Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years

by Thomas Mann

  Zouzou played with skill and calm precision. She neither laughed at my blunders — as, for example, when I missed the ball I had tossed into the air when serving — nor at my uncalled-for pranks; on the other hand, she showed no reaction to my unexpected virtuoso feats and the applause they earned me. These occurred very infrequently and, despite my partner's solid play, Zouzou's side had won four games after twenty minutes and after another ten had taken the set. We left the court to other players and sat down on a bench to cool off.

  'The marquis's game is amusing,' said my yellow-and-green partner for whom I had spoiled so much.

  'Un peu fantastique, pourtant,' replied Zouzou, who felt responsible for me because she had introduced me to the club. At the same time, I ventured to think that the fantastic nature of my play had done nothing to hurt me in her eyes. I apologized for myself on the ground of beginning over again and expressed the hope that I would quickly regain my lost skill and would then be worthy of such partners and opponents. After some chatter, while we watched the players and applauded their good strokes, a gentleman named Fidelio came over and addressed the two cousins in Portuguese. Presently he took them off for a conference of some kind. Hardly was I alone with Zouzou when she turned on me.

  'Well, and what about the drawings, marquis? Where are they? You know that I wish to see them and take possession of them.'

  'But, Zouzou,' I replied, 'I couldn't possibly have brought them here. Where would I have left them and how could I have shown them to you? Every instant we would run the risk of being caught at it.'

  'What a way to speak — "being caught at it"!'

  'Well, yes, these imaginative products of my dreams of you are not for the eyes of a third person — leaving aside the question of your seeing them yourself. By God, I wish that circumstances here and at your house and everywhere else did not make it so hard to share secrets with you.'

  'Secrets! Please watch what you say!'

  'But you insist upon secrets, which, like everything else, are very hard indeed to arrange.'

  'I simply said it was a challenge to your adroitness to find an opportunity of handing over those drawings. You are certainly not lacking in adroitness. You were adroit during the game — fantastic, as I said a moment ago by way of excuse, and often so blundering that one could easily believe you had never played tennis at all. But adroit you certainly were.'

  'How happy I am, Zouzou, to hear you say that!'

  'How do you happen to be calling me Zouzou?'

  'Everyone calls you that, and I love the name very much. I pricked up my ears the first time I heard it and I have clasped it to my heart.'

  'How can one clasp a name to one's heart?'

  'The name is inseparable from the person who bears it. That's why it makes me so happy, Zouzou, to hear from your lips — how I love to talk about your lips! — a kindly, half-laudatory comment on my poor playing. Believe me, if in its bungling fashion it was in any way passable, that was because I was completely imbued with the consciousness of acting under your dear, bewitching black eyes.'

  'Very pretty. What you are practising now, marquis, is called, I believe, paying court to a girl. In this you show less originality than in your fantastic tennis. Most of the young people regard tennis as more or less of a pretext for this disgusting occupation.'

  'Disgusting, Zouzou? Why? A short time ago you called love a disreputable theme and said pfui to it.'

  'I say it again. You young men are all nasty, dirty-minded boys, interested in unseemly behaviour.'

  'Oh, if you are going to get up and go away, you deprive me of any chance of defending love.'

  'That's just what I intend to do. We have sat here alone too long already. In the first place, it's not proper, and in the second — for when I say "in the first place" I am not accustomed to leave out the second — in the second place, you have very little taste for individual persons and wax much more enthusiastic about combinations.'

  She is jealous of her mother, I said to myself, not without pleasure, as she threw me an 'Au revoir' and withdrew. May the queenly Iberian, in turn, be jealous of her daughter! That would dovetail with the jealousy my own devotion to one often provokes in my devotion to the other.

  We made our way from the court to the Villa Kuckuck with the young people who had arrived with Zouzou, the two cousins, whose home lay in that direction. At luncheon, which was to have been a farewell meal but had already forfeited that name, there were only four of us, as Hurtado could not attend. It was spiced by Zouzou's scorn and derision for my tennis, in which Dona Maria Pia evinced a certain smiling interest, especially since her daughter prevailed upon herself to mention my occasional glorious feats. I say 'prevailed upon herself' because she spoke with brows knit and teeth clenched as though profoundly annoyed.

