It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  “All right, and while waiting I could reassemble the scaffold for the net.”

  “No, that would be quite conspicuous.”

  “I’ll go out midstream, wait twenty-five minutes and then come up along the wharf. We can cover the torches with red plastic, but only use them if we fail to find one another – ”

  It would be a very long watch – half an hour – while trying to make himself invisible.

  “About a kilometre further upstream there is an inlet where we can have lunch.”

  “No, it will be better to turn round and wait with lunch till we have left this place five or six miles behind. But try to get as close to the Alder there as you can. I will attach a transmitter to it so that when we come in the dark we will know exactly where we should go ashore.”

  “That’s a genuine improvement. When all candles be out, all Cats be grey.”

  “Yes! Just a little further in.”

  Standing in the prow she attached the transmitter – which looked like an oblong barky protuberance – at a height of seven feet above the river. Then he let the current carry the boat outwards and swung the prow round.

  “If you want to see me survive you’ll have to open one of the bottles now.”

  The Chablis was quite cold and it matched the heat of the early afternoon just as its ethereal greenness suited the surrounding colours and the chuckling of the wavelets. The soul was healed by harmony – and in spite of the distant hum of traffic the peace had a pristine air.

  “On the other side of the bridge here, go as close to the north brink as you can.”

  “Yes, what about that place over there?”

  “Let’s see, I’ll run up and have a look.”

  As he slipped up along the wharf she took the stern rope and jumped ashore to noose a bollard. While the current slowly swung the boat outwards he watched her till she disappeared among the trees – so carefree and determined – quick and graceful – but how close did his evaluation approach objective reality? For living beings objective reality would remain unknown – there were merely interpretations of objective reality – but if their interpretations failed to be very finely attuned to objective reality they would not survive. So he could only trust his intuition. A company chartered out boats on the other side – but at half past ten they would have closed down for the day. She came running down the path and jumped on board without rocking the boat – as sure footed as a Clouded Leopard coming headlong down a branchless tree trunk.

  “The road to Horning is just around the corner.”

  “There is a place about one and a half mile further down the river where we can have lunch.”

  “All right. I have several torches, one of them is very strong.”

  “We might need that. On Wednesday, Óðinn’s Day, the Moon will be crescent.”

  “And the sky should be overcast. Maybe it will rain.”

  “I have a watertight container with a volume of three litres. Would that be large enough?”

  “Oh yes!”

  “Monday morning I’ll go to London and get the ketamine, and when it gets dark we can test it on one of the Sheep.”

  “How are you going to get it?”

  “Fjodor knows a reliable Doctor Feelgood, who will write himself a prescription which he, for a generous appreciation of his pains, will give to a Mister John Smith together with a few well-meaning bits and pieces of advice if need be.”

  “What would you do without Fjodor?”

  “I don’t know. I depend on him like he does on me in a way. We split half and half.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to get a little more?”

  “Oh no, the joy of painting the picture is mine. It’s the commercial transaction that’s difficult.”

  “I will be marrying a lawless saint. According to the map it’s past the large Alders – ”

  “We can anchor here, at a safe distance. I’m really hungry now.”

  “Though you resent all the boats they provide a good cover.”

  She handed him a piece of bread and a piece of chicken.

  “You’ll have to eat it like a bone, it’s easier.”

  “You’ll ruin my manners.”

  “Oh, stuff and nonsense. But did you like the look of the house?”

  “It looked opulent enough but I could hardly see it for the trees.”

  “And easy, but if it looks as if it’s too easy there’s probably a hidden snag somewhere.”

  “I would have thought that problems merely existed to be circumnavigated.”

  “No, there has to be a certain flow, I mean a lack of obstructions, just like when you, noticing my accent, the scar in my mouth and my martial arts, with perseverance and diligence, solved the problems one after the other and found me without encountering any major obstacles. If this flow does not become evident then there’s probably something wrong, but I don’t really know the causal sequence here. For is there a flow because it feels right, or does it feel right because there is a flow? I have thought about this for years without being able to reach a conclusion.”

  “Yes, it’s a fascinating subject which theoretically should be open to empirical investigation, but it can hardly be investigated properly. There are too many unknown variables in each case.”

  “So intuition is the only solution.”

  “It nearly always is when the stakes are high and time is short, but would you want me to join you when retrieving the transmitter on her car?”

  “No, there’s no need to do that. You had better stay in the boat and wait.”

  “What if you just continued on your way home and waited for me, maybe at the landing?”

  “No, that would be as if I jumped ship, and I still think it’s better to sail than to drive.”

  “Of course, but we might as well begin to go back now. It will take three hours.”

  “There will be light enough, but it was nice to get something to eat.”

  “And to drink. The two basic parameters are of course risk and result. The greater the risk the greater the result. How do you plot risk against result to find the point where the risk is at a minimum and the result at a maximum?”

