The Skin (7 page)

"She is a virgin. You can touch. Don't be afraid. She doesn't bite. She is a virgin. A real virgin," said the man, thrusting his head into the room through the gap in the curtain.

Someone laughed, and seemed to repent of it. The "virgin" did not move, but stared at us with her eyes full of fear and loathing. I looked about me. Everyone was pale—pale with fear and loathing.

Suddenly the girl closed her legs, bringing her knees together with a soft thud. She raised herself up with a jerk, pulled down her dress, and with a rapid movement of the hand snatched the cigarette from the mouth of an English sailor who was standing near the edge of the bed.

"Get out, please," said the man's head framed in the gap in the red curtain, and we all slowly filed out through the little door at the end of the room, shuffling across the floor, overcome with shame and embarrassment.

"You people ought to be well satisfied to see Naples brought to this pass," I said to Jimmy when we were outside.

"It certainly isn't my fault," said Jimmy.

"Oh, no," I said, "it certainly isn't your fault. But it must give you all great satisfaction to feel that you have conquered a country like this," I added. "Without such scenes how would you make yourselves feel that you were conquerors? Be frank, Jimmy: you would not feel that you were conquerors without such scenes."

"Naples has always been like that," said Jimmy.

"No, it has never been like that," I said. "Such things have never been seen in Naples before. If you didn't like such things, if scenes like that didn't amuse you, they wouldn't happen in Naples. Such sights wouldn't be seen in Naples."

"We
didn't make Naples," said Jimmy. "We found it ready made."

"You
didn't make Naples," I said, "but it has never been like this before. If America had lost the war think of all the American virgins in New York or Chicago who would open their legs for a dollar. If you had lost the war there would be an American virgin on that bed, instead of that poor Neopolitan girl."

"Don't talk nonsense," said Jimmy. "Even if we had lost the war you wouldn't see things like that in America."

"You would have seen worse things in America if you had lost the war," I said. "To make himself feel that he is a hero every conqueror needs to see these things."

"Don't talk rubbish," said Jimmy.

"I would rather lose the war and spend my time sitting on that bed like that poor girl, than behave in such a way for the pleasure and glory of feeling that I was a conqueror."

"You came to see her too," said Jimmy. "Why did you come?"

"Because I am a coward, Jimmy, because I too need to see such things, so that I may feel that I am one of the defeated—that I am one of the unfortunate ones."

"Why don't you go and sit on that bed too," said Jimmy, "if it gives you so much pleasure to feel that you are on the side of the conquered?"

"Tell me the truth, Jimmy—would you be willing to pay a dollar to come and see me?"

"I wouldn't even pay a cent to come and see you," said Jimmy, spitting on the ground.

"Why not? If America had lost the war I should immediately go over there to see Washington's descendants behaving like that in front of the conquerors."

"Shut up!" cried Jimmy, forcibly gripping my arm.

"Why wouldn't you come and see me, Jimmy? All the soldiers of the Fifth Army would come and see me. Even you would come, Jimmy. You would pay not one dollar, but two or even three. All conquerors need to see these things, to convince themselves that they have won the war."

"You're all a lot of mad swine, in Europe," said Jimmy, "that's what you are."

"Be frank with me, Jimmy—when you go back to America, to your home in Cleveland, Ohio, it will give you pleasure to talk of the triumphal arch of the poor Italian girls' legs."

"Don't say that," said Jimmy in a low voice.

"Forgive me, Jimmy—I hate it for your sake and for mine. It isn't your fault or ours. I know. But it makes me sick to think of some things. You shouldn't have taken me to see that girl. I shouldn't have come with you to see that horrible thing. I hate it for your sake and for mine, Jimmy. I feel miserable and cowardly. You Americans are fine fellows, and there are some things that you understand better than many other people. Isn't it a fact, Jimmy, that there are some things you understand too?"

"Yes, I understand," said Jimmy in a low voice, gripping my arm tightly.

