It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  “Yes, but only for the tomatoes, so I’ll have to be going now.”

  “Thanks again and good luck with the pump.”

  He went down to the car – and camouflaged by leafy trousers – a leafy jacket and a hat with mosquito net he took the mattress in one hand and the bag with all the rest of the gear in the other and began to walk up along the far side of the trees to reach the small grove behind her house where he imagined there might be a chance of seeing the side entrance she would use when going out to or coming in from the driveway. Following the willowy edges of the fields he had to walk partly in zig-zag so it was longer than he had expected – though that did not matter – but for a distance of seventy yards there was hardly any cover along the trench that met the row of Poplar Trees which grew at a right angle to the road – but as this row of trees was fairly dense he hoped that it would hinder this open stretch from being easily visible from her house. Placing the mattress and the bag beneath a fairly large Ash he began cautiously to scrutinise the surroundings with the binoculars. The dark gloves and the mosquito net shielded his hands and his face and as he kept close to the ground he would be hard to spot from the garden or the upper windows. There was about one hundred and fifty metres to the front gate and the driveway but only a part of the house and the side entrance were plainly visible through a gap in the Elder thicket. So taking care not to ruffle the Nettles and the Festuca grass he eased the mattress down into a slight hollow – spread the camouflage net out over it and adjusted the legs of the tripod to the uneven ground. With a broken branch he pushed gently the Cow Parsleys in front of the telescope aside so that he could get a good view of the house when lying on his stomach – but he could not see her car – so she was not at home – and it would be impossible to know when she would return. There was not as much traffic now as when he had come and when the sound of tires became audible among the buzzing of the insects he hoped that the car would slow down and swing into the driveway so that he could see her face and get the ultimate confirmation he had to have. The afternoon crawled slowly on – the shadows lengthened and all was as quiet as if the house had been uninhabited. Suddenly it struck him – with a force that surpassed those of his previous forebodings – that there would be complications en masse if she happened to share the house with someone – but once more his sixth and country sense told him that she was single – living at the naked edge of society just like he did – a natural anomaly fostered both by genetic profile and circumstances – yes – she would have to be a lone Wolfess whose ways did not coincide with the ways of the social pack. The unconscious reluctance in modern English to use feminine agent nouns was symptomatic of the hidden misogynism that pervaded this seagirt society of castes and shop-keepers at all levels. So being out of tune as well with the present century and relying on the stars above he had a cup of tea and a sandwich but returned every thirty seconds to the telescope – absurdly willing her to have arrived in the interval as if by magic. Both his eyes were hurting and full of water which blurred the sight – but he had no other option but to wait and wait until the end of time. Sooner or later she would be bound to appear on the scene – unless she only came and went by night. There was a Blackbird singing in her garden and a Chaffinch a little to his right in an old Hawthorn. If she did her shopping in the village – the ordnance map had given him the impression that there might be about six kilometres to the village – but about twice that length to Yarmouth – he could park in the small wood beside the road and wait till he saw her car and then follow her to the shop of her preference and slip the transmitter up under the wing of her car – but it would entail another harrowing day of waiting – or rather several days for she would presumably not waste her time shopping if she could avoid it. Maybe she only replenished her stocks once a week – but women liked shopping – however – she was certainly atypical – though not necessarily in this respect. A close look at the premises would reveal the presence of detectors but he would have to wait till he saw her drive away – however – they could not have been set to detect Cats – Badgers or Foxes – so if keeping below a height of about two feet he would probably escape detection. It did not look like there was a garage – but there might be – hidden by the shrubbery – though not in connection with the driveway which was on the west side of the house. It had begun to be overcast and it would probably soon rain – but he waited till the first drops began to fall. It was about seven o’ clock now and the light could have been better so he packed his bag – took the mattress and hurried down to the car. When he came home he saw on the map as well as on the aerial photograph that there was a small path going in among the trees about three hundred metres east of her house. He could park there so that his car would be hidden from the road and continue his vigilance at sunrise.

