Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

So there began a terrible confusion — not in my soul — that had already existed long — but in my private, my material affairs. I began to spend money — with both hands, as one says. Actually, Lutetia herself did not need so much. I myself needed it; I needed it for her. And she began to spend it, senselessly and with that hungry accursed delight with which women always spend the money of their husbands and lovers — almost as though they see in the money which one pays for them, which one even squanders for them, a certain measure of the feeling which their loving men have for them. So I needed money. Very soon. Very much. I went, as was my duty, to my sympathetic chief — his name was Solovejczyk, Michael Nikolajevitch Solovejczyk.

“What have you to report to me?” he asked. It was getting on towards nine o’clock in the evening, and it seemed to me that there was no one else, not a soul, in the great white house. It was very still, and one could hear, as if from an infinite distance, the confused noises of the great city. The whole room was dark. The single lamp with a green shade, standing on Solovejczyk’s desk, looked like a bright green core in the surrounding darkness.

“I need money,” I said, hidden in the gloom and therefore more boldly than I had intended.

“For the money which you need,” he answered, “you must work. We have several jobs for you. It is only a question of whether you are capable — or rather, of whether you are willing to be capable — of carrying out these jobs.”

“I am ready for anything,” I said. “That is why I came here.”

“I do not believe it,” said Solovejczyk. “I have not known you long, but I do not believe it. Do you know what this work entails? It entails a vile betrayal — a vile betrayal, I tell you. The betrayal of defenseless people.” He paused a while. Then he said: “And of defenseless women.…”

“I am used to it. In our profession…”

He cut me short. “I know the profession,” he said and bent his head. He began to search among the papers which lay before him; and the only sounds in the room were the rustling of paper and the slow ticking of the clock upon the wall.

“Sit down!” said Solovejczyk.

I sat down, and now my face was in the light of the green lamp, opposite his. He raised his eyes and stared fixedly at me. His eyes were dead, there was something blind in them, something comfortless and already far away. I held out against those eyes, although I was afraid of them, for there was nothing to be read in them, no thoughts, no feelings; and yet I knew that they were not blind, on the contrary they were exceedingly sharp. I knew very well that they were observing me, but I was unable to discover the reflex which every observing eye naturally reveals. Indeed, Solovejczyk was the only person whom I have ever found to possess that faculty; that is, the faculty of masking the eyes in the same way as many people can mask their faces.

I watched him. It lasted seconds, minutes; to me it seemed hours. The hair over his temple shone faintly gray, and the muscles along his chin rippled incessantly. It looked as though he were chewing over his reflections. At last he got up, walked across to the window, pulled the curtain back a little and beckoned to me. I came over to him. “Look there,” he said, and pointed at a figure on the opposite side of the street. “Do you know him?” I strained my eyes, I peered through the darkness, but all I could see was a smallish, well-dressed man, with a turned-up fur collar and brown hat, and a black stick in his right hand. “Do you recognize him?” asked Solovejczyk again. “No,” I said. “Well, we will wait a bit!” Good, we waited. In a short while the man began to walk up and down. After he had taken about twenty paces, a flash went through me. My eyes had not recognized him, my brain had not remembered him, but it flashed into my heart, my blood began to pulse faster. It was suddenly as though my muscles, my hands, my fingertips, my hair, had retained the memory which had been denied to my brain. It was he . It was the same half dragging, half tripping gait which once, when I was still young and innocent, I had noticed, in a fraction of a second and in spite of my inexperience, in Odessa. That was the first and only time in my life when I had seen that a limp could be graceful and that a foot could disguise itself as otherwise only a face can. And so I recognized the man on the opposite side of the street. It was none other than Lakatos

“Lakatos!” I said.

“You see!” said Solovejczyk, and stepped back from the window.

We sat down again opposite one another, exactly as we had sat before. With his gaze lowered to the papers on the desk, Solovejczyk said: “You have known Lakatos a long time?”

“A very long time,” I replied. “He is always meeting me. I would almost say, he is always meeting me in the decisive hours of my life.”

“He will often meet you again — probably,” said Solovejczyk. “I rarely believe, and only very unwillingly, in the supernatural. But with Lakatos, who visits me from time to time, I cannot avoid a certain superstitious feeling.”

I was silent. What could I have said? It seemed to me inexorably clear that I had been helplessly caught. A prisoner of Solovejczyk’s? A prisoner of Lutetia’s? A prisoner, even, of Lakatos’s?

After a pause Solovejczyk said: “He will betray you and perhaps destroy you.”

I picked up the papers containing my orders, a considerable bundle, and went.

“AufWiedersehen , until next Thursday,” said Solovejczyk.

“If I am to see you again,” I answered.

My heart was heavy.

When I left the house Lakatos was no longer to be seen. Far and wide — no Lakatos, although I searched thoroughly for him, anxiously even. I was afraid of him, and so I sought him anxiously. But I felt already, while I was trying to hunt him out, that I should not find him. Yes, I was certain that I would not find him.

How can one find the Devil by searching for him? He comes, he appears unhoped for, he vanishes. He vanishes, and he is always there.

From that hour I no longer felt safe from him. But it was not from him alone that I felt unsafe, it was from the whole world. Who was Solovejczyk? Who was Lutetia? What was Paris? Who was I myself?

More than all the others, I feared myself. Was it my own will which still decided my day, my night, and all my actions? Who was driving me to do what I did at that time? Did I love Lutetia? Did I not only love my passion, or rather my need to confirm myself, my humanity so to speak, through my passion? Who and what was I really — I, Golubchik? If Lakatos were there, I should cease to be Krapotkin, that seemed certain. Suddenly it became clear to me that I could be neither Golubchik nor Krapotkin. Soon I was spending half my days and nights with Lutetia. I had long ago ceased to hear what she said to me. She only spoke of unimportant things. I merely noticed many expressions which had hitherto been unknown to me, the cadence of words and sentences. Concerning my progress in French, I had much to thank her for. For, helpless as I was during those days, I never forgot that a “command of languages” might prove valuable to me — as Solovejczyk had once suggested. Well, after a few weeks I had a complete command of French. At home I sometimes dipped into English, German, Italian books; I stupefied myself with them, and I imagined that through them I was really enjoying an existence, a real existence. For example, I read English newspapers in the hotel lounge. And while I read them it seemed to me as though I were a fellow countryman of the white-haired, bespectacled English colonel over in the opposite armchair. For half an hour I persuaded myself that I was an Englishman, a colonel from the Colonies. And why shouldn’t I be an English colonel? Was I Golubchik? Was I Krapotkin? Who and what was I really?