Kaputt (29 page)

After the clear Moselle wine that smelled of hay in the rain— the Moselle's delicate, clear rosy hue, glistening among the silvery scales of the salmon, imparted a taste of the Lake Inari countryside under the nocturnal sun—the red wine of Burgundy with its bloodlike reflections sparkled in our glasses. A side of Karelian pork on a large silver tray in the center of the table filled the room with the warm smell of the oven. After the transparent glitter of the Moselle wine and of the rose-tinted salmon bringing thoughts of the silvery current of the Juutuanjoki and of the pink clouds in the green sky of Lapland, the red Burgundy and the pork of Karelia, just taken from the oven and scented with pine wood, brought to us the memory of a land warmed by the sun.

No wine is so earthy as the red wine of Burgundy that in the warm glow of the candlelight and in the white reflection of the snow was the color of soil, the crimson and gold hue of the Côte d'Or hills at sunset. The bouquet was strong, scented with grass and leaves like a summer evening in Burgundy. No wine is so congenial with the evening dusk or so partial to the night as the wine of Nuits Saint Georges. Even its name, deep and flashing like a summer evening, belongs to the night. It shines bloodlike on the threshold of the night as the glow of sunset on the crystal edge of the horizon. It kindles glints of red and blue in the crimson-colored earth, in the grass and in the leaves still warm with the taste and the aroma of the dying day. Wild beasts, when night steals on them, burrow deep into the earth; the wild boar crashes into the thicket amid a hurried crackling of twigs; the short-flighted pheasant swims silently into the shadows that are already floating above the woods and the glades; the nimble hare glides along the first moonbeam as if drawn by a taut silver string. That is the hour for Burgundy wine. At that hour, during the winter nights, in that room alight with the ebony reflection of snow, the deep odor of the Nuits Saint Georges brought forth memories of summer evenings in Burgundy, of nights asleep on the soil still warm with the sun.

De Foxá and I looked at each other smiling as a warm flush rose in our faces. We looked smiling at one another as if those unexpected memories of the soil were freeing us from the sad spell of the northern night. We were lost in that desert of snow and ice, in that watery land of a hundred thousand lakes, in that sweet stern Finland where the smell of the sea penetrates the inmost depths of the most remote forests of Karelia and Lapland, where the glitter of water may be traced in the blue and gray eyes of man and beast and in the slow and distracted manner, not unlike the movements of swimmers, with which people walk along streets ablaze with the white fire of the snow, or wander in the summer night through parks, raising their eyes to the blue-green, watery glow over the roofs in the endless day without dawn or sunset of the white northern summer. The unexpected memories of the soil made us feel earthy deep down within our bones, and we looked at one another smiling, as if we had escaped from a shipwreck.

"Skoll!"
said de Foxá, deeply moved, and raised his glass, breaking the rigid Swedish convention that reserves for the host the right to invite his guests to drink with the traditional word of good health.

"I
never say
skoll,
when I raise my glass," remarked Westmann mischievously, as if to excuse the gauchery de Foxá had committed. "There is a character in one of Arthur Reid's plays who says: 'London is full of people, who have just come back from Sweden, drinking
skoll
and saying
snap
at each other.' I too drink
skoll
and say
snap."

"Snap
it shall be!" said de Foxá whom the Burgundy wine had made gay and almost childishly intoxicated.

"Snap!"
said Westmann smiling, and I followed his example and said,
"Snap!"

"How comfortable it is to belong to a neutral country, isn't it? " said de Foxá turning to Westmann. "One may drink without wishing for victories or defeats.
Snap
for the peace of Europe."

"Skoll!"
said Westmann.

"Why? Why do you say
skoll!"
asked de Foxá.

"I like to make mistakes occasionally," replied Westmann with an ironical smile.

"I enjoy saying
snap,"
said de Foxá raising his glass—
"Snap
for Germany and
snap
for England!"

"Snap
for Germany," said Westmann with an amiable solemnity, "and
skoll
for England."

"You are right," said de Foxá,
"skoll
for England!"

I too raised my glass and said
snap
for Germany and
skoll
for England.

"Instead of saying
snap,
you should say
skoll
for Germany," said de Foxá to me. "Germany is Italy's ally."

