It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  “Now it’s just the transmitter in front of her back door. It’s on that maple there. Hold the torch!

  The light they had first seen from the brink of the river came from two windows in the attic so the shadow of the roof extended half-way to the fence. Though he seemed to have noticed it when they approached the house he had not been attentive enough to fit it into the overall picture. There was an unevenly shaped protuberance of a dark brown colour on the bark. She turned it round several times – like a corkscrew – and placed it in her pocket. The next hurdle was the back door. While he tripped around – unable to stand still – she took out the pick gun and began – holding her head a little aslant as if listening for something – to feel her way forward among the small ratchets – like a piano tuner adjusting the strain on the string – and long before he had expected a result he heard the lock click. Turning the handle she opened the door just wide enough to illuminate the upper corners in a narrow hall in front of them with the beam from the strong electric torch. There were no infrared detectors to register a change in temperature – so now they were doomed to continue. Having found no signs of alarm devices in the door frame either she turned round to calm him with a smile of wolfish reassurance.

  So far they had been lucky – but he had a black hole of uneasiness in his stomach now that the breaking and entering had become faits accomplis – and yet the impetus of her determination carried him along as if caught on the crest of a tidal bore. Taking off their sou’westers they left them in partial shelter beneath the porch and stepped in over the threshold to the house. Her nostrils quivered as she savoured the scent of her quarry at close quarters but the smell of the house met him like a mute wall. Lavender and repressed frustrations or something soft – slippery and amorphous he could not define. Taking off their shoes they placed them on a plastic bag beside the mat and hid their feet in thick woollen ski socks. To the left there was a kitchen – in which curry and mutton recently had been prepared – and to the right another room – but in front of them a broad door which probably led out into the main hall. The red glare from the torch was even more wraith-like now inside the house – not warm and pleasant as from the fire in a homely hearth. When she had eased the handle down to forestall creaking sounds and opened the door they looked out into a dimly lit hall with four large wooden sea chests aligned along the walls. Their heavy iron furnishings suggested the early decades of the nineteenth century and they were probably heirlooms rather than recent acquisitions. Reproductions of The Fighting Temeraire and Dedham Vale covered by glass and encaged in formidable frames – faced one another on the walls above the sea chests. The house had a slightly worn or even an abandoned air as if hibernating or – being past its prime – as if beginning to turn in upon itself – and its musty silence was only roiled by the beating of his heart. Like he found it obnoxious if he should tutoyer someone he did not like on account of the untoward intimacy it implied as well as to shake hands with someone whose hands he found coarse he felt unclean now entering a private house whose inhabitants had imbued it with an insensitive air – but the house made him also feel ill at ease because of its atmosphere of a soi-disant style that could not but reveal its owner’s triviality. Doors on both sides of the hall led into the dining – sitting and living rooms which only would be of interest in case they found nothing of value in her bedroom. To the left there was a broad staircase – up which they went hand in hand – but for every other step they stopped to listen for warnings that would admonish them to escape before ending up stranded somewhere down the river – though the concept of freedom was so much harder to shun. On the landing a comparatively narrow corridor with tall windows at both ends ran along the length of the house. Taking the north side first she probed the doors with the light of her torch and he wondered for a second why – but of course – it gave her an impression of the size of the rooms behind. As she cautiously pressed the handle down on the first door to the left the flash from the lightning that filled the corridor came simultaneously with the explosion of the expanding air that made the windows rattle in their frames and the sound echo in their ears. The room was almost empty so she turned her attention to the prospect on the opposite side. Consisting of assorted furniture and forgotten memories it seemed to have been made more habitable though as if for an unwelcome guest. The next rooms on both sides were small and sparsely furnished – so he expected that the last room facing the front would be what they were looking for and knew instantly that she shared his expectation. It was large and in the beam of the light even somewhat sumptuous as the partial illumination suggested an antique quality which a bright electric light would have reduced to good craftsmanship. The furniture was relieved with Roman eagles – honeysuckles – ormolu decorations and intricate wreaths – the chairs with pink silk seats – all fine imitations and late Empire – but going straight over to a broad walnut dressing table standing between the windows she began pulling out the drawers. The drumming of rain came mainly from the sills and the repeated lightning dissected the room with brilliance while the urgency of her movements and the thunder fused to preclude semantic excursions. There were four large drawers on each side. Number two to the left contained her jewellery in a deep blue velvet casket which – as she opened it in the middle – revealed three double sets of compartments. The rings – chains and wristlets shone like Viking gold in the red light but the pearls acquired a delicate rosy sheen. There were quite a number of rings with emeralds and some with diamonds. One by one they were gently turned around between her black gloved fingers – either to be deposited for safe-keeping in her vest or – if having been found wanting – replaced in the casket. She closed the zipper tightly and began filling the left hand pocket. Two large bracelets of gold – a long thin bracelet with blue and watery stones – sapphires maybe and a gold pendant with a round emerald – pearl earrings like drops – several emerald necklaces and four gold wristlets. She opened the second drawer on the opposite side and the fine flavour of her prey – which might make containing her excitement within the bounds of the necessary procedures difficult – came wafting by his nostrils too to make him forget his previous considerations or churlish caveats and lean forward impatiently now as keen as she was to appropriate the spoil of their common quest. This drawer contained a blue velvet casket with small compartments filled with diamond-strutted brooches – several pairs of earrings – long and short pearl-strings – some with large pearls and a broad pearl wristlet. The other drawers did not yield anything of comparable interest – so that was it. With the red beam of the torch he pointed to a silver-framed photograph that adorned the polished surface of the dressing table.