*       *       *       *

I felt miserable and cowardly, as I had done on the day when I climbed the Gradoni di Chiaia, in Naples. The Gradoni are that long flight of steps leading up from Via Chiaia to Santa Teresella degli Spagnoli, the miserable quarter where once were the barracks and places of amusement of the Spanish soldiers. The sirocco was blowing, and the clothes hanging out to dry on the lines which stretched from house to house flapped noisily in the wind like flags: Naples had not thrown its flags at the feet of the conquerors and the conquered. During the night a fire had destroyed a large part of the magnificent palace of the Dukes of Cellamare, situated in Via Chiaia, not far from the Gradoni; and the warm, humid air was still pervaded by a dry odour of burnt wood and cold smoke. The sky was grey; it seemed to consist of dirty paper, covered with specks of mould.

On days when the sirocco prevails Naples, huddled beneath that scabious, mouldy sky, assumes an appearance that is at once both miserable and arrogant. The houses, the streets and the people exhibited a self-conscious air of abject, baleful insolence. In the distance, above the sea, the sky was like the skin of a lizard, mottled green and white, dripping with the cold, dull moistness peculiar to the skin of reptiles. Grey clouds with greenish edges flecked the dirty blue of the horizon, on which the warm squalls of the sirocco left a trail of oily yellow streaks. The sea was green and brown in colour, like the skin of a toad, and the smell of the sea was pungent and sweet, like the smell of a toad's skin. From the mouth of Vesuvius belched forth a dense yellow smoke, which, repelled by the low vault of the cloudy sky, opened out like the foliage of an immense pine-tree, interspersed with black shadows and large green cracks. And the vineyards dotted about the purple fields of cold lava, the pines and cypresses rooted in the deserts of ashes, amid which the greys and pinks and blues of the houses that clung to the sides of the volcano stood out with sombre prominence, took on gloomy, deathly tints in that panorama, which was bathed in a greenish half-light broken by vivid yellows and purples.

When the sirocco blows the human skin perspires, the cheekbones sparkle in faces dripping with grimy sweat and overlaid with a black down which leaves a dirty moist shadow about eyes, lips and ears. Even voices sound thick and lazy, and words have an unwonted meaning, a mysterious significance, as though they belonged to a forbidden jargon. The people walk in silence, as though oppressed by a secret anguish, and the children pass long hours seated mutely on the ground, nibbling crusts of bread or fruit black with flies, or looking at the cracked walls on which can be seen the motionless outlines of lizards, embedded by mildew in the ancient plaster. The air is heavy with the perfume of the brilliant carnations which stand in terracotta vases on the window-sills. The voice of a woman, singing, ascends now from this side, now from that: the song echoes slowly from window to window, coming to rest on the sills like a weary bird.

The odour of cold smoke from the fire in the Cellamare palace pervaded the dense, sticky atmosphere. Sadly I inhaled that odour of a captured city, sacked and consigned to the flames, the ancient odour of an Ilium enveloped in smoke from burning buildings and funeral pyres, prostrate on the shore of a sea crowded with enemy ships, under a mould-specked sky, beneath which the flags of the conquering peoples, who had hurried forward from all the corners of the earth to take part in the long siege, grew mouldy in the wind that blew in hoarse, steamy, fetid gusts from the far horizon.

I walked down Via Chiaia in the direction of the sea, surrounded by crowds of Allied soldiers who thronged the pavements, jostling and pushing one another and shouting in a hundred strange, unfamiliar tongues, as they made their way along the banks of the raging river of vehicles which flowed tumultously through the narrow street. And I felt amazingly ridiculous in my green uniform, which was riddled with bullets from our own rifles, and had been stripped from the corpse of an English soldier who had fallen at El Alamein or Tobruk. I felt lost in that hostile throng of foreign soldiers, who pushed me on my way with violent shoves, used elbows and shoulders to thrust me to one side, and turned back, looking contemptuously at the gold braid on my uniform and saying to me in furious voices: "You bastard, you son of a bitch, you dirty Italian officer."

And I thought to myself as I walked: "Who knows how one says 'You bastard, you son of a bitch, you dirty Italian officer' in French? And how one says it in Russian, in Serb, in Polish, in Danish, in Dutch, in Norwegian, in Arabic? Who knows, I thought, how one says it in Brazilian? And in Chinese? And in Indian, in Bantu, in Madagascan? Who knows how one says it in German?" And I laughed as I thought that that conquerors' jargon must certainly translate very well into German too—even into German—because German too, compared with Italian, was the language of a victorious people. I laughed as I thought that all the languages of the earth, even Bantu and Chinese, even German, were the languages of victorious peoples, and that we alone, we Italians alone, in Via Chiaia, Naples, and in all the streets of all the cities of Italy, spoke a language which was not that of a victorious people. And I felt proud of being a poor "Italian bastard," a poor "son of a bitch."

