Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years

by Thomas Mann

  In this connexion I cannot praise highly enough the counsel and assistance of my godfather. Nor can I express sufficient gratitude for the plans and suggestions that extraordinary man had worked out for each of us. These proved in the sequel to be altogether happy and fruitful inspirations, especially for me.

  Our former salon, once furnished with refinement and elegance and filled so often with an atmosphere of joy and festivity, now barren, pillaged, and hardly furnished at all, was the sorry scene of our conference. We sat in one corner on cane-bottomed walnut chairs, which had been part of the dining-room furniture, around a small green table that was really a nest of four or five fragile tea or serving tables.

  'Krull!' my godfather began (in his comfortable, friendly way he used to call my mother simply by her last name). 'Krull!' he said, turning toward her his hooked nose and those sharp eyes without brows or lashes, which were so strangely emphasized by the celluloid frames of his glasses, 'you hang your head, you look limp, and you're entirely wrong to act like that. The bright and cheery possibilities of life only reveal themselves after that truly cleansing catastrophe which is correctly called social ruin, and the most hopeful situation in life is when things are going so badly for us that they can't possibly go worse. Believe me, dear friends, I am thoroughly familiar with this situation, through inner experience if not in a material sense! Furthermore, you are not really in it yet and that's bound to be what's weighing down the wings of your soul. Courage, my dear! Arouse your spirit of initiative! Here the game is up, but what of it? The wide world lies before you. Your small personal account in the Bank of Commerce is not yet entirely exhausted. With that remaining nest egg you shall set yourself up to keep lodgers in some big city, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Cologne, or even Berlin. You are at home in the kitchen — forgive my inept expression — you know how to make a pudding out of crumbs and a tangy hash out of day-before-yesterday's leftovers. Furthermore, you are used to having people around you, used to feeding them and entertaining them. And so you will rent a few rooms, you will let it be known that you are ready to take in boarders and lodgers at reasonable rates, you will go on living as you have hitherto, only now you will let the consumers pay and thereby get your profit. It will simply be a matter of your patience and good humour producing an atmosphere of cheerfulness and comfort among your clients, and I should be much surprised if your institution does not prosper and expand.'

  Here my godfather paused, and we had an opportunity to give heartfelt expression to our approval and thanks. Presently he took up his discource again.

  'As far as Lympchen is concerned,' he continued (that was my sister's pet name), 'the obvious idea would be for her to remain with her mother and follow her natural vocation of making their guests' stay agreeable, and it is undeniable that she would prove herself an admirable and attractive filia hospitalis. Indeed, the chance of making herself useful in this capacity will always remain open. But for a start, I have something better in mind for her. In the days of your prosperity she learned to sing a little. Not to amount to much, her voice is weak, but it has a pleasant, tender quality, and her other advantages, which spring to the eye, add to its effectiveness. Solly Meerschaum in Cologne is a friend of mine from the old days and his principal business interest is a theatrical agency. He will have no trouble finding a place for Olympia either in a light-opera troupe, at first of the simpler sort, or in a music-hall company — and her first outfit will be paid for out of what remains of my ill-gotten gains. At the start her career will be dark and difficult. She may have to wrestle with life. But if she shows signs of character (which is more important than talent) and knows how to profit by her single talent, which consists of so many pounds, her path will swiftly lead upward from her lowly beginning — possibly to glittering heights. Of course, I, for my part, can only indicate general directions and sketch in possibilities; the rest is your affair.'

  Shrieking with joy, my sister flew to our counsellor and threw her arms around his neck. During his next words she kept her head hidden on his breast.

  'Now,' he said, and it was easy to see that what was coming lay especially close to his heart, 'in the third place I come to our fancy-dress boy.' (The reader will understand the reference contained in this epithet.) 'I have given thought to the problem of his future and, despite considerable difficulties in the way of finding a solution, I think I have hit upon one, though it may be only of a temporary kind. I have even begun a foreign correspondence on the subject; with Paris, to be specific — I'll explain in a moment. In my opinion, the most important thing is to introduce him to that way of life to which, through a misunderstanding, the school authorities thought they ought not to grant him honourable admittance. Once we have him in the clear the flood tide will bear him along and bring him, as I confidently hope, to happy shores.

  Now it seems to me that in his case a career as a hotel waiter offers the most hopeful prospects: both as a career in itself (which can lead to very lucrative positions in life) and thanks to those bypaths which open up here and there to left and right of the main thoroughfare and have provided a livelihood for many a Sunday's child before now. The correspondence I mentioned has been with the director of the Hotel Saint James and Albany in Paris, on the rue Saint-Honoré not far from the Place Vendôme (a central location, that is; I'll show it to you on my map) — with Isaak Stürzli, an intimate friend since the days when I lived in Paris. I have put Felix's family background and personal qualities in the most favourable light and I have vouched for his polish and his adroitness. He has a smattering of French and English; he will do well in the immediate future to extend his knowledge of these languages as much as possible. In any case, as a favour to me, Stürzli is prepared to accept him on probation — first, to be sure, without a salary. Felix will have free board and lodging and he will also be given some help in acquiring his livery, which will certainly be very becoming to him. In short, here is a way, here are space and a favourable environment for the development of his gifts, and I count on our fancy-dress boy to wait upon the distinguished guests of the Saint James and Albany to their complete satisfaction.'

