Page 94 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
them what they can give me, I extend them by bold adventures which are the proof of their amorous potency. Every one of my lovers elicits a sordid story. These dangerous nocturnal adventures into which I let myself be drawn by my sombre heroes are thus the elaboration of an erotic ceremonial, of a mating which is sometimes quite long.
Bernardini had many such details, the blossoming of which was no doubt due to his amazing career in the police, which itself gave meaning to and justified such details. I left Marseilles at the end of a few weeks. Many of my victims were complaining and threatening me. I was in danger.
“If you were ordered to arrest me, would you do it?” I asked Bernard.
He didn't seem troubled for more than ten seconds. He wrinkled an eyebrow and replied, “I'd arrange not to have to do it myself. I'd ask a friend.”
Instead of revolting me, such baseness heightens my love Nevertheless, I left him and went to Paris. I felt calmer. This brief encounter with a detective, the love I bore him, the love I received from him and the amorous blend of our two opposing destinies had purified me. Rested, rid of all the slag which desire deposits, I felt washed, purged, ready for a lighter leap. About fifteen years later, when I had a crush on a cop's son, I tried to transform him into a hoodlum. (The boy is twenty years old. His name is Pierre Fievres. He wrote to me asking me to buy him a motorcycle. I shall speak of his role a few pages hence.)
As I was now being helped by Armand, he gave me half of our profits. He insisted that I assume a certain independence, and he wanted me to have a room of my own. For the sake of prudence, perhaps, for though he was protecting me, the danger was growing. He chose one in another hotel, on another street. Around noon, I would go to his room, and we would plan our evening's program. We would then go out for lunch. He also continued with his opium traffic, in which Stilitano had a hand.
I would have been happy were it not that my love for Armand had taken on such importance that I wonder whether he never noticed it. His presence drove me wild. His absence worried me. After robbing a victim, we would spend an hour together in a bar, but what then? I knew nothing about his nights. I grew jealous of all the young bums who hung around the water−front. Finally, my anguish reached a climax when one day, in my presence Robert got uppity with him, though jokingly.
“And what about me? You think I don't know all about you?” “What do you know?”
“Don't worry, I've got certain rights over you.”
“You? You little bitch.”
Robert burst out laughing.
“That's just it. It's because I am a little bitch. I'm your gal, see.”
He said it coolly, without bluster, and with a wink at me. I thought that Armand would strike him, or that his reply would be so sharp that Robert would keep still, but he smiled. He seemed to despise neither the boy's familiarity nor his passiveness. Had I displayed either of those two attitudes, he would have sailed into me. That was how I learned how things stood between them. I was the friend whom Armand esteemed. Alas, I would have preferred to be chosen as his beloved mistress.
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