I looked about me in the crowd for someone who, like me, felt proud of being a poor "Italian bastard," a poor "son of a bitch." I looked hard into the faces of all the Neapolitans I met, lost like me in that noisy crowd of conquerors, pushed like me on one side with violent shoves, with elbow-thrusts in the ribs: poor wan, emaciated men, women with thin white faces hideously restored to life with rouge, skinny children with enormous eyes, ravenous and fearful; and I felt proud of being an "Italian bastard" like them, a "son of a bitch" like them.

But something in their faces, in their expressions, made me feel humble. There was something about them that wounded me deeply. It was an insolent pride, the vile, horrible pride of hunger, the arrogant and at the same time humble pride of hunger. They did not suffer in their souls, but only in their bodies. They suffered no kind of pain other than bodily pain. And suddenly I felt lonely and strange in that crowd of conquerors and poor starving Neapolitans. I was ashamed that I was not hungry. I blushed because I was only an "Italian bastard," a "son of a bitch," and nothing worse. I felt ashamed that I too was not a poor starving Neapolitan; and elbowing my way along the street I escaped from the press of the crowd and set foot on the first step of the Gradoni di Chiaia.

*       *       *       *

The long flight of steps was cluttered up with women, seated one beside the other, as on the tiers of an amphitheatre, and it seemed that they were there to enjoy some wonderful spectacle. They laughed as they sat, talking among themselves in high-pitched voices, or eating fruit, or smoking, or sucking caramels, or chewing gum. Some were leaning forward, their elbows on their knees, their faces buried in their clasped hands; others lolled back with their arms on the step above them; others yet rested lightly on their sides; and all were shouting and calling one another by name, exchanging voices and formless oral sounds, rather than words, with their companions seated lower down or higher up, or with the shrieking attendant crowd of dishevelled, repulsive old women on the balconies and at the windows overhanging the alley, who, their toothless mouths agape with obscene laughter, were waving their arms and hurling gibes and insults. The women seated on the steps were straightening one another's locks, which in every case were gathered together and built up into a lofty edifice of hair and tow, reinforced and supported by hair-pins and tortoiseshell combs, and adorned with flowers and false tresses, in the style of the wax Madonnas in the little chapels at the corners of the alleys.

This crowd of women sitting on the steps, which resembled the ladder of the Angels in Jacob's dream, seemed to have come together for some celebration, or for some play in which they were at once actresses and spectators. At intervals one of them would sing a song, one of those melancholy songs of the Neapolitan people. This would at once be drowned by outbursts of laughter, raucous voices, and guttural yells which sounded like appeals for help or cries of pain.

But there was a certain dignity about those women, about their varied postures, now obscene, now comic, now solemn, about the very disorder of the tableau which they presented. A certain nobility even, revealed in some of their gestures, in the way they raised their arms to touch their temples with the tips of their fingers, to straighten their hair each with her two plump and dexterous hands, in the way they turned their heads and inclined them on their shoulders, as though the better to hear the voices and the obscene words which floated down from the balconies and windows above, and in the very way in which they spoke and smiled. Suddenly, when I set foot on the first step, all became mute, and a strange palpitating silence, like an immense variegated butterfly, settled lightly on the packed stairway.

In front of me walked a number of negro soldiers in their close-fitting khaki uniforms, swaying on flat feet encased in thin shoes of yellow leather which shone as if they were made of gold. Slowly they climbed, in that sudden silence, with the lonely dignity of the negro; and as they advanced up the steps, through the narrow passage left free by that mute crowd of seated women, I saw the legs of those unfortunates slowly splay open. "Five dollars! Five dollars!" they suddenly began to cry all together, in hoarse, strident voices, but without gestures; and this absence of gestures added obscenity to their voices and their words. "Five dollars! Five dollars!" As the negroes ascended, so the clamour increased, the voices became shriller, hoarser and hoarser grew the cries of the termagants on the balconies and at the windows, as they goaded the negroes on and joined in the chorus of yells: "Five dollars! Five dollars! Go, Joe! Go, Joe! Go, go, Joe, go!"