by Niels Hammer
“She missed.”
“The water is full of microorganisms so the visibility is bad. Did you know it was a female?”
“I didn’t really, I just said it without thinking.”
“It was a female, I think, because of the size.”
At the jetty they began carrying the equipment up to the car.
“The smithy in Lowestoft is not open yet, so let’s have breakfast and begin?”
They drove home though he wanted to stay – alive. The peace and the light of the early morning had dispelled all thoughts about worldly activity.
“Are we really in a hurry?”
“No, but I think that you would like to get it over and done with as quickly as possible.”
She poured the content of the water-tight container out on the table and he began to make tea.
“This necklace is exceptionally fine, Philippine pearls, Pinctada maxima, fourteen millimeters, rosy tones, triple A, about twenty inches – when you’ve finished eating cut the knots between the pearls and take care to remove the pieces of thread that may remain inside the holes. Wash them in lukewarm water with the soap I have placed over there by the wash basin, use the thin needle to draw a thread through the holes, and pull it to and fro to remove traces of organic material, and here’s a pair of surgical gloves.”
“I was amazed at how quickly you could open and close the door with the pick gun.”
“That’s not so difficult once you have a little experience. Your door for example was just as easy or even easier, as I have said already. Now, the wristlet here is standard but heavy, about three hundred grammes or so, but the emerald in this necklace is unique.”
She wrung the prongs back with a small pair of tongs.
“How many carats?”
“About seven, very slightly included, clear green, medium saturation, Muzo, very expensive, I’ll clean it later. This necklace is standard eighteen carat and we’ll melt it.”
“What do you mean by ‘slightly included’?”
“Emeralds are quite brittle. They consist of beryllium, aluminium and silicium oxide, but trace amounts of chromium give them their green colour. In contrast to diamonds, which consist of carbon, and which are very hard, ten, the hardest on the scale, emeralds have tiny cracks and fissures. They appear as flaws, but they are made invisible, or nearly so, by being filled with cedar wood oil which has the same refractory properties as the stone itself.”
“Do all emeralds have such cracks?”
“All natural emeralds. Synthetic ones do not have cracks but they are not worth very much.”
“But do they look dull or dead because they lack such cracks?”
“Oh no, it’s merely a human convention that makes them less valuable.”
“Like it is a human convention that makes them valuable in the first place?”
“We’re attracted to glittering objects because of the light they reflect.”
He took the necklace to cut through the small hard knots between the pearls.
“Light suggests the Sun and the inner light of the soul, the inner moonlight.”
The Hamsa-upaniṣad – Huxley’s observation – the self-evident reason – Scotus –
“What about the clasp here?”
“Cut it off. Let me see!”
“The holes in these pearls are very thin.”
He warmed the water and added soap. The effort to get the legal tender was the same unless –
“Yes, and you have to pull the thread up and down several times in each pearl while keeping it submerged in the soapy water, and change water often.”
“What about the other emeralds there. She certainly liked emeralds.”
“Yes, they are smaller, but the quality is good. The bracelet here has twelve emeralds of about two carats each. It’s quite unique, and could fetch a considerable sum. I’ll take the stones out, wash them and melt the necklace. It’s eighteen carat.”
“You look quite unfamiliar with that magnifying glass in front of your eye.”
“A magnifying glass is not required when evaluating emeralds, but this is a sapphire, about eight carats or a little more, heated and flawless.”
“Why heated? This is a whole new world to me.”
“Heat makes the blue colour more distinct. Nearly all sapphires are heated, from six hundred to eighteen hundred degrees. Different temperatures give different results. Too high a temperature kills the stone. Aluminium oxide. It’s very hard, nine on Mohs’ scale. This sapphire is finely cut, oval, and with a deep blue colour; but I think it’s a unique piece so I will remove the stone and clean the necklace. It’s also standard eighteen carat.”
“What’s it worth?”
“About fifteen thousand Pounds. Now, then there are all the smaller stones, primarily in the rings. Here’s a platinum ring with three diamonds, white, also a unique piece, made to order, cushion cut, very good, category G, nearly colourless. When I have removed the stones we’ll melt the metal.”
“These pearls take some time.”
“Yes, and here’s five standard gold chains which we only have to clean, and two rings with smaller diamonds, another wristlet of gold, rather heavy, or even a bit gaudy. I’ll weigh the metal, but I do not have an electronic scale as that might imply an interest in jewellery.”
“So you have two piles of gold here, one of which we’re going to melt?”
“Yes, the assorted bracelets and necklaces here weigh altogether about nine hundred and seventy grammes, and they can be sold as they are although it might take time depending on how and where they are sold. The gold content will be seven hundred and thirty grammes.”
“What about the gold we’ll have to melt?”
“It weighs thirteen hundred and fifty grammes, and seventy-five per cent of that will be, wait a second, around one thousand and ten grammes. Let me help you with the pearls.”
