The Skin (38 page)

"No, it's Achilles," said Jack.

And in a low voice I began to recite in Greek the verses from the
Iliad
in which Achilles rises from the Scamander "like the mournful star of autumn which men call Orion." When I stopped Jack continued, watching the moon rising over the mountains of Latium and scanning the Homeric hexameters with the sing-song cadence that he had learned in his own Virginia University.

"I must remind you, gentlemen . . ." said General Cork in a severe voice. But he stopped; slowly he descended from the tomb of the Horatii, climbed back into his jeep and in a furious tone gave the order to start. "Go on! Go on!" he shouted, and he seemed not merely irritated but profoundly astonished. The column set off again, and near Capo de Bove, where stands the athlete's tomb, we had to slow down in order to give the G.I.s time to cover the boxer's statue with signatures. "Go on! Go on!" shouted General Cork; but when we reached the famous inn at Capo di Bove called
Qui non si muore mai
I turned to him, pointed to the sign, and shouted: "Here we never die!"

"What?" shouted General Cork, trying to make his voice heard above the metallic roar of the Shermans' caterpillars and the gay, noisy chatter of the G.I.s.

"Here we never die!" said Jack.

"What? We never dine?" shouted General Cork.

"Never die!" repeated Jack.

"Why not?" shouted General Cork. "I
will
dine—I'm hungry! Go on! Go on!"

But when we came to the tomb of Caecilia Metella I told Jack to stop for a moment. Turning round, I shouted to General Cork that this was the tomb of one of the noblest matrons of ancient Rome—of that Caecilia Metella who was the consort of Sulla.

"Sulla? Who was that guy?" shouted General Cork.

"Sulla—the Mussolini of ancient Rome!" shouted Jack. And I wasted at least ten minutes explaining to General Cork that Caecilia Metella "wasn't Mussolini's wife."

The word passed from vehicle to vehicle, and a crowd of G.I.s made a dash for the tomb of Caecilia Metella, "Mussolini's wife." At last we started off again. Down we went to the Catacombs of San Callisto, then up once more in the direction of San Sebastiano. When we reached the little church called
Quo Vadis
I shouted to General Cork that we ought to stop there even if it meant that we were the last of the conquerors to enter Rome, because this was the
Quo Vadis
church.

"Quo what?" shouted General Cork.

"The
Quo Vadis
church!" shouted Jack.

"What? What does
Quo Vadis
mean?" shouted General Cork.

" 'Where are you going?' " I replied.

"To Rome, of course!" shouted General Cork. "Where d'you think I'm going? I'm going to Rome!"

Standing up in the jeep I then described in a loud voice how at that very point in the street, outside that little church, St. Peter had met Jesus. The word passed all the way down the column, and a G.I. shouted: "Which Jesus?"

"Christ, of course!" shouted General Cork in a voice of thunder.

A hush came over the column, and in reverent silence the G.I.s crowded round the door of the little church. They wanted to go in, but it was shut. Some of them began to try and force an entry with their shoulders, others hammered with fists and boots on the door, and just as a mechanic from a Sherman was endeavouring to lever it off its hinges with an iron bar the window of one of the hovels opposite the little church suddenly opened and a woman appeared. She hurled a stone at the G.I.s, spitting at them and shouting: "Shameless creatures! Stinking Germans! Sons of whores!"

"Tell that good woman that we aren't Germans, but Americans!" General Cork shouted to me.

"We're Americans!" I shouted.

At my words all the windows of the houses were, suddenly flung open, a hundred heads popped out, and on all sides' voices arose in a delightful chorus: "Long live the Americans! Long live freedom!" A crowd of men, women and boys, armed with cudgels and stones, came out of the doors and emerged from behind the hedges. Throwing aside these rough weapons they all made a rush for the G.I.s, shouting: "The Americans!"

Amid scenes of confusion that beggar description the G.I.s and the crowd embraced one another, uttering loud cries of joy. In the meantime General Cork, who while the uproar lasted had not stirred from his jeep, called me to him and asked me in a low voice whether it was true that St. Peter had met Jesus Christ at this very spot.

"Why shouldn't it be true?" I replied. "At Rome miracles are the most natural thing in the world."

"Nuts!" exclaimed General Cork. And after a few moments' silence he begged me to describe to him exactly what had taken place. I told him about St. Peter, his meeting with Jesus Christ and his question:
"Quo vadis, Domine?
Where goest thou, O Lord?" It seemed to me that General Cork was much disturbed by my narrative, and especially by St. Peter's words.

