It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  XVIII

  The late morning sunshine revealed the possibility that she could just as well investigate a house in daylight. That would often be easier as the inhabitants would be away – and besides – she would probably only break into a house she had kept under observation for some time. There was no way of determining her routine – apart from a prolonged surveillance – and that did not agree with his impatience – not at all – but if a recording device could be connected to the receiver and if he placed that where he had parked last night he would know her daily routine after a week – but on the other hand he felt certain that she would be capable of sustained improvisation so such a pattern would have a rather limited reliability. Of course – he could just call on her but such a prosaic approach would make her feel ill at ease – or worse – give her the impression that he was at a loss to invent an original reply that would fit the spirit of their first encounter. No – he had to surprise her just as she had surprised him – so the problem remained – he would need enough time to get in – three or four minutes – before she came home and it would be unnerving if he had to wait ten or twelve hours. Now that he knew her car he could park – as he had first thought – beside the road in the little wood and follow her when she drove to town – and if she were going to replenish her pantry he would just have time to drive back – hide the car in the track and get into the house. This seemed to be a rather slow but comparatively certain method and likely to give a result within a span of four or five days if he watched the road from early in the morning till it grew dark – so he might just as well begin immediately. But how could he have his attention fixed on the road continuously for twelve hours – ten seconds inattention and she might have passed him? He had forgotten all about the transmitter. How could he? Excitement was not an excuse. He could even take a book. So equipped with tea and sandwiches – binoculars – a bottle of Champagne in a foam plastic container and the bouquet of roses he had bought yesterday he drove off. In the small wood he parked the car – took out the deck-chair – the binoculars – the antenna – the receiver and his book – to find a place behind a leafy Chestnut that could shield him from the road. The ceaseless noise of cars rushing by was more than an ordeal. He waited and he waited and he waited for a signal from the receiver – but the receiver remained dormant – and he nearly fell asleep in spite of the intermittent waves of pain that approached – reached a crescendo and vanished but with irregular intervals that precluded habitualisation. He had only arrived around midday but felt as if he had spent twelve hours waiting already though it was only six o’clock. He began reading again – but the steady terror of exclusive goal-orientation occluded his attentiveness. Silence – what was more precious than silence and clear night skies? The light pollution was a disaster annihilating space. He would soon leave this place of crowds and common perdition – leave it to indifference and mediocrity. Grammar was unpopular – distinguishing between facts and opinions offended the vegetative will of the decisive majority. All activity in the environment indicated a lack of harmony – the abominable urge to be busy – for the frail – the foul – the false Love might – admit – but not the busied wight. The entire system was now geared only to business – and this modern Disease was so jealous that it did not tolerate any values. Wohin ist Gott? Was thaten wir – als wir diese Erde von ihrer Sonne losketteten? Wohin bewegt sie sich nun? Wohin bewegen wir uns? Fort von allen Sonnen? Giebt es noch ein Oben und ein Unten? Irren wir nicht wie durch ein unendliches Nichts? Haucht uns nicht der leere Raum an? Ist es nicht kälter geworden? Gott ist todt! Und wir haben ihn getödtet. As so often before a seething rage against ignorance – vested interests and stupidity – that formed the atmosphere – the direction – the basis and the limits of society – made him feel sick with loathing – but just then a Blackbird – irrespective of the traffic and of his despair – began – to confirm himself and life. His song of melancholic rapture came from an Elm about twenty yards to his right. When a car passed the melodious tones were almost inaudible but when the white noise from the tyres ebbed out the melody returned. He rose to walk too and fro – suddenly noticing that it must be quite late. So having waited half an hour more he drove home – tired and weary – though yet with a clear beacon on his inner horizon – in spite of the common grime.

