Kaputt (11 page)

"What did you go to Batorego Street today for?" inquired Frank with a cunning smile.

"To Batorego Street?" I said.

"Yes, I believe it is called Ulica Batorego, isn't it?" repeated Frank turning to Emil Gassner.

"
Ja,
Batoregostrasse
,"
replied Gassner
.

"What did you call on those young ladies for—what's their name?"

"Fräulein Urbanski," replied Gassner.

"Fräulein Urbanski? They are two elderly young ladies, if I am not mistaken, two spinsters. Why did you call on the Misses Urbanski?"

"You know everything," I said, "and you do not know what I did in Batorego Street? I went to bring some bread to the Misses Urbanski."

"Bread?"

"Yes, Italian bread."

"Italian bread? And did you bring it with you from Italy?"

"Precisely! I brought it from Italy with me. I should have liked to bring an armful of roses from Florence for the Misses Urbanski. But it is a long way from Florence to Cracow, and roses fade quickly. So I brought bread."

"Bread?" exclaimed Frank, "and do you think there is a lack of bread in Poland?" And he seemed to embrace by a wide sweeping gesture the silver trays heaped with slices of that soft white Polish bread with its thin crust, smooth and rustling as silk.

An ingenuous smile of surprise lighted his pale swollen face.

"Polish bread is bitter," I said.

"Yes, that's true. Italian roses are sweeter. You ought to have taken an armful of roses from Florence to the Misses Urbanski. It would have been a kindly souvenir of Italy. Particularly as long as those two 'elderly' young ladies were not the only ones you met in that house,
nicht wahr?"

"Oh,
vous êtes méchantl
—You are naughty!" said Frau Wächter graciously threatening Frank with her finger. A Viennese, Frau Wächter liked to talk French.

"A Princess Lubomirska, wasn't it?" went on Frank laughing. "Lili Lubomirska. Lili.
Ach, so,
Lili!"

Everyone began to laugh and I kept silent.

"Does Lili like Italian bread, too?" asked Frank, and his words provoked general laughter.

I then turned smiling to Frau Wächter: "I am not a man of wit," I said, "and I don't know how to answer. Won't you answer for me?"

"Oh, I know that you are not a man of wit," replied Frau Wächter kindly, "but it is so easy to answer that. Poles and Italians are friends, and friendship's bread is best. Isn't it so?"

"Thank you," I said.

"Ach, so!"
exclaimed Frank, adding after a moment's silence, "I forgot that you are a great friend of the Polish people. I mean to say of the Polish nobility."

"All Poles are noblemen," I said.

"Quite so," said Frank, "I cannot tell the difference between a Princess Radziwil and a coachman."

"And you are wrong," I said.

All looked at me in wonder, and Frank smiled at me.

But at this juncture the door opened quietly and there appeared on a silver tray the roast goose, lying on its back amid a garland of potatoes roasted in fat. It was a round fat Polish goose with a flourishing bosom, full hips and a strong neck; and I cannot say why there came into my mind that its neck had not been cut in the good old-fashioned way, but that the goose had been shot against a wall by a platoon of SS men. I seemed to hear the harsh voice ordering "Fire!" and the sudden rattle of shots. No doubt the goose had fallen looking proudly into the eyes of the cruel oppressors of Poland. And I shouted "Fire!" as if to realize what that shout meant, that raucous sound, that harsh voice of command, almost as if I expected to hear the sudden rattle of rifles in the great hall of the Wawel.

And everyone started laughing; they threw their heads backward laughing, and Frau Brigitte Frank looked fixedly at me, her eyes glistening with sensuous joy, her face red and slightly perspiring.

"Fire!" shouted Frank in his turn, and the laughter grew in volume; they fixed their eyes on the goose, cocking their heads on their right shoulders and closing their left eyes, as if they really were taking aim. Then I laughed too, while a crawling sensation of shame overcame me little by little. I felt a sort of hurt shame. I felt on the side of the goose. Oh, yes! I sided with the goose, not with those who were aiming their rifles, nor with those who were shouting "Fire!" nor with all those who were saying "
Gans Kaputt!
—The goose is dead!"

I sided with the goose, and gazing at the goose, I thought of the old Princess Radziwil, dear old Bichette Radziwil, standing in the rain amid the ruins of the station of Warsaw, waiting for the train that was to take her to safety in Italy. It was raining, and Bichette had been standing there two hours on the platform, under the charred beams of the station's roof, that shells of the artillery and Stuka bombs had ploughed.

