Page 37 - The Thief's Journal

adventure of Manon Lescaut.
I felt myself very close to taking part in
The Thief's Journal
sell myself to them, and I succeeded, thanks to the darkness of the narrow streets. At noon, the beggars could hang around anywhere in the enclosure, but in the evening we lined up in one of the barracks. One evening I recognized Salvador on the line.
When two years later, in Antwerp, I met Stilitano, who had put on weight, he was walking arm in arm with a smart−looking tart who was wearing long artificial eyelashes and a tight black satin dress. Still very good−looking, despite the heaviness of his features, wearing an expensive woolen suit and a gold ring, he was being led by a ridiculous and irritable, tiny little white dog. It was then that this pimp was revealed to me: he held his folly in leash, his curly, frizzy, coddled meanness. It preceded him too and led him to a sad city which was always wet with rain. I lived on the Rue du Sac, near the docks. At night I hung around the bars on the docks of the Scheldt. With this river, with this town of cut and stolen diamonds, I associated the radiant
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1. Translator's note: The name of the Scheldt in French is L'Escaut.
the novel, entering into the picture, idealizing myself, turning into an idea of jail and love intermingled. I teamed up with a young Fleming who worked on a merry−go−round at a fair, and we stole bikes in that city of gold, gems and naval victories. There where Stilitano was rich and beloved, I continued in my poverty. I shall never reproach him for having squealed on Pepe. Do I even know whether I was not more excited by Stilitano's treachery than by the gipsy's crime? Though unable to give me the exact details—the fact that this indecision imparted to the tale a historical tone further embellished it—Salvador was glad to tell me what had happened. His drunken, joyous voice—broken at times so as not to yield too fully to the song of a victim—proved his hatred of Stilitano, and his bitterness. A feeling of that kind made Stilitano seem stronger, bigger. Neither Salvador nor I was surprised to see one another.
As he was one of the most prominent of the tramps and had a certain seniority in Linea, I escaped having to pay the tithe of service that two or three strong and bullying beggars demanded of me. I went to his side.
“I learned all about what happened,” he said. “What?”
“What? Stilitano's arrest.”
“Arrested? Why?”
“Don't act innocent. You know better than I.”
All of Salvador's gentleness had changed into a kind of peevishness. He spoke to me maliciously and told me about my friend's arrest. It was not for the theft of the cape or any other theft but for the murder of the Spaniard.
“He wasn't the one,” I said.
“Of course not. Everyone knows that. It was the gipsy. But it was Stilitano who spilled the beans. He knew the name. The gipsy was found in the Albaicin. They arrested Stilitano in order to protect him from the gipsy's brothers and pals.”
On the road to Alicante, thanks to the resistance I had to combat, thanks to what I had to bring into play to abolish what is called remorse, the theft I had committed became in my eyes a very hard, very pure, almost luminous act, which only the diamond can symbolize. I had, in achieving it, destroyed once again—and, I
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