The Confessions of Felix Krull

by Thomas Mann

  The Twentymans, father, mother, and daughter, together with a maid, had occupied a suite in the Saint James and Albany for a number of weeks, a fact which in itself indicated a gratifying degree of wealth. This was confirmed and made conspicuous by the magnificent jewelry Mrs Twentyman wore to dinner, which, one must admit, was wasted. For Mrs Twentyman was a joyless woman — joyless for those around her and, probably, for herself as well. Her husband's successful business activities in Birmingham had obviously raised her from some lower-middle-class sphere to a social plane that made her stiff and uncomfortable. Mr Twentyman, his face flushed by his liberal consumption of port, radiated more human kindliness; his joviality, however, was greatly damped by the hardness of hearing which produced an empty, strained expression in his watery blue eyes. He used a black ear trumpet, into which his wife had to speak when, as was seldom the case, she had something to say to him. He extended it to me, too, when I advised him what to order. Eleanor, his daughter, a girl of seventeen or eighteen, sat opposite him at table number eighteen. From time to time he would summon her by a gesture to come and sit beside him for a short conversation through the trumpet.

  His fondness for the child was obvious and winning. As to Mrs Twentyman, I will not contest her motherly affection, but instead of expressing it in loving words and glances she concentrated it in a critical supervision of Eleanor's conduct. Each time she raised her tortoiseshell lorgnette to her eyes, Mrs Twentyman would find something to correct in her daughter's coiffure or deportment; she would forbid her to roll bread crumbs into little balls, lift a chicken bone in her fingers or peer inquisitively round the dining-room — and so on. All this supervision indicated a parent's uneasiness and concern and may well have been annoying to Miss Twentyman; the equally annoying experiences I had with her, however, forced me to admit that they were not unjustified.

  She was a blonde creature, pretty in the fashion of a young chamois, and when she wore her little silk evening dress with its modest décolletage her collar-bones were the most touching sight in the world. Since I have always had a weakness for the Anglo-Saxon type, of which she was a very notable example, I enjoyed seeing her. Moreover, I saw her constantly, at meal-times, after meals, and at the tea-time musicales where I served and where the Twentymans, at least at first, used to appear. I was kind to my little chamois, surrounded her with the attentions of a devoted brother, set her food before her, passed her the dessert twice, provided her with grenadine, which she loved to drink, and gently draped her embroidered shawl around her thin, snow-white shoulders when she got up from the table. All in all, I did decidedly too much, I thoughtlessly sinned against this too responsive soul by not sufficiently taking into account the magnetism my being exerts, whether I will or no, on all my fellow creatures who are not completely insensitive. The effect would have been the same, I venture to believe, even if my mortal dress, as it is called at the end — my appearance, that is — had been less attractive; for that was only an external symbol of a deeper power — sympathy.

  In short, I was very soon forced to realize that the little one had fallen head over heels in love with me, and this realization, naturally, was not mine alone. Peering worriedly through her tortoiseshell lorgnette, Mrs Twentyman had made the same discovery, as I learned at lunch one day from her hisses and whispers behind my back:

  'Eleanor! If you don't stop staring at that boy, I'll send you up to your room and you'll have to eat alone till we leave!'

  But, alas, the little chamois was lacking in self-control; it never occurred to her to obey or to make the slightest attempt to conceal that she had fallen in love. Her blue eyes clung to me constantly in a dreamy ecstasy; when they met mine she lowered them to her plate and flushed scarlet, but she immediately raised them again, as though under some compulsion, in a glance of complete and glowing surrender. One could understand her mother's watchfulness; no doubt she had been warned by earlier indications that this child of Birmingham respectability was inclined to be irresponsible, inclined, in fact, to an innocent and fierce belief in her right and even her duty to surrender openly to passion. Certainly I did nothing to encourage this, my considerateness bordered on severity, and in my attitude toward her I never went beyond the attentiveness that was part of my duty. I approved the decision, which no doubt was made by her mother and must certainly have seemed cruel to her, when the Twentymans at the beginning of the second week gave up their table with me and moved to the distant part of the hall where Hector served.

  But my wild chamois was not without resources. Suddenly at eight o'clock one morning she appeared in the breakfast room for petit déjeuner, whereas before that her practice, like her parents', had been to have breakfast in her room. She changed colour on entering and searched for me with reddened eyes. There was no trouble in finding a table in my section, for at that hour the room was almost empty.

  'Good morning, Miss Twentyman. Did you rest well?'

  'Very little rest, Armand, very little,' she murmured.

  I indicated I was sorry to hear it. 'But then,' I said, 'perhaps it would have been wiser to stay in bed a little longer and have your tea and porridge there. I'll get them for you right away, but I can't help thinking you would have enjoyed them more comfortably there. It's so calm and peaceful in the room, in bed ...'

  What did this child reply? 'No, I prefer to suffer.'

  'But you are making me suffer, too,' I replied softly, indicating to her on the menu the kind of marmalade to order.

  'Oh, Armand, then we suffer together!' she said and looked up at me with her tired, tear-stained eyes.

