Page 112 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
his darkness which will gradually dilute me. With my mouth open, I shall know he is in a torpor, held in that dark axis by his steel pivot. I shall be giddy. I shall have no further responsibility. I shall gaze over the world with that clear gaze that the eagle loaned to Ganymede. The more I love Lucien, the more I lose my taste for theft and thieves. I am glad that I love him, but a great sadness, fragile as a shadow and heavy as the negro, spreads over my entire life, just barely rests upon it, grazes it and crushes it, enters my open mouth: it is regret for my legend. My love for Lucien acquaints me with the loathsome sweetness of nostalgia. I can abandon him by leaving France. I would then have to merge him into my hatred of my country. But the charming child has the eyes, hair, chest and legs which belong to ideal hoodlums, to those I adore, whom I would feel I was abandoning in abandoning him. His charm saves him.
This evening, as I was running my fingers through his curls he said to me dreamily, “I'd really like to see my kid.”
Instead of making him seem hard, these words softened him. (Once when his ship put ashore, he made a girl pregnant.) My eyes rest upon him more gravely, more tenderly too. I gaze at this proud−faced, sly, smiling youngster with his keen and gentle eyes as if he were a young wife. The wound I inflict upon this male compels me to a sudden respect, to new delicacies, and the dull, remote and almost narrow wound makes him languid, as does the memory of the pains of childbirth. He smiles at me. More happiness fills me. I feel that my responsibility has become greater, as if—literally—heaven had just blessed our union. But will he, later on, with his mistresses, be able to forget what he was for me? What will it do to his soul? What ache never to be cured? Will he have, in this respect, the indifference of Guy, the same smile accompanying the shrug with which he leaves behind, letting it drift in the wake of his swift walk, that dull and heavy pain, the melancholy of the wounded male? Will a certain casualness toward all things be born of it?
Roger had often instructed me not to let him stay too long with the queers he had just picked up. We took the following precautions: as soon as he left the can or clump of bushes where he had just been accosted by a queer, we would follow him at n. distance (sometimes Stilitano and sometimes I) up to his room—−generally in a small hotel run by a former whore in a filthy, smelly street. I (or Stilitano) would wait a few minutes and then go up.
“But not too late, you understand, Jeannot? Not too late.”
“He's got to have time at least to undress.”
“Naturally. But make it fast. I'll always drop a little paper ball in front of the door.”
He repeated this instruction so often and so urgently that I finally asked him, “But why do you want me to be so quick? All you have to do is wait.”
“You're crazy. I'm scared.” “Scared of what?”
“Don't you understand? I'll tell you. I get hot pant” right away. If the guy has time just to grope me, I'm a goner. I can't be sure I won't let him.”
“Well, let him.”
“Don't be dumb. If I get hot pants I might let him stick me. And I mustn't. But don't tell Stil.”
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