“I’ve been too occupied watching you and wondering about the different skills it takes to make a good thief, such as a knowledge of electronics, lock-picking skill, connoisseurship of precious stones and precious metals, expertise in the martial arts, and a very well developed sixth sense.”
“But could I not say just the same thing about being a good painter? It requires first of all the ability to see, I mean really, to see, and then the skill of conveying that which you see on to the canvas or the paper by means of brushes and colours. You must have it in your hand or rather there must not be any discrepancy between your intentions and your ability. You must also have self-insight, without which everything becomes superficial.”
“It looks as if you’ve done nothing else but clean pearls all your life.”
Pearl laughter rippling out over pearl teeth. Pure azure – Vairocanaḥ – Sky. Her innate disposition to release β-endorphine had made him totally dependent.
“Oh no, but now we’ll rinse them in distilled water and wash the gold we’re not going to melt.”
She lighted the gas and using a pair of long stainless steel pinchers she swept each piece too and fro in the flames. Forget-me-nots and Primroses would absolve them from the past.
“I don’t want to leave any traces of organic material. Now we can let them soak in the soap water while we melt this. I’ll drive to Lowestoft now, it’s half past nine.”
He kissed her good-bye for an hour or for ever and went down into the cellar to find four pieces of cardboard that were large enough to cover the windows in the garage just in case – though visitors this time of the day would be highly unlikely. Yet there were such events as accidents. Small events that changed the world. When he had shut out the lovely daylight – cleared the garage of tires – old newspapers – oil cans and rubbish he washed his hands of the past and began to wait. It was almost becoming a regular habit. But this ordeal to-day would be the last. Sometime to-night probably
he could ring the solemn bell. They had better wait till midnight – then the risk would be very negligible. Lepidopterologists would at this time of the year use light – not fermented syrup – going from tree to tree – so they would be stationary and easily visible at a distance. Nightjars would be conspicuous around dusk. Only people looking for owls might pose a problem – but they would be likely to keep to the tracks. A daylight evaluation would be optimal and the exposure time later minimal. He lay down on the sofa to listen – to the lute’s clear mellifluent notes – fragrant rose petals falling into silence – and recall – a September night on the island – waves washing across the sandy shore – sparks from the fire of driftwood carried away by the wind as fire-flies – draughts of claret – dark and rustic – glowing embers – drowsy heat – bright constellations appearing through vast empty windows of eastward rushing cloud castles – whiffs of partly burnt sausages and cackling of invisible skeins in the Sky – and then to sense– beyond subjective associations – flickering tapers along granite walls enwrapped in velvet – rustling of silken skirts in wanton canaries – gay and carefree laughter – games of give and take – longed for trysts and nightly secrecies – hell for leather plots and subsequent bloody feuds – lonely forests of serenity and evenings of peace and peace of communion – as the true suggestions of the air superseded his memories to sharpen the bitter-sweet feeling of loss – for this very moment – this day and this by-gone night of his youth were all left behind by time just like that distant age of courtly music. All – all irretrievably lost.
“Are you really asleep?”
“No, I lay listening to the distant echoes of time past.”
“Did you? I have also fetched the crucible, the ceramic plate and the gloves.”
He remembered the red fire extinguisher and they walked out into the garage where she connected the gas cylinders to the reduction valve and placed the crucible on the ceramic.
“You have no protection mask so on no account should you open the door to look in.”
“But what if you need help?”
“I’ll just drop all the gold here into the zirconia crucible, and use the welding helmet, which automatically will darken the glass should the flare become too bright. When the metal has melted I will leave it in the crucible to cool. In the meantime we can clean the rest of the pearls, the gold, the pick-gun and the electric gun.”
“At least you know how to give me confidence.”
He went out to stand under the eaves and wait. A sharp hissing sound reached his ears and the glare was reflected in the open window through a gap in the cardboard – but he resisted the temptation to look. Not even through the darkest of sunglasses.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, it just takes a while. Platinum melts at two thousand and forty-one degrees Kelvin.”
“While you depend on inspiration and sixth sense awareness you also require a large battery of equipment in addition to a broad spectrum of subtle skills.”
“Your imagination beggars reality, but you can come in now. We’ll just wait till it cools.”
There was nobody on the road so he opened the door and closed it to the world outside. An evening Sun in the desert just after a sand storm. He covered the gap in the cardboard.
“Are the gloves fire proof? Or rather what’s the critical temperature?”
“One thousand degrees Celsius, close to the melting point of gold, for ten or fifteen seconds.”
“The more I see the more intrigued I am.”
“Then that’s as it should be with reality. Come! Let’s finish cleaning the pearls.”
She could not wait for his sake. They closed the door to the garage and switched off the light.
“I was suffering from an illusion. I thought that theft was a relatively uncomplicated affair.”
“It very often is, but if serious you have to come close enough to see the details. While you rinse the pearls in distilled water I’ll clean the gold here. I always forget how hot it is.”