"Don't you worry about me, my dear. I am an old hen," she was saying to Soro, a young secretary of the Italian Legation. And now and again she shook her head to rid the brim of her felt hat of the raindrops that had gathered on it.

"If I only knew where to find an umbrella," said Soro.

"An umbrella, come, it would be ludicrous at my age!" and she laughed as with her peculiar voice and accent, and with her eloquent glances she entertained the small gathering of relations and friends who had succeeded in obtaining permission from the Gestapo to see her off, and told them amusing little stories, merry little incidents, diverting little annoyances that she had experienced during her Odyssey across the territories occupied by the Russians and the Germans—as if she were prevented by her charity, her pity and her pride from looking deeply into the vast tragedy of Poland. The rain ran down her face streaking the rouge on her cheeks. Her white hair, stained yellow, drooped in sodden strands from under her felt hat. She had been standing two hours in the rain, her shoes sinking in a mess of mud and coal dust that covered the platform; but she was merry, lively, full of zest. She inquired about this one and that, about relatives, friends, the dead, the escaped, the interned—and when anyone answered, "Nothing is known about him," Bichette pleaded, "Now, come!" as if she felt deprived of a pleasant story, of a piece of amusing gossip. "Ah, that's really amusing," she exclaimed when she was told that somebody was alive. And if it so happened that anyone replied, "So-and-so is dead, so-and-so is interned," Bichette pouted and exclaimed, "Is it possible?" as if she were saying, "You are making fun of me," and as if they had told her an incredible story.

She asked Soro for the latest Warsaw gossip, and gazing at the German officers and soldiers who passed along the platform, she said, "
Ces pauvres gens
" in an indescribable tone, an ancient tone, as if she disliked to make them uncomfortable by her presence and she felt sorry for them, as if Poland's destruction was a terrible misfortune that had befallen those poor Germans.

After a time a German officer approached carrying a chair and, bowing to Bichette, he silently offered it to her. Bichette drew herself up, and with a most gracious smile, in a delicious tone in which there was no suspicion of contempt, she said: "I thank you; I accept favors only from my friends." The officer was puzzled, he did not at first dare to show that he had understood; then he blushed, set the chair down, bowed and strode off without a word.

"Come, look," said Bichette. "A chair! Can you imagine that!" She gazed at the forsaken chair in the rain and said: "It is amazing how those
pauvres gens
—poor people—feel at home."

And I thought of the old Polish lady standing in the rain, of that solitary and deserted chair in the rain, and I sided with the goose, with Princess Bichette Radziwil and with the chair—both alone in the rain.

"Fire!" shouted Frank again, and the goose fell backward shot against the ruined walls of the station of Warsaw, smiling at the firing platoon.
Ces pauvres gens.

Everybody laughed. The Queen alone did not laugh. She sat in a rigid, solemn attitude, as if on a throne. She was gowned in a sort of bell-shaped beltless, green velvet dress, edged at the bottom by a wide band of crimson. The long wide sleeves, of an ancient Gothic cut, were joined at the shoulders with billowing folds that seemed to be puffed up by air, and rose above the shoulders in a noble arch, falling over the arms in ever greater abundance as they descended toward the wrists. Over that green bell was thrown a vast lace cape of the same color as the wide crimson band. The Queen's hair was dressed very simply in a bun at the top of the head. Her forehead was twice girded with a string of pearls as if with a tiara. Fat, thick-set, with wrists aglitter with gold bracelets, with hands be jeweled with rings that fitted her too tightly and sunk deeply into the flesh, she sat in a Gothic pose, weighed down by the velvet bell and the lace cape as if it were a heavy coat of armor.

Her glistening, flushed face was masked with insolent sensuousness. There was, however, something pure, sad and absent-minded shining in her eyes. Her whole face was thrust forward toward the food heaped on precious Meissen plates, toward the scented wine glittering through Bohemian crystal, and on it, around her nostrils quivered an expression of insatiable greed, almost of gluttonous rage. It throbbed on her thick lips, it engraved her cheeks with a network of spidery wrinkles that tightened and expanded around her mouth and her nose to the rhythm of her labored breathing. I felt something between disgust and pity for her.
Perhaps she was hungry!
I should have liked to help her,- to get up, bend across the table, thrust a large slice of goose into her mouth with my fingers; gorge her with potatoes. At any moment I feared lest she might flop down, overcome by hunger, within her green bell and rest her head on the dish filled with greasy food. But each time as I gazed into her flushed face, at her swelling bosom pressed under the heavy velvet armor, I was stopped from helping her by her vague, pure gaze, by that virginal, clear and transparent light that shone from her humid eye.

