Page 74 - The Thief's Journal

“Couldn't you have asked me for some?”
The Thief's Journal
He spoke simply; then he remained silent. He made no attempt to hold on to life. His insensitivity to his own misery exasperated me.
“He may be dying to do it,” I thought, “but his lack of imagination prevents him from finding the necessary gestures.”
All at once he seemed to be walled up in an underground cavern from which he could not make his voice heard—a voice that was no doubt very discreet and very gentle. He was a paralytic whose soul was pining away in a motionless body. But what finally melted my rigor was my remembering something he had said about his dislocated shoulder: “It's not my fault.” He had uttered this excuse in such a humble tone of voice that I thought I could feel him blushing in the dark.
“I can't leave this poor kid all alone,” I said to myself. “He may remember saying this to me and he'll know that I have a heart of stone.”
Two minutes later, when he was in my arms, I took hold of his hair to lift up his face which he had buried in my neck; I saw that he was crying. During those three days he had known utter grief. I was then at peace with my soul for having brought peace to this child. I was proud of being the cause of a child's tears, of his joy and grief. Through my grace, he was a kind of jewel which his tears and pain hardened until it sparkled. His despair embellished both himself and his return to life. They made him precious. His tears and sobs on my neck proved my virility. I was his man. Hardly had he sponged his face and stretched out beside me on the bed than he began straightening the rim of my ear. He rolled it, unrolled it, bent it.
“It's getting creased,” he said.
He abandoned my ear for my cheek, then for my forehead, which he folded with his cruel fingers. (His fingers are kneading my skin with harsh precision. His gesture is not mechanical. Lucien is paying very close attention to what he is doing.) He seemed to be trying various faces on me, none of which satisfied him. I let myself be worked on by this child; the game enabled him to work off his grief. It amused him to invent wrinkles, hollows and bumps, but it seemed to amuse him solemnly. He was not laughing. Under the inventive fingers I felt his kindness. They made it “seem a blessing to be kneaded and molded, and I felt the love that matter must bear to the one who fashions it with such joy.
“What are you doing to my cheek?”
My question is far away. Where am I? What's going on here, in this hotel room, on a brass bed. Where am I? I am indifferent to what he is doing to me. My mind is resting. In a little while that roaring plane is going to crash to the ground. I shall remain here, my face finally on his neck. He won't move. I shall be caught in love, the way one is caught in ice, or mud, or fear.
Lucien was pawing away and kneading my skin, my eyebrows, my chin, my cheek. I opened my eyes wider, looked at him and, without smiling, for I had not the strength to, said to him sadly (nor did I have the strength to change my tone), “What are you doing to my cheek?”
“I'm making knots in it.”
He replied simply, the way one speaks about a natural thing to someone who ought to understand, or who will never understand anything so simple and so mysterious. His voice was somewhat hollow. When he raised my eyebrow in order to massage it, I drew my head slightly back. He put out his hands to take it again. I drew it
The Thief's Journal 72