I was accustomed to accessing the cemetery at night for reasons that we need not concern ourselves with here. On this occasion, however, my intentions were particular. Specific, that is to say, more so than peculiar, or at least no more peculiar than on any other night.
There are many things one can steal from a person, the vast majority of which I have successfully stolen. Money and possessions are the least of it; the worth of the sum or the object notwithstanding, they offer only paltry reward. A cheap and short-lived thrill. My predilections had long since passed beyond the likes. Nor either was I entirely interested by the more obvious abstracts. Stealing someone’s hope, say, as delicious a thing as that may be, I had done to death. Relieving them of their dreams, similarly. A person’s sense of self, a greater achievement no doubt, but one also that I’d achieved, and more than once, though the manner in which these thefts were accomplished were ugly, and neither something I am proud of or on which I care to dwell. The big one, of course, is to steal the will of somebody to live, and though I can say, and not without pride, that such an achievement I count among my own, I intend to keep hold covetously to that tale until the moment for its telling is ripe.
As I have said, my purposes entering the cemetery on the night in question were particular. Feeling light-hearted, I proceeded on a whim, the idea occurring to me quite by chance as I sauntered home from a surprisingly pleasant evening dining with friends. I had attended against my will, given assurances of being the only guest, though still wavering throughout the day, until persuaded, finally, and only, when a well-timed and admittedly canny text from my host informed me that he planned to open a 2011 Châteauneuf du pape (Château Rayas, no less) that he had brought from his father’s country house. Being that it was access to his father’s library that had led me to make overtures of friendship toward Valentin while we were students, him as astoundingly dull as I was precociously brilliant, and that continued access to the more refined pleasures into familiarity with which Valentine had been born while I had been fated to strive had maintained our acquaintance, not to have attended would have been churlish. The wine all night was sensational, as was the shoulder of lamb we devoured; a cheese platter, my contribution, was no less divine – though that was not surprising. That there had been chance to speak, in long and in precise detail, about that favourite subject of mine, architecture of the ecclesiastical kind, was, however, truly unanticipated. Given the floor I became, I suppose, quiet verbose, with both Valentin and his wife, Marie-Laure, hanging on my every word. Thus I had left their home giddily, and giddily, perhaps, the idea had occurred. I had changed course and made my way expeditiously to my familiar stalking grounds.
Once there, I breached the wall, despite the amount of wine I had drunk and heavy meal we had shared, with little difficult. I knew precisely where the cover of municipally maintained verdure would provide an opportunity to hoist myself up onto it, then shuffled along it in a crouch, one foot either side of their ludicrous rusted-wire defences, to a spot (one of several) from which I knew I could drop into a dark, enshadowed and neglected corner. Acrobatics done, my heartbeat slowed. I hiccupped an afterthought of sweet and fragrant wine. There really is little like feeling oneself at home, and that this landscape of the dead could provide me that is a benediction that should not go ignored.
In no rush I wandered between the headstones. Not pressed by my once common urges, and yes, perhaps, in terms of purpose, mind goosed by the convivial hours I had whiled away before the night had taken its turn, I took more delight than one might usually afford in the unyielding silence of those edifices, the blankness of them, the lifelessness, in their alternating blocky and more ornate forms, more lifeless even than the gatherings of bones which, in their arrangement, long mortem passed, calcify the phantom of a thing called human.
A ran my hands over the stones, their chill rough the texture of the night. I lay my hands where letters had been inscribed. Yes, I had gone there to steal a name.
To steal someone’s name may seem an arbitrary thing. Should we meet, and I introduce myself by one not my given, you would assume the name was mine no matter from where it had come, a reception of stolen goods which seems inevitable, unless I were able to invent a name, which I do not believe I am, which no living person before had ever born. The theft of identity, specific and targetedly so, is a theft these days no less banal than the theft of money, jewellery or any other more or less precious thing. It is a manner of theft that to the risks of which we have become accustomed, confident in the assurances offered by our banks and any number of digital services that such thievery will be swiftly dealt with and compensated (as far as it is possible to do so). Fake accounts and mimicry and pastiche, these, alongside profitable data, such as account and social security numbers, codes and passwords and the like, are what come to mind when the notion of stealing someone’s name comes up. At a push, perhaps, we can envisage a cuckoo-like attempt to take over someone’s life. To me these things seem trite. What, however, and this was the question that had occurred to me sauntering home that night, might it mean to steal a name from the dead, to steal a name when there was no fraud one intended to commit? When there was no profit to be made, other than to know you had taken into your possession, the lasting and finite remnant of a soul? A hand’s full of letters. A few words. A name.
