Page 43 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
years old. He was blond and was wearing a plaid shirt and a pair of corduroy pants. Beauty is rare in Brno; I was charmed by his face. I stood and looked at him for a long time and I caught him exchanging a smile of understanding with a fat, pink−cheeked man who was very conservatively dressed and holding a leather brief−case in his hand. As I walked away, I wondered whether the young men realized that their companion made himself available to the city's rich queers. I walked away, but I managed things so as to see them a number of times on different squares. None of them was from Brno except Michaelis Andritch, the one who became my friend. His gestures were graceful without being effeminate. As long as he was with me, he never bothered with women. I had the surprise of seeing for the first time a homosexual whose bearing was manly, even somewhat blunt. He was the aristocrat of the troupe. They all slept in a cellar, where they also cooked their meals. Of the few weeks I spent with them there is nothing much to tell, except of my love for Michaelis, with whom I spoke Italian. He introduced me to the manufacturer. He was rosy and fat, yet he did not seem to put much weight on the earth. I was sure that Michaelis felt no affection for him; nevertheless, I pointed out to him that theft would be more beautiful than prostitution.
“Ma, sono il uomo,” he said to me arrogantly.
I doubted it but pretended to believe it. I told him about a few thefts and that I had been in prison; he admired me for this. In a few days, with the help of my clothes, I became a glamorous figure to him. We managed a few thefts and I became his master.
I shall allow myself a certain coquetry and say that I was a clever thief. Never have I been caught red−handed, in “flagrante delicto.” But the fact that I know how to steal admirably for my earthly profit is not very important; what I have sought most of all has been to be the conscience of the theft whose poem I am writing; in other words, refusing to enumerate my exploits, I show what I owe them in the moral realm, what I build with them as a basis, what the simplest thieves are perhaps dimly seeking, what they themselves might achieve.
“A great coquetry...”: my extreme discretion.
This book, The Thief's Journal, pursuit of the Impossible Nothingness.
We very quickly decided to leave after robbing the gentleman. We were to go to Poland where Michaelis knew some counterfeiters. We planned to circulate counterfeit zlotys.
Although I had not forgotten Stilitano, the other was taking his place in my heart and against my body. What remained of the first was rather a kind of influence which imparted to my smile (which collided with the memory of his) a slight cruelty and to my gestures a certain rigor. I had been the beloved of so beautiful a bird of prey, a miscreant of the finest breed, that I could adopt a certain insolence with a charming guitarist, though he was so bright and alert that I had to go easy. I dare not venture a sketch of him. You would read in it the qualities I find in all my friends. (Pretexts for my iridescence, then for my transparence, and finally for my absence, the lads I speak of evaporate. All that remains of them is what remains of me: I exist only through them, who are nothing, existing only through me. They shed light on me, but I am the zone of interference. These chaps: my Twilight Guard.) This one had, perhaps, a certain sweet roguishness, and he was so vibrant with grace that I am tempted, the better to define him, to use the old−fashioned expression:
“He was a sweet fiddle.”
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