It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  V

  The repeated mechanical noise – a thwart composition by Mondrian in long black and yellow rectangles – began to oppress that part of his consciousness that was aware of becoming conscious while his subconscious tried to maintain the fading images of the dream – but having already been torn loose from peaceful sleep – as the past was set in stone – he picked up the telephone – though with a certain reluctance as if to postpone that which eventually would prove to be inevitable – to stop the shrill signals – that demanded immediate attention – from increasing their echoes inside his unprotected awareness –

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry to wake you, but when should we start?”

  Wide awake and sprightly with feminine sensibility she was calling on him from a distance to act in the near future.

  “If you come about half past seven we’ll be there before eight.”

  “What is it I have to remember?”

  In the eye of her mind the likely scenes – when floating on the surface of the darkening water – unfolded as superimposed impressions of past events.

  “Warm clothes, thick socks and gloves. That’s all.”

  “All right, à tout à l’heure!”

  She was so keen on this evening’s expedition – but what did he expect? Full blown telepathy? A switch – in time to form another chain of causality? The present universe of cause and effect had a one-way flow. Another phase or a phase out of phase? Both aspects fused? He took a bath and shaved carefully – the froth peeled off by each swath left parts of his chin and cheek – glabrous – soft and smooth to the soothing air of the afternoon. It was half past five – so he had better ease the day with rye bread – a glass of Bourgogne – Italian tomatoes and olives. Standing at the table and chewing slowly to get the satisfaction of the red and the green sarcocarps he sensed simultaneously the subtle changes in the light – the incessant movement of Great Creative Nature – when each instant revealed a slightly different bloemstilleven in his window frame. And the Champagne! He placed a bottle in a bucket and cooled it with running water. Two glasses – binoculars – telescope and warm clothes. He brushed his teeth and concentrated on the evening ahead although the chase of the coming days stirred beneath the threshold of his consciousness. No – here and now. This very evening. He might be dead by to-morrow. The sound of tires crunching the gravel gnashed against his tympanum. Sally was as precise and reliable as a woman could be. He wrapped the bottle up in a large towel and used a dish cloth for the glasses.

  “How are you?

  “Fine! I’ve been looking forward to our expedition in to the wilderness.”

  He had to fulfil her great expectations. She had parked in the driveway and they walked over to his car – having by mutual consent found it expedient not to kiss each other here where decent women armed with ten inch Maksutov-Cassegrain telescopes could see them – to tell tales.

  “The drive only takes about five minutes and I have made everything ready in the boat.”

  “Oh have you?”

  Pleased to see that he was considerate – the sweetness of her smile – but also enjoying to tease him a little – as a challenge – the colour brambled the tone of her voice.

  “I hope we’ll hear nightingale, cuckoo, lapwing, curlew – ”

  “Maybe not Lapwing and Curlew, but Savi’s Warbler, Reed Warbler and maybe Marsh Warbler, and I hope to show you a Bittern. I saw one early this morning.”

  “So you’ve already been there?”

  This evening light – softly on tip-toe – the retiring day. Mis’ess Tomlinson’s creamy lilies were at their very best on the greenest of green grass now when the slanting saffron-red rays could reach in among the dappled Birches.

  “I go out nearly every morning during the season. The weather has to be very bad if I resign myself to remain enclosed within the four rectangular walls of a house; but here we are. We’ll walk down to the boat this way through the willows.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A Reed Warbler.”

  “So light and still so intense.”

  In the silent spaces between the high notes the tolling of bronze church bells – borne along intermittently on the evening breeze – was faintly audible.

  “They’re practising, I think.”

  A moment they stood still to listen to the history of their species. The vibrations in the air were tinged with nostalgia for all that which was vanishing and which soon was going to be irrevocably buried beneath neglect or indifference – but it was also their childhood memories that – having been formed along identical patterns of experience although being different as to particular events – now united them in a communion of appreciation of how these experiences had made them the individuals they presently were.

  “Yes, they must be. If you’ll step into the boat first I’ll place the bags in the stern. This slightly veering wind will soon die down, so the conditions will be ideal to-night.”

  He took the mattress out of the plastic bag and removed the seat between the row locks.

  “Put this Jungle Oil on your clothes, not on your skin, and here’s a hat with a long net.”

  Her display of grace when she rolled the Jungle Oil out on her sleeves – dark gloves and socks – was thoroughly mammalian – a fine integration of affective and motor coordinate systems – and she had some soul as well in comparison with which everything else was at best thin air – nothing but thin air.