  “That’s impossible in practice for your plotting is never better than the data you use, so both risk and result are more often than not unknown; or rather, they are only partially known, and even this partial knowledge is uncertain. So it depends on Fingerspitzengefühl and accumulated experience. I sometimes imagine that it could be considered as one of the minor arts. It cannot be regarded as a science though it often has great benefit of scientific devices and even methods. In an ideal case such a plotting might be possible, but in reality it never is for there’s always the great Joker of the unforeseen, of something happening which you had not thought about as it has never happened before, and will never happen again.”

  “Like, for example, when you were surprised last year you had prepared yourself for fighting a sober person capable of rational reactions, and not a raving drunkard?”

  “The things that can happen are beyond imaginative limits and it’s quite impossible to be prepared to meet all of them.”

  “But it’s the element of uncertainty that’s attractive, otherwise it would not be very exciting?”

  “No, but I might nevertheless still consider doing it if it would be worth while.”

  “That would be artistic suicide. You’re joking!”

  “Of course I’m joking, but have you ever been hungry, really hungry, with hunger gnawing at your stomach, leaving you unable to do anything at all but think about food?”

  “Not as hungry as all that, but hungry enough to dig up potatoes and catch fish at night.”

  “I’m pragmatic, as a woman I have to be pragmatic. Men can build Spanish castles of ideas which they then end up being doomed to haunt, but women have t
o stick to the bare earth.”

  “That’s one of the reasons why I love you as a woman among women for men have politics, religion and self-promotion, all equally detestable delusions. Some women have themselves.”

  “True enough, some women though.”

  “So let’s celebrate that we’re alive here and now after all the hardships we’ve gone through. My grandfather always opened a bottle of Champagne to celebrate if a Horse won, but he also opened a bottle of Champagne if a Horse lost to soothe the sorrow and lessen the loss.”

  “Then I’m glad you’re not a gambler, but a reliable artist, if that’s not an oxymoron.”

  “Not necessarily, but gamblers may also be reliable. A debt of honour always has priority.”

  “Sometimes, but here we shall take care not to turn south, the south turn comes a little later.”

  “Yes, it does, and it suddenly reminds me of David Beatty’s run to the south and then his run to the north to draw Scheer up within the reach of Jellicoe’s guns, but why? There is only the faintest conceivable parallel here between ‘a run to the south’ and ‘a turn to the south a little later,’ and I haven’t been thinking about such tactics as crossing the Tee for years. But it illustrates how odd and unpredictable the associative evocations of the hippocampus can turn out to be; for the multidimensional web and woof of our memories contain such a plurality of interconnections that it may mirror certain patterns of a quantum vacuum, but it differs from a quantum vacuum, which may or may not be utterly stochastic, by being definitely causal, although the causality, as in this instance, escapes us.”

  “No, there is a coarse or partial similarity between the tactics of engaging an enemy in order to draw him out into a vulnerable position and waiting till a house is empty before enticing a dog away to immobilise it.”

  “There are several turns here before we come to the confluence where we should head North.”

  “So we just have to follow the left bank all the way, or nearly all the way.”

  “It’s half past five now. We’ll have to see how long time it takes to get to the river on the left.”

  “It’s past that hideous building.”

  “The basic incongruity of the two situations prevented me from seeing the similarity.”

  “You have only read about the tactics of the battle, and you’ve only discussed the tactics of breaking into this house with me, so in your imagination both are equally abstract prospects, but they have become associated in your memory matrix.”

  “But why this battle in particular? It would not be difficult to recall similar battles or maybe even battles exhibiting a far closer parallel?”

  “I don’t think it would be possible to answer such a question, as it must depend on idiosyncratic parameters of your reading, recollection and imagination, but what I find remarkable is that you should associate such a foray with a real battle, for it indicates that you want to give it an aura of glory which is a bit pathetic if not downright pompous or ridiculous.”

  They were going slower now – upstream. The landscape was flat – low and had a grassy feel.

  “Yes, we are not risking our lives. To do that places whatever you do in another dimension. But while belligerent parties may be aware of the terrible dangers they have to brave they remain, by and large, convinced of survival. If the real odds were known to each single soldier or sailor as an ineluctable fact of life it would be impossible to wage war in the first place. While we do not risk very much in comparison we do experience an excitement of the same kind as the soldier or the sailor, but the excitement is of course much less keen, much less pronounced. However, such excitement varies greatly from person to person – ”

  Adrian Carton de Wiart and Ernst Jünger – Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Graves –

  “An individual who has rather limited imaginative faculties but who is convinced of his own invulnerability will often be able to perform great feats of bravery whereas an individual who has a vivid imagination and an acute sense of his own mortality might be dying several times before the battle even begins and hence be unfit for action. Real courage consists in braving the danger when feeling sick with fear and knowing the odds.”