  It is easy to imagine that I showed myself no less grateful to this splendid man than the women. I laughed for joy and embraced him in complete ecstasy. My cramped and odious native place disappeared at once, and the great world opened before me; Paris, that city whose very memory had made my poor father weak with joy throughout his life, arose in brightest majesty before my inner eye. However, the matter was not so simple, there was indeed a difficulty, or, as people say, a hitch; for I could not and might not go in search of the wide world until the matter of my military service was attended to; until my papers were in order, the borders of the Empire were insuperable barriers, and the question presented all the more disquieting an aspect since, as the reader knows, I had not succeeded in gaining the prerogatives of the educated class and would have to enter the barracks as a common recruit if I was found fit for service. This circumstance, this difficulty which I had hitherto put out of mind so lightly, weighed heavily on my heart at the moment when I was so elated by hope; and when I hesitantly mentioned the matter, it transpired that neither my mother and sister nor even Schimmelpreester had been aware of it: the former out of womanly ignorance and the latter because, as an artist, he was accustomed to pay scant attention to political and official affairs. Furthermore, he confessed to complete helplessness in this case; for, as he irritably explained, he did not have any sort of connexion with army doctors and there was therefore no chance of exerting personal influence on the authorities; I could just see about getting my head out of this noose myself.

  Thus I turned out to be entirely dependent on my own resources in this very ticklish matter, and the reader will judge whether I rose to the occasion. In the meanwhile, however, my youthful and volatile spirits were diverted and distracted in a variety of ways by the prospect of leaving, the imminent change of scene, and our preparations. My mother hoped to be taking in lodgers and boarders
by New Year, and so the move was to be made before the Christmas holiday. We had finally fixed on Frankfurt am Main as our goal because of the greater opportunities afforded by so large a city.

  How lightly, how impatiently does youth, bent on taking the wide world by storm, turn its back, contemptuous and unfeeling, on its little homeland, without once looking round at the towers and vineyard-covered hills! And yet, however much a man may have outgrown it and may continue to outgrow it, its ridiculous, too familiar image still remains in the background of his consciousness, or emerges from it strangely after years of complete forgetfulness: what was absurd becomes estimable; among the actions, impressions, successes of one's life abroad, at every juncture, one takes secret thought for that small world, at every increase in one's fortunes one asks inwardly what it may be saying or what it might say, and this is true especially when one's homeland has behaved unkindly, unjustly, and obtusely toward one.

  While he is dependent on it, the youth defies it; but when it has released him and may long since have forgotten him, of his own free will he gives it the authority to pass judgement on his life. Yes, some day, after many years rich in excitement and in change, he will probably be drawn back to his birthplace, he will yield to the temptation, conscious or unconscious, to show himself to its narrow view in all the glitter he has gained abroad, and with mixed anxiety and derision in his heart, he will feast upon its astonishment — just as, in due course, I shall report of myself.

  I wrote a polite letter to the aforementioned Stürzli in Paris, asking him to be patient on my account since I was not free to cross the border right away but must wait until the question of my fitness for military service had been decided — a decision, I ventured to add, that would probably prove favourable for reasons in no way affecting my future calling. Our remaining possessions were quickly transferred to packing cases and hand luggage. Among them were six magnificent starched shirts that my godfather had given me as a parting gift and that were to stand me in good stead in Paris. And one gloomy winter day we three, leaning out to wave from the window of the departing train, saw the fluttering red handkerchief of our good friend disappear in the fog. I only saw that splendid man once again.

  CHAPTER 4

  I SHALL pass quickly over the first confused days following our arrival in Frankfurt, for it pains me to recall the distressing role we were obliged to play in that rich and resplendent centre of commerce, and I should be afraid of earning the reader's displeasure by a circumstantial account of our situation. I say nothing of the dingy hostelry or boarding-house, unworthy of the name of hotel which it arrogated to itself, where, for reasons of economy, my mother and I spent several nights, my sister Olympia having parted company with us at the junction of Wiesbaden in order to seek her fortune in Cologne with Meerschaum, the agent. For my own part, I spent those nights on a sofa teeming with vermin that both stung and bit. I say nothing of our painful wanderings through that great, cold-hearted city, so unfriendly to poverty, in search of an abode we could afford, until, in a mean section, we finally came on one that had just been vacated and that corresponded fairly well to my mother's idea of a starting-place. It consisted of four small, sunless rooms and an even smaller kitchen, and was situated on the ground floor of a rear building, with a view of ugly courtyards. As, however, it cost only forty marks a month, and as it ill became us to be fastidious, we rented it on the spot and moved in the same day.

