Page 120 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
His hand which grabs the cigarette I offer him is too weak, too fine for his heavily muscled body. I stand up and kiss him and tell him that this kiss is the last.
“No, Jeannot, there'll be others,” he says.
A few minutes later, in thinking about this scene, I suddenly felt certain that the fragility of his hand, without my having been clearly aware of it at first, had just made my decision final and irrevocable.
His fingers sticky with balls of mistletoe crushed at New Year's. His hands full of sperm.
Our room is darkened by wet clothes drying on ropes which zigzag from wall to wall. This washing—shirts, underpants, handkerchieves, socks, towels—softens the bodies and souls of the two fellows who share the room. We go to sleep fraternally. Though his palms, which have been soaking a long time in soapy water, are softer, he compensates by more violence in our love− making.
After our quarrel, in which I insulted him with a cruelty which proved my tenderness, I accused him of being cowardly and letting himself be had out of weakness and for too little money (he once assured me that he had protected his ass with his spread fingers. “The old guy thought he was screwing me, but it was only my hand. I made believe I was sleeping. He shot into my fingers.”) We were in the same room bumping into the hanging laundry which was still damp. Suddenly I took his head into my hands and smiled at him. Hope returned to him, mounted from his heart to his mouth, which smiled. His eyes filled with tears. Inside my fly my prick was present. Presiding over this intimate reconciliation, it swelled up with joyous blood. It wanted to be in on the festivity. I tenderly laid Java's docile hand on the bump. He lowered his head gently.
In every important city in France I know at least one thief with whom I have worked—or, having known him in prison, with whom I have made plans and preparations for various jobs. I can count on their help if I am ever alone in their cities. These fellows, scattered all over France, and sometimes in foreign countries, are a comfort to me, even though I may not see them often. It makes me feel calm and glad to know they are alive and handsome, lurking in the shadow. My little pocket address−book in which their names are scrawled is endowed with a comforting power. It has the same authority as a prick. It is my treasure. I transcribe: Jean B. in Nice. Met him one night in Albert Premier Park. He didn't have the heart to knock me out and steal my money, but he let me know about the Mont−Boron affair. Rene D. in Orleans. Jacques L. and Martino, sailors who stayed in Brest. I met them in the Bougen jail. We did some deals together, peddling dope. Dede in Cannes, a pimp. In Lyons, some crooks, a negro and a fellow who runs a brothel. In Marseilles I know a good twenty. Gabriel B. in Pau. And so on. I've said they were handsome. Not with regular good looks, but with something else, made up of power, despair and many other qualities, the mention of which involves comment: shame, shrewdness, laziness, resignation, contempt, boredom, courage, cowardice, fear... It would mean a long list. These qualities are inscribed upon my friends' faces or bodies, where they overlap, jostle and oppose one another. That is why I say that these men have souls. Added to the complicity which unites us is a secret understanding, a kind of tenuous pact which seems as though it could be easily broken, but which I know how to protect and handle with nimble fingers: it is the memory of our nights of love, or sometimes of a brief amorous conversation, or of groping each other with the restrained smile or sigh of an anticipation of pleasure. They all kindly allowed me to recharge myself at each of their asperities, as at terminals where a current was polarized. I think they were all dimly aware that they were thus heightening my courage, inflaming me, giving me a will to work and enabling me to gather enough force—emanating from them—so as to protect them. Nevertheless, I am alone. The address−book in my pocket is the written proof that I had such friends; but their lives are apparently as incoherent as mine, and I really know nothing about them. Perhaps most of them are in
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