Page 92 - The Thief's Journal

charged rather with tenderness.
The Thief's Journal
Sometimes I would meet him in the bar. I would walk with him in the street. I could then imagine myself as a kind of machiavellian thief playing at being “on the up and up” with a cop, flirting with him, delicately flouting him while waiting to be nabbed. Never was there any exchange of impertinent remarks between us, or of cockiness or ironic threat, except once: suddenly grabbing my arm, he said in a decided tone, “Come along, you're going with me...”
And in a gentle voice trailing off into a smile, he added, “...for a drink.”
Detectives make use of a number of facetious remarks of this kind. Bernardini was indulging himself with me. As I left him, I said, “I'm beating it.”
Though the joke might have been mechanical in his case, it worried me. I felt as if I were penetrating to the very heart of the police. I must have wandered deep into it for a detective to be ironical with me about his function. However, it seems to me that this joke revealed to us the absurdity of our reciprocal situations. We were escaping from it that we might meet smilingly in friendship only. Invective was banished from our relationship. I was his friend, would have liked to be his dearest friend, and though I felt that we did not love each other in our two chief qualities, as policeman and thief (it was by these that we were bound), we knew that they were only a means, something comparable to the nature of opposite electric poles whose meeting produces the incomparable spark. No doubt I could have loved a man equal to Bernard in charm, but, having to choose him, I had preferred a cop to a hoodlum. In his presence I was submissive chiefly because of his splendid bearing, the play of his muscles which I sensed under his clothes, his gaze, in short, his particular qualities, but when I was alone and thought of our love, it was by the nocturnal power of the entire police force that I was dominated. We feel impelled to use the words “Nocturnal” or “Sinister” when speaking of them. Like anyone else, detectives wear various colors; however, when fancying them, I see, as it were, a shadow over their faces and clothes.
He once asked me to ” squeal” on some friends. By agreeing to do so, I could have deepened my love for him, but there is no need for you to know any more about this particular matter.
It is usually said of a judge that he is lofty. In the symbolism of the Byzantine Empire, which copies the heavenly order, Eunuchs are said to represent Angels. Judges owe to their robes an ambiguity which is the sign of orthodox angelism. I have spoken elsewhere of the uneasiness which the idea of these celestial beings causes me. In like manner, judges. Their garments are droll, their behaviour comical. If I consider them I judge them and am disturbed by their intelligence'. At a court hearing, when I was brought up on charges of theft, I said to Judge Rey, “Will you allow me to clarify (it was a matter of establishing the fact that there had been certain provocations by paid police informers) something which one is forbidden to mention in a court−room, and first of all to question you?”
“Eh? By no means. The Code...”
He had sensed the danger of too human a relationship. His integrity might have been attacked. I burst out laughing, for I saw the judge retreating into his robe. You can twit them, but not cops, who have arms to grab criminals and thighs to bestride and dominate powerful motorcycles. I respected the police. They can kill. Not at a distance and by proxy, but with their hands. Their murders, though ordered, derive none the less from a particular, individual will, implying, along with its decision, the responsibility of the murderer. The policeman is taught to kill. I like those sinister though smiling machines which are intended for the most difficult act of all: murder. That was how Java was trained in the Waffen S.S. In order to be a good body−guard—he was the bodyguard of a German general—he was taught the swift use of a dagger and certain judo holds with a fine lasso or bare hands. The police come from a similar school, just as the young heroes of Dickens come from a
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