The fact of the matter is that I've been robbed. Twice. The first time, a couple of months ago, someone stole my treasured fleece jacket. Due to sheer carelessness, I must add, but that only made the loss harder to swallow. It's the good old Calvinist reflex—blaming yourself rather than the one inflicting harm on you.
The second time, less than a week ago, things got a bit more confrontational if not downright ugly. Cycling across the camping municipal of Port-La Nouvelle, having just magically turned a bagful of mustiness into a bagful of fresh clothes at the local laverie, I spotted three boys standing around my tent. As soon as they saw me they legged it. Shouting 'hey! hey!' didn't convince them to turn back and come and say hello, so I went after them, ploughing through rows of hedges and empty camping lots.
When they got to a high fence they paused and glared at me. All three of them were panting. It struck me how young they were—the oldest fourteen, perhaps, the youngest a mere ten or eleven. I tried to make clear that I didn't intend to do them any harm, at least not for the moment. 'Il est gentil,' I heard one of them whisper. That seemed to pave the way for some kind of communication. 'What were you doing at my tent?' I ventured in my finest French, always patchy at best but now patchy to the point of falling apart, what with all the Spanish occupying the limited space in my head reserved for Romance languages. 'We were only looking, sir. Only looking.' 'Then why the hell did you just run away?' I snapped. One of them started shivering, as though he was having some kind of fit. But then I realised he was crying, or pretending to cry, unable to produce any tears.I decided to let them go. Even though they were looking pretty shifty, I just couldn't believe these little brats were capable of petty crime. Not at this age. Moments later, back at the tent, I found out I was wrong. Awfully wrong. An unfastened guyline. Some paperwork out on the grass. And when I entered the tent it struck me like lightning: one of the bags on its side and one crucial item missing. A pack of Snickers bars. My emergency snack. The perfect antidote for limbs going a bit weak.
I jumped on my bike and went after them a second time. Again they made a runner and again I managed to stop them. 'Snickers?' they said, putting on an innocent face. After pushing them a bit, they admitted having taken a roll of cookies, some chocolate paste and two kiwis. And yes, the Snickers bars, too. They led me to a nearby skatepark and showed me the sad remains.
My suspicions darkened. What else could they have taken? Something valuable? One of the boys offered me to search his backpack. Nothing but dirty sports clothes and some crumpled-up homework. But the backpack itself looked pretty nice—a black-and-blue Puma affair—so I strapped it securely to my back, glad to have taken some kind of hostage. 'Right,' I said, and marched them back to the tent, determined to make sure nothing else was missing.
But how to ascertain every single item is still there when almost all of your stuff is unpacked? It's like trying to tell which, if any, piece of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle is missing. Moreover, I found I couldn't focus. What if I had arrived ten minutes later? With their appetite taken care of, greed might have been next on their list.
By now, the boys were begging me to let them go with their backpack. The oldest started hugging me, his body covered in a cold sweat. The backpack boy fell to his knees, trying to kiss my feet. 'We were only hungry, sir. Our parents are from Morocco, we don't get a lot to eat.'
I dearly wanted them to get out of my sight but not without a name or address, neither of which they were likely to provide. So I offered to do the only sensible thing: go with them and hand the bag to their parents. This simple suggestion had a profound impact. They turned pale, hesitated for a moment and then ran away, leaving me alone with the fancy backpack. I never saw them again.
An hour or so later, going through the boy's belongings, I came across a written homework assignment, something having to do with changing the point of view of a short text. Apart from the boy's name, I found his teacher's corrections, plus the final verdict:
Trop rapide. Tu oublies certains points. Les temps du récit ne sont pas respectés. 9/20 des efforts de construction.I started feeling sorry for the lad. Getting lousy marks at school because you're too damn hungry to focus... Had I been too harsh on them? I'm ashamed to admit I even accepted two one-euro coins the backpack boy offered me as some kind of damages. Maybe I had taken it too far. They had looked so intimidated.
The next day I hung the backpack from a tree and took off early. A terrible sadness came over me, which didn't disappear until well after lunchtime.
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