Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

But to continue with my story. I asked Lutetia whether she had already seen my cousin. No — she said, he had only written to her. But sooner or later she was expecting a visit from him, probably in the dressmaker’s shop. “You will send him away immediately!” I said. “I don’t like you seeing him!” “It makes not the slightest difference to me whether you like it or not. Besides, I’m tired of you!” “Do you love him?” I asked, without looking at her. I was mad enough to believe that she would answer either yes or no. But she said: “And if I do love him? What then?” “Take care!” I said, “You don’t know me, or what I’m capable of.” “Of nothing!” she answered, and stepped over to the cage of the repulsive parrot and began tickling the bird’s carmine throat. In the next moment, it cackled three times, one after another: Krapotkin, Krapotkin, Krapotkin. Lutetia had taught it that trick. It was as if she already knew everything about me and wished to tell me only through the parrot.

I let the parrot finish speaking, out of politeness, as though it were human. Then I said: “You’ll see what I’m capable of!” “Well, show me then,” she retorted. And suddenly she fell into a rage, or acted as though she were in a rage. It seemed to me that her hair all at once began to wave, although there was no wind in the room! At the same time, the parrot’s feathers ruffled. Lutetia grasped the metal swing on which the horrible bird used to perch — and struck out blindly at me. I felt her blows, they hurt too, although I was very powerful. But far stronger than the blows was the surprise at seeing my well-known beloved Lutetia changed into a sort of deliberate, perfumed hurricane, an entrancing hurricane, which nevertheless provoked me into an attempt to tame her. I gripped her arms, she screamed with pain, the bird screeched shrilly as though it were calling the neighbors to help against me. Lutetia reeled, the blood ebbed from her face, she sank to the carpet. She certainly did not drag me with her, for I was too heavy. But I let myself fall. She encircled me with her arms. And so we lay together, for long hours, in ecstatic hatred.

I got up. It was still deep night, although I could already feel the approach of morning. I let Lutetia lie. I thought she was asleep. But she said in a tender, loving, childish voice: “Promise to come tomorrow to the shop. Protect me from your cousin. I cannot bear him. I love you!”

I went home, through the silent, fading night. I walked carefully, for I expected to meet Lakatos every moment.

It seemed, also, as though I could hear from time to time a soft, dragging step. Although I was afraid of my friend, I believed that that night I needed him urgently. I needed, so I believed, his advice. And yet I knew that it would be advice from Hell.

The next day, before I went to the dressmaker’s — that is, to Lutetia — I drank heavily. And while I befuddled myself, I believed that my brain was gradually growing clearer and clearer and forging cleverer and cleverer plans.

The dressmaker greeted me enthusiastically. His creditors — recognizable at first glance by their gloomy smiles and eloquent silence — were waiting for him in the next room.

I did not know exactly what I was saying. I wanted to see Lutetia. She was standing in her dressing room, between three mirrors, while a designer was trying different stuffs on her, alternately wrapping and unwrapping her, and it looked as though he were martyring her to a slow and elegant death with a hundred pins.

“Has he been here?” I asked, over the oily heads of three youths who were grouped around with materials and pins.

“No. He only sent some flowers!”

I wanted to say something more, but firstly I began to choke, and secondly Lutetia waved to me to leave the room. “This evening,” she said.

Monsieur Charron was waiting for me outside the door. “This afternoon, for certain,” I said, in order to avoid having to speak with him further, although I had no great: hopes that Solovejczyk would give me the money.

I went out quickly and drove to Solovejczyk.

I knew very well that he was seldom to be found at this hour. His room had two anterooms, each on an opposite side. The anterooms hung on the central room just like two ears on a head. One anteroom was reached through a white door with gilded moldings. — The other, on the opposite side, was curtained off by a heavy green portière. In the first room waited the unsuspecting, those who knew nothing of Solovejczyk’s real activities. In the second waited the others, we the initiated. I did not know them all, only a few. Through the portière we could hear everything that Solovejczyk discussed with the unsuspecting. They were mostly ridiculous matters: the export and import of grain, special concessions for hop merchants in the season, extension of passports for the sick, recommendations for businessmen to foreign governments. For us, the initiated, all these things held no interest; but our ears, trained to listen, took in everything. We could easily have talked with one another while we were thus waiting, but none of us could control our professional urge to listen; and so we avoided conversation, which would only have interfered with our listening. Also we mistrusted one another, even avoided one another. As soon as Solovejczyk had finished with the unsuspecting, he drew back the green portière, looked into our anteroom and selected, according to the importance of the person or the case, the first of us to go in. At this point, the other “initiateds” had to go out and along the corridor into the opposite anteroom, the one separated by a door through which one could hear nothing.

That afternoon Solovejczyk arrived late, but the unsuspecting — with whom he used to talk loudly, often indeed shouting — were soon disposed of. There were six of us waiting to see him. He called me in first.

“You have been drinking,” he said. “Sit down.”

Friendly as he had never been before, he offered me a cigarette out of a heavy silver box.

I had carefully prepared the beginning of my speech, but his friendliness dazed me and I forgot everything.

“I have nothing special to report,” I said. “I have only one request. I need money.”

“Of course,” said Solovejczyk. “The Prince is here.” He blew a cloud of smoke into the air. “Young man,” he began, “you will never be able, in the long run, to hold out against this competition. You will fail miserably.” He dissected and distended the word “miserably.” It was an endless, boundless “miserably.” “You are a person,” he continued, “whom I myself”—and for the first time I perceived a sort of vanity in him—“whom I myself,” he repeated, “cannot quite make out. You refuse to accept money. You wanted to get the Rifkins set free. You are gifted, certainly. But you are not complete. How can I express it — you are still a man. You are already a scoundrel — pardon the word; coming from my mouth it is not meant personally, but, so to speak, ‘literally’ But you still have human weaknesses. You must decide.”

“I have decided,” I said.

“Tell me honestly,” asked Solovejczyk, “were you really intending to set a trap for the Prince when you asked him to intervene on behalf of the Rifkins?”

“Yes,” I said, although, as you know, that was not true.

“I see,” said Solovejczyk. “Then you are complete. It would have been useless. The Prince will never let himself be caught. But you can still have the money. And you will bring the little Rifkin to Russia.”