With hindsight, it is easy to blame, in no small part, Henri and Marie-Laure for planting the seed of this bizarre but no less enchanting idea in the churned black soil of my mind. After all, it was in introducing into our evening’s discussion their ongoing disagreements regarding the renovations of Notre Dame (opinions so banal it is not worth my time to expand upon them here), that my disquisition on the cathedral’s architecture had begun and, as it developed, my unfettered praise to all medieval masons had been sung. It was that, I am certain, which put it in my head. That thought of the chisel and the brute stone, images of shaping, carving, sanding down, of sainted figures and sacred words inscribed.
What if, I must have somewhere thought, my path home leading me inexorably closer to the cemetery at Montparnasse, what if one could, from the very tablet into which it had been carved, lift the name of the dead to which it was tribute. Without any thought of how I had decided I would try.
I approached the grave of a man I had known. That anyone of the least good taste or even a passing knowledge of literary culture would have. His tomb was one I would visit often. Not for any reason untoward, simply for the pleasure of reflecting on his works and acknowledging the ways in which his thinking had shaped the contours of my own. I had often stood before that tomb, devout and mute. The challenge, then, of the evening, was not to find its place among the headstones in the dark (I believe I could locate it with a blindfold on) but rather to approach it in a way that would not draw suspicion. Not only was the grave adjacent to one of the cemetery’s main thoroughfares, neither its placement nor its neighbours nor the avenue’s trees offering much in the way of cover, himself being one of the more prestigious residents, I felt certain that any present watchman or patroller would be certain to notice any action round his spot. Again, had it not been for the evening’s libations, the more cautious elements of my character, those necessarily cautious and well-trained in maintaining the protection of a vice, would have forbidden manoeuvres towards the man’s position – and, perhaps, too, it was my mission, its playful element, that I was not propelled by notions which on other nights had led me along similar paths. I felt something like an innocent, a naïf, though I doubt anybody reading would consider me with such grace.
Not having entirely lost my senses, I did not come at the grave directly, winding, instead, my way through the stones from a distance out, moving exceptionally slowly, as only my experience could have taught one to move, an advancement of stone and shifting shadow, which, if glanced upon at all, would be dismissed as the trick of a tired eye, a shift in light brought about by the movement of a branch against the soft breath of the night, or the sudden illumination of a room high up, looking out over the graveyard from one of the surrounding buildings.
By such means I arrived at the tomb by its head, the letters of his name, to me, backwards, upside down, the hieroglyphic twist denuding them sufficiently of their sense that I suffered no sudden surge of reverence to distract me from my task. But what task? I had set myself upon stealing the name from a grave and there I was, contemplating one of the highest renown (amongst, that is, anyone of the least good taste etc.), one the disappearance of which would be noticed before I had even made it home, a grave whose defacement would be nationally – internationally! – decried. Why then had I chosen it? Acknowledging the whim of it, the sudden notion and hastily made decisions that were a product of the evening, is not sufficient to explain.
It had occurred to me with great alacrity when the notion first emerged that it was doubtful I would be able to steal an entire name on my first attempt. I had no idea what I was doing after all. No, that was never my goal as I approached the doyen’s stone. I had settled on my mission being the lifting of a letter. Yes, I could have chosen any, any figure of the alphabet appearing on any uncared for grave in a well hidden corner of the cemetery. Yes, I could have. Yes, I could have proceeded cautiously, disinterestedly, practicing my craft, waiting for the perfect opportunities, relying, as I had in the past, on the slow development of my skills, until the stealing of name tout entire was a delinquency within my grasp. Rather, in the burst of bravura the evening had brought on, I had decided I would steal, and why not?, the letters of my name and, in having done so, immediately recalled that himself, that great literary man over whose grave I was then crouched, would be the perfect victim, his name concluding in a double occurrence of the letter which was the first of mine. An homage, in part, perhaps, a cocked snoot at his renown too, why not, that I should dare, a ribbing, an identification and a way of laying claim; and a choice undergirded also by neatly practical observations: it was a letter that I needed, and he had one to spare.
