He looked through the spy-hole in the front door. Outside he could see a landing and three more front doors. He went back to the living room, ran his finger along the spines of the few books on the shelves. He caressed a china mug. Turned on the radio. Music blared out, but he couldn’t understand the words:
. . . unforgettable doves,
unforgettable like the afternoons
when the rain from the sierra
stopped us going to Zapoopan . . .
He switched it off. Silence. Sat down on the sofa. Picked up the channel-changer. Turned on the TV. Changed channels; brightened the colors as much as he could, turned the volume all the way up. Turned it all the way down. It was so easy. There was a book open on the sofa. He picked it up, convinced he would understand nothing, but the second he looked at the page, he read almost fluently: “I’ve moved. I used to live in the Duke Hotel, on the corner of Washington Square. My family has lived there for generations, and when I say generations I mean at least two-hundred or three-hundred generations.” He closed the book, and when he’d put it back where he’d found it, he remembered he’d found it open and not shut. He picked it up again, and while he was looking for the page it had been open to, he heard the sound of keys turning in a lock. A man and a woman appeared; they were clearly adults. The man said, “Hello.” The woman walked over, kissed him on the cheek, looked him up and down, and asked: “How come you’ve put your pants on backwards?” He looked at his tracksuit bottoms. How was he to know they were back to front? He shrugged his shoulders. “Have you done your homework?” the man asked. Oh, no, not homework! He imagined (as if he could remember) an earlier time, when homework and backward pants didn’t exist. “Get on with it then!” It was the woman’s turn. Before going to his bedroom and getting on with it, he went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, took out a can of Diet Coke, that he struggled to open (still being clumsy with his hands), and spilled half on the floor. Before they could scold him, he went to the junk room, and as he unhooked the mop, he spotted three beetles huddling against the wall; after freezing for a moment, they tried to escape. He felt disgusted, put his right foot on them, and pressed down until he could feel them squashing.
A Hunger and Thirst for Justice
The fact he had been born into an aristocratic family didn’t mean Robin Hood couldn’t hate social inequality. From his childhood, he’d always felt indignant when he saw how the poor lived in abject poverty while the rich wallowed in luxury. Robin Hood was repelled by a contrast that left the rest of his family unfazed.
He was sure the powers-that-be were always on the side of the wealthy, and he couldn’t simply stand by and watch that degrading spectacle, so one day he decided to do something about it. He selected the richest of the rich families in the county. He didn’t even need to spy on them to execute the plan he had in mind. He knew them all so welclass="underline" he was familiar with their every move—where, when, and what they did, when exactly they could be taken by surprise. Then he fixed a day to do the deed. But he had to dress for the occasion. He couldn’t wear his usual garb; they’d recognize him. He opted for a black silk mask and a hunting cap, complete with a slender, gray feather from the trunk in the attic that his Uncle Richard had brought him from a visit to the Tyrol. He took his bow, quiver, and arrows and mounted his best steed.
From afar he could see the castle-windows lit up and hear the music pouring out. As he had anticipated, they were throwing a party. Perfect. That way he’d catch them all together, and the pickings from his choice selection of the wealthy and their guests would be rich. He burst into the house, indifferent to the mess his horse’s muddy shoes were making on the deep red carpet. The crème de la crème of local society was present: not only the hosts (the richest of the rich, the owners of the castle, the main target of his incursion), but also their friends: marquis, counts, and dukes, who were possibly not as rich but in any case were excessively rich when compared to the community as a whole.
It was an exceptional harvest. He stole their tiaras (silver, gold, and jewel encrusted silver), their rings (none was unadorned: all were as thick as the links of a chain), their earrings (some were long and hung down to the shoulder), their keepsakes (one made of platinum), and hair slides (of more varied quality). He put all the money they were carrying in a sack, in a jumble of coins and notes, and ordered the castle-owners (the richest of the county’s rich) to open their strongbox and empty it out. He bundled the silver cutlery and candelabra into the same sack and put all the food he found in the pantry into a blue velvet bag. (So many delicious tidbits the needy never got to taste!) Then, still unrecognized by the revelers, he galloped off into the night. The richest of the rich and their aristocratic friends, excited by his feat (that interrupted the monotony of their existences), decided to dispatch lackeys the next morning to take the news to friends who hadn’t been with them that night: a masked man had come and had stolen their jewels, valuable possessions, and money. They invited them to an orgy in their castle, so they could tell them the whole story in detail.
Robin Hood galloped through the forest, from west to east, with a clear objective in mind. He had taken two weeks to select the poorest of the poor inhabitants of Sherwood: a family who lived in a wretched timber shack next to an open drain. The poverty-stricken family saw Robin Hood riding up from afar and hid. Whenever anybody went near them, it was always to steal the little they had. Sometimes masked robbers in horizontally striped shirts, sometimes tax collectors in checkered jackets, and sometimes gentlemen in need of fresh meat for a banquet. Robin Hood knocked on their door and asked them to open up: he came in peace. The poor people didn’t respond. Robin Hood persisted: “Open up, I bring you what I have robbed from the rich!” They paid no heed. He was forced to smash the door down. The poor people were huddled in a corner of the only room in their hovel (an all-in-one lobby, dining room, kitchen, and bedroom), shaking and begging for mercy. Robin Hood told them they shouldn’t be afraid and told them again that he was going to give them what he’d robbed from the rich. “My idea is this,” he repeated, “steal from the rich and give to the poor.” He repeated the idea several times because they didn’t understand him at first. They looked at each other and at him, and were frightened. Robin Hood explained himself, yet again. He was proud of his own distinctive idea of justice. As some would say, “He takes justice into his own hands!” But, take note! He didn’t do so to benefit himself but to help others. He robbed the rich (that was clearly a crime: the fact that someone was rich doesn’t give anyone carte blanche to attack their inalienable right to private ownership, at least not in a market economy), but didn’t do so to keep their property for himself, as any common or garden-variety thief would have done, but to hand it on to the needy; he didn’t touch a cent. Robbing the rich to give to the poor was an act of generosity that, he was sure, granted him forgiveness in the eyes of God for his premeditated felony. Did the end justify the means? It did as far as Robin Hood was concerned, beyond the shadow of a doubt. That was why he confronted the sheriff, the powers-that-be, and the landowners, whether ecclesiastical or not. Similarly, he always tried to treat women, the poor, and the humble extremely courteously.