The narrator

“Having already been convicted of theft, I can be convicted again without proof, merely upon a casual accusation, just on suspicion. The law then says that I am capable of the deed. I am in danger not only when I steal, but every moment of my life, because I have stolen.” [1]

One night in the 13th floor kitchen there loitered a thin boy with a grubby red nose and hair like straw, such that I immediately dubbed him an urchin. He had eaten some mess of his own triumphant arranging and now held a leftover uncooked potato in his cold hands. It was still in its peel. That’s one lonely potato you got there, I remarked. I’m wondering whether to keep it, he said. Keep it, I assured him, so’s you can bake it in the oven some morning when you are in a rush, the way they did in Dickens, with a dash of butter if luck is a lady. In Dickens, he said, incredulous. Sure, I said. They were orphans with one potato to their name each and no ovens to speak of, and they ate their potatoes with relish, having held them over the embers smoldering in rubbish bins.

The following morning, and for several mornings thereafter, fire alarms clamored, so that the entire building was evacuated threefold. In the end I was singled out as the instigator.

But I do insist that the urchin was the faulty party, for he lacked the imagination to realize that he should use a rubbish bin out in the city somewhere, instead of directly in the kitchen, and that he should, to boot, be dressed none too well, and that there should be in his company a half-hearted snowfall, a long-faced moon. I suppose that if I tell a woman I live on the Nile to the extent that, when I’m falling asleep, I slip my hand out the window and ripple its waters, I shall be sentenced for the fact that she falls in love with me. So I exaggerate! So does every advertisement in the free world. It’s called public relations, self-promotion, and sometimes, poetry.

[1] Genet, Jean. The thief’s journal. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. Grove Press, 1987. Page 211.