  I pointed this out, and she replied: 'Annoyed? Of course. You don't play well enough for that. It was unnatural.'

  'Say, rather, it was supernatural!' the professor laughed. 'All in all it seems to me that it amounts to this: the marquis was gallant enough to throw the victory your way.'

  'Dear Papa,' she replied tartly, 'you know so little about sport that you believe gallantry plays a part in it, and you provide a very kind explanation for the absurd behaviour of your travelling-companion.'

  'Papa is always kind,' the senhora said, closing the subject.

  We did not go for a walk after lunch that day, but I was to enjoy many more luncheons at the Kuckucks' home during the coming weeks, followed by excursions to places outside the city. More about that directly. Here I simply wish to mention the pleasure I derived from a letter from my dear mother which was handed me by the concierge upon my return from such an expedition about two weeks after I had dispatched my letter to her. It was written in German and read as follows:

  Victoria Marquise de Venosta née Plettenburg Castle Monrefuge, 3 September 1895

  My dear Loulou:

  Your letter of the 25th duly reached us, and both Papa and I thank you for its conscientious and undeniably interesting fullness of detail. Your handwriting, my good Loulou, always left much to be desired and is now as ever not unmannered, but your style has decidedly improved in smoothness and polish, a circumstance I attribute, in part, to the atmosphere of Paris, so friendly to word and wit, which you have breathed so long and which is making itself increasingly evident. Moreover, it is probably true that a sense for good and attractive form which has always been yours, since we implanted it in you, is an attribute of the whole man and is not limited to his corporeal deportment, but extends to all the personal manifestations of his life and therefore to the manner of his written and oral expression as well.

  Besides, I assume that you did not really speak to His Majesty, King Carlos, in the oratorical and elegant fashion that you report in your letter. That is certainly a letter-writer's fiction. Nevertheless, you have given us pleasure by it, and most of all by the point of view you took the opportunity to express, which represents the sentiments of your father and myself just as accurately as those of the great man. We both completely share your conviction in the God-appointed necessity of distinctions between rich and poor, noble and commoner, on earth, and of the necessity of the beggar caste. Where would the opportunity be for Christian charity and good works if poverty and misery did not exist?

  This by way of introduction. I will not conceal from you, and you expected nothing else, that your rather high-handed action in so considerably postponing your journey to Argentina at first troubled us. a little. But we have accepted it and are reconciled, for the reasons you advance are sensible and, as you say with justice, the results of your decision have justified it. Naturally, I am thinking first of all of the acquisition of the Order of the Red Lion, which you owe to the grace of the King and to your own engaging behaviour and on which Papa and I send you our hearty congratulations. That is no inconsiderable decoration and is seldom attained by one so young; although it is of the second class, it is by no means to be considered second-clas
s. It does the whole family honour.

  This pleasant incident is mentioned, too, in a letter from Frau Irmingard von Hueon, which I received at almost the same time as yours, and in which, on her husband's report, she tells me about your social successes. She wished to warm a mother's heart and was completely successful in that purpose. Nevertheless, without wishing to offend you, I must say that her description, or that of the ambassador, was read here with some astonishment. Of course you have always been a prankster, but that you should possess such a talent for parody and such gifts of burlesque that you could set a whole company, including a prince of the blood, to laughing and were even able to move a care-laden monarch to almost unmajestic merriment — this we would never have believed of you. Well and good, Frau von Hueon's letter confirms your own report of the matter, and it must also be admitted here that the result justifies the means. You are to be forgiven, my child, for basing your representation on details of our family life which might better have been kept among us. As I write, Minime lies in my lap and would certainly endorse our attitude if the matter could be brought to her tiny attention. You have allowed yourself exaggeration and grotesque licence in your performance, and, in particular, you have exposed your mother in a ridiculous light, through your description of her lying there in her chair, pathetically dirtied and half unconscious while old Radicule had to come to her assistance with shovel and ash bucket. I know nothing of any ash bucket — it is the product of your zeal to be entertaining. But as this has borne such pleasant fruits in the end, it doesn't greatly matter that you have rather arbitrarily detracted somewhat from my personal dignity.