  “Do you always keep a mattress in the boat?”

  He ought to have expected a question like that. Her mischievous smile made him bend down and remove the net of the hat so that he could give her a kiss. That was what she had been waiting for – but he had been too careful or too absent-minded to notice. Just excuses?

  “No, I arranged everything early this morning when I fastened the rafters for the mosquito net.”

  Did she believe him? She wanted to believe him. She probably did believe him because what he said was true and she had an instinct that from afar could detect the stench of any conscious deviation from reality. Paddling to get out mainstream he began to approach the place where he had seen the Bittern – and all along the brink Barn Swallows were eagerly skimming the tops of the sedges. If each Swallow ate one mosquito weighing two milligrammes –

  “Is it better in the morning?”

  “Always. The world wakes and sings a hymn to the new day. In the evening there is maybe one third of the activity as there is early in the morning.”

  Gliding in among the sedges in the shallow water the prow settled in the mud. The light was still good but there was no visible movement further downstream among the linear leaves. They had heard nothing during their cautious approach so there was only a sporting chance of hearing him now. Wavelets rippled up against the flanks of the boat from time to time – the slight evening breeze was slackening as the beams of the sinking Sun began to cover a greater and greater area. Darkness intensified from below to touch the sleepy surface of the water and they were resting – like all other conscious organisms – within the centre of their audible semisphere. Several Nightingales and at least two Cuckoos were calling simultaneously – but right now there were only sporadic snatches of song from a couple of warblers. A whiff of salt air came drifting in from the Sea – almost fishy even but distinctly wrack-like. The depth among the trees behind the Reeds became diffuse as the Sun vanished – Le passage du gué le soir or rather Le vallon perhaps. It was the coming uncertainty of twilight – the liminal hour of the tāṇḍavaḥ coming closer – the dance of destruction – the dance of creation – but suddenly giving up all hope as if in a fit of impatience he began easing the boat out midstream.

  “Where are we going.”

  Her whisper had almost dissolved in the air before he could catch the sounds whose meaning he had read on her lips. Then they heard it – just across their wake.
The deep soft hollowed out boom boom. He stopped paddling to bend down – almost touching her ear with his teeth.

  “The Bittern.”

  Turning slowly round they strained their eyes to penetrate the twilight-tessellated darkness of the sedges. No warm-blooded change in patterns suggested the pointed black-streaked shape of the bird but the sound came again twice from the same place with a short interval. Having waited till her attention faltered he continued paddling down the river till he reached the rill which just was wide enough to let the boat come through as the branches of the trees hung out over the water to form a tunnel though with skyey gaps here and there in the dark canopy. After moving upstream – sometimes zig-zagging from brink to brink to avoid an overhanging branch – they were now completely hidden from the river. The water was shallow but just deep enough to keep the keel from scraping the weeds off the bottom – and at the place where the old Rowan leaned out over the water he had to stand on the gunwale to push the branches up over the scaffold of the mosquito net. Here – cradled in Nature – he led her into the shelter of the evening and began undressing. It was already getting dark and shielded from the world of humankind in the secluded privacy of the dense black foliage along the brinks she smiled to shed her clothes.

  “Here, take the glasses while I open the bottle.”

  “How romantic you are, but it’s a good idea. It matches what I feel.”

  The soft plop sounded hollow and strange – almost like a shot – but it did not diminish the intensity of the chorus that surrounded them. He poured the honey stream from the misty neck of the bottle up into their glasses which she held – one in each hand – while sitting cross-legged on the mattress – waiting to bless and to be blessed in turn.

  “Cheers!”

  Carbon dioxide bubbles – prickling the inside of his nostrils. Her eyes in the darkening dusk – she was asking him – even though knowing the answer already. The penetrating spondee of a Cuckoo’s call just overhead filled all space – or was it the invigorating chill of the humid evening air that almost gave him goose-flesh? The stable though labile sensation of the boat floating on the water – and the way she held the slender stem of the glass between her fingers – felt like the cool mellow fragrance of honey – blackberries and carnations did on his tongue. As he kissed her she responded – at first tentatively – then with more direct determination – by investigating his mouth with the cattish tip of her tongue – to reveal that nougat and carnation notes had coloured her spittle though they would also have become fused with his own so as to prevent any proper diagnosis. Having found what she wanted or expected to find – thirty-two teeth – a hard palate and a quick yearning for her to come closer and closer – she paused to sip the Champagne.