Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

During the first interval I again took up my position in Lutetia’s dressing room. I persuaded myself that it was no more than my sense of duty demanded. But in reality it was the result of a remarkable impulse, a mixture of jealousy, obstinacy, amorousness, curiosity — and Heaven knows what else. Once again Lakatos appeared, while Lutetia was changing, and while I, exactly as before, stood with my back to her and stared at the door. Although I was actually standing in his way, he seemed to take as little notice of me as if I had been a wardrobe and not a human being at all. With a single elegant swing of his shoulders and hips, he evaded me. Already he stood behind Lutetia, so that she would see him in the mirror before which she had just sat down. His entry enraged me to such an extent that I even overcame my shame and forgot my love and promptly turned round. I was just in time to see Lakatos lay three fingers against his lips and blow a kiss to the reflection in the mirror. All the while he kept repeating incessantly the same French phrase: Oh, mon amour, mon amour, mon amour ! Lutetia’s reflection smiled. The next moment — I could not conceive then how he did it, and I still do not know today — Lakatos laid a huge bouquet of dark red roses on the table in front of the mirror. And I had seen him come into the room with his hands empty! Lutetia’s reflection nodded lightly. Lakatos blew another kiss to her, turned round, and with the same circular motion by which he had eluded me on his entry, slipped past me and out of the room.

After I had seen with my own eyes that a bouquet of roses could suddenly be conjured out of nothingness, my professional alarm, so to speak, came to join my private fear. Like a pair of inseparable twins, they crouched within my breast. If a man could waft a bunch of roses out of thin air, then Lutetia, or even Lakatos, might easily produce with bare hands one of those bombs of which my superiors and their employers were so afraid. You must understand me: I was not worrying about the life of the Czar or the grand-dukes or the governors. What were the great men of this world to me, and why should I have bothered about them during those days? No, I trembled simply at the thought of the catastrophe, of the naked catastrophe, although I did not as yet know under what guise or in what form it would suddenly appear. But it seemed to me inevitable. And inevitable it seemed to me, also, that Lakatos should be its originator, must be its originator. I was never very religious by nature, and I had never trubled myself much with God and Heaven. But now I began to have a foretaste of Hell — and, just as one only calls the fire brigade after the fire has started, so I began during those days to offer up senseless, incoherent, but nevertheless desperately heartfelt and ardent prayers to the unknown Ruler of the world. They helped me little, evidently because I had not as then been tried sufficiently. Little did I suspect what lay in store for me.

I began to redouble my vigilance. The dressmaker was supposed to be staying only ten days in Russia, but already, after the third day, it was announced that his “creations” had so pleased our society ladies that it was proposed to prolong his visit by another ten days. What a wonderful and yet what a disturbing possibility! I was given orders to watch the well-known house of Madame Lukatchevski, where the officers of the garrison often used to gather after midnight. I knew it well, professionally, but only from the outside. Its interior I had not yet explored. I was given a so-called “expenses-allowance” of three hundred rubles and a “service” suit of tails, such as was usually shared between every three of our people in the higher division. Round my neck I hung a Greek order, a gold medal on the end of a red silk ribbon. Two of the lackeys at Madame Lukatchevski’s were in our pay. At midnight I posted myself in front of the house. After having waited until such a time as I thought my presence would attract no attention, I went in, complete with top hat, cane, opera cloak, and orders. Those of the gentlemen, in uniform and civilian dress, about whom I had precise information, I greeted as if I were an old acquaintance. They smiled back at me with the disagreeable, empty smile with which one acknowledges friend and foe and neutral in the world of the great. Some time later one of our lackeys gave me a sign to follow him. He led me up to one of those discreet rooms on the first floor, whose presence was kept a secret from the ordinary habitués of the house. Such rooms were not for love — or what passed for love; on the contrary, they were reserved for witnesses and listeners, for informers and spies. Though a slit in the thin intervening partition one could hear and see everything that went on in the next room.

And I saw, my friends — I saw Lutetia, my beloved, together with young Prince Krapotkin. Oh, I recognized him immediately, there was no possible doubt. How could I not have recognized him! At that time I was so depraved that I could recognize something horrible more quickly than something pleasant and beautiful. Yes, I even practiced this quality and tried to perfect myself in it. So I saw Lutetia, my beloved, in the arms of the man whom I had once regarded as my archenemy; in the arms of the man whom I had almost forgotten during my last shameful years; in the arms of my hated false stepbrother, Prince Krapotkin.

You may perhaps realize, my friends, what took place inside me at that moment. Suddenly — for I had long since ceased to think of it — I was reminded of my ridiculous name, “Golubchik”; suddenly I remembered that I had only the Krapotkin family to thank for my present degrading profession; suddenly I believed that the old Prince would gladly have accepted me on that summer’s day in Odessa had not the young boy burst into the room with such insolent cheerfulness; suddenly the mad vanity of my youth was reawakened — and all the bitterness. Yes, the bitterness, too! He — he was not the son of Krapotkin. I was! I! The name had only come to him by chance, and all that the name carried with it: the repute, the money, the world, and the first woman I had ever loved.

You know what that means, my friends: the first woman a man loves. She meant everything to me. I was a miserable creature, who might one day have become a decent man. Now I would never become a decent man. In that moment when I saw Krapotkin and Lutetia together, the evil in me flared up, that evil which had been within me since my birth. Till then it had only flickered gently inside me, but now it roared up in a great open blaze. My fate was sealed.

I realized my fate even then, and because of that I was able to observe closely the two objects of my emotions; that of my hate and that of my love. Never does a man see so clearly and coolly as in the hour when he feels the black precipice before his feet. In that hour I felt that the love and the hatred in my heart were as inwardly united as the pair in the next room: Lutetia and Krapotkin. Just as little as the two I was watching, were my two feelings at variance; rather they were united into an overwhelming satisfaction, which was certainly greater and stronger and more sensual than the physical union of the pair.

I felt no desire, not even jealousy; at least not the common jealousy which each of us has probably felt when he has had to watch a beloved person being snatched away from him — or rather, when he has had to see the joy with which that person lets himself be snatched away. I was not even embittered. I had not even a desire for vengeance. Rather I was like a cold and objective judge who watches the exploits of the criminals whom he will later have to judge. I pronounced judgment then. It was death. Death for Krapotkin! I only marveled that I had waited so long. Yes, I realized then that this sentence of death had long lain inside me, pronounced, recorded, and sealed. It was, I repeat, no desire for revenge that prompted me to this. It was, in my opinion, the natural consequence of ordinary, objective, normal justice. Not I alone had fallen a victim to Krapotkin. No! The effective law of common justice was also his victim. And in the name of the law I pronounced judgment. It was death.