I had, however, no idea of how then to achieve my aim, not only no clue as to how to begin, but even what method I was to employ. Explicitly, the idea was not the physical removal of the letter. That wasn’t what I had had in mind at all. There was to be no damage, no vandalism, no chipping, scratching or breaking of stone (even if I had had the tools, this had never been the objective). I had envisioned, simply put, removing the letter, and leaving no sign or clues of its removal other than the fact that it was no longer there.
I placed my hand upon it, over the letter on the stone. The smooth and unforgiving cold of it was so familiar. It sent a charge through me that I’ve since consigned to the pricking of old habits rather than arousal at the thievery to hand (who, though, could ever really understand or unpick the bleak and pulchritudinous weft of our desires). I crouched there, waiting, arm extended. I leant my knees on the rim of the headstone's top, my own head abandoned – I couldn’t tell you, and could not have then, what I was thinking even if I wanted. Squat like that I remained until my body ached (I am no longer as fit as I was once was, having squandered the conditioning I had maintained in periods when I more regularly lifted heavy things.)
The light changed, perhaps, perhaps it started to rain, or the wind picked up. I was no longer there or was. An erection rose and sank. I remembered how it felt to commune with the dead. I did not think about him or of anybody else. I knew what it was to commune with death itself. I met the ice of it, its stillness, its hard edge. I drifted from my consciousness.
Something was pressing into my palm. I looked up and the cemetery was still dark, the city beyond its high walls silent. Some time must have passed, or perhaps none had; there was nothing in my surroundings to suggest I had done more than briefly shut my eyes. The weariness I was suffering, however, was remarkable, as though I had been woken, brusquely and too early, from a slumber much needed and most profound. Thoughts hazy, and wincing with a suppurating fatigue, I thought to open my hand, which, on rousing, I could see held balled in a fist before me.
The pressing there felt like that of an object, something metal, thin but sturdy, not bending or flexing to my grip. Its tip dug in the fleshy pad at the base of my middle finger, while across the heel of my palm, I felt the chill pressure of its crossbar. I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. How I had succeeded, I had no idea, but I surely had. A quick glance in the direction of the tombstone was the proof. There was no second T on its dark grey, granite top. The letter had simply disappeared, leaving behind no mark or trace, no scratching or scrabbing, no chipping or splinters. It was as though from the day of its first carving the name of that man had been misspelt. I could not stifle the laugh that rose in my throat. Quite aside from notions of my personal and unique potency (that such a deranged impulse should be vindicated with success), my immediate thought was of the coming day’s first caller to that famous grave. The disconcerting sense, when seeing the man’s name alternatively spelt, that it was perhaps they who had been mistaken, who had gone through life assuming the man’s name was something slightly other than it was. The idea of the ripples my act was sure to send out – an act with no victim, almost without sense, but one onto which I could cling (and at that moment was!), the entirely unknown and unsuspected perpetrator of the most delicate and subtle theft, one visible to all and noticeable and remarkable and of no consequence. What delight.
Still having not opened my hand, I tenderly caressed the stone with my other, giving himself a light tap as I stood; “Good sport, old man.” I said. I shrank back to the cemetery’s darker corners.
Safely ensconced, I waited, testing the tensile strength of the unknown object in my hand with tightenings of my fist, and rotations of my wrist. All that resulted was pain, though that too pleased, signalling that I had not merely fantasised or carried over dreams, but had borne something actual from the graveside to my current spot. Still I waited to look at the thing directly. I allowed the cemetery to fall back into stillness; as delighted as I was, the risks I’d already taken had been considerable and, now with the added threat of any kind of disturbance resulting in the loss of the precious letter (how easy it would be to drop when attempting to scale the walls in a hurry), I had fallen back on the masterfully subtle practices of my former night-time visits. I had a position and held a pose in which I could quite comfortably remain for hours without moving; my breathing slowed to almost nothing. I decided I would wait until I was home to study what was in my hand.
In the meantime, I imagined its proportions – a simple enough task – and then how the thing might look. My memory of the headstone itself were vague. My mind’s eye could not settle on a font, though I saw the letters as fine and unadorned. Nor could I remember whether the name was simply carved or also inlaid, and, if so, whether in silver or gold. The letter in my hand felt metallic, that was sure, but that needn’t mean that it would prove to be. The relation between what had been and what I had taken – not least having no idea of how – remained, for the time, obscure.
[Read Part II here]