Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

“Well, my friends, I returned to Russia — gladly. In vain I inquired at the frontier for the Rifkins. Not even Kaniuk was to be found there. Nothing was known of my telegram. For all of you who have been through the war, there is no need to describe what it was — that World War. Death was near to everyone of us. We were as familiar with it as with a twin brother. Most of us feared it. But I–I sought it. I sought it with all my soul and all my strength. I sought it in the trenches, I sought it in outposts, between the barbed wire entanglements and in raiding parties, in poison gas and in every place where I might possibly have found it. I received decorations, but never a wound. It was simply that death shunned me. Death despised me. All around, my comrades fell in heaps. I mourned them not at all. I only mourned the fact that I could not die. I had murdered, and I could not die. I had brought a sacrifice to death, and death punished me: Me, me alone, it refused to have.

At that time I longed for it. For I believed then that death was an agony by which one could atone. Only later did I begin to realize that it was a deliverance. I had not earned it and therefore it had not come to deliver me.

It is unnecessary to remind you, my friends, of all the disasters which overtook Russia. They have, indeed, nothing to do with my story. To my story belongs only the fact that, against my desire and will, I escaped the Revolution unharmed and fled to Austria. From there I went to Switzerland.

But there is no need to tell you the various stages of my flight. It eventually brought me to France; it brought me to Paris. After death had disdained me, I was drawn back to the scene of my miserable crimes, to the scene of my murder.

I arrived in Paris. It was a joyous day, although autumn was already merging into winter. But winter in Paris looks very like our Russian autumn. Everywhere people were celebrating victory and peace. But what had victory to do with me, what did I care for peace? I turned my steps towards the house in the Champs Élysées, where I had once committed a murder.

The conciérge, the old concierge of former days, was still standing before the door. She did not recognize me. How could she have recognized me? I had grown gray — gray as I am today.

I inquired for Lutetia — and my heart thumped.

“Third floor left,” she said.

I climbed the stairs. I rang the bell. Lutetia herself opened the door. I recognized her immediately. She did not recognize me. She seemed about to shut the door.

“Ah,” she said after a while — stepped backwards, shut the door, and then opened it again. “Ah,” she repeated, and held out her arms.

I do not know why I fell into those arms. We embraced long and passionately. I felt clearly that the situation was unbelievably banal, ridiculous, even grotesque. Just think. I was holding in my arms the woman whom I believed I had killed with my own hands.

Well, my friends, I experienced the greatest — the deepest, if you like — of all tragedies: the tragedy of banality.

I stayed with Lutetia. Actually, she had long since ceased to be called that — and the name of the fashionable dressmaker, too, had passed into oblivion. So I stayed with her. From love, from remorse, from weakness — who knows?

I had killed neither of them. The Rifkins were probably the only ones I had killed. The day before yesterday I met young Prince Krapotkin in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Accompanying him was his bearded, silver and black secretary, who still lived and who, although thinner and shabbier than formerly, still looked less like the companion of a prince than his pallbearer, his mourner. The young Prince was hobbling along on two sticks — perhaps as a result of the injuries which I had inflicted on his head.

“Ah, Golubchik,” he called when he saw me — and his voice sounded different, almost happy.

“Yes, it is I,” I said. “Forgive me.”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing of the past,” he said, and with the aid of his two sticks drew himself up to his full height. “Only the present, the future, is important.”

I saw immediately that he was weak in his mind, and said: “Yes, yes.”

Suddenly a feeble fire glowed in his eyes, and he asked:

“Mademoiselle Lutetia? Is she still alive?”

“She is alive,” I said and hastily took my leave.

“And that is really the end of my story,” said Golubchik, the murderer. “I had a few more remarks to make.…

It was growing light. One could feel it even through the closed shutters. Through the chinks penetrated the victorious golden light of a summer’s morning, faint and yet strong. Outside could be heard the awakening noises of the Paris streets and, above all, the loud chorus of the birds.

We were all silent. Our glasses had long stood empty.

Suddenly there came a hard, sharp knocking on the shutter outside the door. “That’s her!” muttered Golubchik, our “murderer”—and in the next moment he had vanished. He had hidden himself under the table.

The host of the “Tari-Bari” walked leisurely across to the door. He opened it. He inserted — and to us it seemed to last an eternity — the great key into the lock; and slowly, slowly and reluctantly, the iron roller-shutter creaked upwards. The new day flowed in, full and triumphant, into our nocturnal yesterday. But more determined even than the morning light, an elderly, withered woman pushed her way into the restaurant. She looked more like an overgrown, emaciated bird than a woman. A short black veil, clumsily sewn to the left edge of her ridiculous hat, tried in vain to conceal a deep hideous scar over her left eye. And the shrill voice in which she asked: “Where is my Golubchik? Is he here? Where is he?” frightened us all so much that, had we even been willing, we would have been unable to tell her the truth. She cast a few vicious and inhumanly sharp glances around the room — and then left.

A few moments later Golubchik crept out from underneath the table.

“She has gone!” he said, relieved. “That was Lutetia.” And immediately afterwards: “Auf Wiedersehen . My friends. Until tomorrow evening!”

With him also went the chauffeur. Outside the first customer was already waiting. He was hooting impatiently on his horn.

Our host remained alone with me. “What stories one hears in your restaurant!” I said.

“Quite ordinary, quite ordinary,” he replied. “What is there strange in life? It gives us nothing but ordinary stories. But that won’t stop you coming again, I hope?”

“Of course not!” I said.

When I spoke those words, I was convinced that I would often again see the restaurant and its owner and the murderer Golubchik and all the other guests. I went out.

Our host thought it necessary to accompany me to the threshold. It looked as though he were still slightly doubtful of my intention to continue visiting his restaurant. “You will really come again?” he asked once more. “But of course,” I said. “You know that I live just across the road, in the Hotel des Fleurs Verts.” “I know, I know,” he said, “but it suddenly seemed to me as though you were already far away.”

These unexpected words did not exactly frighten me, but I was greatly surprised by them. I felt that they contained some great and as yet unknown truth. Of course, it was nothing more than conventional politeness that made the host of the “Tari-Bari” walk with me to the door; for I was only a regular guest, who had shared in a somewhat alcoholic night. And yet there was something solemn, something unusually, I might almost say, unjustifiably, solemn about this procedure. The first carts were already returning from the markets. They rattled gaily along, although the drivers, wearied by their night’s work, were asleep, and the reins in their sleeping hands seemed to be asleep too. A blackbird came hopping boldly up to the restaurant keeper’s shabby, loose felt slippers. It stood calmly beside us, as though sunk in thought and yet interested in our conversation. The diverse sounds of morning were awakening to life. Doors opened gratingly, windows rattled softly, brooms swept harshly over the pavements, and somewhere a child was crying, having perhaps been startled from its sleep. “This is a morning like any other morning,” I said to myself. “An ordinary Parisian summer morning.” And aloud I said to our host: “But I’m not going away. I’m not thinking of it.” And at that I gave a little irresolute laugh. It should have been a strong, convincing laugh, but unfortunately it emerged as such a miserable effort: a real abortion of a laugh.…