“Now beside the jewels, the gold and the pearls, the receivers and the transmitters and the two guns, what else do we have to ask the Earth to keep? And we might have to use a shovel.”
“No, we’ll just make two holes and remove the earth between them with the hand trowel.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to throw them away and buy some new ones if necessary?”
“Of course, provided they will remain easy to buy.”
With her fingertips touching the current trends she had ascertained the direction they would take.
“The emeralds must be washed with a wet cloth and wiped clean immediately afterwards.”
“Why don’t you wash them in Cedar wood oil?”
“I don’t have any, but do you have any pure ethanol?”
“I have a bottle somewhere. I tried it as an experiment, but I also have a bottle of ethanol but it’s not pro analysi or even purissimum.”
“That does not matter. As a precaution I could dissolve the old cedarwood oil first.”
He went into his atelier to look. Somewhere on the shelf. A small brown bottle. Not on the top shelf where it ought to have been – but there – and the bottle with ethanol was almost full.
“Here you are! And there’s about nine hundred millilitres of ethanol left. Is that enough?”
“Yes, thanks! I’ve now cleaned the diamonds and the sapphires. We should also return the gas cylinders and the reduction valve, and hide the crucible, the ceramic plate and the gloves.”
“It’s as if you expect to be ready for another adventure. You’ve had all these things at home for years, and now you’re suddenly becoming so worried that I cannot make it all cohere.”
“Can’t you? I think you should be able to. The answer lies just in front of your cat-cold nose.”
She smiled enigmatically pleased still to represent a mystery. Shaking his head he looked at her.
“You fool! I’m no longer alone. I do not just have myself to take care of. I have a responsibility. I have to ensure, however remote the risk, that no harm can come to you or to me for that matter, and besides, I have always hidden the gloves, the crucible, the pick-gun and the electric gun at various places in the little wood just like I hid the jewels, for a certain amount of circumstantial evidence will at one point turn into real evidence.”
“And did you dig it all up just now, en plein soleil?”
“The cache was placed inside a dense cluster of hazels, completely shielded from prying eyes.”
“What would the difference be between this and what we did Wednesday night?”
“That was pure excitement, not minimising small risks.”
It was not given that he should be able to understand everything. He only understood isolated patches – such as mouches en lait – but he could see what she meant – and yet the contradiction was typical of a mindset which in many ways differed from his own – but for that he had to give due thanks to colours – for it was this difference that made it all worth while – but the present intellectual preference for grey – black and white – as a kind of non-descript neutrality – showed the conditioned fear of acknowledging emotions – the fear of feelings and subjective truth – inherent in colours.
“Then the affective states associated with the two different risks are different.”
She washed the emeralds carefully with ethanol and the slightly sweet smell of the organic solvent of brain cells filled the air of the kitchen.
“How would you evaluate them?”
“The feeling tone is all important. It’s the only touchstone, and your consideration for me – ”
“And for myself, and thereby indirectly also for you, for how would you survive a gap in time, caused by an accident, that would separate us?”
A hypothetical reality of unspeakable consequences – and the deli
ght of feeling all-important.
“Take refuge in opium or Mandrake, cocaine or wine.”
“Not in other women though?”
“I cannot go back, and mandrake or cocaine would probably just intensify the agony, and I’ve never been fond of opium. While it produces a certain opaque calmness it dulls the senses, and besides, it has a candy-floss air of pink artificiality I dislike; and in the long run it hollows out the soul. Baudelaire calls it immense but I’ve always found it rather restrictive. Contrariwise cocaine can give both inspiration and energy, but there’s a heavy price to pay in the form of lethargy and irritation afterwards. If just chewing a couple of leaves it’s of course merely stimulating and devoid of adverse effects, but an intravenous injection produces a desire to conquer the whole world ten times over, and what’s worse, it also substantiates the belief that it easily could be achieved; so a dopamine agonist would merely initiate a deterioration. I have no experience with Mandrake, only with Henbane, and that was negative, so I would not even be able to seek shelter in the haven of an artificial paradise.”
“There is no remedy apart from death that can alleviate the presence of reality; but now I’ve cleaned the emeralds and we can leave them in ethanol for a couple of hours before we let them dry. I have also cleaned the electric gun and the pick-gun and wrapped them in plastic. We’ll wash the gloves, the crucible and the ceramic plate with soap and leave them in soapy water with a fair amount of isopropanol before we dry them. We should also clean the phials with ketamine when we’ve removed the label.”
Her clinical efficiency – her clarity of purpose and her joyful competence tempted him all of a sudden to suggest that they might after all continue to explore such excitements together – but the thought of how the uncertainty would affect his spontaneous ability to paint left him with no choice – and besides he did not want to expose her to any further danger even though she seemed to thrive on it. Anyway – though burying the tools they could always dig them up again.