Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years

  Returning to the Rua Augusta, I followed that busy and crowded thoroughfare toward a square which the porter at my hotel had recommended to me as the most important in the city; it is called Praça de Dom Pedro Quarto, or, familiarly, the 'Rossio'. For purposes of clarity let me say that Lisbon is surrounded by hills, some of them of considerable height, and on these the white houses of the better residential districts rise almost without a break, flanking the straight streets of the new part of town. I knew that Professor Kuckuck's home was located somewhere in those upper regions and so I kept glancing in that direction; indeed, I inquired of a policeman (I have always liked to talk to policemen) more by gesture than by words for the Rua Joäo de Castilhos, the address I had read on Kuckuck's card. He pointed upward toward a street of villas and added in his tongue, which was as incomprehensible to me as the language I had heard in my dream, something about trams, cable cars, and mulos, obviously in reference to means of transportation. I thanked him repeatedly in French for this information, which was not of immediate importance to me, and he raised his hand to the brim of his summer helmet at the end of our brief but animated and pleasant interchange. How agreeable it is to receive such a mark of respect from these simple but smartly uniformed guardians of the public order!

  I hope I may be permitted a general observation: that person is fortunate in whose cradle some good fairy has placed the gift of responding to pleasure, a perpetual responsiveness in even the most unlikely circumstances. No doubt this gift involves a heightening of responsiveness in general, the reverse of insensitivity, and therefore brings with it much pain which others are spared. But I cheerfully insist that the increase in joy more than compensates for that disadvantage — if it is one — and it is this gift of responsiveness to the smallest and even the most commonplace pleasures that has always made me consider truly appropriate my first and real Christian name, Felix, about which my godfather Schimmelpreester felt so bitter.

  How right Kuckuck had been in saying that the principal ingredient in the desire to travel is a vibrant curiosity about as yet unknown human types! With warm interest I studied the people in the busy streets, those black-haired, alert-eyed men and women who accompanied their conversation with rapid southern gestures, and I made a point of getting into personal contact with them. Although I knew the name of the square I was approaching, I stopped a passer-by from time to time to ask the name — children, women, townsmen, sailors — simply to observe the play of expression on their faces while they gave their almost invariably courteous and detailed answers, to listen to their alien speech in their hoarse, exotic tones, and then to part from them with friendly gestures. I placed a gift, the size of which may have been a surprise, in the cup of a blind beggar who sat on the pavement, leaning against the wall of a house, with a cardboard sign beside him. To an elderly man who accosted me in a murmur, I gave an even more considerable sum. He was wearing a frock coat with a medal, but his shoes were broken and he had no collar. He was touched and even wept a little as he bowed his thanks in a way that showed me he had slipped into penury from some higher level of society, whatever his weakness of character may have been.

  When I finally, then, reached the Rossio with its two bronze fountains, its memorial columns, and its strangely wavy mosaic paving, there were many more occasions for asking questions of the strollers and the idlers sitting in the sun on the fountain edges — questions about the buildings that loomed so picturesquely in the blue above the houses bordering the square, the Gothic ruins of a church and a newer structure that proved to be the Municipio or City Hall. Below, the façade of a theatre occupied one side of the Praça, while two other sides were lined with shops, cafés, and restaurants. And so when finally, on the pretext of desiring information, I had had my fun with various children of this alien spring, I sat down at a table in front of one of the cafés to rest and take tea.

  Close to me sat a group of three distinguished-looking persons, also enjoying late-afternoon refreshment, and to them my well-bred and unobtrusive attention was at once attracted. There were two ladies, one considerably older than the other — mother and daughter, to all appearances; the third member of the party was a gentleman, just barely middle-aged, with an aquiline nose and spectacles. Below his Panama hat his hair fell in artistic fashion to the collar of his coat. He was hardly old enough to be the husband of the senhora and the father of the girl. As he ate his ice he held several neatly tied parcels on his lap, obviously out of courtesy, and two or three similar ones lay on the table in front of the ladies.

  While I pretended to be interested in the play of the nearest fountain and in studying the architecture of the ruined church, I glanced surreptitiously at the trio. My curiosity and lively interest centred on mother and daughter — for such I considered them — and their disparate charms blended in my mind into an enchanting image of that relationship. This has been a characteristic of my emotional life. Earlier in this book, I reported the feelings with which, as a young pavement loafer, I had drunk in the glimpse of a lovely brother and sister who appeared for a few minutes on the balcony of the Hotel Zum Frankfurter Hof. I remarked explicitly that such excitement could not have been aroused in me by either of the figures alone, either his or hers, but that their lovely brother-and-sister duality was what had moved me so deeply. The connoisseur of humanity will be interested in the way my penchant for twofold enthusiasms, for being enchanted by the double-but-dissimilar was called into play in this case by mother-and-daughter instead of brother-and-sister. At all events, I find it very interesting. I will just add, however, that my fascination was soon enhanced by a sudden suspicion that coincidence was here engaged in an extraordinary game.

