Page 104 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
This explanatory tone made Robert a bit bolder. He dared answer, “Still and all, they got cold feet. If they did all they claimed...”
“You lousy little bastard, it's just because they did everything they claimed that they got cold feet, as you say. Do you know what they wanted? Eh, do you know? Well, I'll tell you. The moment they saw it was all up, they wanted to give themselves a treat that they never in their lives had time for: getting cold feet. You get it? It was a treat for them to surrender to the police. It gives them a rest.”
Stilitano didn't turn a hair. I thought I could tell by his wry smile that he was familiar with the meaning of Armand's answer. Not in that assertive, heroic, insolent form, but in a more diffuse style. Robert didn't answer. He didn't understand the explanation at all, except that it had just placed him slightly outside the circle of the three of us.
I would have discovered this justification by myself, though later on. Armand's kindness consisted in allowing me to feel at ease in it.
He understood everything. (I mean that he had solved my problems.) Not that I am suggesting that the explanation he dared give of the gangsters' surrender was valid in their case, but it was so for me—had it been a question of justifying my surrender in such circumstances. His kindness also consisted in his transforming into a revel, into a solemn and ridiculous display, a contemptible desertion of duty. Armand's concern was rehabilitation. Not of others or of himself, but of moral wretchedness. He conferred upon it the attributes which are the expression of the pleasures of the official world.
I am far from having his stature, his muscles and the fur on them, but there are days when I look at myself in a mirror and seem to see in my face something of his severe kindness. Then I feel proud of myself and of my dull, pushed−in mug. I don't know in what pauper's grave he lies buried, or whether he's still up and about, strolling around with his strong supple body. He is the only one whose real name I want to transcribe. To betray him even so little would be too much. When he got up from his chair, he reigned over the world. Had he been slapped, insulted in his body, he would not have flinched. He would have remained intact, just as great. He filled out all the space in our bed with his legs open in a wide, obtuse angle, where I would find only a small space to curl up. I slept in the shadow of his meat, which would sometimes fall over my eyes and, upon awakening, I would find my forehead adorned with a massive and curious brown horn. When he awoke, his foot would push me out of bed, not brutally but with an imperious pressure. He wouldn't speak. He smoked while I prepared the coffee and toast of the Tabernacle where knowledge rested—and where it was distilled.
One evening, we learned in the course of a distasteful conversation that, in the past, Armand used to go from Marseilles to Brussels, from town to town, from cafe to cafe, making lace−paper cut−outs in front of the customers in order to earn money enough to eat. The docker who told us the story didn't joke about it. He spoke very simply and straightforwardly about the doilies and fancy handkerchiefs, the delicate linen work produced with a pair of scissors and folded paper.
“I've seen Armand at it. I've seen him do his act,” he said.
The idea of my calm and hulking master doing woman's work moved me. No ridicule could touch him. I don't know which prison he had been to, whether he had been released or had escaped, but what I did learn about him pointed to that school of all delicacies: the shores of the Maroni River in Guiana or the penitentiaries of France.
As he listened to the docker, Stilitano smiled maliciously. I feared he might try to wound Armand: I was right. The machine−made lace which he palmed off on the pious ladies was a sign of nobility. It indicated Stilitano's
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