Page 123 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
But I am speaking of a penal colony which has been abolished. Let me therefore restore it in secret and live there in spirit, as in spirit Christians suffer the passion. The only passable road must lead there through Armand and continue through the Spain of beggars, of shameful and humiliated poverty.
As I write these notes, I am thirty−five years old. I want to spend my remaining years in glory's opposite.
Stilitano had more integrity than Armand. If I think of them, I compare Armand to the expanding universe (as I understand it). Instead of being defined and reduced to observable limits, Armand constantly changes form as I pursue him. On the other hand, Stilitano is already encircled. The differences in the nature of the lace in which they dealt is also significant. When Stilitano dared laugh at Armand's talent, the latter did not get angry immediately. I believe he controlled his anger. I do not think that Stilitano's remark wounded him. He calmly went on smoking his cigarette and then said, “Maybe you think I'm a dope?”
“I didn't say that.”
“I know.”
He kept smoking, with an absent−minded look. I had just been made aware of one of the mortifications —no doubt there were many—which Armand had suffered. This mass of pride was not composed of only bold, or even honorable elements. His beauty, vigor, voice and guts had not always assured his triumph, since he had had to submit, like a poor wretch, to an apprenticeship in lace−making, to what is ordinarily expected of children who are allowed no other material than paper.
“You wouldn't think it,” said Robert who had both elbows on the table and was resting his head cupped in his hands.
“Wouldn't think what?”
“Why, that you know how to do that.”
His usual unmannerliness dared not confront the man with his poverty. Robert spoke hesitantly. Stilitano was smiling. He, more than anyone, must have been aware of Armand's pain. Like me, he feared and hoped for the question—which Robert, moreover, dared not formulate:
“Where did you learn how to do it?”
The approach of a docker left it hanging. He merely mentioned a time as he passed Armand: eleven o'clock. The tunes of a player−piano lightened the thick smoke in the bar. Armand answered, “All right.”
His face remained just as sad. Since there were few whores around, the general tone was cordial and simple. If a man got up from his chair, he did so in all simplicity.
It was later on, when thinking of his thick palms and fingers, that it occurred to me that the lace−paper they made must have been ugly. Armand was too clumsy for such work. Unless he learned it in prison. Convicts are amazingly skilful. Their criminal fingers sometimes create delicate and fragile masterpieces with anything on hand, matches, cardboard, bits of string. The pride they feel has the quality of the material and of the masterpiece: it is fragile and humble. Visitors occasionally congratulate prisoners on an ink−well carved from a nut−shell, the way one praises a monkey or a dog: with amazement at their clever tricks.
When the docker had gone off, Armand's face remained unchanged.
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