Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories Read Free Page B

from down there, near those shops,’ said the one next to me.
    I took a look.
    ‘Get your head down, idiot, they’ll see us and get away again,’ he hissed.
    ‘I was looking,’ I explained, and crouched down by the wall.
    ‘If we can circle round without them realizing,’ another said, ‘we’ll have them trapped. There aren’t that many.’
    We moved in bursts, on tiptoe, holding our breaths: every few seconds we exchanged glances with bright eyes.
    ‘They won’t get away now,’ I said.
    ‘At last we’re going to catch them red-handed,’ someone said.
    ‘About time,’ I said.
    ‘Filthy bastards, breaking into shops like that!’ the other said.
    ‘Bastards, bastards!’ I repeated, angrily.
    They sent me a little way ahead, to take a look. I was back inside the shop.
    ‘They won’t get us now,’ one was saying as he slung a sack over his shoulder.
    ‘Quick,’ someone else said. ‘Let’s go out through the back! That way we’ll escape from right under their noses.’
    We all had triumphant smiles on our lips.
    ‘They’re going to feel really sore,’ I said. And we sneaked into the back of the shop.
    ‘We’ve fooled the idiots again!’ they said. But then a voice said: ‘Stop, who’s there,’ and the lights went on. We crouched down behind something, pale, grasping each other’s hands. The others came into the backroom, didn’t see us, turned round. We shot out and ran like crazy. ‘We’ve done it!’ we shouted. I tripped a couple of times and got left behind. I found myself with the others running after them.
    ‘Come on,’ they said, ‘we’re catching up.’
    And everybody raced through the narrow streets, chasing them. ‘Run this way, cut through there,’ we said and the others weren’t far ahead now, so that we were shouting: ‘Come on, they won’t get away.’
    I managed to catch up with one of them. He said: ‘Well done, you got away. Come on, this way, we’ll lose them.’ And I went along with him. After a while I found myself alone, in an alley. Someone came running round a corner and said: ‘Come on, this way, I saw them. They can’t have got far.’ I ran after him a while.
    Then I stopped, in a sweat. There was no one left, I couldn’t hear any more shouting. I stood with my hands in my pockets and started to walk, on my own, going nowhere in particular.

The Black Sheep
    There was a country where they were all thieves.
    At night everybody would leave home with skeleton keys and shaded lanterns and go and burgle a neighbour’s house. They’d get back at dawn, loaded, to find their own house had been robbed.
    So everybody lived happily together, nobody lost out, since each stole from the other, and that other from another again, and so on and on until you got to a last person who stole from the first. Trade in the country inevitably involved cheating on the parts both of buyer and seller. The government was a criminal organization that stole from its subjects, and the subjects for their part were only interested in defrauding the government. Thus life went on smoothly, nobody was rich and nobody was poor.
    One day, how we don’t know, it so happened that an honest man came to live in the place. At night, instead of going out with his sack and his lantern, he stayed home to smoke and read novels.
    The thieves came, saw the light on and didn’t go in.
    This went on for a while: then they were obliged to explain to him that even if he wanted to live without doing anything, it was no reason to stop others from doing things. Every night he spent at home meant a family would have nothing to eat the following day.
    The honest man could hardly object to such reasoning. He took to going out in the evening and coming back the following morning like they did, but he didn’t steal. He was honest, there was nothing you could do about it. He went as far as the bridge and watched the water flow by beneath. When he got home he found he had been robbed.
    In less than a week