The Skin Read Free

meat was not in great demand, and even the negroes refused it in the end: negroes don't like white women to be too dark. Every day there arrived in Naples, on carts drawn by wretched little donkeys or in Allied vehicles, but mostly on foot, parties of sturdily-built, robust girls, nearly all of them peasants, attracted by the mirage of gold. They came from the Calabrias, the Apulias, the Basilicata and Molise. And so the price of human flesh on the Neopolitan market had been crashing, and it was feared that this might have a serious effect on the whole economy of the city. (Nothing of the kind had ever been seen in Naples before. It was certainly a disgrace, and the vast majority of the good people of Naples blushed with shame because of it. But why did it not bring a blush to the cheeks of the Allied authorities, who were the masters of Naples?) In compensation, negroes' flesh had risen in price, and this, luckily, was helping to re-establish a certain equilibrium on the market.
    "What does negroes' flesh cost today?" I asked Jack.
    "Shut up," he answered.
    "Is it true that the flesh of a black American costs more than that of a white American?"
    "Tu m'agaces," answered Jack.
    I certainly had no intention of offending him, nor of poking fun at him, nor even of being disrespectful to the American Army—the loveliest, the kindest, the most respectable Army in the world. What did it matter to me if the flesh of a black American cost more than that of a white American? I like Americans, whatever the colour of their skin, and I proved it a hundred times during the war. White or black, their souls are pure, much purer than ours. I like the Americans because they are good and sincere Christians; because they believe that Christ is always on the side of those who are in the right; because they believe that it is a sin to be in the wrong, that it is immoral to be in the wrong; because they believe that they alone are honourable men, and that all the nations of Europe are more or less dishonest; because they believe that a conquered nation is a nation of criminals, that defeat is a moral stigma, an expression of divine justice.
    I like Americans for these reasons, and for many others that I have not mentioned. In that terrible autumn of 1943, which brought so much humiliation and grief to my fellow-countrymen, the Americans' humanity and generosity, the pure and honest simplicity of their ideas and sentiments, and the genuineness of their behaviour, instilled in me the illusion that men hate evil, the hope that humanity would mend its ways, and the conviction that only goodness—the goodness and innocence of those splendid boys from across the Atlantic, who had landed in Europe to punish the wicked and reward the good—could redeem nations and individuals from their sins.
    But of all my American friends the dearest was Staff Colonel Jack Hamilton. Jack was a man of thirty-eight—tall, thin, pale and elegant, with gentlemanly, almost European manners. On first acquaintance, perhaps, he seemed more European than American, but this was not the reason why I loved him: and I loved him like a brother. For gradually, as I got to know him intimately, he showed himself to be intensely and indisputably American. He had been born in South Carolina ("My nurse," he used to say, "was une negresse par un demon secouée"), but he was not merely what is known in America as a Southerner. Intellectually he was a man of culture and refinement, and at the same time there was about him an almost childlike simplicity and innocence. What I mean is that he was an American in the noblest sense of the word—one of the most admirable men I have ever met. He was a "Christian gentleman". How hard it is for me to express what I mean by the term "Christian gentleman"! All who know and love the Americans will understand what I mean when I say that the American nation is a Christian nation, and that Jack was a Christian gentleman.
    Educated at Woodberry Forest