It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  “Almost South South-West, two hundred and eleven, the distance is twenty-two forty-eight.”

  She made a note and fastened a piece of tape to a branch where the line entered the grove.

  “This place will be easy to cover because of the leaves. We’ll just brush them back.”

  He wound the measuring tape up while Caitlin noted the coordinates.

  “It will take us about two hours, I think, so we ought to leave at half past eleven.”

  “Yes, that should do, but to avoid going through the dense undergrowth again we can make a detour, but it’s at least a kilometre longer than the way we came.”

  They jumped the trench together and Caitlin marked the place with a piece of tape.

  “That doesn’t matter really, but now we can find the oak in the dark, and of course also where we have to leave the path.”

  Going back the way they had come he counted his steps – six hundred and forty-one – to the small wooden bridge across the ditch. In front of them lay the low-lying areas of extensive Reed beds and a flock of Little Terns were flying around –

  “That’s a large bird of prey – ”

  “A Marsh Harrier, but look at the Little Terns over there, they fly with the bill pointing – ”

  “Yes, they’re diving down, and coming up again but the open water is hidden by the reeds.”

  Following the track they walked hand in hand and thought in thought with the Sun blazing down from the blameless blue above and a soft breeze wafting through the fluffy reeds – where the abrupt movement of a straw often indicated the presence of a Bearded Tit.

  “Wait a little and look over there. Can you see a small bird with white-streaked wings?”

  “It has to sit still first. The tail is long, the wings black and white and it’s dark beneath the eyes. What a sweet little bird – ”

  “The female does not have the black patches beneath the eyes. It’s a male prerogative.”

  “Like the glittering decorations of generals and admirals. Vanity, oh vanity!”

  “You cannot compare – ”

  “Of course I can, both phenomena are simply biologically determined.”

  “In the case of the Bearded Tits it is mainly determined by the selective power of the females, but in the case of admirals and generals it’s a highly hierarchical system invented to enhance efficiency, but basically shaped by notions of self-promotion and vanity. It’s male oriented – ”

  “So human males fall short of the bearded tit ideal, which is determined by females.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think you can justify including me in such a comparison.”

  “Your kind of vanity is different and not so obvious, but vanity is a typical male characteristic.”

  “What about the female of the species – sans rire s’adorant et s’aimant sans dégoût – ”

  But kissing him quickly she flipped the bric-à-brac of opinionated reminiscences away from his mind – so they continued in shared silence and crossed the ditch where they first had emerged from the forest. Again the difference between the open sunlit and flat landscape of swaying reeds and the shadowy twilight beneath the canopy of the trees gave him the impression of going from one world into another. Where the open landscape had encouraged activity – exploration and curiosity the twilight of the leaves evoked semnic inspiration – fleeting and hidden notes from a flute – not heard but felt – and the silence beneath the canopy of the trees turned the attention inwards to memories – to images and thoughts – but even more so to a state of contemplative awareness that excluded intentionality – a state of mere being where the scenery was experienced without evaluating or judging it as the appreciation was mute and non-conceptual – instinctive and spontaneous – liberated from ulterior motives focused on use and purpose and understanding. Conscious evaluation obfuscated the self-luminescence of the primeaeval experience though the two modes of being could enhance one another and form complementary poles like extrovert and introvert states or like explicate and implicate orders. Synchronising their intuition of each other the trees had followed them back towards the car – but now he felt that the factual pattern he saw became plain because it was the pattern with which he was born. The pattern was not wrong – it was inherently right – but there were so many patterns he failed to see because he did not incorporate them – so to what extent did the patterns he saw obscure the patterns that escaped him?

  “You shouldn’t worry yourself about something which you simply cannot solve.”

  He nearly lost his grip on the wheel – so unexpected – so uncannily unexpected was her comment on his train of thought – which had begun again in the car – that he had to park by the roadside. Smiling enigmatically she looked at him – or was it just another projection?

  “What made you say that just now?”

  “You looked so frustrated and annoyed, as if you couldn’t find the right piece in a puzzle.”

  “I felt that you could read my thoughts.”

  “Sometimes I can, no, I cannot ‘read’ them, I can feel them, so you should not feel certain that I don’t know what you’re thinking about or at least feeling. Are you still ready to marry me?”

  He parked the car in the driveway and when Caitlin had dug the plastic bags out of the compost heap he took her in his arms and kissed her to confirm his destiny.

  “I will share my images, feelings and thoughts with you. It gives you a sense of power and joy.”

  “Or better still, a sense of how close we have come to one another, but now we must dry the emeralds and take the gloves and the crucible out of the water, but we’ll have to use four plastic bags, that is, one for the melted gold, one for the standard pieces, one for the pearls and one for the precious stones, but they will altogether take up less space than the three thousand cubic centimetres of the container even when the pearls and the precious stones are packed separately; and while I remember it, have you cleaned the container?”

