Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

The dressmaker was prepared to pay. He took his leave, put on his curious furs, and drove away.

On the first evening on which his exhibition of “creations” was to take place, he appeared, friendly, rotund and yet rectangular, beaming, and dressed in a tailcoat and a white waistcoat with wonderful little red buttons which looked like ladybirds. He came out from behind the wings and took up a position in front of his girls’ dressing rooms. But he was quite incapable of bribing even the least of us! He clinked a handful of silver coins in his tail pocket, like a monk with his collecting bag; and in spite of his resplendence he looked less like a potential briber than an actual begger. Even the most venal among us could never have taken any money from the man. One thing was clear: he was more at home with archdukes than with spies.

He disappeared. We went into the dressing rooms.

I was trembling. You must believe me when I tell you that at that moment I knew fear, real fear, hollow-eyed fear, for the first time in my life. I was afraid of Lutetia, afraid of my desire to see her, afraid of my eager anticipation, afraid of the unknown, of nakedness, of hesitation, afraid of my own power. So I turned around. I turned my back on her while she undressed. And she laughed at me. While I so fearfully turned my back, she may well have sensed, with the infallible instinct of a woman, the terror and impotence of a man in love; she probably realized that I was the most harmless spy in the whole of Russia. But what am I talking about instinct! She knew well enough that it was my duty to keep a close watch on her, and she had seen how I had turned my back and thereby delivered myself into her hands. I was already lost! She had already seen through me! Ah, my friends, it were better for a man to deliver himself over to his bitterest enemy than to let a woman see that he is in love with her. An enemy destroys quickly! But a woman… You will soon see how slowly, how murderously slowly.…

Well! There I stood, with my face to the door, watching the immobile white handle, as though I had been ordered to spy upon this harmless little object. It was, as I can remember clearly, an ordinary porcelain door handle. Not even a crack was to be seen on it. I stood thus for a long time. And all the while my beloved sang and whistled and twittered behind my back — and in front of the mirror, as I discovered later — as carefree as the tender airs she sang. Yet in her singing, her whistling, her twittering, was derision. Nothing but derision…!

Suddenly there came a knock on the door. I turned around immediately, and of course saw Lutetia. She was sitting in front of an oval gold-framed mirror, trying to powder her back with an immense powder puff. She was already dressed. She was wearing a black dress, cut at the back into a low triangle which was edged with strips of blood-red satin, and she was trying, with her right hand, to reach her back in order to powder it with that oversized puff. More even than her nakedness had confused me, was I dazzled by this almost hellish — I can find no other expression for it — by this almost hellish combination of colors. From that hour I have firmly believed that the colors of Hell, which I shall certainly one day see for myself, are black, white, and red; and round the walls of Hell, here and there, will be seen the triangular outline of a woman’s back; and the powder puff, too.

But the telling of all this takes too long, for it only lasted a moment. Before Lutetia could call: Come in! — the door opened. And even before I looked around, I already had a presentiment as to who the newcomer was. You will guess it, my friends! Who was it? — It was my old friend, my very old friend, Jenö Lakatos!

“Good evening!” he said in Russian. Thereafter he carried on a long conversation with Lutetia in French. I understood little of what was said. He seemed not to have recognized me — or not to have wished to recognize me. Lutetia turned round and smiled at him. She said a few words and smiled again, half leaning over the back of her chair and still holding the powder puff in her hand. I could see her double, her living self and her reflection. Lakatos walked over to her; he still limped visibly. He was wearing a tailcoat and patent leather shoes, and in his buttonhole glowed a red flower of a species unknown to me. As for me, I might not have been there. I felt certain that neither for Lutetia nor for Lakatos was I existent. I would almost have doubted my own presence in the dressing room, had I not seen how Lakatos drew up his sleeve — his cuffs were slightly frayed — and how he took the powder puff out of Lutetia’s hand with two pointed fingers. And when he set to work, he did not simply powder the girl’s back, but started to outline a completely new back; with both hands he began describing inexplicable circles in the air, first bending down, and then standing on tiptoe, his whole body stretched taut, until finally, at last, he touched Lutetia’s back with the puff. And he powdered her back exactly as one would whitewash a wall. It took a long time, and Lutetia smiled — I could see her smile in the oval mirror. At last Lakatos turned to me, and in a matter-of-fact way, as though he had already seen me and greeted me, said: “Well, my friend, are you here too?” And at the same time he put his hand into his trouser pocket. There came a clinking of gold and silver coins. I knew the sound well enough.

“So, we have to meet again,” he went on. I answered nothing. Finally, after a long silence, he asked: “How much longer are you going to bother this lady?”

“I bother her against my will,” I said. “I am on duty here.”

He lifted both hands towards the ceiling and exclaimed: “Duty! He’s on duty!” And then he turned again to Lutetia and said something softly in French.

He beckoned me over to the oval mirror, close beside Lutetia, and said: “Your colleagues have all gone. All the other ladies have been left undisturbed. Understand?”

“I am on duty,” I replied.

“I bribed them all,” said Lakatos. “All of them. How much do you want?”

“Nothing!”

“Twenty? Forty? Sixty?”

“No!”

“A hundred?”

“No!”

“That is the most I am empowered to offer.”

“Go yourself!”

At that moment the warning bell rang. Lutetia left the room.

“You will regret it!” said Lakatos. He went out after Lutetia, and I remained behind, confused and embarrassed. There was a cloying odor of rouge, perfume, powder, and woman about the room. I had not smelled it before; or perhaps I had simply not noticed it; how could I tell? Suddenly this diversity of scents surrounded me like an insidious enemy, and it seemed as though they had been left behind, not by Lutetia, but by my friend Lakatos. It seemed as though, before his arrival, the perfume, the rouge, the powder, and the woman had had no perceptible odor, and that only in his presence had they awoken to life.

I left the dressing room. I looked down the corridor. I looked into one dressing room after another. Nowhere did I find my colleagues. They were obliterated, spirited away, swallowed up. Twenty, forty, sixty, or a hundred rubles had slipped into their pockets.

I stood behind the wings, between two firemen, and I could see, sideways on, a part of the distinguished audience which had collected there to welcome a ridiculous dressmaker from Paris and which stood in awe of his wretched girls, called by them “mannequins.” So the world had come down to this — I thought to myself — that it admired and reverenced a dressmaker! And Lakatos? Where had he come from? What wind had blown him here? He made me afraid. I felt plainly that I was in his power; I had long ago forgotten him, and therefore he made me doubly afraid. That is, I had never really forgotten him; I had only banished him, pushed him out of my thoughts, out of my consciousness. And so I was afraid — but with no ordinary fear, my friends, such as one has for one’s fellow men! Not until that hour, and from the peculiar nature of my fear, did I properly realize who Lakatos was. I knew it now, but it was as though I were afraid of my own knowledge and had at all costs to endeavour to hide this knowledge from myself. It was as though I had been condemned rather to fight against myself and guard myself against myself, than to fight against him and guard myself against him. To such an extent, my friends, is a man blinded when the great Tempter so desires it. Man is indeed mightily afraid of the Devil, but he trusts him far more than he trusts himself.