Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

“But how?” I asked. “She is suspicious.”

“How, is your affair,” said Solovejczyk. “You can forge.”

I extinguished my cigarette in the black agate ashtray.

“I don’t know how to forge,” I said helplessly, like a child.

I was lost. Before my eyes stood the brave little Jewess. Before my eyes stood my beloved Lutetia. Before my eyes stood the enemy of my life, young Krapotkin. Before my eyes Lakatos suddenly limped into sight with his dragging foot. All of them, all, so it seemed to me, ruled my life. Only what was it now? Was it still my own life? A great rage against all four surged through me. An equal hatred against all of them, my friends, although I knew exactly how to differentiate between them, although I knew exactly that I really loved the brave Channa Rifkin, that I desired and despised Lutetia, only desiring her because I hoped to win thereby a petty, cheap, miserable triumph over Krapotkin, and that I feared Lakatos as the actual emissary of Satan who had thought out for me, for me especially, a little private devil. A sudden, indescribable, ecstatic desire filled me, the desire to be stronger than all of them, stronger even than my own feelings which bound me to them; to be stronger than my real love for the Jewish girl; stronger than my hatred for Krapotkin; stronger than my desire for Lutetia; stronger than my fear for Lakatos. Yes, I wanted to be stronger even than myself; that was what it really was.

So I plunged into the greatest crime of my life. But I did not yet know how to set about it, in the safest way, and I asked again timidly: “I don’t know how to forge.”

Solovejczyk looked at me with his dead, pale gray eyes and said: “Perhaps your old friend can advise you. Go out there.” And he pointed, not to the door, but to the portière through which I had come in.

One thing is certain, my friends. Fate guides our steps. A reasonable assumption, and as old as Fate itself. We see it sometimes. Mostly we do not wish to see it. I, too, belonged to those who are unwilling to see it, and all too often I closed my eyes tight in order not to see it, just as a child shuts its eyes in the dark so as not to be afraid of the darkness around it. But as for me — perhaps I was accursed, perhaps I was elect — Fate compelled me at every step, and in obvious, almost banal ways, to open my eyes again and again.

When I left the Embassy — it was situated, as you all know, in one of the most fashionable streets, together with several other embassies — I looked out for a bistro . For I belong to that numerous class which finds some measure of mental clarity, not in action, but in sitting down in front of a glass. So I looked out for a bistro . There was one about forty yards down a side street to the right; it was a so-called tabac . And not more than twenty yards farther on was another. I did not want to go into the tabac , I wanted to go into the other. So I walked past. But just as I reached the second, I turned around, for no explicable reason, and went back into the tabac . I sat down at one of the tiny little tables in the back portion of the shop. Through the glass door which separated me from the buffet I could see cigarette purchasers coming and going. I sat facing the glass door, and so never noticed that behind my back there was another door, an ordinary wooden one. I ordered a brandy and decided to consider my position.

“There you are, old friend,” I heard a voice say behind me. I turned around. You will have guessed who it was. It was my friend Lakatos.

I offered him only two fingers, but he squeezed them as though it were my whole hand.

He sat down immediately. He was gay, spruce; his white teeth glistened; his black mustache shimmered bluely; his straw hat was pushed on to one side, over the left ear. I noticed that he was carrying no cane today; for the first time I saw him without his stick. But the thing that caught my attention was his dispatch case, made of red Saffian leather.

“Good news,” he said and pointed to the case. “The prizes have been increased.”

“What sort of prizes.

“Prizes for enemies of the State,” he said, as though it were a question of prizes for runners or bicyclists — as was common at that time.

“I have just come from Monsieur Charron,” continued Lakatos. “He is expecting you.”

“He can wait!” I said. But I was uneasy.

While Lakatos dipped his pastry in the coffee — I can still remember, it was a French roll, what they call a croissant —he added casually: “ Á propos , you have friends here. The Rifkins.”

“Yes,” I said brazenly.

“I know,” said Lakatos. “The girl must go back to Russia. Hard, very hard, to deliver up such a brave girl.” He fell silent and dipped the croissant into his coffee again. As he swallowed the soddened pastry, he said: “Two thousand—”and then, after a longer pause—“rubles!”

We said nothing for a few minutes. Suddenly Lakatos stood up, opened the glass door, glanced at the clock over the buffet, and said: “I must go. I’ll leave my hat and case here. In ten, at the most fifteen, minutes, I shall be back.”

And he was already out of the door.

Opposite me leaned Lakatos’s fiery red case. The straw hat lay beside it, like a satellite. The lock on the case glistened like a tightly closed golden mouth. A greedy, covetous mouth.

A professional, but not only a professional, also a sort of supernatural, devilish curiosity compelled me continuously to glance across the table and stare at the dispatch case. I could easily open it before Lakatos returned. Ten minutes, he had said. Through the glass door I could hear the harsh ticking of the clock over the buffet. I was afraid of the case. On either side of the middle lock, which, as I have said, resembled a mouth, there were two smaller locks, and these now looked to me like eyes. I drank two more double brandies, and already the eyes on the case were beginning to wink at me. Still the clock ticked, and time passed, and I believed I suddenly knew how precious time was.

At moments it seemed to me that Lakatos’s red case was bowing to me from the chair on which it was propped. At last, when I thought it was about to offer itself to me completely, I stretched out for it. I opened it. Since I could still hear the hard and relentless ticking of the clock, it occurred to me that Lakatos might return any moment, so I went with the case into the lavatory. Should Lakatos come back in the meanwhile, I could always say that I had taken it with me as a precaution. It seemed to me as though I were not just taking it, but actually abducting it.

I opened it with feverish fingers. I should have already known what it contained — how could I not have known, I who knew so well the Devil and his relationship to me. But we often know things — as was the case with me — by quite other means than through our senses or understanding; and from laziness, cowardice, habit, we guard ourselves against such knowledge. Such were my feelings, too, at that moment. I mistrusted my own knowledge; or rather, I was making a desperate effort to mistrust it.

Some among you, my friends, may perhaps guess what were the papers I found in Lakatos’s dispatch case. Those that concerned me I knew well; I knew them from past experience in my profession. They were the stamped and signed passport papers which our people used to give to wretched emigrants in order to lure them back to Russia. By such means, countless people had been delivered up by us to the authorities. The unsuspecting victims journeyed happily home, safe, so they thought, with legal passports. But on the frontier they were arrested, and only after weeks and months of agonizing suspense were they brought before a court, removed to prison, and finally sent to Siberia. The unhappy fools had trusted us — put their faith in people of my type. The stamps were genuine, the signatures were genuine, the photographs were genuine — how could they suspect? Not even the official authorities knew of our shameful methods. On each passport there was a tiny sign which enabled our people at the frontier to distinguish those of the suspected from those of the unsuspected. Of course, those signs escaped the eye of a casual observer. And they were also changed frequently. Sometimes it was a minute pinprick through the passport owner’s photograph; then again, half a letter might be missing from the imprint of the round stamp; or else the owner’s name would be written in script instead of in ordinary handwriting. Of all these ruses the official authorities knew as little as the victims themselves. Only our people at the frontier knew the fiendish signs. In Lakatos’s dispatch case I found a complete set of stamps and ink pads, red and blue and black and violet. I returned to my table and waited.