Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years

by Thomas Mann

  'I went through six grades at high school,' I replied softly, feigning distress at having alienated and offended him.

  'And why not the seventh?'

  I let my head hang and threw him an upward glance that may well have spoken for me and struck the recipient to the heart. 'Why do you torment me?' I asked with this look. 'Why do you force me to speak? Don't you hear, don't you feel, don't you see that I am a refined and remarkable youth who, beneath an agreeable and conventional exterior, hides deep wounds that life has cruelly inflicted on him? Is it delicate of you to force me to reveal my shame before so many respectable gentlemen?' Thus my glance; and, discriminating reader, it was by no means a lie, even though its piteous plaint at this particular instant was the product of calculation and design. For lies and hypocrisy refer properly to a sensation that is illegitimately produced because its outward expression corresponds to no true and deep experience, a state of affairs that can only result in pathetic, bungling apishness. Should we not, however, be able to command the timely and useful manifestation of our own precious experiences? Briefly, sadly, and reproachfully my glance spoke of early acquaintance with the injustices and misfortunes of life. Then I sighed deeply.

  'Answer,' said the senior staff doctor in a milder tone.

  Struggling with myself, I replied hesitantly: 'I was passed over at school and did not complete the course because of a recurrent indisposition that on several occasions confined me to my bed and frequently prevented me from attending class.

  Also, the teachers thought it their duty to reproach me with lack of attention and diligence, which depressed me very much and disheartened me, since I was not aware of any failure or carelessness in this respect. And yet it so happened that at times a good deal escaped me, I did not hear it or absorb it, whether a classroom exercise was in question or the prescribed homework, whose completion I neglected because I knew nothing about it, not because I entertained other and unsuitable thoughts but because it was exactly as though I had not been present, had not been there in the classroom when the assignments were given out, and this led to reprimands and severe disciplinary measures on the part of the authorities, and on my own part to great —'

  Here I could no longer find words, grew confused, fell silent, with my shoulders twitching strangely.

  'Stop!' he said. 'Do you have trouble hearing? Step farther back there! Repeat what I say.' And now with laughable distortions of his thin lips and sparse beard, he began to whisper cautiously: 'Nineteen, twenty-seven,' and other figures which I took pains to say after him promptly and exactly; for like all my faculties my hearing was not simply normal but of a special acuity and fineness, and I saw no reason to hide this fact. And so I understood and repeated compound numbers that he only breathed out, and my unusual talent seemed to fascinate him, for he pressed on with the experiment further and further, sending me into the remotest corner of the room in order to hide rather than communicate numbers of four figures at a distance of six or seven yards, and then with pursed mouth he directed significant glances at the commissioner's table when I, half-guessing understood and repeated what he believed he had barely let slip across his lips.

  'Well,' he said finally with pretended indifference, 'you hear very well. Step up here again and tell us precisely how this indisposition that occasionally kept you from school manifested itself.'

  Obediently I approached.

  'Our family doctor,' I replied, 'Health Councillor Düsing, used to explain it as a kind of migraine.'

  'So, you had a family doctor. Health Councillor, was he? And he explained it as migraine! Well, how did it show itself, this migraine? Describe an attack for us. Did you have headaches?'

  'Headaches, too!' I replied in surprise, looking at him with respect. 'A kind of roaring in both ears and especially a great feeling of distress and fear or rather a timorousness of the whole body, which finally turns into a spasm of choking so violent that it almost hurls me out of bed.'

  'Spasms of choking?' he said. 'Any other spasms?'

  'No, certainly no others,' I assured him with great earnestness.

  'But the roaring in the ears?'

  'A roaring in the ears did certainly often accompany it.'

  'And when did the attacks occur? Possibly when there had been preceding excitement of some sort? Some specific cause?'

  'If I am right,' I replied hesitantly and with a questioning glance, 'during my school clays they often ensued just after an incident — that is, a difficulty of the sort I told -'

  'When you failed to hear certain things just as though you had not been there?'