  XVII

  As he had fallen asleep at dusk he woke when the first grey light touched the Sky in the East and hurried up to shave – make tea and dress. A ruthless necessity drove him forward to follow his God-given dharmaḥ. So an hour later – having left the car on the driveway to the farm because of the exposure he would have been subjected to if having had to carry his equipment for eight hundred metres along the road from the small track east of her house – he continued his hidden watch from the same place as yesterday. The grass was lush and the dew hung in large drops on leaflets and panicles which – bending gracefully – sustained the added weight of the water of life – so while yielding to gravity the plants were also strengthened by the tensile strain. At least two hundred million years of evolutionary interdependence. He was dressed in weatherproofs and would be fairly well camouflaged in the south-westerly shadows of the altruistic Ash. As soon as he had adjusted the telescope he saw her car – so she had come home – but there was not light enough yet to see the number plate. The Chaffinch was singing again – having decided that he did not pose any immediate threat – on one of his favourite perches – and the Sun was coming up behind him so soon the back of the house would be illuminated – at least partly because of the Elders. If she had a dog – which was unlikely – both on account of the character with which he had endowed her but also objectively because a dog would impose certain restrictions on her movements – he would be faced with a severe problem – but this impediment was hypothetical. Sooner or later he would see her come out – if she did not stay at home all day to sleep or improve her strategy and practice – so he had to reconcile himself to a long arduous watch. Patience was one of the few qualities he thought he had – but under these circumstances he felt drained of anything even remotely resembling patience. It would be sufficient with the binoculars for as soon as there were any movements he could within three seconds be ready to use the telescope – but there were no movements yet. Everything was quiet and peaceful with that kind of rural peace he associated with a White Stork in a flowery meadow – a Starling sitting on the gable of the house and the honeyed fragrance of blooming Dandelions in the air. The morning was fresh and dewy from the ablution of the night and he began to forget what he was doing. The acute beauty of the intensifying light and two Larks singing a duet to the day sent a thrill through him to renew the immediacy below conscious deliberations. Great creative Nature. Whatever happened – this was real – and he was part of that reality – provided he could see it – hear it – smell it – sense it – as now – Caitlin or no Caitlin – here was his space – but she would match the morning joy if she too could sense both it and him for what they were. Just wishful thinking – pious hopes – and long projections far up into Cloudcuckooland. As the Sun rose in might and turned from Kingfisher orange to Oriole yellow the shadows shortened and the light reached down to touch her number plate. The letters were distinct with a magnification of forty – as AV TEN BTS. He wrote them down and took a photograph of the car with the small Digital camera attached to the telescope. It was – as he had conjectured – a common nondescript car – an anonymous presence – soon to be forgotten if even noticed – but
presumably the same as the one into which she had jumped that morning – long ago – as if to dodge her fate for a little while yet. As her preferences appeared to mirror her profession he became a little more confident of being able to engage her – for to brave the multiplicity of challenges she would encounter she would be bound to be intelligent and to have intuition – like a magician – though that was harder to explain – but intuition would be the most cherished weapon in her armoury. It would facilitate a spontaneous rapprochement with the events as they unfolded around her – though she would doubtless also have a good sense of probability while always being alert to the sixth sense of warning in case of sudden danger – but that ought not to be relevant now – as he posed no danger – quite the contrary. First of all she had a self-confidence that was unshakable – and that was one of the traits that intrigued him – but at the same time an instinctive sense of being cautious and prudent – of avoiding hybris at all cost. The jealous Gods and Goddesses of the broad Sky above – who hated hybris in human beings more than anything else – were swift in retaliation. As the Sun ascended his blue throne and the air grew warmer the chorus of birds began to subside in volume and consistency. Satisfied with singing they had grown hungry with the expenditure of energy. It was now seven o’ clock and he felt hungry too. A cup of tea and a toast sandwich with whortleberry jam. He licked his dripping purple-blue fingers and made certain that he had not missed anything. The house was still asleep – she was still asleep. Maybe she had been out all night looking for treasures at the foot of a lunar Rainbow and relieving someone of his worldly impediments? Probably – so she would sleep till midday if she had retired while it was still dark. He licked his lips. How would her lips taste? Honey and sun-green translucent leaves or the snowy froth from a stormy Sea – the Sea from whence she came – but he ought not to come with hope or fear or