Page 61 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
astonishing me. I perceived events themselves in their autonomy. The reader can gather how dangerous such an attitude must have been in the life I was leading, where I had to be wide−awake every minute and ran the risk of being caught if I lost sight of the ordinary meaning of objects.
With Stilitano's help and advice I had managed to dress elegantly, though with a quite personal elegance. Disdaining the rigid styles of the riff−raff, I displayed a certain fancy in my attire. Thus, the moment I stopped being a beggar whom shame cut off from the practical world, this world eluded me. I distinguished the essence of objects, not their qualities. In short, my humor disentangled me from the beings to whom I had passionately bound myself. I felt lost and absurdly light.
A young pimp in a bar, squatting on his haunches and playing with a puppy: this playfulness seemed to me so unusual that I smiled with pleasure at pimp and puppy; I had understood them. And also that the bus, which was full of serious and hurried people, would courteously stop at the diminutive sign of a child's fingers. Seeing a stiff hair threateningly emerge from Stilitano's nostril, without trembling I took a pair of scissors to cut it off.
Later on, when, without refusing to get excited about a handsome boy, I applied the same detachment; when I allowed myself to be aroused and when, refusing the emotion the right to rule me, I examined it with the same lucidity; I was aware of what my love was; on the basis of my love I established relationships with the world; this was the birth of intelligence.
But Stilitano was disenchanted. I no longer served him. If he struck me or bawled me out, he taught me the meaning of insults and blows. Antwerp no longer had for me its sad character and its sordid maritime poetry. I saw clearly, and anything might have happened to me. I might have committed a crime. This period lasted about six months. I was chaste.
Armand was away on a trip. Although I heard that he was sometimes called by other names, we shall keep this one. Am I not myself up to my fifteenth or sixteenth name, including Jean Gallien, my current one? He was returning from France where, as I learned later, he was smuggling opium. A face need appear before me only a few seconds for me to be able to express its quality in a single word. If, however, it lingers, instead of the straightforwardness, limpidity or frankness which it suggested, a curl of the lip or a gaze or a smile which I then perceive complicates the interpretation. The face becomes more and more complex. The signs overlap: it is illegible. In Stilitano's I made an effort to see the hardness which was marred only by a sign of irony at the corner of the eyes or perhaps the mouth, I'm not sure which. Armand's face was false, cunning, mean, sneaky, brutal. No doubt it is easy for me to discover these things after knowing the man, but I know that the impression I had at the time could have been the result only of the miraculous union of these qualities on a single face. Hypocrisy, meanness, stupidity, cruelty and savagery are all reducible to a single term. Rather than their being detailed on his face, what could be read there (I mean not in space but in time) was either my own mood or what provoked, within Armand, the appearance of such qualities on his features. He was a brute. He exhibited no regular beauty, but the presence on his face of what I have mentioned— and which was pure because so unmarred by its opposite—gave him a sombre though sparkling appearance. His physical strength was prodigious. He was about forty−five years old at the time. Having lived so long in the company of his own vigor, he carried it lightly. He had been clever enough to make the most of it, so that this vigor, this muscular power, visible in the shape of the skull and the base of the neck, further proclaimed, and imposed, these detestable qualities. It made them sparkle. His face was flat, I believe naturally so, as his nose did not look as if it had been damaged by a blow. His jaw was strong and solid. His skull was very round and almost always shaved. The skin on the back of his neck had three folds which were delineated by thin streaks of dirt. He was tall and splendidly built. He generally moved slowly and with deliberation. He laughed little and without frankness. His voice. It was deep, hollow, almost bass. Not that it could be called a gruff voice, though its timbre did seem woolly. When Armand spoke very fast or when he spoke while walking quickly, he achieved, by the contrast of the acceleration of his delivery and the deep tone of his voice, an ingenious
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