Page 29 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
I asked him, in fun, which was the monkey, he or the animal he carried on his shoulder. We started quarreling. I punched him. His eyelashes remained stuck to my knuckles; they were false. I had just learned of the existence of fakes.
Stilitano got money occasionally from the whores. Most often he stole it from them, either by taking the change when they paid for something, or at night from their handbags, when they were on the bidet. He would go through the Barrio Chino and the Parallelo heckling all the women, sometimes irritating them, sometimes fondling them, but always ironic. When he returned to the room, toward morning, he would bring back a bundle of children's magazines full of gaudy pictures. He would sometimes go a long roundabout way in order to buy them at a news−stand that was open late at night. He would read the stories which, in those days, corresponded to the Tarzan adventures in today's comic−books. The hero of these stories is lovingly drawn. The artist takes the utmost pains with the imposing physique of this knight, who is almost always nude or obscenely dressed. Then Stilitano would fall asleep. He would manage so that his body did not touch mine. The bed was very narrow. As he put out the light, he would say, “Well, kid!”
1 And upon awakening: “Well, kid!”
1. I used to toss my things any old place when we went to bed, but Stilitano laid his out on a chair, carefully arranging his trousers, jacket and shirt so that nothing would be creased. He seemed thereby to be endowing his clothes with life, as if wanting them to get a night's rest after a hard day.
Our room was very tiny. I was dirty. The washbasin was filthy. No one in the Barrio Chino would have dreamed of cleaning his room, his belongings or his linen—except his shirt and, most often, only the collar. Once a week, to pay the room rent, Stilitano screwed the landlady who, on other days, called him Senor.
One evening he had to fight. We were going through the Calle Carmen. It was just about getting dark. Spaniards' bodies sometimes have a kind of undulating flexibility and their stances are occasionally equivocal. In broad daylight Stilitano would not have made a mistake. In this incipient darkness he grazed three men who were talking quietly but whose gesticulations were both brisk and languorous. As he neared them, Stilitano, in his most insolent tone of voice, hurled a few coarse words at them. Three quick and vigorous pimps replied to the insults.
“Do you take us for mariconas that you talk to us like that?”
Although he recognized his blunder, Stilitano wanted to strut in front of me.
“Suppose I do?”
“Maricona yourself.”
A few women drew up, and some men. A circle gathered around us. A fight seemed inevitable. One of the young men provoked Stilitano outright.
“If you're not fruit, come on and fight.”
Before getting to the point of fists or weapons, hoodlums gab it out for a while. It's not that they try to soft−pedal the conflict; rather, they work themselves up to combat. Some other Spaniards, their friends, were egging the three pimps on. Stilitano felt he was in danger. My presence no longer bothered him.
He said:
The Thief's Journal 27