  No doubt it was for a mother's heart, too, that Frau von Hueon assured us that on all sides you are considered as pretty as a picture, a youthful beauty indeed. This announcement has once more caused us a certain degree of bewilderment. You are, to speak frankly, a nice boy, and unquestionably you under-estimate yourself when you talk with engaging self-ridicule of your cheeks like pippins and your slit eyes. That is certainly unjust. But you could never be considered really beautiful or pretty, not that we know of, and compliments of this sort which are paid to me upset me a little, even though as a woman I am well aware that the desire to please can improve the exterior from within, can glorify it and, in short, prove a means pour corriger la nature.

  But why am I talking about your exterior? Let people call it pretty or passable! The thing of importance is the safety of your soul, your social salvation, for which we at one time had to tremble. And it is this in your letter, as in your telegram, that has brought us a real lightening of the heart when we learned that in this trip we had hit upon the right means to free your soul from the spell of degrading wishes and projects, to cause you to see them in the right light — that is, as impossible and destructive — and to bid them farewell together with the person who, to our concern, inspired them in you!

  Wholesome circumstances, according to your letter, have contributed to this result. I cannot help regarding as a providential encounter your meeting with that professor and museum-director whose name, to be sure, sounds so funny, and your visits to his house as useful and conducive to your restoration. Distraction is good; but all the better when it is combined with a gain in education and brilliant information such as is so clearly evident in your letter in the simile of the sea lily (a plant unknown to me) and in your reference to the natural history of the dog and the horse. Such things are an adornment in any social conversation and, if they are woven in without pretension and with good taste, they will not fail to distinguish a young man of attainments from those who have no vocabulary beyond that of sports. Which does not mean that we were not glad to hear, in view of your health, that you have once more taken up the long-neglected game of lawn tennis.

  As for your association with the ladies of that household, the mother and daughter, whose description you enliven with a few ironic lights, if this appeals less to you than your conversations with the learned head of the house and his associate, I hardly need warn you — however, I am now doing so — not to allow them to perceive your lower estimation of them and always to treat them with the chivalry that a cavalier owes in all circumstances to the opposite sex.

  And now all good wishes, dear Loulou! When you embark in about four weeks, after the return of the Cap Arcona, our prayers will rise to Heaven for a smooth crossing that will not unsettle your stomach for so much as a single day. The postponement of your trip means you will arrive in the Argentinian spring and will probably have a taste of summer as well in that region where the seasons are the reverse of ours. You will provide yourself, I trust, with a suitable wardrobe. Light flannel is to be recommended because it is the best protection against chills, which, as is not generally known, are easier to catch in hot weather than in cold. Should the funds at your disposal prove inadequate, be assured that I am the woman to procure a reasonable supplement from your father.

  Our kindest greetings to your hosts, Herr and Frau Consul Meyer.

  BLESSINGS, MAMAN.

  CHAPTER 10

  WHEN I recall the extraordinary and elegant equipages that later on were mine for a time — the gleaming victorias, phaetons, and silk-upholstered coupés — I am touched by the childish pleasure I derived, during those weeks in Lisbon, from a barely decent rented carriage. By arrangement with a local livery stable, it was kept constantly at my disposal, so that the concierge of the Savoy Palace had only to telephone for it when occasion arose. Actually it was nothing more than a four-seated droshky with a folding hood, which had probably served as a family carriage before being sold to the stable. The horses and harness were at least presentable, and for a small premium I arranged for the coachman to have an appropriate personal uniform — a hat with rosette, blue coat, and top boots.

