Page 102 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
“It was you. The concierge recognizes you.”
“It's someone who looks like me.”
“She says his name is Guy.”
“It's someone who looks like me and has the same name.” “She recognizes your clothes.”
“He looks like me, has the same name and the same clothes.”
“He's got the same hair.”
“He looks like me, has the same name, the same clothes and the same hair.”
“They found your finger−prints.”
“He looks like me, has the same name, the same clothes, the same hair and the same finger−prints.” “That can keep on.”
“To the very end.”
“It was you who did the job.”
“No, it wasn't me.”
A letter from him contained the following passage (I had just been locked up again in the Sante): “Dear Jeannot, I'm too broke to send you a package. I don't have any dough, but I'd like to tell you something that I hope you'll be glad to hear. For the first time I felt like pulling off while thinking about you and I came. At least you can be sure you've got a pal outside who's thinking about you...”
I sometimes reproach him for his familiarity with Inspector Richardeau. I try to explain to him that a detective is even lower than a stool−pigeon. Guy hardly listens to me. He takes short steps when he walks. He is aware, around his neck, of the loose collar of his very soft silk shirt; on his shoulders, of his well−cut jacket. He holds his head high and looks straight ahead, in front of him, severely, at the sad, grey, gloomy Rue de Barbes, though a pimp, behind the curtains in a hotel room, can see him pass by.
“You're really right,” he says. “They're all bastards.”
A moment later, when I thought he was no longer thinking about what I had been saying (a certain time elapsed without his thinking, so that he might thereby better feel a silvery chain weighing at his wrist, or that an emptiness might develop in order to make room for this idea) he muttered: “Yes, but a cop's not the same thing.”
“Oh? You think so?”
Despite my arguments, which aimed at merging the cop and the stool−pigeon, and at condemning the former more, I felt as Guy did, though I did not admit it to him, that there was a difference. I secretly love, yes, I love the police. I wouldn't tell him how excited I used to be in Marseilles whenever I walked by the canteen
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