Page 57 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
“What about Sylvia?”
“Sylvia, she's my bread and butter.” “Is that all?”
“Yes. And that's enough.”
If Stilitano were to add to his power over me by giving me any wild hope, he would reduce me to slavery. I already felt myself floundering in a deep and sad element. And what were Stilitano's flurries holding in store for me? I said to him, “You know I still have a soft spot for you, and I'd like to make love to you.”
Without looking at me, he answered smilingly, “We'll see about it.” After a brief silence, he said, “What do you feel like doing?”
“With you, everything!”
“We'll see.”
He didn't budge. No movement bore him toward me, though my whole being wanted to be swallowed up within him, though I wanted to give my body the suppleness of osier so as to twine round him, though I wanted to warp, to bend over him. The city was exasperating. The smell of the port and its excitement upset me. Flemish dockers brushed against us, and the maimed Stilitano was stronger than they. Perhaps he had in his pocket, for his imprudence was exquisite, a few−grains of opium which made him precious and punishable.
In order to get to Antwerp I had just gone through Hitler's Germany where I had stayed a few months. I walked from Breslau to Berlin. I wanted to steal. A strange force held me back. Germany terrified all of Europe; it had become, particularly in my eyes, the symbol of cruelty. It was already outside the law. Even on Unter den Linden I had the feeling that I was strolling about in a camp organized by bandits. I thought that the brain of the most scrupulous bourgeois concealed treasures of duplicity, hatred, meanness, cruelty and lust. Probably I stole there as elsewhere, but I felt a certain constraint, for what governed this activity and what resulted from it— this particular moral attitude set up as a civic virtue— was known by a whole nation which directed it against others.
“It's a race of thieves,” I felt within me. “If I steal here, I perform no singular deed that might fulfill me. I obey the customary order; I do not destroy it. I am not committing evil. I am not upsetting anything. The outrageous is impossible. I'm stealing in the void.”
I felt a kind of uneasiness after stealing. It seemed to me that the gods that govern the laws were not revolted. They were merely surprised. I was ashamed. But what I desired above all was to return to a country where the laws of ordinary morality were revered, laws on which life was based. In Berlin I chose prostitution as my means of livelihood. It satisfied me for a few days and then wearied me. Antwerp offered me legendary treasures, Flemish museums, Jewish diamond merchants, ship−owners loitering about at night, passengers on transatlantic steamers. Exhilarated by my love, I wanted to experience perilous adventures with Stilitano. He seemed to want to lend himself to the game and to dazzle me by his boldness. Driving with only one hand, he arrived at the hotel one evening on a police motorcycle.
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