  “Yes, but for how long can they lie like that in the earth?”

  “Packed carefully pearls can keep for several years, precious stones and gold for ever.”

  When she had swept the air from her hair dryer to and fro over the emeralds till all the ethanol had evaporated she polished them with cedarwood oil and wrapped each stone in nylon cloth.

  “You should put the pearls into these sleeves but separate them with a small piece of nylon.”

  When they had finished Caitlin placed the gloves in the oven and they sat down to eat.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to lie down a little? We cannot begin before half past eleven so we could have dinner around eight o’ clock?”

  As they went upstairs he felt tired enough to sleep even now when the Sun was shining brightly and the wind – ruffling the leaves of the Wisteria outside the windows – was strong and humid enough to evoke images of glittering water and swaying green reeds – so there must have been exertions – of which he had no real memory – at least none that would enable him to identify them precisely – that had required far more energy than he had imagined he had used – but at the point of slipping away into semi-awareness he noticed an impression that suggested that it had been the intensity of her commitment that had made him feel tired – but that would also have to be a conclusion it would have been impossible not to reach by plain deduction.

  XXX

  The Blackbird woke him – as he had woken her already – for he would be sitting on one of the new perches to which he had fastened the torn Wisteria she had used as a parachute. Almost simultaneously with the movement of her arm beneath the eiderdown he felt how she took hold of his hand to further their mutual appreciation of the song. Brightening and darkening flute notes dissolved into rippling thrills – to clear drops of water or to sudden twitterings – almost shrill sometimes – but short and soft – or they changed tone and colour to f
orm a melodious flow of blue and purple strains that drew them both out towards him as he sat beneath the window and expressed his sense of being present in song – primarily to his mate but also to everyone else within reach of his evening magic of saying farewell to the day and of greeting the night. But when the darkness deepened and he ceased Caitlin pulled him – in slow-motion and still inundated by the vanished sounds – out of the comfort of the bed. So following her down the stairs he began to envisage the evening that lay ahead beyond the event horizon.

  “I’ve taken two slices of venison, and we can fry the potatoes; I like this wine here!”

  “I don’t know of any bird with a song as melodious and varied as a blackbird’s.”

  Rolling the dark red liquid around in the glass he inhaled the fragrance of the droplets.

  “It’s a sweet melancholic dream, a wistful melodious paean to the passing of time, and it has a contemplative air, a thoughtfulness, that does not seem to match the bird’s innate pugnacity.”

  “Why should a blackbird display a greater degree of coherence in character traits than we do?”

  “It’s the juxtapositions that add spice, but there must be a coherence, an all-pervasive sense of self-insight. Wer nicht liebt Weib, Wein und Gesang, Der bleibt ein Narr sein Lebenlang.”

  “You do have une bonne cave of quotations with which to prop up all your idiosyncrasies.”

  “By drawing analogies I can occasionally discern sporadic patterns emerging out of the general chaos, and they can give the whole enterprise of staying alive from day to day a certain orientation and sometimes even a whiff of meaning.”

  “I have no need of such an hypothesis.”

  “In women innate meaning is naturally and biologically founded to a greater extent. The necessity of exploration is not so pronounced for the felt certainty of purpose is stronger.”

  “Mon pauvre petit loup! Is it really that hard being a man?”

  “Only the instant a poor fool begins to reflect, but then there’s no way back and the tenuity of a raison d’être increases with age, experience and disillusion.”

  “Is that why you drink?”

  Her direct gaze was quizzical and curious but she was withholding her judgment.

  “No, I drink primarily because the fragrance of wine stimulates my imagination and enhances my sense of being alive like most scents or odours do, and there is hardly anything, apart from roses and jungles, that can be compared with the richness and diversity of the bouquet of wine.”

  The venison – smelling strongly of game – blood and roasted meat – was ready and he put it on their plates while Caitlin took the potatoes out of the oven.

  “And as a visionary inspiration it enables me see things as they are or as if for the first time and to discover analogies and causal connections which hitherto seem to have been hidden.”

  “It’s just now that I feel how hungry I really am. This is delicious. Here, take some more water-cress, it’s dewy fresh. So you’re not likely to become addicted to anything?”

  “I am far too keen on reality such as it is to blunt my senses or befuddle my mind.”

  “So we are just confirming our choices by getting to know one another a little bit better.”

  “As an hors d’œuvre to that which really matters?”

  “Staying naked together beneath the stars above?”

  “What else is there to do down here? Doing our best and dying?”

  “You are indeed a gloomy godforsaken mournful melancholic ruminating romantic.”

  “Who, malgré moi-même, has fallen in love with you?”

  Pushing her chair back she rose and kissed him still with her mouth full of wine to pour ambrosia in over his tongue and breathe life down into his lungs.

  “Come, lets make tea while we wait, we have to wait an hour.”

  Filling the kettle she looked wryly at him.

  “Then I’m your rescuing angle?”

