Page 42 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
With faithful regularity he was still fulfilling his simple function. His begging was stagnant. It had become a still, transparent lake, never disturbed by a breath, and this poor shameful creature was the perfect image of what I would have liked to be. It was then perhaps that, had I met my mother and had she been humbler than I, we would have pursued together the ascension—though language seems to call for the word “fall” or any other that indicates a downward movement—the difficult, painful ascension which leads to humiliation. I would have carried out that adventure with her, I would have written of it so as to magnify, thanks to love, the terms— whether gestures or vocables—which were more despicable.
I returned to France. I crossed the border without any trouble, but when I had got a few miles into the French Countryside, I was arrested by French policemen. My rags were too Spanish.
“Your papers!”
I showed some scraps of paper that were torn and dirty as a result of folding and unfolding.
“What about your card?”
“What card?”
I learned of the existence of the humiliating anthropometric card. It is issued to all vagabonds and stamped in every police station. I was thrown into jail.
After numerous stays in jail, the thief left France. He first went through Italy. The reasons that took him there are obscure. Perhaps it was the proximity of the border. Rome. Naples. Brindisi. Albania. I stole a valise on the “Rodi” which set me ashore in Santi Ouaranta. The port authorities in Corfu refused to allow me to stay. Before I could leave again, they made me spend the night on the boat I had hired to bring me. Afterwards it was Serbia. Afterwards Austria. Czechoslovakia. Poland, where I tried to circulate counterfeit zlotys. Everywhere it was stealing, prison, and, from every one of these countries, expulsion. I crossed the borders at night, went through hopeless autumns when the lads were all heavy and weary, and− through springtimes when all at once, at nightfall, they would emerge from God knows what retreat where they had been priming themselves to swarm in the alleys, on the docks, the ramparts, the parks, the movies and the barracks. Finally it was Hitler's Germany. Then Belgium. In Antwerp I ran into Stilitano again.
Brno—or Brunn—is a city in Czechoslovakia. I arrived there on foot, in the rain, after crossing the Austrian border at Retz. Some petty thefts in stores kept me going for a few days but I was without friends, astray amidst a nervous people. I would have liked, however, to rest a while after my turbulent trip through Serbia and Austria, after my flight from the police of those countries and from certain accomplices who were eager to destroy me. Brno is a wet, dismal city, oppressed by the smoke of factories and the color of the stones. My soul would have relaxed there, grown languid, as in a room whose shutters have been drawn, if only I could have gone a few days without worrying about money. German and Czech were spoken in Brno. There was a kind of war going on between rival groups of young street−singers. A group which sang in German invited me to join them. There were six of us. I took up the collection and handled the money.
Three of my companions played the guitar, one played the accordion and the other sang. One foggy day, as I was leaning against a wall, I watched the group us they gave a concert. One of the guitarists was about twenty
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