  'Yes, Surgeon-in-Chief.'

  'Hm,' he said. 'And now just think back and tell us carefully whether you noticed any signs that regularly preceded and heralded this condition when it seemed to you that you weren't present. Don't be hesitant. Overcome your natural embarrassment and tell us frankly whether you noticed anything of the sort at such times.'

  I looked at him, looked him resolutely in the eye for a considerable time, while I nodded my head, heavily, slowly, and as it were in bitter reflection.

  'Yes, I often feel strange; strange, alas, was and is very often my state of mind,' I finally said softly and reflectively. 'Often it seems as though I have suddenly come close to an oven or a fire, so hot do my limbs feel, first my legs, then the upper parts, and this is accompanied by a kind of tickling or prickling that astonishes me, all the more so because at the same time I have before my eyes a play of colour that is really beautiful but that nevertheless terrifies me; and if I may come back to the prickling for a moment, one might describe it as ants running over one.'

  'Hm. And after this you fail to hear certain things?'

  'Yes, that is so, superintendent, sir! There is a great deal I don't understand about my nature, and even at home it has caused me embarrassment, for at times I know I have involuntarily dropped my spoon at the table and stained the tablecloth with soup, and afterwards my mother scolds me because I, a full-grown man, behave so boorishly in the presence of our guests — theatrical artists and scholars they are, for the most part.'

  'So, you drop your spoon? And only notice it a bit later? Tell me, did you ever tell your family doctor, this Health Councillor or whatever that civilian title is, about these little irregularities?'

  Softly and dejectedly I replied that I had not.

  'And why not?' the other persisted.

  'Because I was ashamed,' I replied falteringly, 'and did not want to tell anyone; it seemed to me that I must keep it secret. And then, too, I hoped secretly that in time it would go away. And I would never have thought I could have enough confidence in anyone to confess to him what very strange experiences I sometimes have.'

  'Hm,' he said, twitching his sparse beard derisively, 'because you probably thought they would simply explain it all as migraine. Didn't you say,' he went on, 'that your father was a distiller?'

  'Yes — that is, he owned a sparkling-wine establishment on the Rhine,' I said, politely confirming his words and at the same time correcting them.

  'Right, a sparkling-wine establishment! And so your father was probably a distinguished connoisseur of wine, wasn't he?'

  'He was indeed, superintendent, sir!' I said happily, while a wave of amusement visibly swept the commission table. 'Yes, he was indeed.'

  'And no hypocrite about himself either, rather a man who loved a good drop, was he not, and, as the saying goes, a mighty drinker before the Lord?'

  'My father,' I replied evasively, as though withdrawing my levity, 'was love of life itself. That much I can agree to.'

  'So, so, love of life. And what did he die of?'

  I was silent. I glanced at him, then bowed my head. And in an altered voice I replied:

  'May I most humbly request the battalion surgeon to be so kind as not to insist on his question?'

  'You are not permitted to refuse any information whatsoever!' he replied in a shrill bleat. 'What I ask you is asked with deliberation and your answers are
important. In your own interest I warn you to tell us truthfully the manner of your father's death.'

  'He received a church funeral,' I said with heaving breast, and my excitement was too great for me to report things in their proper order. 'I can bring you papers to prove that he was buried from a church, and inquiries will show that a number of officers and Professor Schimmelpreester walked behind the coffin. Spiritual Counsellor Chateau himself said in his funeral oration,' I went on with increasing vehemence, 'that the gun went off accidentally as my father was examining it, and if his hand shook and he was not completely master of himself, that was because we had been visited by a great calamity.'