  At the very first glance the young person — eighteen, as I guessed, and wearing a simple loose summer dress of striped bluish material with a belt of the same stuff — reminded me startlingly of Zaza, but at once I am in honour bound to add 'except that'. Another Zaza, except that her beauty, or if that is too exalted a word and more applicable to her mother (this is a subject I shall return to directly) — except that her prettiness, then, was, so to speak, more demonstrable, more authentic, and more naïve than that of Loulou's friend, with whom everything was simply froufrou, a little feu d'artifice and an optical illusion not to be examined too closely. Here was dependability — if a word belonging to the moral order can be applied to the world of charm — a childish forthrightness of expression, of which in the sequel I was to receive disconcerting evidence....

  A different Zaza — so different, in fact, that on reflection I asked myself whether any actual similarity existed even though I thought I had seen it with my own eyes. Did I perhaps believe I had seen it only because I wanted to see it, because I, strange to say, was in search of Zaza's double?

  I am not altogether clear in my own mind on this point. Certainly in Paris my emotions had not been in competition with those of the good Loulou; I was not the slightest bit in love with Zaza, however much I liked to flirt with her. Can it have been that as part of my new identity I had assumed the obligation of falling in love with her? Had I fallen in love with her after the event and had I been hoping to meet another Zaza abroad? When I remember my sudden interest at Professor Kuckuck's mention of a daughter with so similar a name, I cannot entirely rule out this hypothesis.

  Similarity? Eighteen years and black eyes constitute a similarity, if you like, although these eyes did not dart and flirt, but, narrowed a little by the thick lower lids, stared out with an expression of rather blunt inquiry when they were not sparkling with amused laughter. They were boyish — like the voice whose abrupt exclamations reached my ears a few times, a voice that was by no means silvery but rather brusque and hoarse, without any affectation, honest and direct, like a young boy's. In the nose there was no resemblance whatever: it was not a snub nose like Zaza's, but fine-bridged, although the nostrils were not particularly delicate. In the mouth, to be sure, even today I admit that there was a resemblance; in both instances the lips (whose
lively red, in this case, was assuredly the work of Nature alone) were almost always parted, thanks to a habit of pursing the upper one, so that one saw the teeth between. The hollow under them, and the charming line of the chin leading down to the soft throat — these might well remind one of Zaza. Otherwise, everything was different, as memory shows me — transmuted from the Parisian to the exotic and Iberian, thanks especially to the tall tortoise-shell comb with which she held in place her high-tailed hair. The hair was drawn back to leave her forehead bare, but at each temple there was a charming curl which again produced a foreign, southern, indeed Spanish effect. She wore earrings — not the long, swaying jet pendants her mother wore, but close-fitting and yet sizeable flat opals surrounded by little pearls which matched the exotic quality of her whole appearance. The southern tint of her ivory skin was something that Zouzou — I called her that immediately — had in common with her mother, whose type and tenue, however, were of a quite different order, more imposing, not to say majestic.

  Taller than her attractive child, no longer slender but by no means too heavy, this lady in the distinguished simplicity of cream-coloured linen, lace at throat and wrists, and long black gloves, was approaching matronly years without having yet reached them. One would have searched in vain for grey in the dark hair under the wide, flower-trimmed, fashionable hat. A black neckband edged with silver became her well, as did her swaying jet earrings, and added a note of dignity to the noble carriage of her head. This quality characterized her whole appearance and was expressed almost to the point of sombreness, almost to severity, in her rather large face with its haughty, compressed lips, flaring nostrils and the two deep creases between her brows. It was the sternness of the south, which many people fail to recognize, obsessed by the mistaken notion that the south is flattering and sweet and soft and that hardness is to be found only in the north, a completely erroneous idea. 'Ancient Iberian stock, presumably,' I thought to myself, 'therefore with a Celtic admixture. And every sort of Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, and Arabic strain may be involved. Not one to be trifled with.' And I added in my mind that under the protection of such a mother, the daughter would be safer than with any possible male escort.

  Nevertheless, it was reassuring that such an escort was present — as was only proper for two women in a public place. The respectable gentleman with the long hair sat nearest me of the three, almost shoulder to shoulder, since he had turned his chair sidewise to the table and his remarkable profile was exposed to me. I have never liked hair that falls to the collar, for, in the long run, it is bound to make the collar greasy. However, I overcame my repugnance and turned to this cavalier, throwing a glance of apology toward the two ladies, and addressed him in these words:

  'Forgive, sir, the boldness of a stranger who has just arrived in this country and unfortunately has not yet mastered its language. I cannot converse with the waiter who naturally enough speaks nothing else. Forgive, I repeat' — and once more my glance strayed to the ladies as though barely daring to touch them — 'this unmannerly intrusion. But it is very important for me to gain certain specific information about this neighbourhood. I have the agreeable social duty, and the desire as well, to pay a call at a house in one of the residential streets of the upper city, the Rua Joäo de Castilhos. The house in question — I add this in a sense to identify myself — is that of a famous Lisbon savant, Professor Kuckuck. Would you have the great kindness to tell me what means of transportation I might use for my little excursion?'