  What was to come of it? I wished heartily for their departure, but it was delayed; it was understandable enough that Mr Twentyman was reluctant to have his stay in Paris cut short by his daughter's emotional whims, of which he had no doubt heard through his black trumpet. Miss Twentyman, however, came down every morning while her parents still slept — they used to sleep until ten o'clock, so that Eleanor could pretend, if her mother looked in to see her, that the breakfast dishes had already been taken down by room service — and I had the devil's own time to protect her reputation in the eyes of those around, and conceal her unhappy state, her attempts to press my hand, and other infatuated nonsense. She remained deaf to my warnings that her parents must some day discover the trick she was playing on them, her breakfast secret. No, she replied, Mrs Twentyman slept most soundly in the mornings, and how much better she liked her when she was asleep than when she was supervising her! Mummy did not love her, she was only interested in keeping a sharp eye on her through her lorgnette. Daddy loved her, but did not take her heart seriously; this was something that Mummy did, if only in the worst sense, and Eleanor was inclined to put that down to her credit. 'For I love you!'

  For the moment I pretended not to hear her. But when I came back to serve her I said softly and persuasively.

  'Miss Eleanor, the words you let fall just now about "love" are pure imagination and simple nonsense. Your Daddy is perfectly right not to take them seriously — although your mother is right too, in her way, to take them seriously — that is, as nonsense — and to forbid you to indulge in this sort of thing. Please don't take yourself quite so seriously, to your distress and mine, but try instead to see the funny side of this — something I certainly won't do, far from it, but you must try to. For what good is all this? You must see that it is unnatural. Here you are, the daughter of a man like Mr Twentyman, who has reached a pinnacle of wealth and who has brought you with him for a few weeks' stay at the Saint James and Albany, where I am employed as a waiter. For that's all I am, Miss Eleanor, a waiter, a lowly member of our social order, which I regard with reverence, but toward which you behave rebelliously. It's abnormal, too, for you not to ignore me, as would be natural and as your Mummy quite properly demands, but instead to come down secretly to breakfast and talk to me about "love" while your parents are prevented by their peaceful slumbers from coming to the defence of the social order. This "love" of yours is a forbidd
en love which I cannot approve, and I am forced to dismiss my own pleasure in the fact that you like to see me. It's all right for me to like to see you, if I keep it to myself, that's quite true. But for you, Mr and Mrs Twentyman's daughter, to like to see me, that's impossible, that's contrary to nature. Besides, it's nothing but an optical illusion arising principally from this tail-coat à la Saint James and Albany with its velvet trim and gold buttons, which is only an adornment concealing my lowly state; without it I would look like nothing at all, I assure you! What you call "love" is something that happens to people on trips and at the sight of tail-coats like mine. When you have left, as you will very soon, you'll forget it before you get to the next station. Leave the memory of our encounter behind you, leave it to me; then it will be preserved without encumbering you!'

  Was that not kindly said? What more could I do for her? But she only wept, so that I was glad the near-by tables were empty; sobbing, she chided me for my cruelty and would hear nothing about the natural social order and the unnaturalness of her infatuation, but every morning insisted that if only we could be entirely alone and undisturbed, untrammelled in word and deed, then everything would work out happily — provided only that I was a little fond of her, a fact I did not dispute, at least to the extent of my being grateful for her partiality. But how were we to contrive a rendezvous where we would be alone and untrammelled in word and deed? She had no more idea than I, but did not on that account cease her pleading; she imposed on me the duty of finding such an opportunity.

  In short, I had the very devil of a time with her. And this would have been bad enough if it had happened by itself and not at exactly the same time as the even more serious incident with Lord Strathbogie! No small trial this, since what was at stake was not an infatuated young girl but a personality of great importance whose sensibilities counted for something in the world, so that one could neither invite him to see the funny aspect of the affair nor find anything funny in it oneself. At any rate, I was not the man to do so.

  His lordship, who had been staying with us for two weeks and who ate at one of my small single tables, was a man of obvious distinction, about fifty years of age, of moderate height, slender, elegantly dressed; his still thick, carefully brushed hair was iron grey, like the clipped moustache which did not conceal the almost feminine delicacy of his lips. There was nothing delicate or aristocratic about the cut of his too large, almost block-like nose, which jutted straight out of his face to form a high ridge between the somewhat slanting brows beetling above the green-grey eyes. These eyes seemed to meet one as though with a great effort of self-discipline. If his nose was deplorable, his cheeks and chin were quite the reverse, clean-shaven to the ultimate degree of smoothness and well massaged. He used some kind of violet water on his handkerchief, whose perfume had a naturalness and springlike scent I have never encountered since.

