Page 109 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
“I can bump a guy off. I'll beat your guy up and rob him, if you want me to. All you've got to do is say so. Well, tell me, Jeannot, you want me to bump him off?”
I stared at him and still said nothing. I assumed that my face was impenetrable. Guy must have seen how tense I was, must have thought I was at the point of an extremely dramatic moment, in fact, of checked will, of a decision which astonished him enough to move him. But I feared his severity, the more so since never had he seemed to me more virile than that evening. As he sat on the high stool, his strong, thick, rough hand rested on the muscular thighs which bulged beneath the short−napped cloth of his trousers. In some indefinable element of meanness, stupidity, virility, pomp and viscosity which he had in common with them, he was the equal of the pimps around us, and their friend. He dwarfed me. “They” dwarfed me.
“You realize what it is to send a guy there? We've both had it. Go on, we can't do that.”
Had he himself betrayed and ratted on his friends? His intimacy with a police inspector had made me fear—and hope—that he was a squealer. Made me fear, for I was running the risk of being reported, made me fear further, for he would be preceding me in betrayal. Made me hope, for I would have a companion and support in vileness. I understood the loneliness and despair of the traveler who has lost his shadow. I remained silent and stared at him. My face was motionless. The time was not ripe for me to change tactics. “Let him flounder about in astonishment until he loses footing.” However, I still could not help seeing his contempt, for he said, “But Jeannot, I regard you as my brother. Do you realize? If any guy, a guy from here, wanted to have you thrown in, I'd sure attend to him. And you, you tell me...”
He lowered his voice, for some of the pimps had drawn near. (Some of the whores too might have overheard us. The bar was packed.) My stare tried to get harder. My eyebrows knitted. I was chewing away at the inside of my lips and was still saying nothing.
“You know, if it had been anyone else but you who suggested that...”
In spite of the shell of will with which I was protecting myself, I was humiliated by the brotherly gentleness of his' contempt. His words and the tone of his voice left me undecided. Was he or was he not a stool−pigeon? I shall never know with any certainty. If he was, he might just as well have been despising me for an act that he himself would have been ready to commit. It was also possible that it repelled him to have me as a companion in vileness because I was less wonderful in his eyes, less sparkling than some other thief whom he would have accepted, I was aware of his contempt. He could easily have dissolved me, like rock−candy. Nevertheless, I had to preserve my rigidity without being too dead−set.
“But Jeannot, if it had been somebody else, I'd have knocked hell out of him. I don't know why I let you say it. No, I don't know why.”
“All right, that'll do.”
He lifted his head. His jaw dropped. My tone had surprised him.
“Huh?”
“I said that'll do.”
I bent over closer and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Guy, my boy, you're all right. I was worried when I saw you so chummy with R. (the detective). I'm letting you know it. I had the jitters. I was scared you might have become a squealer.”
The Thief's Journal 107