"Are you quite sure," he said to me, "that St. Peter asked the Lord where He was going?"

"What else could he have asked Him? If you had been in St. Peter's place what would you have asked Jesus?"

"Of course," replied General Cork, "I should have asked Him where He was going, too." And he stopped. Then with a jerk of his head he added: "So this is Rome!" And he said no more.

Before ordering the column to start off again General Cork, who did not lack a certain prudence, begged me to ask someone in the small, gay crowd that surrounded us "who was in Rome."

I turned to a youth who looked to me more wide-awake than the rest and repeated General Cork's question to him.

"And who do you think is in Rome?" the fellow replied. "The Romans, of course!"

I translated the youth's reply, and General Cork flushed slightly. "Of course," he exclaimed, "the Romans!" And raising his arm he gave the order to resume the advance.

The column stirred and moved off. Shortly afterwards we entered Rome through the arch of the Porta di San Sebastiano and proceeded along the narrow street on either side of which stand high red walls covered with the green mould of centuries. When we passed by the tombs of the Scipios, General Cork turned and cast a lingering look at the sepulchre of Hannibal's conqueror. "That's Rome!" he shouted to me, and he appeared deeply moved. Then we came out opposite the Thermae of Caracalla, and at the sight of the stupendous mass of the imperial remains, transfigured by the moonbeams' marvellously delicate caress, a chorus of enthusiastic whistles went up from the column. The pines, cypresses and laurels threw luminous dappled shadows of a greeny-black hue over that prospect of purple ruins and shining grass.

Amid a terrific roar of caterpillars we came face to face with the Palatine, which seemed weighed down by the remains of the Palace of the Caesars. Up we climbed once more, along the Via dei Trionfi, and suddenly, immense in the peaceful moonlight, the mass of the Colosseum arose before our eyes.

"What's that?" shouted General Cork, trying to make his voice heard above the chorus of whistles that went up from the column.

"The Colosseum!" I replied.

"What?"

"The Colisee!" shouted Jack.

General Cork stood up in his jeep and for a long time surveyed the gigantic shell of the Colosseum in silence. He turned to me, and with a note of pride in his voice shouted: "Our bombers have done a good job!" Then, spreading out his arms, he added apologetically: "Don't worry, Malaparte: that's war!"

Just then the column entered the Via dell'Impero. I had turned to General Cork, and was pointing to the Forum and the Capitoline Hill, shouting "That's the Capitol!" when a terrific uproar cut me short. A vast, yelling crowd was coming towards us down the Via dell’Impero. It consisted largely of women, and they seemed to be preparing to assail our column. They came running down, dishevelled, delirious, their clothes awry, waving their arms, laughing, weeping and shouting. In a twinkling we were surrounded, assailed, overwhelmed, and the column disappeared beneath an inextricable tangle of legs and arms, a forest of black hair, and a soft mountain of ripe breasts, full lips and white shoulders. ("As usual," said the young curate of the Church of Santa Caterina, in Corso Italia, when delivering his sermon next day—"As usual Fascist propaganda lied when it predicted that if the American Army entered Rome it would assault our women. It is our women who have assaulted, and discomfited, the American Army.") And the roar of engines and caterpillars was drowned by the yells of that joy-maddened crowd.

But when we were on the heights of Tor di Nona a man who was running towards the column, waving his arms and shouting "Long live America!" slipped, fell and was dragged along beneath the caterpillars of a Sherman. A cry of horror arose from the crowd. I jumped to the ground and forcing my way through the mob bent over the shapeless corpse.

A dead man is a dead man. He is just a dead man. He is more, and perhaps less too, than a dead dog or cat. Many times, on the roads of Serbia, Bessarabia and the Ukraine, I had seen in the mud of the street the imprint of a dog that had been killed and crushed by a tank. The outline of a dog drawn on the slate of the road with a red pencil. A carpet made of the skin of a dog.

In July, 1941,1 had seen a carpet of human skin lying in the dust of the street right in the centre of Yampol, a village on the Dniester, in the Ukraine. It was a man who had been crushed by the caterpillars of a tank. The face had assumed a square shape, and the chest and stomach were splayed out at the sides in the form of a diamond. The outspread legs and the arms, which were a little apart from the torso, were like the trousers and sleeves of a newly-pressed suit, stretched out on the ironing-board. It was a dead man—something more, or something less, than a dead dog or cat. I cannot say now in what respect that dead man was more, or less, than a dead dog or cat. But then, on that evening, at the moment at which I saw his imprint in the dust of the street, in the centre of the village of Yampol, I could perhaps have said what it was that made him something more, or something less, than a dead dog or cat.