  “I don’t think you have very much in common with an angle. Angles are sexless, you’re rather like a Goddess, and a real Goddess is more often than not the girl next-door.”

  “Why are angles sexless?”

  “Angles are, as the word implies, messengers or harbingers, in this case from God, and the Christian anthropomorphisation of the numinous is per definition sexless. For a Christian the numinous is opposed to sexuality. A Christian cannot see that the numinous can infuse sexuality like it can infuse anything else to make it sacred. For a Cat God is an immense Cat, very cunning, very sweet, constantly purring, very lecherous and always successful when hunting choice game. Christians anthropomorphise the numinous and Cats make it cat-like.”

  Laughing at his honest antics Caitlin carried the tray with the tea into the sitting room.

  “When my mother comes please don’t frighten her with your analysis of religion.”

  “I can keep quiet about that subject too, and I don’t mind disguising myself as a pious believer.”

  “You don’t have to do that. She doesn’t mind atheists as long as they don’t question her faith.”

  “I’m not an atheist, quite the contrary. But are we ready? Do we have everything we need?”

  “I think so. Infrared binoculars, gloves, walking stick, the tube, trowel, red torch and ordinary torch, large plastic bags for the earth and rusty four inch nails. We have also the container with the jewellery, the pick gun, the electric-gun, the crucible, the ceramic disk, the transmitters, the receivers and the gloves.”

  “Have you remembered to remove the batteries?”

  “Yes. That’s always the first thing I do. This chocolate here is really nice.”

  “It’s real chocolate, not milk powder and chemicals; but we must also remember to take the tapes down, three in the first place and three in the last place.”

  Having drained their tea cups dry they sat silently beside one another waiting for the Earth to turn round so as to leave the Sun a little further down below the horizon.

  “Should we begin?”

  He carried the tray out into the kitchen and took the green mosquito hats down from the shelf. All prophylactic measures – bitter experience – covering a kill with branches to hide it from the vultures. They placed everything in their vests apart from the trowel – the walking stick – the tube and the container which Caitlin carried in a bag – and went out to the car with a strange light sense of excitement or maybe even of apprehension. Some approaching cirri at twenty thousand feet in the South-west seemed to prognosticate a front but the night was deep and quiet – in tune with their actions. There was not much traffic and the last stretch of the road leading down to the Nature Reserve appeared to be empty. He parked the car at the edge of the parking lot and they closed the doors silently. Caitlin carried the infrared binoculars around her neck – the precious bag and the walking stick in her gloved hand while he hid the tube and the plastic bags with the tools under his coat and the trowel in his side pocket. There was a leafy atmosphere of peace among the trees for the joy of eating – mating and killing had yielded to dreams or recuperation beneath the pale Summer Sky and its faint few distant stars. The Plēïades had beckoned him to follow at a distance which he had transgressed with trepidation. They were walking side by side down towards the Broad with its smell of sweet water and weeds to guide them if they closed their eyes and the songs of two Nightingales to attune them to themselves.

  “Wait a minute, a Fir branch is a good broom.”

  “It’s over here in the Hazels, maybe a little further down. There’s light enough from the Sky. Don’t use the torch. We went into the thicket just about here.”

  The trees were aware of them as living organisms differing from themselves and they were aware of the trees as representing an innate evolutionary level it was so difficult to sense that it remained as a suggestion of an all-encompassing primordial peace
– a peace which they to-night would only be able to share superficially as they had a red-blooded enterprise at hand. He removed the three pieces of tape from the branches as Caitlin began to press the tube downwards. Inch by slow inch it began to disappear into the good earth. He sought solace in her concentration. It was absolute as she was in touch with herself – and her intentness was an affective state that helped him to escape the triviality of daily life – the habit that dulled the senses and stultified the mind – the tautology of each single déjà vu event that hollowed out the soul – for she became so absorbed in what she did that she became the activity itself.

  “There was a root there, but I think it broke. Now it’s almost level with the grass.”

  Twisting the tube from side to side she pulled it slowly up. About eight thousand cubic centimeters and not less than twenty kilogrammes. Opening it on the plastic sheet she disengaged the cylindrical rod of humid earth from the two metal semicircles that glinted weakly in the dull red light from the torch. And at a distance of about six centimetres from the strange round cavity in the earth Caitlin began to make the second hole and when that had been accomplished to her satisfaction and the earth had been loosened from the tube she cut the small turf of grass out between the two holes and removed the remaining earth with the trowel.

  “The transmitters and the receivers first! Press the bag with the gloves down beside them.”

  “Here’s the pick-gun and the electric gun, the ceramic plate and the crucible.”

  Caitlin cut the columns of earth up into short sections and pressed them down in the holes by using the handle of the walking stick. When a cavity with a depth of about fifteen centimetres was left she dropped two nails in each hole before replacing the round pieces of greensward – and like the last piece in a puzzle he fitted the almost square piece of earth in between them.