Kaputt Read Free

out and expose the grass to the sky; he stops and waits—stiff, lean, wooden, like an old tree trunk, worn and withered by the sun, by the frost and the storms, and with a happy smile hidden amid the hair of his small beard like that of an aged faun; and the birds fly to him in flocks, twittering lovingly; they perch on his shoulders, on his arms, on his hat. They peck at his nose, his lips and his ears. And Munthe remains there, stiff, motionless, talking to his little friends in the sweet Capri dialect, until the sun sets and dives into the blue-green sea,- and the birds fly away to their nests all together with a high chirrup of farewell—
    "Ah, that rascal Munthe," said Prince Eugene; his voice was loving, trembling a little.
    —We walked for a while in the park, beneath the pines swollen with wind. Later, Axel Munthe took me to the topmost room of his tower. It must once have been a granary; he uses it now as his bedroom for the black days of loneliness when he shuts himself up as in a prison cell, stopping his ears with cotton in order not to hear a human voice. He sat down on a stool, with a heavy stick between his knees and the dog's leash coiled around his wrist. The dog, crouching at his feet, gazed at me with a frank, sad look. Axel Munthe raised his face; a sudden shadow had overcast his brow. He told me that he could not sleep—that war had killed his sleep; he spent his nights in tortured wakefulness, listening to the call of the wind through the trees, to the distant voice of the sea.
    "I hope," he said, "that you have not come to talk about the war."
    "I shall not talk to you about the war," I replied.
    "Thank you," said Munthe. And suddenly he asked me whether it was true that the Germans were so dreadfully cruel.
    "Their cruelty," I replied, "is made of fear; they are ill with fear. They are a sick nation, a Krankesvolk."
    "Yes, a sick people," said Munthe, tapping the floor with the tip of his cane, and after a long silence he asked me whether it was true that the Germans were thirsting for blood and destruction.
    "They are afraid," I replied, "they are afraid of everything and everybody,- they kill and destroy out of fear. Not that they fear death; no German, man or woman, young or old, fears death. They are not even afraid of suffering. In a way one may say that they like pain. But they are afraid of all that is living, of all that is living outside of themselves and of all that is different from them. The disease from which they suffer is mysterious. They are afraid above all of the weak, of the defenseless, of the sick, of women and of children. They are afraid of the aged. Their fear has always aroused a profound pity in me. If Europe were to feel sorry for them, perhaps the Germans would be healed of their horrible disease."
    "They are bloodthirsty then, it is true then, that they butcher people without mercy?" broke in Munthe tapping his stick impatiently on the floor.
    "Yes, it is true," I replied. "They kill the defenseless,- they hang Jews on the trees in the village squares, burn them alive in their houses, like rats. They shoot peasants and workers in the yards of the kolkhoz —the collective farms—and factories. I have seen them laughing, eating and sleeping in the shade of corpses swinging from the branches of trees."
    "It is a Krankesvolk ," said Munthe removing his dark glasses and wiping the lenses carefully with his handkerchief. He had lowered his eyelids. I could not see his eyes. Later he asked me whether it was true that the Germans kill birds.
    "No, it is not true," I replied. "They have no time to bother with birds. They have just time enough to bother with human beings. They butcher Jews, workers, peasants. They set fire to towns and villages with savage fury, but they do not kill birds. Oh, how many beautiful birds there are in Russia! Even more beautiful perhaps than those of Capri."
    "More beautiful than those of Capri?" asked Axel Munthe in an irritable voice.
    "More