Hands off

Her face is deeply furrowed. You can hear her false teeth clatter when she talks. Her eyes hide behind coke-bottle bottoms. Two watchful pupils. She doesn't lose sight of me, and especially gazes at me intensely when she thinks I'm not aware of it. Everything she relates seems only meant to gauge my reaction. I try to act the sucker I look, but I doubt if she falls for it.
     Once every two or three days I go to her place in the morning to keep her company over coffee and do a little shopping for her. I also bring her my old papers and magazines, because she thinks new ones are a waste. "At my age, time goes so fast, it doesn't matter whether you read today's newspaper, or yesterday's, or last week's, or the next year's, for that matter. It's all the same." Suspiciously she aims her magnifying glasses at me. Like all old people, she is particularly interested in crimes and atrocities, but she seems to seek them out as an opportunity for expostulating about the inequities of our times. "Look here what they've done, the bastards!" she yells, slapping her hand flat on the paper. "Smashing old people's heads in for a few hundred bucks! The Arabs would know what to do with such people! In the Arab countries they simply chop off your hands when you steal. The sooner they start doing that here, the better, if you ask me. That would finish them off! Thieving cowards!"
     Occasionally I do a little chauffeur service for her. I still have a rusty vehicle, a left-over from better times. I insisted she pay me for the service, or she would have refused out of suspicion I want something from her.
     As always, she is dressed up and ready when I come upstairs to get her. About her hovers a cloud of sweet perfume that is either very cheap or very expensive. I gaze at her neck, but the carefully folded scarf only reveals the trembling little hollow between her collar bones. Last time I came to fetch her, I saw a gold locket shining there, but I must have looked a bit too greedy then, because she turned away abruptly and folded her scarf over it. I notice that this time she has caught my casual gaze again and I read annoyance in her eyes. She is not to be fooled by sucker-like behaviour. I watch her lock the door to her apartment. Then I bring her to where she wants to go.

I spent my last money on an electric drill that runs on batteries, and the biggest size crown saw I could find. If I'm lucky, it will be a good investment. At the front door of her apartment block I ring the neighbour's bell. With a buzz and a click the door opens and I yell, "Chimney sweep!" into the gaping hole of the staircase. The neighbour, without bothering to come down, shouts an annoyed "Go away!" and I slip inside while slamming the front door shut. I wait till the neighbour is back in and then tiptoe to the door of her apartment.
     I take the drill out of the bag. Her front door is quite old and has two oblong panes of very thin plywood. Boring through them will be a piece of cake, it'll only take a few seconds. I hold my breath, put the crown saw against the wood and push the button. A noise as if a regiment of cavaliers is galloping down the stairs. Then the saw shoots through the pane and the drill whines as it revs up to full speed. I listen intensely, but I hear no door open, no inquiring voices. There's always someone somewhere using a drill during the day in these houses. I put the machine in tthe bag and stick my hand through the hole. My fingers grope around and find the pin of the lock. It clicks open and I immediately walk to the back room. There's a huge steel desk there - "my late husband's" - with heavy drawers that glide smoothly over double sledges. She has complained often enough about those drawers, they're so massive, she always was afraid her finger would get stuck in while closing them, and then it would "snap like a match stick". I only have to open one drawer: the little box inside is still open and if it isn't gold that's gleaming there, it certainly looks like it.

This time she is waiting for me at the front door of her apartment when I come upstairs. She points at the hole in the door. "Burglars," she explains. "The bastards, I could murder them. Nothing is safe anymore. And nobody ever told me it's so easy either. Only last year I had a new lock fitted to the door, but they never warned me those panes were so thin. Did you know it's so easy to get through them?" It is as if the circles in her glasses have multiplied. The concentric rings give the impression of a long sewer tube, at the far end of which a dark animal sits waiting patiently for its prey. But then a resigned attitude comes over her. She turns round and gets back inside. "You can't stop them," she says. "If they want to get in, they get in. The best thing to do is not to have valuable things in the house. And why should old people like me still have valuable things? Better give them away, to family or friends, people who have any use for them, before they steal it from under your nose. And it's especially old people they're after these days, the cowards. Come here, I've got something for you." She struts to the back room, one hand against her back, the other leaning on her cane. "And my back is aching too," she mutters. She stops before the steel desk and points to a drawer. "Open that, will you, and take out the box that's in there." I feel sweat prickling in my neck. Hasn't she looked yet? But that's impossible, because she must have put the jewels back she wore yesterday. Does she intend to give me one of those? I pull the drawer and with a soft humming sound it slides open. I hesitate and reach inside to take the box. Could it be...? But then I see the shining edge of the steel drawer, ground razor sharp, and, one split second too late, the triumphant flicker in her eyes when she thrusts herself forward and, with a loud bang, slams the drawer shut.