Here and there gangs of Jews in black caftans, armed with spades and shovels, were collecting the dead whom the Russians had left behind them in the village. Sitting on the doorstep of a ruined house I watched the light transparent mist ascending from the marshy banks of the Dniester, while in the distance, on the other bank, beyond the bend of the river, the black clouds of smoke that rose from the houses of Soroca slowly spiralled up into the air. The sun revolved like a red wheel in a whirlwind of dust at the far end of the plain, where cars, men, horses and waggons were clearly silhouetted against the brilliant, dust-filled sunset sky.

In the middle of the street, there in front of me, lay the man who had been crushed by the caterpillars of a tank. Some Jews came up and began to remove the outline of the dead man from the dust. Very slowly they lifted the edges of the pattern with the ends of their spades, as one lifts the edges of a carpet. It was a carpet of human skin, and the fabric consisted of a fine network of bones, a spider's web of crushed bones. It was like a starched suit, a starched human skin. It was an appalling and at the same time a delicate, exquisite, unreal scene. The Jews talked among themselves, and their voices sounded distant, soft, muffled. When the carpet of human skin had been completely detached from the dusty street one of the Jews impaled the head on the end of his spade and moved off, carrying the remains like a flag.

The standard-bearer was a young Jew with long hair that hung loosely over his shoulders. His eyes shone forth from his pale, lean face with a melancholy, unwavering stare. He walked with his head high, and on the end of his spade, like a flag, he carried that human skin, which flapped and fluttered in the wind exactly as a flag does.

I said to Lino Pellegrini, who was sitting beside me: "That's the flag of Europe. It's our flag."

"It isn't my flag," said Pellegrini. "A dead man isn't the flag of a living man."

"What is the inscription on that flag?" I said.

"It says that a dead man is a dead man."

"No," I said. "Read it carefully. It says that a dead man is not a dead man."

"No," said Pellegrini, "a dead man is just a dead man. What do you suppose a dead man is?"

"Ah, you don't know what a dead man is. If you knew what a dead man was you would never sleep again."

"Now I see," said Pellegrini, "what the inscription on that flag is. It says: The dead must bury the dead."

"No, it says that this is our country's flag, the flag of our true country. A flag made of human skin. Our true country is our skin "

Behind the standard-bearer, carrying their spades on their shoulders, came the procession of grave-diggers, enveloped in their black caftans. The wind fluttered the flag, ruffling the dead man's hair, which was saturated with a mixture of dust and blood and stood up on end above the broad, square brow like the rigid mane of a plaster saint.

"Let's go and see our flag buried," I said to Pellegrini.

They were going to bury the remains in the communal grave that had been dug at the entrance to the village facing the bank of the Dniester. They were going to cast them into the filth of the communal grave, which was already full to overflowing with charred corpses and the bloodstained, mud-spattered remains of horses.

"It isn't my flag," said Pellegrini. "The inscription on my flag is 'God, Freedom, Justice.'"

I began laughing and, raising my eyes, looked across at the opposite bank of the Dniester. I gazed at the opposite bank of the river and thought of Tarass Bulba. Gogol was born in the Ukraine. He had passed through this place, through Yampol. He had slept in that house at the far end of the village. It was actually from the top of that high, steep river-bank that Tarass Bulba's faithful Cossacks rode headlong into the Dniester. Tied to the stake at which he was to die, Tarass Bulba urged his Cossacks to flee, to throw themselves into the river, to seek safety. From that very spot, opposite Yampol, a little way upstream from Soroca, Tarass Bulba watched his faithful Cossacks ride rapidly away on their lean, shaggy horses with the Poles in pursuit; he watched them throw themselves headlong over the precipice, over the edge ot the cliff that flanks the Dniester; and he watched the Poles likewise throw themselves into the river, and break their necks on the river-bank directly opposite where I was sitting. The horses of an Italian field-battery kept appearing and disappearing among the acacia-groves situated on top of the steep bank, and down below, beneath the corrugated-iron roofs of the sheds of the Yampol
kolkhoz,
lay the charred, still smoking remains of hundreds of horses.