Page 114 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
“Shut up. Hand over your dough.”
“How much do you want?”
“All of it.”
Stilitano spoke so coldly that the old man stopped insisting. “Your watch.”
“But...”
“I'll count to ten.”
This remark, reminiscent of my childhood games, made Stilitano seem to me even more cruel. I felt as if he were playing, and that he might go very far since it was only a game. The old man undid his chain, from which the watch was hanging, and went forward to hand it to Stilitano, who took it.
“Your rings.” “My rings...”
The old fellow was now stammering, Stilitano, standing motionless in the middle of the room, pointed sharply to the objects he wanted. I was a little behind him, to his left, with my hands in my pockets, and I watched him in the mirror. I was sure that he would thus be, unnaturally cruel. In fact, when the old man told him that his knotted joints prevented him from removing the rings, he ordered me to turn on the water.
“Soap your fingers.”
Very conscientiously the old man soaped his hands. He tried to take off his two gold signet−rings, but without success. Desperate, and feeling that his fingers might be cut off, he gave his hand to Stilitano with the timid anxiety of a bride at the foot of the altar. Was I about to witness the hulking Stilitano's marriage—at a later time my emotion was almost visible when Monsieur B. took me through his park and stopped before a bed of carnations: “It's one of my finest flower−beds,” he said—to a trembling old man with wet hands? With a delicacy and precision which I thought contained a strange irony, Stilitano tried to pull the rings off. With one hand the old man held up the other which was being worked on. Perhaps he felt a secret joy in being stripped by a handsome male. (I note the exclamation of a poor hunchback from whom Rene had just snatched his last thousand−franc note without letting him have a moment's pleasure: “It's too bad I haven't received my pay−check. I'd have given you all of it!” And Rene's answer: “Don't be shy about sending it to me.”) As one does with babies, or as I myself would soap his one hand Stilitano carefully soaped the old man's. Both of them were now calm. They were collaborating in a simple, matter−of−course operation. Stilitano was taking it easy; he was being patient. I was sure that his rubbing would wear the finger down to the desired thinness. Finally he stepped back and, without losing his temper, slapped the old man twice. He gave it up as a bad job.
I've drawn out this account for two reasons. First, it enables me to re−live a scene of inexhaustible charm. To Roger's immodesty in offering himself to old men are added some of the elements which are at the source of my lyricism. First, the flowers accompanying the robustness of a twenty−year old boy. Without ceasing to smile, the boy exposed his manly valor—and submitted it—to the trembling desire of an old man. Stilitano's brutality in destroying this encounter and his cruelty in carrying out his destruction to the very end. Lastly, in that room, in front of a mirror, where all that youthfulness, despite appearances, was in league and in love—it seemed to me—with itself; and the presence of a half−dressed, ridiculous, pitiful old man, whose stricken self,
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