Page 22 - The Thief's Journal

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The Thief's Journal
fearful and enchanted prisoner I was.
1. The first line of verse which to my amazement I found myself composing was the following: “Harvester of stolen breath.” I am reminded of it by what I have written above.
The crossing of the borders and the excitement it aroused in me were to enable me to apprehend directly the essence of the nation I was entering. I was penetrating less into a country than to the interior of an image. Naturally, I wished to possess it, but by acting upon it. Military attire being that which best denotes it, this was what I hoped to tamper with. For the foreigner, there are no other means than espionage.
Mixed in with it, perhaps, was the concern about polluting, through treason, an institution which regards loyalty — or loyalism — as its essential quality. Perhaps I also wanted to get farther away from my own country. (The explanations I am giving occur to me spontaneously. They seem valid for my case. They are to be accepted for mine alone.) In any event, I mean that as a result of a certain frame of mind which is natural to enchantment (finding itself further exalted by my emotion in the presence of nature, endowed with a power recognized by men) I was ready to act not in accordance with the rules of morality but in accordance with certain laws of a fictional aesthetic which makes the spy out to be a restless, invisible, though powerful character. In short, a preoccupation of this kind gave, in certain cases, a practical justification to my entering a country where nothing obliged me to go, except, however, expulsion from a neighboring country.
It is in regard to my feeling in the presence of nature that I speak of espionage, but when I was deserted by Stilitano, the thought of it was to occur to me like a consolation, as if to anchor me to your soil where loneliness and poverty made me not walk but fly. For I am so poor, and I have already been accused of so many thefts, that when I leave a room too quietly on tiptoe, when I hold my breath, I am not sure, even now, that I am not carrying off with me the holes of the curtains or hangings. I do not know just how informed Stilitano was about military secrets nor what he might have learned in the Legion, in a colonel's office. But he was thinking of turning spy. Neither the profit to be derived from the operation nor the danger had any charms for me. Only the idea of treason had that power which was taking greater and greater hold of me.
“Who'll we sell them to?”
“Germany.”
But after a few moments' reflection he decided: “Italy.”
“But you're Serbian. They're your enemies.” “So what?”
Had we followed this adventure through, it would have drawn me out somewhat from the abjection in which I was caught. Espionage is a procedure of which states are so ashamed that they ennoble it for its being shameful. We would have profited from this nobleness. Save that in our case it was a matter of treason. Later on, when I was arrested in Italy and the officers questioned me about the protection of our frontiers, I was able to discover a dialectic capable of justifying my disclosures. In the present case I would have been backed up by Stilitano. I could not but wish, through these revelations, to be the abettor of a terrible catastrophe. Stilitano might betray his country and I mine out of love for Stilitano. When I speak to you later of Java, you will find the same characteristics, indeed almost the same face as Stilitano's; and as the two sides of a triangle meet at the apex which is in the sky, Stilitano and Java go off to meet a star forever extinguished: Marc
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Aubert.
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