preconceptions. The experience should be naked and untouched by prior conjectures. He yawned deeply and had another toast sandwich. If the worst came to the worst he would have to lie here till about eight o’ clock – when the light failed – twelve hours. So what? The day was as fine as it could be. How strange it was to love her like he did. A phantom? An illusion? A projection? A real woman? All four potentialities combined? To what degree would his deductions turn out to be right? That was the question. A gamble – the dopamine system – so he was no better than Fjodor – and no worse either. The Chaffinch had ceased singing and the Larks were still feeding in the fields. From afar came the brittle sound of church bells on the breeze. The rural scenery – as it had been for centuries – generation after generation – the door swung open. He threw the binoculars aside and looked through the telescope. She was locking the door and turning round – not towards the road – but in the direction from which the light came and in which he lay waiting – so now he saw her en face. There could be no doubt – no doubt at all. It was she. He recalled her face as she had looked at him in the glare from the flashlight. Now she was looking towards him in the light of the morning Sun. She walked over to the car – her steps were brisk – her movements smooth and charged with spontaneous concentration. Opening the door she sat down in the seat like she had done so often before without his knowledge – but not any longer. The red lights blazed – he could not hear the motor but the car began moving and she turned westwards down the road. He rose to see the car through the binoculars move away at a constant speed and began running down towards her house – but remembered the thicket and jumped round the cluster of Poplars to walk in through the driveway. She had not appeared to activate an alarm – but she could have done so from the house or even from the road. Looking into her garden he could not see any man-made objects among the trees or the bushes along the driveway – no infrared or other spying eyes seemed to lie in wait. The house looked slightly dilapidated – not much – but it did not suggest affluence – nor poverty though – just moderate and inconspicuous means. There was also a back entrance but he had not been able to see it for the Elders – and there was a partly open window above a bed of budding roses. He looked into her dining room. The window sill was slightly scratched and a look on the ground confirmed his conjecture. Having noticed how far open the window was he eased it up and caught a faint smell of Cat coming from the air inside the house. Standing on the gravel path he took hold of the window sill and jumped up to lie half-way inside the room – and when his heart beat had slowed down he began to take the pulse of the house. As a sense of quiet emptiness encouraged his intentions he took off his shoes and tip-toed forward. The kitchen was to the right and there was a door leading out to the hall. A flight of stairs led up to the bedrooms above and from where he stood he could look into a sitting room. Its large French doors opened up to the garden in front of the house. He noticed a long sofa – some fine prints – real prints – on the wall and his heart began to beat fast for she had taste – she certainly had taste. Maybe it was not quite his taste – but within her means she knew what she wanted. That Water-buffalo was late Táng and reminded him for a second about the comparable lines – suggesting live movements – of the ochre sketches in the cave of Lascaux – but he had to hurry – so he tip-toed upstairs. There were two large bedrooms – a landing and a small bedroom – and just behind one of the doors someone might be asleep so he had acted before considering the implications but the house still had an empty feel. His doubt was a result of the dichotomy between the two hemispheres. Listening to his heartbeats he stole down the stairs and left the way he had come in – but set the window at the right height for the Cat – who – if he or she had been at home – would have welcomed him with a sweet growl. If the window always had to be open – which it would be at least during the summer months – it would greatly facilitate his pilgrimage. Putting on his shoes he ran out into the driveway and went back the way he had come. There was nothing he could do now but wait till it was dark so having packed his gear and removed the mattress he lifted the grass up – which had been flattened – as well as he could – but as some of the long straws were broken it was not hard to see the outline of where he had been lying. By flattening the grass somewhat more in the middle he tried to suggest that a Red Deer had wallowed in it during the night and went back to the car. Yes – that might be quite a good idea – should there be complications later on – to prevent her from forming any suspicion of having been under observation by making the suggestion about a Red Deer unmistakable – so he drove back to a place near the sharp bend in the river where there were Red Deer droppings – and using a stout broken branch he filled a plastic bag with the black-brown and slightly oblong pellets. As the edge had become soiled he had to place it in another bag by using the towel in the booth as he did not want to spoil his gloves – so driving back and seeing that she had not returned home yet he walked up to the trees behind her house and placed the comparatively fresh droppings where they would