  There was always a kind of embarrassment in his way of entering the dining-hall, which might have seemed puzzling in so important a gentleman, but which, in my eyes at least, did nothing to detract from his impressiveness. It was completely compensated for by his extreme dignity, and it simply led one to imagine that there was something remarkable about him and that he therefore felt himself singled out and observed. His voice was soft, and I replied to it even more softly, only to discover too late that this was not good for him. His manner was friendly but tinged with melancholy, like that of a man who has suffered a great deal; what person of goodwill would not have reacted to it as I did by a responsive attentiveness in serving him? However, it was not good for him. To be sure, he seldom looked at me during the brief exchanges about the weather or the menu to which our conversation was at first restricted — just as in general he employed his eyes very little, keeping them in reserve and making sparing use of them, as though he were afraid their play might produce unpleasant consequences. It was a week before our relationship became somewhat freer and ceased to be bound completely by the formal and conventional; then I observed with pleasure, which was not unmixed with anxiety, the signs of his personal interest in me. A week — that is probably the minimum time required by a person in daily association with an unfamiliar being to become aware of certain changes, especially when the eyes are so little used.

  It was then that he asked me how long I had been in service, where I came from, how old I was, hearing the number of my years with an emotional shrug of the shoulders and the exclamation 'Mon Dieu!' or 'Good Heavens!' — he spoke English and French interchangeably. Why, he inquired, if I was German by birth did I have the French name of Armand. It was not mine, I replied, I simply answered to it in obedience to instructions from my superiors. My real name was Felix. 'Ah, pretty,' he said. 'If it were within my power, I would give you back your real name.' He added the information that his own Christian name was Nectan, which had been the name of a king of the Picts, the original inhabitants of Scotland. There was something, it seemed to me, inconsistent with his exalted position, something that impressed me as unstable in his saying this. I replied, to be sure, with a show of attentive interest, but I couldn't help wondering what use I was to make of the information that his name was Nectan. It was of no good to me, for I had to call him milord and not Nectan.

  Bit by bit I learned that he owned a castle not far from Aberdeen, where he lived alone with an elderly sister, who was unfortunately in delicate health; and he had a summer estate as well on one of the highland lakes in a region where the people still talked Gaelic (he spoke a little himself), a place that was very beautiful and romantic, with rugged and precipitous cliffs and air perfumed by the wild flowers of the heath. Near Aberdeen, too, it was very beautiful, the city afforded every kind of entertainment for those interested in that sort of thing, the air blew in from the North Sea strong and clean. I was further given to understand that he loved music and played the organ. In his country house on the mountain lake it was, to be sure, only a harmonium.

  These confidences, which were not made in a single conversation but dropped casually and fragmentarily now and then, could not, with the possible exception of 'Nectan', be considered as evidences of excessive communicativeness on the part of a man travelling alone who had no one to chat with but the waiter. The most favourable opportunity came after lunch, when his lordship, as was his custom at noon, instead of taking his coffee in the lobby, remained at his small table in the almost deserted dining-hall smoking Egyptian cigarettes. He always took several cups of coffee. Before that he would not have drunk anything or eaten much of anything. Indeed, he ate very little, and one was forced to wonder how he could exist on the nourishment he consumed. He made a good start, to be sure, with a soup; strong consommé, mock turtle, or ox-tail soup disappeared completely from his plate. After that, however, whatever delicacies I placed before him were only tasted; he would light another cigarette immediately and let course after course be carried out almost untouched. After a while I could not refrain from commenting on this.

  'Mais vous ne mangez rien, milord,' I said in distress. 'Le chef se formalisera, si vous dédaignez tous ses plats.'

  'What can I do, I have no appetite,' he replied. 'I never have. The business of nourishment — I have a decided dislike for it. Perhaps it's a symptom of a certain self-repudiation.'

  The phrase, which I had never heard before, startled me and called forth my politeness.

  'Self-repudiation?' I exclaimed softly. 'Milord, no one can follow you there or agree with you. You will meet with the strongest opposition!'

  'Really?' he asked and slowly raised his eyes from his plate to my face. His glance still seemed an act of self-discipline. But this time his eyes showed that the effort was gladly made. His lips smiled with a delicate melancholy. But over them his over-sized nose jutted toward me straight and massive.

  How can one, I thought, have so delicate a mouth and such a block of a nose?

  'Really!' I assured him in some confusion.

  'Perhaps, mon enfant,' he said, 'self-repudiation helps one to appreciate
someone else.'

  At this he got up and went out of the hall. I stayed behind, occupied with a variety of thoughts while I cleared and reset the small table.

  There was little doubt that contact with me several times a day was not good for his lordship. But I could neither put an end to it nor could I render it harmless even by excluding all sensitive responsiveness from my conduct and keeping it stiff and formal so that I wounded the very feelings I had inspired. To make merry over them was even more impossible than in the case of little Eleanor. It was equally out of the question to fall in with their intention. This resulted in a difficult conflict, which was to turn into a temptation through the unexpected proposal he made to me — unexpected in its form, though not at all in essence.

  It happened toward the end of the second week, while I was serving coffee in the lobby after dinner. The small orchestra was playing behind a hedge of plants near the entrance to the dining-room. At some distance from it, at the other end of the room, his lordship had chosen a small, isolated table which he had used several times before, and it was here that I served his coffee. As I passed him a second time he asked for a cigar. I brought him two boxes of imported cigars, one with bands, the other without. He looked at them and said: