Page 69 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
Sometimes I fear that his docility may suddenly stop obeying my love. I have to be very prudent and take quick advantage of what he offers my happiness. Toward evening, when Lucien holds me tight in his arms, a sadness clouds my face. It is as if my body were growing dark. A shadow covers it with crape. My eyes turn inward. Shall I let this child detach himself from me? Fall from my tree? Be crushed against the ground?
“My love is always sad.”'
“That's right. As soon as I kiss you, you get sad. I've noticed it.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No, it doesn't matter. I'm happy instead of you. I murmur to myself I love you... I love you... I love you...”
My love may end, I say to myself, by going out of me, swept off by these words, as a poison is swept out of the body by milk or a purge. I hold his hand in mine My fingertips linger over his. Finally I cut the contact: I still love him. The same sadness clouds my body. I see him for the first time: Lucien was corning down from Le Suquet barefoot. He walked through the town barefoot and went into the movie theatre. He was wearing a faultlessly elegant outfit: a pair of blue dungarees and a white and blue striped sailor's jersey with short sleeves rolled up to the shoulders. I dare write that his feet were bare, so keenly did I feel that they were accessories which had been wrought to complete his beauty. I often admired his mastery and the authority conferred upon him, amidst the city's conceited throng, by the simple and sweet assertion of his beauty, by his elegance, youth, strength and grace. Amidst this profusion of happiness, he seemed to me solemn, and he smiled.
The leaves of the araucaria plant are red, thick and fuzzy, slightly oily and brown. They adorn the graves and cemeteries of fishermen long dead, who for centuries walked about this coast, which is still wild and gentle. They bronzed their muscles, which were already black, as they hauled their boats and nets. They wore at the time an outfit whose forgotten details have changed very little: a very low−cut shirt, a multicolored scarf around their dark, curly heads. They walked barefoot. They are dead. The plant, which also grows in public parks, makes me think of them. The people of shades which they have become continues with its mischievousness and eager chatter: I reject their death. Having no other finer means of resurrecting a young fisherman of 1730, that he might live more brightly, I would sit out in the sun on the rocks or in the evening in the shadow of the pines and oblige his image to serve my pleasure. The company of a youngster was not always enough to distract me from them. One evening I shook off the dead leaves clinging to my hair and jacket; I buttoned my pants and asked Bob, “Do you know a guy named Lucien?”
“Yes, why?”
“Nothing. He interests me.”
The chap didn't bat an eyelash. He was gingerly brushing off pine needles. He subtly ran his fingers through his hair to feel for bits of moss. He emerged slightly from the shadow to see whether any spunk had spattered his soldier pants.
“What kind of guy is he?” I asked.
“Him? A little tramp. He used to hang around with the guys from the Gestapo.”
The Thief's Journal 67