  What an advantage it is to possess an easy and polished style of address, the gift of good form which that kind fairy thoughtfully laid in my cradle and which is so very necessary for the whole way of life I have adopted! I was satisfied with my speech although toward the end I had become a little disconcerted because the girl, when I named the street and then mentioned Professor Kuckuck, had begun to giggle and had come close to bursting into laughter. This, I say, confused me a little — since it could only confirm the suspicion that had prompted me to speak. The senhora glanced at her child, shaking her head in regal reproof at this outburst of merriment — and then could not keep a smile from her own severe lips, of which the upper one was darkened by the faintest shadow of a moustache. The gentleman with long hair was naturally astounded, since he — unlike the ladies, I may say — had not hitherto been aware of my presence. However, he answered very politely:

  'Certainly, sir. There are various possibilities — not all to be recommended equally, let me add. You could take a fiacre, but the streets that go up there are very steep, and the passenger usually finds himself obliged to walk beside the carriage at various points. The mule bus is preferable; it gets up the steep places very well. But best of all is the cable car. The entrance is near here in the Rua Augusta, which you certainly already know. It will take you conveniently and directly to the immediate neighbourhood of the Rua Joäo de Castilhos.'

  'Splendid,' I replied. 'That's all I need. I can't thank you enough, sir. I shall follow your advice and I am very much obliged.'

  Thereupon I settled myself in my chair, indicating clearly that I had no intention of continuing to be a bother. However, the girl — whom I already called Zouzou — seemed not to have been impressed by her mother's admonitory glances and went right on displaying her merriment, until finally the senhora was compelled to explain her behaviour.

  'Forgive this child's frivolity, sir,' she said in harsh French, her voice an agreeable, husky contralto, 'but I am Madame Kuckuck of the Rua Joäo de Castilhos, this is my daughter, Susanna, and this is Dom Miguel Hurtado, a professional colleague of my husband. I can hardly be mistaken in assuming that I am addressing Dom Antonio José's travelling-companion, the Marquis de Venosta. My husband told us about his meeting with you when he arrived today.'

  'Enchanted, madame,' I replied with sincere pleasure, bowing to her, to the young lady, and to Hurtado. 'This is a charming coincidence! My name is indeed Venosta and I had the pleasure of your husband's company for a time on the train from Paris. I will make bold to say I have never travelled to greater advantage. The professor's conversation is inspiring -'

  'You musn't be surprised, monsieur le marquis' young Susanna broke in, 'that your inquiry amused me. You inquire a great deal. I observed you on the square stopping every third person to inquire about something or other. Now you inquire from Dom Miguel about our own home 'You are forward, Zouzou,' her mother interrupted her — and it was wonderful to hear her addressed for the first time by the nickname I had long since assigned to her.

  'Excuse me, Mama,' the girl retorted, 'but when you are young everything you say is forward, and the marquis, who is still young himself, hardly older than I am, it seems, was just a trifle forward too in beginning a conversation from one table to the next. Moreover, I have not told him what I wanted to say. First of all, I wanted to assure him that Papa did not burst out talking about him the minute he got home, as would almost appear from your words. He told us a great many other things first and then quite incidentally mentioned that he had dined the evening before with a certain de Venosta.'

  The lady who had been born da Cruz shook her head reproachfully. 'Even when speaking the truth, my child,' she said, 'one must not be forward.'

  'Good God, mademoiselle,' I said, 'it's a truth I never doubted. I did not imagine -'

  'That's good. That's good. That you did not imagine!'

  The mother: 'Zouzou!'

  The girl: 'A young man with a name like that, chère maman, who in addition happens to be so good-looking, is in danger of imagining all sorts of things.'

  After this there was nothing to do but join in the general merriment. Hurtado joined, too.

  I said: 'Mademoiselle Susanna must not overlook the greater danger she herself runs of imagining things because of her own appearance. Added to this there is the natural temptation to pride oneself on such a papa — and such a mama,' bowing toward the senhora. Zouzou blushed — partly for her mother, who had not the slightest idea of blushing; but
perhaps out of jealousy, too. She rescued herself in disconcerting fashion from this embarrassment by simply disregarding it and remarking with a gesture of the head toward me:

  'What pretty teeth he has.'

  Never in my life had I encountered such forthrightness. But any awkwardness the speech might have caused was removed when the girl replied to the senhora's 'Zouzou, vous êtes tout à fait impossible!' with the words:

  'But he keeps showing them all the time. Clearly, he wants to have them mentioned. And besides, one ought not to be silent about something like that. Silence is unhealthy. A statement of fact is less harmful to him and to others.'

  An extraordinary creature. How extraordinary, how complete a personal exception to all the accepted conventions of her society and country, was to become clear to me only later. Only through experience was I to learn with what almost monstrous forthrightness this girl was capable of acting up to her remarkable principle that silence is unhealthy.