Prefatory Confession

"It is not without a certain meager trepidation that I set out to record for the reader's considered benefit the events that have occurred since that fateful scene in the living room of the Villa Cacaold, on the Rua João de Castilhos . . ."--or so the original Felix Krull may have expressed it.

From such a remove in time and space as I currently enjoy, I can only attempt to recount to you the denouement of Felix's adventurous pilgrimage in the full spirit of his own manner of speaking, with the full flavor of his own epoch. For this I ask the reader's indulgence, with the promise of an attempt to make amends as my own progress through time allows. Meanwhile I make no excuses as I confess to a certain lingering tendency, in a more advanced age, to dawdle and divert, to digress and speculate--for the old Felix remains a part of me, in fact the most notable of my former selves.

I should add that I've wondered many times if it was even worth the effort to delve back into the easily forgotten past, back to a story of an old, lost world. I would say that it was the rudeness of the interruption of our story by the scythe-swinging rider of an overly pale horse that motivates me to take up the tale again--out of spite, as it were. Perhaps I must exercise a playful revenge upon that unwelcome guest. And so, lest the reader be tempted to disbelieve my providential transference across the several planes of life, let me offer the confidence that I have, in the process, exposed the masquerade of that spectral impostor.

If the reader is interested in investigating my early life and career, he or she would do well to read the version entitled Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, as transcribed by Thomas Mann. I am indebted to that masterful storyteller for the widely known basis of my tale---no, let us admit, for the entire recorded substance of it up to the point at which this chronicle begins.

By way of brief summary:

Born Felix Krull, I was the favored son of a locally prominent turn-of-the-century bourgeois German family. I was quick of wit and tongue, and loath to remain in the social mold into which I was born. My predilection for flattery and deceit landed me, via a series of youthful escapades, in the shoes of a reluctant marquis who, like me, wanted no part of the role in life assigned him so arbitrarily by fate and family. Having switched identities, we parted company in Paris. The ex-marquis went incognito with his lover, Zaza; while I set out on a world tour which had been arranged to take the marquis first to Lisbon, then onward to Argentina.

On the train to Lisbon, I made the acquaintance of a professor, Dom Antonio José Kuckuck, who invited me to call at his villa and meet his family. In the course of my visits I started to fall in love with the daughter, Zouzou. The first complication was her expected marriage to Dom Miguel Hurtado, a colleague of Professor Kuckuck. Then, with my ship, the Cap Arcona, due to sail in a matter of days, I suddenly found myself in the embrace of Zouzou's mother, Maria Pia.

At this point in the story, we are left hanging by Thomas Mann, or rather by grinning Death, who whisked the writer away before he could relate another word. Thus our motive for revenge.

Now as I take up my pen once again, in my leisure at the end of it all, I would ask to establish a compact with the reader concerning the credibility of the tale about to recommence and to be herein concluded. For not only is one's credence to be taxed concerning my belated reappearance as from a long-moldering crypt; presently we must also become acquainted with a veritable felix anima in the person of Sophie Tucker Vaughan, the first woman President of the United States of America. (It should come as no surprise that I would consort with one of such rank, to those familiar with my previous exploits, of which I merely need mention the long congenial meeting I enjoyed with King Carlos I, the esteemed monarch of Portugal.) And as if it were not enough to grant me, fate's darling, the benefit of the reader's sympathy in following my charmed footsteps through the chicanery that marked my former career in late nineteenth-century Europe, now I must appeal to those who would be skeptical concerning such powers as became evident to me at a later date--powers possessed for better or worse, and wielded in all good faith on my behalf, by said Ms. Vaughan . . . powers that might even be deemed impossible on this earth, at least at the present time.

Ah, but here is the seed of a dilemma: What is the present time, precisely? Is it this past that I bring forward so glibly, to the juggler of words a mere matter of tense? Is it the time that is present at the other end of the act of writing: that is, when the words are read, or read again, or again? In such cases, which in truth occupy all the available possibilities once the letter is struck and posted, history as we understand it must be reunderstood. Clearly I can provoke no argument in stating that time is all of past, present, and future. Now consider me, looking back on it all--and indeed on a goodly part of my readers, and readers to come. It must be said that I occupy a place in a world not yet arrived, until a certain point is reached. And even then, I reach ever backward to my past, and thus retain my future perspective forever. . . .

But enough of idle speculation that threatens to lose itself in riddle and mystery. Let us return to that divine moment . . .