Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

An unnamed Russian lives in the Rue des Quatres Vents in Paris during the inter-war years. The window of his rented room overlooks the 'Tari-Bari' restaurant, a popular eating place for Russian expatriates. Very late one night at the restaurant he overhears a customer ask another man “Why is our murderer so gloomy today?” The narrator, already intrigued by the patron, strikes up a friendship and soon Golubchik (for that is the murderer's name) is telling his story of violence and betrayal to the remaining customers and the innkeeper.

Golubchik is described as “a large man, broad-shouldered, with fair hair turning grey. His eyes were clear, sometimes flashing, never clouded with alcohol; and he always looked the person was addressing straight in the face.” The narrator finds him appealing, and so too do the other customers. There is an attractive darkness about him, a sense of innocence lost and perhaps a brush with the demoniac. Joseph Roth builds the character of Golubchik in the first few pages by the description and impressions of the narrator who, after providing Golubchik an excuse to tell his story, all but disappears from the novel. It becomes a night-time confession, told with dramatic excess and a certain fondness for grandness.

Roth essentially uses the narrator as a framing device, for of the one hundred and forty-four pages comprising Confession of a Murderer, perhaps eight or nine only are from the narrator's perspective. Because Golubchik is relating his story to a group of people, and not simply the narrator of a novel, Roth is able to move back and forth along Golubchik's life, and the exact focus of the piece – the murder – is always kept at the fore. It became the obsession of Golubchik's existence, which necessarily makes it the obsession of his story.

To begin with, Golubchik was raised by a poor Russian family, though he knew from the start he had been conceived not from his mother and her husband, but during a tryst between his mother and the immensely rich a powerful Prince Kropotkin who, it turns out, had something of a habit of leaving bastards along in his wake as he leisurely travelled the length and breadth of post-WWI Russia. Golubchik doesn't know this, of course, which causes him to consider himself the Prince's heir. Upon reaching adulthood he sets off to Odessa, where he meets the Prince, secures himself an (undesired and undesirable) career, and meets a man who appears to be the Devil in human form, Hungarian merchant Jenö Lakatos.

Through a series of alternately comic and dramatic mishaps, Golubchik finds himself in France, where he is now a Russian spy. He falls in love, obsessively and unhealthily, with Lutetia, a model, and all the while the curious Lakatos lurks in the background, appearing during significant moments in Golubchik's life to ensure he chooses the incorrect path, makes the wrong decision, and continues to damn himself.

All this sounds like an eventful process, and it is – except the novel is only thirty or so pages done by this stage. Golubchik allows himself a great many liberties with his story, skipping over vast quantities of time and space in his effort to centre the story where it needs to be, which is within the heart of his murderous past. This is handled quite well by Roth, for the skipping over of years doesn't seem to jar the flow of the novel to any great extent. Golubchik is drawn well enough during the framing period at the beginning of the novel that to see him fall from excitable youth to hardened Russian spy would, in effect, be a waste. We know Golubchik the man in the present, and thus there is no need to see him in what would effectively be a montage of events to get him from A to B.

Nonetheless, there are problems with this approach, one of which is mostly harmless, but the other proves almost fatal to the novel. The first problem lies with the Prince and Golubchik's ancestry. The concept of fatherhood and the identity of the Prince's 'real' child is something very important to Golubchik and the story, but the importance never quite comes across. During the final scenes, when Golubchik has assumed the identity of the Prince to further his spying, the ramifications of this never resonate as strongly with the reader as they do with the story-teller. Roth's skipping about means that, as the noose around Golubchik's neck tightens in Paris and his obsessive love for Lutetia deepens, we focus more on that and less on his parentage. As indicated though, this is a minor flaw, for a larger one awaits – that of Jenö Lakatos.

Jenö Lakatos is clearly the Devil, or a stand-in at any rate. Golubchik regularly uses words like 'Devil' and 'demon' and 'Hellish' when Lakatos is about, and descriptive words such a 'fiery' and 'evil' tend to appear more frequently. Often there is a smell of violets, and the narration as a whole takes on a menacing turn whenever Lakatos is about. This is all very good, and works at building Lakatos up as a frightening figure capable of much more than is actually shown. And therein lies the problem – Roth builds this character to such a degree that some sort of climax or display of devilish machinations is required. What comes, though, is a disappointment, and Lakatos descends – or perhaps ascends – from mysteriously evil to simply deceitful. Golubchik and Roth, however, would have us believe that a man involved in forgery is a spawn of Satan, and the conceit of Lakatos' damnation continues. A good example of effectively building up an antagonist and using them well when the time comes is Moby Dick – when the whale appears, all the religious terminology and foreshadowing pays off in spades. Lakatos, though, is not an effective character in the end, and the novel more than suffers – it almost completely fails.

That said, the writing is of excellent quality, with both the narrator and Golubchik possessing solidly defined, and splendidly realised, narrative voices. If I personally enjoyed the cadence of the unnamed narrator's voice over Golubchik, that is a personal preference rather than a statement of quality. Both are strong, solid characters, and the novel remains a pleasure to read. Consider this description (of Golubchik's) about the Prince's 'real' son: “He looked not unlike a used-up piece of soap. So pale and insipid was his skin. He looked like a piece of used-up yellow soap with a thin black moustache. I hated him as I had always hated him.” or this when the depth of Lutetia's depravity is revealed: “And there began to glow in her beautiful, soulless eyes, which at that moment reminded me of glass marbles, an angry little fire, such as you, my friends, will have seen in the eyes of your wives – at certain times. If fire has sex, I believe that there isa quite definite feminine fire. It has no reason, no visible cause. I suspect that it is always glowing a woman's soul and sometimes it blazes up and burns in her eyes: a fine and yet an evil little fire.” Of course, note here the use of demonic imagery, a sure indication that Lakatos will soon make an entry (he does).

Toward the end, Golubchik tells his listeners that, “Fate guides our steps. A reasonable assumption, and as old as Fate itself. We see it sometimes. Mostly we do not wish to see it. I, too, belonged to those who are unwilling to see it, and all too often I closed my eyes tight shut in order not to see it” His eyes are opened by the likes of Lutetia, Lakatos, and the Prince, but so too has the eyes of the unnamed narrator opened. He sees the man Golubchik for who he is, a spy, a murderer, a liar, a thief, a bungler, a fraud. He finds him charismatic still, but the mysterious attraction has somewhat died. And the end, when it comes, would have been perfect had the character of Lakatos been built up to greater effect. But never mind. Joseph Roth was a very good author, and Confession of a Murderer is a pleasure to read. Its flaws are evident and large, but for all that I don't hesitate to recommend it.

Author	Joseph Roth
Title	Confession of a Murderer (Original Title: Beichte eines Mörders, erzählt in einer Nacht)
Translator	Desmond I. Vesey
Nationality	Austrian
Publisher	Granta
Published	1937 (English) 1936 (Austrian)
Pages	144
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK)