Page 86 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
“In Cambo, I'm telling you, because there's no sanatorium in Cambo. That way, they couldn't accuse me of fraud. So in each town I'd go see the cure. I'd show him my card, my one arm and my lace. I'd tell him that it would be nice to have altar−cloths in the church made by sick kids. It didn't work with the cures, but they'd send me to all the women with dough. Since I came from the cure, they didn't dare kick me out. They didn't dare refuse to buy. So I'd get a hundred francs for the little machine−made lace squares that cost me five francs on the Rue Myrrha.”
That was how Stilitano told it, without any frills, in his toneless voice. He said that he had made a lot of money, but I didn't believe him because he wasn't very industrious. What must have attracted him more than anything else was the idea of such a racket.
One day, while he was away, I found a lot of military medals in a drawer, croix de guerre and so on. He admitted that he had put on a French uniform, plastered his chest with them and gone through the subways showing his stump and making a collection.
“I made my couple of hundred francs a day,” he said. “I sure put it over on those Parisians.”
He informed me of other details which I haven't time to go into. I still loved him. His qualities (like those of Java) make me think of certain drugs, certain odors which can't be called agreeable but from which one can't escape.
However, Armand returned when I had stopped waiting for him. I found him lying in bed, smoking a cigarette.
“Hello, kid,” he said.
He offered me his hand for the first time. “Well, did it work out all right? No hitches?”
I have already spoken of his voice. It seemed to me to have the same coldness as his blue eyes. Just as he looked at things or people, without resting his eyes on them, so he spoke, with an unreal voice, as if hardly taking part in the conversation. Certain gazes have a kind of radiance (Lucien's, Stilitano's, Java's) but not Armand's. Nor did his voice radiate either. It was emitted by a group of tiny characters whom he kept secretly hidden in the depths of his heart. It betrayed nothing and would not have betrayed. However, I could discern a vaguely Alsatian accent: the characters of his heart were Boches.
“Yes, it worked out all right,” I said. “I kept your things, as you see.”
Even now I sometimes wish that the police would arrest me in order to say: “Indeed, sir, I see that it wasn't you who committed the thefts; the guilty ones have been arrested.” I would like to be innocent of everything. When I answered Armand, I would have liked him to know that someone else—who, nevertheless, was myself—had robbed him. Almost shuddering, I triumphed in my fidelity.
“Oh that? I was confident.”
“What about you, everything all right?” “Oh, me? Things worked out.”
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