  XIX

  Drifting up from the shadowy depth of periconscious sensations toward the brittle interface of conscious activity and environmental patterns – he woke – prompted by an anxiety – that vibrated as a thin almost inaudible frequency in the twilight beneath his awareness – to miss her – but also by an all-pervasive desire to see her again as she was in the changing reality of the present moment instead of as now in the static images of his memory. Although he had put the roses in water with plant nutrients and placed them in the cellar during the night they did not now look perfectly fresh – so equipped like yesterday he drove off but bought in Yarmouth a new bouquet of roses – pink and red – because the pink roses had a faint fragrance whereas the red ones were scentless – to begin his vigil beside the road of a ceaselesss traffic which he loathed – because of a woman he did not know – to take the chance of a wild gamble and risk his precious equanimity or more likely than not just to be bitterly disappointed – but what could he do crawling here between Earth and Heaven? It was a quarter past ten when he reached his observation post with the hope that he had not come too late. The traffic was sporadic – the Blackbird was still singing and the ancient life of the wood stayed juxtaposed to the modern invention of a white noise devoid of proper signals and even of the harmony of interdependent origination – so he tried to fortify himself with stoicism and patience – but it was not necessary to sit so close to the road as he had done yesterday. For he must have wanted to confirm the veracity of the transmitter by seeing her car – but as the receiver could pick up the signals from her car at a distance of five kilometres he would have plenty of time. Taking the deck chair – the antenna and the receiver he walked in among the trees. He could leave the chair where it was and pick it up later – so it was only the fear of falling over his own feet that made him nervous. The weather was windy – neither cold nor warm and large fluffy clouds obscured the Sun as they drifted eastwards. He had left the book in the car and sat with closed eyes to gather strength and vivacity – and to let time flow on unhindered by thoughts – by thoughts – the ceaseless iron chain of words. It was this chain that was his real enemy – a flight from inwardness – a flight from that which was. So he slipped into a blank state of mind where the surroundings almost ceased to exist and where he – as an organism with a gravitational point of egocentricity mainly based on motor coordinates – sensory impressions – memories and body boundaries – almost ceased to matter. The sphere of awareness expanded as the cognitive limitations faded. There was hardly any longer a sensation of the flow of time and hardly any sense of ontological characteristics – but a sense of lightness – connectivity – interdependence and vastness – for the sense of being present was intensified and prolonged though still undifferentiated and devoid of specificity – so when the receiver began beeping he felt confounded – not knowing who he might be or where in the world he could be. Only because he had envisaged all his actions beforehand was he able get up – take the antenna and the receiver – run back to the car and crawl in behind the wheel. As he was accelerating she passed him – AV TEN BTS – and he could see the halo of her hair through the rear window but kept a decent distance as a necessary precaution. She drove carefully – well within the accepted Cartesian grid – again as he had expected. When doing what she did it was simply prudent to follow the preset parameters in order to avoid undue attention from Nosey Parkers and hired hands. While he could keep a safe distance behind her here on the open road he would have to be just behind her when the traffic intensified in Yarmouth. There was one car between them now and they had driven about five kilometres from the rendez-vous point in the wood. When he cleared the
hurdle in front she began to focus all of his attention – but he became afraid that she would sense the strength of his one-pointedness and become curious enough to notice his presence so he tried to dissipate his interest in spite of the excited state of his autonomic nervous system. She did not slow down to look at anything so she had a particular object in mind but that would always be the case unless she had lost her way. She knew where she was going just as she knew what she was doing. The very triviality of his conjectures made him smile. What was happening to him – Fortune’s – a strumpet’s fool – imagining her Favours. Soon she ought to do something specific like parking in front of a shop so that he could estimate the time her transactions would give him. They passed the bridge – they passed the oval round-about – and at last she slowed down – but he had to follow the flow of the traffic. In the mirror he saw her cross the road and having waited for a large truck with a trailer to pass he turned round. She had probably parked at the fish market – maybe to get a couple of Herrings for her Cat. Passing slowly he saw her close the booth and proceed to the stalls. She was definitely going to replenish her stores – there would be time enough now – so he drove back the way he had come. There was about eleven kilometres to her house and it took him nine and a half endless minutes. Parking in front of her driveway he placed the Champagne and the roses behind the hedge and continued down to the small track where he hid the car. The antenna and the receiver? In his pocket. What if the window had been closed? That was unlikely and it might still be eased open. A car came from the opposite direction. His heart stopped beating but it passed her house and he began – suppressing his impatience – to walk quickly down the road – for running would make him breathless in case she should come before he had time to calm down. Taking the roses and the Champagne he ran round to the back of her house hoping that the window still – with a little bit of luck – would be the Cat’s way in and out – and it was – so opening it fully he placed the foam container and the roses on the sill and jumped up – like he had done the other day – to lie on his stomach – half-way inside her dining room – and listen to the live silence of the house. Reaching a precarious equilibrium between the necessity to proceed without delay and the necessity to ascertain that there were no audible indications of human activity anywhere he took off his shoes and crawled down from the window sill to scrape away the loose earth on the soles with his pocket knife while holding the shoes outside of the window – to avoid leaving any tell-tale signs on the floor – for he was certain that she must have acquired a habit of being alert to minute changes in her surroundings. Having pulled the window down to cat height again and put on his shoes he picked up the Champagne and the roses to stand still and listen. The house was silent apart from the booming drum beats of his heart – so there was no way back – now. Unfolding the antenna on one of the armchairs he pointed it in the direction of Yarmouth – and placed the Champagne on the table in front of the sofa before he went out into the kitchen to see if she had a couple of slim glasses and a suitably coloured vase. The receiver was silent so he had time enough provided that it still worked. He took two tall wine glasses and found in a cupboard beside the sink a cracked blue porcelain vase. It