Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years

  Now and again, however, I stayed at home in bed on school days — and not always, as I have explained, without justification. It is a favourite theory of mine that every deception which fails to have a higher truth at its roots and is simply a barefaced lie is by that very fact so grossly palpable that nobody can fail to see through it. Only one kind of lie has a chance of being effective: that which in no way deserves to be called deceit, but is the product of a lively imagination which has not yet entered wholly into the realm of the actual and acquired those tangible signs by which alone it can be appraised at its proper worth. Although it is true that I was a sturdy boy, who, except for the usual childish ailments, never had anything serious the matter with him, it was nevertheless not a gross deception when I decided one morning to avoid the painful oppressions of school by becoming an invalid. For why should I subject myself to such treatment when I had at hand the means of neutralizing the cruel power of my intellectual lords and masters? No, the painfully intense excitement and exaltation which, as I have explained, accompanied certain states of mind used often to overwhelm me to such an extent as to produce in combination with my abhorrence of the misunderstandings and drudgery of a day in school, a condition that created a solid basis of truth for my behaviour. I was effortlessly provided with the means of gaining the sympathy and concern of the doctor and of my family.

  I did not at first produce my symptoms for an audience, but for myself alone. On a certain day when my need for freedom and the possession of my own soul had become overpowering, my decision was made and became irrevocable through the simple passage of time. The latest possible hour for rising had been passed in brooding; downstairs breakfast had been put on the table by the maid and was growing cold; all the dull fellows in town were trudging off to school; daily life had began, and I was irretrievably committed to a course of rebellion against my taskmasters. The audacity of my conduct made my heart flutter and my stomach turn over. I noted that my fingernails had taken on a bluish tint. The morning was cold and all I needed to do was to throw off the covers for a few moments and lie relaxed in order to bring on the most convincing attack of chills and chattering teeth. All that I am saying is, of course, highly indicative of my character. I have always been very sensitive, susceptible, and in need of care; and everything I have accomplished in my active life has been the result of self-conquest — indeed, must be regarded as a moral achievement of a high order. If it were otherwise I should never, either then or later, have succeeded, merely by willing my mind and body to relax, in producing the appearance of physical illness and thus inclining those about me to tenderness and concern. To counterfeit illness effectively could never be within the powers of a coarse-grained man. But anyone of finer stuff, if I may repeat the phrase, is always, though he may never be ill in the crude sense of the word, on familiar terms with suffering and able to control its symptoms by intuition. I closed my eyes and then opened them to their widest extent, making them look appealing and plaintive. I knew without a mirror that my hair was rumpled from sleep and fell in damp strands across my brow, and that my face was pale. I made it look sunken by a device of my own, drawing in my cheeks and unobtrusively holding them in with my teeth. This made my chin appear longer, too, and gave me the appearance of having grown thin overnight. A dilation of the nostrils and an almost painful twitching of the muscles at the corners of the eyes contributed to this effect. I put my basin on a chair beside my bed, folded my blue-nailed fingers across my breast, made my teeth chatter from time to time, and thus awaited the moment when somebody would come to look for me.

  That happened rather late, for my parents loved to lie abed, and so two or three school hours had passed before it was noticed that I was still in the house. Then my mother came upstairs and into the room to ask if I was ill. I looked at her wide-eyed, as though in my dazed condition it was hard for me to tell who she was. Then I said yes, I thought I must be ill. What was the trouble then, she asked. 'My head ... pains in my bones ... And why am I so cold?' I answered in a monstrous voice, speaking with an effort and tossing myself from side to side in the bed. My mother was sympathetic. I do not believe she took my sufferings very seriously, but her sensibilities were far in excess of her reason and she could not bring herself to spoil the game. Instead, she joined in and began to support me in my performance. 'Poor child,' she said, laying her forefinger on my cheek and shaking her head in pity, 'don't you want something to eat.' I declined with a shudder, pressing my chin on my chest. This strict consistency in my behaviour sobered her, made her seriously concerned, and, so to speak, startled her out of her enjoyment of our joint game; that anyone should refuse food and drink for frivolous reasons went quite beyond her powers of imagination. She looked at me with a growing sense of reality. When she had got this far I helped her to a decision by a display of art as arduous as it was effective. Starting up in bed with a fitful, shuddering motion, I drew my basin toward me and bent over it with spasmodic twitchings and contortions of my whole body, such as no one could witness without profound emotion unless he had a heart of stone.

  'Nothing in me ...' I gasped between my writhings, lifting my wry and wasted face from the basin. 'Threw it all up in the night ...' And then I launched upon my main effort, a prolonged attack of cramps and retching which made it seem that I would never breathe again. My mother held my head, repeatedly calling me by name in an effort to bring me to myself. By the time my limbs finally began to relax she was quite overcome and, exclaiming: I'll send for Düsing!' she rushed out of the room. I sank back among the pillows exhausted but full of indescribable joy and satisfaction.