  Whatever is new holds infinite charm for the young, and although this gloomy domicile could not be compared even faintly with our cheerful villa at home, I nevertheless felt cheered by the unfamiliar surroundings and satisfied to the point of boisterousness. With rough and ready helpfulness I joined my mother in the necessary preliminaries, moving furniture, unpacking cups and plates from protective wood-shavings, stockings shelves and cupboards with pots and pans; I also undertook to negotiate with our landlord, a repulsively fat man with vulgar manners, about the necessary alterations in our quarters. 'Fat-belly', however, obstinately refused to pay for them, and in the end my mother had to dip into her own pocket-book so that the rooms we hoped to rent would not look completely dilapidated. This came hard, for the costs of moving and settling in had been high, and if our paying guests did not put in an appearance, our establishment would be threatened with bankruptcy before it was properly started.

  On the very first evening, as we were standing in the kitchen eating our supper of fried eggs, we decided, for reasons of pious and happy memory, to call our establishment 'Pension Loreley', and we immediately communicated this decision to my godfather Schimmelpreester, on a postcard we jointly composed; next day I hurried to the office of Frankfurt's leading newspaper with an advertisement couched in modest yet enticing terms and designed, by the use of boldface type, to impress that poetic name on the public consciousness. Because of the expense, we were unable for several days to put up a sign on the house facing the street that would attract the attention of passers-by to our establishment. How describe our jubilation when, on the sixth or seventh day after our arrival, the mail from home brought a package of mysterious shape with my godfather Schimmelpreester's name on it? It contained a metal sign one end of which was bent at a right angle and pierced by four holes. It bore, painted by the artist's own hand, that female figure clothed only in jewelry which had adorned our bottle labels, with the inscription: 'Pension Loreley' emblazoned in gold letters beneath it. When this had been fastened to the corner of the house facing the street in such a way that the fairy of the rock pointed with outstretched, ring-bedecked hand across the courtyard to our establishment, it produced the most beautiful effect.

  As it turned out, we did get customers: first of all in the person of a young technician or mechanical engineer, a solemn, quiet, even morose man, clearly discontented with his lot, who, nevertheless, paid punctually and led a discreet and orderly life. He had been with us barely a week when two other guests arrived together: members of the theatrical profession — a comic bass, unemployed because of having lost his voice completely, heavy and jolly in appearance but in a furious temper as a result of his misfortune and determined to restore his organ through persistent and futile exercises which sounded as though someone were drowning inside a hogshead and shouting for help; and with him his female supplement, a red-haired chorus girl with long, rose-coloured fingernails, who wore a dirty dressing-gown — a pathetic, frail creature who seemed to have chest trouble, but whom the singer, either on account of her shortcomings or simply to give vent to his general bitterness, beat frequently and severely with his braces, without, however, making her at all dubious about him or his affection for her.

  These two, then, occupied a room together, the machinist another; the third served as a dining-room, where we all consumed the meals my mother skilfully concocted out of very little. As I did not wish to share a room with my mother, for obvious reasons of propriety, I slept on a kitchen bench with bedding spread over it, and washed myself at the kitchen sink, mindful that this state of affairs could not last and that, in one way or another, my road would soon have a turning.

  The Pension Loreley began to flourish; the guests, as I have indicated, drove us into a corner, and my mother could properly look forward to an enlargement of the enterprise and the acquisition of a maid. In any case, the business was on its feet, my assistance was no longer required, and, left to myself, I saw that until I departed for Paris or was compelled to put on a uniform, there would be a prolonged period of leisurely waiting of the sort that is so welcome to a high-minded youth — indeed, so necessary for his inner development. Education is not won in dull toil and labour; rather it is the fruit of freedom and apparent idleness; one does not achieve it by exertion, one breathes it in; some secret machinery is at work to that end, a hidden industry of the senses and the spirit, consonant with an appearance of complete vagabondage, is hourly active to promote it, and you could go so far as to say that one who is chosen learns even in his sleep. For one must after all be of educable stuff i
n order to be educated. No one grasps what he has not possessed from birth, and you can never yearn for what is alien. He who is made of common clay will never acquire education; he who does acquire it was never crude. And here once again it is very hard to draw a just and clear distinction between personal desert and what are called favourable circumstances; if, on the one hand, beneficent fortune had placed me in a big city at the right moment and granted me time in abundance, on the other hand it must be said that I was entirely deprived of the means which alone throw open the many places of entertainment and education such a city contains. And in my studies I had, as it were, to be content with pressing my face against the magnificent gates of a pleasure garden.

  At this time I devoted myself to sleep almost to excess, usually sleeping until lunchtime, often until much later, eating a warmed-up meal in the kitchen or even a cold one, and afterwards lighting a cigarette, a gift from our machinist (who knew how greedy I was for this pleasure and how unable I was to provide it for myself out of my own funds). I did not leave the Pension Loreley until late in the afternoon, four or five o'clock. At that hour the fashionable life of the city reached its height, rich ladies rode out in their carriages to pay calls or go shopping, the coffee houses were filling, and the shop windows began to come magnificently alight. Then it was that I betook myself to the centre of town, embarking on a journey of pleasure and entertainment through the populous streets of the famous city, from which I would not return to my mother's house until the grey of dawn, though usually with much profit.