  It was a pleasure to enter this carriage in front of my hotel with a page holding the door for me and the coachman bending down slightly from the box, as I had taught him, his hand at the brim of his top hat. A conveyance of this sort was an absolute necessity not only for outings and in order to take one's place in the procession of carriages in the parks and along the avenues — which I did for entertainment — but also in order to arrive with a certain elegance at those houses to which I was invited as a result of my evening at the Embassy and, no doubt, also as a result of my audience with the King. Thus, Saldacha, the rich exporter of wines, and his extraordinarily corpulent wife invited me to a garden party at their magnificent estate outside the city; Lisbon society was gradually drifting back from the summer resorts, and many of its representatives were there. These I encountered again, less numerous and with some substitutions, at two dinners, one of which was given by the Greek businessman, Prince Maurocordato and his classically beautiful but astonishingly forward wife, the other by Baron and Baroness Vos von Steenwyck at the Dutch Embassy. On both these occasions I was able to display my Order of the Red Lion and received congratulations on all sides. On the Avenida I was kept busy bowing, for my distinguished acquaintances were increasing in number; nevertheless, all these relationships remained on a superficial and formal footing — or, to be more precise, I kept them so out of indifference, as my true interests were concentrated on the small white house on the hillside and on the double image of mother and daughter.

  I need hardly say that these came first rather than last in my list of reasons for securing the carriage. With it, I could invite them to drive to such places of historic interest as, for instance, those whose beauty I had, by way of anticipation, praised to the King; and nothing gave me greater pleasure than to sit, my back to the driver, facing those two: that august representative of her race and her enchanting child. Sometimes Dom Miguel would sit beside me, for he was occasionally free to accompany us, and he liked to serve as our instructor on visits to castle or monastery.

  These weekly or biweekly drives and excursions were regularly preceded by tennis and a family luncheon at the Kuckucks'. On the court I sometimes played as Zouzou's partner, sometimes as her opponent,
and sometimes with others. My game quickly became more uniform: those sudden spectacular feats came to an end, and with them my laughable exhibitions of ineptitude. I played a decent medium sort of game, though the presence of my beloved gave me the advantage of a sort of physical inspiration — if I may call it that — beyond the average. If only it had been less difficult for us to be alone! The dictates of southern convention were explicitly and disturbingly in our way. To call for Zouzou at her house and accompany her to the courts was not to be thought of; we met there. Nor was there any chance of taking her home alone; it was understood that others must always be present. A tête-à-tête in the house before or after lunch, in the drawing-room or anywhere else, was out of the question. Only when we were resting on a bench outside the wire enclosure of the tennis courts was there now and again an opportunity for private conversation. On these occasions she always began by mentioning the portrait sketches and demanding that I show them to her or, rather, that I hand them over to her. Without contesting her stubborn theory that she owned the drawings, I kept evading her demand on the plausible pretext that there was no safe opportunity of submitting them to her. In truth, I doubted whether I would ever risk showing her those daring sketches, and I clung to this doubt as I did to her unsatisfied curiosity — if that is the right word for it — because the unrevealed pictures constituted a secret bond between us which delighted me and which I wished to preserve.

  To share a secret with her, to have an understanding of our own — whether she liked it or not — seemed to me to have a sweet significance. And so I made a point of telling her about my social adventures before I recounted them to her family at table — and I also made a point of going into them more thoroughly, more intimately and with more comment so that later on I could look at her and see in her smile the memory of what we had previously discussed. An example of this was my meeting with the Princess Maurocordato, whose divinely noble features and figure made her conduct so unexpected — conduct that was by no means divine but more like that of a soubrette. I had told Zouzou how the lady from Athens had cornered me in her salon, had kept tapping me with her fan, showing the tip of her tongue between her lips, winking, and making the most wanton advances — wholly unmindful of that dignity of deportment which, one might think, the consciousness of classical beauty would naturally inspire in a woman. Sitting on our bench, we discussed for some time this contradiction between appearance and conduct, and we came to the conclusion that either the princess was at odds with her classical appearance, found it boring, and showed her rebellion against it by her behaviour — or that it was a matter of sheer stupidity and lack of awareness of, and respect for, oneself such as, for instance, a poodle might show, emerging snowy-white from its bath only to find a mud puddle and roll in it.