Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years

  After prolonged jolting and rattling the carriage finally stopped, we got out, and my friend paid the driver. Then we went upward through a dark, cold stairwell which smelled of dead lamp-wicks, and my guide opened the door to her room, just opposite the stairs. Here it was suddenly very warm; the smell of a greatly over-heated iron stove mingled with the heavy, flowery scent of cosmetics, and when the hanging lamp was lighted, a deep-red glow suffused the room. Comparative luxury surrounded me; on little velvet-topped tables stood colourful vases with dried sheaves of palm leaves, paper flowers, and peacocks' feathers; soft, furry hides lay about; a canopy bed with hangings of red wool adorned with gold braid dominated the room, and there was a great abundance of mirrors, even in places where one does not ordinarily expect them — as, for instance, in the canopy of the bed and in the wall at its side. But since we were filled with longing to know each other completely, we set to work at once, and I stayed with her until the following morning.

  Rozsa, this was my antagonist's name, had been born in Hungary, but of the most doubtful antecedents; her mother had been employed in a travelling circus to leap through tissue-paper-covered hoops, and who her father had been remained wholly obscure. She had early shown a very marked inclination to unlimited galanterie, and while she was still young she had been placed, by no means against her will, in a house of ill-fame in Budapest, where she had spent a number of years as the establishment's chief attraction. But a businessman from Vienna, who believed he could not live without her, had extracted her from this den of iniquity by dint of great cunning plus the active co-operation of a society for the suppression of the white-slave trade and had installed her in his home. No longer young, and prone to apoplexy, he had been excessive in expressing his joy at possessing her and had unexpectedly passed away in her arms. Thus Rozsa had found herself left to her own devices. Living by her arts, she had moved from city to city and had only recently settled in Frankfurt. Unsatiated and unsatisfied by her purely professional activities, she had entered into a permanent relationship with a man who had originally been a butcher's assistant. His fierce energy and wild virility, however, had led him to choose pimping, extortion, and other kinds of blackmail as his calling. This fellow had made himself Rozsa's master and had derived the best part of his income from her amorous activities. But on account of some bloody deed he had been picked up by the police and had been forced to leave her unattended for a protracted period. As she was by no means inclined to give up her private pleasure, she had turned her eyes towards me and had chosen the quiet, still-untrained youth as her bosom companion.

  She told me this simple tale in a relaxed hour, and I reciprocated with a condensed version of my own earlier life. For the rest, however, both then and in the future, conversation played a very minor role in our association, for Rozsa restricted herself to simple, practical directions and commands, accompanied by short, excited cries, which were survivals from her earliest youth — that is, from the circus ring. But on those occasions when our conversation took a broader turn, it was devoted to mutual admiration and praise, for the promise that we had held for each other at our first encounter was richly confirmed, and my mistress, for her part, gave me repeated and unsolicited assurance that my adroitness and prowess in love exceeded her fondest expectations.

  Here, earnest reader, I am in the same position as once before in these pages when I was relating certain early and happy experiences with the sweets of life and I added a warning not to confuse an act with the name it goes by, or to make the elementary mistake of dismissing something living and specific with a general term. For if I now set down the fact that for a number of months, until my departure from Frankfurt, I was on intimate terms with Rozsa, often stayed with her, secretly superintended the conquests she made on the street with those slanted, shimmering eyes and the gliding play of her underlip, sometimes, even, was there in hiding when she received her paying customers (occasions that gave me small grounds for jealousy) and did not disdain to accept a reasonable share of the proceeds, one might well be tempted to apply a short, ugly word to my way of life at that time and to lump me summarily with those dark gallants about whom I was talking above. Whoever thinks that actions make people equal may go ahead and take refuge in this simple procedure. For my own part, I am in agreement with folk wisdom which holds that when two persons do the same thing it is no longer the same; yes, I go further and maintain that labels such as 'drunkard', 'gambler', or even 'wastrel' not only do not embrace and define the actual living case, but in some instances do not even touch it. This is my point of view; others may judge differently about this confession — in respect to which it should be remembered that I am making it of my own free will and could quite easily have passed over it in silence.