  How often I had imagined such a scene, how often I had practised it in my mind before I caused it to become a reality! I don't know whether people will understand if I say that I seemed to be in a happy dream when I first gave it concrete expression and achieved complete success. Not everyone can do such a thing. One may dream of it, but not do it. Suppose, a man thinks, something awful were to happen to me: suppose I were to faint or blood were to gush out of my nose, or I were to have some kind of seizure — then how quickly the world's harsh unconcern would turn into attention, sympathy, and belated remorse! But the flesh is obtusely strong and enduring, it holds out long after the mind has felt the necessity of sympathy and care; it will not manifest the alarming tangible symptoms that would make an onlooker see himself in a similar plight and would speak with stern voice to the conscience of the world. But I — I had produced these symptoms as effectively as though I had nothing to do with their appearance. I had improved upon nature, realized a dream; and only he who has succeeded in creating a compelling and effective reality out of nothing, out of sheer inward knowledge and contemplation — in short, out of nothing more than imagination and the daring exploitation of his own body — he alone understands the strange and dream-like satisfaction with which I rested from my creative task.

  An hour later Health Councillor Düsing arrived. He had been our family physician ever since the death of old Dr Mecum, who had ushered me into the world. Dr Düsing was tall and stooped, with bad carriage and bristling grey hair; he was either rubbing his long nose between thumb and forefinger all the time or rubbing his big bony hands. This man might have been dangerous to my enterprise. Not through his professional ability, probably, which was, I believe, of the slightest (though a true doctor devoted to science and to the pursuit of medicine for its own sake is easiest of all to deceive), but through a certain native human shrewdness, which is often the whole stock in trade of inferior characters. This unworthy disciple of Aesculapius was both stupid and ambitious and had achieved his title through personal influence, exploitation of wine-house acquaintances, and the receipt of patronage; he was always going to Wiesbaden to advance his interests with the authorities. Most indicative to me was the fact that he did not receive the patients who came to his waiting-room in the order in which they arrived, but took the more influential first, letting the humbler sit and wait. His manner toward the former class w
as obsequious, toward the latter harsh and cynical, indicating often that he did not believe in their complaints. I am convinced he would not have stopped at any lie, corruption, or bribery that might ingratiate him with his superiors or recommend him as a zealous party man to those in power; such behaviour was consistent with the shrewd common sense he relied on to see him through in default of higher qualifications. Although my poor father's position was already doubtful, as a businessman and a taxpayer, he still belonged to the influential classes of the town, and Dr Düsing naturally wished to stand well with him. It may even be that the wretched man willingly seized every opportunity to school himself in corruption, and may have believed for this reason that he ought to make common cause with me.

  Whenever he came and sat by my bed with the usual avuncular phrases like: 'Well, well, what have we here?' or: 'What seems to be wrong today?' the moment would come when a wink, a smile, or a significant little pause would encourage me to admit that we were partners in the deceptive little game of playing sick — 'school sick' as he would probably have called it. Never did I make the smallest response to his advances. Not out of caution, for he would probably not have betrayed me, but out of pride and contempt. At each of his attempts I only looked all the more ailing and helpless, my cheeks grew hollower, my breathing shorter and more irregular, my mouth more lax. I was quite prepared to go through another attack of vomiting if needs must; and so persistently did I fail to understand his worldly wisdom that in the end he had to abandon this approach in favour of a more scientific one.

  That was not very easy for him. First because of his stupidity; and secondly because the clinical picture I presented was very general and indefinite in character. He thumped my chest and listened to me all over, peered down my throat with the aid of a spoon handle, annoyed me by taking my temperature, and finally, for better or worse, was forced to express his opinion. 'Migraine,' he said. 'No cause for alarm. We know our young friend's tendency in this direction. Unfortunately his stomach is involved in no small degree. I prescribe rest, no visits, little conversation, and preferably a darkened room. Besides, citric acid and caffeine have proved valuable in these cases. I'll write a prescription ...' If, however, there had been a few cases of grippe in the town, he would say: 'Grippe, dear Frau Krull, with gastric complications. Yes, that's what our friend has caught! The inflammation of the respiratory tract is as yet insignificant, but it's detectable. You do cough, don't you, dear boy? I also observe an elevation of temperature, which will no doubt increase in the course of the day. Moreover, the pulse is rapid and irregular.' And, with his hopeless lack of imagination, he could think of nothing but to prescribe a certain bittersweet tonic wine from the druggist's, which, moreover, I liked very much. I found it induced a state of warm and quiet satisfaction after my victory in battle.