  “Maybe I drew the wrong conclusions. It was the similarity in the tactics which puzzled you, but I felt affronted because my great grandfather was wounded on the battleship Malaya – ”

  “So if I had used another comparison you would not have imagined that I tried to shed an heroic light on our little adventure? Unlike your great grandfather I am not a hero.”

  “I don’t know if he were a hero. He died before I was born, but he did his duty and his duty might have been heroic, but heroism can take many different forms and most heroic acts remain quite unnoticed, sometimes even by the very persons who perform them.”

  He did not know if she consciously or subconsciously were approaching his point of view and – if so – whether it could be due to a proper clarification or because she wanted to make amends if she thought she might have done him an injustice.

  “They act spontaneously not knowing that any other course of action would be possible. That’s probably the most distinct form of heroism – ”

  “Like when you feel you have no other choice than to follow me now?”

  Curiosity – wonder and matter-of-factness.

  “That’s different. It’s because I love you that I have no choice.”

  “Is heroism then not based on love of an abstract, such as a country or on a concrete, such as a person, but only if death appears to be a likely consequence will such an act be heroic?”

  He kissed her to seal their reunion without knowing what it was that lay hidden there – deep down in the underworld – what mouldy skeleton or grinning skull – what withering resentment – absurd misunderstanding or inexplicable annoyance. Most likely it was nothing in particular but an odd conglomerate of unresolved issues. A Marsh Harrier – illuminated by the fine afternoon light – flew with soft slow wingbeats over the sedges – and he gave her the binoculars.

  “Male or female?”

  “Female, her head is white, apart from the eye region, her tail and wings brown. The male has white-speckled head, pale grey tail and wings.”

  “She flaps her way forward very slowly, almost stalling.”

  “Often as now at a speed of about ten kilometers an hour, but she sees everything, even at that speed, I mean, every movement there is, though not necessarily a bird sitting absolutely still. But her eyes have a better resolution than the binoculars’, and she has the added advantage of being able to change focus almost in a couple of milliseconds.”

  “Grace and strength combined?”

  “Evolution is always optimising the abilities to survive though sometimes the optimal has been reached in a given set of circumstances.”

  As the light ripened to longer wavelengths the stillness of the evening became more perceptible. The day was getting ready for a metamorphosis. Processes formed space and time by expansion and change in matter. There was no stasis. Even a black hole would tunnel away eventually.

  “It’s beginning to get a bit chilly.”

  “Yes it is, and you can almost see the change in the light now from minute to minute as the Sun sinks and the shadows lengthen with increasing rapidity.”

  “There is a distinct sense of peace here in spite of the human presence.”

  “The landscape is artificial but the increased area of wetland is very beneficial.”

  “That’s why you live here?”

  “Though I prefer a wilderness that is uncontaminated by the artificiality of human structures, square and angular forms with long straight lines, mono-dimensional colours, mechanical contrivances and constant white noise, a panacean wilderness into which the heart, the soul and the senses can expand and find peace as its inherent harmony enhances or sustains one’s own inher
ent harmony, I have to survive made a compromise to live here where there still are relics left of Great Creative Nature; but I wonder what other motives you could have had when you decided to hone your crafts here and not in a proper metropolis?”

  “I have already told you I don’t like to enter flats and apartments. In houses there are multiple ways of approach and multiple ways of escape. And I wanted a rural area in close proximity to London, but not a rural area with too opulent possibilities, for the best houses are bristling with servants and security systems, so the more modest ones are preferable. That’s where the criteria of easy access and circumscribed risk best meet the richness of the spoil.”

  They were passing the last bridge. From this side it had appeared to be so low that they would have had to take the scaffold down. In March it would have been impossible. He looked at her profile and glimpsed the sunset vixen sneak across the land.

  “We’ll note the time it takes from the bridge here to where we have to turn north to the Broad.”

  “You’re very keen on minimising the risk of taking a wrong turn in the dark?”

  “Yes, things look indistinguishable at night. Because of our colour vision, we are, like all other Primates, creatures of the daylight. At night we are lost, being utterly dependent on the faculty of sight, although the faculty of hearing quickens accordingly; but if we had been out looking for owls or Nightjars I would not have been so careful.”

  “Even if we should get lost and spend the night on the river we would be perfectly safe.”

  “Yes, but it would be a relief to get back and hide the spoils.”

  “And where would you choose to hide it?”

  “Not inside the house of course but outside. In the top of a Chestnut maybe,”

  “That’s of course quite a good place. I usually hide it in the ground somewhere in the wood where you waited to pick up the signal from my car.”

  “Do you dig a hole in the ground?”

  “No, I have a hollow metal tube, five inches in diameter and two feet six inches long. At a suitable place I press it down into the ground. On the inside it is full of small knobs tapering downwards so that the earth will stay in the tube when I pull it up. The tube is hinged all the way down so that I can open it and take out the cylindrical rod of earth with grass or flowers on top. I then replace the nethermost eight inches of earth with a small cylindrical container, then I fill the hole with the earth I have removed.”