  If, however, I have treated the present interlude in as much detail as good taste will permit, it is because in my view it was of the most crucial importance for my education; not in the sense that it especially advanced my knowledge of the world or in itself refined my social manners — for that person my wild Eastern blossom was by no means the right person. And yet the word 'refine' can claim a place here, which I withhold only in order to clarify my meaning. For our vocabulary offers no other term for the profit I derived, in person and character, from my association with this exacting and beloved mistress, whose demands coincided so precisely with my gifts. Moreover, here one must think not only of a refinement in love but also through love. Those italics must be understood aright, for they point to a distinction between, and at the same time an amalgamation of, means and ends, in which the former take on a narrower and more specific meaning and the latter a far more general one.

  Somewhere in these pages I have already remarked that because of the extraordinary demands life imposed on my energies it was not permissible for me to squander myself in enervating passion. Now, however, during the six-month period that is signalized by the name of the inarticulate but audacious Rozsa I did just that — except that the censorious word 'enervating' comes from the vocabulary of hygiene, and its appropriateness to certain important instances is very doubtful. For it is the enervating that benerves us — if certain vital prerequisites are met — and makes us capable of performances and enjoyments in the world that are beyond the compass of the un-benerved. I take no little pride in my invention of this word 'be-nerved' with which I have quite spontaneously enriched our vocabulary; it is intended to serve as the scientific antonym to the virtuously deprecatory 'enervate'. For I know from the very bottom of my being that I could never have borne myself with so much subtlety and elegance in the many vicissitudes of my life if I had not passed through Rozsa's naughty school of love.

  CHAPTER 7

  WITH the coming of Michaelmas the leaves began to fall from the trees that bordered our streets, and the moment arrived for me to take up the position my godfather Schimmelpreester had secured for me through his international connexions. One cheery morning, after a tender farewell from my mother — the pension had acquired a maid and was enjoying a modest success — with my few possessions packed in one small suitcase, hurrying wheels bore me toward my new goal in life — no less than the capital city of France.

  They hurried, rattled, and jolted, those wheels, beneath the communicating compartments of a third-class carriage. On the yellow wooden benches a mixed lot of depressingly insignificant travellers of the poorer sort went on with their miserable existence throughout the day, snoring, smacking their lips, gossiping, and playing cards. My own interest was mainly attracted by some children between two and four years of age. Although they were blubbering and roaring intermittently, I gave them some chocolate creams out of a bag my mother had included among my supplies; for I have always liked to share. Later I did a great deal of good with the treasures that passed from the hands of the rich into mine. The little ones came tripping up to me, repeatedly touching me with their sticky hands and speaking to me in lisps and gurgles. They were delighted when I replied in exactly the same fashion. Now and again
this intercourse earned me a benevolent glance from the grown-ups, despite their schooling in reserve — not that I had any such purpose in view. On the contrary, this day's journey taught me afresh that the more receptive one's mind and soul to human charm, the more abysmally depressing one finds the sight of human rag-tag and bob-tail. I know very well these people can do nothing about their ugliness; they have their little joys and no doubt their heavy sorrows; in short, like other creatures they love, suffer, and endure life. From a moral point of view, every one of them very likely has a claim to our sympathy. But the alert and sensitive aesthetic perception that nature has endowed me with compels me to avert my eyes. Only at the tenderest age are they tolerable, like these waifs to whom I gave chocolates and whom I set roaring with laughter by using their own language, thus paying sociability its due.

  Moreover, I shall now take occasion to say for the reader's reassurance that this was the last time I ever travelled third class, companioned by misery. What is called fate, and is actually ourselves, working through unknown but infallible laws, soon found ways and means of keeping this from ever happening again.

