Page 32 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
“At least,” I said to myself, “if my shame is real, it hides a sharper, more dangerous element, a kind of sting that will always threaten anyone who provokes it. It might not have been laid over me like a trap, might not have been intentional, but since it is what it is, I want it to conceal me so that I can lie in wait beneath it.”
At Carnival time, it was easy to go about in woman's dress, and I stole an Andalusian petticoat with a bodice from a hotel room. Disguised by the mantilla and fan, one evening I walked across town quickly in order to get to the Criolla. So that my break with your world would be more brutal, I kept my pants on under the skirt. Hardly had I reached the bar when someone ripped the train of my dress. I turned around in a fury.
“I beg your pardon. Excuse me.”
The foot of a blond young man had got caught in the lace. I hardly had strength enough to mumble, “Watch what you're doing.” The face of the clumsy young man, who was both smiling and excusing himself, was so pale that I blushed. Someone next to me said to me in a low voice, “Excuse him, senora, he limps.”
“I won't have people limping on my dress!” screamed the beautiful actress who smoldered within me. But the people around us were laughing. “I won't have people limping on my toilette!” I screamed to myself. Formulated within me, in my stomach, as it seemed to me, or in the intestines, which are enveloped by the “toilette,” this phrase must have been uttered with a terrible glare. Furious and humiliated, I left under the laughter of the men and the Carolinas. I went straight to the sea and drowned the skirt, bodice, mantilla and fan. The whole city was joyous, drunk with the Carnival that was cut away from the earth and alone in the middle of the Ocean. I was poor and sad.
(“Taste is required...” I was already refusing to have any. I forbade myself to. Of course I would have shown a great deal. I knew that cultivating it would have—not sharpened me but—softened me. Stilitano himself was amazed that I was so uncouth. I wanted my fingers to be numb: I kept myself from learning to sew.)
Stilitano and I left for Cadiz. Changing from one freight train to another, we got to a place near San Fernando and decided to continue our journey on foot. Stilitano disappeared. He arranged to meet me at the station. He didn't show up. I waited for a long time; I returned the following day and the day after, two days in succession, though I was sure that he had deserted me. I was alone and without money. When I realized this, I again became aware of the presence of lice, of their distressing and sweet company in the hems of my shirt and pants. Stilitano and I had never ceased to be nuns of the Upper Thebaid who never wash their feet and whose shifts rot away.
San Fernando is on the sea. I decided to get to Cadiz, which is built right in the water, though connected to the mainland by a very long jetty. It was evening when I started. Before me were the high salt pyramids of the San Fernando marshes, and farther off, in the sea, silhouetted by the setting sun, a city of domes arid minarets. At the outermost point of western soil, I suddenly had before me the synthesis of the Orient. For the first time in my life I neglected a human being for a thing. I forgot Stilitano.
In order to keep alive, I used to go to the port early in the morning, to the pescatoria, where the fishermen always throw from their boats a few fish which they have caught the night before. All beggars are familiar with this practice. Instead of going, as in Malaga, to cook them on the fire of the other tramps, I went back alone, to the middle of the rocks overlooking Porto Reale. The sun would be rising when my fish were cooked. I almost always ate them without bread or salt. Standing up, or lying among the rocks, or sitting on them, at the easternmost point of the island, facing the mainland, I was the first man lit up and warmed by the first ray, which was itself the first manifestation of life. I had gathered the fish on the wharves in the darkness. It was still dark when I reached my rocks. The coming of the sun excited me. I worshipped it. A kind of sly intimacy developed between us. I honored it, though without, to be sure, any complicated ritual; it would not have occurred to me to ape the primitives, but I know that this star became my god. It was within my body
The Thief's Journal 30