  “I certainly hope we don’t meet her, either here or elsewhere.”

  “Neither do I!”

  Like an Anglerfish – conceivably imagining that her choice of jewellery could create a favourable illusion. Caitlin closed the drawers and they left as intent on getting out of the house now as they had been on getting into it ten minutes ago. She held so tightly on to his hand that it almost began to hurt but he did not want to lessen her excitement.

  “It’s highly unlikely that she keeps any other valuables in one of the other rooms so let’s go.”

  He nodded and they hurried down the stairs – closed the door to the main hall – ripped their shoes out of the plastic bag and stood still expecting the worst. A faint sound as if a bump had come from somewhere behind the kitchen door. His heartbeats would be audible in the whole house – but Caitlin took the electric gun out of her pocket and stood waiting for the handle to turn though only shielded by the mosquito net and he cursed the inattentiveness that had prevented them from using masks. So it might be necessary to use ketamine if it should be the maid though that would be a very serious aggravation – but why did they not run away with their shoes in their hands instead of standing here waiting for a disaster? Because everything was quiet – quiet as in the Shipka Pass painting. On tiptoe she approache
d the door and looked in through the keyhole. There had been no light in the kitchen and the maid would not have fallen asleep in the dark while stirring the pots? Sniffing the air she shook her head and as she turned round he felt that the tension had gone.

  “It was a cat!”

  He became light enough to defy the Earth and in the next instant they had taken off their ski socks – opened the door and put on their shoes sheltered by the porch.

  “Let’s see if we have everything. I have the jewellery, the pick gun, the electric gun, the infrared binoculars, the two door transmitters, the receiver to the transmitter on her car, my red torch, my bright torch, both ski socks, my hat, both gloves, and you?”

  “The plastic bag with the meat, the plastic bag with the cloth, the two full phials and the empty phial, the syringe, the needle, the red torch, my hat, both gloves, both ski socks, and the plastic bag we used for the shoes. You left the receivers to the doors and the Alder in the boat.”

  It was pouring down from a dense black Sky and the water flowed out over the gutters. Caitlin closed the door and the click was hardly audible through the steady splashing. A painfully bright flash illuminated everything like day light while the thunder rolled around just above their heads as if trying to close in on them.

  “Just take the sou’westers. We had better get away as quickly as we can.”

  They passed the wet dog who looked as if he had not moved at all so she knelt down and began to shake him out of his lethargic sleep. They might have used too much ketamine?

  “His eyelids are trembling. Let’s go.”

  “I’ll take a branch and obliterate our footprints from the ground here.”

  “The rain will do it for us, come on.”

  Becoming more and more wet they lost their way trying to get down to the river. Coming up they had had the light of the house to guide them.

  “We have to follow the brink till we find the boat.”

  “I think we have come down too far to the South.”

  “Yes, we have the open patch of ground behind us here.”

  They fought their way forward through the drenched leaves of the shrubbery which seemed to be alive with knowledge of their movements. The drumming of the drops on the leaves and the purl of the drops on the water fused to a chaos of white noise which from everywhere and nowhere numbed their senses.

  “I had better use the torch, no, there she is!”

  A prolonged zigzag flare revealed the boat as she lay nuzzling the brink though with the stern swaying slightly in the current. As Caitlin stepped on board and the water trickled down his back he followed the rope to the bowline knots that had kept the boat from floating away down-stream. By feeling for the shape of the bights with his fingertips he loosened the knots one by one and crawled up over the gunwale with the rope in his hand to take an oar and push them away from the peril of being stuck to the brink – but as the boat began to drift out into the eddies of the river and he sat down in the stern to start the motor Caitlin tore off her wet clothes – unbuttoned his shirt and wrung it out over his arms. Being only conscious of the need to get away and of the cold clammy touch of his clothes he failed to summon up so much presence of mind that he could keep his teeth from chattering and tell her to wait.

  “Wait! I cannot wait another second now. I wanted you while we were there, in the house, as soon as we had found the jewels, I did, oh I did, but thought that we had better postpone it, because of the dog, if he should wake, but now – ”

  Loosening the clamp she swept the motor aside and fastened it roughly beside the port gunwale.