  My ticket, of course, was in perfect order, and in my own fashion I relished that fact that it was so irreproachable — that consequently I myself was irreproachable and when, in the course of the day, the honest conductors in their smart uniforms visited me in my wooden carriage to examine and punch my ticket, they returned it each time with silent official approval. Silent of course and expressionless: that is, with an expression of indifference that was barely animated and bordered on affectation. This prompted me to reflect on the aloofness, the stand-offishness, amounting almost to lack of interest, which one human being, especially an official, feels compelled to manifest towards his fellows. This honest man who punched my valid ticket earned his livelihood thereby; somewhere a home awaited him — there was a wedding ring on his finger — he had a wife and children. But I had to behave as though the thought of his human associations could never occur to me, and any question about them, revealing that I did not regard him simply as a convenient marionette, would have been completely out of order. On the other hand I had my own particular human background about which he might have inquired. But this, for one thing, was not his privilege and, for another, was beneath his dignity. He was concerned only with the validity of the ticket held by a passenger who was no less a marionette than he. What became of me once the ticket had been used was something he must coldly disregard.

  There is something strangely unnatural and downright artificial in this behaviour, though one must admit that to abandon it would be going too far for various reasons — indeed, even slight departures usually result in embarrassment. This time, in fact, toward evening, when the conductor, lantern at waist, returned my ticket, he accompanied it with a prolonged glance and a smile that was obviously inspired by my youth.

  'You going to Paris?' he asked, though my destination was clear to see.

  'Yes, inspector,' I replied, nodding cordially. 'That's where I'm bound.'

  'What are you planning to do there?' he took the further liberty of asking.

  'Just imagine!' I replied. 'Thanks to a recommendation I am going into the hotel business.'

  'Think of that!' he said. 'Well, lots of luck!'

  'Good luck to you, too, chief inspector,' I replied. 'Please give my regards to your wife and children.'

  'Yes, thanks — well, what do you know!' He laughed in embarrassment, mixing his words up oddly, and hastened to leave. But on his way out he tripped over a non-existent obstacle, so completely had this human touch upset him.

  I felt very cheerful at the border station, too, where we all had to get out with our luggage for the customs inspection. My heart was light and pure, for my small bag actually did not contain anything I had to hide from the eyes of the inspectors. Even the necessity of a very long wait (since the officials understandably gave distinguished travellers precedence over those of the meaner sort, whose possessions they then all the more thoroughly mussed and mauled) was not able to cloud my sunny mood. When the man before whom I was finally permitted to spread out my meagre belongings at first seemed bent on shaking every shirt and sock to see whether some contraband might not fall out, I immediately engaged him in a conversation I had composed in advance and thus quickly won him over and kept him from mauling everything out. Frenchmen naturally love and honour conversation — and quite rightly! That, after all, is what distinguishes human beings from animals, and it is certainly not unreasonable to assume that a human being, distinguishes himself the more from animals, the better he speaks — especially in French. For France regards its language as the language of mankind, exactly, I imagine, as those happy tribes of ancient Greeks took their idiom for the only human mode of expression, holding everything else for barbaric barking and quacking — an opinion the rest of mankind involuntarily subscribed to, more or less, inasmuch as it regarded Greek, as we today do French, as the finest.

  'Bonsoir, monsieur le commissaire!' I greeted the inspector, dwelling with a kind of muted hum on the third syllable of the word 'commissaire'. 'Je suis tout à fait à votre disposition avec tout ce que je possède. Voyez en moi un jeune homme très honnête, profondément dévoué à la loi et qui n'a absolument rien à déclarer. Je vous assure que vous n'avez jamais examiné une pièce de baggage plus innocente.'

  'Tiens!' he said, looking at me more closely. 'Vous semblez être un drôle de petit bonhomme. Mais vous parlez assez bien. Êtes-vous Français?'

