Page 50 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
In the evening he offers his cock to whoever wants to suck it, or his ass for a ramming.
1. I have to leave this name blank.
Murder is not the most effective means of reaching the subterranean world of vileness. Quite the contrary. The blood he has shed, the constant danger to which his body is exposed of one day or other losing its head (the murderer withdraws but his withdrawal is upward), and the attraction he exerts—for he is assumed to have, considering the way he defies the laws of life, the most easily imagined attributes of exceptional strength—prevent people from loathing the criminal. Other crimes are more degrading: theft, begging, treason, breach of trust, etc.; these are the ones I chose to commit, though I was always haunted by the idea of a murder which would cut me off irremediably from your world.
Having had a run of good luck in Poland, I paraded my elegance. Though the Poles never suspected me, the French consul sized the situation up and requested me to leave the consulate forthwith, Katowice within forty−eight hours and Poland itself as soon as possible. Michaelis and I decided to go back to Czechoslovakia together, but we were both refused entry visas. We hired an auto with its chauffeur so that he could take us to the border by a mountain road. I had a revolver.
“If the chauffeur refuses to drive us, we'll kill him and keep going in the car.”
Sitting in the rear, with one hand on my weapon and the other in the hand of Michaelis, who was stronger than I though just as young, I would gladly have fired into the driver's back. The car was going slowly uphill. Michaelis was supposed to leap to the steering−wheel, but just then the chauffeur stopped in front of a border post that we had not seen. This crime was denied me. Escorted by two policemen, we returned to Katowice. It was night.
“If they find the revolver in my pocket,” I thought, “they'll arrest us. Maybe they'll convict us.”
The stairway leading to the office of the chief of police was dark. As we were going up, I got the bright idea of putting my weapon on one of the steps. I pretended to stumble, lowered my body and laid the weapon in a corner near the wall. During the questioning (Why did I want to go to Czechoslovakia? What was I doing there?) I was all atremble lest my ruse be discovered. At that moment I experienced the anxious joy, fragile as the pollen on hazel blossoms, the golden morning joy of the murderer who escapes. Though I had not managed to commit the crime, I had at least been gently bathed in the fringe of its dawning.
Michaelis loved me. Perhaps the painful position he knew I was in transformed this love into a kind of pity. Mythologies speak frequently of heroes who are changed into servants. Perhaps he dimly feared that in my contracted, my larval position, I might elaborate some cunning scheme and that my metamorphosis would be climaxed by a sudden sprouting of wings, like the stag at bay to whom it is miraculously granted by God to escape from the' hounds, before the very eyes of my guards who would be thunderstruck by my glory. The beginning of the execution of a murder is in itself sufficient, and Michaelis beheld me as in the past, but I no longer loved him. If I report my adventure with him, I do so only that it may be seen that a relentless fatality corrupted my attitudes; either my hero collapsed or I myself proved to be made of paltry clay. It will be no different with Java. I am already aware that his toughness is only an appearance; not that it is a mere front, but that it is made of the softest gelatine.
The Thief's Journal 48