Page 18 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
“You're sure?”
He burst out laughing.
“Sure. No mistake. I'm so likable that sometimes I can't get rid of people. In order to make them let go of me I sometimes have to do them dirt.”
“What kind of dirt?”
“Would you like to know? Just wait, you'll see me on the job. You'll have time to see what it's like. Where are you staying?”
“Here.”
“Don't. The police'll be around. They'll look here first. Come with me.”
I told Salvador that I couldn't stay at the hotel that night and that a former member of the Legion was offering me his room. He turned pale. The humility of his pain made me feel ashamed. In order to leave him without remorse I insulted him. I was able to do so since he loved me to the point of devotion. He gave me a woebegone look, but it was charged with a poor wretch's hatred. I replied with the word: “Fruit”. I joined Stilitano who was waiting for me outside. His hotel was in the darkest alley in the neighborhood. He had been living there for some days. A stairway from the corridor which opened out to the sidewalk led to the rooms. As we were going up, he said to me, “D'you want us to shack up together?”
“If we feel like it.”
“You're right. We'll stay out of trouble easier.”
In front of the door of the corridor he said to me, “Hand me the box.”
We had only one box of matches between us.
“It's empty,” I said.
He swore. Stilitano took me by the hand. His own was behind his back, for I was at his right. “Follow me,” he said. “And stop talking. The staircase is gabby.”
He gently led me from step to step. I no longer knew where we were going. A wondrously supple athlete was leading me about in the night. A more ancient and more Greek Antigone was making me scale a steep and sombre Calvary. My hand was confident, and I was at times ashamed to stumble against a rock or root, or to lose my footing. My ravisher was carrying me off.
“He's going to think I'm clumsy.”
However, he gently and patiently helped me, and the silence he enjoined upon me, the secrecy with which he surrounded the evening, our first night, made me for a moment believe in his love for me. The house smelled neither better nor worse than the other houses in the Barrio Chino, but the horrible odor of this one will always remain for me the very odor not only of love but of tenderness and confidence. After making love, the animal odor of my lover lingers in my nostrils for a long time. Probably some particles remain clinging to the hairs which line the interior, and it is a bit of his body that I encounter and recreate in me when I sniff. When
The Thief's Journal 16