  'Oui et non,' I replied. 'A peu près. À moitié — à demi, vous savez. En tout cas, moi, je suis un admirateur passioné de la France et un adversaire irréconciliable de l'annexion de l'Alsace-Lorraine!'

  His face took on an expression that I might describe as deeply moved.

  'Monsieur,' he said decisively, 'je ne vous gêne plus longtemps. Fermez votre malle et continuez votre voyage à la capitale du monde avec les bons vœux d'un patriote français!'

  And while I was stuffing back my odds and ends of linen, still expressing my thanks, he was already putting his chalk mark on the top of my open bag. In the course of my hasty repacking, however, chance decreed that this piece of luggage should lose some of the innocence I had quite honestly ascribed to it, for an additional small item slipped into it that had not been there before. To be specific: beside me at the tin-roofed luggage counter, behind which the inspectors carried on their activities, a middle-aged lady, wearing a mink coat and a velvet cloche adorned with heron feathers, was engaged in a heated altercation with the official in charge, who obviously held a different view from hers about the value of some of her possessions, certain pieces of lace which he held in his hand. Her handsome luggage, from which he had plucked forth the lace in question, was strewn about, several pieces of it so close to my own possessions as to be mixed up with them; nearest of all was a very costly small morocco case, almost square in shape, and it was this that had unexpectedly slipped into my little bag along with the other things while my friend was inscribing his chalk mark on top. This was an occurrence rather than an action, and it happened quite secretly; the case simply smuggled itself in, so to speak, as a by-product of the good humour that my friendly relations with the authorities of this country had produced in me. Actually during the rest of my trip I hardly thought about my accidental acquisition and I only fleetingly considered the possibility that the lady might have missed her jewel-case while repacking. Eventually I was to find out more about that.

  And so at the end of a trip that, with interruptions, had lasted twelve hours, the train rolled slowly into the Gare du Nord. While porters busily and loquaciously helped the wealthy travellers with their numerous pieces of baggage, while some of the latter were exchanging embraces and kisses with friends who had come to meet them, while even the conductors condescended to receive handbags and blanket rolls handed to them out of doors and windows, the lonely youth descended into this tumult from his refuge for third-class members of society. Observed by no one, h
is small suitcase in his hand, he departed from the noisy, rather unattractive hall. Outside on the dirty street (a shower was falling) the driver of a fiacre saw I was carrying a suitcase, and lifted his whip invitingly in my direction, calling to me: 'Eh! Shall we drive, mon petit?' or 'mon vieux' or something of the sort. And yet how was I to pay for the ride? I had almost no money, and if that little case foreshadowed an improvement in my financial position, its contents could certainly not be put to immediate use. Besides, it would hardly have been proper to arrive at my future place of employment in a fiacre. It was my intention to make my way there on foot, even though it might be a considerable distance, and I politely inquired from passers-by the direction I must take to reach the Place Vendôme — for reasons of discretion I mentioned neither the hotel nor even the rue Saint-Honoré. I did this several times, but no one I asked so much as slowed his step to give ear to my inquiry. And yet I did not look like a beggar, for my mother had in the end disgorged a few talers to spruce me up a bit for my journey. My shoes had been newly soled and mended, and I wore a warm, short jacket with patch pockets, and a becoming sports cap to match, below which my blond hair showed attractively. But a young fellow who does not hire a porter and carries his possessions through the street without engaging a fiacre is a stepson of our civilization, not worthy of a single glance. To be more precise, a feeling of anxiety warns others against having anything whatever to do with him. He is suspected of a disquieting attribute: to wit, poverty; and he is therefore suspected of even worse things as well. It thus seems wisest to society simply to avert her eyes from this damaged product of her order. 'Poverty,' it is said, 'is no sin,' but that is just talk. To its possessor it is highly sinister — half defect, half undefined reproach; it is in every way extremely repulsive, and any association with it may lead to unpleasant consequences.