The other guests, as they greedily ate and drank never withdrew their eyes from the Queen's face,- they watched her with glistening eyes, as if they also feared lest, conquered by hunger, she would repose her head on the dish heaped with greasy slices of goose and roast potatoes. They lingered occasionally, gazing at her in a tremulous abstraction, the tips of their forks resting on their lips, their glasses hovering in mid-air. The King, too, followed every movement of his Queen with an attentive look, ready to anticipate her every wish, to guess at her more secret promptings, to interpret the most fleeting impression on her face. But the Queen sat stolid and motionless, from time to time letting her pure, abstract look wander over the guests,- she gazed at the Governor of Cracow, young Wächter, or at the abbot-like face of Emil Gassner, another Viennese, with his deceitful and ironical smile, who never met any glance, and timidly, almost fearfully, drooped his lashes whenever the virgin eye of the Queen rested on him. More frequently it rested on the head of the German National-Socialist party in the Government of Poland, on athletic Stahl, whose cold sharp Gothic face with its brow, crowned by an invisible oak wreath, thrust forward toward the Queen—that motionless statue of flesh, clamped within her heavy armor of green velvet, who clutched the slender crystal glass in her fat fist and listened with an absent-minded air wrapped in her thoughts, secret, lofty and pure.

Occasionally, I too broke away from the contemplation of the Queen, and allowed my eyes to wander over the guests, lingering on Frau Wächter's smiling countenance, on Frau Gassner's white arms, on the red perspiring forehead of the Chief of Protocol of the Government, Keith, who was talking about boar hunting in the Lublin forests, the fierce hound-packs of Volhynia, and the beasts in Radziwilom woods. I looked on the Staatsekretärs— State Secretaries—Böpple and Bühler, in their tight-fitting gray uniforms with the red armlet and the swastika, their flushed cheeks, perspiring temples and glistening eyes, as they said, and almost shouted,
"Ja,
ja!"
from time to time, whenever the King called out
"Nicht wahr!"

I gazed on Baron Wolsegger, an old silver-headed Tirolese gentleman with a dashing white pointed beard and clear eyes in a flushed face, and tried to recollect where I had seen that proud and gentle face before; traced my memory back from year to year, from place to place, as far as Donaueschingen in Würtemberg, where in the park of the Princes Fürstenberg the source of the Danube gushes into a marble basin encircled by white statues of Diana and her nymphs. I bent over the side of the new-born river, gazed for a long time at the slow, uncertain rise of the gushing water; then I knocked at the castle gate, crossed the great hall, climbed the marble stairs, and finally entered the vast gallery on the walls of which the canvases of Holbein's famous "Way of the Cross" are hung; and there, against the clear wall I saw the portrait of the seventeenth-century adventurer. I smiled at that far-off recollection of the German
condottiere
; I smiled at Baron Wolsegger. Suddenly my gaze rested on Himmler's man.

I felt as if I saw him for the first time at that moment, and I was startled. He was looking at me, too, and our eyes met. That man was in his middle years, not more than forty; his dark hair was already graying at the temples, his nose thin, his lips drawn and pale, his eyes extraordinarily light. They were gray eyes, perhaps blue or white, like those of a fish. A long scar cut across his left cheek. Suddenly something began to worry me: his ears; they were extremely small, bloodless, waxlike, with transparent lobes—the transparency of wax or milk.

There came to mind a tale by Apuleius, in which the ears of one Ambrose had been gnawed by lemurs while he watched a corpse, and they had been replaced by waxen ears. There was something softish, almost naked in the Gestapo man's face. Although his skull was strong and rough hewn, and the bones in his forehead looked solid, well-knit and extremely hard, the face seemed, nevertheless, that it might give way at the touch of a finger, like the head of a new-born babe,- it looked like the skull of a lamb. His narrow cheekbones, his long face and slanting eyes were also like a lamb's; there was something at the same time bestial and childish in him. His brow was white and damp, like a sick man's,- and even the perspiration oozing out of that soft waxen skin recalled the perspiration that feverish sleeplessness brings to the foreheads of consumptives as, lying on their backs, they await the dawn.