"

"Did you see their expressions? I thought they were all going to be sick!"

"Une sacrée farce, Malaparte! Ah! ah! ah!" cried Jack.

"Did you see how skilfully I arranged those little ram's bones on my plate? They looked just like the bones of a hand!"

"Ah! ah! ah! merveilleux!" cried Jack as he ran. "It looked just like a hand—the skeleton of a hand!"

And we roared with laughter as we ran among the trees. We reached our jeep, jumped in and drove at breakneck speed down the Castel Gandolfo road. We reached the Via Appia and overtook the column amid a cloud of dust. Eventually we took our place behind General Cork's jeep, which, preceded by a few Shermans, was leading the Fifth Army's column on its way to the capture of Rome.

*       *       *       *

Now and then a burst of rifle-fire rent the dusty air. The smell of mint and rue was wafted towards us on the wind; it was like the smell of incense, the smell of Rome's thousand churches. By now the sun was sinking and the purple sky was filled with swollen clouds, marshalled as in the cloud-scenes of the baroque painters. The roar of a thousand aircraft created vast whirlpools of sound, through which the sunset river of blood went coursing down.

Ahead of us the Shermans advanced slowly with a loud metallic roar, from time to time firing their cannon. Suddenly, as we rounded a bend, Rome came into view. There it lay, at the far end of the plain, behind the red arches of the aqueducts and the tombs of blood-red brick, beneath that baroque sky—very white in the midst of a vortex of smoke and flame, as if a terrific fire were consuming it.

A shout went up, and passed from end to end of the column: "Rome! Rome!" From the jeeps, tanks and lorries thousands and thousands of faces, covered with white masks of dust, strained towards the distant city as it lay there, wrapped in the flames of sunset; and I could feel my hoarse voice expressing the hatred, the bitterness, the anguish, and all the sadness and happiness of that moment, which I had awaited so long and in such an agony of fear. At that moment Rome seemed to me harsh, cruel, impenetrable— it was like an enemy city; and an obscure feeling of apprehension and shame came over me, as if I were committing a sacrilege.

Outside the smoking ruins of the Campino aerodrome the column came to a halt. Here two German Tigers lay on their sides, barring the road. Occasionally a rifle-bullet whistled over our heads. Standing up in their tanks, lorries and jeeps the American soldiers laughed and chattered happily and carelessly as they chewed their gum.

"This road," I said to Jack, "is strewn with obstacles. Why don't you suggest to General Cork that we should leave the Via Appia Nuova and take the Via Appia Antica?"

Just then General Cork turned, and unfolding an ordnance map made a sign to Jack with his hand. Jack jumped down from the jeep, and going up to General Cork started to confer with him, indicating a point on the map with his finger.

"General Cork," said Jack, turning to me, "would like to know if there's a shorter and safer route to Rome."

"If I were General Cork," I replied, "I would turn left at that cross-road and enter the Via Appia Antica at a point about a mile from the Tombs of the Horatii and the Curatii. Then I would pass through Capo di Bove and enter Rome by the Via dei Trionfi and the Via dell'Impero. It's a longer route, but it's more picturesque."

Jack ran over to General Cork and came back after a few moments.

"The General," he said, "asks if you feel inclined to act as guide to the column."

"Why not?"

"Can you guarantee that we shan't fall into an ambush?"

"I can guarantee nothing. We are at war, I believe."

Jack resumed his conference with General Cork and after a few moments came to tell me that General Cork wanted to know if the Via Appia Antica was,
generally speaking,
safer.

"What does
generally speaking
mean?" I asked Jack. "Does it mean
usually?
In time of peace it's as safe as houses. I don't know about now."

"Generally speaking," replied Jack, "probably means in this particular case."

"I don't know if it's the safer way in this particular-case, but it's certainly the more picturesque. It's the noblest road in the world— the road that leads to the Thermae of Caracalla, the Colosseum, and the Capitol."

Jack ran off to confer with General Cork, and came back shortly afterwards to tell me that the General wanted to know which was the road by which the Caesars entered Rome.

"When they returned from Orient, Greece, Egypt and Africa," I replied, "the Caesars entered Rome by the Via Appia Antica."

Jack rushed away, and came back to tell me that General Cork came from America, and had therefore decided to enter Rome by the Via Appia Antica.

"I should have been astonished," I replied, "if he had chosen any other road." And I added that Marius, Sulla, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Pompey, Antony, Cleopatra, Augustus, Tiberius and all the other Emperors had passed along the Via Appia Antica, and that General Cork might therefore pass along it too.

Jack ran over to General Cork, and after he had spoken to him in a low voice the General, turning to me with a broad grin, shouted: "Okay!"

"Let's go!" said Jack, jumping into the jeep.

We passed General Cork's jeep and took our place at the head of the column, immediately behind the Shermans. We turned down the lane opposite the Ciampino aerodrome which leads from the Via Appia Nuova to the Via Appia Antica. Shortly afterwards we entered that noble road, the noblest road in the world. It is paved with great slabs of stone in which the two grooves dug by the wheels of the Roman chariots are still visible.

"What's that?" shouted General Cork, indicating the tombs that stand at the side of the Via Appia Antica in the shade of cypresses and pines.

"Those are the tombs of the noblest families of ancient Rome," I replied.

"What?" shouted General Cork, amid the frightful din of the Shermans' caterpillars.

