Page 34 - The Thief's Journal

traitors and become one of them.
The Thief's Journal
I left Cadiz for Huelva. Chased away by the Municipal Guard, I returned to Jerez and then along the coast−line to Alicante. I went alone. At times, I would pass or overtake another tramp. Without even sitting down on a stone−pile, we would tell each other which village was more friendly to beggars, which sheriff less inhuman, and we would go our solitary way. Joking about our sacks, we would say, “He's out hunting with a canvas gun.” I was alone. I walked humbly along the outer edge of the roads, near the ditches where the dust from the white grass powdered my feet. As a result of this shipwreck, sunk by all the woes of the world in an ocean of despair, I still knew the sweetness of being able to cling to the strong and terrible prick of a negro. It was stronger than all the currents of the world, more certain, more consoling, and by a single one of my sighs more worthy than all your continents. Toward evening my feet would be sweating; on summer evenings I would therefore walk in the mud. The sun filled my head, with a lead ballast which served as thought and at the same time emptied it. Andalusia was lovely, hot and barren. I went all through it. At that age, fatigue was unknown to me. I carried with me such a burden of sorrow that I was sure my whole life would be spent in wandering. Vagrancy was no longer a detail which would embellish my life, but a reality. I no longer know what I thought, but I remember that I offered all my miseries to God. In my solitude, remote from men, I came quite close to being all love, all devotion.
“I am so remote from them,” I had to tell myself, “that I no longer hope to return to them. Let me therefore cut myself off completely. Between them and me there will be even fewer bonds, and the last will be broken if to their contempt for me I oppose my love for them.”
Thus, reversing steam, here was I granting you my pity. My despair was probably not expressed in this form. Indeed, everything in my thoughts was frittered away, but the pity I speak of must have crystallized into exact reflections which, in my sun−scorched head, assumed a final and obsessive form. My weariness—I do not think it was fatigue—−prevented me from resting. I no longer went to drink at the fountains. My throat was parched. My eyes burned. I was hungry. Copper glints played over my tough beard in the sunlight. I was dry, young and sad. I learned to smile at things and ponder them. As a young Frenchman on this shore, from my solitude, from my beggar's state, from the dust of the ditches that rose up in tiny individual clouds about each foot, renewing themselves at every step, my pride derived a consoling−singularity which contrasted with the banal sordidness of my apparel. Never did my broken−down shoes or my dirty socks have the dignity that lifts the sandals of the Carmelites and bears them through the dust, never did my dirty jacket accord my movements the slightest nobility. It was during the summer of 1934 that I trudged along the Andalusian highways. At night, after begging a few coins in a village, I would continue into the country, and I would lie down to sleep at the bottom of a ditch. The dogs would scent me—my odor further isolated me—they would bark whenever I left a farm or arrived at one.
“Shall I go or not?” I would ask myself as I neared a white house surrounded by whitewashed walls.
I would not hesitate long. The dog tied to the door would still be yapping. I would approach. It would yap louder. In very bad Spanish, I would ask the woman who appeared, though without leaving the threshold, for a sou—being a foreigner protected me a little. If alms were refused me, I would withdraw, my head bowed, my face expressionless.
I dared not even notice the beauty of this part of the world—unless it were to look for the secret of this beauty, the imposture behind it, of which one will be a victim if he trusts it. By refusing it, I discovered poetry.
“All this beauty, however, is made for me. I am registering it, and I know that it is so conspicuous in order to show how woebegone I am.”
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