attract her attention beside the hedge along which she would come if she went up to the cluster of trees to have a suspicion confirmed or refuted. He would now have to investigate the small track or path further east – so he drove past her house again and turned in between the trees. It was just a track – and a little further on the car became almost invisible from the road. Satisfied with his recognisance he drove home to have a long bath and a nap. Time in which to reflect and time in which to transcend thoughts and reflections were necessary for survival day by day. He could attach the transmitter to her car while it was parked in the driveway – and then the crucial poetic touch would be to get into her house while she was away and wait – properly armed – for her return. The transmitter would only give him a warning of six minutes plus the time it would take her to get out of the car. It was impossible to relax – hypotheses grating in the ears of reality. What if she had an accident before he could meet her? Oh she should be careful – but of course she was – and it would not be expedient to act before half past one – about two – or half past would be the best time – when she was most likely to be asleep. He
just had to wait as usual – and he was not in a mood to paint so he sat down to read. After a leisurely dinner of chicken – onions – aubergines and mushrooms – to dispel his trepidation – he ascertained the precise radius of the transmitter by placing it on the iron rail of the garage and driving off with the antenna and the receiver lying on the front seat. It functioned at a distance of five kilometres but at a distance of six kilometres he could not get a response – so he drove slowly back and when he had driven about one kilometre the receiver picked up the signal again and closed the activation. So the critical distance would be around five kilometres. In case her car did not happen to be there he could wait – and he would at that distance be able to see if she came from the West and turned into the driveway and of course also if she should come from the East and pass him. All he needed was the transmitter – the receiver – the antenna – cyanoacrylate glue – the infrared binoculars – a piece of sandpaper – a plastic bag – a large piece of plastic and his camouflage dress – just as if he were out looking for owls or Nightjars. There was plenty of time – so he could have another cup of tea and read a little. Isla negra. The images arose from the pages to crowd the atmosphere of the room around him. Evolution – what truly lived truly died but otherwise it was all in the mind and thinking made it so – even das sogenannte Böse.

  When it was ten minutes past one he swung out of the driveway. There was not much traffic now and he drove safely within the common limits and confines and conventions although it was nighttime – when the thrifty citizens of the glaring daylight – all those who imagined that they had paid their own way while in reality they had merely been devastating their habitats – would nestle down between their lawful sheets to dream about further acquisitions – but concomitantly – also when Badgers – Foxes – Noctule Bats – Noctuidae – artists of various forms of léger-de-main and even fair assassins of peace and equanimity all were on the prowl to challenge or to follow fate. Twenty minutes later he drove slowly past her house but he could not drive slowly enough to see if her car were parked in the driveway. So turning in between the trees at the track he took the infrared binocular – the plastic sheet – the plastic bag – the transmitter – the glue – the small torch and the sandpaper – and walked as quickly as he could down the road towards her house. The car was parked in the driveway and the house was dark – at least in the front. Crossing the road quickly he crawled forward on the grass between the flagstones. The distance was about twenty metres and lying on his back beside the left front wheel – so that the car hid him from the house – he stretched the plastic sheet out on the grass and began to clean the inside of the wing – about three inches from the rim – with the sandpaper. There was quite a lot of dirt and some rust. It made a distinct rustling noise but he did not think the noise would be audible in the house and yet he felt each scratch in the pit of his stomach like an open wound. When the metal felt comparatively smooth he took the transmitter from his pocket and pressed it softly up against the iron plate. Pulling it a little from side to side he felt satisfied with the strength of the magnet and began carefully to shake the débris into the plastic bag. Holding the torch between his teeth he placed a large drop of glue above the transmitter and pressed the antenna into the glue. That was it. There ought to be no trace left beside the car and when he had scrutinised the grass in the shielded light from the torch he put the sandpaper – the plastic sheet and the plastic bag into his pockets. Then he ruffled up the grass where he had been lying to erase the impression and crawled out towards the road. It had taken about ten minutes. When he reached the rough asphalt scar in the forbearing Earth he looked up and down the road to see if there were any signs of approaching cars before he hurried back to the small track to test the transmitter. It gave a positive response. Feeling sustained by a fair measure of hope he drove home as the night began to vanish in a dull light above the Sea to the North-East.