"The tombs of the noblest Roman families!" shouted Jack.

"The noblest what?" shouted General Cork.

"The tombs of the Four Hundred from the Roman
Mayflower
!" shouted Jack.

The word passed from vehicle to vehicle all the way down the column, and the American soldiers, standing up in their tanks, lorries and jeeps, shouted "Gee!" and clicked their Kodaks.

I too stood up and, pointing my finger at each tomb, shouted at random: "That's the tomb of Lucullus, the most famous drunkard in ancient Rome. That's the sepulchre of Julius Caesar. That's Sulla's tomb, and that's Cicero's. That's the tomb of Cleopatra . . ."

The name of Cleopatra passed from mouth to mouth and from vehicle to vehicle, and General Cork shouted: "A famous
signorina,
wasn't she?"

When we came abreast of the Actor's tomb I told Jack to stop for a moment. Indicating the marble stage-masks embedded in the high red brick wall that rises like a theatre scene or backcloth beside the great round mausoleum I shouted: "That's the tomb of Cotta, the most famous Roman actor!"

"Who's what?" shouted General Cork.

"The most famous Roman actor!" shouted Jack.

"I want to autograph it!" shouted a G.I., and a crowd of American soldiers jumped down from their vehicles and made a dash for the wall, which in a few moments was covered with signatures.

"Go on! Go on!" shouted General Cork.

Just then I raised my eyes and saw, sitting on the rough stone steps that lead up to the mausoleum, a German soldier. He was almost a boy. His fair hair was dishevelled, his face covered with a mask of dust through which his bright eyes gleamed softly like the sightless eyes of a blind man. He sat there with a weary, abstracted look, his head thrown back and his two hands resting on the stone steps. He seemed remote from everything—from the war, from his surroundings, from time. He was breathing deeply, panting like a shipwrecked mariner who has just reached the shore. No one had noticed him.

The column started off again, and shortly afterwards we came abreast of the two high grassy mounds beneath which sleep the Horatii and the Curiatii. These mounds resemble two pyramids of earth, and are surmounted by cypresses and pines.

I told Jack to stop. "These are the tombs of the Horatii and the Curiatii!" I shouted, and in a loud voice I briefly related the story of the three Horatii and the three Curiatii. I told of the challenge and the fight, of the cunning deception practised by the last Horatius and of how the victor ran his sister through with his sword on the threshold of their home to punish her for loving one of the three Curiatii brothers whom he had slain.

"What? What the hell's that about the sister?" shouted General Cork.

"Where's the sister?" shouted several voices. And all the G.I.s in the column jumped to the ground, and scrambled up the two high grassy pyramids which the massive foliage of the pines and the lissom cypresses endue with the romantic colouring of a canvas by Poussin or Boeklin. Even General Cork wanted to climb to the top of one of the tombs, and Jack and I followed him.

From the summit of the mound, Rome, now that the fires of sunset had spent themselves, looked at once sombre and kindly in the transparent green light of evening. A vast green cloud hung over the cupolas, the towers, the columns and the roofs with their countless marble statues. The green light streamed down from the sky, like one of those showers of green rain that sometimes fall on the sea at the beginning of spring. It seemed exactly as though a shower of green grass was pouring down from the sky on to the city, and the houses, the roofs, the cupolas and the marble statues shone like a damp meadow in spring time.

A cry of wonder burst from the lips of the soldiers who thronged the mounds. As if disturbed by the cry, a flight of black crows ascended from the distant red Aurelian Walls which form the boundary of Rome between the Porta Latina and the tomb of Caius Cestius. Their black wings sparkled now green, now blood-red. From that lofty vantage-point we could distinguish the meadows and orchards of the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina, the grove of the nymph Aegeria, the forests of canes surrounding the little church in which the Barberini sleep, the red arches of the aqueducts, and in the distance, beyond Capo di Bove and over towards the Porta di San Sebastiano, the great crenellated tower of the tomb of Caecilia Metella. At the bottom of the vast green bowl, sprinkled with pines, cypresses and sepulchres, which gradually falls away towards the Acquasanta golf links, the first houses of Rome suddenly came into view—those lofty white stuccoed walls with their flashing glass, against which the green and red breath of the Roman Campagna spent itself as in a billowing sail.

Groups of men were running hither and thither over the plain. Every so often they would stop and look uncertainly about them, then start running again, hesitant, like wild beasts pursued by dogs. Other groups of men would come forward in overwhelming numbers from every side, closing in upon them and blocking the paths of flight and salvation.The sharp crackle of rifle-fire was wafted towards us on the sea-breeze, which brought a sweet tang of salt to our lips. These were the last clashes between the German rearguards and the bands of partisans; and the evening air, transparent as an aquarium, gave a melancholy tinge to that scene of pursuit, which in its sound and its vague, elusive colouring touched a chord of memory. It was a mild, green evening, like the evening on which the Trojans looked down from the top of their walls and anxiously watched the last encounters of the blood battle, even as Achilles rose from the river like a bright star and ran across the plain of the Scamander towards the walls of Ilium.

Just then I saw the moon rising behind the wooded slopes of the mountains of Tivoli—an enormous moon, dripping with blood—and I said to Jack: "Look over there. That's not the moon—it's Achilles."

General Cork looked at me in astonishment. "It's the moon," he said.