was the only option and it was far from ideal – too small and the colour was too tepid. He filled the vase with water – wiped it with a towel and returned to the living room. The French doors? They were locked – so he unlocked them just in case he needed a quick retreat and sat down to wait for the inevitable to come his way. It was strange to sit here in her house and expect her to return home with groceries. The very ordinariness of it was strange. There seemed to be both something oddly familiar in the commonplace notion and something utterly weird – because he had not the faintest idea about how she would react to his presence. She might get a shock – but that was what she ought to get – and that was also one of the few possible ways he had of winning her over – to take her by surprise and meet her on her own chosen terms. She would appreciate that as an honest approach in tune with her own colours. He had almost been here for fifteen minutes now and he expected her within an hour – especially as she had bought fresh fish. His nervous agitation forced him to go out into the bathroom to ease his bladder and wash his hands – but he took care to wipe all drops of water away from the sink. The receiver was strangely quiet but the indicator diminished his doubt. What could he do but play the only card he had? As nothing happened he began to feel more and more nervous and apprehensive – while just sitting still waiting like this – hoping for the best and fearing the worst – when he ought to have been beyond both – nec spe nec metu – but a shadow fell between the two incompatible states which nevertheless had a common prerequisite. The Sun was beginning to look in through the tall windows and the narrow beams absolved the room from the rather lugubrious twilight into which the curtains had enwrapped it – as they partly became transparent though they still left the features of the world outside coarse-grained – so they would also obscure the movements inside the room. As the toes of his left foot were twitching up and down it indicated that he no longer could suppress his agitation – so beginning to feel breathless he rose and opened one of the doors to the garden. The worst that could happen would be if she came home with a guest – with her lover even – for such a situation would leave him without even the possibility of a loophole. He would not have time to get away with the Champagne and the roses – and he would look fatuous if confronting her with a declaration of love in the company even of one of her friends. On the other hand this time of the day was not ideal for visitors so he had the advantage of a statistical likelihood – but what if? He could not scrape enough courage together to imagine such a constellation. Her garden was not well-kept though not entirely neglected either. The roses there were old and the Tea-roses along the wall even older. In two weeks’ time they would bloom – but where would he be then and where would she be? The receiver beeped and he went back to the sofa – disconnected the antenna – folded it up and put it in his pocket together with the receiver. There was time enough in which to open the Champagne even with trembling fingertips and fill their glasses – or so he thought for then he heard the car coming up the driveway. Now and forever. He wriggled the bouquet of roses – which still partly was held together by a loose string – out of the vase and took her bubbling flûte in his right hand – to wait for the love of his live or a life as a shadow till death or chance would release him. The door was opened and closed – lightly but firmly. Then her steps resounded softly in the hall. She stopped. She was alone. There was a slight bump. She had placed her groceries on the floor. A faint sound? It was the hanger on the wall as she replaced her coat. The water from the stalks of the roses dripped inaudibly down on the carpet. Another and a deeper drawn-out yawn. This intimate expression of ennui – loud when knowing one to be alone – made him stand still – absolutely still – beside the coffee table – expecting her to pass the door and see him. If she failed to see him he would have to make a sound to catch her attention. The soft flaps of her feet – she had taken off her shoes – suggested the weight of what she had bought as she began carrying her groceries out into the kitchen. He saw her through the frame of the door and she saw him out of the corner of her right eye and stood immovable – as if hewn out of time. The plastic bags slipped out of her hands and collapsed on the floor beside her feet. But what a way to dress? She wore a dark jump-suit. What a lack of style? Transfixing him on a beam of levelled fury she turned round and came slowly forward. Unable to speak and to look at her simultaneously he stood with both hands stretched out – only aware of offering her a glass of Champagne and a large bouquet of vermilion and pink roses – beside of course his heart – however – she seemed not to notice anything but his intrusion into the privacy of her home – though the plain irony of the situation only crossed his attention like a sunfleck. As if taking his measure step by step she came closer and closer while the danger inherent in her movements became palpable in the roaring silen
ce of the room – but he kept smiling and urged her on and on to emphasise his imperturbable goodwill. There was no indication of a scar on her upper lip – just a hint of an anomaly. She did not seem to walk but rather to come gliding forward with an ethereal coordination of her movements. Her eyes – icy fire and flaming hail – hit him in the perineum – with the same force as that of her shin when she had kicked him on the arm. Then the glass was knocked out of his hand and the splintering sound when it hit the fireplace filled his ears as they tumbled down embracing one another – defensively and offensively – in a cloud of roses. The impetus of her assault – because he had held on to the flowers as to a straw of love and friendship far too long – had made him fall backwards and gasp for air as he hit the carpet – and as he struggled to push her aside she sat up – lifted his head and swung the calf of her left leg in under his neck. The sound of a car on the road made him remember that he had forgotten to close the door. The draft when she came in must have pushed it open. With a small precise jump she placed her instep in the hollow of her right knee. He was lying upon some of the roses and though they hardly had any smell they certainly had thorns – so above as below – but it was all of his own doing. The instant she had caught sight of him she had felt transfused by star-blue energy – and the sheer drive of her determination had astonished him to such a degree that his sense of initiative had been put in abeyance. So his defensive moves had been haphazard – frenetic and uncoordinated – as if he had been unwilling to accept her response and hence unable to take proper counter-measures. Still acting in a fit of fury – but keenly aware of what she was doing – she wrenched his left arm in under her right knee to keep him from trying to make her lose her balance. She had shattered his expectations like glass against her anger and feeling breathless by the violence of her inopportune assault he kept looking at her with surprise and disappointment just as she kept looking at him with disbelief and rage. Forcing his right arm – which was stretched upwards beside his head – back into her groin – she leaned forward – as if to kiss him.