The Skin by Curzio Malaparte

Author:Curzio Malaparte [Malaparte, Curzio]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Published: 2010-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VI - GENERAL CORK'S BANQUET

"EXANTHEMATOUS typhus," said General Cork, "is becoming disturbingly prevalent in Naples. Unless the violence of the outbreak diminishes I shall be forced to ban the city to American troops."

"Why worry so much?" I said. "It's obvious that you don't know Naples."

"It's possible that I don't know Naples," said General Cork, "but my medical service is familiar with the bug that spread exanthematous typhus."

"It isn't an Italian bug," I said.

"It isn't American either," said General Cork. "As a matter of fact it's a Russian bug. It was brought to Naples by Italian soldiers returning from Russia."

"In a few days," I said, "there won't be a single Russian bug left in Naples."

"I hope not," said General Cork.

"I'm sure you don't think the bugs of Naples, the bugs of the alleys of Forcella and Pallonetto, will let themselves be fooled by those three or four miserable Russian bugs."

"Please don't talk like that about Russian bugs," said General Cork.

"My words carried no political implication," I said. "What I meant was that the Neapolitan bugs will swallow those poor Russian bugs alive, and exanthematous typhus will disappear. You'll see. I know Naples."

All the guests began to laugh, and Colonel Eliot said: "We shall all end up like the Russian bugs if we stay in Europe for long."

A decorous laugh rippled down the table.

"Why?" said General Cork. "Everyone in Europe likes the Americans."

"Yes, but they don't like Russian bugs," said Colonel Eliot.

"I don't get your meaning," said General Cork. "We aren't Russians, we're Americans."

"Of course we are Americans, thank God!" said Colonel Eliot. "But once the European bugs have eaten the Russian bugs they'll eat us."

"What?" exclaimed Mrs. Flat.

"But we aren't . . . hm ... I mean ... we aren't . . ." said General Cork, pretending to cough into his table-napkin.

"Of course we aren't ... hm ... I mean ... of course we aren't bugs," said Colonel Eliot, blushing and looking around him with a triumphant air.

They all burst out laughing and, goodness knows why, looked at me. I felt more like a bug than I had ever felt in my life. General Cork turned to me with a gracious smile. "I like Italians," he said, "but . . ."

General Cork was a real gentleman—a real American gentleman, I mean. He had the naivety, the artlessness and the moral transparency that make American gentlemen so lovable and so humam He was not a cultivated man, he did not possess that humanistic culture which gives such a noble and poetic tone to the manners of European gentlemen, but he was a "man," he had that human quality which European men lack: he knew how to blush. He had a most refined sense of decorum, and a precise and virile awareness of his own limitations. Like all good Americans, he was convinced that America was the leading nation of the world, and that the Americans were the most civilized and the most honourable people on earth; and naturally he despised Europe. But he did not despise the conquered peoples merely because they were conquered peoples.

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