"Personally," I replied, "I am not Germany's ally. The war Italy is waging is Mussolini's personal war and I am not Mussolini. No Italian is Mussolini.
Snap
for Mussolini and Hitler!"

"Snap
for Mussolini and Hitler!" repeated de Foxá.

"And
snap
for France," I said.

De Foxá hesitated for an instant then said,
"Snap
for France, too!" and burst into laughter. Turning to Westmann he went on, "Do you know the story of Malaparte's cricket match in Poland against Governor-General Frank?" He told him about my agreement with Frank and about my revelation to him that during Himmler's stay in Warsaw, I had distributed letters and money that Polish refugees in Italy had asked me to deliver to their relatives and friends in Poland.

"And Frank did not betray you?" asked Westmann.

"No," I replied, "he did not."

"Your encounter with Frank is truly extraordinary," said Westmann. "He might have handed you over to the Gestapo. I must admit that he behaved surprisingly well toward you."

"I was certain that he would not betray me," I said. "What may appear reckless about my frankness was merely a wise precaution. By showing that I considered him a gentleman, I made Frank my accomplice. Nevertheless, later he tried to avenge himself for my frankness by making me pay dearly for his forced complicity. I told him that a few weeks after I had left Warsaw, Frank lodged violent protests with the Italian government about some articles of mine about Poland, charging me with adopting the Polish viewpoint. Frank not only demanded that I publicly refute what I had written, but that I also send him a written apology. By then I was safely in Finland, and of course, my answer to him was
snap!"

"In your place," said de Foxá, "I would have said
merde"

"That's a word that sometimes is very difficult to pronounce," remarked Westmann smiling.

"Do you consider me incapable of answering a German in the way Cambronne answered an Englishman at Waterloo?" said de Foxá with dignity and, turning to me, added, "Would you invite me to supper at the Royal, if I reply
merde
to a German?"

"For God's sake, Augustin, don't forget that you are the Minister of Spain."

"Excellent! I shall reply
merde,
in the name of Spain."

"For goodness' sake, Augustin, can't you see that this one word may drag the Spanish people into a war?"

"The Spanish people have waged war for much less."

"Wait at least until Hitler gets to Waterloo," said Westmann. "Unfortunately, so far he has only reached Austerlitz."

"No, I cannot wait, I shall be the Cambronne of Austerlitz."

Luckily just then there was placed on the table a tray laden with those soft pastries of a most delicate flavor, that even the Sisters of the Sacred Heart call by the Voltairian name,
pets de nonne.
{10}

"Do these
pets de nonne
remind you of anything?" asked Westmann of de Foxá.

"They remind me of Spain," replied de Foxá in a grave voice. "Spain is full of convents and of
pets de nonne.
As a Roman Catholic and a Spaniard I appreciate the delicate way in which you have reminded me of my country."

"I was in no way alluding to Spain or to the Catholic religion," said Westmann with a kindly laugh. "These convent delicacies remind me of my childhood. Do they remind you of your childhood? All children love them. At home, in Sweden, where there are no convents, we still have
pets de nonne.
Don't they make you feel young?"

"Your way of rejuvenating your guests is charming," said de Foxá. "This excellent food makes me think of the immortal youth of Spain. As a man, I am, unfortunately, no longer a child; but as a Spaniard I am young and immortal. Too bad that one can be young and decayed at the same time. The Latin peoples are decayed." He became silent and lowered his head onto his chest, but suddenly he raised it again and said in a proud voice: "But it is a noble decay. Do you know what one of our friends at the United States Legation told me the other day? We were talking about war, about France, Italy and Spain, and I was telling him that the Latin peoples are decayed. 'They may well be decayed,' he said to me, 'but it is a fine odor.'"

"Yes, it is a fine odor," said Westmann.

"I thank you with all my heart for the love you have for Spain," said de Foxá, leaning across the table—across the icy glitter of the glasses—and smiling at Westmann. "But which Spain do you love: the Spain of God or of man?"

"Naturally, the Spain of man," replied Westmann.