  Indeed, the medical profession is not different from any other: its members are, for the most part, ordinary empty-headed dolts, ready to see what is not there and to deny the obvious. Any untrained person, if he is a connoisseur and lover of the body, exceeds them in his knowledge of its subtler mysteries and can easily lead them around by the nose. The inflammation of the respiratory tract was something I had not thought of, and so had not included in my performance. But once I had forced the doctor to drop his theory of 'school sickness', he had to fall back on grippe, and to that end had to assume that my throat was inflamed and my tonsils swollen, which was just as little the case. He was quite right about the fever — though the fact entirely disproved his first diagnosis by presenting a genuine clinical phenomenon. Medical science maintains that fever can be caused only by an infection of the blood through some agent or other, and that fever on other than physical grounds does not exist. That is absurd. My readers will be as convinced as I that I was not really ill when Health Councillor Düsing examined me. But I was highly excited; I had concentrated my whole being upon an act of will; I was drunk with the intensity of my own performance in my role of parodying nature — a performance that had to be masterly if it was not to be ridiculous; I was delirious with the alternate tension and relaxation necessary to give reality, in my own eyes and others', to a condition that did not exist; and all this so heightened and enhanced my organic processes that the doctor was actually able to read the result on the thermometer. The same explanation applies to the pulse. When the Councillor's head was pressed against my chest and I inhaled the animal odour of his dry, grey hair, I had it in my power to feel a violent reaction that made my heart beat fast and irregularly. As for my stomach, Dr Düsing said that it too was affected, whatever other diagnosis he produced; and it was true enough that it was an uncommonly sensitive organ, pulsing and contracting with every stir of emotion, so that I could properly speak of a throbbing stomach where others under stress of circumstances speak of a throbbing heart. Of this phenomenon the doctor was aware and he was not a little impressed by it.

  And so he prescribed his acid tablets or his bitter-sweet tonic wine and stayed for a while sitting on my bed chatting and gossiping with my mother; while I lay breathing irregularly through my flaccid lips and staring vacantly at the ceiling. My father used to come in, too, and look at me selfconsciously, avoiding my glance. He would take advantage of the occasion to consult the doctor about his gout. Then I was left to spend the day alone — perhaps two or three days — on short rations, to be sure, which tasted all the better for their sparseness, given over to dreams of my brilliant career in the world. When my healthy young appetite rebelled at the diet of gruel and Zwieback, I would get cautiously out of bed, noiselessly open the top of my little desk, and partake of the chocolates that almost always lay there in abundant store.

  CHAPTER 7

  WHERE had I procured them? They had come into my possession in a strange, almost fantastic fashion. Down in the town on a corner of what was, comparatively speaking, our busiest street, there was a neat and attractively stocked delicatessen shop, a branch, if I am not mistaken, of a Wiesbaden firm. It was patronized by the best society. My way to school led me past this shop daily and I had dropped in many times, coin in hand, to buy cheap sweets, fruit drops, or barley sugar. But on going in one day I found it empty not only of customers but of assistants as well. There was a little bell on a spring over the door, and this had rung as I entered; but either the inner room was empty or its occupants had not heard the bell — I was and remained alone. The glass door at the rear was covered by some pleated material. At first the emptiness surprised and startled me, it even gave me an uncanny feeling; but presently I began to look about me, for never before had I been able to contemplate undisturbed the delights of such a spot. It was a narrow room, with a rather high ceiling, and crowded from floor to ceiling with eatables. There were rows and rows of hams and sausages of all shapes and colours — white, yellow, red, and black; fat and lean and round and long — rows of tinned preserves, cocoa and tea, bright translucent glass bottles of honey, marmalade, and jam; round bottles and slender bottles, filled with liqueurs and punch — all these things crowded every inch of the shelves from top to bottom. Then there were glass showcases where smoked mackerel, lampreys, flounders, and eels were displayed on platters to tempt the appetite. There were dishes of Italian salad, crayfish spreading their claws on blocks of ice, sprats pressed flat and gleaming goldenly from open boxes; choice fruits — garden strawberries and grapes as beautiful as though they had come from the Promised Land; rows of sardine tins and those fascinating little white earthenware jars of caviar and foie gras. Plump chickens dangled their necks from the top shelf, and there were trays of cooked meats, ham, tongue, beef, and veal, smoked salmon, and breast of goose, with the slender slicing knife lying ready to hand. There were all sorts of cheeses under glass bells, brick-red, milk-white, and marbled, also the creamy ones that overflow their silver foil in golden waves. Artichokes, bundles of asparagus, truffles, little liver sausages in silver paper — all these things lay heaped in rich profusion; while on other tables stood open tin boxes full of fine biscu
its, spice cakes piled in criss-cross layers, and glass urns full of dessert chocolates and candied fruits.

  I stood enchanted, straining my ears and breathing in the delightful atmosphere and the mixed fragrance of chocolate and smoked fish and earthy truffles. My mind was filled with memories of fairy-tale kingdoms, of underground treasure chambers where Sunday children might fill their pockets and boots with precious stones. It was indeed either a fairy-tale or a dream! Everyday laws and prosaic regulations were all suspended. One might give free rein to one's desires and let imagination roam in blissful unrestraint. So great was the joy of beholding this bountiful spot completely at my disposal that I felt my limbs begin to jerk and twitch. It took great self-control not to burst into a cry of joy at so much newness and freedom. I spoke into the silence, saying: 'Good day' in quite a loud voice; I can still remember how my strained, unnatural tones died away in the stillness. No one answered. And my mouth literally began to water like a spring. One quick, noiseless step and I was beside one of the laden tables. I made one rapturous grab into the nearest glass urn, filled as it chanced with pralines, slipped a fistful into my coat pocket, then reached the door, and in the next second was safely round the corner.