  “But I’m dren-ched t’ th’ bone all ov’r an’ ice –”

  Her lips burned through the rain as she closed his mouth and quenched his paltry objections with her tongue – so what could he do but follow the way all water flowed? Her focused eagerness bore him away and like her lips her hands were everywhere at once – to arouse him to respond. The presence of the house just behind the trees and his wet uncomfortable clothes collided with his inclination till he became too listless to act. Though he knew that it would delay them he also knew that Caitlin would be even more conscious of it than he was – and if she could choose to disregard the consequences he should also be able to forget them for an hour or a lifetime. All her intentions and acts had – since they woke up – but even more so since they had entered the door to the empty house – been focused on the single issue of reconquering the Eden of her birthright. Waiting for that to happen had been torture and waiting now had become as difficult as to stop breathing. Pulling his sticky trousers off and wriggling his vest up over his head she knelt down astride him on the cold wet stern thwart to consolidate their fates – so halfway aghast and halfway intrigued – as her nakedness banished his blueblack premonitions – he was momentarily taken aback by the sudden peripeteia – for her ardour was absolute – as if for death – and spontaneously contagious as she engaged the present circumstances as added incentives instead of pushing them aside as impediments. Feeling single-sinewed with the weather she sharpened the sensation of being adrift in this particular boat – being drenched by these very raindrops and whirling around on this unique stretch of the river as the only reality that could ever have existed. With her lips still pressed down on his mouth she settled with a jump of joy to peel him naked so he shivered involuntarily with gooseflesh both because of the cold and the thrill of her ardour – but once attuned to her tonic the cold drops that trickled down over his face and his shoulders were swept out to the periphery of his awareness. When the lightning – which hit a tree a little further upstream in a forked flash of armed fire – illuminated the densely leafed brinks as an intricate mosaic of pewter-streaked graphite the tightened surface of the black water around the boat was everywhere splintered by shiny bubbles arising around the falling drops – but in the darkness of the heavy clouds a little later as they listened in to each other her eyes shone with a green-black luminosity that reflected the internal combustion of the gtum-mo which had begun to permeate her skin and soak him in warm sweat. Innate predilections arose with spread-out hoods from their coccyges to twine into double helices while the boat – which was caught in an eddy – swirled around midstream. The thunder made them tremble together with the air and the rain united them with the current in the river as she strove to approach a primeaeval state that would initiate a derangement of the senses and of all prior conceptions. Internalising the shape of his shoulders and his back with her fingertips and pressing him closer and closer she gyrated up and down while her wet dishevelled curls brushed the raindrops off from his cheeks as quickly as they ran down from his temples. Exulting in a steepening alternation between crest and trough she had to feel him – in the hold of her loins and crescent moon lips – now and for ever – to fulfil her destiny irrespective of whether they would die or survive or the universe expanded or imploded. She had to know him through and through as so close and real that he became a part of herself or she a part of him. Transcendence – sensitivity – small seismic shifts – a partial expansion of awareness. The edge of the transom was cutting into his back and the pain was a sharp point glinting at the edge of his proprioception – but she was his proprioception – all that which existed – the entire world and its anagnōrisis. As she coloured her movements he ached under the impact but was borne inwards on her impetuous surge though still kindling her to exceed herself – so laughing into his mouth for the joy of what they were doing she knew now in the marrow of her bones that he had accepted her unconditionally. She felt secure with both her feet resting on the iron core of the Earth – she felt certain of him and of his absolute commitment. So she could do whatever she wanted – with him – for him – to him – for he would always be there – ready to catch her in his arms to substantiate her as a woman – and then he did not any longer shiver with cold – hear the rain drumming on the tightly stretched out skin of the water – sense the boat turn
round – ache with the edge of the wood gnawing into his back – but heard the unstruck sound of harmony that vibrated among the leaves in the trees – in the waters that rushed around the keel – in the drops that dripped down from his hair and in her movements as she see-sawed herself into expansion and melting – melting and expansion. Feeling his pulsation as heartbeats between her lips she gasped for breath and contracted her muscles to expel sensation after sensation downwards through his groins – through the boat and through the water of the river and out into the dense sandy mulch of the all-receiving soil. Her nasal moans arose as a confirmation of the suchness of things and trailed downstream like bow waves to inundate the reeds – the yellow Irises and the low-lying areas of the shore with her absolute existence while a bare flaming iciness made him withdraw – through the stern – to thwart the stabs – but continuing to descend she pressed him further out over the transom for their mutual satisfaction should sweep a sting or two of agony aside as ephemeral. Clinging to her neck and lying half-ways out over the water he felt that they were reaching the point of no return and would fall overboard unless he – against the music-making movements of the stars – should chance to break the spell. Indifferent to all such worldly concerns and cuddled in the purple-red rose of fulfilment she refused to budge an inch – so abandoning the security of their tight embrace he hang for half a second out over the boat with his shoulders touching the water before he could catch hold of the gunwale with his right hand and of the edge of the transom with his left. Still suspended in space he felt how time slowed down but with an intense effort he defied earthly gravity to lift them both so far upwards that he could sit on the stern thwart. Still clinging to his neck Caitlin collapsed in laughter and encouraged by her sense of humour he breathed deeply to recuperate – placed the motor in the middle of the transom and pushed the switch down. The relief of finally moving away from the house seemed to set the whole world spinning around its axis once again.