Count de Foxá looked at Westmann with deep disappointment. "You too?" he said. "The men from the North only care for what is human in Spain, and yet all that is young and immortal in Spain belongs to God. One has to be a Roman Catholic to understand and love Spain, real Spain, the Spain that belongs to God, because God is a Catholic and a Spaniard."

"I am Protestant," said Westmann, "and I would be very much surprised if God were a Catholic, but I am prepared to believe that He is a Spaniard."

"If God exists, He is Spaniard. This is not blasphemy—it is a profession of faith."

"In a few months, when I go back to my post of Swedish Minister in Madrid," said Westmann with his slightly ironical grace, "I promise you, my dear de Foxá, to take a little more interest in the Spain of God and a little less in the Spain of man."

"I hope," said de Foxá, "that the Spanish God will interest you more than the golf links in Puerto de Hierre." He told us how a young English diplomat, at the end of the Civil War, as soon as the British Embassy to Franco's government moved to Madrid, made it his concern to inquire first of all whether it was true that the fifth hole of the Puerto de Hierre links had been damaged by a Fascist shell.

"And was it true?" Westmann asked in an uneasy voice.

"No, thank the Lord. The fifth hole was undamaged," replied de Foxá. "Luckily it was a piece of biased news issued by an anti-Fascist agency."

- "That's a relief," exclaimed Westmann with a sigh. "I confess that you made me hold my breath. In modern civilization a golf hole is unfortunately as important as a Gothic cathedral."

"Let us beseech the Lord that at least golf holes may be spared in this war," said de Foxá.

Actually de Foxá cared nothing for golf holes or for Gothic cathedrals. He was a devout Catholic, but in the Spanish way— that is to say he considered religious problems as his personal problems and maintained toward the Church and even toward the problems of Catholic conscience, a freedom of mind—the famous Spanish insolence—that has nothing in common with the Voltairian freedom of mind. His attitude toward all other problems, political, social or artistic, was the same. He was a Falangist, but in the same way that a Spaniard is a communist or an anarchist—namely, in a Catholic way. De Foxá described it as "having his back to the wall." Every Spaniard is a free man, but he has his back against a wall—the high, smooth, impassable Catholic wall, the theological wall, the wall of old Spain, the very wall against which the firing squads—anarchist, Republican, communist, monarchist or fascist—execute their enemies, the wall in front of which
autos-da-fé
are staged and theological dialogues of
autos-sacramentales
are heard.

The fact that he represented Franco's Spain in Finland—Hubert Guerin, the Minister of Pétain's France, called de Foxá "The Minister of Vichy Spain"—did not prevent him from laughing with contempt at Franco and his revolution. De Foxá had belonged to that youthful generation of Spaniards who had tried to build a feudal and Catholic foundation for communism, or, as he put it, "to create a theology for Leninism," to reconcile the old Catholic and traditional Spain with the young Europe of the workers. Now he laughed at the generous delusions of his generation and at the failure of that tragic and ludicrous attempt.

At times, when he spoke about the Spanish Civil War, I thought that the voluntary prompting of his conscience induced him to resist his own reasoning and to acknowledge the legitimacy and the truth of the political, moral and intellectual position of Franco's opponents—as on the evening when he spoke about Azana, the President of the Spanish Republic, and about his "secret diary" in which, day by day, and hour by hour, Azana had recorded and commented on the most minute and, apparently, the most trivial details of the revolution and of the Civil War—the color of the sky at a certain hour on a certain day, the musical note of a fountain, the rustling of the wind among the leaves of trees, the echo of a rifle firing in a neighboring street, the paleness, the arrogance, the pity, the fear, the cynicism, the treachery, the hypocrisy and the selfishness of bishops, generals, politicians, courtiers, gentlemen, syndicalist leaders, grandees, anarchists, and others who called on him to offer advice, to make requests and offers of deals, to sell themselves and to betray. Naturally Azana's "secret diary" had not been published, but neither had it been destroyed. De Foxá had read it and he described it as an extraordinary document in which Azana appears peculiarly detached from the events and people, a solitary man living in a pure and abstract atmosphere. At other times de Foxá appeared to be strangely uncertain about the simplest aspects of a problem that he seemed to have settled long before in the irrevocable depth of his Catholic conscience—as on that day in Beli Ostrov in front of Leningrad.