  I said 'great calamity' and made use of other extravagant and figurative expressions. 'Ruin had knocked at our door with her bony knuckles,' I said, beside myself, knocking in the air with my own bent index finger by way of illustration, 'for my father had fallen into the toils of evil men, bloodsuckers, who cut his throat and everything was sold and squandered — the glass — harp,' I stammered foolishly, and felt myself change colour, for now something altogether astounding was about to happen to me, 'the Aeolian — wheel -' and at that instant this is what occurred.

  My face became contorted — but that tells very little. In my opinion, it was contorted in an entirely new and terrifying fashion, such as no human passion could produce, but only a satanic influence and impulse. My features were literally thrust apart in all directions, upward and downward, right and left, only to be violently contracted toward the centre immediately thereafter; a horrible, one-sided grin tore at my left, then at my right cheek, compressing each eye in turn with frightful force while the other became so enormously enlarged that I had the distinct and frightful feeling that the eyeball must pop out — and it could have done so for all of me — let it happen! Whether or not it popped out was hardly the important question, and in any case this was not the moment for tender solicitude about my eye. If, however, so unnatural a play of expression might well have aroused in those present that extreme distaste which we call horror, it was nevertheless only the introduction and prelude to a real witch's Sabbath of face-making, a whole battle of grimaces, fought out during the following seconds on my youthful countenance. To recount in detail the distortions of my features, to describe completely the horrible positions in which mouth, nose, brows, and cheeks — in short, all the muscles of my face — were involved, changing constantly, moreover, so that not a single one of these facial deformities repeated itself — such a description would be far too great an undertaking. Let just this much be said, that the emotional experiences which might correspond to these physiognomical phenomena, the sensations of mindless cheerfulness, blank astonishment, wild lust, inhuman torment, and tooth-grinding rage, simply could not be of this world, but must rather belong to an infernal region where our earthly passions, magnified to monstrous proportions, would find themselves horribly reproduced. But is it not true that those emotions whose expressions we assume really do reproduce themselves in premonitory and shadowy fashion in our souls? Meanwhile the rest of my body was not still, though I remained standing in one spot. My head lolled and several times it twisted almost entirely around just as if Old Nick were in the act of breaking my neck; my shoulders and arms seemed on the point of being wrenched out of their sockets, my hips were bowed, my knees turned inward, my belly was hollowed, while my ribs seemed to burst the skin over them; my teeth were clamped together, not a single finger but was fantastically bent into a claw. And so, as though stretched on a hellish engine of torture, I remained for perhaps two-thirds of a minute.

  I was not conscious during this most difficult and consequently lengthy period, at least I was not aware of my surroundings and audience, for to keep them in mind was rendered wholly impossible by the rigours of my condition. Rough shouts reached my ears as though from a great distance without my being able to understand them. Coming to myself on a chair, which the army doctor had hurriedly pushed under me, I choked violently on some stale, warmish tap water which this scholar in uniform had been at pains to pour down my throat. Several of the gentlemen of the commission had sprung up and were bending forward over the green table with expressions of consternation, indignation, and even disgust. Others revealed more sympathetically their amazement at the impressions they had received. I saw one who was holding both fists against his ears; probably through some kind of contagion, he had twisted his own face into a grimace; another had two fingers of his right hand pressed against his lips and was blinking his eyelids with extraordinary rapidity. As far as I myself was concerned, I had no sooner looked about me with a restored but naturally shocked expression than I hastened to put an end to a scene that could only appear unseemly to me. I rose from my chair quickly and bewilderedly and took up a military posture beside it, which, to be sure, ill-suited my naked human state.

  The doctor had stepped back, with the glass still in his hand.

  'Have you come to your senses?' he asked with a mixture of anger and sympathy.

  'At your service, sir,' I replied in a zealous tone.

  'And do you retain any recollection of what you have just gone through?'

  'I humbly beg your pardon,' I replied. 'For a moment I was a little distraught.

  Short, rather harsh laughter answered me from the commission table. There was repeated murmuring of the word 'distraught'.

  'You certainly didn't seem to be paying very close attention,' the doctor said dryly. 'Did you come here in a state of excitement? Were you specially anxious about the decision on your fitness for service?'

