Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

She had drunk too much. She was still lying, I realized that after the first half-hour. But where, my friends, can one find the truth which one would like to hear from the lips of the girl one loves? And had not I lied myself? Was not I living completely enmeshed in lies? And was I not so comfortably nested in falsehood that I not only enjoyed my own lies, but also recognized and treasured those of others? Of course, Lutetia was as little the daughter of a rag-and-bone merchant or a concierge or a shoemaker or anything else, as I was a prince. Had she then suspected who I really was, she would probably have persuaded me that she was the illegitimate daughter of a baron. But since she had to assume that I was at home among barons, and since she knew that high-born people regard the poor and lowly with an almost poetic melancholy and love the fairy story about the blessings of poverty, she too told me the fable about the wonders of being poor. Actually, while she spoke, she sounded quite credible. For years she had been living among lies, among those special lies, and at times she even believed in her own story. She was lost, just as I was lost. And a lost person lies as innocently as a child. A lost existence demands a foundation of lies. In reality, Lutetia was the daughter of a once fashionable dressmaker, and the man in whose employ she now was had not sought for his girls among the crowds of Paris, but, naturally enough, among the daughters of his colleagues.

But besides all that, my friends, Lutetia was beautiful. Beauty always appears credible. The Devil, who determines men’s judgments on women, fights on the side of the beautiful and attractive. We seldom believe the truth from an ugly woman; but from a beautiful one we believe every word she utters.

It is difficult to say what it was about Lutetia that attracted me so greatly. At the very first glance she appeared different from all the other girls. Also she was made up and looked like a creature of wax and porcelain, a mixture of which mannequins were made at that time. Today, of course, the world has made great progress, and the women are made of different and ever-changing materials for each season of the year. Lutetia, too, had an unnaturally small mouth, and as long as she kept silent it looked like a narrow piece of coral. Her eyebrows, also, formed two unnaturally perfect arches, constructed almost according to geometrical rules; and when she lowered her eyes, one could see improbably long, artificially blackened eyelashes, curtains of eyelashes. The way she sat down, leaned back, the way she got up and the way she walked, the way she picked up a thing and put it down again, all these were, of course, practiced and the outcome of numerous rehearsals. Even her slender fingers seemed to have been in some way stretched and carved by a surgeon. They were slightly reminiscent of pencils. She played with her fingers while she spoke, watching them attentively, and it almost seemed as though she were searching for her reflection in her brightly polished nails. Only seldom was any expression to be found in her blue eyes. But when she spoke, and in the few moments when she forgot herself, her mouth became broad and almost lascivious, and between her gleaming teeth there appeared for a fraction of a second her moist tongue, alive, a red and venomous little animal. It was with her mouth that I had fallen in love, with her mouth. All the wickedness of women is to be found in their mouths. That is, by the way, the home of treachery and, as you all know from your Catechism, the birthplace of original sin.…

So I loved her. I was staggered by her mendacious story and just as staggered by the little hotel room and the parrot wallpaper. The surroundings in which she lived were unworthy of her, and more particularly unworthy of her mouth. I remembered the face of the hotelier, as he sat below in his box, looking like a sort of dog in shirtsleeves — and I made up my mind to provide for Lutetia a happier, kindlier existence.

“Would you allow me,” I asked, “to help you? Please don’t misunderstand me. I make no demands. Helping people affords me great pleasure,” I lied, because destruction was my profession. “I have nothing else to do. Unfortunately I have no profession. So would you allow me…?”

“On what conditions?” asked Lutetia, sitting down on the bed

“On no conditions, as I have already told you.”

“All rights!” she said. And since I made a move to get by she began: “Please don’t think that I am unhappy here. But our lord and master, whom you know, is very often bad-tempered — and I have the misfortune to be more dependent on his temper than the other girls. You know”—and now her tongue began to distill poison—“they all have their rich and noble friends. But I, I prefer to be alone and respectable. I don’t sell myself!” she added after a while and jumped up from the bed. Her dressing-gown, pink with blue flowers, gaped open. No! She didn’t sell herself. She was only offering herself to me.

From now on began the most confused period of my life. I rented a little maisonette near the Champs Élysées, one of those houses which at that time used to be called “love nests.” Lutetia herself arranged it according to her tastes. Again there were parrots on the walls — a genus of birds which, as I have already said, I loathed. There was a piano although Lutetia could not play, two cats, of whose noiseless and startling jumps I was greatly afraid, a fireplace without a draught, in which the fire immediately went out — and lastly, so to speak a special compliment to myself, a genuine Russian samovar made of brass, which I was chosen to operate. There was a pleasing parlor maid in a suitable and pleasing dress — she looked as though she had come from a special factory for parlor maids — and, as a crowning touch, which enraged me beyond bounds, there was a genuine live parrot which learned, with uncanny quickness and almost malicious genius, to repeat my false name “Krapotkin,” thus continually reminding me of my foolishness and deceit. It would certainly not have learned the name “Golubchik” so easily.

Besides all this, the “love nest” swarmed with various of Lutetia’s friends. They were all made of porcelain and wax. And I drew no distinctions between any of them: the cats, the wallpaper, the parrot and the friends. Lutetia was the only one I still recognized. I was a prisoner, thrice and four times a prisoner. And twice a day I returned voluntarily to my sweet, hateful, alluring prison.

One evening I remained there — it could not have been otherwise! I stayed the night there. Over the parrot’s cage hung a covering of red plush. The energetic cats purred comfortably in their baskets. And I slept, no longer a prisoner, but a man chained for all eternity; chained in Lutetia’s arms. Poor Golubchik!

In the early morning I woke up, happy and yet unhappy. I felt ensnared and depraved, and yet I still had not lost my feeling for cleanness and decency. But that feeling, my friends, as tender as a breath of air upon a summer’s morning, was stronger, far stronger, than the strong wind of sun which raged around me. And it was under the influence of that feeling that I left Lutetia’s house. I did not know whether I ought to feel happy or sad. And beset by this doubt, I strode, without thought or plan in my head, through the early streets of Paris.

Lutetia cost money I very soon discovered that. (All women cost money, especially those who are in love; they cost even more than those who are loved.) And I thought that Lutetia loved me. I was grateful that someone in the world loved me. Besides, Lutetia was the only person who wholly believed in my Krapotkin — who believed in my new existence, yes, even confirmed it. But I was determined not to make any sacrifices for her; only for myself would I make sacrifices. For myself, for the false Golubchik, the real Krapotkin.