  'I must admit,' I replied, 'that it would have been a great disappointment to be turned down, and I hardly know how I could have broken such news to my mother. In earlier days she was used to having many members of the officers' corps in her home, and she regards the Army with the greatest admiration. For this reason it is especially important to her for me to be taken into the service, and she not only looks forward to conspicuous advantages in respect of my education but also, and in particular, to a desirable strengthening of my health, which occasionally leaves something to be desired.'

  He seemed to regard my words with contempt and as worthy of no further consideration.

  'Rejected,' he said, putting down the glass on the little table where lay the instruments of his profession, the measuring-tape, stethoscope, and little hammer. 'The barracks is no health resort,' he snapped at me over his shoulder, turning to the gentlemen at the commission table.

  'This person summoned for duty,' he explained in a thin bleat, 'suffers from epileptoid attacks, the so-called equivalents, which are sufficient to negate absolutely his fitness for service. My examination shows that there is obviously a hereditary taint from his alcoholic father, who, after his business failure, ended his life by suicide. The appearance of the so-called aura was unmistakable in the patient's obviously embarrassed descriptions. Furthermore the feeling of severe distress which, as we have heard, at times confined him to bed and which my colleague in civil life,' (here a wooden derision appeared once more on his thin lips) 'attempted to diagnose as so-called migraine, is to be scientifically designated as a depressed condition following a precedent attack. Especially significant for the nature of the illness is the secrecy the patient observed in regard to his symptoms; for though he is obviously of a communicative character, he kept them secret from everyone, as we heard. It is worth noting that even today there persists in the consciousness of many epileptics something of that mystical, religious attitude which the ancient world adopted toward this nervous disorder. This individual came here in a tense and excited emotional state. Indeed, his exalted way of speaking made me suspicious. Furthermore there were indications of a nervous disorder in the extremely irregular though organically sound beat of his heart and the habitual twitching of the shoulders, which he appeared unable to control. As an especially fascinating symptom I should like to draw your attention to the really astounding hyperacuity of hearing which the patient manifested upon further exam
ination. I have no hesitation in connecting this super-normal sensory sharpness with the rather severe attack we have witnessed, which had perhaps been latent for hours and was instantly precipitated by the excitement I induced in the patient through my unwelcome questions. I recommend to you' — he concluded his clear and learned survey and turned condescendingly to me — 'that you put yourself in the hands of a competent doctor. You are rejected.'

  'Rejected,' repeated the sharp, nasal voice that I knew.

  Aghast I stood there, not moving from the spot.

  You are exempt from service and may go.' These words were spoken, not without some traces of sympathy and kindliness, by that bass voice whose possessor had discriminatingly taken me for a one-year serviceman.

  Then I rose on tiptoe and said with beseechingly raised brows: 'Would it not be possible to try? Is it not conceivable that a soldier's life would improve my health?'

  Some of the gentlemen at the commission table laughed so that their shoulders shook, but the doctor remained harsh and truculent.

  'I repeat,' he said, rudely throwing the words at my feet, 'that the barracks are not a health resort. Dismissed!' he bleated.

  'Dismissed!' repeated the sharp, nasal voice, and a new name was called. 'Latte' it was, if I remember correctly, for it was now the turn of the letter L, and a tramp with shaggy chest appeared on the scene. I, however, bowed and withdrew to the passage. While I put on my clothes the assisting NCO kept me company.

  Happy of course and yet serious in mood, and wearied by experiences so extreme as hardly to lie within the human range, to which I had surrendered myself, acting and being acted upon; still preoccupied in particular by the significant comments the army doctor had made about the esteem formerly attached to the mysterious sickness from which he believed I was suffering, I paid hardly any attention to the intimate chatter of the underling, with his inadequate stripes, watered hair, and waxed moustaches; it was only later that I remembered his simple words.